hmmm

Of course there are alternative explanations to the fact that you're talking with fairies/elves, but it shouldn't be neglected that critical thinking involves examining in depth those easy answers. I think firm conclusions should be well reserved and few, but what may be contemporarily considered an "outlandish idea" could have merit to it as much as or in conjunction with some of the approaches you emphasize.

An opinion often implicitly expressed here is that those who believe in conventional scientific paradigms are clear-minded, rational, critical thinkers, and that those who are willing to examine the DMT experience from a different perspective are lazy, flakey, non-critical thinkers who believe in fairies and elves. Not surprisingly, those who most often express this opinion are those who see themselves as scientific rational critical thinkers.

But those who unquestioningly try to pound the square peg that is the DMT experience into the round hole of current scientific understanding are not exhibiting rational critical thinking any more than those who believe in elves.

I think it is sad to outright disregard certain 'mystical' experiences...in a way I feel sorry for very solid atheists, as they will never even tolerate the idea that something may exist beyond what they see. I am not saying I believe them to be true, I dont (and will possibly never) know. Either way, the DMT experience is astounding whether there really is another world, or it is all created by the human mind. Not sure which idea I find most comforting either...

Looks like more exploring is in order

I feel the same way as you Gibran but it is an endless persuit on this forum to bother with expressing that opinion I find. I go elsewhere often when I want to have a well rounded discussion these days.

Alan Watts' Prickles and Goo
Seems somewhat relevant at this time.

In my mind, he puts it quite well when he says "We know very well that this natural universe is neither prickles nor goo exclusively- it's gooey prickles and prickly goos."
Silliness of the imagery aside, I think his is a keen insight.
The way I understand his point vis-a-vis the critical thinking video is this: the TRUTH of the matter can be considered from countless perspectives. This is another way of saying that there is no ultimate truth for us as humans because we are not universal observers; we have limited perceptive abilities in a limited space in a limited time frame. HOWEVER, there is a vital difference between accepting that capital T- TRUTH cannot be known to us and being intellectually dishonest. The former is imo an aspect of the proper frame of mind to approach the world with, but the latter is the failure to think critically. The video gives a number of painful examples of intellectual dishonesty.

Haha, nice addition to the thread InfiniteFacticity.

It reminds me of a quote that was included in the book The Messenger by Klaus Joehle.

Indeed a very apt poem Melodic, thank you.

Also, this discussion makes my mind turn to the philosophical question of how we live practically while remaining authentic. In other words, how do we integrate our reasoned, intellectual philosophy into our living philosophy about the good life?

Some people are much better than others at this. Others seem to resort to just the sort of intellectual dishonesty that the critical thinking video is lambasting. I would suspect that, as longshot pointed out, we all live on a sliding continuum of the critical thinking scale. Sometimes it is much more emotionally convenient to put aside reason and go with your gut, I would argue that it's as necessary to maintain a balanced emotional state as it is to remain intellectually honest. What I do hope is that as we evolve our reason and emotion will come into closer alignment. But then, as Hyperspace Fool (brilliant post btw) pointed out, genius and the ability to think outside the box go hand in hand. Perhaps such complex emotions have the evolutionary benefit of throwing our ideas to extremes, just to see how far we can push our intellectual boundaries. With that, of course, comes what is called insanity by people closer to the rational end of the spectrum. But that we have the capacity to have those outlandish ideas is perhaps one reason for the success of our species.

Ah but it is a beautiful dance, would you not agree?


This is such an interesting and vital conversation, cheers to all participants.

I don't know why, but this reminded me of Thomas Edison and the light bulb. He knew in his heart that it would work and no amount of argument from anyone could convince him otherwise. His ability to dream and use his critical thinking, engineering and deductive reasoning skills made it a reality. If that isn't inspirational I don't know what is.



Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely look into them.




Anytime, just trying to do my part.

Thanks, I really hope that this, like Hyperspace Fool said, helps raise the standards of discussion. Maybe we can think of some key points, such as what Gibran2 quoted, to make an easy reference guide that can be recommended when discussions start going off track.



I'm glad that you brought this up. I believe that misinformation is the root of this. I mean there is a plethora of it floating around where DMT is concerned. I know that when I first found out about DMT, I started reading everything I could about it. All of these insights really skewed my outlook on the situation because I didn't know what to believe.

Are the shamans right? Are the scientists right? What's real? All of them make some pretty damn good points that are hard to ignore.

That's why I instantly fell in love with the Nexus because instead of just going along with everything that everyone says, Nexians look deeper. They ask, "What's really going on here?"

I really admire that you admit that you don't really know anything. I feel the same way and after reading all of the bullshit I did, it was really the only way I could regain any sane notion to grab onto about DMT. "I don't know what's going on, just accept it for what it is."

People just need to realize that saying "I don't know" isn't a bad thing.




I believe that this is another key point. With today's mass media outlets, all that is promoted is war, terror, violence and just all around bad news. People are scared to go outside in a lot of cases. The general population is underpaid, scared and exhausted. All of this combined and you're left with some horribly unbalanced individuals that just do as their told.



That it is

I had to put Gibran2's quote on the "memorable quotes thread" https://www.dmt-nexus.me...&m=271283#post271283

It was simply too spot on to let pass. I won't repeat my comments about it here, but feel free to pop over there. It basically just runs along the lines that Global said above.

@ InfiniteFacticity > Right with you brother.

@ Melodic Catasrophe & Uncle Knucles on the subject of DMT eroding critical thinking:

I think this ties into a number of discussions on other threads, but i can't be bothered to aggregate at this time. My opinion on the matter is that the DMT experience is too far outside of any frame of reference to think about it completely clearly and rationally. It is too utterly shattering and astounding to try and put it in some neat boxes. All anyone can say is "who the hell knows?"

Although, having said that, I must say that it is disingenuous to completely disregard your own repeated and repeatable experience and pretend that you don't have an opinion about it. If your encounters with DMT or the entities it can conjure up are limited, than a tentative conceptualization is all you might be able to manage. However, if you have had enough experience with Hyperspace Entities... you will be hard pressed to accept any suggestion that they are all in your neurochemistry.

People I meet while walking down the street, COULD, conceivably be dream characters I created... there is no way to prove they are not. But, it seems more rational to treat them like the seperate beings they mostly appear to be. Hyperspace beings tend to be infinitely more OTHER than any "external seeming" human being. Much less like something you might be able to create in your mind. Furthermore, they often go out of their way to prove to you that they are not only "alien" to you and your world... but that they are a GREAT deal smarter and more evolved than you to boot.

I don't think that these things are actually debatable. Personally, I never try to convince anyone that my understanding of what goes down is correct or the only possible explanation. In fact, anyone that simply takes my word about something like this immediately loses a significant amount of my respect for them. MC wondered who to believe about DMT before she tried it... I would say NOBODY. Without actually experiencing the spice yourself, nothing anyone could say about it will be worth more than slightly titilating inspiration. And equally true, is that once you have had your world completely shattered by spice, nothing anyone who hasn't experienced it themselves has to say about it means doodly squat to you.

This field of cosmic exploration is more akin to pioneering than it is to think tanking in legalese. The beliefs and speculations about "The West" from business types in the East Coast cities didn't mean a hill of beans to the frontiersmen who actually explored it.

[EDIT: I don't know why I assumed that InfiniteFacticity was a man, and Melodic Catastrophe a woman. As far as I know, their respective genders have never come up. I didn't even intend to use gender specific language, and only noticed that I had some assumptions regarding this when re-reading my post. I see now that MC is a man on his profile. Sorry about that... sheepish grin.]

I find it funny when anyone says DMT is THIS or THAT... hell, modern science can't even say what the most elemental particles or building-blocks of our world ARE. What we usually do is say things like "light behaves as if it were a particle under certain circumstances" where the word particle is a model, something ideal and non-existent in *reality*. The wave as well is just a mathematical construct, a model that describes the behavior of light under other circumstances. What I am trying to say is that all we have is models or representations to describe the things we encounter in *reality*.

I think it would be beneficial to try to remind ourselves not to mistake the map with the territory, and to remember that whatever scientific explanation we come up with for what we experience, it will always be just a model. Now one thing that is important to realize about models is that there is such a thing as equivalence - if two models explain the same thing equally well there is no way to say which one is *true* or not, unless you find something in the phenomenology that you are trying to explain that doesn't fit.

Now since we are not dealing with wholly objective phenomena here, speaking about dmt, there is IMO the element of implication/significance that we need to consider when looking at the different models we have for explaining our experiences - i.e. what does this model imply for my subjective experience? What is it's significance within this view/moel? If I use Jungian psychology and try to interpret all I see as something from my subconscious then this will make me contemplate which shadows I have yet to integrate. If I use the god-is-speaking-to-me model then I will look for some deeper meaning in my experiences to guide my life in some direction or other.

While it's really hard to say if any model is better than the other, for me some models imply more positive things than others. My approach to the experiences, as hopefully a critical thinker, is to always ask myself how I can use what I have experienced in some way to transform myself/my thoughts/my mood etc. towards something more positive.
I don't believe any of my models explain the truth of the experience but IMO truth is a concept derived from Boolean logic which simply does not apply to these kind of things. What views can be used, how can this or that idea help, are there any negative consequences to pursuing this line of thought, etc... these are questions I tend to ask.

I suspect I'll never know what the nature of experience, reality, life and consciousness is... but regardless of this I know what direction I want to move in, and I apply my logic and all I've learned to move towards this.

Critical thinking, hell yes.
I recently rewatched the movie Contact and the end reminded me so much of the dmt experience - the whole debate on whether it was real or not what she experienced, and how in the end all she knows is that it was important and significant to her, and that she believes in that. I think this is what we should put before discussing the *truth* of one model over the other. We tend to feel insecure when it comes to discussing subjective science and always slide into objective science trying to apply concepts that just don't apply to all areas of existence. I'm not sure how to develop this area of research in a meaningful way yet, but I'm spending a lot of my thoughts on it...

Oh wow, I haven't visited the Nexus in a few weeks, but threads like this are the kind I look forward to, it's what keeps me coming back to this place. I'm up way past my bed time right now and am quite exhuasted so unfortuntely at this point I don't seem to have the mental awareness to construct a well thought out reponse that could contribute to the discussion.

But please keep it rolling

I feel like I learn alot from such threads.

mooch loov Nexus <3

~DMT Psychonaut