Are you free yet...???

[christian]

I tend to agree with Citta here. This thread is filled with so many vague, generic terms like "asleep" and "free". What are these but our own human concepts? These are things we have defined, therefore we are caging ourselves by limiting ourselves to these categories in the first place.
As to what Tek just posted, how can you or anyone be in any special position to judge whether other people are asleep(which implies some sort of boundary that limits your freedom)? I don't think people are in a lesser position because they are materialistic or haven't used psychedelics. We tend to view ourselves as special(innate psychology), but in truth we are all actually pretty similar and see the world in a similar way, its only our interpretation of it that changes with experiences.
I think the only thing that someone who has done psychs has over someone else is an understanding of the nature and fragility of consciousness. The fact is, we only see things through our narrow lens of consciousness so I don't think any of us are in a position to judge whether others are "awake" or "free", when in fact all of us could be asleep and locked in some mental prison. Don't be so quick to think you are suddenly in some advantaged or enlightened position because you took a psychedelic drug, or tripped balls. These are just induced mental states, to an outside observer there is nothing special going on or happening to you aside from brain chemistry.

Dmtk, i disagree with your reply. However i respect your own wisdom. The reason why i disagree is because the i believe that the powerful psychadelic experience allows people to access states that they normally would never be able to. These are the "awake" states i'm talking about. It's these states that allow one to rise above the "nitty gritty" of mundane society, which leads them to think that perhaps earthbound religions are a laughable attempt to understand something that cannot be understood, or that there's more to life than having a fast sports car, mansion, playboy model girlfriend, and million dollar bank account....(to quote some rather simplistic situations..)

-Also, whilst you talk about altering brain chemistry, i believe that psychadelics dissolve the filters of ego which allow us to directly and effortly access the divine consciousness without barriers. My view is that todays society has made us forget about the ways people communicated in the past to higher planes. :idea:

 

[Tek]

I think what your missing Christian is psychedelics don't allow ALL people to access those states, it appears that only some of us gain access to the inner world through them.

I've discussed this at length before, but I've tripped with dozens of other people, some specifically spiritually minded and I am the ONLY one I know of that has had these deep mystical life changing experiences, it's the reason I post on this forum because only here have I found a community of people who seem to understand what I'm talking about (which thankfully reminds me again and again that I'm not crazy!)

While I agree with your premise, the fact of the matter is I only think I've been shown the path to being truly free, not actually delivered unto it entirely. I mean, I'm still here at my 9-5 job typing this message while I work on some dumb project for a company that doesn't give a hoot about me one way or another. I'm still struggling to get by, and I'm still human which means I'm not 'free', free in sense of how I feel while in hyperspace.

Now, from what I've been told by entities in hyperspace, is that this is just the way of it. My guide told me one time that "To know everything (which would be true freedom) is to collapse the illusion that you so desperately cling to", so I can't say I'm more free than any body else cause clearly, I'm still on planet Earth with all the baggage that comes with it. I think the only difference between me and perhaps other people is I have the DRIVE and DESIRE to go deeper, know more of myself and my reality, which some people don't have but that still isn't to say I'm more or less than them.

I'll close with this buddist quote that I absolutely love: "The finger that points to the moon is not the moon." I take this to mean the path one takes to one's own truth (and by extension, freedom since the 'truth shall set you free') is not the end result, i.e. just because psychedelics put me on MY correct path doesn't mean that I'll reach the conclusion any faster than someone who took a different one. All roads lead to home, imo.

In the end, we all are one. There is no separation.

 

[gibran2]

-Also, whilst you talk about altering brain chemistry, i believe that psychadelics dissolve the filters of ego which allow us to directly and effortly access the divine consciousness without barriers. My view is that todays society has made us forget about the ways people communicated in the past to higher planes. :idea:

Does “direct and effortless access to the divine consciousness without barriers” make one a better person? I don’t think that kindness, compassion, and love follow automatically from such experiences. The experiences orient us – point us in a particular direction – but we must then choose to move in that direction.

I’m sure there are many people who, either by upbringing, intuition, education, or other non-psychedelic means, are oriented toward kindness, compassion, and love. In other words, it isn’t necessary to use psychedelics in order to understand what really matters in this life.

I also wonder, in the grand scheme of things, if it matters whether or not one “sees the light”. Part of the “game” of material existence may be to learn and experience what it feels like to not see the light.

 

[obliguhl]

i just hope that they one day realise this....WHAT DO YOU THINK??

I hope that one day i realize it, and i wish that for you as well.

 

[christian]

Some good points there, Tek.

-When i ask "are you free yet", i mean free to see the things we attatch to on this earth so dearly, withought realising we are doing this. I think the psychadelic experience can open one up to this. In terms of truly being free, that is not something i ever expect we will be, we will continue to transform, but will never be free from existing. We will forever exist as some kinda energetic form, i believe.

> but i do think that thinking about this can "free" us up to perhaps realise that we do have choices, and can make some more honest lifestyle choices if we choose. The world can then become our oyster.

--Gibran..

-I like to think of a healthy lifestyle as incorporating some psychadelic ceremonies as part of a growth process for a well balanced lifestyle. I don't see psychadelics as being there to necessarily provide the qualities you mentioned. And perhaps in todays society we do in fact waste too much energy getting tearful and emotional over silly things when we should just toughen up a little...such as being voted off a cookery programme on tv,etc...:lol:

 

[christian]

i just hope that they one day realise this....WHAT DO YOU THINK??

I hope that one day i realize it, and i wish that for you as well.

>>Obli, yes, there is hope for us,thanks :surprised :lol:

 

[obliguhl]

I do like to think that we already walked a great deal down the road, I could easily be mistaken though. There are some things we'll never be able to believe again, yet we've got our little machine elfs and fractal circuses. I'm not sure what to think these days. I'm not even sure if my talk to you at this moment is an expression of my hypocrit mind, or if there is more to it.

Still, i see no reason why we should be infuriated about the "progress" of others if we ourselfs got still more seeing to do.

 

[christian]

Funny word that one, Obli.."Progress"...hahahaha..How loud do you want me to laugh??:lol:

---Funny how the word progress seems SO yesterday, even in dreamstates.....

 

[Super Radical]

I see what your saying, and I can see everyone's point, all valid from different perspectives.
That's what the world is though, valid from different perspectives. It depends on what makes someone happy to me.
If it wasn't for psychedelics I would still be a simple happy christian who prayed to a human-form God every night and just hoped my cats were in christian heaven when I got there.

Now I don't, and I'm happy I don't. I pray much differently now, but most of all it works for me.
Meditating to the vibrational frequencies of conciousness may not be for errybody.
Like that episode of adventure time when finn tries to kill everybody in a hyperdemensional blackhole, causing their brains to release DMT and giving them 'the best gift of all, alternate awareness', but then he finds out it was a bad idea. Holla' my adventure time fans!

 

[dmtk2852]

Dmtk, i disagree with your reply. However i respect your own wisdom. The reason why i disagree is because the i believe that the powerful psychadelic experience allows people to access states that they normally would never be able to. These are the "awake" states i'm talking about. It's these states that allow one to rise above the "nitty gritty" of mundane society, which leads them to think that perhaps earthbound religions are a laughable attempt to understand something that cannot be understood, or that there's more to life than having a fast sports car, mansion, playboy model girlfriend, and million dollar bank account....(to quote some rather simplistic situations..)

-Also, whilst you talk about altering brain chemistry, i believe that psychadelics dissolve the filters of ego which allow us to directly and effortly access the divine consciousness without barriers. My view is that todays society has made us forget about the ways people communicated in the past to higher planes. :idea:

You are correct that psychedelics allow us to access altered states of consciousness. However, I disagree that these states can be called "awake". When you are in these states you are hallucinating, that is fact. Entities or any other divine experience go along with other hallucinations you experience, such as patterned visuals or color shifting.
How can you call that awake, when a person in a normal unaltered state of mind does not see it that way? From our human perspective these states are no more awake than dreaming. The truth is the "nitty gritty" of mundane society is reality, and you are far more likely to believe that something as magical and fantastical as a DMT trip is real because you perceive normal reality as "nitty gritty" and "mundane."
I do agree with you that modern society has made us forget how people in the past "communicated with the divine". That is because today we attribute these experiences as miracles, when in reality they were very likely to be hallucinations similar to DMT trips.

 

[Entheojen]

-Unfortunately the reality is that 90% the population think that the above is all there basically is to life. They think they are free, but they are not. They do not know, and have not seen the light for themselves. The governments don't want them to see it. These people are simply existing in a fabricated lie...i just hope that they one day realise this....WHAT DO YOU THINK?? :twisted:

My difficulty is that I know there is a light, but unfortunately I haven't had time to see it...

 

[jamie]

"You are correct that psychedelics allow us to access altered states of consciousness. However, I disagree that these states can be called "awake". When you are in these states you are hallucinating, that is fact. Entities or any other divine experience go esalong with other hallucinations you experience such as patterned visuals or color shifting.
How can you call that awake, when a person in a normal unaltered state of mind does not see it that way? From our human perspective these states are no more awake than dreaming."

Is that a fact? How so? I have had psychedelic expeiences before without visual phenomenon at all..not all psychedelics cause hallucinations..so there is one problem with your theory. Another is that noone has really proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that there cannot be any exterior correlation to psychedelic visions etc..so lets hold off on what is "fact" for the time being, reguardless of how you feel about it personally.

By your same reasoning here, can you really call someone who is in a "normal unaltered state of mind" any more awake than when under the influece of DMT or LSD etc?..the normal waking state is just as much based on neurochemical reactions as is a psychedelic state so I am not sure how valid your point is here. Just becasue there is a higher % of people with a certain neurochemical balance at any given time than those who ingest whatever substances, does not mean necessarily that what they are experiencing is any more "real"..all it means is it is concentual..that is it.

In a very real sense you could say that someone under the influence of LSD for example is more "awake"..this has been proven neurologically. LSD works nearly exclusivly on the right hemisphere of the brain..it basically awakens it..a psychedelic experience is essentially that of an active right brain...sure different substances will have different effects, but in general there is a very discernable right brain activation. There is also much more left/right brain coherance in certain psychedelic states, and other altered states of consciousness..so I am not really sure how grounded in reality your assumptions are when it comes to the idea that it is not possible for someone under the influence of a psychedelic to literally be more "awake".

If you only focus on the more superficial aspects of psychedelics like cool visuals and hallucinations you are going to miss alot of the other stuff that is going on, and it is no wonder you would come to the conclusions that many people come to.

 

[Sublime]

If you want to experience freedom, then first you'll have to experience that you're not free at all. That's just how it works.

Well put. Just like opening your mind and not to let outside influence in. No one can tell you how it is or who you are, but people live by this.. If you don't stand up for something you'll fall for anything. However I would rather say if you stand up for everything (question and investigate everything yourself), you'll fall for nothing (all the bullshit)

 

[Sublime]

Dmtk, i disagree with your reply. However i respect your own wisdom. The reason why i disagree is because the i believe that the powerful psychadelic experience allows people to access states that they normally would never be able to. These are the "awake" states i'm talking about. It's these states that allow one to rise above the "nitty gritty" of mundane society, which leads them to think that perhaps earthbound religions are a laughable attempt to understand something that cannot be understood, or that there's more to life than having a fast sports car, mansion, playboy model girlfriend, and million dollar bank account....(to quote some rather simplistic situations..)

-Also, whilst you talk about altering brain chemistry, i believe that psychadelics dissolve the filters of ego which allow us to directly and effortly access the divine consciousness without barriers. My view is that todays society has made us forget about the ways people communicated in the past to higher planes. :idea:

You are correct that psychedelics allow us to access altered states of consciousness. However, I disagree that these states can be called "awake". When you are in these states you are hallucinating, that is fact. Entities or any other divine experience go esalong with other hallucinations you experience such as patterned visuals or color shifting.
How can you call that awake, when a person in a normal unaltered state of mind does not see it that way? From our human perspective these states are no more awake than dreaming. The truth is the "nitty gritty" of mundane society is reality, and you are far more likely to believe that something as magical and fantastical as a DMT trip is real because you perceive normal reality as "nitty gritty" and "mundane."
I do agree with you that modern society has made us forget how people in the past "communicated with the divine". That is because today we attribute these experiences as miracles, when in reality they were very likely to be hallucinations very similar to DMT trips.

Well that is all your understanding of it, just words to associate and information to describe it. Here is the definition of hallucination. What he is probably referring to is the fact that it is an awakening experience, a wake up call, something beyond our mundane lives where we feel asleep, empty or lacking a true spiritual connection.

hal·lu·ci·na·tion
   [huh-loo-suh-ney-shuhn]
noun
1.
a sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind, caused by various physical and mental disorders, or by reaction to certain toxic substances, and usually manifested as visual or auditory images.
2.
the sensation caused by a hallucinatory condition or the object or scene visualized.
3.
a false notion, belief, or impression; illusion; delusion.

First of all, we can even go as far to say that nothing exists outside the human mind if we wanted to. And who is to say this is false? Hallucination or not, we experience it, and that is real, because a hallucination is a real thing.

 

[onethousandk]

I'll close with this buddist quote that I absolutely love: "The finger that points to the moon is not the moon." I take this to mean the path one takes to one's own truth (and by extension, freedom since the 'truth shall set you free') is not the end result, i.e. just because psychedelics put me on MY correct path doesn't mean that I'll reach the conclusion any faster than someone who took a different one. All roads lead to home, imo.

Well put. Especially the last line.

 

[smokerx]

Unfortunately the reality is that 90% the population think that the above is all there basically is to life. They think they are free, but they are not. They do not know, and have not seen the light for themselves. The governments don't want them to see it. These people are simply existing in a fabricated lie...i just hope that they one day realise this....WHAT DO YOU THINK?? :twisted:

^ I Totally agree with this^

 

[smokerx]

Whatever you say, but you are still serving some very distasteful generalizations and accusations. My wish is that you understand that truth for you is not necessarily truth for others. We live different lives, we have different thoughts, feelings and perspectives, we have different ambitions and different goals. Who are you to say that everything is a lie and that people should wake up? I understand that you wish to start a debate, but perhaps formulating yourself in a different way would be appropriate, because you come off as a guy who thinks he knows what is right for everyone.

No offence mate but who are you to judge Christian than? Nobody should judge other people nor you nor anyone else.

I did not feel his statement really judgemental I agree with all he said. The truth is that people are sleeping and do not see that there is more to the life than what they are experiencing right now. Or are you saying that world is in proper order? Don't you see what is going on around you ? I don't even want to go there. It is pretty obvious that that people are being manipulated every single day and I hope that one day they will see the truth.

See I am not saying I know it all I am only expressing my own opinion. I believe there would not be a sound without silence cos that is where the sound comes from , from silence. The same you could say about freedom. Without knowing what is it like to be in prison you can not know what freedom feels like.

 

[onethousandk]

No offence mate but who are you to judge Christian than? Nobody should judge other people nor you nor anyone else.

I did not feel his statement really judgemental I agree with all he said. The truth is that people are sleeping and do not see that there is more to the life than what they are experiencing right now.

How do you not see the irony in this series of statements?

 

[dmtk2852]

"You are correct that psychedelics allow us to access altered states of consciousness. However, I disagree that these states can be called "awake". When you are in these states you are hallucinating, that is fact. Entities or any other divine experience go esalong with other hallucinations you experience such as patterned visuals or color shifting.
How can you call that awake, when a person in a normal unaltered state of mind does not see it that way? From our human perspective these states are no more awake than dreaming."

Is that a fact? How so? I have had psychedelic expeiences before without visual phenomenon at all..not all psychedelics cause hallucinations..so there is one problem with your theory. Another is that noone has really proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that there cannot be any exterior correlation to psychedelic visions etc..so lets hold off on what is "fact" for the time being, reguardless of how you feel about it personally.

By your same reasoning here, can you really call someone who is in a "normal unaltered state of mind" any more awake than when under the influece of DMT or LSD etc?..the normal waking state is just as much based on neurochemical reactions as is a psychedelic state so I am not sure how valid your point is here. Just becasue there is a higher % of people with a certain neurochemical balance at any given time than those who ingest whatever substances, does not mean necessarily that what they are experiencing is any more "real"..all it means is it is concentual..that is it.

In a very real sense you could say that someone under the influence of LSD for example is more "awake"..this has been proven neurologically. LSD works nearly exclusivly on the right hemisphere of the brain..it basically awakens it..a psychedelic experience is essentially that of an active right brain...sure different substances will have different effects, but in general there is a very discernable right brain activation. There is also much more left/right brain coherance in certain psychedelic states, and other altered states of consciousness..so I am not really sure how grounded in reality your assumptions are when it comes to the idea that it is not possible for someone under the influence of a psychedelic to literally be more "awake".

If you only focus on the more superficial aspects of psychedelics like cool visuals and hallucinations you are going to miss alot of the other stuff that is going on, and it is no wonder you would come to the conclusions that many people come to.

First of all, when I used the word hallucination in my post, I was solely referring to things fitting in the first category of the definition, other experiences go in the same category of "effects of a drug."
These are powerful substances, but the point you're missing is they alter our consciousness. Our brains have evolved a certain way, that which has proven most fitting based on natural selection.
I'll admit, it's a mystery why these chemicals fit so perfectly into our brain chemistry the way they do. Especially as simple a substance as dimethyltryptamine. I have had deep, profound and meaningful experiences but I have no reasons to attribute that to any external causes aside from inhaling chemical vapors.
Also that bit you posted on the LSD awakening a certain hemisphere of the brain is unfounded, both halves are the brain are in constant use everyday. So much so they are linked by a section known as the Corpus Collosum. Trust me, if your right brain was never awake you would be in a non-functioning mentally retarded state. LSD works like drug any other drug, even though the effects are very different, it binds to certain receptor sites in the brain(think Serotonin) and has some effect there. I'll admit we don't know much more than that, but there is no evidence to support that right-brain activation hypothesis you proposed.

 

[smokerx]

No offence mate but who are you to judge Christian than? Nobody should judge other people nor you nor anyone else.

I did not feel his statement really judgemental I agree with all he said. The truth is that people are sleeping and do not see that there is more to the life than what they are experiencing right now.

How do you not see the irony in this series of statements?

Statements = plural - I was commenting on only one statement = singular and I definitely don't see any irony in it.

Lets ask Christian - did you write that statement as a irony or did you really mean what you said in it ???

Onethousandk if you were referring to some other statement that you have to be specific otherwise I would not know what you are talking about