Psychedelics have helped me reach the same conclusions as religions do through other

[max_freakout]

I think more people will get a mystical experience out of playing golf at St Augusta than will enjoy being high as a kite on psychedelic drugs. Do you disagree with that?

You are lumping together two entirely different things, 1 - mystical/religious experiences and 2 - "enjoyable" experiences. I am only talking about the first one, mystical/religious experiences (which may or may not be enjoyable) and the relative efficacy of the various purported routes of access to them.

 

[Ismene]

That's a very limited way of looking at mystical - lots of things have mystical ie "spiritually symbolic" meanings for people. You don't hear people saying "I had a mystical car crash" or "I had a mystical miscarraige". I think people generally feel something is mystical when it's positive for them.

And I also disagree that most people would describe a terrifying drug experience as mystical or religious. They'd simply call it terrifying. Don't consider what's written about Jesus as being literal - a lot of it was written simply to frighten people into believing their particuar brand of deranged religious belief.

I think what you're doing is called positive re-inforcement or "groupthink". If all you do is read people who enjoy psychedelics you begin to believe everyone thinks like that. Try reading people who are anti-drugs or who had bad experiences with psychedelics - they have a whole other viewpoint.

 

[Xorkoth]

The human mind is clearly wired to be able to experience spiritual and mystical states, and something within us seeks that (or most people at least). Psychedelics are great tools for accessing these kinds of states, and it's true that you won't be able to "trip" unless you take a psychedelic, but there are many ways to experience profound mystical/spiritual states without tripping. They can happen spontaneously, and they can happen when someone seeks them with purpose.

I think that by and large our society today does not value these things very much, but historically humans have been much more in tune with the mystical/spiritual, especially the closer you get to the root of human culture. I'm not sure whether I would have broken through social conditioning to experience the mystical and spiritual without the help of psychedelics, but it's not because it's not possible for me to do so without them, it's because my learned belief system simply did not account for these things and I was unlikely to find them without something to break me out of that forcibly.