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Spirituality?
    #6899887 -

I don't understand how hallucinogens can be connected with spirituality.

Granted, many specifics concerning the science of hallucinogens have not been concluded, we can reasonably believe that the reason for a trip is science... chemical reactions in the brain. Whether it be THC molecules hookin' up with Seretonin receptors or what-not... its just science.

It's very-very difficult chemistry and biology that we, as a human race at our present knowledge, cannot always understand.

For those of you that have a spiritual belief with psychedelics, why? How do you justify that 'god' speaks to you.

Sorry if I'm being biased, I admit that I am. I do not believe psychedelics are connected with any kind of higher-power, I believe it's simply chemistry. I'm curious as to how other people with spiritual practices/beliefs can defend these ideas.

Honestly, I'm not critizing, I'm trying to understand.

Thanks in advance for your understanding of my question and your responses.


--------------------
YIPPIE!

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6899912 -

I study neurobiology and am very interested in the science behind hallucinogens, work in a molecular biology laboratory, am an atheist, and have had spiritual experiences on psychedelics. Spirituality does not entail religiosity or belief that there isn't some objective reality. Granted, many people here obviously believe they have had revelations of something "beyond" reality or some such thing, but spirituality does not entail those types of things in itself.

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6899923 -

You're kind of all over the place with this one. Those who view usage of psychadelics in a spiritual context are likely viewing all of life's experiences in such a context. The experience itself is likely conducive to a spiritual perspective of the experience due to the nature of the experience - it typically is quite the altered, unique experience in contrast to one's usual state.

Regarding it all being "chemistry", all phenomenon can be viewed through such a lens. Its all just atomic processes, isn't it? Such a reduction down is entirely irrelevant in terms of one's experience. This is a question of experience, after all.


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: Zaprabe]
    #6899949 -

Saprobe said:
Spirituality does not entail religiosity or belief that there isn't some objective reality. Granted, many people here obviously believe they have had revelations of something "beyond" reality or some such thing, but spirituality does not entail those types of things in itself.


:thumbup:


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs
:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6899981 -

You seem to be arguing from the viewpoint of the primacy of matter. I see this view as illusory. I believe in the primacy of consciousness. That is, I believe that energy, manifesting as consciousness, is the primary substance of reality. Chemicals are a byproduct of that energy, not the cause of it. Unfortunately, chemistry and biology are still stuck in the Newtonian paradigm, failing to incorporate the ideas of quantum physics and string theory into their discipline.

Anyway, as for how psychedelics relate to spirituality, psychedelics bring forth parts of the mind not normally accessed in our normal state. This includes the subconscious, but also the collective mind known as the superconscious. At the source of this collective mind is the Ground of Being, sometimes called the Godhead. It expresses itself through archetypes in our subconscious, making itself known in forms we can understand.


--------------------

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: Silversoul]
    #6900004 -

Silversoul said:
You seem to be arguing from the viewpoint of the primacy of matter.  I see this view as illusory.  I believe in the primacy of consciousness.  That is, I believe that energy, manifesting as consciousness, is the primary substance of reality. 


:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :mushroom2: :heartpump: :levitate:


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6900046 -

AnarchoTrip said:
For those of you that have a spiritual belief with psychedelics, why? How do you justify that 'god' speaks to you.





Pardon my potential rambling I am a bit hmm tipsy.. I don't think that God speaks to me per say through psychedelics...just that God, (in the myriad of forms that people perceive that term) speaks.

I feel with psychedelics and frankly with compassion and with maybe a sunrise or a cool breeze that I have connected to something that is always broadcasting that I have just tuned into.

The trick is to stay tuned in.

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6900442 -

Well first of all let me start by saying that it is your choice whether you make this whole thing spiritual or not. That being said,
I'm going to continue with an example:

Let's say you're taking a walk in the park on a spring sunny day, blossoming trees and flowers all over. You can feel the smell of the flowers bathing in the sun rays and say yeah... the smell comes from the chemical structure of the plant which has a reaction on the warm sun and the trees are all blossoming because it's spring and that's what happens when it's spring, it's a well-known process.  :lecture:
Or you could still be aware of the scientific explanation of the phenomenons that happen during spring and in the same time feel free to actually enjoy the smell of the flowers, feel happy for the shining Sun and AWE at the blossoming trees. All these actions will put a huge smile on your face and give you a warm sensation which will make you feel and act like a better person, thing which some chose to name it spiritual experience. :levitate:

In both situations it is always you the one who decides how to view things. Decisions which in extent will create a certain feeling a certain emotion or lack of emotion. And when you are able to know, to come to the conclusion that you have a multitude of of options from which you can choose is want I call awareness. :earth:

We're living our lives as someone who's observing our memories, feelings and thoughts in a similar manner as we're watching a movie or watching cars go by. We can't really call this state, this faculty as being "I/me" simply because it's beyond comprehension (rational comprehension).:bongload:
It's sort of like trying to look in our own eyes in a room where we don't have a mirror. :crazyeyes:

Consciousness, awareness is perceiving reality as a whole, thing that only can happen in a transcendental manner.
So how can science find a formula, am explanation for spiritual experiences, how can science really prove the existence of awareness since science in only a past of the whole? :mushroom2:


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs
:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #6900702 -

because so many experience multilayered mentation often amounting to visions and epiphanies;
and because so many experience from slight disorientation to a total break from habituated reflexes which amounts to detatchment to puny ego,
a natural thing to do is to refer to other instances in our culture where such things arise.
these are:
a.) results of spiritual devotion.
b.) results of asceticism
c.) results of emotional stress and social disruption and healing
d.) nightly dreaming
e.) substance initiated mental states

all these things are interconnected by virtue of change of mental state, particularly by the shift to more layered states with greater pause, or refrain from knee-jerk reaction.

practicing restraint from knee jerk reactions is what a tripper learns to do to improve the quality of experience.


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: Silversoul]
    #6900777 -

Silversoul said:
You seem to be arguing from the viewpoint of the primacy of matter.  I see this view as illusory.  I believe in the primacy of consciousness.  That is, I believe that energy, manifesting as consciousness, is the primary substance of reality. 



:thumbup: :psychsplit: :thumbup:


--------------------
γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6900827 -

> For those of you that have a spiritual belief with psychedelics, why? How do you justify that 'god' speaks to you.

For me, psychedelics are a tool, just like meditation is a tool. When I consume something, such as LSD, I find that my mind becomes very focused. I can literally become lost within myself. When this occurs, I am able to experience in ways that I never knew existed. The rational part of me looks back and thinks perhaps it was just the drug, but the side of me that remembers the feeling of the experience isn't so certain. Either way, it shows how closed my mind can become.


--------------------
Just another spore in the wind.

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: Seuss]
    #6901053 -

"god" is "speaking" to us always. (omnipresence) that makes everything a spiritual expirience. and the psychedelic expirience can be used as an alternate perception of the same subject. the subject being god/reality/the whole of creation, and our relationship to this phenomenon. (or rather, our state of being as the phenomenon)

thats my trip, and thats why tripping is a communion with god for me.
im intersted in pure human expirience. that is all i have, really. as far as i know, that is all there is.

Edited by Archemetis (05/11/07 08:23 AM)

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6901284 -

Resident.
Jantsch (1980) defines consciousness as the degree of autonomy a system gains in the dynamic relations with its environment; thereby even the simplest chemical dissipative structure can be said to possess “a primitive form of consciousness” (Jantsch 1980: 40). The image of the Magician, as a sign of autopoiesis, represents such a trace of consciousness embedded in the material universe, in agreement with Peirce’s asserting that mind in not a sole property of us, conscious and evolved human beings, but pervades the natural world in various degrees. Autopoiesis affirms the living systems as essence-less and the world as open-ended albeit not predicated solely on the interference of a subjective human intervention imposed from without. World of duality?

Maybe… The memories got old. Or they are the prolog… or the prelude of mating dances and harmonic displays. They are revisited in the pathways of consciousness. From the box of pandora they flee. The little cube vibrates and the bosons run free. The planetary collective is available to anyone who knows how to remember. The inspiring power is left in the images and symbols by the ancients. “If you know an angel’s name you can call him by it”…”You can call up the power of the pagan gods if you can remember their forms”… “If you wear the mask of Horus you will speak with the voice of Horus” Life is a ritual; the rise and fall of energies. The psychic forces cycles clockwise/anticlockwise around the centers of the four functions sensing; intuition, thinking, and feeling.


--------------------
Wave.
'And for this reason repentance (metanoia) is an elevating means. For he who feels impatience with the circunstances in which he finds himself, devises means of escape.
  Now the chief thing in purification is the will. For then both deeds and words lend a helping hand. But, when the will is absent, the whole purificatory discipline of initiation is...'

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #6903592 -

MushroomTrip said:
Let's say you're taking a walk in the park on a spring sunny day, blossoming trees and flowers all over. You can feel the smell of the flowers bathing in the sun rays and say yeah... the smell comes from the chemical structure of the plant which has a reaction on the warm sun and the trees are all blossoming because it's spring and that's what happens when it's spring, it's a well-known process.  :lecture:
Or you could still be aware of the scientific explanation of the phenomenons that happen during spring and in the same time feel free to actually enjoy the smell of the flowers, feel happy for the shining Sun and AWE at the blossoming trees. All these actions will put a huge smile on your face and give you a warm sensation which will make you feel and act like a better person, thing which some chose to name it spiritual experience. :levitate:


I understand what your anaology is trying to say, but I disagree. The happy feelings that we get from smelling the pretty flowers and what-not (all caused by chemical reactions) are simply chemical reactions. No matter how 'aware' one were to get, all of the processes to reaching this 'aware' state are chemical reactions... and even the feeling of awareness is a chemical reaction.

I dont want to demote psychedelics to simply algrothims and deductive logic, but the more I realistically look into things, the more physical they become... chemically, anatomically, naturally. Also, what's the problem in reducing everything to simple chemistry and science? Just because everything can be reduced to such a primitive logic doesn't make it any less extraordinary-- does it?

How can we be 'communicating' or 'connecting' to a 'god' figure when psychedelics simply work off of our minds? It's like a dream when sleeping; Does 'god' speak to you when you're dreaming? Or is it random (or as far as we can understand, random) electrical impulses coming from our brain? My money's on chemistry.

I suppose one could take a psychedelic experience as 'spiritual' but that's only playing off of the game-roles we've, in our own mind and consciousness, assigned to a 'god' figure.

Obviously I'm just rambling and I still don't understand.

Thanks for responding and reading.


--------------------
YIPPIE!

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6903741 -

AnarchoTrip said:
I understand what your anaology is trying to say, but I disagree. The happy feelings that we get from smelling the pretty flowers and what-not (all caused by chemical reactions) are simply chemical reactions. No matter how 'aware' one were to get, all of the processes to reaching this 'aware' state are chemical reactions... and even the feeling of awareness is a chemical reaction.


Yeah? And? So? What? :smirk:

Quote:
I dont want to demote psychedelics to simply algrothims and deductive logic, but the more I realistically look into things, the more physical they become... chemically, anatomically, naturally. Also, what's the problem in reducing everything to simple chemistry and science? Just because everything can be reduced to such a primitive logic doesn't make it any less extraordinary-- does it?


Of course it doesn't. The fraction 8/16 might reduce down to 1/2 yet it is still 8/16. What's your point?

Quote:
How can we be 'communicating' or 'connecting' to a 'god' figure when psychedelics simply work off of our minds?


How could we be communicating with other human beings? How could we be experiencing reality if it is simply sensory information "working off of our minds"? What is your question getting at? :confused:

Quote:
It's like a dream when sleeping; Does 'god' speak to you when you're dreaming? Or is it random (or as far as we can understand, random) electrical impulses coming from our brain? My money's on chemistry.


If your money is on chemistry than you haven't even placed a bet. :smirk: That's like speculating that there is no actual meaning implied by the impression of words. One could see the word "food" and observe the subsequent reaction when that word is produced and assume it is simply an automatic, chemistry-style reaction. Is there actual meaning and experience? :strokebeard: Please. :smirk:

Quote:
I suppose one could take a psychedelic experience as 'spiritual' but that's only playing off of the game-roles we've, in our own mind and consciousness, assigned to a 'god' figure.


I don't remember anyone mentioning "g*d" but you, I thought we were talking about spirituality? I think you have this very particular conception of what you are speaking of and you are attempting to review what others like MT have said through that conception, when what is being proposed by others is entirely within its own league.

Quote:
Obviously I'm just rambling and I still don't understand.


Clearly. :tongue:


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6903953 -

Quote:
The happy feelings that we get from smelling the pretty flowers and what-not (all caused by chemical reactions) are simply chemical reactions. No matter how 'aware' one were to get, all of the processes to reaching this 'aware' state are chemical reactions... and even the feeling of awareness is a chemical reaction.


It is pointless to dispute that the mode of communication utilized by the human brain is electro-chemical. This can be measured, tested, proven, empirically shown.

Similarly, the mode of communication we are currently utilizing is electronic, with a visual output on our respective monitors. Does this mean that I do not exist? Am I simply 0000110101010101010? That is, after all, the only proof you have of my existence. If you decided to run some tests, you could search my past posts & show that I have electronically displayed my 001010101010 here for two years. That must be all that there is to me.

I'm not implying that there are two alternatives: chemicals or God. My point is that the obvious is not necessarily the only.

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6904639 -

Quote:
I understand what your anaology is trying to say, but I disagree. The happy feelings that we get from smelling the pretty flowers and what-not (all caused by chemical reactions) are simply chemical reactions. No matter how 'aware' one were to get, all of the processes to reaching this 'aware' state are chemical reactions... and even the feeling of awareness is a chemical reaction.


Please re-read with more caution my example. It was extremely plastic and I stated that if one chooses to stop his thought only at the chemical reactions one could be stumbled by feeling joy (which yes, results into a chemical reaction in ones brain but a conscious reaction)... meaning that one can chose whether that chemical reaction will take place in his brain or not. That what which gives one the opportunity to chose is called awareness, directed informed and pure energy which makes the atoms in motion.

Quote:
I dont want to demote psychedelics to simply algrothims and deductive logic, but the more I realistically look into things, the more physical they become... chemically, anatomically, naturally. Also, what's the problem in reducing everything to simple chemistry and science? Just because everything can be reduced to such a primitive logic doesn't make it any less extraordinary-- does it?


There is no "problem" :smirk:
It's just the fact that reducing is... well... reducing. What's then the problem with reducing a movie just to the image? You miss the discussions, the soundtrack, and whatever else is there which leaves one with an incomplete understanding upon the what the movie wanted to transmit. Besides that, no problem at all  :hehehe:

Quote:
How can we be 'communicating' or 'connecting' to a 'god' figure when psychedelics simply work off of our minds? It's like a dream when sleeping; Does 'god' speak to you when you're dreaming? Or is it random (or as far as we can understand, random) electrical impulses coming from our brain? My money's on chemistry.


My oh my :rolleyes:
Where in the world did I mention God? Where did I mention any kind of religion? In my book religion is the antonym of spirituality. So your negation completes my negation and double negation is affirmation  :uptosomething: . So you just agreed with my point.  :biggrin:


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs
:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:

Edited by MushroomTrip (05/12/07 09:13 AM)

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6905332 -

AnarchoTrip said:
How do you justify that 'god' speaks to you.



My relationship with my "god" needs no justification.
Some things you just know, without any striving.

M


--------------------
Wave upon wave of demented avengers marched cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: AnarchoTrip]
    #6905602 -

Think of the mind as a bell or tuning fork. When you still your own personal sounds and disturbances, your mind begins to resonate with the harmonious vibrations of reality. You begin to see, hear, and feel the unobstructed happiness underneath your ego, which is a defense mechanism created by taking things too personally.

Mushrooms for me, long ago, showed me that this state of mind is possible by forcefully removing layers of junk that I had accumulated through many years of self-defense.


--------------------
As the life of a candle,
my wick will burn out.
But, the fire of my mind
shall beam into infinite.

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Re: Spirituality? [Re: psyka]
    #6907215 -

Ask yourself what is god? what is religion? what is spirituality? What is science? Separte each item and try to define them alone(maybe while tripping:mushroom2::eek:). It seems your preconcieved notions of these things may be getting in the way a little. But hey "everything is just science" right? True it is, but thought/consciousness/free will isn't and that is the realm we are talking about here, the realm of spirituality. But if you think about it its all the same anyway...

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