DMT saved me

[Bare_head]

religion are fairy tales, i dnt blast of peoples beliefs but if u believe in religion ur pretty brainwashed to say the least, who is buddha? where is this man?

 

[Vurtual]

^I don't 'believe' in religion, except in the sense that i'm pretty sure it exists. To be honest your simplistic characterisation of all religions together like that sounds pretty brainwashed (by dawkins? hitchens?) - is there no difference between deep zen philosophy arrived at through direct mystical experience and 'god hates fags' christians parrotting texts out of context?.

There's organised religion, which i'd agree is usually pretty dodgy (but as i said i think is more of a social issue); then there's the wider use of the word religion to describe anyone's spiritual/cosmolgical beliefs, regardless of whether they're individual or part of a collective. Eg, the cosmology of the big bang has various articles of faith like inflation and dark matter/energy - pretty much a faith given by high priests if you can't do tensor mathematics yourself.

 

[Xorkoth]

No, but we know the Tibetan buddhists - who studied buddha for 900 years while they ran a brutal feudal slavemaster state. If they caught a peasant pinching a goat to survive, they'd gouge his eyes out and cut off his hands. So that's the old "do not covet possessions" buddhist law out the window right there. More "Do not covet possessions unless it is thy fucking goat, and then thy must get medieval on someones ass".

I'm sure all those centuries of tibetan monks could've quoted you Buddha chapter and verse - but their everyday life revolved around kicking Tibetans up the arse if they didn't fetch the water quick enough. Enlightened beings? Not as far as I'm concerned.

Are all the people who claim to have had experiences with meditation deluded or lying?

I prefer to look at someones actions rather than their words. Like the Dali Lama never mentions anything about buddhists hoarding money - but the first thing he did when leaving Tibet was fill a few helicopters full of gold.

I'm sure someone meditating experiences something - it's just nothing I'm interested in. It's like Dr Ruth's pussy - I'm sure there's something down there that pee that comes out but you wouldn't recognise it.

Hehe. But yeah, you're describing organized religion, not the pure practice of meditation. Organized religion is sketchy, all the way around. I'm not sure there are any that haven't been appropriated for social control by now, or at some point(s) in their history at least.

Mushrooms are a whole different thing to meditation.

Yes, I agree. I'm just saying that meditation is nevertheless a valid thing that has enabled people to increase their awareness and understanding of life and reality. It's not the same, but it's not useless hogwash either. And it seems that people have reached similar conclusions with it as people have done on psychedelics, just through a different experience that takes a lot more time and effort.

Still i agree with ismene, without my first mushroom experience i dnt think i woule be the same person in terms of being open minded

Nor would I. It changed me forever. Psychedelics are so valuable for that... I wasn't ever going to study meditation, I didn't even believe in spirituality as a concept. I took mushrooms because I was curious and I was hoping for a cool experience, and what I got was a glimpse at reality independent of my own individual incarnation of life. The experience was so profound and real that nothing was ever the same again.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

sorry for not being more clear, but i was referring to the genuine enlightenment that is attained without drugs, the one that doesnt go away.

genuine yes,....."as good" of enlightment as dmt or another peak experience can bring...a plus four so to speak. I don't think so. I don't think the most dedicated monk could reach a stage of enlightenment profound as dmt or a peak psychedelic experience. I think the old adage that you can reach the same peaks mediating, lucid dreaming, OBE or other natural routes is bullshit.

Drugs alter your brain chemistry in extreme ways that natural techs are just not capable of. allowing you to have perceptions just not physically possible from a biological standpoint.

 

[yaesutom]

I don't completely doubt people can experience very altered 'enlightened' states through meditation alone, but I find it annoying when spiritual teachers (or zen masters or buddhist monk type people etc) say things like "You can get even higher through meditation" when they haven't ever tried a psychedelic so how would they know?

I have seen some amazing methods demonstrated on video that does put you into an altered state - There are these Ken Wilber DVDs I found online where this zen master guy has the audience do these things (and you do them watching the video) to get you into a state... it was pretty good. Think its called "Big Mind". It was nothing like a psychedelic trip though but some things about it were similar and it got me into "The Now" state. It reminds me of medium-high LSD doses or other substances which cause all sorts of stuff to go on which makes the center/"now" stand out way more, but without the drugs you don't have all the other stuff going on. Its probably more useful to practice that without drugs so its easier to get there during your regular sober life.

There was a time a few years ago I was meditating twice a day for ~20 minutes (morning and night) and I started to notice I would automatically get there while working at my job while everyone else was lost in their mind. Its hard though I keep saying damn I should start doing that again haha but haven't...

 

[Vurtual]

@Lucid - Psychedelics simply block up receptors and trigger some sort of feedback/increased gain (pupnik explained this better than me) - the information content and meaning comes from the brain itself, the new information doesn't come from the molecule i don't think (as suggested in mckenna's 'cross-species pheromone' idea). Sensory deprivation allows you to have perceptions with no connection to sensory input - altering your brain chemistry substantially (as all intense experience does). These seem like roughly the same basic process to me albeit with differeing intensities, differing visual detail, arcs of experience, somatic sensations etc. The in-built meaning/pattern finding bit of our brain going haywire is the culprit in both cases i'd say.

In the most intense psychedelic experience or meditation, the 'blocking' or sensory deprivation/disruption eventually may disrupt the brain enough that the thing we might call the ego stops functioning; in both cases, this can reveal or highlight the presence of (or give the illusion of) a still-persisting point of view that is more than the ego (whether some sort of soul, a lower substrate of brain or just your collective cellular awareness (my hunch)). This 'ego-loss' (shut up ismene ) 'plus 4' mystical experience is the mountain top, which it seems to me has been achieved by various people in various ways without drugs - sure they didn't have an 8 hour hallucinatory trip with the same arc as taking some lsd, but they got there (a clue is how both drug and non-drug claimants of enlightenment talk almost exactly the same sort of beautiful nonsense)

I'm of the view that this sort of enlightenment is always transitory, just like the drug trip, as we must always return to the time-based world, but people can certainly be permanently changed by the experience (as described above regarding the effect of trips); it seems reasonable to think the change brought about by the more disciplined non-drug methods may have more permanence, but who knows (as it happens, i've known someone who had an 'enlightenment' experience without drugs (via meditation), but they were still stuck in the 'maya' after (as they'd say) and not perfect buddhas by any means (though undoubtedly 'better' in most ways) (how exactly this differs from a benevolent psychotic episode is another thing...).

 

[Ismene]

I don't completely doubt people can experience very altered 'enlightened' states through meditation alone, but I find it annoying when spiritual teachers (or zen masters or buddhist monk type people etc) say things like "You can get even higher through meditation" when they haven't ever tried a psychedelic so how would they know?

They irritate the piss out of me. There's a book called "Zig zag zen buddhism and psychedelics" and pretty much every page pisses on psychedelics and says some shit like "Oh, psychedelics are good to start with, but when you mature you go onto meditation". The whole idea is that psychedelics are somehow inferior to religious bollocks and meditation techniques. I don't buy it - to me the meditation is like the blow-up doll, mushrooms are like Marilyn Monroe. In a catsuit.

Psychedelics are their own path - seperate to meditation or any religious idea. Vastly superior in every way and the only thing that could ever have helped me. I could've meditated for the next 50 years but I think I'dve put my head in the gas oven first.

 

[Xorkoth]

Yeah that bothers me too. And it seems quite judgmental. I don't think one is better than the other, it's up to the individual as to what works for them. Psychedelics and meditation are not the same, I just believe both can be used to reach profound states. What works for one doesn't always work for another.

 

[Fishface]

Ain't that the Truth

 

[StanleyJobson]

...mushrooms are like Marilyn Monroe.

Well now we know why Ismeme is so cantankerous. It's because he's in his 80s

 

[Ismene]

Older than that Stan

I was actually thinking of the Sam Kinison line about JFK having his dick up Marilyn Monroes ass in the oval office with his finger on the nuclear button at the same time saying "It doesn't really get any better than this does it?"

 

[yaesutom]

I find it weird how some of the bigger (well known) teachers who have been teaching stuff their whole life about enlightenment or buddhism etc haven't taken a psychedelic just to see what its like. One exception is Eckhart Tolle - he was on Oprah and someone asked if he ever took acid and he was like "Yep i did had to see what it was like" although i don't remember what else he said about it.

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.

Then there's also the profit motive - when people are making a bunch of money off it i'm way less likely to trust what they say because if profit is involved (with anything in life) its motivation to raise the bullshit level to appeal to more people.

 

[phuckingnutz]

I don't completely doubt people can experience very altered 'enlightened' states through meditation alone, but I find it annoying when spiritual teachers (or zen masters or buddhist monk type people etc) say things like "You can get even higher through meditation" when they haven't ever tried a psychedelic so how would they know?...

Also, what about the person (zen masters or buddhist monk type people etc) who does reach that ultimate "enlightened" state and then does a hit of acid or some DMT...where the fuck is he going to end up?

 

[JackARoe]

I find it weird how some of the bigger (well known) teachers who have been teaching stuff their whole life about enlightenment or buddhism etc haven't taken a psychedelic just to see what its like. One exception is Eckhart Tolle - he was on Oprah and someone asked if he ever took acid and he was like "Yep i did had to see what it was like" although i don't remember what else he said about it.

And I don't believe him. And even if he did. Want me to listen? Do it 5 times first and then report back. It does astound me that some of these teachers of "expanded consciousness" or "enlightenment" won't even try a psychedelic. That would be a like someone teaching astronomy but who has never looked through a telescope. Sure it can be done, and they can teach, but really, only experience teaches and as we know psychedelics ARE experiences. Not just talking about experiences.

This is a good thread, good thoughts expressed. I have meditated on and off for 35 years, as soon as I was old enough to figure out what it was. But had done psychedelics on and off also for 35 years. I can imagine life without meditation, but not psychedelics. I highly doubt we'd have a Ram Dass without psychedelics. I doubt Huxley would be as popular or doubt that we'd have a Grateful Dead. No psychedelic art, music, or writing could happen without psychedelics IMO. Meditation has made me have more control of my mind. I never reached anything near what DMT could do with meditation. And since we are chemical factories it makes sense.

Lasly I still laugh at some of the content in the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. When Kesey wanted to have a graduation from acid, to show it wasn't needed (sort of a hoax for the public). Owsley hearing of this was saying bullshit, it was the DRUGS that did all this. That is where I stand on this topic of enlightenment without psychedelics. And really, I don't know what enlightenment means. The best I could come up with is figuring out we should be kind to each other.

 

[Ismene]

I'm not sure why psychedelics and eastern religions got mixed - maybe just because they were both the in-thing for groovy hippies in the late 60s. Right from the get go people were so gullible that they instantly bought the "drugs are bad, the only way of doing it permanently is eastern religion". Perhaps that's just down to the demonisation of drugs that we're all subject to and the fact that no-one had a clue about the reality of eastern religions so they were "mysterious" and "deep". Mention that to the untouchables in India - they'll have some good words about compassionate Hinduism I'm sure.

Ram Dass came out with that story about his guru taking 900mics and just sitting there as if nothing had happened because he'd already experienced it through meditation. That someone could seriously believe you could dose someone for the first time with 900mics and they wouldn't feel anything. Just the physical effects alone would've had him jumping up and down.

Apparantly Ram Dass's guru just palmed the LSD (most of these indian fakir types are adept at sleight of hand because it's a good way of impressing on uneducated people that you're holy) and pretended he'd taken them. Then to fool another 3 westerners he put the acid in the ash from his fire (apparantly ash from the gurus fire is supposed to be holy) and they all went of tripping their tits off - another 3 devotees 8)

I wish we could just completely seperate psychedelics from man-made religious nonsense. My take on it - if you want the truth, you don't need to study zen for 40 years - the truth can be eaten - just take some mushrooms.

 

[Vurtual]

If it's the same truth, but just revealed with different methods, then everyone's a winner . Some 'spiritual' people feel funny about putting an icky mushroom in their body; instead, they can dawdle up the long path to the mountaintop (and us lazy/lucky bastards can take the fungal/chemical ski lift) - we'll all meet there eventually (so to speak). I do think we should give a bit of a hat tip and some respect to all the people who managed to do it the hard way; those pioneers surveyed the landscape and we still borrow their languages/concepts to describe it often.

 

[Ismene]

I don't know if they do take you to the same place tho - wherever the tibetan buddhists got after 900 years of relentless buddhist practise it wasn't anything we'd recognise - it was like Dr Ruths pussy.

And perhaps using their language has corrupted how we feel about the psychedelic experience. I think Leary started trying to link LSD to eastern religions partly he was misguided and partly because he thought it would be trendy and lend them a respectful air when he was talking to magistrates about them. Instead of them being totally different and new he could slide in a reference about "They are zen" and a judge might say "Oh, we'd better respect them then". Obviously it didn't quite work.

 

[Vurtual]

Death/loss of the ego, profound sense of connection to all existence, feelings of oneness; sounds pretty much the same to me. I do appreciate your scepticism, and this topic needs it, but should you sometimes try being sceptical about your universal scepticism too? (and then be sceptical of that scepticism too) This crazy theosophist says some stuff about reaching the mountain top without drugs (wacky but interesting).

The eastern and western philosophical tradition both pioneered the search of the internal landscape, defining it and thereby shaping it to a degree for anyone who subsequently used their language/concepts - this goes for basic stuff like logic/reason, as well as more far out stuff that easterners found - there's as much chance of unpicking this as there is for the rest of our language. You can take the boy out of socrates, but you can't take socrates out of the boy ('get off that boy socrates!') (sorry)

 

[thikal]

I don't completely doubt people can experience very altered 'enlightened' states through meditation alone, but I find it annoying when spiritual teachers (or zen masters or buddhist monk type people etc) say things like "You can get even higher through meditation" when they haven't ever tried a psychedelic so how would they know?

Actually I think this is false. Jack Kornfield in his book "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry", he speaks about a lot of western teachers began they spiritual journey using a psychedelic. He (Jack) says also that nothing was more intense than a practice down by his teacher with Jack's mind prepared with extensive meditation practice. And he admit had taken many psychedelics.

Personally, I don't think that meditation and psychedelics are contradictory. Myron Stolaroff explain it well. You have to master your mind to bring benefits from psychedelics. You have to be equanimous about all you experience in a psychedelic trip if you want it to be healing. Meditation is a great tool to become more equanimous, and to integrate psychedelics experiences in real world.

In the fall 1996 issue of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, various teachers of Buddhist meditation practice commented on the value of psychedelic experiences, with opinions of them ranging from helpful to harmful. Here, the author hopes to explain these conflicting viewpoints by describing important aspects of employing psychedelics that must be taken into account for effective results. These embrace proper methodology, which includes set and setting, dose levels, appropriate substances, appropriate intervals, and proper integration of each experience. The author has found the informed use of psychedelics to be a valuable tool in accelerating proficiency and deepening meditative practice and offers recommendations for successful use. The adverse comments of several recognized teachers are evaluated to shed further light on fruitful application of psychedelic substances.

https://www.erowid.org/references/refs_view.php?ID=6704

 

[JackARoe]

Actually I think this is false. Jack Kornfield in his book "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry", he speaks about a lot of western teachers began they spiritual journey using a psychedelic. He (Jack) says also that nothing was more intense than a practice down by his teacher with Jack's mind prepared with extensive meditation practice. And he admit had taken many psychedelics.

I agree that meditation is a great thing to get into after psychedelics, not really as a replacement but a way to strengthen the mind. I think one of the most interesting meditations I had was lying on a beach in California tripping on acid and meditating. For about 3 hours I was all over the realms, everywhere except my body. It showed me how busy the mind could be and none of it included the body until I snapped out of it and walked home.

I think what bothers me is the I do know many of the spiritual teachers, even people like Deepak Chopra (who does irritate me ) started their path because of psychedelics. Yet many will not admit that for fear of scaring their fan base off. Nothing could be more blasphemous to me. But some of them are starting to admit it.

Ismene, I remember the story of Ram Dass and his Guru. Now me personally I am not a guru person. Never have I been in anyone's presence that made me shake and shiver inside, or felt such holy vibes. I has never happened to me. But with Ram Dass in one of his books that came out after Be Here Now he admits he thinks his Guru palmed the LSD, so he had that in his head. 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. Then the Guru acted crazy for a minute just to screw with Ram Dass then laughed and again claimed nothing happened. He also claimed these things were used as a yoga long ago and can be a path so at least that is positively acknowledged. Anyway that is the story Ram Dass presents, whether any of it is true or not is not for me to debate, I just presented what I had read. So I am 50/50 on the palming story. So I won't argue one way or another. I just don't know. Logically palming seems like the answer, unless it really did not affect him. I like the story though!

I think a lot of spiritual practices are very important after using psychedelics as a tool. But I also think that using pychedelics as a tool for the mind is as important as using power tools to build a house, as opposed to not using tools to build a house.

The OP is a good testimony to the power of psychedelics and the transformation they can impart.