Introduction:

I have frequently tried to make the case that DMT is not a gateway to the spirit world and that spiritual beliefs stemming from psychedelic experiences, spontaneous spiritual experiences, and spiritual experiences induced by rituals or meditation are not real. My motivation is to seek the truth and to prevent a massive large scale misunderstanding of psychedelic drugs in a somewhat paranoid fear that something like what happened in the 60's will again happen and destroy serious scientific research into these substances and human consciousness.

I have already made my case against religion in the "freedom from religion" thread. If readers want some more back-round info check it out. I may wind up repeating myself here but no big deal I want to start a fresh discussion for those new users to take part in the discussion without having to re-read a very long thread. Many authors in a host of popular books have also made similar cases against religion so there is plenty of info on that topic out there. Most often these authors skip over or don't discuss psychedelic drugs but since this is a psychedelic drug oriented site I want to take on those experiences specifically and how they related to modern and historical notions of spirit and or spiritualism.

Quantum spiritualism:

I first want to dispel the myth that quantum mechanics provides a mechanism in which spiritual experience can be explained or made to seem real. If you don't know what I mean by the myth of quantum spiritualism just watch one of the mainstream popular documentaries like "what the bleep do we know" which I and many others consider to be complete rubbish and a gross misinterpretation of quantum mechanics. The basic myth that I wish to dispel is the idea that "we create reality". I want to dispel the myth that the universe is conscious and that consciousness is the root of all things. This in turn will allow a more logical and realistic explanation of the psychedelic experience.

There is a host of books some written by physicists such as "The tao of physics" by Fritjof Capra that claim that modern physics confirms eastern spiritual beliefs. They are wrong and I hope I can explain why.

But first lets look at what aspects of quantum mechanics these so called "gurus of science" claim validates their beliefs.

1)- Wave/particle duality of light. Basically the idea here is that depending on experimental set up light can appear as a wave or a particle. Even stranger is that even if you want to look at a source of light from a galaxy thousands of light years away the decision to observe it as a particle or a wave can occur as soon as we decide to measure it. This has lead some spiritualists to claim that human consciousness and or observation influences the result.

2)- The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics which states that quantum states are merely probabilities (which is true) until they are observed (wave function collapse) and then you know the result within a finite degree of accuracy. This rather complex and counter-intuitive idea is what drove Einstein to say "God does not play dice". He was wrong. This idea has also been hijacked by spiritualists to mean consciousness causes collapse which I also want to attempt to show is wrong. Note that the Copenhagen interpretation is not the only interpretation of quantum mechanics but it is the most widely accepted and no interpretation has refuted the probabilistic nature of quantum events.

3)- Quantum entanglement. Another strange aspect of quantum mechanics that has been proven shows us that lets say two photons are created as a pair from some other event (whether natural or induce by particle collisions) and they fly off in opposite direction are linked meaning when the spin state of one is known the other is also immediately known. Spiritualists have taken this to be an explanation for things like ESP and universal consciousness. It has lead some to believe that information can travel faster then the speed of light which is also not correct.


If you don't know or have never heard of these concepts just look them up information is all over the web. But do not read their interpretation because the web is loaded with misinformation. I mean loaded. I will take on each issue one at a time.

1)- The wave particle duality of light is a misnomer that quantum spiritualists taken to mean that human beings create our own reality. The famous double split experiment by Thomas Young is the most famous example of the wave nature of light. What is really going on however is that light is made up of photons. Photons are particles. If you do a double split experiment with modern equipment with lets say electrons you will get a picture that looks like the following:



Note that the more hits you do as you go from A to E the more the picture starts to look like a wave. Also you notice that the hits are random which further confirms the random probabilistic nature of subatomic particles. This picture was taken with electrons but the same applies for photons. But really its particles.

This kind of observation has led the famous physicists Richard Feynman to make the following statement:



Also another statement by Feynman:



So we see that photons are not waves they are particles but it doesn't matter what we call them we simply describe them in the same quantum mechanical way. Of course they can behave as waves but this behavior is a result of the statistical distribution of a large number of particles. There is no difference hence no duality and hence no room for the human mind to influence the outcome of the result. Also note that classical wave mechanics is entirely appropriate to make calculations about things electromagnetism in the normal scaled world we live in.


2)- The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics in no way implies that human consciousness causes the wave function to collapse. The wave function derived first by Schrodinger is a mathematical method that utilizes very abstract mathematics to calculate something that can only give a probability for finding a particle in a given space and a certain time. Although the term wave function is still used its better described now as a state vector. I am not going to get into the mathematics because its above me. The point is there is nothing magical about it. Its just a mathematical abstraction. There are other mathematical abstractions such as Paul Dirac's which quantum states are represented by vectors in abstract multidimensional space and Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. The point is it doesn't matter they are all mathematical abstractions that are meant to give statistical results about quantum states.

So again there is nowhere in this theory that confirms spiritual notions that the human mind or consciousness at any level causes these quantum events to happen and that we create reality by this mechanism. Its a complete and utter myth.


3)- Quantum entanglement. This strange quantum truth does not imply that any information is traveling faster then the speed of light and in no way confirms any ideas of universal consciousness. Classical information channels are still required to complete the process. Furthermore just because the transmission of information is instantaneous does not mean that one photon sends information to the other. Its difficult for me to describe this concept without complex mathematics that I don't entirely understand. The point is that quantum entanglement does explain any sort of spiritual phenomenon.



To summarize I hope I have briefly outlined why quantum mechanics cannot be used to explain spiritual phenomenon.

Now we can continue this discussion to show how psychedelic and other spiritual experiences can be explained in a purely materialistic fashion. I will wait to get a few responses and or comments before I go down that road.

A family member has been hooked on a traveling alleged Saint (Ammachi, Amma, The Hugging Saint) This rich Indian woman is so questionable it hurts. I have no idea how many disciples she has but its allot around the whole world. She has set up Hospitals in India and these are questionable as well (possible organ trafficking) This sad old fat woman talks through her translator to her huge filled rooms like a child speaks to children about basic concepts and then they go to concession stands to purchase dolls of her, necklaces with her pictures on them and T-Shirts with OM symbols.

Another famous Saint I have learned is all bullshit is Yogananda, of course I had this mans picture as well as Sri Yukteswar his Guru pinned up on my Crib, I was spoon fed Self Realization cult-crap since I could talk. He wrote a book called Autobiography of a Yogi and I'm sure every dread locked college drop out has read it since Woodstock. This man was fat too, he was a fat real estate addict.

Sometimes people have direct experiences that are so strange or awkward that they seek the method of least resistance to incorporate them into a view of reality. Synchronicity if had enough is like being shot in the face with a .45 and there's nothing around to really explain this but fancies of spiritualistic fast food. I should know.

I'm just not interested in a purely materialistic perspective. It is interesting in moderation, and I certainly don't agree with science being twisted for the sake of religious ideas, but I definitely prefer to think Hyperspace as a portal into another dimension, rather than just my brain doing something funky.

I believe in science and my motivation to believe in it is spiritual of nature, since it goes something like: 'this universe is truly magical, beautyfull and immensely valuable and worth investigating'.

There may be a god or something similar and there may not be.
Anyhow...
The basis of any sense of spirituality is our counscious experience of life in this material dimension. Therefore we have to acknowledge that the material world holds the possibility to generate counsciousness so we might not need an immortal soul nor a god to explain our counscious existence here. At the same time this explanation allows for any material system to generate counscious awareness and therefore for a spinozaic like god, a gaya type of god; the god-nature/nature-god, since matter and it's laws can cause awareness; if we can be aware, then so could other material systems be.

On the other hand there might be a god wich is not material in our sense of understanding. This would be more of a cartesian god, a god like 'the programmer of the matrix', a god outside of this world.

That god could not manifest itself in this world without becoming material and thus subject to the laws of physics, itself. Anything happening in this material dimension IS material in essence, wich aplies to matter, and any form of interaction of material substances with matter or energy's; if god would move a stone, the movement would be equal to a measurable amount of energy according to classic newtonian laws.
It is possible for such a god to exist and to be the creator of the universe and the source of our counsciousness as long as the following principles of this reality are obeyed: The divine can never contradict scientific findings, the divine can never be directly observed, the creation can never be FULLY explained.
This last rule is nessecary for this other reality to still be a part somehow of this reality or for the two of them to still be one;
The existence of the programmer could never contradict the program, from within the program we can never see the programmers face and even if we would know all of the program we still would not be able to fully explain it's existence nor it's working.

Morphane:

The question you must then ask yourself is, do you want to believe what makes you feel good, or do you want to attempt to understand the world as it actually is?

You can claim or believe anything you want, but that has no effect on how the universe actually operates. This is what science seeks to understand. It is not perfect, but it is the only real method we have for ascertaining information about the world around us.

I would basically call myself a scientist, or I will do, ans I'm doing a BSc in physical geography. I think it is important to retain a skeptical, yet open mind. Remember we as a species are very primitive indeed...we have been around for so little time, there are trees living today that have been alive throughout all of our development from hunter gatherers to where we are today.

Scientists think that 90% of the mass of the universe, is not visible to us...this I find pretty weird. 'Dark matter' perhaps, but we don't know much about this do we?

There is still a lot for us to learn about the universe we inhabit, science provides tools to analyse the universe, yet we are largely limited to analyzing what we can observe before us...but as the flash of a DMT trip hints, there may well be a lot more out there/in there than we can detect.

I recently met someone at an ethnobotany conference, through a quite bizarre meeting of synchronicity (but that's another story), an ethnobotanist from Ecuador. I instantly liked her and found her fascinating...she is a healer, and currently working on her second PhD, and very knowledgeable.

We traveled back on the train to my home town (where she also lives) and we talked about her work in Ecuador.

She worked with the indigenous tribes out in the forest. At one point in her studies, she had a Quecha guide, and the Shuar and Warani indians were fighting each other, using poison blow darts...and the chief shamans of each tribe were drinking ayahuasca, and using sorcery and shape shifting to attack the opposing shamans families...this I found interesting, as ayahuasca is often viewed with 'love n light' tinted glasses, yet there is a flipside to every coin, and in certain hands it can be used in a very negative way.

She described stories of shape shifting and plant/human communication that made my hair stand on end, stuff over there that was common knowledge, yet completely unknown and alien here in the UK, something which baffled her when she moved here. We are to some extent, brain washed by our culture...while we have development and much to celebrate here in the West, this did come at a cost, things were lost, knowledge was lost.

At one point, she was at the Eden Project here in the UK (large biomes with different environments). She was in the tropical biome, and heard a voice, calling out to her, which she thought was her friend. It wasn't. She followed the voice, and discovered a large ayahuasca vine (which I have seen) growing in the biome, she she stayed with a while, meditated and communed with it.

I believe this person. And with that belief, I have to accept that our Western science has missed something, something quite important I think...so has science got it all figured out? No I don't believe it has. But I fully appreciate and respect science's role.

Yeah, I'm only interested in what makes me feel good, and am not really bothered with technical matters.

I have a car and have no real clue how it works. It gets me from A to B, and that is all I care about. Same with my computer, same with my body, same with the entire Universe. I'm not interested in how, but why is another matter. Why is the most fascinating question to me.

You could say all the same of any experience. Words are just words. If there was such a thing as "the end of spiritualism", it would just be the beginning of calling the same thing something else..though i do understand what you are getting at..just playing devils advocate ..there will always(well maybe) be something there that we cannot see beyond, and we will always strive to comprehend a bigger picture..spiritualism to me is just the hip term in use today to attemt to explain it.

I like that. I think at the end of the day it's all we can really say. I see science as still such an open ended thing, just like everything else, religion included (some anyway, though I am not religous)..these are all just approximations, and in my opinion, an "objective" study, which doesn NOT acount for singular, subjective experiences as well, is still a "subjective" study.

That being said, I have no problem with what you said before burnt about quantum physics, mainly because I know these things are still so open eneded and there probabily is TONS of misconceptions(plus you do seem knowlegable on the subject!)

People will always strive to see beyond though, to see the truth. Even science strives to accomplish this goal..and it's interesting how so many scientists end up deeply spiritual..perhaps not in a religous sense..more liberating than that.

Quoting Burnt from the original post:

How are the hits random if they form a wave? I mean, if they create a specific aestetic appearance, how is that random? It looks like a very specific result to me.

My next point: Nihilism.

We all know that the big religions are nonsense, so if your crusade to deconstruct spirituality itself is successful, where are we left?

Science can try to explain reality, but if consciousness has nothing to do with that explaination, and indeed we are nothing but neurons, we are left with a nihilistic worldview.

You don't matter. Nothing matters. why care about anything? why not just feed the ego, eat junk food and watch porn all the time; Or give up childhood dreams of being an artist and become an accountant, get a desk job that you hate and waste your life wathcing T.V. and getting drunk?

Spirituality in my life has led me away from Nihilistic behaviour, and I've seen it do the same for others. Perhaps I use "spirituality" for lack of a better term, maybe we'll have a term someday that transcends the current religous implications. Have you considered that spirituality, when excercised with complete creative freedom, is completely natural and benificial to man kind?

Also, I've never found Quantum Mechanics and all the theories you seek to deconstruct to be paramount to my worldview. QM has never "validated" any of my experiences.

Just some of my thoughts

Good to see you posting again codfert

Science vs. Spirituality is just another false dualistic construct. It is not one or the other, but rather a melange of both.

There is a place where they intersect, and that place is consciousness. We need both science and spirituality in order to explain the nature of existence and being. The How and the Why.

As far as I know, there is no scientific explanation for consciousness.

Everything is waves, all of existence is composed of waves vibrating at different speeds/amplitudes/frequencies. What about the extension of that experiement where researchers made the point of choosing wave/particle after the photon had gone though the slit(s)? The choice was consistent with observations even after the photon had gone through the slits. Therefore the conscious choice affected the photon in the past, meaning that time was irrelevant in the determination of what was to be observed. The experiement conformed to the researchers conscious choice irrespective of when he made the choice. Light is directly affected by our consciousness.

Your arguments against the Copenhagen interpretation are incomplete. In no way do they prove or even suggest that consciousness does not collapse the quantum world into something that we can tangibly percieve. What causes the quantum world to collapse into something that we can percieve then? What is the mechanism that takes infinite probability and makes it manifest reality if not consciousness? Dice are being played, but with free will as a mechanism that does not keep things totally random. If things were totatlly random at all points and at all times, it is highly unlikely that a material world would be able to exist at all. There would be no cause and effect, forms manifesting and disappearing almost instantly.

We do co-create the world around us. It is not a myth, the world around us and everything we percieve is a function of our consciousness creating it. We are manifestations of consciousness, existence experiencing itself.

Quantum entanglement implies that a) everything in existence is connected and b) there is a medium for information to be transfered instantaneously, outside of the known laws of physics. One can also view this process in the context of a Holographic or Membrane Universe which would allow the same type of information transfer to occur.

I am happy to debate these ideas, but you are claiming things as "facts" or "myths" when they are only your own personal experience of reality and cognition coming into play. You have proven no facts, nor provided adequate proof that these ideas are myth. The concepts of quantum mechanics provide a good scientific groundwork for the nature of consciousness and the mechanisms with which it could create the reality we percieve. They are just as likely to produce the results we see as not.

In many cases spiritual experiences are heavily based on the emotional content of the experience. The emotions one feels often leads to the person deeming it a spiritual experience.

How can a BELIEF not be real? It's something you believe! People have profound experiences on psychedelics and they gain insights into things they never could have imagined, and they then naturally begin to form belief's based on what they've experienced. So I guess I just don't understand what you mean by "spiritual beliefs stemming from anything are not real." That just doesn't make any sense to me.

As far as the quantum world goes, certainly it does not validate anything, other than that there is a lot of stuff we don't yet fully understand about the way our universe and reality work. I think that psychedelics show us the same thing- that there is some crazy shit going on here that we don't get yet...

I fail to have faith in science as a practice anymore, it is the Western spirituality and nothing more. It seeks to find solid mechanical validation of a world that is not solid and mechanical. Science has become God, people look to Science for their answers to everything as if Science HAS the answers. Sure science will have the answers for those how choose to follow Science. But isn't it the same with all religions? God has all the answers for Christians, Buddha has all the answers for Buddhists. I think that science is trying to find an objectivity in a subjective world. Yes there are some constants that can be measured now, but perhaps this wasn't always so. Perhaps our belief in the solid constant of these 'physical laws' holds us in restraint from allowing more mystical seeming things to occur.

Such as Bancopuma's story of the woman who knew of shamans shape-shifting and fighting via sorcery and astral attacks. If the shamans in the jungle believed that they could not physically perform these shape-shifts, then they would not be able to. Just as we thinks these things are impossible because of our belief in these 'laws'.

I'm just trying to say that Science does not hold all the answers for everyone. I find my own answers, I find what works for me and not what someone else tells me works. DMT is just another such world where things can be one way or another depending on your perspective of it.

And when it boils down to it, everything is filtered through our perception of the world and our perception is tweaked depending on our personal biases of the world around us, or should I say the world inside of us.

Entertaining the notion that someone or some thing can shape shift is like entertaining the notion that a fat man wears a red puffy suit, has ice cubes for nuts and subjects a bunch of reindeer to freezing cold temperatures and severe wind chill. If some lion attacks someone out in the jungle then these backwoods tribes are likely to say it was a shape shifted human. Its all wishful thinking.

^^oversimplifying the whole thing just a little there...there is more to anthropomorphism than that, and it goes beyond some delusional fear of preditatory animals..look at the significance of the raven in both native american and european mythology..especialy native american totems..not saying that "shapeshifting" is real as an actual, tangable phenomenon..cuz I dont know..but if you study indigenous cultures you will find that they aren't as stupid as you seem to make them out to be.

Its easy to get caught up in magic of these ideas. These people in a way are holding the rest of the world back with their enchanted point of view. They wont give out researches knowledge of plant medicines that could potentially be big cures because they fear letting outsiders have it will ruin its effectiveness(magic) I'm just thinking that these people have ran with a train of thought that was never interrupted for so long that its like they are all caught up in it. Like religion, try telling a fundamentalist that something impossible from the bible could never happen in this reality. Its possible to get so lost in a belief system that threatening it could bring destruction/war/end to these tribes.

Also along the lines of witch craft, try being the only one in a tribe saying "its not real, that person just got sick by chance" try standing up for reason in a land with no police or fbi.

I don't pretend to know much about shape shifting or sorcery, but I don't think you literally turn into some beast, at will...I think the shamans use ayahuasca to leave their bodies and will then in the astral/disembodied state shape shift into another form, so as to gain the awareness of that species...such as a Jaguar (which is weird as Jaguars have been observed chewing on ayahuasca vine in the wild).

The thing is though I have complete faith in what this person was saying...I was looking into her quite amazing eyes and she was telling me what she believed to be the truth. Understand, that we have different capabilities in our culture...some parts of our brain tend to get over exercised, others largely lie dormant. These indigenous people, and their shamans have amassed more plant and nature based knowledge about their environments than you will find in any library.

I do really want to meet her again and have some more conversations about her experiences in the Amazon. I have another healer friend I'm meeting tomorrow has been attacked shamanically before. Again, I don't understand the science of what is going on here, but I trust him.

Noone mentioned magic here...but you seem to think that you can marginalise the experiences of other people, in completely other parts of the world you have probabily never been to, facing situations you or I cant imagine becasue it is not our life..lots of these things, totems, animistic worldviews, anthropomorphism etc, are there in there culture for a very good reason..they tell stories to the younger generations that teach them about life where they live, about the forest, about hunting, about how to live and survive,take care of each other, about the circle of life etc...we here in western civ have no idea..just as they have no idea as to what we face each day and how we choose to exlpain and deal with it.


You also msut think our society is just grand, since you seem to think that these other cultures should just drop the guards and let western civ mow them down..again, these people are not stupid.