This is more of a reply for magic clown I wrote it in that context, but I thought it had some good ideas expressing my thoughts on skepticism and rationality and perhaps why we are playing explorer, where are it's benefits and pitfalls, what are we looking for? I will say also I'm still a big fan of the original skeptics. Richard Alpert and Tim Leary. Men of science who took the drug and knew they had it all wrong. How closely Tim's life is looking a lot like me. Like unleashing rebellion, but not a rebellion of hate or that sort, of the sort of rebellion where you will 'salvage this human thing from the dumpster'. (if you feel modern society has thrown us, into the dumpster, and in fact creates a false subject filled with malcontent and misery) That was what struck me about it as well. So that's what this is about.
http://www.dmt-nexus.me/....aspx?g=posts&t=1156Hi Magic clown,
I have not taken DMT, but I don't underestimate it. As someone who gets, has gotten, and continues to get a strong spiritual effect, and purging and healing and ups and downs from cannabis use. Mini trips, philosophical triumphs and failures. I am actually taking it quite slowly. I don't have a big timeframe. I'm young. And for example as a huge fan of Tim Leary, who did not have his first trip or inkling to rebel against society, not until well into his adulthood, I think it may have been 36 when he first tried magic mushrooms and overnight his whole world changed.
One thing he said, that if you listen carefully he says he's studying the brain, he's studying the mind. As a psychologist this is why he studies. He studied it 15 years as a psychologist relentlessly within the paradigm of his men. He takes psychedelics, and describes it as continuing his research. He is adamant that the only way to ever understand the mind is through such a tool.
I feel like time. I lived my life, straight line. Not into 'drugs'. Out of curiosity I tried weed. Coupe big bong rips and sat like a skeptic for 15 minutes as strange sensations started. Then I started telling friends. "It's doing something to time. It's fixing time..." And it proceeded. Listening to music deluged with religious art I was convinced I couldn't be creating. Brilliant Artworks composed themselves about 3 or 5 seconds, better and better in unison with the music. It was more beautiful with my eyes shut in my mind, than any object I had ever glimpsed or held or any emotion touched. It converted me. Saved me from ignorance, from the oppression of the false subject created by society.
As far as the effect on my life. I had this period for a while. The optimism of the 60's lived in me for a year. Then I got heavy into Marxism, and the pessimism that the world was too bullheaded and stupid to see or ever wake up and see it like me. I also lost access to cannabis for a long time. In another year in half, I started over. And slowly. I see the many ironies of the it all.
Just as simple as the irony of being human. Consciousness vs a monkey that has no consciousness. That a primate will be administered acid, and behaviorally look spaced out, and be unable to perform his usual tasks. Administer it to man, he goes up there, he starts saying the sages and holy men history looks at now like outdated fools, were drinking the ambrosia all along. You find human in the darkness, like finding what you had squandered away to become an adult member of society. This can lead to battles of paradigms, biological vs spiritual vs wtfarewe. I can't find a way around it. I just simply had to, accept the ironies of consciousness and the vexation of biological reality and the fact that 'these are just drugs' and yet, it is clearly not 'just drugs'.
Hopefully, the value you gain exceeds the cost, or you find what you wanted? But who could ever be sure what they will find when they smoke DMT for example. The shaman is brave. If you can take DMT and come back ok, concerns about your bike crashing or boss can fall into the BIG picture. And it's big. My combo is this: I mix psychedelics with post modernism. Both are about deconstructing the subjects imprisonment of himself. One is chemical and illicit and the other fills the shelves of a university library.
It worked for me. So I wonder if it will work for others. Lets play a strange game now. Imagine if Freud had had taken acid.
So
I would love to think if Freud had gotten his hands on acid. The man who didn't believe in people had a soul. Who studied people restlessly only to have his own heart turn cold and bitter, writing essentially in his later years, that man was doomed to his impulses, his aggression and the fantasy world of the subconscious hidden beneath our noses. He IOW had the sad realization his hopes for what man was, that man appeared not to be the shining god, but the product of the machinations of a fixed reality with scientific properties to be discovered. IOW Freud became a victim to his philosophy to his perspective, to the strong atheism that serious men had in the early 1900's.
My point is, I love Freud too. Not because psychoanalysis is the key to everything or is especially that important. But he studied people, philosophized about them for years and years, and it changed him. His own fate is interesting. We can look at the man Freud became. He was a man with his own demons and Phantasies [sic] like anyone else. He didn't ever really 'get it' or get the answer he wanted, but I think he was looking for it. The question is?
What if Freud takes acid and 'got it'?
I'm not that far from Freud, a staunch materialist and rationalist, you reach you nihilistic apex. And like Tim, nothing but the medicine would have set that man free I think. I feel the same way. Not that I'm there, but that this to be the enterprise, that saves us or damns us.
Dunno. All that said, my own enamorment with drugs is maybe derailed a bit by a pessimism that a lot of people take them, and don't seem to come back much back wiser. Or describe it as "It got me good and fucked up". I also have my hesitations about other drugs like Salvia or DMT especially, which might throw something into my spiritual humanist perspective. I'm afraid it might shake my foundations a bit, And just like that... it might fling me back to the pit of nihilism. I hope not. I hope I've learned my lesson.
Has that happened to any of you guys? Where you got cozied into weed, LSD mushrooms and spiritual practice, then you take one of these like DMT, Salvia, or Ketamine to get kicked out of your spirituality it's like?
OTOH, I've heard the 'Chrysanthemum' alone was worth the price of admission. To see this 'city' that no words or anything else can come close to the visual deluge, or the teaching that these beings have. That it becomes impossible to rationalize away like we do to phenomena that doesn't mush with our western adult-like views. And it's always like TMK says "You can come back a space bunny too".
For me there's no alternative. I can't ever go back and watch TV,** or the sports game or read the paper or work without knowing what it is. I suppose if I had a vision for myself and the future. I'd want to evoke the 60's again, but this time without all the fear and paranoia.
-NS
** Family guy and south park, are the usual stoners ideal night right, (proabably not for this forum, but in general). Few months back I described it like, "I see the jokes 10 seconds before it happens, I see 1000 reasons why it's not funny and there is no reason to laugh. IOW it doesn't work on me anymore."