Have I have gone too far philosophically?

[Shrooms00087]

Be careful, in seeking the truth, you often just find your unconscious.

 

[ParappaTheRapper]

...

 

[azzazza !?]

I feel like I have swallowed the horse-pill version of the red pill. I've dabbled much in psychedelics, especially Salvia. I really appreciate the wisdom Salvia has to offer (mostly imparted during oral experiences, not smoked), but it has made my perspective quite... absolute?

I feel like everything is ultimately in vain. Because everything is temporary and unsustainable, I can't find it in myself to get behind or believe in something other than the destruction of illusion. I feel like the more illusion I strip down, there are more layers underneath. But the deeper I go, the further away I get from where it seems everybody else is in society. It makes it very hard for me to relate to people. I want absolutely love and truth all the time, and other people want to talk about mundane things, in my view. I see us as already connected, but people try to connect with me because they see themselves as separate. I want to say, no, we are already one.

I feel like I'm addicted to truth.

such truth is subjective. thus you are addicted to subjectivity. which i suppose, is narcissism. before you go overboard on the negative connotations of this particular word, simply consider this: everybody else is one too. lets leave this as it is for now to come back to it later.

onwards to the root of what you are alluding to: considering that 'truth' is defined by the subject, it is interrelated with 'illusion'. Truth, taken as a concept, is the -result of the process of- judgement on behalf of the subject, which creates properties the subject ascribes within its conceptual framework as a whole by which it operates (=the Truth= its own subjectivity= its most intimate 'being'), namely: true and false. However! Alas! False is not possible since Truth=subject in this case: we are considering the truth itself, which is -thus- 'of the subject, ie.: referring to, belonging to, self-referential*'. As Descartes already tried, you cannot consider 'false' to properly exist when considering 'the truth of your subject'. Really funny that one. Thusly, you aptly name it 'illusion'. Nice! But... that does leaves us with the question: then what are you referring to when you employ the word 'illusion'? apparently, some form of 'distortion of the truth' of course! which could perhaps be... the salvia itself? But.. you already judged the salvia as being 'truth-revealing'! but now it is concealing! How can that be!? the answer: You made this judgement before the process started. as such it became a framework/an operating system for the process of your interpretation of your subjectivity.

now lets go back to where we left off: Everybody else is doing something rather similar. perhaps not as extensively as you, but structurally similar. ie: building a framework of being. a reality that makes sense. a house to live in, so to speak. As you are realizing, the judgement you made 'salvia is revealing truth' is more of an infinite process, in which is revealed that concealing is also a form of revealing. namely: it reveals concealment. You understand what is is concealing, as you refer to in your post: the others. but now we made this more defined: it is revealing a concealment. And what is being concealed, more specifically, is the very impossibility of the interpersonal. Which can only be true as long as you try to maintain said premise. Any framework that considers the interpersonal however, is structurally very similar, but this can only be said of the interpersonal once it is conceptualized (ie: when you start to try to 'think' -or imagine- it. An actual moment of a realized interpersonal interaction is characterized by a certain 'passion' -for lack of a better word-; an 'openness' as to the possibilities of where the conversation will flow -'naturally' one says-. One can argue in hindsight or premeditation for reasons and explanations all one wants, and proceed to deny this open-endedness in a myriad of causal reasoning, but it remains undeniable that the subject is, and cannot be, even aware of the possibility of any of that reasoning in the moment of the interpersonal itself. because in order to do what the subject does when proposing a framework for itself is to temporally try to deny the very possibility of intersubjectivity; which then, if 'successful', results in the representational framework that is 'a theory of being'. But not being itself. Naturally.

One particular footnote is in order: and that is that intersubjectivity did presuppose the subject (and as such its self-defined truth) as well, in order to be able open it up towards Otherness. Just as much as the subject presupposes Otherness within itself in order to be a 'meta-subject' -subject of its own subjectivity, thus: self-aware-, even though it itself and by itself can -of course- never reach beyond this frail idea/remembrance/empty representation of 'Otherness'. The subject cannot, by itself alone, differentiate between 'Otherness' and 'non-being'

*in latin the word 'sub-jectum' (litterally translated as 'under-placed') creates a beautiful play of words, especially with words as under-stand ('sub-stans'). now here there be a beautiful picture of ancient world syntax-logic which transports us -well, me at least - directly to the era and pathos of thinking before Descartes. Come to think of it, its really strange how the mode of thought changed so much starting from his realizations. Its probably the perceived simplicity of his thought that makes it so historically powerful. hm.. something to ponder with a nice pipe, i say.
also very much structurally related with this idea of 'self-referring definitions' is the mathematical concept of recursion.

thus hereby I conclude: no you haven't, because it can be taken a lot further, philosophically at least. And i'm still (somewhat) sane.

 

[caseface99]

OP I have been sober for 8 months, including clean off of all psychedelics - however I have done quite a bit of mushrooms, LSD, DMT, and others in my day. I feel very similar to you. I still feel like I know something about life that most people don't, and it does make it very hard for me to relate to people. I almost never speak unless I have something worth saying, meaning I don't do mundane small talk ever unless I really force myself and i have a lot of difficulty with it. I find very few people that I can talk to about my world view, and basically all I talk to people about for the last 8 months is recovery. The problem is you can't make friends without joking around, smalltalk, similar specific interests, etc. My psychedelic induced life philosophy coupled with the fact that the only other material i have to converse about being my drug using and my recovery, I have a VERY hard time making friends. I still don't really have any since getting sober. I have tons of acquaintances, but the only person I've met who really truly understood me, that I could talk to for hours about anything, well she recently left me and won't speak to me.

Not sure what the point of this post is besides the fact that I relate to you a lot. The longer I stay sober, the easier it seems to be getting - I know the only way it will get different is if I stay sober and I keep forcing myself to try and be social. Eventually I will have done enough real, non drug related life things that I will be able to talk to people about normal shit. For now, I just gotta keep trying to be the change i want to see in my life and I'd suggest you do the same.

 

[Foreigner]

I wish the OP would return to give their input. This thread has touched on some really great things.

I haven't really done any major mind altering for 4 months or so now. The sense that this reality is one big illusion still pervades my thoughts often, but without the confusing layers that psychedelics add it feels like I am getting closer to understanding reality better than before.

I remember talking to a guru-type guy a long time ago... and I only call him a guru in so far as I really respected him and he had a lot of wisdom I needed at the time. He said that there's nothing wrong with doing psychedelics, as long as you take the core truth about illusion with you for the journey. All psychedelics really do is add more layers to Maya, which, if you're skilled, won't really throw you off. But it's not like psychedelics can bring you any closer to the truth than you are right now, just sitting here. You can't get anymore into "it" than you already are, right now. It's like trying to look for just the right water while you're standing in the ocean.

 

[azzazza !?]

I haven't really done any major mind altering for 4 months or so now. The sense that this reality is one big illusion still pervades my thoughts often, but without the confusing layers that psychedelics add it feels like I am getting closer to understanding reality better than before.

I remember talking to a guru-type guy a long time ago... and I only call him a guru in so far as I really respected him and he had a lot of wisdom I needed at the time. He said that there's nothing wrong with doing psychedelics, as long as you take the core truth about illusion with you for the journey. All psychedelics really do is add more layers to Maya, which, if you're skilled, won't really throw you off. But it's not like psychedelics can bring you any closer to the truth than you are right now, just sitting here. You can't get anymore into "it" than you already are, right now. It's like trying to look for just the right water while you're standing in the ocean.

^nearing 7 years now. It is simply not conductive for the time being. I've seen enough; not necessarily to last me a lifetime, although it wouldn't surprise me should it do, either.

Regarding mind alteration and the situations one therein encounters, there's one adagium i like to keep close to mind: integration is your friend. That means that anything that cannot be transpositioned to your practical experience of the world (that means: given a valid, extensive and satisfactory explanation when looked at from the perspective you would call baseline), is under scrutiny*. Because it means you are meddling with psychological structures you don't (fully) understand. Thread carefully. Failure to do so will result, to varying degrees, in 'losing the pedals'. Make no mistake at the perhaps somewhat lighthearted expression there, such experiences can be extremely jarring. Sometimes though, transgression may be unavoidable, such as in cases of childhood transference**. But those have specific characteristics, luckily.

I think that taking psychedelics is not structurally different from exploring subjectivity any other way. And i should, because honestly, what kind of self-respecting theory wouldn't :/. But, it has to be said that it does have its specifics in a direct comparison. One such issue, and in my opinion the most prominent, is one of volatility. Potential risks, rewards and consequences are all -psychologically- empowered, both negatively and positively, during the time of effect. Which means that things you take to be true there will take a lot longer to be disproven in the only place they can be disproven: your experiential, interpersonal 'slow' world***, given that such should be necessary. Of course every psychedelic adds its own particular quirks to the equation (and yes these bear relevance to this too but not ultimate -since that's the subject itself- and each is specific), but here we are employing a functionalist approach of which the results are limited to their pertaining to the framework of 'using psychedelics to seek -subjective- truth'.

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*Fear -angst or dread, to be more precise- takes care of that naturally. However, it is most quickly revealed by and with repeated willful exposure, that fear is of an ironic nature. It both attracts and repels at the same time. Kierkegaard wrote extensively about that in his work on anxiety, though unfortunately it is notoriously difficult to grasp. Mostly due to the subject itself, no doubt.
**One very dark thought may argue that it may even be due to the nature of anxiety itself that any and all transgressions are ultimately unavoidable. But that results in something so horrific that it simply cannot be thought of. It behaves like it is exclusively piling up logical conflicts. Which means the mind just runs away from it, and should it somehow manage to come across the ultimate realization of what is really meant, it just shuts down. It seems to be a theoretical form(just piling up logical conflicts here) of pure -and thus very impossible- experience (there's more of em). Well at least to the mind. It is unspeakable, but philosophically the possibility of such an eternal horror has to be held open, absurd as that may appear, i guess. However though, from that perspective, the temporal appears as a form of mercy.
***see previous post on falsehood and subjective truth.