A recent discussion led to thoughts of knowledge and the various kinds of knowledge, in particular with respect to “the psychedelic experience”. You can know what a psychedelic experience is, but until you have the experience yourself, you can’t know what it is like.

To illustrate this point, the philosopher Thomas Nagel once asked “What is it like to be a bat?” Or to phrase it more precisely, “What is it like for bats to sense objects by echo-location?” These are questions we cannot answer – we’ll never know what it is like to be a bat.

We can study bat physiology, echo-location, bat neurology, bat behavior, etc. We can learn about what bat echo-location is, but we will never know what it is like – what echo-location is like for a bat.

A person blind from birth can easily learn about the color red. He can learn that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation, and that different frequencies of this radiation correspond to different colors, and that we call a particular frequency range “red”. He can learn about the rods and cones in the retina and the role they play in sensing light and color. He can learn about the visual cortex and how it translates this sense data into the sense impression “red”.

But this blind person will never know what it is like to see the color red.

Words don’t adequately describe the subjective DMT experience. Words can tell us something about what the DMT experience is. But they really tell us nothing about the subjective experience – what it feels like to be altered by DMT – what the experience is like.

Comments?

Knowledge in an abstract sense about any subject is clearly not the same as the experience itself.

Ive read lots of war novels but that doesnt make me fit for the frontline in Afghanistan

Here is one theoretical way I feel it could be possible (knowing what the "psychedelic experience" is without directly experiencing it):

If there is egoistic consciousness at the beginning of the spectrum (black), unified consciousness at the other end (white), while the colors of the rainbow are what we call psychedelic experience, then someone who can do a direct jump from black to white (without passing through the colors) may understand what the colors are without actually going through them (experiencing them).

My analogy is bad though... I wanted to give the intermediary stages a tint of confusion, but the colors of the rainbow are too pure to do that. My point is that if everything that separates the beginning from the end is seen as distortion of the Mind, then someone who can make the jump may deem it unnecessary to experience the confusion.

In other words: if someone can get to that point in the psychedelic experience where it all clears up, stay there, and do this instantly (without running through the path from black to white), then he/she may say that the psychedelic experience is unnecessary.

Its impossible to describe something that is beyond language so how can you describe it? You cant, only way you could understand is through direct experience, when ive tried to describe my dmt expereinces it just sounds so pathetic the words coming out my mouth in comparison to what it was really like, like ill try say this happened and that happened but it sounds like a tiny fraction of how it felt and what it was like you seem to take away the enormity of it by trying to describe it with language, it just seems pointless but of course we try lol. Other psychedelics are kinda easy to describe in compariosn to spice as its just so ridiculous an experience sometimes.

I’m not sure what this means. Knowledge via extrapolation?

Even if you could experience a state without actually experiencing it (???!!! ), how would you know it was that state and the experience of it?

In other words, if one claimed to have psychedelic experiences without ever having experienced a bonafide one, how would one know that those first experiences did indeed compare?

One could never know, so the statement is false.

JBArk

Usually somewhere in the mushroomplateau a few moments after the peak, there will be moments of contemplation where i fully realize im looking though different eyes, and in a playfully and sort of guided way experiencing the world on a somehow deeper level, full of deeper meaning. Moments like these always puts a smile or grin on my face. You know when you are in the know.

More like assumption..not actaul gnosis.

Psychedelics seem, to me, to each have aspects that can't even be addressed when not interfacing with them. Even beyond the aspects I can think about when at baseline but can't speak about, each psychedelic has... something to it that doesn't fit through.

Every once in a while, I get psychedelic bleed through into baseline states. Not like flashbacks, but actual engagement with reality seems to take on psychedelic logic for a while, without tracers or any other obvious physiological effect. That logic just doesn't compute for ordinary states and I don't think anyone can actually claim to sufficiently describe it, much less understand it.

Some novels can approach that level of interrelationship, Infinite Jest comes to mind, but only in as an allusion.