Pre dmt I felt religion was obsolete, post dmt I feel religion is real f**king obsolete.

Nice thread, sheepie. I've been giving the idea some deep thought over the last few days. I'll start by saying I was always a very "religious" person before eclipsing with psychedelics. I never went through an atheistic or even agnostic phase. This, however, doesn't mean that my entire view of what is spiritual didn't go through a radical shift!

As a small boy, 3-6 years old, I would have repeated dreams where I would approach God, who was this eight foot tall giant of a being, seated on a white marble throne. Being a child, I would fearlessly walk up to the Lord and sit on his lap and listen to him explain things about life to my young mind. He was an all-loving, yet immensely powerful being. For whatever reason, God was entirely covered with thick white fur, from head to foot. He had enormous green eyes but no discernible face, as it was also covered with very thick white fur, forming a long beard which began just beneath the eyes. He had a thick mane of hair upon his crown and had an aura of light, which glowed from within him, although I could clearly see the shining brilliance he exuded. Mind you, I had never even heard of Bigfoot in those days, the early 1960's.

Now, when I would go to church and describe my regular encounters with this Deity, my Sunday school teacher would get this troubled look in her eyes and tell me that "Satan can deceive mortals, Johny, so don't believe these dreams. They are not real. God is in Heaven and humans cannot see him until they die. These dreams are evil!" Eventually, the dreams stopped occurring and I accepted the more traditional perception of a proper Christian Deity. The more I crystallized this thought form, the further and further away from "God" I felt.

My mother gravitated towards Christian Science when I was about eight years old. For the next eight years, I was trained to see the universe through this lens. I recall how perplexed I often felt, because this creed emphasises the spirituality of humankind and denounces the physical materiality of humankind. While this is a gross simplification, it hits a certain metaphysical nail, right on the head.



I would think to myself, "If I am an embodiment of purest spirit, how is it that I live almost entirely within this physical body and percieve largely material things?" Granted, I understood that philosophically, she was referring to the illusion of concrete matirlaity... but why so strongly deny material existence? Especially if God is truly Omnipresent, therefore, immanent within all of creation. I have grown to beleive that man is spiritual WITHIN material existence. Seemingly, this is a big differnece in meaning? Absolutely! It's all about the balance.

Another idea used to keep surfacing in my thoughts, "If all is Divine Mind... why is there hatred, robbery, murder, war, poverty and starvation?" What kind of twisted God could knowingly allow such travesties and do nothing about them? If none of these things are real, why would God create the whole facade? Frankly, it wasn't until I started to smoke pot, in 1974, that I understood anything about the nature of the Divine or the interrelation of individual mind and universal mind.

So, without going into too much detail (don't you believe it, folks), I would say that when I first ingested LSD, my world was turned literally, inside out. So, did this alter my "religious" perspective? Oh yeah, blew it to tiny translucent shards! The first thing that changed within my perception, was that I experienced God as a Field of Infinite Consciousness, not a specific super-being, living separately from it's creation. I would say that furthermore, I KNEW directly within myself, that all being is existent within this Grid of supra-intelligence. Nothing that exists is apart from said force... and despite appearances, everything is one.

I has had innumerable immersions within this vibratory frequency of thought. I began to see how unreal my persona was and how conceptual everything I had previously thought I knew, indeed was. In short, psychedelics had become entheogens for me. They had transformed from being a "drug experience" which expanded my consciousness, to a ritual of worship (through the healing gift of a Sacred Medicine), which opened myself to the INTERCONNECTION to everything else. This is both, a relief and the most terrifying thing an ego can experience... extinction of self.

As many of us have found through these internal voyages into higher states of awareness, when we approach total breakthrough experiences, our finite ego is briefly shattered by the force of the infinite totality. After all, one cannot be both, separate and interconnected to the Grid. Right? Both, asleep and awake? Now, if one is determined to reach beyond the duality of self and other, one merges into what could be described as, The Unified Field of Energy. I believe Einstein was correct with his hypothesis, yet, frustrated that it cannot be proven through repeatable formula or scientific procedure. This discovery of the living spiritual presence is wholly subjective. It does, however, transcend the boundaries of individuated consciousness, thus eclipsing within the light. Remebering my being as the Unified Singularity of Divine Being. :idea:

Through direct and conscious immersion into the Clear Light of the Void, we embrace our own self reflections and release them as illusory. As this occurs, the mind is stopped (even if only temporarily). This pause in the thought process allows for an awareness of a level of consciousness, by which the self remembers that it is Self or "God". All selves are God, for we are a singular being. One energy, myriad individuations of this interior energy. I recalled that within my core self, that God is the totality over which all existence is overlaid. The interior emptiness, which all forms emerge our of. Call it a "cosmic blueprint", if you will?

While this is the outward manifestation of this living field of awareness, it is born of an insubstantial essence. What quantum physicists refer to as "no-thing". The nothingness or void, which initiated quantum fluctuations, thereby initiating the manifestation of the entire universe. Could it be that I had dreamed the entire paradigm of myself into being? Who am I? Am I me or am I God? Yeah, I remember it now... I am God. We are all God!!! If I/you/we are God... then what is not God? Suddenly, I was washed away by the blinding light of this presence. I have been immersed within this fulcrum of supraconsciousness so many times... it has fully replaced my cognition of the concept of God, for the realization that all is God.

Naturally, this led my youthful mind to research the philosophy and religious thought of the East. I was drawn towards the Hindu concept of Brahman, indivisible and transcendent, which dreams of being other than Brahman. The cosmic game of hide and seek? Now, on the surface of the Hindu religion, there is a tangle of a mind-boggling array of Deities and Demons. Most orthodox Hindus understand little about the metaphysical truths hidden within their very own religion. The Vedas and especially the Upanishads, reveal a wealth of spiritual knowledge.

Sadly the idolatry of most of this great world religion is what captivates and fills the minds of it's ardent believers. The worship of anthropomorphised Gods and Goddesses is the conceptual context by which most of these folks are trapped. so, the ego can cling to the separation, as with other religious organizations. Not radically different than the Judeo/Christin/Islamic picture of the universe and it's source... just not in any way monotheistic. That is an understatement, for sure!

I was drawn to the philosophy of Advaita, early on in my journey. The teachings of Patanjali, Shankaracharya and Ramana Maharshi awakened a desire in me to seek the oneness of this conceptual stance. This led me to the way of Tao and eventually, Zen. Thank you Alan Watts! with in such a context, one perceives the insubstantial, as immanent within the substantial. As I threw away any idea about God or a Divine Being... I found that all I could directly perceive was and will always be Divine. for what is Divinity? Is it not the Unified Field of Energy? I began to suspect that within the core of each and every atom, electron and quark... exists an interconnected to the formless, causative Spirit. While all that we personally and intellectually understand about existence, is a mirage caused by our data reception. We exist largely in a dualistic universe of subject and object, cause and effect, inside and outside, this and that.

By gradually silencing the mind, we arrive at our own truest self. The witness to this pradigm, the Inner Pilot, is the central vortex of this fulcrum of awareness. We are inessence, awareness without form. We are the "no-thingness" within the somethingness of our mortal life. The singularity awareness within the myriad manifestation of innumerable thoughts.

We are the eternal quintessence, which exists within all being. This is always right under our very noses, the present moment... the now. always was, always will be. By bringing our focus to one point... we dissipate as individual souls and awaken into the oneness of the Godhead. Such a realization eliminates the need for any religion or cherished philosophy. We, as individuals, needn't spend our time seeking to grasp the ungraspable, rather, we might find more joy and wisdom by attuning our consciousness to the Grid of the unbroken Spirit.

When we attune our consciousness through regular meditation and the respectful use of entheogens, we find that still, empty center. What the Zen folks refer to as no mind or zero. In such a vacuum of thinking, awareness is free to expand exponentially. So too, self dies (temporarily), in a manner of speaking. As self is eclipsed with the Omniself, one recalls a mysterious truth. We are always this state, regardless of the dream of our individual journey through time and space.

Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that I have no religion. I believe that while I am embodied in this persona, it is unreal and transient. Releasing identification with this plane of being, opens an avenue of transcendental expansion, by which duality ceases to exist within the perceptual cognition of the witness to the play of existence. This is in no way atheism, however, for I do believe in The Godhead. I like the sound of the word, "God" and I've been a head for some time now. Hehehe...

I don't actually hear this three letter word as the sonic vibration of The Word, though. Yeah, it's still a symbol in my mental vocabulary. I do hear the OM/AUM vibration very clearly. Especially with the aid of Sacred Medicines. I hear a higher overtone, ringing above this vibrational tone and I would agree that it is like a "Carrier Wave".

This organically draws one's awareness into the highest point of this vibration, deep into the core stillness and silence of The Void. This insubstantiality is the central point of this living field of supraconscious being. The quintessential all-in-all and the eternal constant. It exists without form or parameter, yet, is a living field of being. I speculate that this is the SELF of universal being? A self which encompasses all, yet is unbound by any aspect of our dichotomous, ever-changing multiverse.

What a wonderful, magnificent story Thank you for sharing it.



I find I fall into this trap a lot. I remember I was tripping on acid once and realized that when you *understand*, everybody understands. Because I am everything. So when I say, "they" don't understand, it means I don't understand Just something that I wanted to point out

Oh, it would seem I spoke critically of others? I'm sorry if I cam across as weirdly judgemental about the 15% of this planet's population, those who practice Hinduism. It is estimated that the population of said peoples is between 900 million and 1 billion in total. I honestly was NOT dissing on these folks. Sometimes I forget how old I am... and so, don't realize that times have changed considerably.

You see, back when I wore a younger man's cloths, the whole psychedelic scene was totally into Eastern thought, religion and philosophy. Most American and European kids had this naive stereotype in our heads, that human beings in India and Nepal, could all play the sitar and sit in meditation for 3 or 4 hours a day. They were all "enlightened" and were free of the confines of duality. Obviously, I exaggerate but the head-trip was all pervasive in the late sixties and early seventies.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, when we are in tune... the whole universe vibrate in unison. I will spend some time in silent reflection and search my heart about this issue. Still, I mean no slam against any other life form or any other religious community. "To each their own."

In my core belief system, I sincerely feel that we are all the very same eternal heartbeat, beating hypnotically in synchronized unison. One interdimensional being expressing itself through innumerable perspectives. I hope that some good came out of my extensive ramblings?

BTW, throughout my twenties, I sought the wisdom of Indian, Persian, Chinese and Japanese spiritual teachers. I was Initiated by Sri Swami Satchidananda in 1979 and came close to taking up the Sannyasin vow and considered becoming Swami Something-or-Other. Ultimately, it was not my path and I am still eager to find the next footstep into the beyond.

Despite my changing horizon lines, I am reborn each day to take the next step, yet again. That being said, despite our organized religious system of belief, we are naked before the immensity of the supraconsciousness. We might just as easily fall into spontaneous "enlightenment" by gazing up at the night sky or observing the way water changes form as it meanders downstream, within the flowing grace of a mountain brook.

I know you didn't mean any insult to the Hindu guys, I just wanted to say that from my personal experience, to say somebody else doesn't understand is an indicator that one is momentarily caught in the self. Simply because if I say "x" doesn't understand, it assumes me and x are separate - which we are not. Much like telling an Ant he doesn't "get it". Just an intellectual indicator that 'it' has slipped away.

I love your writing by the way, please write a book.

I was a scary person before. I was a hardcore misanthrope. I had no friends because I wanted kill every human. I thrived with hate. Every moment of my life I was constricted with hate. Constantly shaking with rage. It filled my dreams, my thoughts, fantasies, imagination, and life. Id probably be in jail on death row by now if it was not for dmt. I can't realy explain how I am now. But you can get an idea with my archive of writings. Once I pay off some debt I am dropping everything and becoming a monk

http://www.ashtarcommand...ds-from-the-heart-to-you