Atheism and DMT

[osake]

If you are an atheist and have had breakthrough experiences on DMT how has DMT effected your belief? I find that DMT always leaves me convinced that I am genially visiting another dimension of some sort. This new conviction will only last for a couple of days, sometimes weeks depending on how strong the experience. After I try and rationalize it and sway to more atheistic beliefs.

 

[anrchy]

Lately I am having a hard time with this. Before DMT I was mostly agnostic. But now I dont really know where I fit in the categories, dont really care to be labeled but whatever.

I dont consider what I believe to be agnostic or athiest, or of any theistic religion either. I dont consider the source to be a "supreme being". I dont really think we have a word to actually describe it correctly so I dunno.

My last dose, ~50mg, major breakthrough, god/source experience ect. Definitely opened my eyes to what the source really could be. Hard to dismiss. This experience has become permanent for sure. Dont know what it means but I like it.

I dont recommend that high of a dose BTW.

 

[universecannon]

same sorta question Atheist experience - Welcome discussion - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus

gigantic thread on atheist dmt experience The Atheist DMT Experience - Welcome discussion - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus

other report Reformed Atheist registering an account - Introduction Essay - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus



I was a depressed atheist in my early teen years, and increasingly worried i was loosing my mind. Then i had a number of profound sober experiences and my views started shifting to a more taoist/pandeistic perspective- although i didn't call it that at the time or realize the correlations....Then once i started exploring psychedelics, it in a sense confirmed my suspicions that we really are all one, on a very literal level. The fact that we are the universe playing with itself, that the atoms that make us up really were cooked in the hearts of dying stars, that the universe originally sprang from a single point unity and oneness, that quantum entanglement shows its all constantly in non-local instantaneous connection, that life is as much a thing the universe is doing as a wave is something the ocean is doing...all these sound profound, and they are, but it goes so much deeper than all of that can even begin to convey to our limited piss-poor categorical approximations and "logic" (just WTF is logical about all of that anyways!?).

That was all nice to think about, but then I literally became one with both my friends and the universe on several occasions with lsd, mushrooms, and high doses of salvia while in high school, and it was too profound to just brush under the rug and not explore further. It was a oneness that was so tangible and literal and viscerally intense and real that it can't be conveyed through a medium as feeble as human language.

Now if i had to guess it seems like the entire multiverse is permeated with consciousness. I don't identify with "isms" really, even though i like some more than others. But i'm sort of a taoist/pan-deistic/animist...most days i guess ^__^ ...sometimes all of these courses i'm taking with dogmatically reductionist/materialistic/atheist 'rational' professors can get to me. Not much though. Luckily i know some great turned on neuro/cognitive scientists in my field who've also peered over the edges

After I try and rationalize it and sway to more atheistic beliefs.

as the distance between the last profound experience grows, our ability to really feel the heaviness of its ridiculously absurd implications dulls

 

[universecannon]

I dont really think we have a word to actually describe it correctly so I dunno.

you can say that again

 

[DeDao]

I was not spiritual at all before my encounters with entheogens.

 

[Quinn the Eskimo]

Prior to trying psychedelics, I used to be a very Richard Dawkins-esque sort of atheist. But my experience with psychedelics has shifted my perspective to something that makes sense in my mind, but is difficult to put into words. I don't believe in a self-aware "god" that has the ability to make decisions and whatnot, but I do believe in a higher power. This higher-power, I believe, is what connects everyone and everything in our universe. Sorry if this is difficult to understand, it's hard for me to put my thoughts on this matter into words.

 

[Sihran Rap]

I used to be an atheist. I also used to have a stance on the Oxford comma. Growing up fixed the second issue, DMT is what fixed the first.

 

[The Electric Hippy]

I went from an atheist to an apatheist. That is to say, I no longer care whether there's a God or not.

 

[ChemisTryptaMan]

I also was an atheist before the spice showed me the flaws in my thinking and showed me that my spirit continues to exist without my body. Now I don't know what I really believe, except in the universal oneness and the fact that our conscious self is not confined to our physical bodies. The existence of a creator now seems much more probable to me than before, but I haven't been able to find anything that definitively gives me the belief in a "god" so to speak. I had a friend once tell me as he was coming out of a dmt trip that "when it comes, it isn't going to hurt, and we aren't going to see it coming. We are just going to become part of it". He was still very gone and does not recall saying it or what he was experiencing, but he definitely said it. His words actually filled me with relief and comfort. Though I didn't have the experience myself, so I can't really know anything about what it means, I definitely have taken it into account when forming my belief that we are all one being.

 

[Infundibulum]

If you are an atheist and have had breakthrough experiences on DMT how has DMT effected your belief? I find that DMT always leaves me convinced that I am genially visiting another dimension of some sort. This new conviction will only last for a couple of days, sometimes weeks depending on how strong the experience. After I try and rationalize it and sway to more atheistic beliefs.

I'd say that dmt has reinforced my belief as an atheist, rather than the opposite.

If not anything else, isn't it telling that feelings of the divine, travels to otherworldly dimensions etc etc are triggered by something so materialistic as a pile of off-white powder?

I went from an atheist to an apatheist. That is to say, I no longer care whether there's a God or not.

I like this viewpoint. At this time in my life, I couldn't care less about any religious explorations or philosophizing about atheism/theism.

 

[The Electric Hippy]

I like this viewpoint.

To me, it is by far the least dramatic one. I'm no longer up on a soapbox defending atheism, and I can't tell you how nice that is. It became so old defending my views to my friends:

"How can you believe in nothing?"

"How can you be an atheist? You have morals"

"So the Universe came from nothing?"

I ended up taking a tab of LSD and going to a nearby beach shortly after talking with Hyperspace Fool on an old thread about atheists and DMT, and as I was lying there, watching the clouds breathe and meditating on our conversation, it dawned on me that I didn't have to defend anything anymore, because it didn't matter whether there was a God or not. I was here on Earth, tripping balls, having a great time, without or without him.

As far as the DMT experience goes:

Yes, flying through the Universe at thousands of times faster than the speed of light is beyond words amazing.

Yes, it is odd that a little white powder gives such bizarre and crazy visions.

Yes, it is unexplainable exactly what happens.

But I'm just not willing to accept that my convictions while under the effects of what is arguably the most powerful drug on Earth constitutes reality. Yes, I've merged with the Godhead. And yes, it was just as amazing and divine and wonderful and insane as any trip report given here. But I'm still not convinced.

 

[Valura]

I was always spiritual, but I also like logic. However a different kind of logic when compared to the "cold" logic, which I find to be illogical. More of a transcendental kind of logic.

Psychedelics only strengthened my ideas. Also I believe many people define themselves as atheists because of many negative experiences with organized religion. The dark part of religion has kind of hijacked the entire idea of "higher power". Instead of placing it internally and integral/inner to everything, they make it external in the form of some judging god who supposedly sends one to heaven or hell, based on how one acts. The "rules" of acting are then obviously engineered or twisted in such a way so the religious leaders can use fear in order to extort power from the people.

If people see not all transcendental "religious" thought is automatically like this, they won't be biased towards atheistic views, and moving to different realms of thought will not immediately be associated with the loss of logic and all kinds of other negative behavior, making non-atheistic views more easily accessible.

 

[lobo]

We are consciousness

 

[Infundibulum]

We are consciousness

What a generic one-size-fits-all one liner...

we are consciousness, so....

??

 

[Demideon]

I was always spiritual, but I also like logic. However a different kind of logic when compared to the "cold" logic, which I find to be illogical. More of a transcendental kind of logic.

Psychedelics only strengthened my ideas. Also I believe many people define themselves as atheists because of many negative experiences with organized religion. The dark part of religion has kind of hijacked the entire idea of "higher power". Instead of placing it internally and integral/inner to everything, they make it external in the form of some judging god who supposedly sends one to heaven or hell, based on how one acts. The "rules" of acting are then obviously engineered or twisted in such a way so the religious leaders can use fear in order to extort power from the people.

If people see not all transcendental "religious" thought is automatically like this, they won't be biased towards atheistic views, and moving to different realms of thought will not immediately be associated with the loss of logic and all kinds of other negative behavior, making non-atheistic views more easily accessible.

This reminds me of a quote by nietzsche I read a while back. Impossible to reference exactly on top of thousands of amazing saying by this man I have read. But it was something like "every godman (jesus,buddha,muhammad) is the gravestone on which rests true religion (the spiritual experiences that were unique to each individual)"

As far as religion goes I've always found it best to be non-dogmatic, always to accept what is happening to me in the midst of my deepest moments and simply to relate and reflect them to the rest of my past. My deepest moments are not always while on the influence of a psychedelic-- but I would say any transcendental type of moment in life makes one more "spiritual", a little more metaphor inclined (to my definition)- Atheist, Theist, panthiest, or what be it.

 

[CrazySage]

For me, DMT has stripped away every "ism." We are one with everything, and yet we are also ourselves. The easiest way that I currently can identify myself is as a pandeist. I don't think in those terms when I think about myself though.

I don't adhere to extensive dogma, but I do believe in the simplicity of living in the moment. The past exists to help us learn, the future gives us something to work toward. Our bodies, minds, and souls are indistinguishable.

 

[jamie]

I can see creator.

That is all I need.

The difference is that so many other people would look at what I see and not realize it as the face of creation. They try to look beyond to see god.

 

[AlbertKLloyd]

DMT has not had an impact upon my spirituality.

 

[Amygdala]

Psychedelics have taught me that I have little to no idea what the hell is going on.

Everything used to be so neat and tidy.

The odds of a domesticated primate figuring it all out are so infinitesimally small IMHO, that as much as I enjoy speculating on the nature of things, I never fully believe my or your ideas

 

[hixidom]

Mainly what Amygdala said.

My past atheism was all about experience and evidence, and I had never had either to support spirituality. Psychedelics changed that, and then atheism was no longer a viable/rational belief for me.