Padawanbater2
Well-Known Member
Read this
You know, I often ask myself the same question: [What is it about psychedelic drug experiences, in your opinion, that causes the average person to turn to supernatural thinking and "woo" to explain life, and why have you in r/RationalPsychonaut felt no reason to do the same?]
First, a bit about me. I was an active drug user from 17-25 or so, and now just do psychedelics 1-3 times a year, and smoke marijuana recreationally. By the time I was 21, I had literally had hundreds of psychedelic experiences. I would trip every couple of days - shrooms, mescaline, pcp, acid... just whatever I could get my hands on. No "Wooo", really. And, perhaps foreshadowing, I was often puzzled by how I could do heroic quantities and work out fine, while peers would lose their bearings with tiny quantities.
When I was 21, a friend found a sheet of LSD. It was excellent. I did it by the dozen. And then one day, something different happened. Something in my periphery. And then, while working on my own philosophical debate I had been having with a religious friend, I "realized" a version of pan-psychism. By 'realized' I mean that, within my own mind, it transformed from something that I thought to something that I fully understood and believed. I was certain of it.
This unleashed a torrent of reconfigurations - everything.... everything that I knew made way for this new idea. And truthfully, I had some startlingly accurate insights about some pretty complex topics.
But what was it? Was it divine? It felt like it, but I also knew fully about madness. So what I did was try to settle the question. I took more and more and more acid, but couldn't recreate the state of consciousness I'd experienced following this revelation. And then, one day, something happened.
What occurred is hard to describe, but if you're interested, I wrote about it extensively here. It is espoused further in the comment section.
The state that I described in the link had two components, that at the time I thought were one. The first is a staggeringly different perceptual state. The second was the overwhelming sensation that I had God's attention, and God had mine. The puzzling character of this was that God is not some distant father figure - rather God is the mind that is embodied in the flesh of the universe. This tied in with my pan-psychic theories that suggest that certain types of patterns, such as consciousness, repeat across spatial and temporal scales. God was always there, and once it had my attention, it took the opportunity to show me things. When I asked questions, it would either lead me around by my attention to show me the answer, or it would just manifest as a voice in my mind.
Problems arose quickly. I had been shown the "true" way to see the world. The "lost" way. And it was my duty to show it to others. I never assumed I was the only one (in fact, my friend with whom I had been debating also had access to this state), but I did believe myself to be divinely tasked. And so I acted like it. And it was punitive.
We came to believe (my friend and I) that we would be granted ever increasing powers. Telepathy, for instance, because we were able to enter a state that was similar to telepathy with each other. Not because we believed our thoughts were broadcast and received, but because God was showing us the same things at the same time.
This prompted an ever increasing array of delusional states. Everything that was even slightly out of the ordinary became laden with meaning and intent. I was on constant lookout for guidance, and, following my intuitions and "God's will", I was lead to heartache after heartache.
Before all this, I had never been religious. In fact, I was at best an agnostic atheist. But I realized that, if it were true, I would have to commit to the belief. So I did. And I was disappointed.
I focused on the mechanisms. How was God communicating with me? It was always private, meaning that God's thoughts were always presented to my own mind. As a consequence, I could not remove my own brain from the explanation. It kept coming back to that. I didn't understand my brain, so how could I be certain that God was, or was not, communicating with me? I couldn't. And truthfully, the mystery of how my brain could do these things without God was an equally driving mystery. So I worked, and struggled until I was stable enough to attend university, where I began to study cognitive science.
And so that's where I started: was it my brain, or was it something else? Over the years, I discovered that I could access the religious state without fully accessing the perceptual state. I could access the full perceptual state without needing to experience the religious one. I was left with a real puzzle. I had a real discovery - a perceptual state - and a history of delusion brought on by the belief that the universe was conscious, and had high expectations for me.
I have a wide range of theories to try explain everything, because I've needed explanations to stay grounded.
The basic premise about the delusional component, and I think psychedelic "woooo" phenomenon in general is that we have absolute faith in our cognitive faculties. Example: what is your name? Are you sure? Evidence aside, your certainty is a feeling, a swarm of electrical and chemical activity. It just so happens that every time you, or anyone else checks, this feeling of certainty is accurate. Your name is recorded externally to you - so every time you look, you discover it unchanged. But I want you to focus on that feeling of certainty. Now, let's focus on something a little more tenuous - the feeling of the familiar. What's the name of the girl you used to sit next to in grade 11 english class? Tip of the tongue, maybe?
For some reason, we're more comfortable with perceptual errors than errors in these "deep" cognitive processes. Alien abductees? They're certain they're right. Who are we to question that certainty?
I have firsthand experience that shows me that even this feeling of certainty - that my thoughts and interpretation of reality are veridical - can be dramatically incorrect. This forces upon me a constant evaluation of my beliefs, my thoughts, and my interpretation of the reality around me. However, most people have neither the experience or the mental tools required to sort out such questions. When faced with malfunctioning cognitive faculties that tell them their vision is an angel, or "Mescalito" (a la Castaneda), then for them it really is that thing. Why? Because never in their life have they ever felt certain and been wrong. Because uncertainty is always coupled to things that are vague, and certainty is coupled to things that are epistemically verifiable.
What color are your pants. Are you certain? Is it possible that I could persuade you that you're completely wrong? What about your location? Could I convince you that you are wrong about that? You can see that certainty is a sense that we do not take lightly.
So when we have visions, or feelings of connection, oneness, openness... they come to us through faculties that are very good at being veridical about the world, and about your internal states. Just as I cannot convince you that you are naked, you know that you cannot convince yourself. You do not have the mental faculties to un-convince yourself - particularly not during the instance of a profound experience. I could no more convince myself that I was not talking to God than I can convince myself now that I am not in my livingroom.
So when these faculties tell you something that is, at best an insightful reinterpretation of the self in relation to the world, and at worst a psychosis or delusion, we cannot un-convince ourselves. It doesn't work that way. Instead, we need to explain these things. Our explanations can range from the divine, to the power of aliens, to the power of technology, or ancient lost wisdom. And why these explanations? Because very, very few of us are scientifically literate enough, particularly about the mind and brain, to actually reason our way through these problems.
I felt this, and I have bent my life around finding out the actual explanation - the one that is verifiable, repeatable, explorable and exportable. Like all science is, and needs to be.
I need to.
The feeling of certainty is that strong.
It compels us to explain its presence to its own level of satisfaction. I need to know: how could I be so wrong?
I don't know how I could live. My experiences were that impactful. My entire life has been bent around them.
I need to know.
Edit: I'll try to get back to all the replies when I have time. I understand this touches on some sensitive subject matter for many of you
Edit II OK, so a LOT of people are writing to share their experiences. This identifies a couple of things - one, it's not that uncommon. Two, people really need to talk about it.
This is a difficult subject to talk about, because many non-experiencers aren't willing to take any of the content of such experiences seriously. We should also make note of the idea that these experiences have enormous overlap with classical mental illnesses. As such, it seems that real work needs to be done in going over what portions of these experiences we get to keep, and which ones need to be discarded. Admittedly, I wonder if a new sub is the right solution, but I really think we need to get all of the commenters and PM'ers who have reached out to me to talk amongst themselves. Any suggestions on how we could establish a community to accomplish such goals?
http://www.reddit.com/r/RationalPsy...us_nonpsychonaut_here_with_a_question/ce0imc7
You know, I often ask myself the same question: [What is it about psychedelic drug experiences, in your opinion, that causes the average person to turn to supernatural thinking and "woo" to explain life, and why have you in r/RationalPsychonaut felt no reason to do the same?]
First, a bit about me. I was an active drug user from 17-25 or so, and now just do psychedelics 1-3 times a year, and smoke marijuana recreationally. By the time I was 21, I had literally had hundreds of psychedelic experiences. I would trip every couple of days - shrooms, mescaline, pcp, acid... just whatever I could get my hands on. No "Wooo", really. And, perhaps foreshadowing, I was often puzzled by how I could do heroic quantities and work out fine, while peers would lose their bearings with tiny quantities.
When I was 21, a friend found a sheet of LSD. It was excellent. I did it by the dozen. And then one day, something different happened. Something in my periphery. And then, while working on my own philosophical debate I had been having with a religious friend, I "realized" a version of pan-psychism. By 'realized' I mean that, within my own mind, it transformed from something that I thought to something that I fully understood and believed. I was certain of it.
This unleashed a torrent of reconfigurations - everything.... everything that I knew made way for this new idea. And truthfully, I had some startlingly accurate insights about some pretty complex topics.
But what was it? Was it divine? It felt like it, but I also knew fully about madness. So what I did was try to settle the question. I took more and more and more acid, but couldn't recreate the state of consciousness I'd experienced following this revelation. And then, one day, something happened.
What occurred is hard to describe, but if you're interested, I wrote about it extensively here. It is espoused further in the comment section.
The state that I described in the link had two components, that at the time I thought were one. The first is a staggeringly different perceptual state. The second was the overwhelming sensation that I had God's attention, and God had mine. The puzzling character of this was that God is not some distant father figure - rather God is the mind that is embodied in the flesh of the universe. This tied in with my pan-psychic theories that suggest that certain types of patterns, such as consciousness, repeat across spatial and temporal scales. God was always there, and once it had my attention, it took the opportunity to show me things. When I asked questions, it would either lead me around by my attention to show me the answer, or it would just manifest as a voice in my mind.
Problems arose quickly. I had been shown the "true" way to see the world. The "lost" way. And it was my duty to show it to others. I never assumed I was the only one (in fact, my friend with whom I had been debating also had access to this state), but I did believe myself to be divinely tasked. And so I acted like it. And it was punitive.
We came to believe (my friend and I) that we would be granted ever increasing powers. Telepathy, for instance, because we were able to enter a state that was similar to telepathy with each other. Not because we believed our thoughts were broadcast and received, but because God was showing us the same things at the same time.
This prompted an ever increasing array of delusional states. Everything that was even slightly out of the ordinary became laden with meaning and intent. I was on constant lookout for guidance, and, following my intuitions and "God's will", I was lead to heartache after heartache.
Before all this, I had never been religious. In fact, I was at best an agnostic atheist. But I realized that, if it were true, I would have to commit to the belief. So I did. And I was disappointed.
I focused on the mechanisms. How was God communicating with me? It was always private, meaning that God's thoughts were always presented to my own mind. As a consequence, I could not remove my own brain from the explanation. It kept coming back to that. I didn't understand my brain, so how could I be certain that God was, or was not, communicating with me? I couldn't. And truthfully, the mystery of how my brain could do these things without God was an equally driving mystery. So I worked, and struggled until I was stable enough to attend university, where I began to study cognitive science.
And so that's where I started: was it my brain, or was it something else? Over the years, I discovered that I could access the religious state without fully accessing the perceptual state. I could access the full perceptual state without needing to experience the religious one. I was left with a real puzzle. I had a real discovery - a perceptual state - and a history of delusion brought on by the belief that the universe was conscious, and had high expectations for me.
I have a wide range of theories to try explain everything, because I've needed explanations to stay grounded.
The basic premise about the delusional component, and I think psychedelic "woooo" phenomenon in general is that we have absolute faith in our cognitive faculties. Example: what is your name? Are you sure? Evidence aside, your certainty is a feeling, a swarm of electrical and chemical activity. It just so happens that every time you, or anyone else checks, this feeling of certainty is accurate. Your name is recorded externally to you - so every time you look, you discover it unchanged. But I want you to focus on that feeling of certainty. Now, let's focus on something a little more tenuous - the feeling of the familiar. What's the name of the girl you used to sit next to in grade 11 english class? Tip of the tongue, maybe?
For some reason, we're more comfortable with perceptual errors than errors in these "deep" cognitive processes. Alien abductees? They're certain they're right. Who are we to question that certainty?
I have firsthand experience that shows me that even this feeling of certainty - that my thoughts and interpretation of reality are veridical - can be dramatically incorrect. This forces upon me a constant evaluation of my beliefs, my thoughts, and my interpretation of the reality around me. However, most people have neither the experience or the mental tools required to sort out such questions. When faced with malfunctioning cognitive faculties that tell them their vision is an angel, or "Mescalito" (a la Castaneda), then for them it really is that thing. Why? Because never in their life have they ever felt certain and been wrong. Because uncertainty is always coupled to things that are vague, and certainty is coupled to things that are epistemically verifiable.
What color are your pants. Are you certain? Is it possible that I could persuade you that you're completely wrong? What about your location? Could I convince you that you are wrong about that? You can see that certainty is a sense that we do not take lightly.
So when we have visions, or feelings of connection, oneness, openness... they come to us through faculties that are very good at being veridical about the world, and about your internal states. Just as I cannot convince you that you are naked, you know that you cannot convince yourself. You do not have the mental faculties to un-convince yourself - particularly not during the instance of a profound experience. I could no more convince myself that I was not talking to God than I can convince myself now that I am not in my livingroom.
So when these faculties tell you something that is, at best an insightful reinterpretation of the self in relation to the world, and at worst a psychosis or delusion, we cannot un-convince ourselves. It doesn't work that way. Instead, we need to explain these things. Our explanations can range from the divine, to the power of aliens, to the power of technology, or ancient lost wisdom. And why these explanations? Because very, very few of us are scientifically literate enough, particularly about the mind and brain, to actually reason our way through these problems.
I felt this, and I have bent my life around finding out the actual explanation - the one that is verifiable, repeatable, explorable and exportable. Like all science is, and needs to be.
I need to.
The feeling of certainty is that strong.
It compels us to explain its presence to its own level of satisfaction. I need to know: how could I be so wrong?
I don't know how I could live. My experiences were that impactful. My entire life has been bent around them.
I need to know.
Edit: I'll try to get back to all the replies when I have time. I understand this touches on some sensitive subject matter for many of you
Edit II OK, so a LOT of people are writing to share their experiences. This identifies a couple of things - one, it's not that uncommon. Two, people really need to talk about it.
This is a difficult subject to talk about, because many non-experiencers aren't willing to take any of the content of such experiences seriously. We should also make note of the idea that these experiences have enormous overlap with classical mental illnesses. As such, it seems that real work needs to be done in going over what portions of these experiences we get to keep, and which ones need to be discarded. Admittedly, I wonder if a new sub is the right solution, but I really think we need to get all of the commenters and PM'ers who have reached out to me to talk amongst themselves. Any suggestions on how we could establish a community to accomplish such goals?
http://www.reddit.com/r/RationalPsy...us_nonpsychonaut_here_with_a_question/ce0imc7
