ninja cat 09 said:

During only one of my trips have I ever had a "spiritual" feeling, but I was never raised to pray everyday, or to pray at all, so I never knew what "spirituality" ever felt like.

Now, I want to ask:

Were you raised religious and feel "spiritual" during you're trips?

were you not raised religiously and don't feel  "spiritual" during you're trips?

Why do you think this is?

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I guess I was raised to feel "spiritual" during my trips. My father, like me is a tripper and a hippie. But he's also a very educated person and holds a degree in biology. He (my father) was raised as christian and the whole shebang but he eventually because very interested in the universe and started to become very keen on eastern philosophy.

He never really forced me to listen to his beliefs but moreso used his knowledge of the universe to help guide me in times of need. He often referred to the fact that "we are all one consciousness" and that "the meaning of life is to be aware".

Obviously as a youngin I never really questioned these concepts - but I didn't really accept them either. It was more like I was an atheist deep down and that "philosophy" was just a way to deluding the rational mind into being content with [perceived] negative inevitability, such as death. If however anyone even asked me philosophical questions I would just mindlessly repeat the eastern values that my father that taught me, having not given the subject my though on my own.

I remember going though a couple philosophical crises when I was about 8 years old. I started to reject the values that my father had taught me and became rather depressed at the notion of death. I would ponder each day the mindlessly paradoxical concept of death. I would say "if I die I will experience nothingness BUT if I don't know that I was ever alive - I won't know this is nothingness". This paradox was scary but I couldn't stop thinking about it.

When I started highschool I was a full blown "atheist" (as I'm sure most rebellious teen are). I would take any opportunity to shit on other peoples philosophies and try to drag them down to my own miserable level. To make them fear death as do I. I guess I felt that by destroying other peoples beliefs at least I would have other people to feel sad with (strange teenage bully logic I know )

In highschool, being rather good at the sciences (especially biology as my father had raised my as a biologist), I developed in interest in theoretical physics. I figured that by understanding the universe I could control it and that a knowledge of physics would make me powerful. The things they taught us in the classroom were rather mundane however, I was interested in the big boys like Einstein's and Hawkins theories. I became fixated on understanding the "unity of everything". If I can understand it all, than I win.

My knowledge of physics took my in an interesting and unexpected direction though. I began to find that physics itself was driven by observation. For instance: "light can be either a particle or a wave but BOTH when you not looking ". I began to realize that physics/science are routed in awareness BUT physics/science doesn't actually describe awareness.

I started asking myself, "where does consciousness take place". Sure I knew that science can describe neurochemistry and all that BUT what I was asking was not WHY consciousness occurred but WHERE. WHERE is the space that I navigate mentally. That illusion of depth, space and time created by my brain WHERE IS IT? Where are my emotions? Where is love? Where is hate?

Like before, I know that they are caused by action on the neurons in the brain but yet the subjective experience that I'm living is NOT described by science. In fact, according to science my subjective state of mind DOESN'T EVEN EXIST! and yet, here I am living it - so I know it does!

This was the point where I realized that science is only part of the picture. That while science can describe the observable, it's unable to describe the observer... and never will, because the observer isn't inside the quantifiable universe. Or more so, the observer IS the universe. Matter and energy are just the illusion created by the act of the observer (the universe) observing itself.

The more and more I think about it, the more and more the things my father was telling me came to mind. I was shocked to realize that here I was spending my adolescence thinking that I am smarter than my father, but all along I was just working up to knowing what he already knew.

I realized that for hundreds of thousands of years people have known about what I'm starting to realize. I am just a naive kid that had too much anger and fear to see clearly.

No longer interested in physics I changed my academic direction to computer science - because it was more viable career path. As far as philosophy was concerned I turned to the eastern teaching that my father echoed and started learning as much as I could about different eastern philosophies. Each helping me build up my own philosophy and understanding of the universe.

Being an academic though (a nerd ) - I was more interested in the theory of it all, rather than putting it into practice (old habit from physics). So while I could now walk around talking about "the Tao" and "noble truths". I really didn't know these philosophies "felt like". It's hard to describe, but you can't learn philosophy like you can learn maths. You need to DO in order to learn.

Frustrated once again by my "inability to meditate" (yes I know), I started looking for ways to cheat the process. I figured that I needed to experience altered consciousness to fast forward my mind... (BUT HOW )

Yes, you guessed right - I discovered psychedelics. A chemical that can supposedly trigger the same spiritual experiences discussed in eastern philosophies. This is exactly what is was looking for.

After experiencing the psychedelic mindset for the first time my personality changed forever. I had done it. I had found the "unity of everything" that I had been seeking.

I understood that drugs only scratch the surface though and that I can't cheat forever. I began to re-evaluate my philosophy and started to incorporate the lessons that psychedelics taught me into it. I learned about true meditation and learned some very important steps in self control that I would probably have never learned otherwise.

So even though I clearly went though my own path full of experiences, fears and surprises in order to become the spiritual person I am today, if my father had never given my a grounding in eastern philosophy the way he did - I probably would have crashed and burned like many people did in the 1960s when they started taking psychedelics for the first time.