Thread: Vision Quest

hehee, this thread took an unexpected turn but it's all good

And DOGGONE it about the Mimosa. It IS the Silk tree and not a true mimosa Oh well. It is what it is

Originally Posted by Original Poster

PhilosopherStoned will belittle anything slightly related to hippy culture and act like there's nothing substantial related to any of it..

This is actually an ad hominem attack. There are so few of them that I thought I'd point it out. The reason it's ad hominem is because you tried to say I was wrong based on some personality trait that I have rather than actually addressing my argument.

It's also wrong.

I love hippy music in case you haven't noticed. What I don't like is that hippies have no respect and piss all over everything as is evidenced by their constant butchering of science, Taoism and Buddhism.
I love hippy drugs. DMT is awesome. It doesn't contain an answer to spiritual questions though. I can tell you straight up it doesn't show you how anything "really" is, it's just the same underlaying reality interpreted through different mechanisms. That's all.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

I can tell you straight up it doesn't show you how anything "really" is, it's just the same underlaying reality interpreted through different mechanisms. That's all.

For my part, I don't think I disagree with you. We do know that a person's learned biases can shape their perceptions of the world, literally and figuratively. All I'm saying is that a drug like DMT can make a person see things in a different and potentially helpful way, just as getting in a car crash can make a person see things differently.

I realize you've been told already, but I would definitely agree against using datura, especially if you are out alone in the woods. Datura causes the same anticholinergic delirium and hallucinations that diphenhydramine (benadryl) does. Usually the trip is extremely confusing, unpleasant, and you will literally see people and things that are not there. There is nothing remotely spiritual about it, if you decided to take datura or diphenhydramine, it would likely be out of curiosity and because the trip is kind of interesting. Classic psychedelics, on the other hand, are very "spiritual". They leave you feeling like you've gained some sort of insight, and all the world just makes sense, everything is just... right. It's possible to have a bad trip on classic psychedelics, but I've never had the problem and I could never envision having a bad trip. So classic psychedelics on a camping trip seem like a possibly good idea, but NEVER datura or diphenhydramine. If you did happen to do either of those you'd probably find yourself scared shitless out in the woods all alone.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

This is actually an ad hominem attack. There are so few of them that I thought I'd point it out. The reason it's ad hominem is because you tried to say I was wrong based on some personality trait that I have rather than actually addressing my argument.

It's also wrong.

I love hippy music in case you haven't noticed. What I don't like is that hippies have no respect and piss all over everything as is evidenced by their constant butchering of science, Taoism and Buddhism.
I love hippy drugs. DMT is awesome. It doesn't contain an answer to spiritual questions though. I can tell you straight up it doesn't show you how anything "really" is, it's just the same underlaying reality interpreted through different mechanisms. That's all.

I don't believe you've ever done it, or it's been so long you've forgotten it, because your description is really off-base.

Originally Posted by Original Poster

I don't believe you've ever done it, or it's been so long you've forgotten it, because your description is really off-base.

I've done it multiple times. Recently too. I can do it anytime I want because I live on Maui. Everything grows here. I know where I can go pick from a Banisteriopsis vine and I know where the Psychotria grows right next to it And I could get permission to pick it. Also, My mom owns a whole sale nursury which I grew up living/working on; my stepdad was a landscaper that gave me a dime for every plant I could ID on road trips; and my real dad is a landscaper/permaculturalist. So, unlike most dumb hippies (such as yourself) I actually know plants. Fuck, I even got training (on the North American east coast) as an herbalist. Know what plantain (a.k.a. "Whiteman's Footsteps") does? Quick, go check google. It's an antispetic and eating the seeds makes you smell bad to mosquitos.

So I know all about DMT from experience.

What I question is your spiritual maturity given the fact that you apparently believe that DMT shows you some "underlaying"reality".

@cmind. The car crash is a good analogy. Since Zhaylin is already seeing things in a different way, I don't think that she needs a car crash. If she was still a slave to biblical literalism, I might agree with you. She's not so she should take some time to settle into her new groove and then play around with that stuff if she wants to. It's really just a game though. Anything that can be done with drugs can be done better without them.

It's not that it shows you the underlying reality, but comparing the change in your perception of reality on DMT reveals the impermanence and irrational nature of this one. When you wake from a dream, you typically think "Now I'm in reality." DMT destroys your capacity to return and believe you've returned to something more real than what you experienced under its influence. This doesn't mean DMT's reality is more real than reality, but the ability to experience the world with DMT helps you to see through the veil.

It helps you understand that you're changing floors in an elevator, and the other worlds were no more fake than the one you returned to. That doesn't mean they're more real, either.

Originally Posted by Original Poster

It helps you understand that you're changing floors in an elevator, and the other worlds were no more fake than the one you returned to. That doesn't mean they're more real, either.

Ok, this is obviously false. Altered states of consciousness are not new realities.

This whole thing is characteristic of hippies pissing on Buddhism to excuse having no respect for reality.

If I kill you in this reality, what happens in the other realities?
If I don't eat in this reality, but do in my dream realities, what happens?
If I steal your sack of weed but you don't see it happening, did I really steal it in your reality or just mine? Maybe it just "disappeared" in your reality.

The Shakyamuni said to not talk about what reality is but this is often misunderstood. Unless it affects your practice, it doesn't matter what the universe and the "things" in it are made out of. But knowing what reality is is essential. Reality is the medium through which sentient beings can influence each others existence. See what Rinzai thinks of that one.

There is only one and we all live in it and we better learn to accept that.

There are no "other worlds" that DMT takes you to from any practical practice because it's just not a userful concept. It is a useful concept if you want to conflate spirituality with drug induced fantasy/sci-fi concepts which most new-agers seem want to do. It's an incredibly useful concept for pretending to escape reality but I'd be very surpised to see a serious application of the concept for something useful.

Just because this one has different rules doesn't make it any more real. It's impermanent, therefore it's not "real." All the physical laws that run it were stitched into place through convenience and one day the stitching will fall apart.

I love salvia, but it has never been a spiritual exploration drug for me. It generally makes inanimate objects seem animate while giving me the perception that I am an inanimate object. It also makes bizarre creatures, usually muppets, do crazy stuff with the nature of reality, like try to take it apart. It twists and disorganizes my basic understandings of reality, such as up, down, inside, and outside. That's most of what it does, but some of its effects transcend description. It's highly fascinating, but not really enlightening. It's the drug version of a book of Rene Magritte paintings.

I have never done DMT, but I hear it is a lot like salvia. LSD has a lot of spiritual potential, but it can give you Hell as much as it can give you Heaven. It usually won't give you either. Psilocybin mushrooms can be really trippy and make you question reality and have some major introspection. They can also make you laugh your ass off at how absurd things seem. All of those are good for philosophical quests, but not necessarily spiritual quests.

Lucid dreaming is great for spiritual quests. It is mind-expanding, fascinating, perceptually versatile, controllable, safe, and immediately escapable. Whatever you are looking for in yourself, you can look for in a lucid dream and find it. I recommend that route.

Didn't even see this thread. You still going to do this Zhaylin?

Just wanted to respond to this:

Originally Posted by Zhaylin

I repeat: DOGGONE it!! lol I now have something within my reach and it's worthless

You do not have something useless. Belladonna (I'm assuming you got a tree, from what you said. Which is Belladonna, not Datura) is a beautiful tree.
The flowers smell amazing and look incredible. It's an astoundingly alluring tree.

I almost got taken by it too a while ago hehe I was young and new nothing. I just happened upon it at the right time and my auntie told me that apparently some lady had one outside her window and the breeze blowing in the scent made her hallucinate.
I took some and smoked a tiny bit of flower petal and just got scared and stopped.

It's a powerful plant, but that's what makes it so interesting.

Probably don't use it, but just plant it in the garden.

Also you three talking about this is pretty hilarious to read.
Especially because at least 2 of the things I picked up on were just all of you disagreeing due to word choice.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I have never done DMT, but I hear it is a lot like salvia

You got lied to

Originally Posted by Original Poster

You got lied to

I got most of my information from Terence McKenna. My understanding is that they both have the seeing crazy creatures element in common. I once saw them constantly morphing from an area of multi-dimensional reality. Also, both drugs turn a person's common understandings of the basic dimensional properties of reality on their heads. Beyond that, I don't know what they have in common.

If you've never done DMT it's far more difficult to point out how different they are, the only describable difference is that DMT leaves you with an incredible feeling of peace for the rest of the day while salvia has a jarring comedown that can often leave you feeling shaken and anti-social.

Both gave me a feeling of deja vu which created in me the belief that I was not exploring some strange realty but returning to somewhere I've been before and had forgotten about. It may just be a random side-effect of the chemical make-up of them, and I figured this about salvia for a long period of time until I tried DMT and realized there was so much more going on in the mind/universe than I even thought possible.

Originally Posted by Original Poster

Both gave me a feeling of deja vu which created in me the belief that I was not exploring some strange realty but returning to somewhere I've been before and had forgotten about. It may just be a random side-effect of the chemical make-up of them, and I figured this about salvia for a long period of time until I tried DMT and realized there was so much more going on in the mind/universe than I even thought possible.

Probably so. I've gotten a weak feeling of returning to my "original mindstate" (best way I can describe it) on shrooms, like I was the "real me" again and the me I was before was... some how not. On acid I got the feeling of deja vu so strongly that what I was experiencing I thought I had already experienced before, like I was in a time loop or something. It was like I was simultaneously creating memories of what I was experiencing and remembering them, all the while still experiencing the... experience. I felt as though I could and was predicting everything that was about to happen next.

However, I realize this was an effect of the drug. There is no reason to believe I was stuck in a time loop or predicting the future, just like there is no reason to believe that the "reality" or "universe" you went to when you took DMT or salvia is in anyway real or that you had already been there before.

Of course it's real, it's all real.

Maybe the acid just tricked you into seeing the universe a different way than before. No reason to apply such literal ascriptions like predicting the future and being stuck in a time-loop. You perception changed, but your perception was not wrong.

Originally Posted by Original Poster

Of course it's real, it's all real.

Maybe the acid just tricked you into seeing the universe a different way than before. No reason to apply such literal ascriptions like predicting the future and being stuck in a time-loop. You perception changed, but your perception was not wrong.

If I felt like 4 hours had past and only 4 minutes had, does that mean 4 hours actually passed? It seemed like it to my brain, but when I used a reality based time measurement tool (a clock), I was proven to be experiencing the passage of time falsely with respect to reality. Let's say, for the sake of argument I was reading the clock wrong or the specific clock I was using was wrong--I also had other, sober, people there that could confirm what time it really was. Therefore, my perception was wrong.

How about we drug Original Poster into a totally unconscious coma and rape him. When he wakes up, we can reassure him that the rape never happened because he doesn't remember it. After all, perception is reality, right?

My view, on the other hand, is that all human beings experience physical reality through psychosocial filters that they learned over the course of their life. No one experiences true reality, but we all experience useful approximations of reality (except schizos). DMT can shock the mind and temporarily erase some of the filters, giving a different approximation of reality, and most likely a closer one (after the trip, not during). So my experiences with psychedelics have shown me that there's exactly one real reality, and we all try to interact with it as best we can.

I suppose you could technically say all of our perceptions of reality are wrong because, although to a degree the perceptions can be accurate, they can never be very precise (while still maintaining a high degree of accuracy, of course). However, for all intents and purposes, the accuracy and preciseness with which the healthy and sober human mind is capable of is more than useful enough for communication purposes. It's pretty silly to try and argue that all we perceive is real because no one experiences an objective reality because to do so means you completely missed the point and meaning of the words "real" and "reality". There would be no need for distinction if reality were the same thing as one's perception of reality.

Originally Posted by tommo

Also you three talking about this is pretty hilarious to read.
Especially because at least 2 of the things I picked up on were just all of you disagreeing due to word choice.

I'd like to know what those two things are.

Originally Posted by snoop

I suppose you could technically say all of our perceptions of reality are wrong because, although to a degree the perceptions can be accurate, they can never be very precise (while still maintaining a high degree of accuracy, of course). However, for all intents and purposes, the accuracy and preciseness with which the healthy and sober human mind is capable of is more than useful enough for communication purposes. It's pretty silly to try and argue that all we perceive is real because no one experiences an objective reality because to do so means you completely missed the point and meaning of the words "real" and "reality". There would be no need for distinction if reality were the same thing as one's perception of reality.

English. It no make communicate good complex ideas.

Originally Posted by snoop

If I felt like 4 hours had past and only 4 minutes had, does that mean 4 hours actually passed? It seemed like it to my brain, but when I used a reality based time measurement tool (a clock), I was proven to be experiencing the passage of time falsely with respect to reality. Let's say, for the sake of argument I was reading the clock wrong or the specific clock I was using was wrong--I also had other, sober, people there that could confirm what time it really was. Therefore, my perception was wrong.

Clock time is based on measurements. Measurements do not always agree with perception, just because I see something 10 feet tall from 500 yards away doesn't mean it's only a centimeter tall. However, if a foot long measuring stick were compared next to him, in a good relative position, it would appear to be 1/10th of a centimeter tall. I am still able to measure, at this point my perception would ruin nothing more than my ability to communicate to appropriate measurements as I estimate them. It would not actually make them wrong. What we're talking about relativity, which brings me to my next response.

Originally Posted by cmind

How about we drug Original Poster into a totally unconscious coma and rape him. When he wakes up, we can reassure him that the rape never happened because he doesn't remember it. After all, perception is reality, right?

My view, on the other hand, is that all human beings experience physical reality through psychosocial filters that they learned over the course of their life. No one experiences true reality, but we all experience useful approximations of reality (except schizos). DMT can shock the mind and temporarily erase some of the filters, giving a different approximation of reality, and most likely a closer one (after the trip, not during). So my experiences with psychedelics have shown me that there's exactly one real reality, and we all try to interact with it as best we can.

The problem is if you believe that the objective reality is out of reach from the subjective mind, then you can't make a statement like that schizos don't experience a useful approximation of reality. You can't know what a useful approximation of reality is. It may be absolutely nothing like what you believe objective reality really is. What you're looking for is not a useful approximation of objective reality, you're simply looking for useful information to increase the probability of making a beneficial decision. Objective reality plays no part, except that the pursuit of objective reality tends to deliver more useful information.

Originally Posted by snoop

I suppose you could technically say all of our perceptions of reality are wrong because, although to a degree the perceptions can be accurate, they can never be very precise (while still maintaining a high degree of accuracy, of course). However, for all intents and purposes, the accuracy and preciseness with which the healthy and sober human mind is capable of is more than useful enough for communication purposes. It's pretty silly to try and argue that all we perceive is real because no one experiences an objective reality because to do so means you completely missed the point and meaning of the words "real" and "reality". There would be no need for distinction if reality were the same thing as one's perception of reality.

I think you're adding false pretenses to reality. What I gained through my experiences with DMT was nothing but useful and has positively shifted the way I see the world to such an extent I cannot possibly relate to someone who has not undergone the same experience. This is true for all my "trips" and all my experiences with dreaming, as well. As they say, Art lies in order to reveal the truth. There is sometimes more truth to a hallucination than to sober vision.

And speaking purely from my own logical conclusion, everything that passes through your perception is real, because there's nothing more real to compare it to. The only thing you could possibly claim to be "objective reality" is the gestalt of all perceptions in all of existence. Anything less is a deceit. We know nothing more than what our brains can tell us about the world, and if we believe there is nothing more to know except what our brains are telling us, then we are adding a pretense to reality that makes my statement incorrect. But I do not agree with that pretense. I do not believe reality needs to by synonymous with truth, and words like real and fake and true and false have lost their validity in my line of thinking. I can only use them now when I am trying to communicate effectively with someone who still thinks along those parameters.

Originally Posted by Original Poster

I do not believe reality needs to by synonymous with truth, and words like real and fake and true and false have lost their validity in my line of thinking. I can only use them now when I am trying to communicate effectively with someone who still thinks along those parameters.

How nice of you to condescend to our level.