After the vision: share your pets journey

[Heretic.Ape.]

The following quote from panthers007 comes from another thread and I've decided to give it a thread of it's own.

Most who go back to the early days of psychedelic exploration value the insights achieved with them. But have moved on for another look to figure out: "What the Hell was THAT??" And the answers were about the same - that was a good look at how the human mind operates. Where the angels and the demons dwell. And what they are there for - the knowledge that "there are no accidents in this business." From there came (also part of human nature - curiosity and elucidation) the desire to define and structure the experiences gleaned - starting with seeking out road-maps from earlier (pre-psychedelic scholars and writers) works that give insight into what the psychedelics laid bare.

Some turned to religion for answers. Some towards psychology. Some to atomic physics. And all went towards everything that presented itself. All roads were taken to find the answer that was true. And, aside from a few flakes, it was found that all answers are true: There is no one simple and profound truth or map that shows you everything. There is no word to describe the full and undiluted - through ego - view. This view is what Aldous Huxley referred to as being "ineffable." "To describe the ineffable is impossible." Look it up somewhere. So this all boils down to psychedelics being important and useful portals into a realm where one is aware of more then one was previously. Then one understands that the psychedelic didn't put anything there that wasn't there before. So the psychedelic acted as a catalyst nudging one to explore this issue of "more" more fully. And it was found that psychedelics were limited in their scope. This may be hard to believe, but it's true. If one wants to know more about all these wider places within one's psyche, then one must move on to other methods of finding out what lies within. It's rather amazing how quickly the quest for knowledge reveals that taking a drug that seemed miraculous a little while before - is now boring and lacks challenges. "So that was fun, now for the REAL look."

So if one has a bad go with the psychedelic approach, then move on. Onwards but not abandon the plan to find out the inner realm's seeming secrets. There are plenty of other portals available to something as inquisitive and ingenious as a human mind. If one is curious what some of these portals may be and how to approach them, please start a new thread in the proper place and we all can relate tales from the trenches of the hidden frontier within.

Now, I'd be very curious to hear other little monkey's, bunny's and assorted adventurous animals tale's concerning their ongoing adventure to find out "what was that?"

[sgurrman]

This is an interesting and relevant topic, one that I was thinking of sounding out myself. I have a good friend whose name is Egbert. Once upon a time, a long time ago, he had all sorts of ideas about life, nature, and so on. Then he had some experiences with psychedelic substances, and his ideas stopped being just ideas, but became direct experiences. He decided that the focus of his life thereafter had to be exploring what he had experienced during these sessions, particularly the sense of oneness and non-duality he had fleetingly had the privilege to participate in (I say 'he decided', but that's not strictly true: he had no choice).

Egbert felt considerable gratitude for the opportunities he had had. However, he eventually felt he was getting nowhere, and was more like a 23-year-old yo-yo, coming down into a slightly different place every time he took off with the help of a psychedelic. He was getting confused, needing more of a framework, and discovered that Buddhism was the closest thing around to what he had experienced. As a result, he spent over a decade engaged in Buddhist meditation, living with other Buddhist dudes, and so on. He was pretty serious and wholehearted about it.

For a while this was undoubtedly beneficial for Egbert but - and here is the interesting bit - as time passed, Egbert became increasingly unimpressed with what and who he saw around him, and indeed with his own explorations of matters of the mind and cosmos within this type of context. Though there were a few exceptions, he was less than convinced that many people doing the Buddhist thing in the west were really pushing the envelope of consciousness all that far. He began to think, like Terence Mckenna, that some people fall in love with the path, and forget or become fearful of the places that path is supposed to be leading to. For himself, he had some important insights through meditation and living 'a Buddhist life', but was unable to penetrate beyond the hard surrounding shell of ego. As the years passed, meditation practice was becoming less effective, and he had the sneaking suspicion that channels had been opened up through his psychedelic years, but that they were now slowly closing up, rendering his efforts almost useless.

Egbert did some shamanic journeying, which took him into hitherto unknown realms. This kick-started his spiritual quest once more, but was limited. He began to wonder whether he should revisit the world of psychedelia, and on doing some serious reading on the subject and listening to what I told him about my reading on Drugs Forum realised there was a lot more to it than he had thought back in his early 20s.

His current position is that he would like to cut through the 'either/or' approach to the subject: he is no fan of the 'I used to do psychedelics but I've moved on' school. He is also no believer in the 'all you need to do is take another trip' approach. He thinks that psychedelics could be part of an integrated approach to pushing the envelope of consciousness, including psychotherapy, psycho-this-or-that, yoga etc etc. He finds the model of shamanic societies instructive in this respect, since their use of psychedelics seems totally integrated into their entire way of life. He reckons this is what could be aimed at closer to home, except that our darling governments don't make such a wonderful vision of human existence easy to put into practice.

He says he probably has more to say on this subject, I'll keep you informed. In the meantime, thanks for opening up this thread.

Reputation Comments on this post:

thanks for sharing, I wholeheartedly agree ;)