If they'd shut up for a second about the plant-spirit mumbo jumbo bullshit and let a little science in I think it'd help them alot...

Y'all are TOO scientific sometimes... and forget about the plant-spirit... which is also a shame!

there is no difference between science and spirit. it's only in the language.

Quite something to think about!

i'd like to cite thomas khun here and say that there is a big difference between them; I.e they are completely different paradigms.

i disagree. i think khun felt great pressure to go the age-of-enlightenment route, which almost requires the renunciation of anything spiritual in order to give science clout.

but, if one were to consider science as something only measurable by the current 5 senses allowed to us, sure. but does that mean anything outside our sensory detection isn't real? hardly. i believe if science finds something outside of our senses it embraces it, as long as it is measurable (think x-rays, and other not immediately detectable subjects that have been later been proven).

so to clarify, just because something cannot be proven right now, does not mean it doesn't exist. not knowing the exact context of whatever quote you have in mind , i will have to take a shot in the dark and assume you are thinking spirituality and science are completely different. they are not. one is currently measurable, and the other is not.

evolution at one point was unprovable, but if you were to look at eastern religions you could find hints of such a thing. the only difference is the language in which it is explained. atoms? once a purely philosophical theory of a man named democritus. who's to say eventually plato's forms will not be measurable? who's to say that what once was thought unprovable will never be.

science is not different from spirituality. it is the language. it is how something is explained, and understood, but hardly completely different. spirituality is the theory, science is the evidence, but both address the same subject: what is, and how?

my 2 cents.

I used to be a mod on t he aya forum that went by TIHKAL... i had to leave because of too much fundamentalist dogmatic arrogance on the behalf of the other mods...
they turned on me like a pack of wolves...
with people thinking that they speak for the spirit of ayahuasca as moderators its a bit hard to express new ideas, especially if they conflict with the moderating hierophants....
it got old after a while...
there are some good folks there... but wow... yah ayahuasca attracts some strange folks.
Its really nice how folks around here are pretty level headed and down to earth... which seems ironic due to the nature of the forums focus...
I was actually told that they could tell that the spirit of the vine was not speaking through me... it was kinda cultish when i left...

ouch.

welcome to the dtm-nexus (even though i am just as new as you)

but really, so far it's nice here, no?

No, it is deeper then just the language. Science and spirituality have entirely different epistemological frameworks.

What makes a spiritual truth true?
What makes a scientific truth true?

Science has proven a more effective framework for addressing what is, and how? IMO, spirituality is more useful for addressing why?

i could agree, but honestly, i deep down personally think it's splitting hairs. if i were to hold the two to the same candle, ultimately i would see a common purpose; and whatever it more effectively does is minute.

what it does is look look look, and hope for some sort of answer which, if we are lucky, leads to more questions.

i absolutely (humbley) think i understand what you are addressing. and yes, by the very definition of epistemologicaly (your word not mine) they have to be different. but, it does not mean the two subjects aren't connected in other ways.

in attempts to turn my argument into a super reduced theory i present you with this:

we have a bowl full of stuff.
one set of tongs only grabs things which can be felt, tasted, heard, smelled, or seen.
another set of tongs can grab at anything else, but no one can touch, taste, hear, smell, or see it. not nly that, but all of that stuff is unmeasurable by any equipment developed thus far.
does this other stuff not exist?
no, of course not.

in forum specific example:

any one of us that has broken through can attest to something outside our normal senses.
and the way we describe the things we "see/experience" in a DMT trance can be explained in scientific terms, or spiritual, but they are both the same. the language used is the only thing sperating the two.

Hey TIHKAL , welcome bud ! Been a few years since I saw you , nice to see you here now!

I used to hang there as well for a number of years back when Enthology was around . I was a mod at Entho's and got really involved . Seems we both ended up leaving for the same reasons, I know a bunch were mods on both boards back then . Intense stuff , this place does seem pretty tame , I am really enjoying it so far . Take care !

Thats what I felt the first couple of times I propperly made an attempt at the forum. however; there are people on there that genuinely do seem to have positive intentions.; I hear you about the weird types! yikes. :s

Mugwump,
I think I can dig it. It's all about trying to find truth in the universe. Some truths are more quantifiable and some must be felt. The psychadelic experience is in the middle somewhere, as is most of our experienced lives.

I really like your attitude about the purpose of science. It makes me really happy. Pure basic science aimed only at trying to find truths in the universe gets no love from many these days. A lot of people only get really excited about curing a disease or inventing a new better television etc. Something that will help them materially. Understandable i suppose. I think this community in general has more respect for immaterial things like basic knowledge.

thanks guys... good to see you again too.

yeah lots of good intentions... i start to think some times that the themes i see in ayahuasca circles include, strange cult like behaviour as well as the predatory shamanry you see down south... not tHAT EITHER OF THOSE THINGS ARE BAD...
I like good ol fashion exploration... not fundamentalism.

Mugwump: there is a big difference between 'science' and 'spirituality', but there is overlap because they are not mutually exclusive subjects.
'Science' is any inquisition using the scientific method. Everything else is conjecture and superstition. Even philosophy is not scientific (although at least philosophers make an attempt to prove their hypotheses, unlike spiritual types).

So, you're right it is possible to approach spirituality using the scientific method. The problem is, people don't. For example, though there is a lot of bullshit around the subject of consciousness, there are also many people who attempt to explore the subject scientifically. As do physicists when contemplating the universe. The key is to build a hpothesis, THEN TEST IT. If it can be proved and the measurements replicated, then it turns from theory to theorem and becomes scientific fact (at least until some aspect of the rule is found not to fit and is revised, such as the shift from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics). That's my understanding anyway.

-Whereas making up spiritual mumbo-jumbo without any proof is plain superstition. Religion falls into this category, I'm afraid.
-Then there's an area in-between, where claims are made that science validates the beliefs, but doesn't and said beliefs are still unproven. Terrence McKenna could be said to fit here. Freud and Jung are more influential users of pseudo-science. Scientific Christians try to fit into this category whenever they can.
-Then there's cold, hard, provable science, which is unique as a discipline because it is the only one to have true predictive power. As yet, nothing spiritual has become scientific fact, but I hope it will someday, because I quite fancy immortality!

Experiments in the paranormal is a famous area that covers both spirituality and science. So far, little has been proven, and many credible scientists therefore avoid the area for the sake of their careers, so it's left to the nutters and charlatans. The ESP experiments bore no fruit whatsoever. So far no modern faithhealers have come forward to be experimented with, probably because all those who were subjected to the scientific method in Victorian times (mediums etc) were exposed as frauds. The only things I know of which have been explained are some aspects of hauntings, such as how low vibrations caused by the movement of old houses makes people feel uneasy and attribute the feeling as a 'presence'.

Here, the SHE (sychronised hyperspace experiments) are approaching the scientific method, although there is currently too much ground for coincidence in the choosing of icons etc because people choose very common ones like Om that many are going to have visions about anyway. And the thread about whether or not anyone has ever seen entities before being told about them is at least endowed with a little healthy scepticism. The surveys are scientific to an extent, in that statistics are the best method available to us on here to explore each others experiences and can be enlightening with a large enough sample size.

Sorry to hear about your experiences LLB and Deweeb, and welcome to Nexus! I love it here because people have open minds, and are inquisitive. This is really important in the use of psychedelics, because after all, let's remember that the ancient cultures of the new-world we not exactly model civilisations. Despite the ritual use of psychedelics, the elite still succeeded in taking control of religion to justify their power, masquerading as god-kings such as with the Inca or at least as beings of greater divinity than the common man. You don't need psychedelics to have this happening (Christian royalty claim to rule by 'divine right' and the Dalai Llama are worshipped as god-kings), but the fact that psychedelics didn't stop it happening is significant... keep an open mind, be sceptical, be vigilant, be scientific- that is the way to enlightenment!

But just because what you experience on DMT hasn't been scientifically proven as real or not doesn't matter to SWIM. as long as he keeps this fact in mind to guard against developing spiritual delusions. What matters is that it seems to improve his life and makes him want to be a better person

Should check out these two authors ohayoco, really brings science and conciousness/sprituality together with a lot of provable stuff, I read them a while back really should read them I again,

http://www.livingthefield.com/the_author

http://www.amazon.co.uk/...01918913/ref=pd_sim_b_3

Went to a talk with jude curivan, that was great. A lot of things have been proven like the power of intention with random number generators and healing. I read that in the field, by lynn mctaggert. But usually when things are proven like the tests I read they arent took onboard by mainstream science because they seem too spiritual and involve conciousness.

thanks dee, i dig your style too. from the posts of yours i have read, i can see you too just like learning.

learning is a high in itself.



Infinite I: thanks for the suggestions. i'm gonna have to check those out.

Frankly, the more SWIM trips, the more he sees that the "spiritual" truths he realizes in the trance are not at all incommensurable with things he'd learned from "materialist" science before he started messing with psychedelics. Psychedelics reveal the universe as a single structure and deconstruct the notion of the flow of time, much like general relativity describes. Psychedelics reveal the ego as an abstract fiction spun by the human animal to better navigate its environment, as does contemporary cognitive science. Psychedelics show, finally, that complex systems manifest different types of phenomena that follow different patterns and principles at different levels of their organizational architecture, something that people in the physical sciences have known for a long time, and something that computer science and systems theory are starting to shed some light on.

When you look at the things that we are learning from contemporary advances in science, look at the deep internal logic of the various spiritual and mythological traditions, and then trip, the similarities are really uncanny. It's as if some people have known these things for millenia, but lacking the context and the vocabulary of science could only relate them through the vaguest metaphors.

The forums at ayahuasca.com are too much "new age" for my taste. I just can't stand some of these new age people. Think they have all the answers but have a very limited life experience and can be very narrow minded.