DMT saved me

[Ismene]

Death/loss of the ego, profound sense of connection to all existence, feelings of oneness; sounds pretty much the same to me.

But is that more down to a limit of language? It's like those studies they did on mescaline/LSD/psilocybin when they concluded they were all exactly the same and interchangeable with each other. It's because they were asking "Did you see colours?" and the answer was "yes" for each drug. Language isn't always subtle enough to express massive differences.

What about orgasms? They make you feel oneness too, so does looking at a sunset. Are they all the same as tripping?

And doesn't the language influence what you think about the trip? When you feel a bit high on psychedelics people will tend to reach for "I'm dying dude" because they've heard someone else say that "you die" on psychedelic trips. Obviously tripping isn't anything remotely like death, never was and never will be.

But he said he got a message from India afrom the Guru saying that the Guru is aware that Ram Dass has doubts, so come back to India and bring that medicine again, to where he did and his Guru carefully places 3 more tablets on his tongue and swallows so there could be no mistake.

That story does ring a bell Jack. I like Ram Dass but whether I trust him to be able to figure out a sleight of hand guy I'm not sure. I mean that thing about "Watch me put this on my tongue, very, very slowly" - that sounds like basic misdirection doesn't it. Every magician I've ever seen goes "I'm going to do this very, very slowly".

If I'dve been there I'dve just injected him direct with a thousand mics. See how he liked that :D

 

[phuckingnutz]

yeah, and this story is also rampant on the web...don't know if it's true, but it seems to fit the theme here...

"American psychedelic pioneer and DMT guru Terence McKenna gave DMT to a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and after the experience was over, the monk told McKenna that it brought him to a place the Buddhists had seen many times through meditation, but he also stated that it was about as far as one could go into the Bardo and still return to the physical plane afterward"

Might be a bullshit story, but I'm still too high to chime in any more on this right now.

 

[Ismene]

Can't see meditation giving you an insight into DMT.

 

[vortech]

I also hate all the religious dogma or "bullshit" out there - I want to learn more about buddhism or higher states and meditation or methods, but I literally don't know where to look because there's so much "noise" out there. Stuff that is basically religious bullshit lol. Ken Wilber seems onto something although he (like the others) still talk about a bunch of crap in between the good stuff.

I watched this documentary today, Yoga is: A Transformational Journey, full of good stuff to help you out in the right direction.
Also, With One Voice may be the right tone from which to proceed ( I've been watching lots of spiritual documentaries today, feels right for the moment)

Re: the meditation/psychedelics connection, of course there is a connection! I believe the resulting state of being can be one and the same, just different ways to get to the same space.

 

[Jonneh]

yeah, and this story is also rampant on the web...don't know if it's true, but it seems to fit the theme here...

"American psychedelic pioneer and DMT guru Terence McKenna gave DMT to a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and after the experience was over, the monk told McKenna that it brought him to a place the Buddhists had seen many times through meditation, but he also stated that it was about as far as one could go into the Bardo and still return to the physical plane afterward"

Might be a bullshit story, but I'm still too high to chime in any more on this right now.

McKenna tells this story in one of his talks. I believe the monk referred to the experience as 'the lesser lights of the Bardo', whatever they are.

But is that more down to a limit of language? It's like those studies they did on mescaline/LSD/psilocybin when they concluded they were all exactly the same and interchangeable with each other. It's because they were asking "Did you see colours?" and the answer was "yes" for each drug. Language isn't always subtle enough to express massive differences.

What about orgasms? They make you feel oneness too, so does looking at a sunset. Are they all the same as tripping?

You're right that at some level of subtlety of difference between meditative and psychedelic states, language is impotent, and the differences are ineffable (while nevertheless continuing to exist). Still, the states need not be identical to be related.

If we take a simple (yet powerful) quantity such as entropy as a measure of how easily one's mind (and brain) moves from one state to another, the psychedelic and meditative states belong at the same end of the spectrum. At the other (more ordered) end, we might find depression, coma and stagnation. The psychedelic and meditative states are not identical, and one cannot (fully) substitute for the other (gurus and psychonauts will find novelty in psychedelic and meditative states, respectively), but they are nevertheless fairly close cousins in state-space.