Stimulants and Spirituality

[ebola?]

Most people don't have the capacity to use psychedelics for intellectual purposes.

I dunno. This sounds a tad elitist. I think that even if they can't clearly verbalize it, most people experience the 'intellectual' (that's a poor term...analytical? conceptually generative?) side of psychedelics. I think that the typical 'psychedelic cognitive space' (for me at least) is best characterized as the inclination to build nesting levels of abstraction, with conceptual oppositions being superseded at each abstractive layer above...the observer standing more aside the concepts, not within them). This is pretty hard to describe properly, in particular as any given concept can be in multiple nesting frameworks, and these frameworks can refer to themselves (see Hofstadter). To me, it's sort of Hegelian, and Hegel's writing is insanely incomprehensible for a sort of good reason...

Similarly, I can have meaningful, serious discussion on stims. I can't do any of that while tripping balls, and I've never met anyone who can.

I thought about this a bit more. Psychedelics and stimulants are simply different cognitive tools. For me, stimulants induce a cognitive space pretty much like sober consciousness, but 'moreso', eg, normally styled thinking with more drive, focus, rigor, detail, and elaboration. Psychedelics, however, incline me to think differently, wandering into more spontaneous insights (and some cognitive garbage). With psychedelics, you have to sift out the insights and discard the manic 'gibberish' once sober. You have to do this with stimulants too though. I mean, look at some of the 5 pp. posts without paragraphs on this site.

ebola

 

[TheAppleCore]

I think that even if they can't clearly verbalize it, most people experience the 'intellectual' (that's a poor term...analytical? conceptually generative?) side of psychedelics.

Yes, this could be true. However, just look at the average trip report for an idea of how much people consciously take away from trips, conceptually. All they talk about is how great the visuals and trippy sex were.



By the way, I still don't feel like I've ever gotten a satisfying definition of the term "spirituality".

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

By the way, I still don't feel like I've ever gotten a satisfying definition of the term "spirituality".

Spirituality is entertaining any idea that you living your life right now may be part of some greater plan.

 

[Pariahprose]

Spirituality is separate from religion, because religion is organized but Spirituality is about finding your own personal place in the puzzle that is the Universe, it is about individuality.

 

[ebola?]

I still don't feel like I've ever gotten a satisfying definition of the term "spirituality".

I don't think I quite grasp it either (perhaps I almost do), and we even had a thread on it.

ebola

 

[rangrz]

The evolutionary selection for what we consider are rewards are not false rewards. They're rewards that make you fitter to survive in physical reality.

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

I dunno. This sounds a tad elitist. I think that even if they can't clearly verbalize it, most people experience the 'intellectual' (that's a poor term...analytical? conceptually generative?) side of psychedelics. I think that the typical 'psychedelic cognitive space' (for me at least) is best characterized as the inclination to build nesting levels of abstraction, with conceptual oppositions being superseded at each abstractive layer above...the observer standing more aside the concepts, not within them). This is pretty hard to describe properly, in particular as any given concept can be in multiple nesting frameworks, and these frameworks can refer to themselves (see Hofstadter). To me, it's sort of Hegelian, and Hegel's writing is insanely incomprehensible for a sort of good reason...

I thought about this a bit more. Psychedelics and stimulants are simply different cognitive tools. For me, stimulants induce a cognitive space pretty much like sober consciousness, but 'moreso', eg, normally styled thinking with more drive, focus, rigor, detail, and elaboration. Psychedelics, however, incline me to think differently, wandering into more spontaneous insights (and some cognitive garbage). With psychedelics, you have to sift out the insights and discard the manic 'gibberish' once sober. You have to do this with stimulants too though. I mean, look at some of the 5 pp. posts without paragraphs on this site.

ebola

In my experience psychedelics bring about a more Eastern mindstate which if given enough effort can be connected to intellectualism but really hardly has anything to do with it. Abstraction and relativism is really only found in the West within Anthropology; otherwise its a basically just a philosophical cop-out. I haven't read Hegel so I can't comment on that, but please feel free to elaborate.

I think we can agree that psychedelics and stimulants both have manic aspects. And I don't agree: at relative doses stimulants make me very efficient and ordered, something that I can come back to when sober and see perfectly clearly, while as stated above the "logic" (if you will) of psychedelia is quite so far out as to be almost untouchable several months after a trip. That is, assuming the doses aren't extreme; I'd imagine anybody given enough of a psycho-stimulant would become incomprehensible.

 

[Deleted member 175441]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

The evolutionary selection for what we consider are rewards are not false rewards. They're rewards that make you fitter to survive in physical reality.

At least they made us fitter to survive way back when...human technological/social development has far outstripped our physical evolution (e.g.: obesity epidemic and our lingering, obsolescent predilection towards sweet/fatty foods. In the developed world that is). I could argue other, more basic emotional/intellectual responses, but I don't wanna reason it out right now, and you're smart enough to catch my drift[/smarter than me].

 

[ebola?]

In my experience psychedelics bring about a more Eastern mindstate which if given enough effort can be connected to intellectualism but really hardly has anything to do with it.

But this is what Eastern philosophers have done with their mystical experiences. While Chinese Daoists have chosen to point toward how ineffability demarcates the limits of conceptualization as priorly construed, and where further thought must press, Hindu scholars have created extremely intricate systems of logical adjudication.

My main point is that the mystical experience itself is just that, an experience to work from, and thus potentially cognitively generative in a variety of potential directions.

Abstraction and relativism is really only found in the West within Anthropology

Really? These seem latent or even very often realized in many strands of discursive histories...

while as stated above the "logic" (if you will) of psychedelia is quite so far out as to be almost untouchable several months after a trip.

My experiences have been nothing of the sort...the generative framework of psychedelia has provided me generative material that has shown itself fruitful beginning even during the experience itself...

ebola

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

Where else do you find it as a paramount factor?

I don't know what you've generated while so possessed but unless its quantifiable the relevance is precarious. Maybe by secondary means then?

 

[Dresden]

This thread has made me think about certain commonalities that stimulants and psychedelics share. They can both be used for spiritual exploration/growth IMO, but I find that stimulants (meth, coke) are more for 'building up' information, and psychedelics (tryptamines, ergolines) are more about meeting this aim through a process of 'breaking down.' I prefer stimulants about 80% of the time and psychedelics the other 20%. And then there is the issue of dissociatives--which are for me functionally impossible to experience and stay out of the looney bin.

LSD used to give me crazy true disturbing insights and many spiritual experiences, but it could be painful. My only two ++++'s, however, came about after prolonged bingeing on stimulants (crystal meth and iv cocaine). The amounts used were dangerous and prohibitively expensive, however.

 

[ebola?]

Where else do you find it as a paramount factor?

Honestly, I'm not sure what you're asking in this pair of questions. Do you mean "the mystical experience" by "it"? And are you asking where I found it pertinent, to be put to use in the rest of my life? Well, in a number of domains. In general, the tilt in abstraction from psychedelia (where conditions of possibility for conceptual systems reveal themselves, pointing at their limit toward experience of the ineffable) provides novel ways of seeing how concepts we use in sober life interrelate. On psychedelics, I have gained new ways of engaging social theory and ontology and epistemology. In particular, psychedelics have helped me think of new ways in which various epistemological layers of social analysis interrelate (namely, pointing toward an uneasy marriage of Foucault and Gramsci), but also how experience in general relates to its conditions of possibility (pointing toward an uneasy marriage of Hegel, Marx, and Dewey).

ebola