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Psychedelics are about life not death

i really like the name of the dpt thread "life and death are but one" ;)

Yeah this thread actually reminded me of that title; the two concepts imply separation.. it may be through the collapse of this illusion of separation into union that forces the realization that life and death are but one. Which can then over time take you into a sort of existential crisis, all meaning becomes meaningless and you start to see that ultimately you define your own existence, infinite and unbound. There is no point, and when you really accept that and let go of 'any' ideals of what life 'should' be.. then you are truly free to simply live.
 
Life and Death are inseparable. Can't have one without the other... and I wouldn't want to.

For me psychedelics are about straddling the boundary between life and death... learning to have one foot in each realm.

I have had very profound (& very different) death experiences on ayahuasca, and 4-ho-mipt + ketamine.
Both times I *knew* that I had been killed and would not come back.
...And it didn't bother me one bit. Those lessons will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Make Death your friend :)
 
I don't think it's either ..., or... I think it's both i.e. the life-death cycle.

What we can see easily looking at the cycling of seasons and the revolutions of moons around planets around stars around galaxies around superclusters, I think is true fundamentally: nothing lasts but nothing is lost. The first two laws of thermodynamics.
Everything is set up to decay from the very first moment it exists yet when things decay only transformations take place and local shifts in equilibria. No energy can truly be created or destroyed, only quantum fluctuations at zero-point energy but this too adheres to the balance ubiquitously demanded in nature.

Thought patterns also come and go. Our self image constantly changes, we are dynamic and never the exact same person at two different moments. So our ego, the one thing we have to try and use as an anchor... it too is perpetuating itself by letting new facets be born and letting others die.

Psychedelic experiences, IMO & IME, unify this by making us silently engrossed in a moment and interfering with our normal sense of time. When the self-refreshing process our ego is wrapped up in is temporarily suspended... it seems to me our perception of the grand clockwork (built up out of all those countless cycles) becomes less limited and we are reminded sometimes by deja vu type sensations that are perhaps a result of the microcosm reflecting in the macrocosm and vice versa.

After saying this how can I decide whether psychedelics are about life or death? No, I believe they are about showing the inward and outward perspective of life-death-rebirth cycles. By that I don't mean reincarnation but rebirth in the context I just mentioned.
During my most intense psychedelic experiences it is quite normal for me to feel a cycling repetition of stopping to exist and starting to exist again. Also, it seems to negate the idea of a center around which everything is constructed (whether it is an arbitrary and imaginary center in the outside world, what they used to think is earth, then the sun) or a mental Cartesian coordinate system with a fixed origin. Instead, it feels to me like support is lost and then I dissolve and everything is relative. All of this is a very liquid feeling instead of a more normal solid yet all too often brittle.
As is a well-known reaction, it's hard to let go when your state of consciousness is fundamentally altered, but when a transition has been made successfully it feels so extremely peaceful. Which is kind of logical since if your vantage point of the world changes from local to more non-local there are no depatures and disconnections anymore from the world comprised of questions and reflex reactions to correct constant imbalance. (Because that is what I think my - and I guess 'our' - general unenlightedness feels like: trying to keep centered by moving towards the center, then moving past it again and repeating continuously. Regaining composure never seems to be finished...)

I don't have the pretention that I am able to draw from the above ideas in order to effectively apply these teachings I feel psychedelics have given me. These are lessons that I believe take a lifetime or at least it takes part of a lifetime to make steps following an indicated path. But at least I can take the above memories from an earlier psychedelic state and use it as an example. I know I need to break free from my self-deceptions one day at a time, feels pretty heavy to prepare yourself to gradually change but I guess I need to erode bad patterns. So I try to let go of things more and more but keep grasping for smaller substitutes. Perhaps at one point a 'major' therapy session is needed, it's likely I will try to use psychedelics as therapeutic tools. Mescaline if possible.
 
Great discussion everyone! :-) I dig that lengthy post of yours solipsis in particular, good empirical qualitative description of 'reference dissolving' :-)

Do you think it is all purely down to Tim Leary and people thinking that unless they say "I had an ego-death brah" people won't take them seriously?

Lol, wellll...I don't see it being quite so black/white as being denied/accepted by the culture based on those terms. However, I do see what you're suggesting and there is ground to that I believe. While plenty of deep Tripper kids will give one credit for a vision, or a description of a psychedelic state regardless of the externally-perceived ferocity of the said psychedelic exp. But, I can see that some psychonauts may have a sort of elitism regarding "man, if your ego was still there, ad you were like still conscious of the fact that you were tripping. Then man, you weren't really trippin man!" Lol...something along those lines.

Like anything, our analytical facilities have only our own exps to go off of as a reference by which to understand exps others purport to have had. So, when we, the psychonauts who've been through many battle with the collective consciousness, come back from the great-war which as far as we could tell seemed to have destroyed the very individual which perceives such exp; I can kind of see how one may overlook the substantiality of another's trip exp just because they didn't get "destroyed to the degree that I did on that faithful day which reality collapsed onto me".

So, I'd say elitism for sure in that case....but not the traditional ego-arrogance propelled elitism, which is the more common breed of elite-fascism in our world today. But rather some new future-form of elitist-tendency made possible through the perceived loss-of-self exped through psychedelic voyaging.

What i'm getting at in answer to your question is.....I don't think that every hippie is saying to himself "peh, he didn't exp ego-death, I'll disregard all of his info" or "well I've tripped away harder than that so this is all elementary info to me". But there's something to be said of the actual 'ego-strengthening' properties which become apparent through having integrated the exp of losing ones self. Again, nomenclature becomes an issue.....is it ego-headed to have confidence in who you are and the composition of your being when you've actively been evolving yourself? Maybe. Or is ego-arrogance a disease only affecting to those who've never been to the other side? Probably not.

But i've met a number of people who seem to have developed that elite snobbery due to the amount of dissolution they've experienced. And while its not the traditional preppy holier-than-thou snob attitude...its equally if not more debilitating, Because the person has convinced themselves that they are above the prep-elitists...and also above the psychonauts who haven't been around the block as much. 'They just don't understand, maybe if they were there when the dmt entities showed me the entirity of reality...but they weren't, so they're all still in the matrix. I'm like the only one who gets it" elitism 2.0 lol, more fascist than ever before!
 
life is just as mucha part of death as death is a part of life

Do you think so pirate? I tend to think life is life and death is death. Death is simply the complete and permanent cessation of life. Death isn't some magical psychedelic journey to wonderland - death is when everything stops. I think we're best off enjoying life while we can.
 
For me psychedelics are about straddling the boundary between life and death... I have had very profound (& very different) death experiences

The trouble is death is probably nothing like tripping on psychedelics so thinking you're learning something about death from tripping is probably a deadend (excuse the pun)
 
"psychedelics are about life, not death" to me,=

glass half full/ half empty...

Partly cloudy/parrtly sunny..

Tomato/ tomatoe... :)

life is just as mucha part of death as death is a part of life.. In fact there are studies done w terminally ill patients that use lsd as a tool in therapy to come to terms w death, through living their life( there was just a good segement on the psych episode on drgs,inc.)

. Its all part of the circle of life <3


qft!!!
 
well of course the real death-space is different from the spaces accessed through psychedelics. to think otherwise would be naive.

But these spaces are unambiguously presented as being closely related or analogous to the after-death state. it's not like some cliched 'oh i'm so far gone i must be dead' misinterpretive situation.

i tend to think of it as being a kind of simulation of the post-death state.

but then i don't believe that consciousness ends with death. so we will just have to agree to disagree there.
 
Death isn't some magical psychedelic journey to wonderland - death is when everything stops.
that's one opinion. there are others.
I think we're best off enjoying life while we can.
for some, enjoying life includes ingesting psychedelic drugs and considering mortality. i respect people's right to define these kinds of things for themselves...

alasdair
 
but then i don't believe that consciousness ends with death. so we will just have to agree to disagree there.

I always found the entropy argument quite convincing - in the universe everything tends toward an unordered state - because that takes the least energy. It takes energy for consciousness to exist, once your body can no longer provide energy, how can it continue?
 
that's one opinion. there are others.

I think it's the opinion that has by far the most evidence to support it tho.

enjoying life includes ingesting psychedelic drugs and considering mortality

That's fine. It's just the idea of dying when you're tripping that makes me wonder. If I felt like I was dying every time I took a drug I think I'd find another drug.
 
Cannabis overdoses quite often make people feel like they are dying, as part of an anxiety attack of varying proportion... I'd say the times that happened to me my reaction is as you describe: it made me turn off of cannabis a little, though it was never enough reason to stop my smoking habit. I had other reasons for that, mainly being fed up with the hazy mental feeling that accompanies semi-regular (or more often) use.

DMT is much more powerful, but contemplation of death was never part of an anxiety attack which makes all the difference. Instead those times the experience had a 'life & death' theme it was worthwhile and constructive for me and helped me overcome fears and much better accept that there is always a chance you yourself or a family member or close friend suddenly dies. I had a very unexpected death in my family, she was only 3 years old actually.
The next time I smoked DMT after that happened, which was a while later (maybe half a year? idk) I felt very clearly that I was carrying it as a burden. In that experience I felt consoled in the womb or lap of the universe, machine elves sympathized with the grief in a way I never experienced before. It was like the ability to communicate uninhibited and telepathically with them made it possible to feel mindmelded, there was total sharing. And it's really true that sharing something difficult can bring immense relief.
For the record: I believe that the machine elf entities are mind manifestations, a part of me rather than separate and living independent 'lives' in other dimensions or something like that. Even feeling the universe, I think, reflects the core of my being because I have no reason to believe I experienced something outside of my mindspace. So, this would mean that I consoled myself. I reflected on it and it worked very well.

I'm not sure if it was that same experience or another one but around that same time I lost part of my fear of death, also with DMT. I guess I would be overconfident if I said I lost it entirely, I do have lots of things in my life I risk losing and I don't think I could really actually imagine how it would feel if I was told I have no more than a week left to live - for example.

But, since then I no longer feel like the inevitability of death is one of the biggest 'shames' in the world, something it seems MANY people feel. Consider how long a lot of people are kept on life support, for the sole reason that at least they are alive and they are not suffering unbearably in their vegetative state, at least to the best of our knowledge...
Every day I wake up more or less healthy is a gift, but when the fat lady sings I want myself to not get spastic about it.
I am not opposed to building some career in my life that allows me to be creative as I love to be, getting a relationship and other things to get attached to, but it's not like I feel that has to be completed before I die. I do not want to schedule my life like that. Getting children would force me to reconsider this though: then it's not feeling the need to stay alive for your own sake but for the sake of your children.

One thing I must say: it's possible that changing my view on life and death like that, accepting death as part of it as young as I am, may have contributed to significant dissipation of classical forms of ambition in my life. For a while I cared too little for my own good, not being suicidal but just neutral to it all. Fortunately I have found new meaning in life in several things since then: different creative media like making music, drawing absurdistic cartoons, designing and building things, but also to keep learning about psychopharmacology and organic chemistry...

Right now I am supposed to find some place where I can do a competence and skill test, since it is already clear that I will stop working in my current sector (IT) after my current contract. I already know where my potential lies, vaguely, but such a test should make it more concrete to what kind of an existing job it translates to.

--- OK returning to the original point of discussion: there is not one single way to feel like you're dying, as a result of the effects of a drug.
Often with ego-death there is also first confusion about physical death: "will my body be okay when I allow my differentiating awareness to switch off and then 'just being' ?" But such worries are not the same as sheer panic about your well-being and survival. With something like a cannabis overdose, to me it doesn't feel very useful and constructive, I just want to pull through it.
But something that also happened to me once, as a good example, was that I was having an acid trip that was just absolutely fine. Then I decided I would lie down on my couch and do deep meditation, with the intention in mind to attempt voluntary and 'controlled' ego-death. At first this worked like a charm, it didn't take long at all before I felt I was getting closer and closer to ego dissolution. I was seeing a mental image of an uplink being constructed that would symbolize completion of the process, something like an elevator reaching into outer space only more abstract.
Then I approached the moment where I felt I was only hanging on by a thread or tether, and there would only have to be installed one last part of the uplink for it to be complete.
It was exactly like being confronted by a leap of faith, unfortunately I botched it and started confusing myself with worries instead of continuing and completely letting go and surrendering. My worries were that I did not have all the information about the 'rules of the game' which is how the idea formulated: that there could very well be unforeseen consequences of me leaving my body unguarded. I was alone, so my fear was that had I gone further, something unknown could possess and control my body, endanger itself (and me), it seemed possible that I would run around like a madman and do irresponsible things if 'no one' was left behind the 'controls'. I had no idea of what exactly it would be that would take possession of me, it wasn't really about that, it was about relinquishing all control.
Since that trip I thought about it and have come to believe that it's okay to let go and leaving your body like that since there is no other party involved besides my consciousness/awareness and my body.
But it took me like half an hour to cool-down from that botched attempt at ego death, it really threw me into a bout of confusion. After that half an hour or so, what resolved the whole situation was the realization of trust and how absolutely essential it is. The way it came to me was: if I am the donor of trust, trust in myself... then I am also the receiver of that trust, in my mind this took shape of a Yin-Yang symbol. It's symmetry reflected this idea that 'you get what you give', when it comes to being at good terms with yourself.

Sorry for the long posts 8)
 
Metaphorical death, death of the old man, death and rebirth, phoenix rising from the ashes, etc, etc...

:p
 
.
Do you think so pirate? I tend to think life is life and death is death. Death is simply the complete and permanent cessation of life. Death isn't some magical psychedelic journey to wonderland - death is when everything stops. I thinik we're best off enjoying life while we can.

@ isemene: after reading your question to me, i began asking myself questions that led to me typing up the story behind what changed my view on where life goes when we die in this form. i havent told this story many times and certainly not to many ppl, but ive made an attempt to put it into words the best i can. i apologize as its along post; just not sure if this belongs in trip reports.. as although i was tripping, there is a lot more to it than that. im in my 30's now; i was 17 at the time. well here it goes; hope it makes a little sense at least..

^^Well, i guess thats where our belief systems differ..and thats ok; actually it's refreshing to hear other ppl's takes on the grand finale. for most of my late childhood/ early adolescent life i was what i supposse one would call agnostic for lack of a better word, and then i had my first plus four. this experience actually came to me through overdosing on GHB accidently( i was tripping and rolling really hard amongst other things and was past panic.. some douchebag gave me what i found out later to be over 5 doses worth) i had never done it before, and being young and trusting, foolishly trusted everyone around me and didnt question what he gave me; i just drank it.

we were at the city park on a sunday afternoon after a huge wherehouse party..after i took it, i remember sitting down under a tree and leaning back, i could slowly begin to feel what i guess i would call my soul being pulled out of me quickly. i would try to shake it off and stand up but eventually told myself to give in, and from there is what has come to define my life belief system.

i saw myself hovering over the park, and then a flash and up i went into the blue sky. another flash and everything went black. what i "saw" from there i can best describe as a model of the solar system. i saw and felt myself as part of this small circle of light which was in rotation of a larger massive circle of light. there were rays coming from it into me; i was a projection of the larger central circle of light, or energy. things began to flash faster each time i was further away. each time i saw more and more similar masses of energy with other projections of energy rotating around them..and then it appeared to be a molecule, which then became a series of flashes of light that began to take formation and color each time until everything came together and i jumped up gasping for air and saw everything around me, which was what the whole experience was progressing into. i had ppl standing all around me and my bud standing over me; they were administering CPR; they said my lips turned blue and i had stopped breathing; i remember as i was up in the cosmos or whatever you choose to call it, thinking this is as far as i go, and as i realized the meaning behind all of it that i had a choice as to whether or not i wanted to continue; but i also knew that time began to tick the moment i understood and that id better not hesitate or i would lose my ability to "flash back" from energy orb inside of a single molecule that paired with all other energy to make up all that is. it wasn't like a train of thought like i am attempting to explain it though, more like an instant realization, like an autmtic respose to something, almost like a reflex.

after that, i became a very spiritual person and still am to tis day. i dont go to church or read passages from the bible although i have read the bible but just as a book, not a guide to worship. i dont worship anything but life itself and the fact that i was special enough to be given this brief opprotunity in a long series of life to come as i rotate farther and farther around the circle...maybe i end up a part of one of the other circles, and become a projection of it. perhaps i radiate my own energy and project it onto my own circle of life. i=regardless, i remain part of the grand design.

it is clear to me and i believe with all my heart that we are all just portions of energy, almost like wheels and cogs inside a machine, that make up a super machine that keeps everything running and continuing to move into the infinite. i realized that once we leave this vessel that we occupy as human beings the energy that lies within us does not simply die off like a fire, where it goes, that i haven't a clue, but such is the beauty behind the mystery of life. i believe that we are forever part of something, and just as we were part of something else before we entered this world, we are part of something when we leave it as human beings. it just doesn't make sense to me any other way.

now i realize that surely everyone does not share these beliefs with me, nor do i expect them to. just as we are all individuals, i think deep down we all have our own subjective beliefs and ideas about what happens next. just as they say it takes all different sorts of ppl to run the world, i believe it takes all different sorts of ideas and concepts to keep the world turning and the universe expanding and so on. even though these sorts of beliefs are often too complex to properly put into words, i think the core idea is quite simple, and that even without spirituality, the infinite lifespan of energy that we are composed of has nowhere to go but up and away to help make something else whole.

again, sorry about the long post, but you asked me a question that is of great importance to me and although i feel i left alot out, i did my best to explain to you why i think when we die in this world we continue to live just in some other form. thanks for probing me and indirectly causing me to revisit this memory; its no doubt, by far, one of the most profound moments in my life to date.
 
Strange that so many want to link psychedelics with ideas like "ego-death" or "the total death of the self". Doesn't anyone find that psychedelics are about life rather than death? It's sad that Tim Leary's fanciful tales have had such a influence on peoples thinking.

I don't think I've ever felt as alive as when I'm on psychedelics.
In my mind your putting far to much stock into the word "death". There just words used to describe a state of being, it has nothing to do with the state itself more so than being a descriptor of it. I find humans often do this though, I can't really see the point to it much more than to waste time. Also how do you know that initiating a state of "ego death" isn't a way for the mind to move past or go around things that are normally blockades, allowing you to reach higher planes? This is in line with living and not death, correct? Moving forward is life and decaying backwards is death so I can't see it as much else.....;) I guess in my mind theres just so many different ways to think about something that it could probably be what you think it isn't anyways, so thinking about it in that sense is just wasting time IMO. I can one thousand percent agree with the statement that just merely existing in a psychedelic state I feel more alive and super charged than any other state. Its like a perfect yet extremely delicate mixture that adrenaline or things like just can't compete with for me. Thats not even doing things like gazing at a full moon in the woods next to a roaring fire either.....
 
@plusfourpirate - nice post man! Wish I had something like that in my life but after losing a few people I can't get any comfort from the idea of life after death, I just think death is the end.

@Help - but even death in a metaphorical sense isn't something that hits me during trips. I feel more alive and euphoric than I've ever done. Death is the furthest thing from my mind, unless I'm thinking about loved ones who are no longer here.
 
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izzy said:
Wish I had something like that in my life but after losing a few people I can't get any comfort from the idea of life after death, I just think death is the end.

If we're talking about life after death being a continuation of the personality/mind/ego-construct of the individual, the idea would not be comforting. But what if it continued in a dissociative hole like fashion? Awareness is retained, but everything else dissipates as the body dies (this all seems in line with PFP's narrative, no? Like a natural extrapolation of it). Of course from there we might just speculate that awareness is singular (universal).

That would mean psychedelics are inherently life-affirming, even if one focused on the "death" of the substrate of awareness.

(note: Conjecture, not saying I believe this, besides, if it were true, then belief in it would be superfluous and only serve as existential comfort. We'll find out how it all works sooner or later)
 
@Ismene: I think very few people here would disagree with your saying that psychedelics, if properly used, makes one feel more alive than ever.

However, the separation between life and death may be only in people's minds. One of the lessons psychedelics taught me is how the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang is adequate to express reality.

Yin and Yang describes how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
 
But what if it continued in a dissociative hole like fashion? Awareness is retained, but everything else dissipates as the body dies

I dunno, I tend to think awareness is something evolution came up with in an attempt, not to put too fine a point on it, to allow human beings to be more effective at converting food into shit.

How far down the chain do we assume awareness continues? Is this afterlife only for human beings or are there billions of cockroaches still existing in mind only?
 
@Ismene: I think very few people here would disagree with your saying that psychedelics, if properly used, makes one feel more alive than ever.

I would hope so Efoj, but you get an awful lot of threads along the lines of "If you havn't felt the total death of self.." then you're some kind of cissy who hasn't taken a big enough dose.
 
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