I believe psychedelics give one a glimpse into the spiritual realm, for lack of a better term, although there are other ways to reach it, such as meditation.
Dimethyltryptamine is endogenous, and is reported to be the cause of near death experiences, alien encounters, and possibly the afterlife. It is produced within us all the time, and larger amounts are made during the REM cycle of our sleep, and stressful situations, i.e. death.
DMT:The Spirit Molecule & Inner Paths to Outer Space by Rick Strassman, M.D.
Rick Strassman also stated in an interview that while trying to become a Buddhist monk, he found out that about 80-90% of the monks he asked admitted that they used LSD and that it was the most influential experience in them deciding to become and devote their life to being a Buddhist monk.
Mushrooms have been used for thousands of years. Terence McKenna's Stoned Ape theory addresses the possibility of magic mushrooms initiating the creation of language and culture. In 100,000 years BC, Cubensis mushrooms could finally grow due to the change in climate which caused the rainforest to recede. Monkeys left the forest, and ate mushrooms and bugs found on animal dung. Mushrooms are reported to increase visual acuity, promote community bonding, and were the first spiritual experience for these primates.
Food for The Gods by Terence McKenna
I have also read a lot about mushrooms and their presence in the bible. Christ in Sumerian apparently means "a mushroom covered in gods semen". Early people understood how seeds worked, but not spores, as they were too small. Mushrooms would grow hours after the rain, from nothing visible, so they'd attribute it to being god's semen that fall from the sky. The people of these times were also very into fertility, animal fertility for food and human fertility for other obvious reasons. They were very curious about mushrooms because of their penis/vagina like appearance and mysterious/unknown growth after rainfall.
John Allegro shows how the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the etymology of various Mesopotamian languages all have mushroom and sexual puns/terms interwoven. This is due to the prominence in the pre-Christian world of mushroom and fertility cults. Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, the languages of the Bible, all ultimately derive from ancient Sumerian, where many original meanings had been long lost. For instance, the gods of the Greeks and Hebrews, Zeus and Yahweh (Jehovah) have names derived from Sumerian words meaning “seed of life� and “juice of fecundity.� The name Herod, as in King Herod, “ardeola� in Latin, serves as a wordplay on the Semitic “ardilia� which means “mushroom.� The name Jesus, in Hebrew “yehoshiia� comes from the Sumerian “JA U ShiJ A� which means “semen which saves, restores, heals.� This is comparable to the fertility god Dionysus, whose cult emblem was an erect phallus, and whose Sumerian name “IA-U-Nu-ShUSh� also means “semen, seed that saves.�
The Sacred Mushroom by John Allegra
Interesting reads/videos
http://shroomn8r.tripod.com/legendsoftheshroom/id7.html
Are psychedelics spirituality? Can all mystical experiences be explained by psychedelic drugs?
Christians used to burn people for being witches, it is now known that some of these "witches" were poor people, that had no where to live, besides caves. These caves were full of intoxicating fumes thats caused them to hallucinate. Other times, girls accused of witchcraft simply ate shrooms they found in the forest. When they were found dancing naked, people claimed they were witches. Are there not many more cases like this?
Are psychedelics spirituality?
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Athiest-420
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Post #31
[Replying to Blastcat]
Thanks for your questions. I think I may have led to some confusion, so let me clarify.
Of course, when you become conscious of something from the unconscious, it is no longer in teh unconscious. However, my point is that mystical experiences are a prime example when your consciousness has been broadened so as to include key elements previously only in the unconscious. A good example would be S. Teresa of Avila's book "The Interior Castles," There, she likens the soul to a castle with all kinds of hidden, inner passages. he theme is that to find God, we must stop living on the "outer walls of teh soul," turn inward, explore the unconscious dimensions of our minds.
I identify very strongly with the romantic movement. I think our rational, scientific culture is selling us short on many points. Note, I didn't say that science is all wrong, just that our strong emphasis on reason and sensation doesn't go far enough. I believe we are primarily feelers, only secondarily thinkers and sensors.
You asked me why it was important where the emotions are located. it think it is vitally important. Empirical or scientific philosophy, dating back to John Locke, divorces the aesthetic dimensions of our experience, from the rest of reality. Hence, color, for example, is assumed to exist only in the minds of teh beholder, a mere pigment of the imagination. Likewise, your emotions are assumed to be purely in you, no place else. So if I say that flaming red is passionate, all I have said is that the inside of my psyche is somehow red and that I feel passionate. it is assumed I have said absolutely nothing at all about external reality. Divorced as it is presented from the world of aesthetic experience, external reality seems dehumanizing and depersonalizing, colorless, odorless, soundless, feelingless, blaw, boring. In contrast, I argue the aesthetic dimensions are fundamental dimensions of external reality. When I say that patch over there is flaming, passionate red, I am talking about what is out there. Yes, that patch is red. Yes, it is a feeling entity. I say it is flaming, passionate red, because it is just that. So I'm not just talking about something in me, a purely subjective response, one referring to nothing at all in external reality.
There are many organisms with little or know sensory apparatus, such as amoebas, trees,jellyfish. In fact, there are many examples of organisms without a brain or nervous system, such as trees, and yet these organisms are alive and then experiencing entities. Out individual body cells, all of them, are experiencing entities, yet they do not have any apparent sense organs. Now, when I sue the term "cognitive," I mean being very thinky, reflective. Reality goes by too fast, our experiences happen too quickly even for us to always stop and think about it. Analysis is paralysis. So, no, I wouldn't say our cells are cognitive. Certainly many organisms evidence no sign of conscious behavior. They are not self-reflective, more like the way we are when we respond when we are in deep sleep. Responsive, yes. Self-aware and conscious, no. But they are capable of experiencing
Even these organisms with little, if any, sensory apparatus show evidence they experience causality, via their purposive behavior. That shoots down the empiricists' argument that causality is a high level abstraction of thought. And remember, we have no sensory experience of causality, as Hume so well pointed out. So where does causality come from? I submit from our purely affective experience. As I said before, we do not see the puff of air make the eye blink, but we do feel it do so. Since causality is essentially our connectedness to the rest of reality, I have said emotion is primarily what connects us to the rest of the world. How do we know that we see with the eyes, that our eyes make us see, and that my present experience of vision is mine, was caused by m eyes? My answer is feeling. We feel our eyes acting on us. We don't see our eyes make us see, we feel them make us see. Our instinctive identification with our own sense organs is a nonsensory process.
When I am talking about empathy, what I mean is that if there are two dots out there, then there are two dots in here, in our experience of the world.
I view feeling or emotion as our primary level of experience, simply because our conscious, sensory experience is but a derivative of zillions of macroscopic nonsensory, noncognitive events in our brand and nervous system. One cell excites another, transmitting its feedings, its experiences, to another, and so on, until consciousness is achieved, at least in the higher organisms such as ourselves.
Also, remember that I view mind and matter as one. The fundamental building blocks of reality, the atoms, so to speak, are momentary drops of experience.
The brain in continuous with the body, because you really can't show a hard-and-fast diving line where brain stops and body begins. The body is also continuous with the rest of the world, because, again, there is no hard-and-fast dividing line between where your body ends and the rest of the world begins. Hence, we have all sorts of avenues of communication with the rest of reality, beyond just our senses or even our nervous system.
Thanks for your questions. I think I may have led to some confusion, so let me clarify.
Of course, when you become conscious of something from the unconscious, it is no longer in teh unconscious. However, my point is that mystical experiences are a prime example when your consciousness has been broadened so as to include key elements previously only in the unconscious. A good example would be S. Teresa of Avila's book "The Interior Castles," There, she likens the soul to a castle with all kinds of hidden, inner passages. he theme is that to find God, we must stop living on the "outer walls of teh soul," turn inward, explore the unconscious dimensions of our minds.
I identify very strongly with the romantic movement. I think our rational, scientific culture is selling us short on many points. Note, I didn't say that science is all wrong, just that our strong emphasis on reason and sensation doesn't go far enough. I believe we are primarily feelers, only secondarily thinkers and sensors.
You asked me why it was important where the emotions are located. it think it is vitally important. Empirical or scientific philosophy, dating back to John Locke, divorces the aesthetic dimensions of our experience, from the rest of reality. Hence, color, for example, is assumed to exist only in the minds of teh beholder, a mere pigment of the imagination. Likewise, your emotions are assumed to be purely in you, no place else. So if I say that flaming red is passionate, all I have said is that the inside of my psyche is somehow red and that I feel passionate. it is assumed I have said absolutely nothing at all about external reality. Divorced as it is presented from the world of aesthetic experience, external reality seems dehumanizing and depersonalizing, colorless, odorless, soundless, feelingless, blaw, boring. In contrast, I argue the aesthetic dimensions are fundamental dimensions of external reality. When I say that patch over there is flaming, passionate red, I am talking about what is out there. Yes, that patch is red. Yes, it is a feeling entity. I say it is flaming, passionate red, because it is just that. So I'm not just talking about something in me, a purely subjective response, one referring to nothing at all in external reality.
There are many organisms with little or know sensory apparatus, such as amoebas, trees,jellyfish. In fact, there are many examples of organisms without a brain or nervous system, such as trees, and yet these organisms are alive and then experiencing entities. Out individual body cells, all of them, are experiencing entities, yet they do not have any apparent sense organs. Now, when I sue the term "cognitive," I mean being very thinky, reflective. Reality goes by too fast, our experiences happen too quickly even for us to always stop and think about it. Analysis is paralysis. So, no, I wouldn't say our cells are cognitive. Certainly many organisms evidence no sign of conscious behavior. They are not self-reflective, more like the way we are when we respond when we are in deep sleep. Responsive, yes. Self-aware and conscious, no. But they are capable of experiencing
Even these organisms with little, if any, sensory apparatus show evidence they experience causality, via their purposive behavior. That shoots down the empiricists' argument that causality is a high level abstraction of thought. And remember, we have no sensory experience of causality, as Hume so well pointed out. So where does causality come from? I submit from our purely affective experience. As I said before, we do not see the puff of air make the eye blink, but we do feel it do so. Since causality is essentially our connectedness to the rest of reality, I have said emotion is primarily what connects us to the rest of the world. How do we know that we see with the eyes, that our eyes make us see, and that my present experience of vision is mine, was caused by m eyes? My answer is feeling. We feel our eyes acting on us. We don't see our eyes make us see, we feel them make us see. Our instinctive identification with our own sense organs is a nonsensory process.
When I am talking about empathy, what I mean is that if there are two dots out there, then there are two dots in here, in our experience of the world.
I view feeling or emotion as our primary level of experience, simply because our conscious, sensory experience is but a derivative of zillions of macroscopic nonsensory, noncognitive events in our brand and nervous system. One cell excites another, transmitting its feedings, its experiences, to another, and so on, until consciousness is achieved, at least in the higher organisms such as ourselves.
Also, remember that I view mind and matter as one. The fundamental building blocks of reality, the atoms, so to speak, are momentary drops of experience.
The brain in continuous with the body, because you really can't show a hard-and-fast diving line where brain stops and body begins. The body is also continuous with the rest of the world, because, again, there is no hard-and-fast dividing line between where your body ends and the rest of the world begins. Hence, we have all sorts of avenues of communication with the rest of reality, beyond just our senses or even our nervous system.
Post #32
[Replying to post 31 by hoghead1]
" The body is also continuous with the rest of the world, because, again, there is no hard-and-fast dividing line between where your body ends and the rest of the world begins."
This is scary.
It mean that tonight I can end up in your bed
or on a railway line.
" The body is also continuous with the rest of the world, because, again, there is no hard-and-fast dividing line between where your body ends and the rest of the world begins."
This is scary.
It mean that tonight I can end up in your bed
or on a railway line.
Post #33
[Replying to post 32 by Monta]
Well, you may not end up in my bed tonight, on one hand. On the other, you have communicated some of yourself, via this post, and that has flowed into me, and so, in a way, part of you will be in my bed tonight. Put another way, you may not be in bed with me tonight, but you may find it difficult to say where your foot ends and the shoe you have on begins, or, if you are walking in your bare feet, when your foot ends and the ground begins. I live in a very rural part of the country, where rescue dogs raised and often used to find people. You may think you are such-and-such a place and nowhere else. Yes, but your stench or odor, which is genuinely part of you, can leave a trail for miles and last for several days, despite even rain, which is how the dogs find you. I spent all last Saturday running our historic steam locomotive. When I got home, you couldn't tell where I ended and the engine began. After several days and strong showers, you can still smell the engine smoke in my hair and beard, not to mention some of the grime still clinging to my hands and fingernails. If we are sitting and talking, it may seem you are over there and I am over here. Yes, but the sounds of our voices, which is definitely part of ourselves, is in each others' ears. You say you hand is here and the table is there. Yes, but take a look at the messy fingerprints you left. Some of your hand acid is back on the table. We are all particles and also waves.
Well, you may not end up in my bed tonight, on one hand. On the other, you have communicated some of yourself, via this post, and that has flowed into me, and so, in a way, part of you will be in my bed tonight. Put another way, you may not be in bed with me tonight, but you may find it difficult to say where your foot ends and the shoe you have on begins, or, if you are walking in your bare feet, when your foot ends and the ground begins. I live in a very rural part of the country, where rescue dogs raised and often used to find people. You may think you are such-and-such a place and nowhere else. Yes, but your stench or odor, which is genuinely part of you, can leave a trail for miles and last for several days, despite even rain, which is how the dogs find you. I spent all last Saturday running our historic steam locomotive. When I got home, you couldn't tell where I ended and the engine began. After several days and strong showers, you can still smell the engine smoke in my hair and beard, not to mention some of the grime still clinging to my hands and fingernails. If we are sitting and talking, it may seem you are over there and I am over here. Yes, but the sounds of our voices, which is definitely part of ourselves, is in each others' ears. You say you hand is here and the table is there. Yes, but take a look at the messy fingerprints you left. Some of your hand acid is back on the table. We are all particles and also waves.
