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Are Realisations Real?

g1zzl3

g1zzl3

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Mar 4, 2009
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By this I mean whenever I have a Realization on a Psychedelic substance its always that im fucked in the head and flying back through distant memory's of everything always seems to build up and piece together the same ending that im a fruit loop.

Now when Ive read about Realizations etc it always seems to be that you should listen to the realization and try to incorporate it into your life.
So does this mean what I keep finding out about myself is true and I am indeed a nutter? or are these "Realizations" aload of drug addled mind bullshit
 
I would take that as an insight into how everything is interconnected.
 
its like reverse engineering freudian dreamwork. its a puzzle of recursive symbolisation, reinterpretation and representation. in interpreting, try to achieve the undercurrent of what psychoanalysis calls 'free association', which you can recognize as a peculiar type of very loose, highly emotional 'logic'. instead of focusing on what it is (objectively) , look for what you yourself tend to feel, what it conjures up; more like as in who it is, what part of yourself. its something you have to get the hang of though. the more you know yourself the easier it becomes.
 
Define real.

IMO there are 3 types of real: real to our consensus intersubjective reality, real within our mind and ultimately, transcendentally real.
The latter cannot be expressed but only experienced by awakening from the former 2 types. Whatever you come up with in your mind has a meaning to it in the second class but its relevance to our everyday consensus reality must be tested empirically or experientially for it to be integrated, validated and realized by reality-check to become 'real' in the definition most used. However, this would still only considered real in an interconnected, relative, cosmological way meaning you have a frame of reference and it is true within that frame, controlled by its parameters. Nonetheless it's still an illusory dream, albeit consistent like a sound comprehensive theory.
 
Psychedelics aren't truth in powder/pill/blotter-form. They merely twist the reality you perceive. Sometimes you get lucky and get a stroke of thought that can be applied in reality, which could be of creative, philosophical or personal value. Remember to always question authority, even if it feels so deep, true and right! It might not be possible whilst on the peak of a trip, but do not succumb to your new-found truths before you have examined their validity. Psychedelics touch the deepest of feelings, but trusting your feelings to always provide the truth, is simply far too much to ask of them - not to mention it could potentially be life-threatening in combination with the creativity associated with this class of drugs.

As what regards the "real within our mind", I'll take the stance that even though, we are evolutionary products of life on earth and our thoughts might be considered true or real or "happening" in this context. However, real phenomenons as they may be, they just do not pose truth value, unless you apply critical thinking to them. Our brain simply does not figure out a truth everytime a thought passes through. This may very well be so because of the slowness of genetic evolution as compared to cultural evolution. The brain is still, by and large, fit for gathering, hunting, telling apart colors etc. - and not to as large an extent, fit for figuring out great metaphysical problems.
 
Whether one chooses to act upon any given realisation is up to him or herself. Also, obscure philosophical realisations might be kind of hard to put to action, even if they are true and/or beautiful.

I think psychedelic realisations should be looked at with critical eyes. It seriously isn't healthy for your continued survival to immediately think "IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!!!" when you have a realisation (or vision, which I prefer - despite it's spiritual connotations).
 
I went and dug up a post I wrote on this question a while back. In short, I believe psychedelics increase both insights we would hold as "real," and seemingly coherent had we experienced them sober originally and false, or "mendacious insights". I speculated that the feeling of insight is the result of the simultaneous activation and integration of two or more previously asynchronous neural networks. I believe psychedelics can artificially evoke these events because they tend to cause loose associating of thoughts in users (seeing connections where none exist).
If we tend to think linearly, in a firm, successive, and stepwise fashion, then a loosening of our conceptual boundaries would entail the simultaneous activation of whole networks of thoughts and more holistic thinking. The thoughts within these holistic networks would tend to be reasonably associated with one another but not necessarily. Psychedelic’s activation both within networks coherently interassociated and between networks reasonably disconnected could explain both the tendency of the psychedelics user to discern plausible higher order connections between ideas (insights typically signified by by the eureka feeling) and their tendency to draw entirely nonsensical parallels between thoughts that no intelligent person can relate to. If the eureka feeling is merely the feeling of a network of thoughts fusing together—which usually occurs in a sensible and fairly reliable way when we’re sober—a psychedelic loosening of conceptual boundaries would increase the incidence of the proper conjoining and subsumption of thoughts into higher order abstractions as well as the incidence of “misconjoinments” due to leeching of reasonably disconnected networks into otherwise coherent networks via liberal application of our favorite psychedelic solvents. Additionally, its possible that the presence of a psychedelic could even amplify the experience of mendacious insight, thereby overpowering our inhibitions and second guesses with an all-consuming feeling of certainty. In dissociative use this loosening of conceptual boundaries might happen when certain brain systems are isolated from others that influence or inhibit (or inhibit the inhibition of) them or the activity of the normally antecedent or successive systems to the isolated system, thereby freeing up networks of thought to make unusual or higher order associations via a breakdown in the usual chain of neural systems that might underpin some forms of linear thought.
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This is a good thread. All good "heady" replies. ;)

Here is a good way to test any thought, psychedelic or not. What does your gut feeling say? When you lighten that area that seems dark what does your inner most guidance say?

I've had some angelic times. I've had some demonic times. I've had total truths seemingly revealed as well as BS thrown at me from some unknown source within me. Some of the stuff I have to say "YES" to. Some of the stuff I have to say "GET LOST" to.

I think just like the "what happens when we smoke DMT" thread we can't nail down exactly what is going on. Anyone that points a finger and says "this is exactly what happens when we trip" (again, physical facts aside) is being arrogant and closed minded. If we knew the mystery would be gone.
 
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The extreme feelings of pleasure would probably still be there. Just like love is still nice after you read about vasopressin and oxytocin.

And you cannot always trust your gut feeling or innermost guidance. In fact, it is becoming less and less likely that an inner you even exists (Cartesian dualism etc.), it's just a benign user illusion. :)

But goodnight to you folks :)
 
that's an interesting post ps00do
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Strangely enough, it was an idea (along with many of my thoughts on panexperientialism) that came about from reflection on salvia, a drug whose visionary states, it seems to me, largely sidestep the model I speculatively proposed for insights on classical psychedelics (I suspect this is true for many radical "breakthrough"-type experiences).

I found it bizarre that what I saw through my eyes during the salvia experience was unchanged (no overlay of visuals), yet I had such an overriding sense of inhabiting an environment and participating in a life narrative wholly incongruous with incoming sense data. The idea that whole impressions of understanding and identity can be rapidly (seconds) synthesized unconsciously and presented to consciousness in a way that overrides all evidence contrary to their reality is what spurred on this line of thinking.

As alluded to in other posts here, "glopping" these impressions together into fantastically deformed cosmologies can take us to potentially important and vital new realms of understanding and experience ie. perhaps one or two corners of their distorted concept/experiential map overlay some more comprehensive experience of the possible world. But the further out we go, the more difficult it is to apply critical or consilient thought or any known procedure of verification, to curve fit.
 
some realizations one has while under the influence can be quite meaningful, others, while perhaps meaningful at the time, are utter nonsense. This is why it is important to have some sober time in between trips to "integrate your experience." And if you're coherent enough to wonder if you're a nutter, you're probably not.
 
If im around people, chances are, the anxiety that Im conflicting with inside already makes me come to realizations that arent neccesarily true (my thinking can appear nonsensical on the surface when not explained clearly which tends to worsen with drugs) This is enchanced by drugs and it feels like a completely superficial experiance because the lies that I create sort of come to life. Everything feels superficial. Ive come to realizations about myself that have helped me put my life into perspective when tripping alone. I also have to have a trusting experiance with people to be able to have a worthwhile trip. Generally on psychedelics, when im not enjoying myself, Im thinking about how small I am in this world and how highly I think of myself and its not ethical, I am destroying the planet. Ive also come to the realization that in order for me to find supreme satisfaction I have to get stuff done and try to move ahead in life in atleast one area, it doesnt take much to figure out you have to improve your life when its obvious things are bad, but for me ive sort of been ignoring it all. Drugs alter your perception and thinking (and perception of yourself), this doesnt totally dismiss any conclusion you could have come to under the influence but if you already think of yourself as a nut or doubt yourself drugs are going to enhance that. Profounddly so. Try to get your mind off yourself I guess, maybe you spend a little too much time inwards. I know I do.
 
Psychedelics are often said to simulate many aspects of schizophrenia and other severe neuroses. I would argue that intense psychedelic experiences also approach psychosis, in the psychoanalytic sense of a mental state where normal symbolic reasoning is impossible.

I wouldn't interpret this as evidence that there is something wrong with your brain or anything. Rather, I would say it provides an insight into how even the 'normal' mind operates in fundamentally the same way as the most deeply psychotic one. A sane, well-adjusted person differs from the deeply neurotic one not by having a 'healthy' brain, necessarily, but by having a more stable relationship to his or her own emotions, memories, traumas, insecurities, etc. Western medicine has constructed a very flawed understanding of mental health, where people think they are either healthy and 'normal' or there is something wrong in our heads that drugs or surgeries can fix. While there are certainly people who need drugs or surgeries to correct these types of conditions, that is not the case for most neuroses. Ultimately, we are all neurotic; it's just a question of how effectively we can deal with it.

I rather like azzazza's comments on this (probably because it's also a psychoanalytic approach). Think of the thoughts and revelations you have on psychedelics less as insights that are either objectively true or false and more as repressed content from your own unconscious. It's there to signify _something_ - a thought, a memory, a connection you have made in your mind - but it's not necessarily what first comes to mind, or the obvious literal meaning. If you hear a voice whisper some strange word to you, it doesn't mean you're a schizophrenic who hears voices and you just didn't notice before taking psychedelics; instead, I would try to think of any connection you can draw to that word, or any experience it reminds you of. Much like a dream, the actual meaning can be displaced into a misleading form (maybe the voice itself is the content, or the act of it being whispered, and the actual word is just filler; maybe it's the reverse; maybe something far less obvious than that). If a particular thought, image, symbol, etc. seems uniquely important to you, it's probably representative of something your unconscious wants to work through. Metaphoric condensation (where a single symbol stands for multiple unconscious thoughts or desires) is also a common dream mechanism. If you find this approach interesting, try googling for a copy of Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams." If you're willing to go further down the psychoanalytic rabbit hole, Lacanian interpretations of Freudian theory are, in my opinion, the most accurate theories we have for interpreting psychedelic experiences.
 
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