Best Of

@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.

Here is my poorly worded, addled stab at it.

Science is the study of the physiological phemomia. Even psychology is within the measurable relm. it deals with our reaction to stimuli and what synaps are associated with X Y or Z. it deals with how we may change our reactiond based upon a measurable and identifiable input.
Spirituality including religion, deals with the immeasurable.
in terms of religion, there is the story:

A man approached a leader/mentor within a particular school of Buddhism.
He stated that he had been studying and observing this school for 20 years.
He knew it's history and it's positive effects, philosophy, etc.
He knew all about it, but was at a loss as to how or what actually made it work.
To this, the leader/mentor replied that, with that study, there was one element missing.
The man was encouraged to apply all that knowledge by doing the practice.
Upon doing so, the man quickly, and with great appreciation, understood.

The scientific study of the theory, and other aspects, from a third person perspective, gave the man a theoretical undertanding of the philosophy and mechanics of the practice. But only when he actually crossed the line to open the spiritual application, actions, did he truely undertand. We can study all there is about riding a bicycle. But, if we never actually ride a bike, we will never know the actuality of riding a bike.

All this, of course means Science is the observation, study and measurement of ideas and things. Engineering is manifesting these concepts, theories, in a material form.
Spirituality is going into the immeasurable. The study of life itself, rather than just the physical, observable, measurable manifestations of life.

Peace to all

@Lionduck said:
Spirituality is going into the immeasurable.

That I think is closer to the truth. Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, “truth is a pathless land” and he indicated that in a spiritual search one could not follow any man or doctrine. But the conditioning which we pick up from toys, clothes, parents, teachers, schools, the government, they all limit the paths we walk.

In order to walk and pursue the truth freely, we have to perceive and let go of the conditionings. It’s a slow process. Science is a good tool for examining the physical world, and it even says some things about spirituality and the origins of life. But once you start looking at the self, at consciousness, at the immaterial realms, it is a serious constraint.

The thing is, many of the things you encounter in an Ayahuasca experience are not physical, but our spirit is profoundly affected by them. Things like magical chants, song, myths and legends all acquire a kind of meaning that renders them significant as the mind expands.