The modern 'internet scene' is very heavily influenced by Shulgin and his followers. I think it's important to remember that he doesn't come from an academic background, but from a commercial background. Whilst academics and intellectuals were perusing scientific research, with a small number of drugs, Shulgin simply carried the mentality of the Dow Chemical Company - a commercial laboratory - into the world of psychedelics, believing it to be 'science'. Accordingly, his definition of a "++++" experience is nothing more than a total abandonment of all sense and reason, to be replaced with the naive and unquestioned conviction of having achieved religious enlightenment.
I think your characterization of Shulgin's definition of "++++" borders on the absurd. He says this:
A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a 'peak experience', a 'religious experience,' 'divine transformation,' a 'state of Samādhi' and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2, and +3 of the measuring of a drug's intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of that same drug. If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end, of the human experiment.
That does not describe a "total abandonment of all sense and reason". It does, in my view, misrepresent the term samadhi, but that is a semantic quibble.
I also think that your knowledge of Shulgin is purely based on the intentional hell-raising he performed by releasing PiHKAL and TiHKAL. Modern researchers still invite Shulgin to speak at their conferences, and it isn't because of PiHKAL and TiHKAL, it's because of such things as his pioneering the use of MDMA in psychotherapy.
fixingahole said:
The very existence of these compounds is based upon the assumption, nothing more, that by taking many different drugs, one can gain a greater understanding of the mind.
The very existence of most of these compounds is based on a number of researchers' grant money, and Shulgin's curiosity. He wanted to see what he could make and to see what it would feel like. The justification for that grant money has largely been that the compounds may be of use in understanding the workings of the brain
from the outside and that they may be of use in psychotherapy. The latter has been demonstrated.
If you want a greater understanding of the mind, I suggest you read
Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, also by Ludwig Wittgenstein, and
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger. If that isn't sufficient, you could try the
Dhammapada.
fixingahole said:
So I suppose I'm trying to say that people who simply talk about pushing the limits of experience on DMT, or mushrooms, are actually far less dangerous than those who are willing to impose their certainties on others, whilst accepting a statistically small number of deaths as inevitable human collateral damage - the mentality of a commercial pharmaceutical company, rather than a human being.
If there is one thing that the "scientific" wing of bluelight commenters, including me, have been consistently explicit about, it is this: when you take an untested drug,
nothing is certain. It is for this very reason that we caution against pushing the limits -- any limits. With that said, many of us, including me, do not believe it acceptable for us to tell people what they can and cannot do regarding their own bodies.
