I believe there are two distinct levels of the mind. When we look at processes on this meso-scale, each of the two processes are not directly altered by psychedelics, but the sensory/raw data injected into each process, their connections to reality, the source of our rationality, is affected.
The lower process is more adept in dealing with it. It is the first and most grandly affected, and the psyche can insulate itself from the corruption by associating itself with the higher process.
The higher process is indirectly responding to input by observation of the first process. In a young mature mind this has little impact on its rationality. It is much more difficult for us to imagine this observation of the lower consciousness as itself being corrupt. Firstly, it is more difficult to observe higher process on the whole, there is no greater process to monitor the higher process. Secondly, there are few things that naturally corrupt the reception inside our brain, this possible sixth sense between the levels, may be less adept to dealing with confusion and so it may be much more difficult to recognize.
We can easily rationalize what we are seeing in the lower process and use the higher consciousness to observe these alterations. There is no such safety net for the higher consciousness.
We can control things at the lower level by using emotional feedback. The lower process is driven by emotion, and responds quickly, changing our state of mind.
Often we focus so much on this heightened state of the lower process that we never even question the higher process. When we do it is short-lived. We realize we are irrational beings, but changes at this level are highly involved and the architecture feels incomplete as well.
I feel like the higher process is affected in a more prolonged and less pronounced way. That it is often not working under optimal conditions anyway, but the connections (lower to reality, higher to lower) can become damaged and we are then unable to reconnect with our lower state of mind, which is ultimately more important for our well-being than connecting with reality, if the psyche should become trapped up there.
This simplified view of the interconnectivity of the mind is difficult enough to imagine without considering what likely is a more complex chain of events that actually occur inside the mind.
I think the input being out of the ordinary is the root cause of phenomena experienced by psychedelic users, becoming irrational, and that specific internal go-betweens are also altered.
I realize this is getting off-topic and ethereal but need some rational basis for discussion about higher and lower consciousness.
There were some studies done in the 50s on LSD and problem solving (on other scientists) and the results were positive. There's at least some "mind expansion" going on, but yeah that is very much within the limits of your knowledge. I think a lot of the confusion comes from not being used to such a state. The way your brain works is very different now, and you're not looking at things, nor processing them the way you're used to.
Not that psychedelics aren't useful for philosophical thought, they actually helped me make sense of derealization. Something about probability and the mind being tied down together, which I don't feel like putting down in it's entirety right now, but it's pretty rational compared to most "psychedelic philosophers." At any rate, it was the altering of the mind that allowed me step outside of my normal view and come to a more rational conclusion. I didn't "download" any of it, it was all within the frame of my own understanding.
Probabilities are important to selection.
