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psychedelics and denial of the divine

Yeah, I'm basically the same way.

What I should have said, is they haven't made me deny the existence of a heaven or hell, or a god even. But simply, re-assured me that they cannot exist.
 
the seeker said:
i guess the fact that two people can take a drug and both believe it has shown them "the truth" but reach opposite conclusions about what the truth is, just goes to show you how unreliable psychedelic insights are and how these drugs have a strong propensity to make people delusional.
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I agree with that to a large extent. My first LSD experience was actaully over 10 years ago, I was 15, too young to be messing with something I knew very little about. I was convinced I'd been imbued with total knowledge of the world and its design and had to sacrifice my soul in order to attain this. I knew a day or 2 later that my assumption of total knowledge was borderline psychotic (and perhaps less of the borderline).

There are some writers whose insights on psychedelics I truly value and think are of worldly value. Huxley is the classic example and his insights are simple: the essential alrightness of the universe, that gratitude is heaven itself and that God is love. All very simple ideas which is why I like them.
 
thugg said:
Yeah, I'm basically the same way.

What I should have said, is they haven't made me deny the existence of a heaven or hell, or a god even. But simply, re-assured me that they cannot exist.
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how so? why can't they exist?
 
nuke said:
it's all the same truth, because it's all the same thing.

.
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My mom told me this when I was a kid questioning her about god, by some unconscious grace in her heart she gave me the pre-program that helped me out of that belief system. I completely agree, I feel most sane when I see all religions focused on the same light source. When that light shines through the frames of human culture it appears to be different. But it really isn't.
 
BristolRob, now that you've mentioned Huxley, I'm going to have to add one of my favorite parts from The Doors of Perception. This is a good example of the relationship between psychedelics and spirituality and the inherent problems in religion based on language and social constructs. I agree with BreakingSet ... most religions at their roots are pointing to the same source, but the source gets clouded by the convoluted mess that is institutionalized religion. You don't need religion to have spirituality.

"The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful." According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born—the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. That which, in the language of religion, is called "this world" is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. The various "other worlds," with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large. Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate "spiritual exercises," or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not indeed the perception "of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe" (for the by-pass does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large), but something more than, and above all something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality.

As Mind at Large seeps past the no longer watertight valve, all kinds of biologically useless things start to happen. In some cases there may be extra-sensory perceptions. Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence, of the given, unconceptualized event. In the final stage of egolessness there is an "obscure knowledge" that All is in all—that All is actually each. This is as near, I take it, as a finite mind can ever come to "perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.""
 
^That is a great quote. In fact, my Neuropsychopharmacology class has just discussed serotonin and its role and sensory filtration. It's funny how Huxley was right on the mark by simply being an active tripper.
 
This has been a great thread so far.

Personally, I was raised as a Methodist Christian. At around 15-16 years of age, I began seriously questioning it; it was just too inconsistent and arbitrary. Something was definitely missing. At 17 I abandoned the faith and became an atheist, believing that we exist merely by chance and that nothing exists beyond the physical realm.

Then I had my first trip, which just so happened to be the most complete and profound trip I have had to date, on mushrooms. It blasted my entire view of everything apart. It connected me to my own spirituality, the spirituality we all share. Everything in my life since then, psychedelic experiences and otherwise, has further immersed me into this belief. Rather than repeat everything everyone else has already said in the past 27 posts, which was all very well-said I might add, I'll just add what I didn't notice anyone else saying.

Psychedelics helped me to realize that atheism - the belief that nothing exists beyond our lives - is a self-centered idea, and foolish. In most cases, I find, as in my own, it results as a backlash against organized religion, going from one extreme to the other. Likewise, although perhaps the root of organized religions comes from a good place, it seems inevitable that they all eventually become a sinister form of social control, an opiate to the masses. Heaven and hell are a sick form of control, used to coerce the people into behaving in certain ways throughout their lives, all to further the cause of those in charge of the current social structure. The myth that you speak of, that psychedelic use is "selling your soul" so that you can never make it to this idealized notion of paradise after death, is just a way of deterring people from using them, of deterring people from thinking beyond this strict and arbitrary set of morals they are brought up with. To me, it's beyond tragic that so many people live their lives by this belief, denying themselves pleasure and satisfaction throughout their lives in fear of the threat of hell that has no base in reality.
 
^Nice, I too began questioning my parents gods at about the same time. In fact I was drawn to psychedelics partly by reading about the occult (I've since decided that even Crowley is not alowed to run my program; but hell, AIWASS could cut a rug you dig?).

Psychedelics helped me realize that beliefs are beliefs. And we all know that truth is not always involved in believing. It always feels like what we believe is truth, but it isn't always so.

Patrich Woodroffe, an incredibly talented painter said "let the prettier doctrine apply when doubts arise."

And I believe that is how it should be: we are all artists and reality is our canvas, we should make this place, this moment, this life time as beautiful as possible.
 
Xorkoth said:
Psychedelics helped me to realize that atheism - the belief that nothing exists beyond our lives - is a self-centered idea, and foolish. In most cases, I find, as in my own, it results as a backlash against organized religion, going from one extreme to the other. Likewise, although perhaps the root of organized religions comes from a good place, it seems inevitable that they all eventually become a sinister form of social control, an opiate to the masses. Heaven and hell are a sick form of control, used to coerce the people into behaving in certain ways throughout their lives, all to further the cause of those in charge of the current social structure. The myth that you speak of, that psychedelic use is "selling your soul" so that you can never make it to this idealized notion of paradise after death, is just a way of deterring people from using them, of deterring people from thinking beyond this strict and arbitrary set of morals they are brought up with. To me, it's beyond tragic that so many people live their lives by this belief, denying themselves pleasure and satisfaction throughout their lives in fear of the threat of hell that has no base in reality.
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Well said. I agree that atheism can become a rigid belief system itself. I find the spiritual "feeling" the most important thing for me, it also makes me not bother about other arguments for and against the existence of a God. If I feel this intense sense of love and fellowship whether on psychedelics or otherwise then I believe. I don't feel that I must give that belief a context, I just feel it and like it and know its true
 
Code: 
Psychedelics helped me to realize that atheism - the belief that 
nothing exists beyond our lives
 - is a self-centered idea, and foolish

Maybe I'm confused, but I thought that atheism and a belief in spirituality were not mutually exclusive. Using wikipedia's definition as it's close to hand and I'm in a hurry:

"Atheism is the disbelief in the existence of deities,and more specifically in the monotheistic Judeo-Christian God. It is most commonly defined as the explicit, positive rejection of theism: however, numerous atheistic philosophers and groups prefer to define atheism as the simple absence of belief in deities"

still allows us - in my view - to believe in something that, as Xorkoth says, "exists beyond our lives", whilst avoiding getting caught up in religiously-inspired deities.

I would say that I am a spiritual person, for whom atheism and psychedelic usage sit happily side by side.

But then maybe I've not taken enough 'heroic doses' - though I'm notching them up =D. For what it's worth, I would have to say that I reckon Salvia (as experienced on longer trips via quidding or tincture) has an incredibly spiritual signature to it after the maelstrom (or because of it?) - maybe more so that anything else I've tried. But still hasn't toppled my atheism (maybe of course, I'm not really an atheist :( - but I hope so!

Zalien
 
Atheism is not the lack of belief in a Judeo-Christian god. Atheism is specifically the lack of belief of any higher power. I think some people use the term incorrectly, however. If atheism meant the lack of belief in a Judeo-Christian god, then everyone who isn't Jewish or Christian would be atheist, which isn't true.

Wikipedia is written and edited by anyone who chooses to do so, so its definitions are not always spot-on.
 
I accept what you say about Wikipedia Xorkoth. But perhaps my issue is with the term 'higher power'.

I guess what believe is that there may well be 'other powers' - or entities or whatever - but not that they are necessarily higher (or lower) in the sense that they would see themselves as such. Just 'other intelligences'. It's in this sense that I see myself as an atheist.

The term higher power implies an inherent reverence - which is OK, but a tad exlusive for my liking. Personally I have reverence for all other life forms or 'intelligences'.

And how can one compare? Does the awe and reverence experienced in psychedelic experiences necessarily imply higher powers - or lower ones, Or just other powers?

Z
 
Atheists are simply people who lack a conscious relationship with God. When you"see" God, you realize he is God of all the major world religions and all mystics and sages throughout the ages.
 
the seeker said:
Atheists are simply people who lack a conscious relationship with God
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But that is, unfortunately, simply begging the question.

the seeker said:
When you"see" God, you realize he is God of all the major world religions ......
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Why do you favour "major" religions over the others?


Z
 
A conscious relationship with a metaphysical deity does sound kind of strange.

God is the sum combination of everything that exists, to me... That is also something you can only find in yourself, not by someone else ever telling you. Spinoza was right on. When people start to describe the "higher" power, it becomes all sorts of skewed by preconceptions of needs and wants, and eventually the end result is almost always anthropomorphisation.

I think this is what makes the Tao effective, by defining God with non-definition.
 
I cannot remember who said "people look for god where their imaginations falter or quit."

It's a name, or a concept, we've pasted to the unknown.
 
EntheoDjinn said:
But that is, unfortunately, simply begging the question.



Why do you favour "major" religions over the others?


Z
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because i dont know of all the minor religions.
 
Xorkoth said:
Atheism is not the lack of belief in a Judeo-Christian god. Atheism is specifically the lack of belief of any higher power. I think some people use the term incorrectly, however. If atheism meant the lack of belief in a Judeo-Christian god, then everyone who isn't Jewish or Christian would be atheist, which isn't true.

Wikipedia is written and edited by anyone who chooses to do so, so its definitions are not always spot-on.
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Wikipedia is right - atheism derives from theism, and is the contradictory position. It's perfectly possible to be a-theistic and believe in power's above and beyond the individual - I think Spinoza and Hegel are athesitic versions of Christianity, for instance. Some forms of buddhism are atheistic, others not...
 
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