A thread to share content or thoughts regarding the relationship between psychedelic drug use, and the life of the spirit: spirituality/religion/God. Topics might include: (1) Using psychedelics as a sacrament (2) Psychedelics changing one's thoughts on God (3) Psychedelics as "moksha medicine"--Enlightenment in a Pill? (4) Psychedelic cults (5) Videos or music or poetry or Art that you find spiritually stimulating when tripping I will post a few favorites to get us rolling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dclx1zJDNv4&feature=related"]Grey: Bodhichitta and Psych's McKenna: Divine Being ANY and ALL of these: LIBRARY: Psychedelics and the Religious Experience
I have had an encounter when a divine feeling.. I was washed clean one night and given another chance/reborn. I can't explain any further.
I've always found psychedelics make me feel more in touch with with nature and existence. I'd consider myself a deist so seeing nature with eyes adjusted by psychedelics is really the most profound experience I can have.
Shpongle which is organic electronic music probably captures the spirit of the psychedelic state best for me. It's meditative, erotic, strange, silly, harmonic, dissonant, beautiful, weird, relaxing, energetic music and creates all these audio paradoxes which I relate to with the psychedelic experience. I use psychedelics both sacramentally and recreationally and oddly enough sometimes there seems to be a blurring of the lines. I use various psychedelics in different ways as well depending on what I see they highlight in the spirit. Mushrooms/San Pedro: I always make an attempt to spend a good portion of the trip in nature if not the whole trip. I find they flow through my being the best in that environment and I often feel guided by spirits of these plants in the proper setting and have a deeper appreciation for nature. LSD: Gives me enlightened insight into the workings of my mind and nature of reality. I find it the best psychedelic for noticing paradox and how streamlined thought process can be. MDMA: When Dancing or other physical release on MDMA, I feel the energy surround me and sort of build up on itself, makes me feel like I'm releasing and receiving energy when dancing with others and I have become enlightened to new ways of movement and emotions. DMT/Salvia Divinorum: Two psychedelics that have made me witness entities that I feel have no basis in my everyday reality, but perhaps shed some light on the workings of visual processing. Also, they definitely have made me more open and enlightened to the possibility of various dimensions and levels of reality. In sort of an odd way, they've also made me even more skeptical about concerning myself with some sort of ultimate Deity. I've had several other spiritually inclined experiences with other psychedelics but I think the experiences that I mention here sort of capture those moments of enlightenment and getting a strong notion of spirit.
On my first acid trip, I had a vision (not a vivid hallucination, simply an image in my imagination) of the entire world as an interconnected ocean of energy, of which different beings are merely aspects or manifestations. This was deeply powerful. On 2c-e I have experienced a calling toward or the presence of a figure that I believe was Krishna.
Raga have you ever heard of the "God Helmet" and Persinger's work? Put's it all into a slightly different perspective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPOTaUyvA0"]Dr. Persinger's God Helmet - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y02UlkYjSi0"]THE GOD HELMET (Koren Helmet) Michael Persinger - YouTube
I really like both vid's Noxious. I think the helmet is clearly a neuroelectric way of causing many of the effects that psych's cause neurochemically. The narrator in the second vid makes the mistake of suggesting that the notion that "God is real" and "God is in our minds" are mutually exclusive. The sort of "God" that is demonstrated not to be "real" by that sort of experiment represents both a very limited idea of "God" and a very specific idea of "real". Very thought-provoking, though.
My only mushroom trip was outside on summer night. My mind was going so many different directions and I wanted it to stop. Then, everything changed. I entered a state of complete inner and outer stillness. Everything was simply in its place. "Everything is alright." I saw that every event ever was perfect the way it was and it was so blissful. I laughed a lot and texted my friend "You little trickster!" as if she knew about the cosmic secret which I was just revealed. I laughed at knowing that I will not remember what it is like to feel this peace by tomorrow morning. I keep trying to remember what it felt like on that mushroom trip. If I'm in a difficult situation, I'll try to remember that everything is in its place, when it really doesn't seem that way. I sometimes think that the cosmic consciousness experience really has nothing to do with everyday life, because when I'm in that state that's all that matters at the time, but when I'm in my everyday mind I act in the same way, cosmic knowledge or not. It's difficult trying to find how to use something like that in daily life.
Far out post NG. Most of the trippers I knew when I was tripping a lot were deep into spiritual work. LSD (and the subsequent work) shifted my life from angry and heedless to purposeful and meaning-filled with a deep foundation of spirituality. Now that I'm tripping again, many of the people I'm associating with are serious about their spiritual life and trying to live it out. I've been going to the same Bible study group every week for about 20 years. I'm pretty sure I'm the only current tripper in the group. We rotate the lead in the lessons and today I had John 2: 1-12, about Jesus turning the water to wine (too bad he didn't just turn the people on). I had two primary discussion points: (1) when have you felt or understood that your time has come or not come and/or (2) what signs or miracles have you seen or experienced. I went with the second as the first seemed too heavy. Nobody had a miracle or sign in their life - at least one they were willing to discuss. Thanks to having been in a lot of combat and having taken LSD I've had destiny trips and I've been healed and I've seen The Light, I've had The Vision. But I wouldn't say that there. So that's part of my response to the question of spirituality: I imagine everyone or almost everyone who has posted in this thread has experienced destiny, healing, beauty beyond belief, miracles, signs. Illuminated, transcendent, beautiful beyond your dreams...
