PatrickKn said:

Many people with a certain capacity for delusional thinking apply their delusions towards frames of spiritual thinking. This is a natural tendency, and I think it doesn't stop at the psychedelic community - even people who do not take psychedelics do this. I would argue that people who have delusional ways of perceiving things are more prone to be interested in the usage of psychedelics, and also that psychedelic usage tends to exacerbate delusion or make people put more weight on already existing thought processes.

I would say that spirituality and religious frames of thinking can be a healthy outlet for this, but can also be unhealthy if approached from an angle that requires your hallucinatory world be the world that you live in verbatim. In my own experience, separating the spiritual world from the logical world of concrete rules is an important distinction that empowers and strengthens both worlds and puts them both into proper context.

The spiritual realm, to me, is a kind of mental sandbox that is mostly separate from a lot of other stuff, and you can use religion or mythological themes as a kind of software to work through thought processes that are delusional in nature. Working from these thoughts in this frame of thinking, and concentrating on making the distinction that the spiritual and esoteric belief system is to be separate can, in my experience, free yourself from applying impractical thoughts or observations to real world thinking in a way that might hinder things.

If I get into a discussion that has elements of spiritual or esoteric thinking with someone, often while on the influence of psychedelics but sober as well (as I've done on here), I make a point to frame the thoughts as a sort of mental exercise rather than an authoritative expression of truth. This sort of unlocks any kind of dogmatic belief system that presents a barrier to the free flow of ideas, and allows epiphanies to be realized with that spine tingling sense of whoa rather than closing the mind to the idea that these thoughts are ridiculous. Instead of challenging a world view, you're sort of creating a new universe using themes derived from both real and fake history, archetypes and myth and creating your own kind of mythos in the process.

This opens up a different kind of thinking, not focused on the details being true rather than focus on the details being expressions of perceived truth. It's very much speaking in tongues, and there needs to be the warning to people new to this kind of thinking that it's delusional in nature, and that this is okay. From there you can come to truths that people might not understand fully from the outside looking in.

However, if you with every fiber of your being know the ideas you've come to the realization of to be true for one reason or another, because you've experienced it as such - this is where stuff gets tricky. The line between delusion and reality has become skewed, your delusion is now your reality. This is where, in my mind, wisdom comes into play. The wise man might understand spiritual or esoteric themes to be truth in his experience, but he also understands that another person's experience will say otherwise or even that a person could be forced to disagree with you on the mere basis that you are pushing the belief onto them. You've worked through your delusion through the software or mental calculators of mythology and religion, of mathematics and music, through the usage of psychedelics and you've come to a conclusion. That conclusion however is merely a statement to the outside observer, and you wouldn't expect a student to take you at your word without some kind of evidence.

We make the distinction between science and analytical thinking and spiritual and delusional frames of thinking. Albert Einstein had epiphanies about the nature of the universe through physics, and these epiphanies came relatively quickly. Having an epiphany wasn't enough to convince everyone though, the wisdom came in being able to prove those models for the universe. You wouldn't expect anyone to believe that he was correct without first demonstrating the theory of relativity in action, and that took many years after he had already formulated his theory.

The same is true for spiritual thinking, and this is where the line is drawn between someone who is wise and someone who merely chances upon an understanding. In order to, well, preach a point of view you might have, you need to show your work. A wise person does this through many different angles, and sometimes the spiritual knowledge is so ridiculous from the outside looking in that one needs to assume the position of the devils advocate and act like he himself doesn't believe in that truth. Let's say a friend brings something up that you too agree with, but you've thought more in detail about that esoteric thought and want to bring them into the same fold as you. Rather than agreeing outright, you might disagree with the notion entirely and bring up points that slowly guide them to the same truth you had before. You might never get the chance to tell them you agree as well, and that's okay if you value that hidden truth over secrecy. That to me can be a deeper kind of humility than telling people you know something as an authority in something.

Likewise, you may share spiritual software and knowledge, trading ideas to arrive at a whole rather than withholding truth. At it's core these are just teaching methods, as well as learning methods, systems of philosophy. Religions that push an idea of absolute truth in my mind miss the point of spiritual thinking in some ways, but can be a good exercise for people to branch from and from which to use as a base. The priest, the monk or the teacher that attempt to show their religion or way of thinking is infallible truth may be unwise and missing the point, but they may also understand the role in a deep way and assume it to it's extremes in order to instill a sense of skepticism, to teach people intelligent enough to read between the lines. This is something that can often only be done when learning from someone concealing their true beliefs, someone who let's on just enough for people to catch on, but someone who can stay in character and not let the lid off should they be pressed.

It's important in my mind to distinguish between people who can impart genuine knowledge between the lines, and people who emulate these people but don't understand. It doesn't matter what the religious background is, they can be a christian priest or a spiritual guru of some sort, a theology teacher or the guy yelling about end times on the subway. The execution is important. Alan Watts for example is a person I enjoy listening to, but it's difficult for me to find other people with the same tact and wisdom he had. It's as if many people emulate the style of spiritual teaching but miss the point. Taken out of context, one could say anything he said quite easily - but it wouldn't carry the same weight perhaps because they couldn't clarify things, they couldn't frame things as an exercise in spiritual thinking vs a set truth, they simply couldn't lie as well about history or science because they took themselves too seriously and not seriously enough. This can be seen in priests as well, there are really good ones and really bad ones out to get your money, sometimes it's difficult for people to see where the lines are drawn because the language used to conduct this kind of teaching can be captivating even if the meaning behind it is empty.

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PatrickKn said:

It made sense, I'm following what you're saying.

Let's bring in that parallel as far as universal truth goes. So we have our physics equations, and they have been proven to be correct given a set of circumstances such as say the curvature of light or whatever the problem might be. At the very least we can say they are true or mostly true given those circumstances on this level. It is accepted as universal truth (though might very well be false for one reason or another), but the reality of it is is that 80% of the people who accept it as such don't truly understand why it's true, because they don't understand the physics behind the equation. They take the word of those more knowledgeable in this realm, who have studied it, who know how to read it, who have tested it. In real world practical applications this is okay, because things add together on the unknowledgable level and we can infer that the understanding is correct based off the expert's opinions and a few anecdotes alluding to it being correct despite your lack of knowledge.

With broad and open spirituality, an issue arises. There is no set agreements on definitions, terms, measurements, history, language. This is where (philosophical aspects of) religion often come into play. Religion may offer a set of absolute assumptions (which may change depending on your level of knowledge) from which to frame your mental constructs. This is why members of a religion may arrive at certain universal truths that others don't. They may not be true at all, merely universal beliefs. They are universal among members nonetheless because the religion has offered a framework and a set of controls from which to base assumptions off of. With the details of whether this or that is true or not out of the way, they can move on to other problems. It's entirely possible that their framework is deeply flawed for one reason or another, often beliefs get mixed and incompatibilities become apparent but it's heresy to speak out against such contradictions, or possibly allowed in other situations.

This is where faith comes into play, you need faith that the system you have chosen is correct in certain assumptions because people who've practiced at the system for longer tell you that it's important when trying to get to the same conclusions. I've not delved deep into religion myself, but I do understand wholeheartedly the principle of faith in this frame of view, it's an important element when trying to solve problems of spirituality. These problems can take many years to solve for some people, and one religion might have already constructed a system to arrive at a few of the those problems, or 'truths'. If one doesn't follow the program, they may fall away from the 'truth' so to speak, so emphasis is placed on having faith in certain assumptions that either are, or appear to be, ridiculous from the outset. Some of these assumptions in a religion may be metaphorical in nature, but understanding that metaphorical nature may take years of study as a theologian or as a monk, and explaining it to the passer-by may not be practical. So the teacher tells the student to have faith or it's cultural equivalent that the assumption is an absolute. It's the controlled element in your equation, and should only be doubted when trying to rework the equation itself.

So you say the Shroomery is the Einstein for example, that we have a certain sort of unconscious truth we're trying to agree upon but can't express universally. I would argue that this is difficult because we have no set of controlled variables, controlled definitions, controlled experiences from which to express our knowledge of this ethereal universe. We may be describing universes that are very similar in many ways, but are actually different places mentally or otherwise in large but discreet ways, so while we make the mistake of saying that the place is the same but that the other guy has the details all wrong.

Because we haven't taken the time to set absolutes on a blind whim of faith, we get stuck at the level of arguing over those elements before solving the equation. I'm not saying one should just take those assumptions at heart to quickly arrive at the conclusion, it's very much an important process to get through. That's what science is in many ways, and why it's difficult for the world of science to cross into the world of spirituality. In science you've agreed on a set of measurement standards, of symbols and language, of hard absolutes that have real world applications and these are incompatible with a system of mythology that doesn't have any sort of Rosetta Stone available to the average Joe, or which doesn't even touch on the same kinds of measurements or same field of truth as another system might. You may be operating in two entirely different universes.

With that said, how can one express knowledge of a psychedelic universe? Well, I see things when I go to these places, and some people have the ability to illustrate this in a way that everyone with a shared experience can agree upon as you might see in art depicting DMT experiences. I hear things and can make music that resembles the sounds I might hear. I can convey these things and see if people have come to the same conclusions and it gets weird from there. A universal truth for a group of observers isn't always a sentence that definitively expresses something, sometimes by it's nature it's less obvious than that.

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KinopioZA said:

But there can be no certainty.. there is no right and no wrong, only duality... and dope... smoke one... or two

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NOUS333 said:

Over the years prior to my first significant psilocybin experience a universal truth drew me in and once I dosed and integrated I found myself in communities of people who all had come to the same conclusions. About the truth of our history and our human ness our consciousness.  The science of everything.    Lately it seems like for myself as an individual up until recently and many of you and people out in the world who have used psilocybin are completely full of shit and talking from their egoic high horse about the right way to be. Their subjective truths they proclaim to be objective.  Trying to persuade others they are wrong or right etc.  extremely religious psychonauts who just snarll at the thought of questioning anything. 

At what point do we come together and go okay. What the hell is actually going on here.  What can we universally matter of factly agree upon? And what can we not?    I used to say live and let live.  Let people believe what they want. Do you.  But it’s getting to the point where I see such confusion and delusion being made worse if not influenced altogether by hsving spiritual and mystical experiences and then subscribing to some artificial belief system worse or just as bad as the ones they claim to have shed and left behind. 

Anyone else notice this?  I’m just as confused and lost as the people I speak of honestly..not trying to be condescending...but .what do we know for sure without one another and an objective community around us? 

I don’t know man. Any one else relate?

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Quote:

At what point do we come together and go okay. What the hell is actually going on here.  What can we universally matter of factly agree upon? And what can we not?    I used to say live and let live.  Let people believe what they want. Do you.  But it’s getting to the point where I see such confusion and delusion being made worse if not influenced altogether by hsving spiritual and mystical experiences and then subscribing to some artificial belief system worse or just as bad as the ones they claim to have shed and left behind. 

Anyone else notice this?  I’m just as confused and lost as the people I speak of honestly..not trying to be condescending...but .what do we know for sure without one another and an objective community around us?

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tHEfLY said:

Quote:

At what point do we come together and go okay. What the hell is actually going on here.  What can we universally matter of factly agree upon? And what can we not?    I used to say live and let live.  Let people believe what they want. Do you.  But it’s getting to the point where I see such confusion and delusion being made worse if not influenced altogether by hsving spiritual and mystical experiences and then subscribing to some artificial belief system worse or just as bad as the ones they claim to have shed and left behind. 

Anyone else notice this?  I’m just as confused and lost as the people I speak of honestly..not trying to be condescending...but .what do we know for sure without one another and an objective community around us?

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I think you've touched on something important here, in reference to the connection between community and what we call truth, not just regarding spirituality, but everything else too. Now, I'm not an absolute relativist by any means, but I think that particular expressions of truth in the linguistic and symbolic sense are local, that is, based on consensus by people in a community with a shared history of experiences going back over time. There's less and less of this type of community existing in the modern world where people are becoming increasingly mobile and very few will stay in the same place long enough to build the type of collective associations that are necessary to have an agreement about anything (even if they do stay in the same place, they probably don't talk to their neighbours). Television was used to artificially bridge the gap between people, but that's useless now because of the internet and the fact that the people directing the content are usually alien to the people consuming it. Everyone has their own opinion about everything, which is one thing, but it goes deeper than that. Something I notice, especially on the internet, is that people are consistently speaking past each other and two people can get in an argument even if they're essentially saying the same thing, all because the semantics, or the associations individuals might have with certain words, are confused. So I would say that our ability to say anything "true" at this point is severely limited. The more atomised society becomes, the more "autistic" and unable to communicate everyone is. It seems to be a feature of modernity and I don't know if there's anything we can do about it. There's always the possibility that we'll find a new way to do things and this is just a transitional phase towards something better, but I'm not optimistic.

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