Has anyone ever considered this? That maybe the psychedelic experience does not give way to greater consciousness and that we're so high that we are just tripping so hard that we don't know what is real anymore?

Now, personally I think the psychedelic experience does give way to greater consciousness but I always consider both sides. On the whole, expanding my mind has lead me down some paths that have felt infinitely more real than anything I have experienced in my life. It has annihilated my entire being until I recognized what parts of me were eternal. I KNOW I didn't just see things, I experienced them, I felt them, and I know they were real.

What does tripping mean? Like, it's all in your head? That's pretty meaningful to me.

I'd think that has 100% to do with an individuals personal reason for experimenting with psychedelics & consciousness in general.

Not that one can't change their perspective & go the other direction at some point.


WS

If you are asking the question, your mind has been expanded to some degree!! The questions I ask as a result of my experiences are so profound and meaningful to me that the question "does it expand my mind" is like asking if smelling the draft from a simmering cauldron of vindaloo makes me hungry! And I have struggled to imagine having these thoughts via any other stimulation or experience, but I come up empty.

So while trippin nuts doesn't expand your mind, thinking about the electric nuts that have tripped the wires of your mind does.

JBArk

Keep in mind that, although there are similarities in experiences, we each experience DMT effects (or psychedelic effects in general) in a unique way. So we can’t really talk about the collective “we” when discussing the nature of the DMT experience.

Some see intricate colorful patterns and little else.

Some explore their subconscious minds.

Some experience other realms that are independent, consistent, coherent, and at least as real as our everyday realm.

So what the experience is depends on who is having the experience.

But if you see a face, for example, or you go to a place, those things are clearly there. Saying you're just "tripping nuts" is not an answer, it's just a way of avoiding the question of why you're seeing those things in particular. Regardless of wether they come from inside or outside, their unfolding begs to be explained, and it's from that point that exploration really begins. By recognizing that sensory elements are being arranged in some way, you start on a path to explore existence, yourself, etc. This goes for all psychedelics of course. That path does not necessarily always take you to positive places, but it cannot be written off as random or irrelevant. There is a certain form of order there.

Gibran2 touches on a point that has really driven my considerations of these issues of late. Some people do not have those experiences, while using psychedelics.

While what happens during a trip is all in your head, that doesn't mean it cant be as meaningful as something you learn during your normal, sober life.

To me, everything is no more or less real. Obviously the earth and all its inhabitants exist not because of me and would still remain if I died or was never born, but dreams and other states of mind are just part of the whole experience. One big fruit tray of consciousness if you will.

Obvious? How so?

How do you know that what you experience as life isn’t a dream or illusion? How can you know that anything other than your own consciousness actually exists?

Regardless of what you see you are experiencing the effects of mushrooms, LSD, DMT, or whatever you are taking. These experiences are outside of our realm of what we consider to be 'normal'; meaning you most likely would not have these same experiences without ingesting the chemicals.

Now, I am not saying that trips are not meaningful and enlightening. In fact, I have taken away many lessons away from mine, lessons that told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear.

All I'm asking, is what if there is nothing extra-ordinary about these experiences? Maybe we're just reeeeeeeeeeally high.

I'm still the same guy afterwards, but I gain a few extra memories. That sounds as real as life to me... unless you're raking deliriants I guess, but that's a whole other story.

Isnt that sort of a cop-out though? I get what you are saying..but what do you mean nothing extra-ordinary?..id then have to ask whatyou concider "ordinary"?..and also how you concider normal consciousness to be classified..since what you are experiencing are (on ONE level, and NLY one level) the effects of other brain neurotransmiters..

Personally I dont think it can ever be that simple..

There have been many times where i thought to myself, that yes these places are definitely there. But do we get to get to experiance them forever (or forever in a sence) once we leave this life?

Yes i think we can, but I think in order for one to move on to the next level one has to learn to live their life in a sort of balance and harmony in order to reach a certain frequency (level), as cliche as it may sound.

I heard Terence McKenna say in one of his lectures once, that he smoked DMT with this monk who was in his late 80s early 90s. The monks reaction was that any further and there is no coming back.... and Terence raved and said if there was any one to ask who would know this was the "dude." It always makes me laugh when i hear him use slang terms on such a technical matter.

What I mean by ordinary is the things we experience on a day-to-day basis. I understand what you're saying about ordinary reality being organized the way it is mostly due to chemicals in our brain. Granted, I'm not trying to condescend what we experience under the influence. This is more of a 'what-if' if we classified psychedelics in the same category as heroin; being that its only purpose is to get you high.

We apply certain value to the experiences we go through while under the influence because they have this pesky habit of A) Being relevant B) Feeling wayyyyyyy tooooo real and C) Generally being awesome.

I just want to know if y'all have ever considered the possibility that we're just getting really high and driving ourselves crazy at the same time; that these worlds we visit are not real and never will be. Please note though, this isn't how I actually feel. Maybe the only thing to the experience is tripping nuts



I remember McKenna talking about his whole novelty hypothesis (It isn't a theory, as much as he wanted it to be) and he said "If this works, mumblemumblemumbleimjesusorsomethinglikethat, but if it doesn't I am crazy"

All my friends who experiment are burn-outs or soon to be burn-outs and it always makes me chuckle when someone talks about the psychedelic experience in a somewhat intelligent manner.

You must chuckle quite a bit because thats pretty much what people do here.

Yes i've considered maybe we just trip nuts....

And YES, Terences novelty theory IS a theory. A theory is simply, a contemplation or speckulation as opposed to action. It's not definite. We won't know until it actually happens. We are all learning constantly. Some quicker then others... i will be the first to admit that i know im not all ways the brightest color in the box, but im here!

Yeah maybe Terence is crazy, heh. But he's the smartest crazy person i've ever heard.

Only because of cultural boundaries.

These visionary experiences are part of a "spectrum of reality". Ordinary consciousness, visionary realms, dreams and imagination are just examples of what humans can do in this planet, with this body, in this dimension. These visionary experiences seem strange and not normal because we haven't done them enough throughout history. If in the future we discover yet another "realities", they will appear supernatural and strange to us, but with time, they will be adapted to what is normal for a human to do. Just like dreams.

Nobody (or almost nobody) thinks dreams are not normal even if they are extremely weird. But humanity has been dreaming since I don't how for how long. So when one dreams, one only says "wow, that was something nice/weird/horrible/cute", and moves on. Sometimes dreams have such a great impact in our psyche that we remember them for a long time and sometimes forever, but we don't think they are not normal.

This planet contains psychoactive plants and fungi. We are inhabitants of this planet. We eat them. There is nothing extraordinary in that.

Some people think these visions are special because they are projecting their own needs. These visions are part of the human experience.


Are we "tripping balls"? Yes.

Why?

The answer is here




If the DMT experience (or any psychedelic is just tripping balls, then we are ALWAYS tripping balls. Always.)

Even in the so.called "Ordinary consciousness"

A hypothesis is an unproven idea/contemplation/speculation based on something we have observed, aka the novelty hypothesis. When it becomes true it will be a theory.

Because you can get injured in the physical world. There is matter. Theres no matter in tripping, its all metaphysical and you can tell. Haha your question made me angry then I was impressed because its kind of like the sound of one hand clapping very philosophical.

And perhaps that is simply your mind's method of separating conflicting perceptions of existence. How can you say which is the real one? Matter is not intrinsically real, it is only what we have named the construct of this reality, just as we have jimjam in the other.

I think your question and premisses are flawed. Don't get me wrong, I think this discussion is very interesting, and I don't mean to be confrontational, but I want to put in question some of the things you said.

"This is more of a 'what-if' if we classified psychedelics in the same category as heroin; being that its only purpose is to get you high."

Purpose? Who gave it this purpose? The user, right? In that sense, yes, if you want to use DMT to 'trip balls', you can. But the substance doesn't come with a purpose. Nothing does, purpose is not inherent, it can only be projected onto something. Or maybe you believe in a creator that put all things in place with an inherent purpose. In that case this is a difficult discussion to have, because I believe that all things to do with this creator are projections of ourselves, and we're talking from two different paradigms.

"We apply certain value to the experiences we go through while under the influence because they have this pesky habit of A) Being relevant B) Feeling wayyyyyyy tooooo real and C) Generally being awesome."

If you're experiencing it, how is it not 'real'? It may go away, it may be different from the rest of reality, it may be drug-induced, but did you not experience it? What is it that grants other experiences more 'reality'? If it's happening, it's real. You can go ahead and deconstruct it and analyze it after the fact, of course, but be prepared to do the same with the moment you're in right now.

"Maybe the only thing to the experience is tripping nuts?"

I just don't understand what this means. The experience is what you make of it. If your thoughts and values and vocabulary make you describe the experience that way (and I know they don't), then ok, say it that way, but it seems like a limited description on the DMT experience. All these substances have their different effects, good or bad, they play with the mind, they reveal things, etc, etc, etc, and you can call that "tripping nuts", but when you do that, you're not contributing to the conversation, you're just closing yourself off from a world that is much more subtle and complex than that. Soccer is not "just" kicking a ball around, reading is not "just" looking at letters, life is not "just" doing stuff.

What does "tripping nuts" mean? What are the processes behind it? How does it manifest itself? How does it differ from the way the DMT experience is perceived by most?