This thread may end up being kind of pointless, but I'd like to get into the philosophy board a little more so I thought I would share my latest idea.

One day at work, I was debating with my good friend and coworker about science and philosophy and the works like I always do. It's great fun. =) Anyways, he's firmly set against psychedelics and any drugs so we always debate about why they're good or bad.

I made the argument that psychedelics are tools for exploring different perspectives to get the most complete picture of a concept. And then I thought of something. Recently, I've been studying telescopes in my astronomy class and I came up with this; psychedelics are like telescopes. An astronomer will use several different kinds of telescopes to get the most complete picture of a body in space. They may use visible light, x-rays, infrared, ultra-violet, etc. This is so they can observe all the different kinds of light coming from said body and gain a complete picture with the most information as possible. Well, psychonauts will use several different psychedelics to gain a complete perspective of a situation/concept. Each psychedelic is unique in its affects and gives you a different perspective. It's like when you're sober, you look at a picture and it's just 2D. When you take LSD for example, you can see that picture from one more angle and it becomes more 3D. The more different perspectives you can look at the picture from, the more completely 3D the picture becomes.

Psychedelics are telescopes.

Thoughts?

Completely agree. However, they are not only telescopes but microscopes also.

A lot more also :]

The experience cannot be summed up in a few words. Any words, for that matter, explain the experience and/or the action of these plants/chemicals.

I think they validate in an experiential sense whatever ontology the taker has...
I've seen it over and over for so many ontologies, so I believe it.

Either way, You are not the only one who thinks and feels this about these entheos!

didn't T.Mckenna once say or paraphrase;

"Psychedelics are to Psychology as the Telescope is to Astronomy "

I totally agree with you OP, especially with DMT. On several journeys, my consciousness has projected across the universe to other solar systems.

Whether you call it a telescope, or microscope, that's only useful as a metaphor. And only if you're trying to communicate to people who understand those fields such as if I was talking to someone with astronomical interests I'd lean towards the telescope metaphor and if I was talking with a pathologist I'd lean towards the microscope metaphor. That I think is the best way to handle a metaphor

If you want to cut to the chase, psychedelics are tools used to explore consciousness. They help us understand perception and neurochemical pathways and how it relates to our perception etc. I'm sorry your friend has such an ignorant view of psychedelics, maybe you've planted some seeds so that they can look at it with different eyes, though it is quite difficult to get around that barrier without ever having any experience.

I'm not sure what other metaphors could be utilized, but I'm sure there are several that would also be useful for this purpose.