A presenter on TV said “ it felt like my soul was taken away” after smoking weed on a TV show. It was then showed that weed shuts down or lowers the function of, some of our neurons. Does it not stand to reason that where the consciousness is being shut out, it is being shut out from causal influences of the everyday world. Is not the experience of being stoned or in meditation, one where the mind is taken away from everyday tasks, and into a more internal mental field of thinking ~ more visualising.
His ‘soul’ i purport [noun] is being more influenced by the world, than his ‘soul’ when it is placed on the subjective external to ones drives. That because the essential nature of consciousness is the subjective observer, this meta [or upper as i think of it] state of being is truer to our real individual nature.
Anything [meditation, contemplation, drugs etc], that externalises your conscious position to a further degree [from worldly influences], by reason will manifest an increase to a greater subjectivity.
Negative of that is where with drugs, there is a period of confused states, a blur of the image if you will. However, after that, there is a period of greater objective clarity but placed more in the visual realm of conscious thinking. Meditation avoids this and gains a clarity of subjectivity ergo greater objectivity of its perception. It’s just so boring though.
Personally, i wouldn’t want a world where everyone smokes, and i think most people don’t want to even where legal, or maybe on the odd occasion. The world is better where it has all kinds of non-violent individuals, and all kinds of ‘normal’. Knowing alone places the subjective observer in an objective or otherwise ‘externalised to the viewed/perceived’ position.
Seems like weed can do precisely the opposite of what you say: it can get one lost in experiences of external things. Hence one is wildly fascinated with the feel of a shirt, the taste and texture of food, the melody of a song. Pretty much any shift in the brain - including choices we make to focus on this rather than that - is going to lead to some neurons not doing so much and others doing more.
Good point! But; ‘wildly fascinated’ is the stupid brother of ‘enhanced’, no? Stupid people will be wildly fascinated, cool intelligent people will be enhanced, though at times confused. In the latter there is a force in the mind fighting the confusion, and it is that struggle which utilises chaos elements of mind to manifest creative thinking.
[size=150]Duality is the engine of creation.[/size]
Like with all psycho-tropics, it all depends upon your condition when you start. If your neurons were already stripped bare, synapses depleted, system corrupted, the smoke will most probably reduce the aberrant chaotic misfiring of nerves and quieten the mind, making you a little smarter. But if you have yet to be so corrupted by your early environment and your system is otherwise healthy, the smoke will simply make you a little more stupid in the form of being excessively imaginative and careless.
I don’t understand why that would reduce the chaos element? The primary experience for me is of enhancing everything whilst equally reducing by the same amount. If you focus upon a thing more singularly it will become more apparent ~ enhanced, as like what occurs when listening to music stoned or otherwise in a trance. Naturally the sound experience can drown out other things occurring in the mind, or that would otherwise be in the focal point of the mind.
I don’t see that as a lesser way of thinking, and i do think that not doing anything e.g. Meditation, contemplation, silence etc, produces a very down to earth consciousness. With one focussing upon worldly things more than the other.
Is that lesser?
Less…
Artistic
Poetic
Musical
Lyrical
Perceptive of alt-perspectives? Mind functions at the everyday macroscopic?
Maths? Do genius mathematicians or physicists have an everyday intellect?
Maybe more analytical in terms of things of the everyday world.
Is there a kind of normal that doesn’t produce more normal?
Stupid people will be wildly fascinated, cool intelligent people will be enhanced, though at times confused. In the latter there is a force in the mind fighting the confusion, and it is that struggle which utilises chaos elements of mind to manifest creative thinking.