Is the experience of all out love on ecstazy valid?

I was listening one day a talk by Will Pyle at a Eckhart Tolle meditation meetup in Melbourne and he was mentioning that his first interest in spirituality came from an experience of all out unconditional love while on ecstasy.

By the way I think he is giving talk at the next Eckhart Tolle meditation meet up in Melbourne wich is I thinkbon next Sunday. It's free to join the group by the way, you just google ET meetup.

Anyway, I agree with him that the experience is valid. I used to take speed and I was evil at times as a result and I ended up in prison for something I have done while affected by amphetamines. So if speed and coke make you feel evil and I am telling you that experience is real and valid then the unconditional love for everyone that you feel from mdma is valid. I wouldn't recommend using any drugs. Drugs are illegal, can be addictive and you never know what you are geting with ecstasy. I have had ecstasy tablets and I think only one was actual mdma. Some other felt like coke, if not stronger. And simply agreeing with me wholeheartedly is enough to know. Wich means there is no need to try it.
You Know what I mean.

Thoughts

 

Extacy once brought me out of a depression.

I was trying all sorts of CBT and NLP tricks for coping and dealing but one of the most common exercises is to recall good times from the past and feel those emotions. But I was incapable of doing that. Having forgotten what 'good/happy/love' felt like, I couldn't summon the sensations like I was supposed to. I had no frame of reference.

Then we stumbled upon some x one day and it did wonders for me. I got to remember what feeling genuinely good was like. I got to remember what love felt like. It was awesome.

From then on, I had a point of reference as to what I was supposed to be feeling during my exercises and it helped me so much.

 

I've had some amazing experiences on ecstasy. And I agree, it is filled with love, I also found that I was so much more intimate (in a non sexual way) with people, really getting into deep conversation about things. It is definitely valid, the stuff I would share/get told came straight from the heart, x was just breaking the barriers of insecurity. I also found that I connected with everything more, I noticed the beauty in things that I wouldn't look at twice usually, for example things like chairs. I'd also notice the beauty in people more, freckles that I hadn't thought about before all of a sudden were amazing and beautiful, the way someones hair curled up under itself, little things like that..

Only down side for me was the fact I always end up needing to strip naked and lie with nature, which I'm totally cool with, but it gets cold..

 

i think that the starting point of love has to be empathy, and ecstasy allows you to empathise better with other people, so it be a catalyst for feelings of love. I've had very meaningful conversations etc with people on E, and came away with friendships strengthened and new ones formed which have lasted long after the event.

but i don't think that it is actually love in a pill (commodified love? a dangerous road to go down) , it just breaks down social barriers.

also, while the barriers are broken down to an extent between individuals on an inter-personal level, at raves and what have you, dancing with the music going, you often get the feeling of being at one with everybody, a mass of people, like religious euphoria, i tend to think that that's largely illusory, brought on by rythmn etc.

it annoys me when people talk about "chemically-induced" happiness etc, strikes me as a profound misunderstanding of how the brain works (try and be happy without dopmamine or seratonin if you think you don't require chemicals) the issue with chemically induced happiness/love isn't that they aren't aren't valid or "real", but more that they have the potential to become commodified and also that, because one can essentially turn these feelings off or on at will, they lack value. a romantic would argue that if you simply take a pill to experience love then the experience is worthless, as love and happiness have to be hard won to be of worth, and composed of pain and heartache as well as joy.

the question, i think, is not one of validity but of value.

i think its the driving force behind Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and the fictional drug "soma", the idea that love as commodity, while equally valid, is worthless, as the price of happiness isn't strictly monetary, but sadness and pain.

on a somewhat related note i once read a really interesting article (a book extract, i think) about the monetary value of happiness, where they experimented by giving people certain ammounts of money, and measuring their response to it, thereby seeing what levels of happiness are associated with what monetary value. Then they measure the response to other stimuli, a conversation with a friend, or hearing a joke and see what those responses are "worth" in terms of money, there were a couple of interesting results. Firstly, they discovered that, after increasing the ammount of money enough, the pleasure it gives is constant, for example, giving someone 1000 pounds gets the same response as giving them 2000 pounds etc, and so on, this could mean a few things;

1) that we find it difficult to conceptualise monetary ammounts past a certain point
2) that money can only make us so happy

secondly they discovered that no matter how happy a single event makes you, you always end up going back to certain average level of happiness.

this goes some way to explaining greed;the desire to acquire far more than is practicaly useful for you; i.e: more than you could possibly spend. are people just trying to recreate that first hit, like junkies who've built up a tolerance?

bit off topic, i know, but i thought it might have some relevance.

love me some E though, all the same

 

There are certainly parts of what everyone is saying that is true. I recently tried real MDMA for the first time and the experience was amazing. I did some with a friend who left shortly after we took some...So I was all alone with my mind. I felt a deep connection for everything around me. I got lost in thought about all the current and past loved ones in my life. I wanted to contact them all and tell them how much I love them. I contemplated my past and my future. ihere I've been, where I'm going and what I'm truly seeking in life. It was a intense high I have never felt before. In short...It was amazing!

On the other hand I realize that some drugs are meant for spiritual enlightenment and not everyday use. Take shamans for instance. For hundreds if not thousands of years shamans have been using hallucinogenics to expand their minds and the minds of others. This has always been done under the context of religious enlightenment...not recreation. So while I had a great time with MDMA I don't think it is something I would do often. I don't want to wear a good thing out. I will use it again though...it just has to be the right context for me.