http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEBlR7-bfSo

The above is Douglas Rushkoff, a writer. He (for whatever reason) was included in the DMT documentary. I'm sure many of you have heard him speak. I'm here to vent, because I can't stand the guy.

Basically, he says that the DMT experience is a metaphor. It's not real. DMT is also "dangerous" if you think it is real. He says that in order for DMT to have some sort of importance to us, it has to provide us with something. Something we can "bring back" and use.

To me this logic is just plain stupid.

Let's reverse the situation.

One morning Douglas Rushkoff is sitting in his kitchen wearing his bath robe and slippers, enjoying a nice warm bagel, topped with his special low fat strawberry cream cheese. He's reading some newspaper article written about him (he loves to read about himself).

Then, unbeknownst to him, an alien pops up next to him. For reasons I don't have time to explain, the alien is basically invisible. In the alien's world/dimension, he took a drug that took him to our dimension. 5 minutes later, he goes back to his own dimension. Since Douglas, the great philosopher, didn't provide him with alien therapy, the meaning of his alien life and infinite knowledge to take back with him, the experience is then belittled.

Apparently Douglas is so smart that he "knows" with great certainty what the whole DMT experience about. It's just about the Universe winking at you in special ways. All those aliens you see and meet that seem so intelligent - nah - that's just a show - the real story is that it's just a metaphorical way for you to feel special!

Why are you so upset about someone having a very outspoken opinion about DMT that conflicts with your own? Does his opinion on DMT hurt you so badly that you must go online and personally insult this man on his opinions?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not quite sure what to think of DMT and how it fits into my life. But what I do know is that getting full of rage because someone disagrees with me will only lead to suffering. And to him, the DMT experience is a metaphor because of the complexity of the universe. So what?

To take partial Yoda quote: "Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

I think no one knows what to think. its nice to think we "peek" through a looking glass to see the unknown, or the untold, or magical land far away, or the hidden truth. we can only experience, observe and speculate. no one (I think) can really know what is seen in hyperspace is actually real.
Me, I have yet to experience it, as I have not started my extraction yet. so I am not the best say on this. but just like many things like alians, dreams and spice trips, it up to the one experiencing it to decide what is real and what is not. love is real but you can not prove it. same with god (please don't chime on god related please!). You just believe what you feel is real...

I think it's important to call him out, yes. He's being an absolutist, not voicing an "opinion". He states DMT is "DEFINITELY a metaphor".

There is no middle line, and he's adamant on letting everyone know that DMT should be regarded as hallucinatory nonsense that's "dangerous" unless you bring back "tools" to use in your life.

If it's okay for him to go on TV and belittle everyone else's "opinions" with his absolutist views then don't get mad at me for coming on a small forum and returning the favor to him.

Why is that so important? In that video he said "That's how I see it". The thing is, you're obviously aggravated because this man his an opinion that is different than yours. If this man is having an opinion that is different than yours, WHY must he be swayed or his opinion proven to be 'wrong'?



So because he does that you're allow to do the same thing? This forum is filled with people who are very open minded. Many don't know exactly what is going on and we most likely never find out either. It is almost as if this man insults you for having said opinion. Why care so much?

Please, calm down. I apologize if you're confused and think I'm here for reasons I'm not. I came here to more or less debate his absolutist views. Is that a problem. I don't think it's "so" important. If it was, I'd be writing a press release, not a forum post. It took me 2 clicks to get here and type out a simple rant. He's not here in my room for me to debate directly, so this forum was my next best option.

Also, I never stated my opinion and we could share the same one. The difference would be that I don't go around with an absolutist viewpoint telling people that my opinion is basically fact. He comes off as very arrogant and adamant about what he thinks to be the "Truth" - and that often includes completely disregarding every else's opinions and any opposing evidence. And to me, that's annoying.



I never even stated my opinion so how can I have an absolutist view? He doesn't insult me, he insults everyone including people who may have his same opinion. I don't care so much, it seems like you do. I came here to write a few sentences and get this off my mind. You don't need to write hate about me because I want to debate his ideas. I'm not going to sugar coat my life and not say anything about everyone's opinions. If someone says something ridiculous people should be able to call them out. "Question everything" - Socrates

First of all, if you came here expecting a debate on his views, then this is what you're getting, so I'm not sure what the problem is. I think you mean to say that you came here to have your view agreed with, more than to debate it. But I digress. This could be a sentiment of absolutism except he distinctly says that it's the way that he sees it (implying that you're open to see it a completely different way). He then proceeds to tell you how it is the way he sees it, and you certainly don't have to agree. If you'd like to debate the ontological reality of the experience then that's fine, but this absolutist view has to be taken off the table, because it's quite frankly just not true. If you want to talk about someone with absolutist views, take a peak at the Martin Ball thread here in Open Discussion.

You say that you've never stated your opinion, but that seems to be because it's veiled in your hypothetical "alien taking a drug antithesis" example. It seems that you disagree with his opinion that it's a metaphor, so we know you don't think that. Now, we probably won't ever be able to conclusively conclude how real DMT is or the reality of the entities and places, but I'll let you know what my current best tentative guess is. Similar to your perceptions of consensual reality where you take in external stimuli through your senses, filter it internally to create an internal model and then project that model back out into the world around you (or at least that's how I understand that part to work ), when you take DMT, you may be using other senses to retrieve external information, filter in internally, and then project it out into your immediate space. I think the key difference between the two modes of "seeing" lies in where the information is coming from. In the case of consensual reality, the information that is internalized is local whereas in the case of DMT, the information is being retrieved non-locally. Where it's being retrieved from is a bigger mystery. Perhaps a higher dimension, but who knows? This is all just conjecture.

On the other hand, because the information that can be quite symbolic is run through internal filters, there's a part of you that's tinting the way that you experience. For example, when I used to go to class, and I would come back after, even if I would meditate before going into the DMT experience, after smoking the DMT, I could hear whatever professor's class I was just in resounding around my head. The other day, I made the mistake of watching Bill Maher before blasting off, and in my biggest breakthrough to date, when the godhead came steamrolling through, in the most audible, loud, deep gigantic voice you can imagine, it was spewing just tons of political nonsense across the spectrum. So on one hand, I believe that the information is in part external, it's simultaneously mirroring what's going on in your subconscious, but they get parsed together so that they're both projected to be on display in a parsimonious kind of way. I believe that it's an interplay of this sort that makes the ontology of the experience so difficult to pin down.

Everyone's different, but for me, DMT communicates with me in more of a visual way than a linguistic way, and it has many lessons. When I say it has lessons, it seems like sometimes it literally has these pre-packaged lessons like a hyper-educational movie whether it be on racism or laziness or pollution or what have you. Because it communicates in a predominantly visual way for me, a lot of what comes across is in symbols. Their symbolic nature may not become clear until afterward, but it can be rather metaphorical at times, and more straightforward (however straightforward DMT gets) at other times. Often it's being metaphorical and not metaphorical at the same time, and this is wherein the difficulty lies. So often with the DMT experience we see that things both are and aren't something simultaneously. We can be both in and out of our bodies at the same time, we can be both hot and cold at the same time, we can see hyperspace and consensual reality at the same time, etc...so I see no reason why the experience can't be both internal and external at the same time and both metaphorical and not metaphorical at the same time. I hope this was clear, and I in no way intended to offend you at any point along the way.

Nope. I said in my original post "I'm here to vent, because I can't stand the guy. "



In order for me to poke holes in his logic, I needed to use logic that did that. If I use passages from the King James Bible to refute something in the Qur'an it doesn't make me a Christian My own viewpoint is similar to yours but I tend to always lean on the "but who knows? This is all just conjecture." side of things. It's a wonderful thing to have ideas, viewpoints, possible explanations. I've heard a lot of them, even the same viewpoints as Rushkoff. What bothers me about him, is he passes them off as absolutes, and that's when I get irritated.


I disagree. "The way I see it" was limited to one of the things he said and of course he sees things his way. What absolutist doesn't? (lol?) When he says "It's DEFINITELY a metaphor", what does "DEFINITELY" mean? According to the English language, "absolutely" is a synonym of "Definitely".

"The way I see it, the world is 100% flat, I am absolutely sure of it". That would be an opinion. Everything is an opinion. If I'm 100% sure of it it's still an opinion. It doesn't make something factual because I'm 100% sure of it. It also doesn't change the fact that it's an absolutist view. If his absolutist viewpoint is not an opinion then what is it?



Again, in order for me to poke holes in his logic, I needed to use logic that did that. It doesn't mean that's my opinion of things. I read a book on lucid dreaming by Robert Waggoner and while I shared many of his opinions on things, I could barely finish the book because he passed off his own opinions like facts, then would build upon those things to come to conclusions on other things. It didn't matter that I agreed with his views on most, it bothered me that he passed off opinions like absolutes...

I think I've made it clear I don't like absolutist views on things that can't be easily validated. There's another guy in the documentary who's similar to Rushkoff. He said something like "If you get aliens while tripping in one place, but not another, that means they're not real". For all I know he could be 100% right that they're not real. I'm not arguing with whether they're real or not. I'm arguing with the logic behind why he thinks they're not real. Apparently, in order for these aliens to be real, they have to be there every single time you take DMT. Basically, we need to figure out a way to tell them to not go shopping on Sundays, because they need to be there in order for us to think they're real. Seriously, maybe we should write their congress. We should tell them that instead of 1,000 portals in all different types of dimensions, they should just keep the one in the Majesty's bathroom so that way, every time we trip, we can talk to him! Because of course, in order for them to be real, they have to be in the same place, every single time, sitting around the portal to their world like a fishing hole just waiting for us to pop out.




I've heard that viewpoint before and find it pretty interesting. It reminds me of the book "Inner Paths to Outer Space". Specifically, Chapter 7 by Ede Frecska: "A Neuro-Ontological Interpretation of Spiritual Experiences". If you haven't read it I'm sure you'd enjoy it

No, you didn't offend me. I hope I didn't offend you. Thank you for the response.