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@Jeroen said:

@Sam8 said:
There are many reasons why the world might be doomed, but at the bottom of all of them is irrational thinking. This is why I'm not keen on "letting go" of science, of all things. In an age where climate change science is denied, flat-earthers and other conspiracy theories are on the rise, and truth is a matter of "whatever is good for my politics/tribe," I believe we need the scientific mode of thinking more than ever.

What you are talking about is the morally bankrupt attitude of materialist thinking. Science is not the right tool to tackle that either, it is philosophy that is needed. Science itself can be twisted, look at Big Oil and climate science, if the core issue of principles and morals is not addressed.

It's not the attitude of "materialist thinking," it's the attitude of irrational thinking. Whether it's materialist or non-materialist doesn't enter into it. Sure, science can be twisted to suit a personal agenda - so can spirituality, by the way - but then it's not really "science," it's pseudoscience. Philosophy, especially moral philosophy, is indeed important, yet philosophy also has to be tethered to reality, and we can only know what what is real through science. Without it, everyone's just flying away into their own fantasties.

@IdleChater said:
I've had some "profound" experiences with Psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, and Cannabis. My meditative experiences were with Cannabis (the other 3 seem a bit too intense for that). I don't have any firsthand experience with Ayahuasca, but I am curious, and your post made it sound like you had. That's all.

No, I’m very much a newbie as far as psychedelics are concerned, I had cannabis maybe twice in my uni days and that didn’t do much for me. But I got interested in Terence McKenna a few years ago and since then have been doing a lot of research into psychedelics, especially ayahuasca.

I just find it fascinating — like a lot of people — that you can explore these different facets of your mind with just a substance. A lot of these magical and mythological ways of relating are so much richer than the mechanic’s approach of science.

I will admit to being a bit hidebound, these things have been in the public eye for a few years now, and I so far have been sitting on the fence. But something changed for me recently… the Gabor Maté interview gave me a bit of an insight.

What were your experiences like with psilocybin and LSD? In the Netflix docu series How to Change Your Mind they cite a study which says that out of 250 participants no less than 70% said that the psilocybin experience they had was in the top five most significant experiences of their life, next to things like the birth of their children.

@Sam8 said:
@Jeroen

Um... so you fell asleep, had a dream, and because of it you throw out centuries of evidence-based science?

This kind of thinking is why the world is doomed.

Hahaha well, I wasn’t so much suggesting throwing it out, as ditching the immediate habit of that kind of thinking, and relegating the process itself to a more secondary position. But you know, even the phrasing of that sentence betrays an ordered, scientific perspective.

It all goes back to my training as an engineer and my career in software development, which was also quite scientific. These things made it seem like whenever there was a problem, one would reach for science as a solution, and that got to be a pattern for me.

But in the realm of the mind, there are many modalities, experiences, which go beyond the straight-line rationality of science, and I have been experiencing some of them. Science is not a good tool for searching for spiritual truth.

And the reason the world is doomed is because of the profit motive, unfortunately. Capitalism is why mankind is exploiting the natural world.

Someone who studies spirituality scientifically. Seems very helpful and grounded to me.

I think the topic of the thread has more to do with the way we hold our view of science or spirituality rather than the rigidity being in the thing itself. Or at least, our views of science and spirituality are subject to the way we approach them mentally. We can hold either science or spirituality rigidly or loosely. The straightjacket or lack thereof exists in us more than it does out there.