mateo wrote:dmt to me is a complete utter mystery. so many have divine experiences with it, but what does this really mean? could it be that the experience is so overwhelmingly powerful in the presence of dissolved ego that one by default attributes it to an all powerful deity? i guess it also raises the question of what's real. i believe the moment is what's real. perhaps what we perceive as reality is only the result of energy and the neurochemical soup within our brains -or- perhaps consciousness is the only thing which truly exists and the thought of having a brain creates it within our perceptions.
i would like to know the reasons people claim to experience 'infinity' or 'god' and is it possible they had a preconceived notion of this before entering hyperspace?
during spiritual experiences, some people have recollection of choosing to experience life in human form and rediscover they are part of a superconsciousness to which they will eventually return. a comforting thought, but isn't the idea of 'ultimate reality' also a religious concept? many psychedelic users even oppose religion because it's used as a method of control. i guess everything is contradictive in the end.
maybe the answer is beyond words and it's pointless to even ask, but figured i'd try.
Divine experiences can seem divine for a number of reasons. Part of it can have to do with sacred imagery. If you're soaring through white light and as you approach this mighty entity time slows to a halt, and you hear his booming majestic voice thundering about as duality evaporates and you find yourself experiencing complete paradoxes of being hot/cold, big/small, etc simultaneously as you feel the most over-the-top feelings of love blasting through your soul, it's hard not to consider the divine (and the above has all happened to me). There is a sense of infinity because in that space (and spaces like it), time has become so obscured that it becomes completely meaningless. I can literally feel the particles of time dilating and expanding until they just no longer have any meaning. When I had my first white light experience, I didn't believe in god, and it took me by complete surprise, waaay out of left field.
In terms of these experiences being religious concepts as well, there is some overlap, which perhaps lends them a sliver of validity, but ultimately (as you were getting at), religion is a system in which people without experience go to other people without experience (the priests/rabbi/etc) so that they can be told of what's going on behind the scenes. In the case of spiritual experiences, this convoluted middle man is taken out of the equation and substituted for direct experience. Religion has capitalized on these experiences while simultaneously placing them off limits. There's no contradiction here. By having a spiritual experience outside of a religious institution and its clergy, then it effectively disempowers religion, as you no longer need them as a crutch or ambassador to the divine. You become free to partake in the mystery yourself.
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind" - Albert Einstein
"The Mighty One appears, the horizon shines. Atum appears on the smell of his censing, the Sunshine- god has risen in the sky, the Mansion of the pyramidion is in joy and all its inmates are assembled, a voice calls out within the shrine, shouting reverberates around the Netherworld." - Egyptian Book of the Dead
"Man fears time, but time fears the Pyramids" - 9th century Arab proverb