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Drug use and mysticism

Dedbeet

Dedbeet

Bluelighter
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Jan 23, 2008
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Visiting this forum for the first time in over a year, it's awesome to discover/rediscover some actual "depth" and spiritual understanding on BL.

Story-wise, for me, drugs and spirituality go together in interesting ways.

The "drug user" archetype is alone, cast out from society and family, on his/her own, living in poverty.

The "monk" or "holy man" archetype is also alone, having abandoned society and family, on his/her own, living in poverty.

A psychedelic trip is contemplative, suggestive of a reality beyond that of societal consensus.

In a very different way, a stimulant binge occurring alone is also contemplative, focused in the here and now, the user cast onto his/her own resources over long days and nights, facing his or her own suffering directly and often choicelessly.

Drugs are risky; thus, a drug user has no choice but to face the possibility of death (at least to some extent).

Aloneness, loss, death - the three main human bugaboos.

I find lots of intriguing parallels between drug users and mystics. Anyone else?
 
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Going by the book definition: Mystic - a person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy.

Mushrooms, mescaline, etc... immediately reveal mystic states to the user. I'd say that there is no difference between a mystic and a psychonaut-- they are the same person.

One point of contention with your post is the claim of "aloneness" and "loss" stemming from psychedelic drugs. I'd say that a nice mushroom or cactus trip cultivates feelings of one-ness that can seemingly only be achieved, naturally, through years and years of spiritual practice (meditation, mostly). And as much as one "loses" their sense of reality in the throws of psychedelic trip, they also gain a knowledge of the nature of things that is revealed to only a select few.

I guess this goes to show that you cannot have the yin without the yang.
 
Changed said:
Mushrooms, mescaline, etc... immediately reveal mystic states to the user. I'd say that there is no difference between a mystic and a psychonaut-- they are the same person.
Click to expand...

Disagree.
Some psychonauts, such as myself, try our best to gleam mystical knowledge from each chemically-induced experience, but most of what is revealed to us disappears with the comedown.

True mystics try to do the same things without using the crutch of the chemical.
Much harder, but longer lasting.
 
slimvictor said:
Disagree.
Some psychonauts, such as myself, try our best to gleam mystical knowledge from each chemically-induced experience, but most of what is revealed to us disappears with the comedown.

True mystics try to do the same things without using the crutch of the chemical.
Much harder, but longer lasting.
Click to expand...

If we took a poll on BlueLight asking psychedelic drug users whether or not their lives had changed permanently after using psychedelics, I'd be willing to bet a large majority would say "yes." I wouldn't even need a poll- I've seen numerous threads from people stating that very fact.

Differentiating between 'true mystics' and... 'fake mystics' (?) isn't the point.
 
Changed said:
If we took a poll on BlueLight asking psychedelic drug users whether or not their lives had changed permanently after using psychedelics, I'd be willing to bet a large majority would say "yes." I wouldn't even need a poll- I've seen numerous threads from people stating that very fact.

Differentiating between 'true mystics' and... 'fake mystics' (?) isn't the point.
Click to expand...

Having one's life changed based on certain experiences is tangential to the definition of a mystic, isn't it?
We could get into a discussion of the definition of mystic, but in any case, I don't think we would end up with "anyone who has had their life changed by psychedelics".
Then again, maybe you would. I certainly wouldn't.
 
Changed said:
Going by the book definition: Mystic - a person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy.

Mushrooms, mescaline, etc... immediately reveal mystic states to the user. I'd say that there is no difference between a mystic and a psychonaut-- they are the same person.

One point of contention with your post is the claim of "aloneness" and "loss" stemming from psychedelic drugs. I'd say that a nice mushroom or cactus trip cultivates feelings of one-ness that can seemingly only be achieved, naturally, through years and years of spiritual practice (meditation, mostly). And as much as one "loses" their sense of reality in the throws of psychedelic trip, they also gain a knowledge of the nature of things that is revealed to only a select few.

I guess this goes to show that you cannot have the yin without the yang.
Click to expand...

thank you so, so much for this post!

especially the last sentence.

peace, love and happiness!

ps: i love your name
 
slimvictor said:
Having one's life changed based on certain experiences is tangential to the definition of a mystic, isn't it?
We could get into a discussion of the definition of mystic, but in any case, I don't think we would end up with "anyone who has had their life changed by psychedelics".
Then again, maybe you would. I certainly wouldn't.
Click to expand...

If you're so skeptic, make a poll in the Psychedelics forum and put a link in this thread. "Do you believe you have become more of a mystic since first taking psychedelic drugs?" Yes / No. Provide them with the definition.

I'm confident that you'd be wrong.
 
There are many glaring parallels between the phenomenology of some (i.e. psychedelic) drug states and the descriptions of mystical states from a variety of traditions. This doesn't mean, however, that anyone who takes drugs is a mystic, or even that anyone who sporadically attains to mystical states is a mystic. Some people get in these states and derive no lasting benefit from it whatsoever as far as I can tell. For such people, having a mystical experience is something that happened to them once upon a time (though they may not know that's what it was) but not something in any way constitutive of their identity.

Also, while I doubt that loneliness and poverty are integral to mysticism in any way, those mystics who are poor and alone tend to get that way voluntarily. I doubt the same can be said of the majority of drug users.
 
Changed said:
If you're so skeptic, make a poll in the Psychedelics forum and put a link in this thread. "Do you believe you have become more of a mystic since first taking psychedelic drugs?" Yes / No. Provide them with the definition.

I'm confident that you'd be wrong.
Click to expand...

Your question is not about what I commented.
Your question examines the relationship between the initial psychedelic experience and the onset or strengthening of "feelings of mysticism."

I said this: just because someone has had their life changed by psychedelics doesn't make them a mystic.

That is a very different thing.

Also, asking people if they feel like they are a mystic, or more of a mystic than before, seems strange to me.
How do you plan to word the question to separate out people who feel more spiritual, more religious, more deeply connected to God/ universe/nature, etc. from people who feel more like mystics?
Or are you assuming that these are all the same thing?
 
Here is a definition of mysticism from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

The term ‘mysticism,’ comes from the Greek μυω, meaning “to conceal.” In the Hellenistic world, ‘mystical’ referred to “secret” religious rituals. In early Christianity the term came to refer to “hidden” allegorical interpretations of Scriptures and to hidden presences, such as that of Jesus at the Eucharist. Only later did the term begin to denote “mystical theology,” that included direct experience of the divine (See Bouyer, 1981). Typically, mystics, theistic or not, see their mystical experience as part of a larger undertaking aimed at human transformation (See, for example, Teresa of Avila, Life, Chapter 19) and not as the terminus of their efforts.

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/)

Note that, in the final sentence, it says that (typically) mystics are not simply trying to experience the divine (e.g. through the use of drugs) but see such experience as part of something larger, aimed at human transformation.
This might be one thing that distinguishes mystics from the many people who love to explore the reaches of inner space, sometimes experiencing the divine, but without any larger goal or purpose in mind.
 
Here are more definitions: (from http://www.religiousworlds.com/mystic/define.html)

definition 1 by Robert S. Ellwood
Mystical experience is experience in a religious context that is immediately or subsequently interpreted by the experiencer as encounter with ultimate divine reality in a direct nonrational way that engenders a deep sense of unity and of living during the experience on a level of being other than the ordinary.
Click to expand...

According to this definition, the experience must take place within a religious context. While I personally disagree with this, if it is used, it might apply to ayahuasca and peyote experiences undertaken in a Native American church, for example, but not to the vast majority of psychedelic-taking experiences by people contributing to this discussion.

definition 2 by Evelyn Underhill
What then do we really mean by mysticism? A word which is impartially applied to the performance of mediums and the ecstasies of the saints, to "menticulture" and sorcery, dreamy poetry and mediaeval art, to prayer and palmistry, the doctrinal excesses of Gnosticism, and the tepid speculations of the Cambridge Platonists -- even, according to William James, to the higher branches of intoxication -- soon ceases to have any useful meaning. Its employment merely confuses the inexperienced student, who ends with a vague idea that every kind of supersensual theory and practice is somehow "mystical." Hence the need of fixing, if possible, its true characteristics: and restating the fact that Mysticism, in its pure form, is the science of ultimates, the science of union with the Absolute, and nothing else, and that the mystic is the person who attains to this union, not the person who talks about it. Not to know about, but to Be, is the mark of the real initiate.
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This definition gets at the heart of our disagreement here, I think. Is it enough to refer to the "higher branches of intoxication" as mysticism? This definition says it is not.

definition 3 by Jess Hollenback
From the moment we awake until the moment we fall asleep, the vast majority of us spend our time silently talking to ourselves. A few individuals whom we call mystics have mastered the difficult art of shutting off this habitual interior dialogue. This inner silence that mystics cultivate cannot develop unless the individual first learns how to tightly focus his or her attention so that the mind and imagination no longer wander aimlessly from one subject, thought, or feeling state to another. When this mental background noise ceases as a consequence of the mystic's successful endeavors to focus his or her attention, a dramatic change in the mystic's mode of consciousness takes place, a metamorphosis that is just as radical (sometimes even more so) as that transformation that occurs during the shift from the waking state of awareness to the dream state. This dramatic metamorphosis of the waking consciousness caused by simultaneously focusing the attention and quieting the mind, together with the responses in both thought and deed that it generates, is what I call "mysticism."
Click to expand...

This definition focuses on the cultivation of inner silence, and the resulting change in consciousness.


For all of these definitions, taking drugs and "meeting God" or experiencing ego-death does not count as mysticism.
 
slimvictor, *of course* destroying your ego or getting high for fun isn't necessarily mysticism. of course most people use entheogens for other purposes.

but why would mysticism need a "religious context"? what we're talking about is a state of mind that can be achieved for moments at first, cultivated, and profoundly impact one's life. this can be religious or nonreligious.

edit, adding a paragraph

i do think there is "something to it", and that psychedelic drug users recognize this, especially when tripping. (even the "simply partyers". i might call them "semi-" or "proto-" mystics ;)

personally, psychedelics have been the most useful technology i've found to reliably induce a genuine mystical experience. but it is not at all "religious".
 
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I think one sense of mysticism does involve a feeling of union with the universe or divinity. Drugs can kind of do the opposite at times to enhancing a drug takers feelings of alienation, unnaturalness, and separation. I think tryptamines are much more likely to incline a lot of people towards feelings of union but it can really go the other way sometimes
 
you're right victor, I was grasping at straws once I tried to develop that argument.
 
Zulkifar said:
I wasn't aware society had a consensus of 'reality'. Have I missed it? What is it?
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Well, from here, there isn't any actual object called "society".

One agrees (or not) that society (consensus) is reality, and that this reality is able to define one as an individual (participant) in society.

Is society actually something existing externally?

If so, where is it located? ;).
 
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