billyjerome

Bear with me on this thread because I am only recently exploring this realm, pun intended.

I have always been a fan of psychedelic drugs, the using part of course, and thoroughly enjoyed the effects and knowledge gained from trips. This is all gravy and such but what about when you want to explore your conscience on your own time? What if there are zero mushrooms or acid in reach or you're just plain broke? Or the fact that you don't want to burn out!? From your adventures, there is something that has stuck with you, something that is real in relation to what you were thinking and contemplating.

I did some reading on the following topics...

• meditation
• isolation tanks
• ghosts
• alternate sciences

Similar topics like those. I stumbled upon ways to accomplish the desired state of mind. In a round-about way, they are all forms of meditation. But the term 'astral projection' really stood out for me. I have yet to actually practice these methods but reading about them has been enough to keep the faith.

Opinions? Questions? Comments? Let's hear 'em.

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Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Music

I don't do psychedelics, or drugs of any kind, and freely enjoy it on a spiritual level.

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Al Pacino = God

Freebase Dali

I wouldn't consider being under the influence of psychedelics as a "higher" level of being. I've had my share of them, and at first, sure that's what it seems like... but after a while a person [should] realize that the drug isn't improving much, and you're still a slave to your own hardwired brain, which dictates your perceptions while you're under the influence of something that practically just stomps through your conscious mind and pisses on your sense of reality. Some may argue that it's necessary, but I don't think so.
I think that if you're setting out to gain some sort of worthwhile enlightenment or ascendancy, you should be doing it from within your own skull. You're better off starting with your sense of self and trying to improve on that, rather than moving it out of the way simply for something different, and calling it "better".

If you're trying to break down personal preconceived notions, or finding inner truth or what have you, you need to accept the fact that you're fallible and let go of the need to rely on your own ego as a checksum of what is correct and incorrect. That doesn't even take meditation. Just a will.
But if you're simply trying to induce an altered state of mind, then you're probably better off sticking with drugs.

billyjerome

I really do believe that the altered state of mind from psychedelics is just a sampling of what is the root of our mental beings, which is the root of this, everything. Why is this day-to-day reality the only reality? I have been having out-of-body experiences since my childhood, through dreams, and random, surreal moments while conscience. My experiences on drugs and off are too convincing to ignore the idea of another plane of existence other than the here and now.

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Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Well, by those standards skitzophrenics are on the highest level of being.

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Al Pacino = God

Freebase Dali

What makes you so sure that all this is evidence of a higher plane of existence, rather than an unwitting perspective of a physiological effect? What makes you so sure that our perception of reality isn't simply a physiological effect? Other animals on this planet, I assume, don't seek enlightenment and ascension from their plane of existence... so could it be possible that the reason many of us do can be attributed to nothing more than a complex fabric of human intelligence and emotion?
And would that fabric be evidence of anything more than the ability to feel and imagine?

cardboard adolescent

I met an enlightened dog once. Though you're probably right, I don't think it ever consciously sought enlightenment. That just gets in the way, anyway.

Scarlett O'Hara

That's awesome.

As far as the topic goes, I believe you can reach a higher level of being. But I'm biased because I am Christian.

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Guybrush

A problem with your drug induced subjective reality is of course that you're the only one occupying it. You're the only one it has importance to. If you delve into that with heart and soul, are you really opening yourself or are you closing yourself off? Is it practical to focus on experiences only you experience?


You ask for comments about ghosts and alternative sciences and so on. I believe anything which is objectively real in our world can be measured if you find the right tool. What you can't trust is people because we're not rational beings and our perception of reality is at best some vague approach. We're wired for finding and seeing patterns even when there is none. We can experience a range of profound placebo effects from eating small sugar pills when we're in the right frame of mind and we're highly susceptible to suggestion, from others as well as ourselves. People invent their own reality and then they lie about the one we percieve as objective. A measuring tape, on the other hand, doesn't lie.

So, I believe most of alternative medicine, ghosts, visits by angels and so on are merely the products of wishful thinking, placebos, suggestion or even mental disease. I believe if people were as cold and calculating as robots, these things wouldn't work or exist. But, if/when these things are properly measured and tested by something else than the people who experience them, I'll be a believer.


Angels is becoming big business in the world (people make a fortune on it now on conferences, books, healing and so on) and I just read an article on that. One of these angel guys who's been speaking with the archangel Gabriel or something every day the last 30 years says the angel appeared to him 30 years ago when he became a believer. Later in the interview, he said that he doesn't really see the angels, rather they're a force (mood or atmosphere) or a smell or a feeling that someone's watching you. I experience these things too, yet I'd never interpret them as angels visiting me. And why angels? If he's gonna "fantasize" about it, how does he know it's not ghosts? What creates his angels is a strong willingness to interpret those things that way. Someone else might feel a ghost. If I experience a gust of wind, the important thing I know about that is that it was a gust of wind and so that's how I try to relate to it. I don't have a strong willingness to interpret it as f.ex a haunting - or at least I try my best not to.

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Something Completely Different