Turning to drugs for... ((( enlightment)))

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

All those shaman got dreams from plants .herbs mushrooms… treebark, cacti…and so on…In the New World it was practiced for a very long time…

all over the Earth it seems people felt the need to go elsewhere for there wisdom their dreams and their knowledge.

I wouldn’t be surprised if even some of the animals do the same… Why do you think we are so attracted to these stimulants?..

and … what is really behind the “comming in contact”…of these two substances… the BRAIN and its capacities and DRUGS?

I think of the 60’s , the beatniks,the hippies and all I can think of is constant change in perspectives and how it was all made into a HUGH multi Billion

Business to keep people from understanding any sort of reality.

Can anyone out there relATE TO ANY OF THIS?.. OR IS IT AS THEY CALL IT … JUST " pie in the sky"?

2

I’m on Dexedrine for narcolepsy. Does legit pharmaceutical count? Or am I now a born as dreamer victim of the black alchemy?

3

One reason is because drugs can be mind-broadening. Drugs change thought patterns. This attracts some people to philosophy, and attracts some people to drugs. Sometimes they are the same people.

4

Anyone here heard of the term, “Nirvana junkie?” I’m definitely one, but I think there’s a basic dysfunction in bing such. Not that I assume there is correct Function out there, either. But aside from maintaining something like a sacred reverence about it-all, maybe, I don’t think Enlightenment ought to be pursued. Then again, as Thadeus Golas, of The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment, observed, if I properly recall, “Enlightenment doesn’t care how you get there.” Perhaps, though, one should, oneself. So, I guess that means the issue resolves around the vision of care one ascribes toward. And, alas Faust, thus Heidegger’s spectre comes there once more through-into the clearing’s spa… :banana-dance:

5

So wait, are you wondering if there might be a moral reason against using drugs to come to new ideas, or achieve “enlightenment?”

(I put enlightenment in quotation marks because I believe in every day enlightenment about ‘x’, sure, but I don’t really think there is some end-all Enlightenment at the end of all the searching.)

6

I don’t think that there’s any sort of “special meaning” in human attraction to psychedelic and hallucinogenic substances.

Based on many of the uncontrollable brain wave pattern changes and, in some drugs, the irreversible damage to the brain that is possible… I prefer logic and reasoning over hallucination tenfold… because it permits a correct, non-distorted perception of reality. If you hallucinate, then you’ll begin to perceive, think, fantasize, and invent things that simply don’t exist, such as God, Zeus, Shiva, Allah, and the list continues.

If you do not hallucinate, then your perception of reality is much more likely to be accurate.

So, I cannot relate to this.

Kind Regards,
~Moral Jeff

7

(( enlightment))

lighten your gray matter by a few million brain cells to gain “enlightenment”…

advocating self imposed lobotomies is wonderful…

ignorance is bliss

bliss is not enlightenment…

-Imp

8

Legit? Treating the symptoms instead of the illness isn’t legit. You keep falling asleep so they give you speed? What a crock! You should see a Naturopathic Doctor about your narcolepsy. They can likely cure you instead of just selling you drugs.

9

The moment we ask the question, “Is there something more to our life than what we are doing?”, it sets the whole questioning mechanism going. Unfortunately, what has created this interest in the Western nations is the so-called Hippy generation. When they tried drugs, the drugs produced a change in what they called their `levels of consciousness’. For the first time they experienced something outside the area of their normal experiencing structure. When once we experience something extraordinary, which actually it is not, we look around for varieties of experiences… more and more of the same. That has created a market for all those people from the Eastern countries, India, China, and Japan, to flood into these countries and promise to provide answers for their questions. But actually they are selling shoddy pieces of goods. What people are interested in is not some answers to their problems but some comforters. They are selling ice packs to numb the pain and make you feel comfortable. Nobody wants to ask the basic question: What is the real problem? What is it that they want? What are they looking for?

10

As a person speaking from both extensive personal experience, and based on the research that I have done myself (I do not ingest anything before I gather information about it and come to a logical decision – or just say “f*#$ it”), I think there is more to psychedelic phenomena than simple reactions in the brain and/or a need to escape. Those can’t really be argued as two major ‘selling-points’ in regards to drugs, but psychedelics in particular do have an interesting effect on some people. The best way I can describe it is how a friend & I first attempted to explain what we were feeling to one another, only to realize we were trying to explain the same state of being: It’s almost as if layers are pealed from reality - or your perception of reality - in a way that seems to expose a more complete and ‘true-to-life’ version of that same perception. In other words, think of the “layers” like a blurred lenses that you peer at your reality through; the “peeling” of said layers is a refocus of the lenses you are observing your environment through. In short, psychedelics have the capacity to allow one’s perception to move beyond merely what is recognizable, identifiable, or comparable – one can experience thoughts, feelings, sensory stimuli, etc. that may be inexplicable and completely new to the observer. Needless to say, that very brand of experience has been theorized since ancient times - usually pertaining to religion - to allow a more complete understanding of life and/or philosophical quandaries. Unfortunately, a child-like naivety and vulnerability often accompanies the aforementioned effects making the observer susceptible to influences like ‘brain washing’ and the like. One’s perception of reality can either be allowed to follow the direction of the psychedelic experience, referred to as the “journey”, or one’s perception can be molded by external influences in such a way as to create the “journey”.

To simplify a bit, as I realize this probably sounds pretty “out there”, I suppose I would say that a psychedelic experience is approached, usually, one of two ways. One can approach the experience expecting a journey but with no particular direction in mind, as if allowing your mind to freely be your ‘guide’ (so to speak). On the other hand, once can approach a psychedelic experience with a goal in mind, a direction or a thought to focus on and contemplate - almost as if the observer becomes the proverbial ‘guide’ and the mind is tasked with interpreting something in particular. The latter is where brain washing and similar techniques have been mixed with psychedelics to yield horrifying results, like the Charles Manson cult murders. His primary mode of convincing his “followers” that his absurd ideas were both profound and necessary was to hold regular services in which he would distribute massive doses of LSD to his crew - everyone but himself that is - and preach about himself being the second coming of Jesus, the necessity and impending danger of a race war (Helter Skelter), and all kinds of craziness. He gave their respective psychedelic ‘journeys’ direction with a specific purpose and, because of the child-like naivety and vulnerability I mentioned earlier, the perceptions of many of the observers could be convinced of nearly anything As I said before, a psychedelic experience can often be perceived as a more complete, true, pure perception of reality. If a particular interpretation of reality is dictated in a convincing way (in this case by a smooth talking sociopath named Charles Manson), that interpretation can become the observers more complete, or pure, understanding of reality.

I think the real draw to psychedelics, for me anyway, is the capacity to allow your mind to experience or observe sensory perception(s) in new, and previously ‘unthought-of’ (or undefined), ways. This not only allows for sensory perceptions to be dissected and considered in different light(s), but also for the conceptual world to take new shape in the face of an experience or “journey” that is your own – the outcome, expectations, and perceptions have not been predetermined by society. You are allowed to experience your environment in a way that you, in your own mind, deem necessary or preferable, rather than the way it has been pushed and controlled since childhood; that is, you have the ability to do so if you can first allow yourself to give up control and be ‘guided’ (so to speak). This is where ego death becomes apparent and often imminent - giving up the ultimate feeling of physical and mental control that we covet so dearly and display with an almost boastful implication. Ego death arrives when one comes to a place in which he is faced with the realization that even one’s own mind, and perception, are no longer under his tyrannical control. Needless to say, the roads to self discovery and personal ‘enlightenment’ become too numerous to count - though a fair amount of courage, or large amount of ignorance/naivety, are required to willingly accept a “journey” down such a road. To quote Nietzsche…

“…And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Here are a few that I find both fitting for the discussion, and just generally insightful, by the late comedian Bill Hicks (sometimes referred to as the Nietzsche of comedy)…

“I’m glad mushrooms are against the law, because I took them one time, and you know what happened to me? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours going, “My God! I love everything.” Yeah, now if that isn’t a hazard to our country … how are we gonna keep building nuclear weapons, you know what I mean? What’s gonna happen to the arms industry when we realize that we’re all one?!”

"Christianity has a built-in defense system: anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It’s a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it – and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist – is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, “Show me.”

I’d like to see Peach-Nietch weigh in on this one; I’m sure he has an interesting tid-bit or two to share…

11

I’ll end the suspense many animals deliberately seem to eat things which make them high, and what’s more they’ll do it repeatedly.

Elephants for example are well known for their silly season in India and Africa where they have a tendency to eat rotting fruit if untended and then go on a drunken rampage. Elephants like humans can be nasty drunks and when you weigh ten tonnes you’re not the most agile of creatures.

newscientist.com/article/dn1 … highs.html

Awesome dude! :smiley:

Oh elephants are in the clear. That’s good.

12

Even the yogins maintain that it is possible to extend normal waking consciousness into the realms usually guarded by sleep, that is, into the unconscious. But you need not practice any yogic techniques in order to experience these things. By taking drugs you can have all these experiences. I am not at all advocating drugs any more than I am advocating yoga. I am just pointing out that all experience is born out of thought and is in all the essentials identical. If you call these yogic or drug-induced states blissful, more profound, or in any way more pleasurable than “ordinary” experiences, you are strengthening the ego and fortifying the separative structure by wasting your thoughts translating sensations into higher or lower and pleasurable or painful. Anything you experience as energy is thought-induced energy. It is not the energy of life.

13

You can use a lightbox for SAD, but it seems supplements of melatonin and a lightbox work much more effectively to inhibit the symptoms, particularly insomnia and depression. That’s according to NIMH anyway. However high doses found in over the counter supplements are less effective than very small doses, so see a Dr folks.

14

Drugs, probably where religion came from. Similar effects can be found by walking around in the desert for too long, but lets face it you don’t casually walk along the street and suddenly god appears or something. There has to be a catalyst for visions and drugs do the same trick as anything else.

Anyone who hasn’t tried acid is missing out imho.

15

Well that and insanity, hearing voices from angels is not exactly a novel experience: St Paul, Jesus, Mohammed.

Nah that’s one drug I wont try, all my friends told me not to. How unusual is that? Considering most of them have tried it and loved it. Mind you they told my friend John not to try it as well and he’s schizophrenic, that was even wiser. :slight_smile:

I’d be careful of all drugs to be honest, try them once sure, but not everyone has a similar experience and LSD can be somewhat problematic in some users. Before I started smoking (don’t try that at home) I used to throw up even on marijuana. I’m not sure whether that was the cannabis or the tobacco though, probably the tobacco.

16

Never know, in the right hands it might sort him out ~ I doubt it though. :stuck_out_tongue: Seriously at my age and looking back 20 yrs, I wouldn’t advise it, unless you are around people who really know what they are at.

No the experiences are very different, some people just laugh at everything, others get enhanced sounds and colours, and some see a different world ~ and that’s the danger, you really can see a bridge over a river when there isn’t one, or stand on a ledge and it only looks 5 ft deep when it is 500 ft. :astonished:

17

Wise words indeed oh tabbed one.

Indeed. I wouldn’t advise against it just against going into it with false promises. We all know the guy who thought he was an orange and tried to peel himself with a knife, albeit figuratively for most thankfully.

18

Apart from the negatives I think used properly it can tell you a lot about the mind and even bring a certain clarity, simply because it enhances everything. A much underused tool these days.

19

So this ‘enlightenment’ that drugs induce-- is it a state that is there when you no longer seek clarity? When you stop using methods to find clarity and accept your present existence? Or is it some chemical imbalance deliberately sought after that temporarily changes perceptions so you think about and experience things differently?

If your life appears to have no meaning, you go searching for a meaning, you search for a goal. As long as you are searching for a goal, and as long as you are searching for meaning you will remain wandering around restlessly. ‘There must after all be something meaningful to do, something with more content, something more interesting than what I’m doing now’, you tell yourself. And the only thing you can do is to change yourself, hmm? But in reality there is no possibility of changing. The only change takes place in your thought structure, you begin to think differently and therefore to experience and feel things differently. Basically however everything remains exactly as it was. You can change your clothes and only wear the most ‘fashionable’ clothing just to be ‘in’, but inside you are still the same. Wanting to understand is only useful for changing small things in yourself. There is nothing you can do to change the past. In the hope of changing things in the future, you remain stuck with the present, which is in fact the past.

The past is always active. If the past ends, you end. That is the reason why you will never allow that, no matter how hard you try. The past is everywhere in you. Every cell in your body is permeated by it. Every nerve is involved in it. The past has this body so much under control that it will not let it go. The past will not come to an end through any effort you make or whatever will power you effect! The more effort you put into it, the more willpower you use, the stronger it becomes. You came across many insights in this process, but every insight reinforces the past. It does not in any way help to understand anything and to thus free yourself from whatever. Every insight that you obtain with your drugs, with your investigations only strengthens and solidifies that.

Thus… what should you try to do in such a situation? NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL! Nothing, no power in the world can help you, period. Thus, as long as you remain dependent on any drug or authority outside of you, you remain hopeless. Once you understand this clearly, there is no more helplessness, your helplessness no longer exists. Then you actually don’t know what to do. This is the situation where you have to arrive, no longer knowing what to do. And, if you expect that something will happen from what you then call your ‘clarity of thinking’, your ‘meditation’, your drugs, or something similar, then you are lost forever. Because that is not the true clarity.

20

Real acid is very much worth trying. However, anyone interested is around 40 years too late. The reason why so many people advise against acid is the same as the reason why so many people advise against ecstasy: the quality is shit.

Recently, SWIM got some real bad acid. Real, genuine LSD with some other products thrown in. SWIM is inclined to think it was derived from ergot because of the St. Andrew’s Fire – a nice rural operation near where they grow rye. Life is good.

But most “acid” sold nowadays is 2C-X, where “X” is a halogen. There is also some bromo-LSD around because Sandoz and to do something with the shit and most clandestine chemists are too broke to get a grignard reagent and make their drugs from Parkinsons’ cures.

But if you can find something approximating the real thing, even the low-quality real acid SWIM had recently, SWIM would highly recommend it.