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How does psychedelia mould into your own philosophy?

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IamMe90

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I'm just curious what people think.

I'm wondering how academic the experience is for anyone anymore. I found as I first delved into psychedelia, the most overt justifications were academic, and the most familiar i came with the experience the less it had become academic or objective in any context and totally a psycho game.

What do you guys think? Do you really justify your drug use philosophically anymore? or have you given up?
 
I havent explored much of the psychadelics since I am young, but just with smoking weed and trying salvia and other things... It made me realise that the universe is odd, and that the way we are brought up to believe in a "normal/mundane" reality is just a barrier that is needed to be broken. By exploring these drugs I realised that there is more in this world than meets the eye, and that different conscious states has potential to expand these perceptions of "reality"
 
psychedelia is not only responsible for a key part of my spiritual and cognitive development, but also, imo, helps me to access states of mind that are the underlying cause of religion in humanity.
 
i notice a huge, in fact absurd, increase in the degree to which i come up with creative thoughts, solutions, art, etc, when i smoke pot or do other psychedelics. if the set and setting are conducive.
 
true, although my ability to sustain those ideas might be somewhat more hindered than usual.

it requires hours of hard work and dedication after coming up with the initial foundations of a song creatively while on acid to write it through til the end afterward.
 
I feel it's very much determined on how well you can integrate these experience's into conscious awareness, this is essentially the key and it's something that takes much time and effort on the individual's behalf. It's easy to get caught up in the revelations experienced during psychedelia but unless you can fully integrate those realizations into your life, it's just mere amusement and awe.

I'm not discrediting the creative potential from psychedelics either, i've had immeasurable creative insight flow through me incandescently which usually shows up in my writing more then anything else.. but it didn't really become apparent until i began applying these realizations to real-world situations.
 
Tried LSD once, taught me a lot. Were all one and connected spiritually, physicality is only an aspect of reality, your life is yours to create and yes of course im now a strong believer of mind over matter. May sound cliche but hell i sure didn't look at life that way before.
 
I believe that DMT is the international standard for worldview testing -- any philosophy that can withstand repeated exposures to high dose, smoked DMT must - by default - be as solid as a rock. I'm not sure how far the UN are along the path of integrating this into the ISO system of international standards; but I believe that it is only a matter of time. To answer the question: Psychedelia DEFINES my philosophy.
 
Mu-ham-mad said:
I believe that DMT is the international standard for worldview testing -- any philosophy that can withstand repeated exposures to high dose, smoked DMT must - by default - be as solid as a rock. I'm not sure how far the UN are along the path of integrating this into the ISO system of international standards; but I believe that it is only a matter of time. To answer the question: Psychedelia DEFINES my philosophy.
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NO! Scrap that idea - look what happened to the Aztecs!
OR: look what happened to the Mayans - more-sensible DMT users.
OR: look what happened in the biggest genocide this world has ever known as 50 million people were killed after the conquest by the Spanish.
OR: look what happened today, in the news.

But this is certainly psychedelic thinking; and is certainly well balanced.
But it could be argued that I am talking to myself: but since I mentioned it, I am also aware of talking to myself.

Again, I must come to the conclusion that psychedelic philosophy is superior to all others; but that makes me no different from every other ego-centric, opinionated person - but this realization in-itself is an example of psychedelic thinking. The layers could grow, but when I doubt that most people even take psychedelic drugs very seriously for a moment - preferring belief in known "facts"; in blissful ignorance of the epistemological origins of those "facts" - it seems senseless to continue.

Having said all of that, the psychedelic experience is senseless in and of itself. It means nothing; unless tainted by the philosophy of sober philosophers - which many if not most people do seem to cling to. Of course, the identification of our calculus as being the cause of everything we "know" to be true is well known; and well-dismissed as irrelevant to philosophy - largely due to the fact that it solves all of the problems of philosophy, which is unacceptable to philosophers who have jobs in academia.

Is it possible, however, to be a logical positivist DMT smoker; I would argue that it is impossible to be anything else -- unless the person is an infrequent DMT smoker; or an ex-DMT smoker.

One further layer of intrigue is the fact that I have been happily typing away with no consideration for how this will be construed by a sober person. This could be argued to be a flaw - however the (belated) realization of this fact again speaks highly for psychedelic thinking - these may be spurious problems, however, due to disinterest of many of those who glance over what other people have written, and rush to contribute something themselves - of this, I could be accused correctly, in this instance - however I would put it to most people that since I smoked some DMT before I started writing this, I am perhaps in the best position of anyone to contribute to a thread about how psychedelia moulds in with my philosophy.

To those seeking a non-considered approach to philosophy, this is obviously a perfect example of why psychedelic drugs can ruin a mind - to those with a brain; they may see that consideration of philosophical positions is in fact enhanced by such alternate approaches.

Conclusions, however, are hard to arrive at - and this causes me no distress at all; simply amusement at how I have spent the past half an hour of my life - writing this pile of tripe with lofty pretensions and absolutely no mathematical formulae. The absence of which guarantee it to be 50% wrong, and 50% right; due to the dualistic nature of language as described at length by Whitehead and Russell!
 
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This is how history falls into history -- when someone sees that they are the only person who really cares about something - when that person realizes that they are talking to no-one who understands them - they give up, and go away. If people only see something as an abstraction -- rather than live that reality -- then there is little point in discussing anything at all - ever.
Because my reality is one embraced in DMT, at the moment; even my knowledge that this seems like an egotistical monologue is nullified by the fact that no-one else writes whilst under the influence of the same drug. Surely being under the influence of the drug is molding psychedelia into personal philosophy -- but the personal philosophy could so easily be a shared philosophy -- except I read this thread in it's entirety and see that no-one else cares to write whilst under the influence. That is the death of a state of ind - not the considered reflection upon that state of mind. Some of that surely will make no sense, to most.
 
Academically? They are USELESS. I study physics, you try integral calc on psychedelics and tell me how it goes. I find stimulants useful tho, for long sessions of number crunching.

In my world view? Again, I prefer my idea to be clear and rational...not.suited to psychedelics.
 
rangrz said:
you try integral calc on psychedelics and tell me how it goes.
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Why is that the benchmark? - Learned, arbitrary, rules? - I agree that they are useless, in and of themselves, however. And I agree that stimulants are great for going mathematics.
 
I believe psychedelics turned me on to a way of looking at the world in a way typical of most eastern mystics who believe in eternity as this very moment and as absolute truth, alongside the interconnectedness of all beings, archetypes, concepts, etc. Basically all facets of existence detectable by the 5 senses of the upper primates as one entity, or consciousness.

Meditation and yoga provide similar insight but require training and discipline, fasting and ascetism. Only difference between these conventional methods and the practice of using plants/compounds to induce them is that they show you the answer at the END of the journey, whereas something like say, Iboga or Ayahuasca, can show you the state of satori right in the begginning. I find this fascinating.

I will echo Watts in reciting these concepts "Once you get the answer, hang up the phone." (speaking of lsd and why repeated dosing is not normally necessary to attain the wisdom learned).

Shamanic plants tend to slam you in the face with it head on, leaving much to integrate, and sharing with you an individual choice to pursue the path you were shown, or to discard it in favor of something else.

I have personally found shamanic plants to sort out quite a bit of the existential monoliths I faced for many years, so I suppose it figures into my philosophy (in the sense of what I see the world as and why it should be as such) in the form of an ally such as zazen, mindfulness, the like. Merely a means to return to a state I possessed long ago, but lost along the way little by little as I grew and formed an ego, subsequently affixing the 'self' to the imagined illusory persona we call 'ego,' thus creating a need to stay on such a path.

Dissolving boundaries is a wonderful way to gain ineffable truths the universe communicates freely, the trick is just shutting your mouth and opening your ears.
 
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Imagine growing up in a regime like North Korea, where every house has a radio that can be neither turned off nor tuned to anything but the state propaganda channel. In fact, you don't even know what "tuning your radio" even means -- it's an ever present, unchanging entity in the background of your life. But then one day a spy from another country shows up at your house with a bag full of tools and wiring. He takes off the front panel of your North Korean radio, hijacks the circuitry, and suddenly gives you access to broadcasts from foreign nations. Suddenly your whole idea of what's possible with that radio has forever changed.

This is what serotonergic psychedelics did for me. In the analogy, North Korea and its propaganda channel represent consensus sober reality, and the radio is my brain. Psychedelics represent the spy that hijacked my brain and tuned it to whole other sides of reality I don't normally receive, thus opening me up to the possibility that when sober, I don't nearly see all there is to see.

Although psychedelics offer some rather in-your-face lessons in epistemology and aesthetics, I'm not convinced they have much to teach in the way of ethics. My ethical views and moral principles haven't really changed much post psychedelia, and nor have those of most people I've known. The reformed asshole who becomes loving and humane after a lesson with Professor Lucy or Reverend Dimitri is the stuff of legend, especially in the hippie crowd. But I've never seen it. I've mostly seen good people remain good people, and not so good people remain not so good people, after psychedelic experiences. Psychedelics may alter the way you relate to the world as a whole, but I'm not convinced they have much effect on they way one has learned to deal with and relate to other people.

This is why I don't think psychedelics have the potential to be the entire basis for a religion. They most certainly have a place within the religious life, a place that has been denied and written out of Western history for the most part. But as the centerpiece of religious life, I find them wanting.

Thou said:
Dissolving boundaries
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I like the way you put this. You can read all you want about the idea that we're all one with the universe. But that barely comes close to feeling this and experiencing it firsthand.
 
Mu-ham-mad said:
Why is that the benchmark? - Learned, arbitrary, rules? - I agree that they are useless, in and of themselves, however. And I agree that stimulants are great for going mathematics.
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Because a) OP asked how people find psychedelics ACADEMICALLY. Given the subject I study, it's fundamental that I be able to do mathematics properly. Making psychedelics useless for me in that sense. Ya know. b) the rules are not arbitrary, my equations have to accurately model empirical reality, I don't think it can get any less arbitrary.
 
Academically? They are USELESS.
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Have you ever tried a low dose of a 5-HT2A agonist? I've heard good things, but I'm not experienced enough in the way of 'psychedelic nootropics' to comment upon their efficacy either way (and, obviously, it's not a particularly well-researched subfield of neuropsychopharmacology atm = all evidence anecdotal :\).
 
P A said:
Have you ever tried a low dose of a 5-HT2A agonist? I've heard good things, but I'm not experienced enough in the way of 'psychedelic nootropics' to comment upon their efficacy either way (and, obviously, it's not a particularly well-researched subfield of neuropsychopharmacology atm = all evidence anecdotal :\).
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I've done low doses of mushrooms. I still found I was not as mentally sharp...well actually a low dose of 25i-nbome once resulted in some good productive work, but I was more just stimulated and had no psychedelia that I could notice...

I can still do well on MDMA, but it's releaser not a receptor agonist.
 
well actually a low dose of 25i-nbome once resulted in some good productive work, but I was more just stimulated and had no psychedelia that I could notice...
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That's pretty much what I meant. You know, (sub-)threshold doses at which your boss's head doesn't appear to be turning inside out while the computer's monitor begins to send you nasty vibrations hinting of future malice.
 
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