Returning to my much earlier post in this thread, which was called into question a bit, and returning to the original topic, the reason I say that DMT has shown me I don’t know anything can be explained using simple math. (Fun math, not boring math, so read on.)

Imagine that in some domain of knowledge, you know 10 “facts”. You also believe that there are only 10 facts to know. You proudly proclaim that you know everything there is to know within the domain under consideration.

At some point, you encounter someone who knows 20 facts – your 10 plus another 10 which he chooses not to share with you. Suddenly, you’ve gone from knowing everything, to knowing only half of what can be known.

Eventually, you encounter a different someone who knows 1000 facts – your 10 plus another 990! With some sadness, you accept that you know only 1% of what can be known.

Then you take DMT. It becomes evident that there are more than 1000 facts to know – more than 1,000,000,000,000,000 facts. As a result, you are forced to accept that you know less than 0.000000000001% of what can be known.

You take DMT again. It dawns on you that what can be known is infinite. And as the number of knowable facts approaches infinity, the percent of facts that any finite being can know approaches zero.

So no matter how much you know, relative to what is knowable (and not even including that which is unknowable), your share of the infinite is very close to zero.

What burden is there in knowing that my knowledge as a share of the infinite approaches 0% ?

Your mathematical description and the analogy of the primitive explorer are pretty much equivalent. Consider this - there can be an implicit burden in knowledge if we understand burden as feeling the responsibility that comes along with knowledge. In that sense, the fact the knowledge you acquire seems to be smaller and smaller as you fathom the actual scale of things can be irrelevant; it's only the effect that knowledge has in your behavior, and how your behavior affects the world around you, which can come with responsibility and subsequently a "burden", although burden is too tainted a word.

Looks like the response to the OP question does not really depend on the amount of (relative, or absolute) knowledge acquired, but on the nature and quality of that knowledge.

Is your newly acquired knowledge asking for an action in the world around you? Should you place your time and efforts towards acquiring more infinitesimal bits of knowledge, even if they seem to tend to zero, or should you leave it as an impossible task? If you accept you cannot know everything, the size of your relative parcel of knowledge becomes irrelevant - in the large scale of things, as you said, it is zero.

But I think it depends on what you learned, and how does it fit in your life and the lives of those around you, regardless of how smaller the share of accessed knowledge keeps becoming.

Well said Vodsel.

There are some things I CAN know..I can know things subjectively, reguardless of what I can prove objectively. Sometimes what I might know subjectively is that I don't know shit..But there are things I can still know, and I stand by those things.

I don't really feel the need to put objectivity up on a pedestal, and then claim I don't know anything in the scope of everything. I already know that there is a level where none of us know much of anything..but does that exclude the rest?

It actually seems rather illogical to me that we have this idea that what we know subjectively is irrelevant in the face of some objective reality we cant know..logic breaks down pretty fast when you go deep enough into this stuff anyway.

To become a person of knowledge, or "one who knows" is to know things, by the very definition. It is just that it is a very different kind of knowing than the knowing we are all talking about when we say we don't know shit. That to me is a cerebral knowing..and I am talking about intuitive knowing.

I am talking about the kind of knowing that does not need to be proven objectively, and perhaps never will be proven objectively, because it is not objective. You cant fit it into a linear box and take it apart and then analyze it with philosophies. When you apply philosophy to it, it falls apart. Philosophy I have found, is good for some things..but it`s not really good for knowing anything in the way I am describing. It is a cognitive exercise, not an intuitive one. Philosophies can fall apart pretty quickly I find when you get out of your head.

It is to place more importance on bigger things than small things, when one claims that the small little knowings are irrelevant compared to the larger knowings..and I am just not convinced that the cosmos works in that way..that is a linear paradigm that falls into dicotemies..and in the face of infinity that paradigm cant take priority, because it inevitably implies boundaries..boundaries that as far as I know, have never been observed.

The best way I can say it, is that there are different KINDS of knowing..not just levels along some hierarchical line.

Words on this subject:

"To release a man into the languages of the world. He becomes wiser by the whole wealth of the incomprehensible. He avoids making a virtue of obscurity. But he feels it everywhere around him."

Elias Canetti, the Secret Heart of the Clock

Implicit in this judgement is an empirical understanding of knowledge. Considered empirically, as 'facts', for a creature with finite senses like ourselves, bodily located (when you journey your flesh body is somewhere in time and space; you go out through the portal of your particular psyche with all its biographical particularity; etc), there is always some inderterminately large realm 'beyond' what we know.

But you can shift to another level... I would argue that your mathematical analogy is already a proto-philosophical attempt to schematise the whole field, that is, to map it conceptually. That is, you are claiming a kind of knowledge of the nature of your ignorance.

So in a sense you are already beyond the limit of your own ignorance. Not empirically (sensorially), but conceptually. To fill in this conceptual map more fully you probably have to go beyond the mathematical analogy (with its assumption that knowledge is essentially about facts, and ignorance pertains to other unknown facts), and explore properly philosophical conceptions of the finite-infinite relationship. That is, where the concepts themselves (finite, infinite, etc), are reflected on, where their implicit finitude is brought to consciousness, so you can see beyond this particular limit.

I know this is not everyone's cup of tea, but for me one of the attractions of the plants is how our taken-for-granted concepts can suddenly become glass-like and liquid, transparent...

Which puts a different spin on this...



I agree with the intent, but not with the straight forward opposition between philosophy and intuition, or between head and heart, objective and subjective. We can actually watch the logical concepts break down, shatter and melt and reassemble, and know in a deep intuitive way that we have understood something (something finite yet also infinite! beyond the opposition of finite and infinite...) about the nature of things. Probably because concepts in the end are not just human artefacts.

I'll throw in my two bob when I get a chance...

Brilliantly expressed, gibran2, as per usual! You make your uber-clever perspective known with an incredible degree of reasoning, insight and crazy-wisdom. Kudos dear lad, your mind is an incredible energy machine in seamless motion!!! Your intelligent point is very clear to understand, in terms of knowledge and/or data, being perceivable as of quantity or in sheer volume of all the potentiality which is impossible to perceive by any individual (in it's limitlessly diverse nature).

And while I cannot speak for the OP, for who else can? And I am not sure exactly what he or she, really meant by "special knowledge"... but human semantics are so subjective, it rapidly becomes a moot point, the more people interject their ideas on this, or any other given subject. I'd love to hear back from the OP, however, as this intriguing thread has become quite an intricate fabric of conceptual ideologies and alternate perspectives.

Yet, what if the knowledge experienced under the enigmatic spell of psychedelics, DMT in particular, is of an altogether different sort, than sheer possibilities of volume and/or relativity in content? What if it is not always a mathematical scenario? In other words, in my admittedly limited experiences, Gnosis is that state of mind which makes all other knowledge wholly unreal, given it's innate relativity and it's miniscule degree of universal significance, in this cosmos as a whole. It's not just that I/you/we can only perceive just so much in volume and percent, of what is an experiential possibility... it's more like the direct understanding that my/your/our whole range of human faculties... are an illusion we are dreaming.

I submit that I/you/we are all dreaming this whole universe, as we each imagine it to be, completely up out of no-thing. Existence undoubtedly is multifaceted and it's immeasurable complexity is infinite. And the lens of compressed potentiality, which I/you/we normally view reality through, is itself a fabrication I/you/we choose to utilize, wholly culled from my/your/our brain-looping and accumulated sensory information and it's logically organized storage.

Thus the knowledge imparted from a spiritual experience or an entheogenic encounter, shatters this mirage into so much cosmic dust. This might come across as burdensome to the neophyte traveler? I used to feel so, as a youth. Seeing oneself and one's panoramic, perceptual field as a sheer illusion... is quite starling at first. It's not just that awakening to discover that one's knowledge is so infinitesimally miniscule, as to seem like nothing much at all... it is literally erased before one's opened eyes.

Even such profound Socratic wisdom, as has been raised herein, is subject to interpretation and translation. I feel that it behooves us to seek the the original, intended meaning, therein. Or at least see more than one side to it's depth of meaning. Ergo, it's not just "I know only one thing, that I know nothing". As if we gauge our epiphanies in mathematical terms, by thinking of the potential volume of all that can be know, which is beyond quantification. IMO, it truly is, "My knowledge comes from an unknowing". One does, in fact, begin to understand that one's own collection of finite knowledge, is undone and that reality as we comprehend it is an illusion and an assumption we make by our own verification of our experiences.

So, said Gnosis can be an overwhelming awaking from a dream or an entrancement, which may or may not, make it a "burden" to pretend you don't know that: A. you have no self at all, apart from your subjective dreamscape. Followed sequentially by B. that post inter-phase modality, you still exist within the parameters of a human organism, itself encoded with a life-cycle of it's own organic nature. And C. we cohabitate this dimensional frequency with billions of others, who largely do not have this awakened degree of Gnosis. One could go on and on in this manner, but I only raise three points for the sake of brevity.

This dramatically points to a perceptual aspect of knowledge, and is not simply of mathematical foundations or measurements of volume and content of knowledge. I is my hope that the OP re-enters the fray and elucidates with more specificity, here within this thread. After all, most of us are making assumptions about his or her meaning of "special knowledge".

From my tiny windowsill, what makes transcendental or hyper-spacial knowledge so very special, isn't some kind of belief that I am special, to the contrary, it's because I think I have gleaned something validly illuminating from said interphase with the understanding that I do not really even exist. These days, it's quite a lovely relief. I am beginning to appreciate Sakyamuni Buddha's enlightening idea of Anatman (or no-self), more and more so.

You guys and gals, all rock!!!

Exactly what I feel.

There comes a responsibility with this knowledge. Especially in these times, where the whole world is going to waste and we have to be very optimistic to believe that the human race will still exist in 100 Years.

I really do think twice before tripping, partly because of my setting but to a big extend because of my intentions.
I feel like I would betray myself and nature with just enjoying the beauty and the freedom it gives you.
Hope I find a solution for this soon as I love tripping.

Maybe the special thing about DMT is that it can make even the keenest mind delusional and it gives us the precious gift of philosiphizing about infinite hyper-bollocks in an otherwise all too material world.

I think there is a difference between being overwhelmed or overawed, and the burden some of us are talking about.

Typically with psychs, you get your mind blown and you then do a certain amount of reintegration... you get your reality shattered and you piece it back together in larger and more cosmic fashion... your ego gets annihilated, and you learn to reinvent yourself. (so on and so forth)

This is not burdensome per se. It can be dealt with, and it is simply the process of growing.

The burden I described before is more of a rather involved set of actions that your new knowledge, perspective and insight call on you to enact. This is exacerbated to the nth degree when you have glorious and powerful entities nudge and direct you into taking certain actions.

For those unfamiliar with the whole "calling to service" that many spicenauts receive... I will give a more common analogy. Dreaming. If you are in a dream (lucid or not) and hear an amazing song... a melody, some text, a killer riff, a sick beat etc., you may be aware enough to recognize that this is a novel piece of music. You may realize that you have never heard this before, that it is hella good, and this "2nd level of understanding" about the dream vision might burden you with the task of transcribing this wondrous song, writing it down, recording it and putting it out into the world.

Naturally, as with most burdens, you could choose not to take it up... you could take it up and find it too heavy, and put it down. You can rise to the occasion or not as you see fit. But if you do decide that the world would be poorer without this song... it will be something of a burden on you. A joyous burden, perhaps... but it is not going to record itself and get itself played on the radio.

There is, of course, the metaphysical question of whether or not you were gifted with something novel to bring into the world. And, if so, would that novelty pass on to another if you failed to take up the challenge? This is impossible to say.

But before people begin to poo-poo the idea that truly novel things can come into the world via dreams... read any of 1000 autobiographies from the greatest minds. One striking thing emerges when you read what people have to say about their greatest works... a stunning number of them (upwards of 70%) mention receiving their inspiration in a dream. Think about such monumental things like the double helix and the Terminator character. Throw in the drug inspired ones and it seems that most truly novel things come into the world like this. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote both of his most famous epics after dreams brought on by opium... double whammy.

This is what I meant. The special knowledge that is most burdensome is that knowledge that requires you to act on it. Even if this is more abstract for you, I think most psychonauts can recognize that a revelation as basic as the inter-connectivity of all things can require you to change your life. You may find you have to treat people better. You may find you can not litter and waste resources any longer... who knows? But if you are required to do anything... then this knowledge (even if it is mathematically insignificant) will cause you to expend some energy.

Simple as.

HF

Eloquently put, as always. This is the kind of thing you come to realize after enough psychedelic journeys. Our view of reality is fluid and ever-changing. The plasticity of reality is akin to a dreamworld. We are the creators and can choose to see it how we wish to see it.


This sums it up nicely. The burden is in the feeling that these insights must be acted upon. That to be surrounded by people who seem to not understand this thing, or worse yet know it and ignore it, can feel burdensome. Feeling like an ant trying to move a mountain, feeling that isolation and loneliness in that there are so few who have heard this calling and attempt to perform the actions to implement it. That you can see things with such clarity while many others wander in a fog. And when you try to explain that there's a better way, that we should come together and make a change, they blatantly laugh at you or insult you. That can feel like a weight on your shoulders, certainly.

I would also like to hear from the OP. Hopefully we haven't scared him away completely

I think that's an important point that we touched on here, the connection between dream states and receiving "special knowledge". DMT can feel very much like a waking dream. Salvia as well. Even some other psychedelic have this quality to them. It also seems that a lot of people who become very interested in psychedelics also take an interest in dream states and lucid dreaming. I feel that's an important correlation to mention.

Hyperspace Fool wrote:





HF - leave out the dream part of your analogy, and if a song comes to you by sheer inspiration, is it as burdensome as if it came to you in a "dream"? The burden comes from yourself, as stated elsewhere in this thread, and not from the experience itself.

This whole "special knowledge" thing I get from many spheres of my life from many people and I have succumbed to it before myself also - it is an easy trap to fall into, especially when some of one's activities, past-times and passions are rare and marginalized. But it is ego, pure and simple.

I am always amazed by the different people I meet in my life who I have made assumptions about based on very little information: they are often smarter, more thoughtful (even philosophical), more interesting and complex than is immediately obvious. Sometimes it takes a little prying, a little understanding and a little more respect for them to open up, but they often do, and I am humbled to realize that a good many of them have far more "knowledge" than I ever would have imagined, and often don't feel burdened with the "special" nature of their brand of knowledge.

Shamefully the people I have the most immediately in common with seem to be the ones most often carrying the "special knowledge" banner, the ones sure they feel burdened by things others cannot possibly know or understand.

There are far less "sheeple" out there than many here like to believe. Keep believing everyone around you is a mindless automaton of consumption and guess what - they will likely live up to your shallow assumptions. Dig a little deeper and you may just unearth some knowledge that IS truly special.

Cheers,

JBArk

Thank the lord that someone has managed to write down what i have been feeling about this thread. I just havent had the eloquence to put it down on paper properly.



It"s funny you should mention the terminator character and dreams, as the first time i ever watched the terminator on video i only managed to see half of it for some reason. That night i had a nightmare about this terminator character endlessly pursuing me. Needless to say i watched the end of the film asap in order to get some closure.

What do you mean by, poitical structures. I think that entheogenic communities should stay out of politics completely and shouldn't be prefiguring or deciding what life style are right and wrong or a burden. Our responsibility to society is to teach mature responsible individuals, who seek it, everything about it,(entheogenic use).

Entheogen advocacy, YES, entheogen activism NO. We as entheogen advocates teach, we build community around us by teaching and by example, Not by deciding what attributes of a community are a burden.

There are very dangerous stigmas already attached to us, stigmas that we have been attempting for decades to get rid of. Hopefully Im just misunderstanding what you are suggesting.




IH

While I get your point IH, which is a very wise aproach to handle the responsibility, I would say that the problem is that not too much people are seeking anymore. Sure they seek lots of things but how many people are seeking the boundary dissolution providing entheogenic experience ?

I agree to stay out of politics simply because there's no chance to have success within these realms but just teaching how to use entheogens ?

Think that's pretty much done. Terrence did a good job on it where Leary and Keasy failed and his teachings are available for everyone who seeks..

How to point mankind in the right direction is what I am asking myself here.

We do it one person at a time using the, each one teach one, principle.

We build community around us and teach. The others with leadership ability do the same. I have converted and taught several who I never planned on teaching. Why because they came to me in search of what my secret was. They saw, through the example I set, that they were missing something in life.

I gotta disagree and say that, society is ripe. Many out there are craving what we have.

But we gotta have trust and security so we build outward, we don't go into someone else's community and push our principles on them.

I think Terrance did as much damage to the community as Dennis did. We don't want to be out spoken gurus here. We don't proclaim and advertise and openly recruit. We drop the ego, get rid or the SPECIAL and forget about burden. We form friendships. Friendships/partnerships and trust first, then comes the teachings. We build community one person at a time. Its not a pipe dream. It works.

I once posted a thread called Going Rogue It might be worth a look, it caused a stir when I released it. Im not talking about philosophy and pipedreams of a Utopian entheogen based society. There are allot of teachers out there, we gotta do our part. Most out there talk allot here on these threads but don't carry it to the real world. Teaching is not for everyone. It takes work, never ending work.


IH

It makes sense the way you put it. I will definately go further on this. Thank you for the references. I Will read these tommorow and reflect on them as this is pretty important to me.

Yes, IH... that is the point. It takes WORK.

Anything that requires work from you is a burden... at least as I have been defining it on this thread.

Your comment here and your comment before about Entheogen Advocacy vs. Entheogen Activism seem at odds to me. As far as I can tell, it is the supposedly "egoless advocates" who tend to actually do nothing, and the somewhat "egoist" activists who are out there busting their butts. (Note that the word activist has active as its basis)

I can say this as someone who got over 1000 signatures for prop 215 (world's first medical marijuana law), and has been a very vocal activist for entheogens and other subjects for many decades. I have spoken at many rallies, had articles published on this subject and been on the front lines of this issue since before many Nexians were born.

I am friends with the author of 215. Without activists like Dennis Peron and Jack Herer, we wouldn't be at the point we are now, with half of the US having medical marijuana and decriminalized ganj... with 2 states beginning to enact recreational weed... with people seriously discussing and end to the drug war. Advocacy doesn't change the laws.

Martin Luther King Jr. was not a "Civil Rights Advocate." He was an activist. Activism and ego are both getting a rather short shrift in your comments, and I have to call it like I see it. It is much easier to do nothing... or only interact with people in your immediate reality who you choose to aid, than to put your action where your mouth is and work to change the system.

If you are content with helping the few people you can touch directly and don't see many sheeple where you live... that is your perogative and your perspective. Perhaps you live in a better place than most of us, and we should all think about moving to your hood. But, you must realize that many of us here see tons of sleepwalking imbeciles everywhere we turn.

The times are so dumbed down now that major news networks can get away with calling the government shutdown a slimdown and blaming it on Obama without people demanding they stop calling themselves a news network. Even worse, as soon as they sow these ridiculous talking points, the mindless idiots in the street start parroting this nonsense.

People who say they are "pro-life" but support the death penalty... people who talk about Jesus in every second breath but hate the poor and bend over backwards to help the filthy rich... people who say they are against big government, but receive welfare (corporate or subsistance)... people who joined the tea party to stop government waste and then say nothing while the tea party shuts down our government which costs taxpayers to the tune of 250 million dollars a day... all to defund a half-assed health-care program that they failed to defund in 42 consecutive bills, that the Supreme Court said was, in fact, constitutional, and that the people supported... These people are morons. I am not ashamed to say it.

If our elected representatives can act like spoiled 1st graders, it says something about the people who continue to vote for them. Congress has 10% support but 90% incumbency... There must be some sheeple around, or this could not be the case.

I am sorry. This idea that everyone is equally valuable to society is a crock.

If you are not willing to be active for something you believe in... if you refuse to be burdened... then you are either lazy or a hypocrite. The world doesn't need anymore armchair philosophers who don't want to get their hands dirty and are fine with the status quo so long as they are personally not being targeted in their comfy middle class suburb.

It isn't the activists who are talking the talk but not walking the walk my friend. That honor tends to go to the people who can take entheogens without fear of persecution and find that they have no "burdensome" responsibilities to their fellow man. IMHO if you can go deeply into Hyperspace and not come back feeling some sense of obligation to change something in this world... you are either not doing it right, or maybe you have underdeveloped empathy. I know people who can step over homeless people in the street while coming down from acid and feel like the world is perfect and jolly... and never even think about helping the people that they are stepping over. They can walk up to a trash can and toss out a quarter eaten burger and never think about the fact that the guy they stepped over on the way there was starving and would probably have eaten that "trash."

I can't go back to sleep. I am awake and plan on staying that way. My knowledge calls on me to act. And I do.

I realize that nothing anyone says here is likely to change another's mind. Perhaps a few fence sitters might be swayed one way or another, but, by and large, this thread is an exercise in futility. Of course, I enjoy a good debate, so I will probably continue on here until everyone gets bored... but I have no illusions about what we are doing.

I try to think of myself as outspoken on this subject in particular, but you have much bigger cojones than I Hyperspace Fool. You say what I think, but am afraid to vocalize due to fear. That was the best post in this thread. Well said, sir.