science is methodology, not domain, affiliation or identity

the standard scientific method is based upon falsification
this defines pseudoscience as a practice that ignores falsification for the sake of justification

the way to test a hypothesis is to attempt to prove it wrong, not to prove it right, because a hypothesis should be based upon evidence and data, not wishful thinking or a desired outcome.
unfortunately this is not well understood and often logic is conflated with science
sadly skepticism is also conflated with science

there is no actual scientific ontology or consensus, as a macro-social-entity it does not exist


Real science is therefore relative to the methodology of investigation of claims according to the principal of falsification

Given Straussmans work ever wonder why he titled his book "the spirit molecule"
why not the "abduction experience molecule", considering what happened at larger doses and why he ceased the experiment out of compassion for the people that were becoming traumatized?
Did he employ falsification methods or did he merely seek to justify a speculative hypothesis lacking empirical evidence? His assertion of the molecule being "the spirit" molecule seems to be based in his personal philosophy and not reproducible evidence. He states that he did not prove his hypothesis, yet he still titles his book in a way suggesting that it was proven.

The very evidence he provides is that DMT experiences can be spiritual to the subject, but are not inherently or predictably so and in some cases they can be quite the opposite. Just an example of psuedoscience insofar as his book is more like an editorial opinion of his experiments instead of a scientific examination of his assertions, assertions which he sought to prove from the onset, something that many consider antithetical to science as method.

but then this is just my opinion

Well said, AlbertKLoyd.

I completely agree with you, while the OP may feel it is contradictory to have a spice experience and still maintain a scientific view I found that it only enhanced my views. Firstly I went from a Deist to an agnostic atheist. If anything, spice made me realize that not everything in this world is as it appears to be, while I may have thought God existed, this could have just been due to an inherent clinging belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
My point is, with drugs like this you realize you can never know a reality to its full extent, only to the limits of what is definable/discoverable. The fact that these types of hallucinations can manifest in the human mind due to a simple organic molecule made me more convinced that science is the best way we have come up with to understand reality. If a hallucination can be so profound it seems religious, alien or spiritual, doesn't it make more sense to claim that none of these things ever existed, and they, like DMT hallucinations, are merely products of the human imagination.

Personally I do not feel that psychedelic experiences beget or inherently constitute spiritual experiences.

However what my own opinion is regarding this is something I do not often see.
It is as follows:

Spirituality seems to me to be linked in a predictable manner to specific practices that tend to have predictable outcomes. In this sense a methodology or science exists regarding individual spiritual practices, and like most methodologies it can be thought of as ever evolving and changing, not as unchanging and static, in a way science is regarded as this as well. If a shamans experiences for example provide new evidences then they will alter their views and methods accordingly.

I can use techniques of spirituality, and I can take psychedelics. If I do both at the same time it is reasonable to expect a spiritual experience, if I have faith that the psychedelic experience is spiritual then to take a psychedelic becomes in and of itself a spiritual practice, that does not mean however that the effect of the agent would be by definition spiritual in and of itself.

I do believe in sorcery and I know the power of intent of mind. The mind directs tremendous constant energy, as it is said in some circles, where the mind goes the energy follows, or chi will follow yi. I view this as a form of method so clear in action that it seems scientifically valid. I also believe that knowledge is a concept, but that it essentially cannot be distinguished from belief and that all we have is belief.

I am entitled to believe what can be disproven, or what can be evidenced, or what cannot be investigated. I can claim to know, but I merely believe I know.

That being said I have seen psychedelic related psychosis manifest in some individuals where they become unable to distinguish from fantasy and reality, however I do not believe that having a spiritual psychedelic experience is the conflation of fantasy with reality. However someone can confuse fantasy with reality without psychedelics and I do not think that psychedelic states entail such confusion in and of themselves. Clearly the two states can coincide though, in regard to the psychedelic state and the state of delusion, I do not think that means that delusion is a fundamental part of psychedelic states.

It is reasonable for someone to doubt a method that does not work for them, but that does not count as a refutation of the method. With every aspect of experience it seems that results will vary.

I do not believe that science leads to an understanding of reality, but it does allow us to interact with reality in a predictable way. Again this is my opinion

I believe for example there to be a science to sorcery and shamanism with a set of methods that have been revised by centuries of experimentation and testing. I see no contest between science and spirituality, however in regard to some claims science has indicated that several religious hypothesis are mistaken. I do not believe in the claims made by religions that come from Abraham, for example, I do not believe the account of the bible to be literally and factually accurate.

However since the mind is very powerful, and psychedelics affect mental states, I believe that psychedelics can be used in conjunction with spiritual techniques in very effective ways and thus think of psychedelics as tools that can be used for spiritual purposes, while not thinking of them as spiritual tools in and of themselves.

how are you going to show tangible evidence for something intangible?
you can't. all you can have is blind faith in it, i.e. your beliefs.

I don't know what people expect science to show evidence for (because you don't "prove" anything in science, anyone who's a scientist knows this) with regards to the psychedelic experience, something that is ultimately a subjective phenomenon. The only thing you can do is conduct surveys. There's no such thing as a 'spiritometer'.

Ok, i like this statement.

Gravity is fundamentally intangible, so does that mean all you can have in it is blind faith?
It is about cause and effect and testing claims. No shamanic method is untested or believed in as a matter of blind faith. one of the shamanic methods is remote viewing, the aya literature contains first hand accounts of real time visions that were empirically confirmed as genuine, resulting in the initial name for the alkaloids to be Telepathine.

the apple is let go, it drops, what makes it drop is unseen and not well understood, is that a refutation of gravity? The very existence of the experience of gravity informs us that there is something to it, is spirituality any different?

Do you think that all spiritual practices are based in blind faith?
That they have not been tested and reproduced in terms of cause and effect?
just because you have not experienced something does not mean it is not real, nor does an experience equate to reality

The testable content of spiritual practices is profound. However if results hinge upon belief, then to believe that it will not work and to thus have it not work does not equate to a falsification.

Mind is intangible, it has not been demonstrated to exist in any specific location or been well explained, so does that mean that it does not exist? Do we deny that mind exists, despite it being experienced, because it is intangible?

Where is the line between mind and spirit?
Can spiritual experience exist without mind?
Could it be that the mind itself is a spiritual phenomena?
That to use mind is itself a spiritual action?
I am inclined to believe that this is highly probable.

this gets into objective vs. subjective 'reality'.
I don't observe a spiritual practice, so it isn't real to me...get it?

now, if I make a claim, then show evidence to support that claim, and the results are able to
be observed by anyone... that's technically more "real" than someone's claim of being able to talk to God. we often pass off the latter as a person of suspect mental health, which is another argument altogether. These altered states are often experienced by people who cannot discern reality from surreality, while not on the influence of any exogenous psychotropic compound. it's subjective reality, perceived by one, not necessarily universal.

This is the case I have been trying to make these last days, especially in the thread "Neuroscience and the self". Well put, benzyme.

I’ve mentioned this in other threads, but it’s worth mentioning again here. Richard Feynman, when describing physics and what physicists do, compared the universe to the game of chess:

Physicists are playing the game of chess without knowing the rules in advance. By moving pieces around the board and watching what happens, they learn the rules of the game. As they continue to play, they learn more rules, and they begin to see the subtleties of some aspects of the rules. I suppose the goal of science is to fully understand the rules.

But Feynman pointed out that there are questions that can be asked about the game that science can’t answer (and is therefore not interested in asking). Questions such as “Why chess instead of checkers? Where did the game come from? Why these particular rules instead of others? How did the game (not the rules) come into being? What purpose (if any) does the game serve? Why is there a game at all?”

The nice thing about science is that we can ask questions about “the rules of the game” and can actually get answers!

But people are curious and want answers to more than just questions about the rules of the game. They want to know about the game itself. The problem is, there aren’t any answers to those sorts of questions. So many people, to satisfy their need for answers, would rather make up answers than have no answers at all.

So science answers questions about the rules, but remains silent with respect to the other questions. Problems arise when people try to answer questions that science can’t answer – either scientifically-minded people trying to apply science to questions that lie outside the scope of science or people claiming they have answers to questions which are unanswerable.

My question for you is what if the objective truth is that the observer and the means of observation shapes the observed?

Joseph McMoneagle was given a legion of merit for providing 150 essential pieces of intelligence information unobtainable from anywhere else. This is a commendation from the armed forces for verified data, which came from remote viewing. This means that the data obtained in this way was verified as accurate and actionable in an objective manner.

Manuel Córdova-Ríos is also worth looking at, he had a remote viewing experience involving ayahuasca that is well known.

So when a spiritual method has been empirically verified, do you deny it because you lack experience with it?
Is that really an issue of objectivity verses subjectivity?
Or does it become an issue of closed minded skepticism?

Science is not about denial, it is about confirmation in terms of probability.
Some people have profound out of body experiences that allow them to observe things that can be verified.

Spirituality and science are by no means opposing disciplines, erroneous claims arise in both.
Neither is immune to mistaken assertions or even fraud.

It is perhaps unwise to place blind faith in either.

Bruce Lipton sees that like this:
Our newtonian physics point of view is: We have "something" - if we put it into smaller chunks and analyze the chunks we get the idea how it is working together. Those little "machines" build a larger machine.
That kind of thinking created the pharmaceutical bussiness.

Quantum physics sais: everything is energy - and information is the cause for any "interaction"

So, basically this whole world is nothing but energy and information.
And i don't think that science ever cracks it to the basics, because the further we go on analyzing particles and mechanisms, the more we discover, thus it becomes more and more complicated.

Maybe the remote viewers where given 'hidden clues'. I can think of a dozen explanations that would not violate any known law of physic's and wouldn't require any extra abilities outside of the realm of ability's we already KNOW humans have.

First of all, I haven't logged in on this site in ages but this thread made me

Everything that happens has absolute mechanics, just not necessarily any reason. To me, spirituality, be it from organized religion or drugs, is just an emotion like nostalgia. We become spiritual when we're in awe of something, its a mechanism of our brain for categorization, association and profiling.

There is no hidden meaning behind anything in this universe. Everything is meaningless, be it our lives or smoking DMT. There's nothing more to it behind its face value. When you smoke DMT you trip really hard, it's an unusual experience so interpret differently than most other things in life. You're not communicating with spirits, you're just really high.

I stand by the idea of DMT not having any special "value". I prefer LSD and mescaline to it, because I do psychedelics to enjoy the experience. Show me proof that there's more to DMT than it just being a tryptamine drug like psilocin and maybe I'll reconsider. Until then, however, there is no reason for me to believe its anything more than just another meaningless drug.

Neither side of this dichotomy can show any *proof* as your opinion and the one you present as the alternate opinion (although there are certainly many that fall somewhere in between) are just that, opinions. You can't prove everything is meaningless...so this assertion is no more valid than the one you seek to negate, imo. It's a perfectly acceptable belief...any belief is...but it's still a belief and should not be wielded as fact by someone demanding proof of an alternate belief.

I tend to agree.

I also question the idea that spirituality implies meaning or that science implies a lack of it.
I even question the idea of meaning as a conflated projection of cause and effect, that we mistakenly confute cause with meaning. Meaning may not even exist in any independent way outside of consideration, it is abstract and meaningless without context.

In a way meaningless is a form of meaning, mathematically speaking it is like meaning to the power of negative one. Both meaning and meaninglessness are constructs of language in relation to experience.

Could something be without both meaning and meaninglessness?
I think the universe is just that.

You are right Polytrip, maybe the remote viewers were given hidden clues.
But then maybe they were not. It is a very interesting topic.
I take it though that you have not had an out of body experience.

SnozzleBerry

Beliefs are constructs of our mind. They don't hold any bearing on the physical world, they're just ways of self rationalization that vary greatly from person to person.

You can't prove anything has meaning either, and to attach meaning to something is a farther departure away from reality as considering it to be meaningless.

I guess meaningless is a blunt word. It would sound better if I stated my opinion as "there is no proof of anything having a purpose, therefore there is no logical reason for me to believe anything has a purpose." I don't think belief is a bad thing, it certainly can be, it's just that there's no way for me to rationalize thinking there's anything more than what I can interface with and experience.

I'm glad you understand that I hold my existence on this world as a purely physical experience, no more or less important than a tree.

AlbertKLLoyd

I don't fully understand the first part of your post, but as far as everything being both meaningful and meaningless, I agree in a way. Life is a beautiful experience, the enormity of our universe and existence is magnificent and nearly unfathomable to anyone. The fact that things, in my opinion at least, have no purpose doesn't take away from life's unprecedented beauty for me. I love psychedelics and music, two relatively abstract things, I just don't see them as anything more than drugs and a language that does better to impart emotion more than any other form of communication. I'm ok with that though.

The only real beef I have with faith and belief is that it tends to get in the way of science. Not so much the introspective, personal spirituality found on these forums but world religions. If it wasn't for science and technology, I doubt anybody on this site would've been able to use DMT in the first place

Aha!

Have you read gibran2's The Improbability of Hyperpsace?

I believe you are "assigning special status to the 'empty box' state."

Take a look if you haven't read it and let me know what you think

1992, the first part of that post pertains to purpose itself being an abstract concept that does not exist outside of the constructs of language.

Spirit can exist without purpose or meaning existing.
the existence of spiritual aspects does not imply a purpose or a meaning or a lack of purpose or a lack of meaning
How can you draw a distinction between spirit and nature? Nature is not purpose or meaning, but it is not without purpose or meaning, it is a lack of overt meaning that allows meaning to arise in relation to cause and effect. The concept of first cause is self refuting, there is no distinction between cause and effect outside of observation. The same goes for action and reaction.
All originates, it did not originate.

You keep talking about science as if it is this thing, like there is some scientific ontology that is mutually exclusive to a spiritual ontology, I really wonder if this is the case.

Do you think that the scientific method and spiritual beliefs are mutually exclusive?

You say that faith gets in the way of science, can you explain?
It seems for example that you have faith in science.

You say that beliefs are constructs of mind, but what about scientific beliefs?
Can't it be that beliefs tend to originate as observations?

I have seen a new organized religion that people have blind faith in, and it is called science.
A sign of belief in this religion is the belief that science is truth, instead of theory, that it proves things and disproved things and is absolute. The closed mindedness that blind faith in science results in is very much identical to the close mindedness that blind faith in religion results in.

Perhaps then you are right, that faith does indeed get in the way of science, but it need to be religious faith to do so, faith in science is also perfectly capable of being blind and hindering science.

It is interesting to note that our most highly regarded scientists tend to believe in god and spirit and science.
Do you think that the faith Einstein had in god was blind? Did it get in the way?

If there is a god, in one way or another, does that mean that existence has purpose or lacks it?
I do not think purpose exists outside of mind, but I do think a god exists and it is my experiences that lead me to believe that god is probable.

Gibran makes a fair point, there is definitely alot of things we don't understand or can't perceive as humans.

However, I'm still not swayed. To relate this back to DMT, I still have no reason to believe that there's anything more to it than being just another drug. To me, the difference between what is "real" and what is not is what persists without me and what occurs within me. If I didn't exist, I couldn't ingest DMT and have the experience. The rest of the world would still persist without me if I didn't exist though.

As far as unknowing and uncertainty goes, there's too many things we can say with absolute certainty that makes the whole concept of "its just as viable to say everything can have meaning as it is to say everything is meaningless." We know that we cannot reproduce with a sunflower, we also know that if we get our heads cut off we cease to live. These are absolutes. Sure there's alot we don't understand enough to apply absolutes too, but history has proven that our understanding of the physical world improves constantly.

It's somewhat hard to articulate everything into an all encompassing statement for me. I guess a decent way of saying it is that yes you can say a DMT experience is real, but its only within the confines of your own body. You cannot have it if you don't exist. A rock in my yard is real, and if I was ran over by a truck today it could still persist and will persist without me, unless another external force acts on it.

So to reiterate, I still have no reason to believe something to be true unless there is repeatable, testable proof. I could argue this all day and you'll never get me to concede to anything farther then there's alot we don't know. I just hope everyone realizes here there is alot we do know though. We can all still be friends

Maybe not cannot reproduce a sunflower so much as have not been able to.

Science never deals in absolutes except when it becomes a religion.