Spiritual - Spirituality and LSD

[redpoppy]

Is the spiritual experiences had on LSD or oterh psychedelics geniuine insights into the nature of the universe due to increased spiritual awareness or simply chemically induced dellusion?

discuss.

[Dalfir]

SWID has recently thought that any startling revelations made under the influence of psychedelics will hold no answers to cosmic puzzles or ground breaking universal truths, they'll rather reveal unexplored parts of the user's mental universe, which is vastly different from anyone else.

SWID believes that psychedelic revelation holds no relevance to anyone but the user who experiences them.

[Nature Boy]

Closed-Eye Visuals (CEVs) can give a user a great insight into the complexities of the universe due to the sheer intricacy of what can be envisioned. It's a lot like staring at something through a microscope only it's right in your face and highly animated to say the least. It isn't delusion that's for sure.

[Heretic.Ape.]

What was that study done at... was it Harvard Divinity?.. where they were given psilocybin and their reports were compared by to reports of mystics and it was determined that no difference could be established?

[Jatelka]

^^^ That would be the "Good Friday Experiement" ha. Here it is for your labmonkey's viewing pleasure...

http://www.maps.org/books/pahnke/index.html

[Heretic.Ape.]

Thank you Jatelka, been meaning to read the actual thesis

[augentier]

Impossible to determine what is "real" and what is just a chemical vision IMO..but there are instances where it seems that on some level, psychedelics do let the user see beyond the limitations of our everyday reality.

For instance - there are many times when two or more people trip together on whatever psychedelic substance, and they reach that spiritual state together..they experience/feel/see/hear the same things..so what that would mean to me is these experiences are shared because in some way, it is really happening..on some plane it is existing..why else would several people experience the same thing on a substance that supposedly is drastically different for each individual? Of course this doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen often. It's like the drug opens each person's mind, but within each person's mind is the same thing - all connected to something more, and the drug is one of several ways of achieving that state.

Also, the brain only takes in a certain amount of information at a time..all the other things the brain isn't processing might be being processed while under the influence of a drug that relaxes and "re-wires", so to speak, a person's mind..so what the person is experiencing is real, but so unfamiliar and foreign to the person's mind that is seems too surreal to possibly be a reality.

Just a theory, but one I'm willing to run with

[Coconut]

Originally Posted by augentier

Impossible to determine what is "real" and what is just a chemical vision IMO..but there are instances where it seems that on some level, psychedelics do let the user see beyond the limitations of our everyday reality.

For instance - there are many times when two or more people trip together on whatever psychedelic substance, and they reach that spiritual state together..they experience/feel/see/hear the same things..so what that would mean to me is these experiences are shared because in some way, it is really happening..on some plane it is existing..why else would several people experience the same thing on a substance that supposedly is drastically different for each individual? Of course this doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen often. It's like the drug opens each person's mind, but within each person's mind is the same thing - all connected to something more, and the drug is one of several ways of achieving that state.

Also, the brain only takes in a certain amount of information at a time..all the other things the brain isn't processing might be being processed while under the influence of a drug that relaxes and "re-wires", so to speak, a person's mind..so what the person is experiencing is real, but so unfamiliar and foreign to the person's mind that is seems too surreal to possibly be a reality.

Just a theory, but one I'm willing to run with

Drugs such as LSD and dissociatives such as ketamine have been known to produce these effects. Because, especially with dissociatives, the brain doesn't have to process signals from the body any longer, its capacity is thought to be able to focus on other things which is usually doesn't encounter.

One could hypothesise that some drugs like this re-assign areas of the brain to process information from that which is always there, right in front of our faces, but which we just can't normally detect. For example, extra dimensions, and, if you believe in the afterlife existing as a higher plane of existence (another dimension). This could tie into the whole OBE and NDE side effects - ketamine is notorious for this but there are many reports of having them while on acid.

An interesting topic, I think.