Struggled for a long time to come up with a way to write about and describe what a transformational experience is, how it is valuable and what it has done for me without resorting to terms like "spiritual", "God", or the like. For me, coming from atheist background – in the true definition of the word,being a-theist, that is not holding a belief onto a specific theological dogma, spiritual entity or some ulta-life form like the bearded fairy king on a cloud, I strive to present this information in a manner that would be accepted by empiricists. However, there is no way to apply some sort of measuring instrument to this experience or its contents outside of relying upon anecdotes from those who have been through it. Like an antenna picking up unseen radio waves that existed long before radio was invented, the human mind is able to tune in to the point source of creation, which has been translated throughout history in religious terms, the mind being connected to it in by an endogenous mechanism of neurotransmitters and synapses in the brain. Through the application of various external and internal means, such as meditation or the ingestion of psychoactive plants, we are able to receive and transmit transmissions to it. At the risk of being metaphysical, I suggest that this practice is important and beneficial to the human experience both collectively and individually without defining it empirically.

In my world-view, I understand that there is an eternal point-source of infinite creation outside of time and space of which the human intellect is pale reflection and creation of. This is not a belief derived from other persons, but rather my conviction in its veracity comes from my personal experience and it's outline is defined through a conglomeration of esoteric and theological thought in my mind, if only as a way to better or more clearly perceive it. That said, there is nothing more "sacred" or "holy" about this perception of a divine entity than is any portion of its creation, say the tree I'm looking at right now. Nothing in the church or temple or mosque is more sacred than myself and I am in turn, as are all things, more holy than anything in the church. Any lifestyle that aligns with this experience or actions generated through it or not caused by a mechanism of belief, but rather become merely footsteps on a clearly delineated path of forging with deliberation into the future granted to me through visionary experiences. Love, kindness, compassion and empathy all naturally derive from the source.

I say it is beneficial to the human experience because in mine, I accessed this from a place of severe depression, PTSD and long-term addiction, and afterwards found myself freed from many of the severe ego based emotional attachments to that state of being and found myself afterwards much better prepared to deal with the things within me that led to me being in that place. The experience give me a certain foundation from which I was able to delve into introspection and arrive at a more perfect state of self-awareness.

I often speak of the deficiencies of the current dominant paradigm and mental health and addiction treatment, part of which is 12-step-based therapy, the maintenance of which is to achieve a connection to a "higher power"; in other words the spiritual foundation. Many conscientious freethinkers find objection in this principle due to the fact that all of the egregious disasters that have befallen humanity, oppression of peoples, suppression of ideas and science, brutality, bloody conflicts – all of them other than those created through natural causes – have been generated through conflicts between religious or theological thought and power structures related to it. That is more than understandable, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak; denying the existence or the importance of a human connection with its source is denying the value of meeting the demands of one of the most intrinsic human values, that of apprehending and comprehending the cosmos and humanities relation to it on unseen or esoteric levels.

So I posit that and experiential connection with the source can be extremely beneficial to those who struggle with hopelessness, or any of the conditions which I found myself in and which it over time freed me from. It should be obvious to anyone reading this on this forum that I do not suggest that merely the experience is a curative, it is merely one of many tools, a key to unlock a door. I would like to know what your positions are on this, how you feel about "spiritual healing", it's validity, your conviction – or not – in it's veracity, and if, like me, you struggle with esotericism and empiricism, how do you align the two?

Isn't the conflict rooted in the desire for something to be different from the way it is? Finding some defect in the way things are?

When a fruit has ripened, having struggled through its growth, it falls from the tree and returns to its source. This is empirical. Trust the process. And yes, part of the process is the desire to "make a difference", to "fix" things. Whose desire is it? Was it derived on demand?

Welcome back Null...Truer words...etc.

Your writing is worthy of pen on paper.

I'm not sure I understand. Yes the desire of change is of course rooted in a dissatisfaction. However that's not really the point.

I search for a way to communicate this experience and my understanding of it as well as its beneficial properties to life without resorting to langauge that would turn off empiricists. How do I do that?

I suggested experience is valuable to any and all, but often hear people who are resistant or deny that I have an ability to separate the concepts from culturally loaded words like spirituality and God.

And thanks Cyb!

Very real in my experience. It's undeniable when one realizes that who thought they were was actually some kind of false personally built around ego, and who they really are is something much deeper and purer, that's not the body at all. People call it different things, I call it essence, and essence is the true me, and essence is one with everyone and everything, ego simply blocked my awareness of this fact, and btw, it fought against my awakening tooth and nail, even after drinking aya quite a few times. And when it comes to ego, it seems to me the entheogens can temporarily dissolve it, but to transmute it something better takes much, much more. Then you have energy. People and plants and everything really seem to have energy. This energy seems to contain at least some part of their consciousness. I think this is what shamans refer to as plant spirits. And you look at all this stuff in so many different ways, and they can all work, but it's best to keep it simple. Alchemy seems to be the best framework for what I've experienced, that everything is ultimately one thing, with different aspects, and that seems to hold true for both the Self, and the universe at large. As above so below. The point seems to be to burn off the false personality and in the process refine ones essence (or I suppose you could call it the soul). Balance seems to be key as well, once you become aware of this stuff. Both balance between divine feminine and sacred masculine, and positive and negative energy (light and dark).

beautiful post, null.




I know this doesn't help you, but I don't tend to worry to much these days about such conflicts. If DMT (and to a lesser extend, odd occurrences in my life) has shown me anything its that this world can be bizarre beyond my imaginings and classifications. It also helps that there's several people whom I consider incredibly intelligent that have written extensively on the subject like Bernard Haisch, Ken Wilber, Ervin Laszlo, Stanislav Grof, and recently read the first book of Thomas Cambell's My Big Toe...

Your search for a way to communicate your experience/understanding is itself driven by a desire to fix something, taking the form of the seemingly altruistic drive to help others in their pain. But if you see yourself as the agent of change here, it is ultimately a selfish desire. As such, its power to effect change will be compromised.

How did your transformation come about? Were others' words, actions and teachings effective before you were ripe enough to change? Wasn't it something that just happened when its time came? So I'm saying, trust that higher power that you have witnessed that is the source of everything. Empty yourself of the notion of being a doer and the space/lightness you open up will be more effective in achieving the goal of communicating you seek.

As far as esotericism vs. empiricism, it's left vs. right brain. One is a product of the masculine brain, the othe a product of the feminine. I'm not sure if one can blend the two though, and this is why balance is important. Because if your living with one foot in the world and the other not of this world, you need both, thus the need for balance.

perhaps from a psychology point of view. There's many psychologists out there who are hip to this stuff.

Ah, okay, I see your position. I don't argue with altruism/ selfish thing, that's also something I struggle with and hope that if I fail, I do so on the side of altruism.

All action however is selfish in some way, no? I would never suggest that "I" hold some knowledge or roadmap to something otherwise unattainable, but I do, for better or worse, seek to communicate my personal experience to others who may seek some way out of their unhappiness and only do so through storytelling. But no, it is not ego-less.

If your interested in my personal experience and where this post comes from, Read these 4000 words.

As always, peace to all, and be good to you!

In a way. And selflessness taken to the extreme can become selfish

Excellent stuff, Null24. You've got a fantastic pen. Rock on.

As a young journeyman in search of the truth, I usually tried to interpret mystical experiences in an empirical fashion, for a variety of reasons. Primarily, it provided for an escape route when things became overwhelming; if something was too big and bad for me, then I could go with a psychological or physical-phenomenological interpretation. It also made it easy to share interesting experiences with ardent skeptics/empiricists/atheists.

An obvious metaphor justifying this approach is the five blind sages and the elephant; where one describes the elephant as like a tree trunk, another says like a wall, another says as a great snake etc. None of them are wrong, and none of us sees the universe or "source" as it really is. IME describing a psychological state you've experienced to an empiricist is no less "holy" to them than describing a religious state to a devotee, especially if it's a state that relieves existential anxiety.

I have long viewed the human experience as an interpretation of one set on a fractal. Two points of the same fractal will describe two aspects of the same experience: perhaps one mystical and the other empirical. After all, your experiential interface is a very empirical lump of electrochemicals. I don't believe you can experience anything as a human, without your brain. And that it's compatible to view all physical phenomena as having causal relationships, and also have a true experience of the non-physical or mystical.

I remember one of my old teachers explaining synchronicity. He described a study that showed a direct correlation between the birthrate of red kangaroos in Australia and the sale of birth control devices in California. Obviously the two have nothing to do with each other, from any sane point of view. They, however describe a pattern that repeats itself within reality. This experience of "source" that you had is just as real in your brain and reflected in a pattern of nuerochemicals, as it is in the more fundamental and non-material aspects of reality.

Anyway, I hope that makes sense. It was some years ago since I spent much time with these thoughts. I am usually able to sidestep all of this by avoiding the assignment of strong truth values to anything, these days lol.

Great stuff, null24! Esotericism OR empiricism? BOTH! The alignment comes in the refusal to "Religify" either one. As you so sagely acknowledged, "Religion killed God".

It is only through leveraging of the polar epistemologies, empiric(knowledge) and esoteric(gnowledge), that the human experience can be holistically appreciated/ascertained. Both are requisite for a balanced and healthy relationship with the, mysterium tremendum.

Our access to "reality", eternally indirect, mandates the commingling of BOTH epistemic realms for a more complete(yet imperfect) REALIZATION.

This is likely why the "initiated" lose patience with both, radical esotericists(Religionists) AND radical empiricists(reductionists/materialists).

As always/forever, the poles imply each other, therefore are "one"!

Peace

Legato, I think you understand where I'm coming from. When I was "initiated", I came from a platform of western esotericism, alchemy, Kabbalah, etc. and even those beliefs fell way, shattered.

I have found and been able to affect vast improvement in my life after this experience and subsequent integration and work. I and my current prose argues the value of it, but I want to shy away from a pat statement like "spiritual experience will make you happy". I guess I'm seeking as wide an audience as possible. Selfish or selfless, I think my motivation is neither but, as I will have to approach the argument, sources from both.

I really like your response, thank you. I like the idea of the polarity. Science and mysticism approach the same thing, an understanding of the cosmos and our place with in it, but do so from opposite ends. The object of attention still lies at the center though, right?

Great question, I often find myself trying to balance the worlds of logic, reason, and empiricism with that of spirituality and how I integrate my psychedelic experiences.

Before I had ever taken a psychedelic drug, I was agnostic--though leaning towards atheism for most of my life. Nonetheless, the idea that we had to come from something stuck with me. Regardless of what people want to call it, I am (and presumably everyone else is) experiencing something we call "life", or "reality". Whatever language we use to describe this phenomena is beside the point; this experience that we all seem to be having is something. And whatever "something" happens to be, it defies logic and reason yet seems to be happening nonetheless.

One of the most pertinent lessons I have taken away from my psychedelic experiences is that everything we do in life is simply an attempt to navigate this "something". All of our language and philosophies and scientific theories are simply ways of exploring, investigating, and describing this phenomena. I'm fascinated by science because I believe it's our best chance yet to come to know "God". With a bit of imagination, the working scientist could be viewed as a holy person of sorts--a seeker of truth.

"Spirituality", in my opinion, is a loaded word. One doesn't have to interpret scriptures or holy books literally to identify as spiritual/religious, and subscribing to the scientific method doesn't exclude one from identifying as such either. A lot of people seem to suggest that to be "spiritual" automatically means subscribing to certain ways of thought or belief systems--yet I don't think that's true at all. One can be a die-hard Christian and not believe anything in the Bible whatsoever. Conversely, understanding the scientific method doesn't automatically make someone more "enlightened" or smarter by any means. Knowledge--whether "spiritual" in the traditional sense, or empirical--is only as good as the context in which it is understood.

There's a great piece on this very subject from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, one of my favorite books.

Both Sprituality and Scientific thought claim to pierce through how things appear on the surface into the deeper levels of how things work; into the "true" nature of things. Whether it be atoms, or chakras, or hormonal fluctuations, or the soul of a person behind all the BS people put on, both Science and Spirutality try to pierce into the layers underneath so that we can live better lives.

The difference being that Spirituality does this through a more intuitive, ideally experiential approach, and Science does this through a more mental, thought-based approach. Neither is wholly right in and of itself, in the same way that we need both hemispheres of the brain to lead functional, fulfilling lives.

The two must work in harmony.

Coincidentia Oppositorum!

Exactly. Everything seems to be some sort of paradox when look deep enough

Empericism - esotericism
Ego - higher self
Within - without
Above - below

The list goes on..

Yes i agree. If you try to talk about love and compassion and how it derives from the source to a hardened science type empirist they will probably just think that you are a wackjob.

The nearest that you can get to explaining it, at least as far as drugs are concerned, is to talk to them in language that they understand. Try steering them towards the recent David Nutt brainscan/lsd trials and how the re-routing of brain activity contributed to one-ness and ego dissolution and how you feel about any possible resulting benefits from these kinds of events.

Maybe they will decide to experience for themselves and see what all the fuss is about. In situations like these experiencing it is the only truly viable way of having it explained and even then there are no guarantees that other people get the same realisations from the experience.
At the end of the day it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. What's important is that you got something positive out of it....