Originally Posted by JJFrank
Al,
Its good to hear from you here. You seem fairly aware of the potential that your experiences may be pure silliness, and still enamored with the possibility that you (we) may be god.
While I do not deny this, I do find enamored to be an ill-connotation in relation to what we are talking about. I understand what you mean, however; the sentiment is true. Again - admittedly - at the beginning, I was terrified that I was going nuts and over time, absolutely, I was obsessive in figuring out the context of my experience. I cannot stress enough that I view my experiences as Jungian "psychotic" breaks; experiences that were had due to great stresses put upon the psyche. In light of this, I offer what I say with a grain of crack, so to speak.
You seem to have looked at much literature on the subject. Have you looked into the possibility that what you love about your drug experiences is similar to what drug addicts love about getting high?
Absolutely not. The experiences are terrifying and not in a good way (at least at the beginning; the consummation of the experience is one of beauty, but the trek up that pyramid is not for the timid). Low-dose experiences are very joyous and those experiences I definitely abused recreationally. It was the high-dose sessions, the sessions that I was going big or going home, that I had these ego-death experiences and every single time they were terrifying. The death of the ego during a high-dose DMT trip occurs in under 15 seconds. Let me repeat that: under 15 seconds. In that time span, from exhalation to zenith, your whole psyche "cleans house" in preparation for the death-state. My heart rate went through the ceiling and pressure built up in my head alarmingly. The mind is absolutely convinced that it is dying; the "stress" exerted upon the CNS causes all sorts of endogenous production of fight/flight neurotransmitters. I didn't crave the experience; the experience was terrifying. In fact, I trembled with fear before almost every high-dose session; often I had to meditate in silence, focusing on my breathing just to make the body tremors stop. I never believed in Kundalini until I felt this "energy" wiggling its way up my spine. I returned to the experience, time and again, because I felt that I was learning something experiential that I couldn't possibly learn from any book.
I personally believe that it is likely that we are god, that god is simply the totality of all existence, and being part of that totality we are all one, temporarily experiencing separation consciousness. I don't get giddy about that perspective because it doesn't change my day to day life. Its just an idea layered over everyday existence.
It changed my life. As an integrated concept, it has proven transformative in the way that I look at the world. I was always a sensitive person, but now I feel that I can appreciate perspective. I am not going to wax poetic too heavily on this, but this is what shamanism is all about. Isolating yourself from society to have experiences that take you beyond society, beyond the world even, and then returning to your niche with your new frame of reference and acting upon it accordingly. The experience forever altered the way I feel about the world; cause and effect, karma, reciprocation, etc. Maybe I was just lacking to begin with? That is why I sought the experience anyway; the world didn't make any sense to me.
It would seem to me that theorizing is only useful if it shows a better way to live. Lofty theories about quantum entanglement to me just seem like mental-eroticism. For example, if we really are all god, then why can't you bring unlimited wealth to yourself? Surely that would be a useful practical application that would be simple enough for a god-aware person at one with all. Think of all the good you could do for others in the world.
I do believe that a new way of living can be derived from this understanding, which Nietzsche posits as "The Greatest Weight." I believe that people are prone to selfishness and insanity when their frame of reference is one of a "one and done, winner-take-all" mentality, which I feel most people harbor. Lofty theories are fun to ponder; their philosophical implications provide extended frames of reference upon which you can base your decisions and actions. That, to me, is the most important thing about all of this; having the widest frame of reference possible, so that you can bestow yourself with the illusion of free-will. All kidding aside: We cannot bring unlimited wealth upon ourselves because, as God, we "agreed" to the boundary conditions of the incarnation. We are subject to the will of all other subjective iterations of the Godhead, and as such, you cannot create miracles, i.e., you cannot accumulate great wealth without playing the game with the rest of the world (all actions are interrelated and you cannot manipulate spacetime/causality because of your merely limited consciousness). We are bound to the conditions of our existence and that is why we did it: only in three dimensions of space and one of time could we exist bodily, with the restrictions imposed upon us by biology and physics. That is what makes existence special. Arguably, if "God" is a hyperdimensional being, outside of time, then I would assume it would jump at the chance of the incarnation; to live, to die, to have sex, to eat, etc. God - The Universe - only experiences thru us and that being so, we can understand that we are the Universe, but we cannot act on this understanding as if we are the Universe as a totality, being the tiny iteration that we are.
I read that the chemicals in drugs do not create our experience of being high, but instead they only induce the body to release the natural chemicals that are already part of our complex neural anatomy. If this is true, then you should be able to recreate the high experience directly, without drugs. Once you learn to do that, you should be able to teach others to do it. That would be useful application.
To my perspective, I am glad you have had the experience that you had. It sounds like it was fun. I would like to hear what you have done with it that makes it different from the experience of any other stoner.
JJ
It is a bit of both: drugs act on receptor sites and they also trigger endogenous production of neurotransmitters. This is NOT a "high" however, but I'm glad you brought this up, because I have had this experience without drugs. I have vasovagal syncope and have lost consciousness several times whilst standing. Every one of these experiences was just like my DMT NDEs: My body, in being convinced that it was dying, released endogenous neurotransmitters that allowed me to have "mystical experiences" during my time being "out." I will include this eventually in my paper to help further my point, but I haven't gotten around to it. Again, the experiences were not had in a "fun" atmosphere; they were very serious and often frightening.
I used my experiences to transform my way of looking at the world. It has changed the music I write and the way that I treat others. I admit to being a stoner in the past, but I'm not just beating off in the existential corner; I've been using my experiences to fight depression and to find a frame of reference in the world. If I sound defensive, I assure you I am not; I just took my experimentation much more seriously than you think. Each time I went for a high-dose, it was like preparing for a space shuttle launch. Everything had to be right. Perhaps I am crazy.
derp
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