right here, hopefully not toooooo many of you will think im crazy....

Ok I am very experienced (perhaps too experienced) in the realm of LSD. I have eaten probably over a book of acid within a 4 year period (17-21). I have had NIGHTMARE trips, I have had BLISSFUL trips. I understand why there is the need for both. I know we are in the nexus where coming into contact with "alien lifeforms" is very controversial (is it external or internal?). BUT before I even smoked the precious substance I would have these "lifeforms" communicate with me telepathically on high doses of LSD and Mushrooms. I know I know, its ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL my subconscious talking to me and I just see it as being external from myself. I have had these "alien lifeforms" PROBE my fucking brain explaining to me that I am basically just a lab rat running around a maze so they can observe us. I mean come on, we were given emotions, we cry, we laugh, we love. I feel like these "alien lifeforms" created us to study our behaviors like lab rats. THEN came the acid trip when they told me I am the only one here, everyone around me is a projection of my brain to keep me occupied, this acid trip was like "OK NOW YOU KNOW, SO KILL YOURSELF! YOUR PARENTS ARENT REAL! THEY ARE COMPUTERS! YOU ARE INSIDE OF A FUCKING COMPUTER! FREE YOURSELF". crazy right? I still to this day believe that I am stuck in a computer program that IS life. I have told this to my friends, and they think I have fucking lost it. But i feel like the most sane person out of all of them. I dont want to believe that I am a computer program but its very hard considering every psychedelic I take shows me MORE AND MORE of how I am one.

I guess the reason im posting this is to say what I believe reality is and MAYBE hoping somebody can relate. I love all you nexians and your support would be VERY much appreciated.

This is what happens when you latch onto certain beliefs. It's best to keep an open mind, rather than be dead set on believing something. This is a good example of how a belief can be a dead end. You believe something, and its so menacing it makes you want to end your life.

The simplest thing to do here would be to not believe that. Try not believing in anything and just remain open to the possibilities. Instead of focusing on things that are beyond your control, look around you, what do you see? You have a life and it is happening right now. I have had thoughts like yours in the past. It helped for me to let them go and move on. There are some things we will never know and it's best to accept that with a smile.

first off, house you have been one of the most helpful members to me on this forum and I appreciate you. I understand how beliefs can confuse us because we hold on to them, but they MANIFEST in your mind and you forget about them until you trip again. To me its like going down the rabbit hole, only to wind up in a rat trap instead. How do you know whats right and whats wrong? do you just believe in nothing?

I don't know about you but when I put my quarter in the machine I was planning to play this game all the way to the end.

After all, if they went to all the trouble of setting up this nice maze for me for me to run around in, the least I can do is try to find the cheese.

of course, you think I would be alive if I went along with my "probed" thoughts?

^^ I do what dreamer042 does. When thoughts get overwhelming, I remember there is no point in being overwhelmed, and find humor in the paradoxical nature of our reality.

You are going through a phase right now, one that many of us go through and will go through. You are going to come out of this stronger than you could have imagined. It may be hard to imagine that now, but time will pass, and you will have evolved.

As for beliefs... it's silly and in this circumstance dangerous to believe in something so existential and unprovable. Just remember, that there's no way we can possibly know anything like that.

My only advice is let go, live your life, and do not stress over the things you can not control and know. Focus on things that you love doing and do them. Life is short. Enjoy it.

Yes, this acid trip I was talking about happened over a year ago, I have realized how precious my life is. I still live it out, its not that these beliefs bother me and affect my everyday life, but they still pop up in my brain from time to time. I just want to clarify to everyone that I have NO intention of killing myself. To be honest I feel like I dont even deserve the life that was given to me.

You definitely deserve it :] and it's wonderful that you acknowledge how grateful you are for being. It's truly a wonderful thing.

That's one of the funny things about the mind. We get thoughts that pop up out of nowhere. Over time we learn how to deal with some of these. Time and meditation. Deep breaths. Good food. Mmmmm :]

Have you tried writing poetry or fiction with the notions? I've found that can help process them...allowing them to be more easily let go.

1) I wish to emphasize that one DOES change. One can have an idea/insight that seems "final," only to later have a DEEPER insight in which one sees that the first one was PARTIAL, and from a broader perspective, WRONG.

2) Taken from the "it's just my subconscious" perspective, your experiences can be literally true as: "I think of myself (in fundamental terms) as being a computer program." In other words, you are truly perceiving and understanding what it is that YOU feel about YOURSELF. This can mean that your experiences are LITERALLY TRUE, but you've only misinterpreted the source (I offer this an alternative to the idea that it's "only" your subconscious).

I personally dont think we know enough to say it is all in our heads, or to assume it is about some outside influence..and to be honest I highly doubt either of those paradigms are sufficient explainations..wouldnt be nice if things were ever that simple?..

Both explainations are extremely linear and thus limiting in a broader sense. I think we will find as time goes on more and more that the fine line between self and other will begin to blur and give way to theories that incorperate a much less fragmented and more integrated paradigm.

On one side we have people like Alan Watts, who I dont find to be all that adequate in they're explaination of the whole phenomenon, taking a more buddhist stance on the issue..at the same time I think Mckenna(when taken literally) tends to miss part of the point as well, though I tend to see mckenna as one of the great psychedelic thinkers who really delved into this less linear model of reality and never seemed to really take a side or have his mindinvested in any particular direcftion. Both of these people submitted a great body of work on psychedelics and the nature of self and I dont think either of them was "wrong"..but I dont think the answer lies in one or the other.

The best example of what I am trying to get at here is our personal designations reguarding what is "real"..how real does something have to be to be "real enough"?..and at what point the do internal experiences mirror the external?..I think these are important and valid questions one must ask when contemplating these sorts of experiences.

I'm hearing you say everyone outside yourself is just a projection. In the same paragraph you speak of your friends...and you speak of love for us nexians...
I'd challange you to examine if this belief is something you really feel, or just something your mind wants. If you really feel it to be reality, you would respond as if it were so. You wouldn't need to explain yourself to us if you truly believed us to be projections.
And how could you love a mere projection?

I've had similar mind trips and believes in the past that didn't serve me, but I never really felt them in my bones. my advice is to let go of beliefs that don't resonate throughout your whole being.

I think that's key advice. When something seems true to every aspect of ourselves, it's a good bet that ALL the data we have perceived and ALL the ability we can muster is in harmony that a thing is true/correct. Of course that's still no absolute guarantee. But at the very least, if there is less than perfect harmony within we can know that SOMETHING about us doesn't quite agree--and that should be investigated further.

May i just chime in with some down to earth feedback: you just might want to be careful to not freak out your friends or family by insisting on these theories too much, and maybe instead give them a warm sincere hug and tell them how much you love them?

Personnally, instead of cultivating the belief that i am the one and only, i prefer to think i am one neuron of the one brain, which sticks better with the fact that i am at the crossing of slightly different inputs and outputs than the other brother and sister neurons out there. Then again, i don't think too much about all that... I prefer to play and get my hands muddy...

I am a musician so I do try to write music to help integrate my trips.

yea.....I definitely know this, i was hoping me saying I was an experienced tripper would insinuate that. I have just mentioned it to my friends once or twice, its not like im trying to shove it down everyone's throats.

Because I have to love these projections, they are all I have. Why sit there and freak out and not care for them when they are all I have around me? Projections or not, I love them the same because its in my nature. (BTW I am not using the word projections because I have seen inception , its just the easiest thing I can call them)

I had a vision once wherein I was a entity outside the bounds of this dimension. I emanated billions of invisible tentacles, each one connected to a living organism. This world was a creation of the entity to further explore itself. I was that entity as was all living things a billion facets to a perfect jewel.

^thats elegant

If you’ve followed any of my posts, you know that I share lots of such ideas here. I think of these ideas as “possibilities” in a vast sea of possibilities. I entertain these ideas, but I can’t say I believe any of them. On the other hand, I believe all of them. Beliefs are funny.

Here are a few conclusions I’ve come to:

1 --- We are probably all wrong. We don’t know the true nature of reality and can’t know it. We interpret experiences we have and draw conclusions, but I have this nagging feeling that we’re all way off base. And by “all” I mean all human beings – religious people, near-death experiencers, psychedelic travelers, scientists, atheists, “enlightened” Buddhists, everyone.

2 --- Human beings probably don’t have the cognitive capacity to understand the true nature of reality, even if it was put right under their noses. So what we see during psychedelic experiences may be glimpses of unseen aspects of reality, but we really don’t understand what it is we are seeing.

Just as a fly can’t comprehend the nature of transparent glass, so too we can’t comprehend the nature of what is right in front of us.

3 --- Reality is what it is. Using psychedelics doesn’t change reality – it just changes our interpretation of it. It changes how we see the world, but doesn’t change the world.

So let’s assume for a moment that everyone other than ourselves are robots or soulless biological machines or whatever. Well, if that’s the case, then that’s how it has always been. Nothing has changed. That’s just the way the world works. Nothing to get upset about. What matters is how you feel. If the people I care about are actually robots, that’s OK. All it means is that I love robots. It doesn’t mean I’ll love them any less.

4 --- Life is a mystery. It is best enjoyed with that simple understanding.



I’ve had the exact same experience! I interpreted the many-tentacled being as my “higher self”, and each tentacle experiences life through the eyes of a living being, one of which is me. Interesting.

exactly