skystone said:

Reading all that, I just had another thought.
I don't know if this is logical or not, but
since psychadelics and meditation/NDE (and other "real" ways)
can lead you to similar or same experiences/thoughts/conclusions-about-universe , then both of those ways are either false or genuine.
It would be too much of a coincedence that one of them is
somehow "real" and other is just a mindless delusion.
So either all those ways are real, or all of those ways are delusions.

---

Quote:

One point of view would be that only meditation and death is a genuine way to enlightenment and that drugs only cause hallucinations
out of whatever reason. The other point of view would be that
psychadelics really cause a state of consciousness similar to that
in meditation or death.

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This is something I was pondering about for quite a while, Skystone. Do psychedelics really open doors of perception through which we can get access to other, deeper realities.

After my first and second shroom trip I was blown away (in a positive way). After the third and fourth trip I started to have some serious doubts about whether psychedic trip opens doors of another reality or just distorts this reality (i.e. messes up the brain). Those latter trips were not bad in any way, but I didn't really grasp the 'meaning' so to speak.

After my two recent shroom trips, however, I concluded that it is much more probable that psychedelics do indeed open one's mind to different realities which really exist, that they do not produce merely a twisted form of ordinary reality.

For this I have two definite proofs. Before I took mushrooms, my visualisation skills were mediocre if not below average. E.g. When I listened to music I was able to imagine some visualisations, but they were all pretty bland.

After several shroom trips, however, my visualisation skills have gone from level 2 to level 2000. Now even when I'm not shroomed I can think of so complex images in motion that had been totally out of my reach before taking psychedelics. And these images are not superficial kaleidoscopes, they are like... like my imagination broke up all the chains and gone totally WILD in a positive way of the word. WOW! What a difference. Give me any song and I'll make the most perfect video for that song. No, not only one, but hundreds of them. And let somebody tell me that psychedelics don't enhance artistic expression.

The other thing that happened to me was that while bemushroomed I was able to compose and literally hear the most amazing music (in total silence). I was kind of suspicious about that at first. I thought I was just hallucinating, my brain simply repeating some tunes that I had heard before. I managed to record some of the tunes after the trip, and lo and behold - they were not copied from someone else's work, I really invented them myself.

The richness of imagery and soundscapes is so utterly convincing and complex that I am quite sure it is not a product of a hallucination or a disordered mind. I'm now much more inclined to think that this is in fact the result of insight into deeper realities that had always existed in my mind but of which I was unaware before. 


However, psychedelics open these doors only for a short period of time. All my life I haven't been trained in the fields of visual expression and music, so although I can visualise pictures and hear music much much better than before, I still lack technical skills to manifest and materialize them.


I know all this might sound pretty irrelevant to your question, but for me it was the most striking changes psychedelics produced, and I liken them to being more aware of my abilites (which is a first step towards enlightment, I think).


The only thing that worries me is that after these last two trips I became very depressed and in some sort of a limbo. I never felt so negative in all my life. Who knows why's that. Perhaps a phase?