The dream.

Psychedelics are about changing the dream that you're in right now. That's about it. Oh, you don't realize you are dreaming right now? Well, consider this: When you are sleeping at night, and you have a dream in which you are engrossed in, is there any question about the realness of said reality? No. However, what happens when one becomes lucid in a dream? When one, wakes up in the dream, and realizes he is "of" the dream, but not "in" the dream. Well, one is no longer scared or concerned about what is happening in the dream when one is awake in the dream. If anything, a lucid dreamer will become more fearless and curious to explore that realm. If a 'person' were to approach you in said dream, while lucid, and said "The world is ending! The world is ending!" then you would only laugh and respond in a way which is appropriate for you knowing this is all a dream. So, what makes one think that they are awake right now? Have you woken up from this dream? It's an unmistakable event if it's happen to you, in other words, you will know it. The perception in sober 'reality' is shifted, so that you are now "of" reality, instead of "in" reality, just like lucid dreaming.

The difference between the nightly dreams we have, and the dream we're all in we call reality, is that the dream we call reality is very stable in illusion. Imagine in a DMT trip, if suddenly you had a body, with legs, arms, and you were there for a long time, and you everyone else in the trip was behaving predictably most of the time, it could fool you completely into thinking that you "are" that body, and the thoughts it was producing. Really, it's just another experience that the dreamer was having, just like the one it's having reading these words right now.

DMT quickly and dramatically, changes the dream, for the purpose of showing you that you are in one. However, most of the time, we don't catch this. Instead, we just think about where we went inside the DMT dream, instead of the fact that the only thing in the universe, the "watcher", didn't go anywhere, it just watched the dream change to hyperspace. It tuned into a different station. Same viewer sitting in the same seat, different bucket of popcorn, different movie. And we all know, the DMT hyperspace movies are really cool.

So what's the problem? Why can't you see that this is a dream? Why does it feel real to you? That's because you've forgotten who you are! So, I ask, who are you? Not the name your parents gave you, or your life situation, or the events that took place in your life in the past, or what someone told you, you were, or what you read that you were in a book, or a list of qualities you've experienced yourself having demonstrated recently. The "who you are" is the real question, and since it's unanswered in your life, you attach to ego which gives you a nice little identity which can provide you with all kinds of circumstantial information about your life situation, but not who or what you really are.

The fact that you are reading this and have probably taken DMT yourself, gives you a leg up on the next guy if you can see DMT for what it is. The "who" you are can be partially danced around while on a DMT trip in hyperspace. If you've noticed, the "Camera" in which you seem to be observing reality through, right now it's positioned between what seems to be a human head, and in a DMT trip, it's just smack in the "center" of your experience and locked in. It doesn't move! You're always right there, "watching" everything, from this fixed point of view. No matter what, you are, and will always be exactly at the center, watching, in life, in trips, in death.

You see, you are not the things you see in a DMT trip any more than you are a human head or even a human brain. You are what is watching the brain, or watching your thoughts, or watching what you see. You are only the watcher. You are the still center of it all, no shape, no form, not moving, just still, watching. The thing is, I can tell you what you are all day, it won't help you to really know who or what you are. You must see it directly for yourself.

The important part: When one does awaken, the first thing realized is that no person awoke. It was all of reality, which has awoken through that person. So, reality, has awoken through me and now I can tell you so. This is about the best an awakened 'person' can say. Put another way, the dream woke up to itself, and realized it's looking at itself through a person.

Notice when you come back from a DMT trip, you feel like you are falling back asleep from a more wakeful state. Falling back asleep into the dream of humanity. However, once reality wakes up through you, it no longer feels this way. You don't wake up more when you go to hyperspace, and you don't fall asleep when you come back. Instead, you have the very real sense that only the dream is changing, no waking up or falling asleep is being done any longer. That part of the ride is over. Reality knows itself know and can no longer hide in this way.

There can be a sense of Oneness on DMT, that's because 'we' in the dream, are just ONE dream. There is one dream being had, and YOU are the one having it. All those problems you have in your life? You are dreaming them. You're playing all parts, all roles, simultaneously, but you're experiencing it all only through one perspective, one camera, one 'person'.

Reality is layered like an onion.

1. We are human beings, with or without the notion of a "soul".
2. We are the one and only dreamer, watching the dream of humanity through one human.
3. We are ALL, collapsing the watcher and dreamer into one, creating pure experience.

Most people walking around the planet appear to be at layer #1. Successful in our "lives" or not, we go around thinking about how well we're doing, or how badly we're doing. We plan for the future, and think about how to "get ahead". We get really upset when things break, like our cars, or when we lose relationships with people we don't want to.

A few people on their way to awakening, get stuck at #2. They become detached, realizing they are the watcher of the dream. It's a very powerful place to be in relative to layer #1 because in nearly any situation, you can detach and realize you are observing. This is a somewhat dangerous layer to spend too much time in as you are constantly aware of the emptiness of the universe. It can lead to getting trapped in meaninglessness, and can even result in depression.

Eventually, the dreamer and the dream collapse into one. There is no more viewer, watching a target. Instead, it's just the experience itself, as one-ness, experiencing itself. When this layer of knowing is realized, then balance is restored and the dream no longer feels so empty.

Awakening brings understanding. It brings truth about reality, not what reality is about, but what reality actually is. Buddah called it the "Crossing to the other shore", a different place to which view everything.

Jed McKenna woke up many years ago, and began teaching about awakening, if you want a fun, easy to read book going into more detail about what I'm rambling about, try this: http://www.naturalthinke...tenment-DamnestThing.pdf

awesome post

totally agree about the awakening ,

edit : still psychedlics can be used for many other purposes aswell ,

i can't really say what its all about , there are many ways in the realm of infinity

Great post vawksel! Very thought provoking and I enjoyed reading it very much

Spot on.

Having always been fascinated by dreams and the nature of reality and our perceptions of it, I absolutely agree with your conclusions. Especially the layers. Reality is just a multilayered dream or illusion. It all depends on how much we buy into it as to how much it can affect us.

Very good post!
I have often had the feeling of stepping out of the matrix under psychedelics.

I think the book "I am That" is also very useful for this topic. I am reading it now and it's spot on: http://www.amazon.com/I-Am-That...ta-Maharaj/dp/0893860468

Thanks for the good read Vawksel.

I agree with much of what you say. I feel we're enveloped in dream. I've felt this many times during the tail end of my smoked journeys.

On the other end, I stick by much of what Hindu writing says regarding the nature of the deep down 'Self' being one n' the same with the Godhead/whole substratum that underlies the whole of Life.

But somehow, someway, I feel these two things are inner meshed so closely as to basically be indistinguishable, or maybe they are just two variants of that one indescribable essence that we tap into when we pierce the veil.

I don't think this train ever stops.

much love,
tat

Just finished that book Vawksel...it's a real doozy.

I get the opposite effect, they ground me and remind me that reality is just that. They show me that only my conciousness is an illusion, but that it arises from reality.
I take them to reconnect with reality when i start living in fantasy.

I see DMT and other tryptamines as modulating the energetic connection and participation of my biological organism within the greater ecosystem, which exists within a state of fractal coherance. Tryptamines retune me, allowing me to realign in perfect fractal compression the way I was designed to exist. Perfect compression, perfect coherance..integreated into the Gaian and galacatic system in perfect context richness..as if a chapter is a book suddenly makes sense in the context of the rest of the book. Tryptamines bring the dialogue of my being back into resonance so that my state of being is back in context.

You dont have to attach anything spiritual to it. It's geometry and compression..and how that generates voltage.

I slightly less confusing terminology, I came to the conclusion not long ago on mushrooms sitting under a tree..that one purpose of mushrooms is for mammals like me to eat them and then sit in complete reverence of the nature they grew out of..which is really the biological soup we came out of, and are made of. That is coherance..physical..emotional..we are so interwoven into that system like a braid within a braid within a braid..if you view or consciousness as a sort of epigenetic pressure on the larger gaian ecosystem it makes sense. How we feel about and perceive the world, is going to imapct how we relate to it. How we relate to it is going to impact the expression of the system. We can tend to a forest or we can build a skyscraper in it's place. One is not very coherant within the context of the rest of the system.

Of course some people eat acid and build computer empires.

What do you mean by this? I totally agree with the rest of what you said (and very well put indeed) but for me that is exactly what spiritual development is. Realizing we are a part of the bigger picture and trying to fit in the picture as well as we can and therefor making it a more beautiful picture. In simple terms, noticing the interconnectedness of the whole.

A few simple questions to help me understand.

Why is interconnectedness, which i do consider to be a given, spiritual?

What is spiritual development? Specifically what is the goal or purpose of said development and why?

And after said goal is reached, what then?

Isn’t that a bit like saying you learned in a dream that dreams don’t exist?

Now that's DMT right there.

I think of it as the subjective (illusory) factor is based upon the objective.

Not for me.
It is like saying that the experience of the dream taught me that dream is not reality, but is perception. Ergo perception can be of the real or unreal and thus is subjective, while the distinction of dream and reality illustrate that subjectivity exists because objective reality exists.

Thus my consciousness, my perception, even my ontology, experience and self are all transient illusions that distinguish or other me from reality and existence, when in fact all is one and the perception of separateness from reality is based upon the illusory property of perception. In that i am one with all, all is real and self is unreal, i exist only as a transient subjective phenomena, thus i or self does not actually work towards a goal in an absolute sense, even in spiritual terms.

The final cause, the ultimate goal, the purpose of the existence of self perception pertains to the oneness with all insofar that there is only now, there will not be an other to this, i do not determine reality for i cannot render my subjectivity non-subjective, for even when it is perceived as real, when i awaken from the dream i am no longer in the dream. If reality was a function of perception, the dream would not be a transient state, and the waking state would be subject in a dream like way.

Dmt and other psychedelics teach me little about reality but a lot about perception of reality. They provide contrast between the subjective and the objective and provide insight into personal psychology and the nature of belief and how it relates to perception.

That is my experience, results of course will vary.

To have seen or felt for a few seconds or hours that everything is interconnected is one thing. To attain that state in daily life is what I call spiritual development. It's just a name that I give to the transitory phase which humans go through. This may take a whole life (maybe more lives).

The purpose is to attain that state of interconnectedness and to be one with the universe and I don't mean just by understanding the concept, because that is easy. I mean by actually being there in every moment. In my opinion that is something that takes discipline and hard work.

After that goal is reached there is no desire anymore therefor making that question irrelevant

What if you are wrong?

What if it is easy to live in a constant state of interconnectedness?

What if, in that state, desire still exists, one seeks to eat, to be warm, to have shelter etc.

What if feeling the universe is a simple as breathing?

What if that state, living daily in a connected way, is the starting point but not the end goal?

Consider the following:
A person with no desire does not speak, eat or seek warmth, or seek friendship, or teach, or learn, or act.

But if you consider desires to imprison, to be free from desire takes upon a meaning different than lack of desire, rather it means that one is not imprisoned by them, despite still having them and the capacity for them.

When one is not compelled by desire then they (desires) develop differently and one will not experience many desires that are led to by indulging other desires, nevertheless one will still experience desires and simply not be compelled, controlled or bound by them and thus be free of the suffering that they entail when indulged.

However my questions i posed previously were not answered and i desire that they are addressed so i learn more about this goal or end state of spiritual development in this topic. Thanks!

In a sense I feel we are saying the same things, but using different paths to reach them.

For me Ken Wilber explained it very clearly as to what the spiritual development is into his integral theory. Again, this is just my opinion and it might be wrong indeed. But as I have read his explanation I found it to be very logic and I could relate to it. His book A brief History of Everything has brought me a lot of new insights as to what spiritual development is.

He tries to explain it by taking into account not only the individual, but also society and the world views that come with it and that history has brought with it.

I think this quote is relevant to our discussion:

“All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well...desire by itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience. It is choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing-food, sex, power, fame-will make you happy is to decieve oneself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.”
― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I am interested in your own opinion of spiritual development and also have my own, I am not really going to read Wilber or any modern author. I find that the teachings i appreciate are so simple that there is very little to say about them and it was said well long ago. However i do enjoy learning about peoples opinions in their own words, even if those opinions reflect the teachings of others.


I have no desire to be happy or to be unhappy.
I experience both and am fine with them, but do not care for either or view either as a goal, purpose of desire.


I do not view any emotion as a goal or state i want to endure in or feel all the time.

I appreciate misery as much as joy and know that the nature of life and experience involves both. Either way i do not wish to attach to misery or joy or hold onto them.

I do not want to celebrate or mourn, but accept laughter and tears equally and am ok with them, as well as the state of peace where one is neither happy nor sad, neither angry or enthusiastic.