I just want to throw this out there... much cacti fungi and salvia have been consumed over the past few months and I have come to feel that there is no godhead, no great consciousness, no higher being, no intelligent order... none of that. Are we really that much smarter than the creatures around us? I don't think there is anything guys and consciousness I think is not as mysterious as we think, complicated yes but I have stopped thinking there is any deep secrets. Any thoughts?

What are your thoughts on consciousness?

Deep secrets??.. what does that even mean? take away language and things just are..things are soooo weird and strange, humans just find comfort in they're words which really explain nothing outside of the human context..dont get me wrong, language is a neat tool, but it's just that..

how would you explain the universe than ..and Big band theory wont cut it..not deep enough..isn't it weird that ANYTHING can exist? The entire concept of a THING is mysterious enough as it is..I can guanantee you you cannot explain it, with all the language and science and bla bla bla whatever else there is humans have thought up..these are all just tools..

It's like taking a wrench and saying "see, I turned a knob, knobs turn! i figured it all out! There is no mystery!"..but where the hell did the knobs come from in the first place?..and why do they turn? Why are things..well..anything?? why why why?

I can see where you are going..sort of. But even the very question you are asking only exists within a human context..the idea of anything being mysterious objectivly makes absolutily no sense..it's complete nonsesne.. It's not as if things appear or come into being or whatever as either "myserious" or "not-mysterious"..that only comes into play in the human world(orwrolds of other thinking beings) of categorizing and collecting, comparing etc..

Step back and take a look at the thing in itself...language just falls away. Unlanguagable things ARE mysterious from our human vantage point.

I agree.



In some ways.



Consciousness isn't as mysterious as people think. People can't seem to get over the fact that their consciousness is a result of the activity of their brains but all evidence points to that being the case. ALL EVIDENCE. Mystical experiences and psychedelic experiences are all correlated to brain activity as well.

But there are certainly more deep secrets to be learned. I just don't think any of them will involve a spiritual component because they so far don't need any.

3 words...

Swing Band theory

I think most people misunderstand the big bang theory.

Its one of the most profound ideas ever. That something can come from nothing.



we have a word for that its called matter. its not bla bla bla

I was sure that I'll see you in this thread.

Well, let's accept for a moment what you just said - that consciousness is a result of brain activity.

There are lots of things in our consciousness. Feelings, thoughts, spiritual experiences and resulting theories, etc. Humans had built complete systems around the stuff perceived through/in that consciousness. They call it culture. It's a common thing, we all share it.

Now, if we accept the fact that all of this happens in (and only in) our brain, that doesn't invalidate anything that is contained in that consciousness. Well, let's say I can feel I have direct contact with God. Does this feeling/experience go away if I think about my consciousness as a result of brain activity? No. So why would I care? I can think that way, but it doesn't change anything. So why should I?

If there is a Godhead, it obviously prefers to remain behind the scenes. I doubt psychedlics are some loop hole to this divine wish - that it pops us into God's hiding spot, where he's forced to admit the mystery and charade of it all.

People like Burnt, or Richard Dawkins, who clearly exalt in their purely materialistic view, seem likely to retain their view despite experiencing altered consciousness. Then you get people like Pandora, who were atheist, who have a spiritual experience and begin to rethink their world view.

1992: were you particularly spiritual before you experienced psychedelics?

Uh oh I'm not that guy am I



I agree. Whatever happens when one experiences unity with god or something similar is most likely happening in the brain. Also agreed it doesn't invalidate the interaction. However then it is a physical interaction. Basically if that's true then a physical or even we could say non physical entity is there interacting with our minds. If that is the case then whatever it is should detectable or observable by observing whats happening in the mind.


Many experiences of god or seeing angels really seem like hallucinations. There are tons of people (millions probably) who think they have seen ghosts or angels or spoken to god etc. They are not all insane and they have not all taken weird substances. Some are insane some have taken weird substances. But all these experiences have something in common in that they can be observed happening in the brain if the brain is examined while something is happening. Unfortunately you can't do a brain scan of someone who saw an angel riding down the highway in their car but when it can be done in that setting there is certainly a neurochemical component.

For example when people pray similar interactions happen in the brain as if they were talking to a friend they looked up too. This shows that our brain just treats god as if he was some imaginary friend. There are lots of other similar examples. But there is of course still a lot to learn. Neuroscientists are digging into this.

My point then is either 1. its a hallucination, which seems likely since many similar phenomenon can be explained as hallucinations or 2. its a physical or non physical (some extradimensional thing whatever) interacting with our physical brain thus it can be detected via interaction with our brain. How can it be anything else?



FOr SWIM it was the opposite. SWIM had spiritual views before psychedelic use. Psychedelics originally encouraged then but in the end forced SWIM to see it another way.

My view, is it is a bit of both.. that sometimes it is just pure hallucinations, and sometimes it is something external/extradimensional showing things to us or interacting with us. And that its often a mix of the two.

On the direct question, SWIM has done most substances many times over, and like yourself, believed there was nothing "higher" out there, no truth or wisdom to be found in drugs, but eventually SWIM had a trip that rocked that notion... only ever once... but the words you're using don't really reflect the state of what was seen or what is... I mean, there is definitely something there, I mean the universe that you live in, your very existence is something amazing, and that isnt completelely explained at all, it goes much deeper, what you're looking for is sitting right in front of your face, I wouldn't look for characters, I mean, the "godhead" that we all appreciate definitely exists in some form, I mean in the form of the universe you live in, it need not be an entity itself... that being said, we live in a galaxy filled with over 300 million stars, we live a universe with that many galaxies and more.. how sure r you that there isn't anything out there? and then I'd have to ask what more do you want?

To do the direct point though, yes, I believe you can access higher levels from time to time, but it's rare and hard to understand which is kinda what you'd expect from the unknown.

Divine Moments of Truth

Why call the really intense experiences different from the not so intense ones? Set and setting certainly play a role here. What are the higher levels? How do they influence the lower levels or do they? Do the lower levels influence the higher levels? I prefer to not just leave it as a question but more prefer to get answers through scientific investigation.

I am not going to get into the language semantics about describing spiritual experiences most of us know what its like.

Certainly there is more out there but that doesn't mean any of whatever is out there has ever been here to earth or visited us via our minds.

I have to pull out Shulgin's quote that I keep on referencing but never actually writing... but it's about how mescaline didnt cause his visuals, it couldnt because the visuals were too complex, all the mescaline did was unlock those images... I really think the "higher" experiences depend on the amount of "damage" done or the side effects of the drugs effect... that's exclusively where set and setting comes into play... for example, if the drug magnifies emotions like acid, we know DMT does a synaesthestic number on your brain...

I imagine neurotransmitters flooding into the wrong places which trigger different effects on our perception of reality, different every trip... every now and then, you get "special" transmitters activated or "special" manifestations of synaesthesia where you get to see things you don't normally see, or simply don't notice, your brain may consider this blazay, yet it may be something unknown to your conscious self and this is the kind of experience I'm talking about.... these epic experiences are very different because of their novelty and they're shocking because of how surprising they are..

To be honest, in SWIM's opinion most DMT users have not had these really intense experiences, I would estimate as little as 1 in 10 is truly epic...

Like I've said before though, the thing that often surprises me most is how little we appreciate the magic that we're already part of, sometimes these trips just show you that... I mean burnt, I agree it doesn't mean aliens have been to earth or are contacting us via our brains... but these "higher" entities I think we've put them on a pedastle when the really high stuff we're already part of, we just dont appreciate it cuz we've already got it. I wonder how long it would take humans to get bored with aliens once they do visit? it'll be like, yeah, aliens are cool, but when are the hyperentities gonna visit us? it's like we always up the ante.

I was raised catholic and dumped all that around the age of 11, right along with santa and what not. When I first started smoking weed and salvia and trying other things I could get my hand on like e and if I was lucky mushrooms and I felt that there was some kind of underpinning to everything. I was very spiritual at this time and I ended up looking to Hinduism as cliche as that is haha. Now a few years later after extensive use of many psychedelics my views are in line with that of burnt, that consciousness is an overrated phenomenon and there are already computers that can process based on input, your keyboard and mouse for example. There are already many computers that can carry out actions based on what they see in an attached camera. We just happen to be a lot more advanced, I think thats the prime difference and eventually one day there will be an animal or maybe even a computer that can think circles around us. As far as the big bang theory goes who knows? Maybe it did happen like that, or maybe we're just the result of a slow expansion of matter?

Also, to fractal, I have thought about that many times myself too, without language what would we have? Not much haha. Also as far as what Ibeing is saying, have you ever played a cartridge based video game and had the cartridge knocked ajar? The communication is pinched off between the pins of the cartridge and the console and all sorts of artifacts and strange shapes appear that are only the result of this accident. Its not like things are rendered from artifacts, they're all polygons and textures. In my opinion psychedelics are nothing more than this, pinching off or setting communication centers in your brain ajar, everything you experience is already in your head and it exists there and only there.

I'm actually materialistic, a big fan of Richard Dawkins actually (met him, yay!)... but I see no reason why there can't be "higher" realms of materialism.... I mean, the supernatural, spiritual is non-sense, if either of those things exist at all then they ARE materialistic... the only thing that Dawkins is doing is waiting until there is suitable evidence before jumping on a boat... my anecdotal evidence wont cut it, but believe it or not, the "spiritual" visions SWIM had did not go against anything Dawkins had ever written... it did however go against everything SWIM had read in theology , even hinduism, despite it having a very hindu feel... I suspect this is because they were getting really high back in ancient India.. the Hindu teachings are just as pedestrian as the other religions, just as esoteric, the only thing I took was the visuals.

counsciousness is way too complex for us to fully understand. We wouldn't be able to build a computer that can posses this trait.
We can maybe one day, build machines that can behave as if they are counscious. But that's not the same.

The big mystery about counsciousness, is how we can be aware of something. Experiencing something is not the same as purely registrating something. We don't consider books, foto's or camera's to know and realize the information they contain.

An idea is that awareness can occur because of a proces in wich the information about one's own existence reflects on itself; like a computer that can figure out it exists and THEN have this information interacting with the program it runs so that each unit of information at a certain moment is rewritten and becomes interwoven with the reflexion of it's own existence, a bit like in a feedback-loop.

But no matter what model's you look at. They all have serious lack's and are never able to completely explain and describe all of the aspects of the counsious mind.

... sorry, I do laugh at this response, because I get similar analogies from very smart people every time I tell the story... I totally understand what you're saying and of course, that's exactly what happens most of the time (more so with LSD than DMT, I find), and I'm guilty of patronising people myself too much looking back... believe me, I am basically just like you are, except I had 1 trip (out of thousands) that could not be explained by any of those analogies, I mean, that was the first thing that I thought...

I mean my post was a variation of yours, a type of damage is done and then you get funky visuals or whatever... but what you're not considering is that unlike the game cartridge, the mind is full of mystery and we know very little about what it does and what it knows... don't forget the brain inherently knows better mathematics than any of our greatest mathematicians. So if you take your game cartridge analogy and apply it to the brain, can you imagine maybe divine flashes of truth appearing among the artefacts???

Haha ya I got you, obviously I can't say I've had a trip of your caliber because I couldn't possibly know that. I absolutely respect that too and I wish I could have the same experience to see how it would affect me. As far as LSD versus DMT goes, DMT is far more interesting to me due to the whole sigma-1 receptor activity. I read some study on how that receptor is more fungal than mammalian and what also interests me is that the damaging of that receptor from cocaine appears to be one of the primary causes of cocaine psychosis also is super interesting. Wish we as a race could devote more time to things like this instead of politics which if there was no language would be non-existent

Stephen Hawkins, I forgot where I read this, but I seem to recall that AFTER his illness kicked, he talked about suddenly being able to visualise space-time, I took it literally in that he could suddenly perceive it due to brain damage... this is the kind of thing I'm talking about, that's real higher level stuff via brain damage.

This is just flatly not true.

There is one school of thought that points to a purely mechanical aspect of consciousness, but it is one one end of a spectrum of philosophies (neurophenomenology). There are others that state that consciousness is a result of behaviors and learned experiences (Functionalism). As of yet, there is no concrete evidence that points to a cohesive theory, it is all philsophical. They can only infer, or guess if you will.

To say that ALL EVIDENCE points to this is to ignore philosophical debate of thousands of years from many different cultures, and the fact that scientific inquiry into the nature of consciousness is really no closer to explaining it now than they were 100's of years ago when they started to try. Show me one piece of evidence that supports your point.

How would you explain near death experiences in which the person has no EEG? They are brain dead, no electrical activity in the brain, yet when revived they tell of experiences similar to the classic NDE. If it is all just brain activity, it would be impossible for these people to have these mystical/spiritual experiences (you cannot hallucinate if you have no brain activity). NDE's traverse cultures, gender, age, religion, and philosophical beliefs to share commonalities no matter where or by whom they are experienced.

What about Out of Body Experiences/Astral Travel? How would these things be possible if our consciousness is confined in our skulls as a strictly physical process would tend to infer? What about memory? Neurobiologists still have no clue as to how it really works. There are great strides being made, but there are questions about subjective experiences and phenomena which cannot be explained by any current scientific understanding.



Yes, many people do misunderstand this theory. On the most fundamental level it is metaphysical theory, and not a scientific one as there is no proof. Scientists take it on faith today. Scientifically it has as much validity as a old white guy with a beard saying "Let there be light"