Interpretation of psychedelic experience

[Sihran Rap]

So... a lot of things happen on a trip. A whole lot of weird phenomena that are outside of most people's ordinary experience. Some even persist afterward. The result is you end up making a lot of claims that sound "crazy" to most people but make sense to most psychonauts. Also, you end up making a lot of claims that sound crazy even to other psychonauts. So I'm trying to personally reach some understanding that accounts for how some of these differences arise.


So I've got questions like... that's a lot of questions just answer whatever you may find interesting to reply to.

-To what extent do you have an 'agenda' when you trip? One end of the scale would be that you just want to experience whatever you will experience. The other end would be having a concrete question to resolve like "what is the answer to this math problem?" If you had some sort of agenda, how often did the trip defy your expectations? When it did, how often did you find that you still got the answer, but in a very strange fashion?


-How do you experience telepathic communication? Is it between yourself and 'entities', between yourself and another person who is immediately present, between yourself and a person not immediately present (or does immediate presence disappear as a concept?), is it sourceless? Also, how do you come to conclude that your communication was telepathic? Is it a sort of visceral feeling of knowledge like how you intuitively "know" that you heard something? Or was it a feeling of receiving information that could not be accounted for by your normal human senses so you reasoned by process of elimination? If the telepathy was to somebody immediately present, did you try to perform a test or to confirm the experience through speech?


-How do you experience "past lives"? Do you see the events of a 'life' that you know cannot be the events of your current life and conclude that it was a past life? Or does the notion that you are viewing a past life present itself as part of the unfolding of the experience? Do these memories remain with you when you are sober? Do you get the sense of having lived finitely many past lives or infinitely many? Were all your past lives as a human? If so, how do the mathematics work out? If not, how did you perceive the non-human past lives? Did you see yourself as animals or did you see extra-terrestrial past lives?


-How do you experience a trip insight such as "I haven't been a good person?". Do you just have the thought and it feels very true? Do you recall various events that you know occurred but which you did not lend much significance? (ie. cheating on partner... not a big deal) Do you experience any tension during such insights, the possibility of taking a contrary stance?


-How do you deal with "unacceptable" experiences? Say you thought that you were God during a trip and then you return to 'ordinary' self-perception. Do you dismiss the entire experience as a big "brain fart"? Do you affirm the reality of your 'experience' but deny the correctness of your initial interpretation? (ie. "I thought I was god, but really I was experiencing egolessness" ) Do you dismiss the very notion of reality or actually adopt the "unacceptable" belief?


-For people who describe their psychedelic use as a "relationship", how did the belief originate? Do you come from a shamanic or animist background or did the belief spontaneously come to you during an experience? How do you personally view the idea of having a relationship with, say, ayahuasca? Do you see it as a figure of speech (an extension of phrases like 'alcohol is a cruel temptress')? Do you view it as simply a useful conceptualization? Do you view from the lens that humans unfairly privilege human-human relationships over all other ones? Do you view it as an actual relationship with a 'spirit'? In case of the latter view, do you see the spirit as being embodied in the plant or do you see the terrestrial plants as the "phone numbers" that the spirit leaves for you while itself existing beyond what we ordinarily call "reality" or do you see the plants gateways to a 'spirit world' in which you can have relationships with all sorts of spirits?


-Has a psychedelic experience led you to consider things you've never thought about or even read about? For instance, you never really thought about the self or religion and then suddenly you are thinking about how "you" don't exist. Did you seek to ground the experience in language that was already out there or did you invent new terminology for what you experienced? In your 'final analysis', did you favor the language you used at the time of the experience or the language you invented when sober or borrowed from elsewhere?


-If you have been led to "unusual" beliefs through the use of psychedelics, how did you deal with any tension you may have had between your new beliefs and your old beliefs or your new beliefs and the beliefs of most other people? Did you see yourself as going to an expanded perspective where previous beliefs are seen as valid but simply arbitrarily privileged in society? Did you see your initial characterization of the belief as 'unusual' to be a remnant of previous prejudice and that in fact the belief is commonly held in various forms? Did you see yourself as advancing from false beliefs to true beliefs?


-If you've had psychotic experiences and also psychedelic experiences, did you find that the language you used to describe one of these experiences was useful in describing the other one as well? Has using psychedelics led you to view your psychotic experience as more or less removed from reality? To what extent did the contents of your psychedelic experiences incorporate content from your psychotic experiences? If you've experienced psychotic episodes before and after using psychedelics, did the post-psychedelic psychotic episodes feature content from your psychedelic experiences?


-During psychedelic experiences, what do you primarily focus on? Your thoughts? Your mind's eye? CEVs? OEVs? Sound? Sensations that have no analogy in ordinary reality? Do you find a considerable degree of "unity" between all these different senses (like the way a good music video reinforces the music)? Do you perceive the experience as internally consistent at the time? That is, when the walls are shifting, does putting your hand on them feel "natural"? When an object just can't seem to settle on having a consistent location, can you still grab it and make sense of what just occurred?

 

[chilling]

Yes to pretty much all these. People are tunning forks for viration. We have high and low vibrations. Telepathy is happening all the time we are sending out vibration and receiving as we attune to the subtle your communicating. You can communicate with a physical persons higher diminsional self while they remain unaware. Past life visions and all these astral unfoldings happen when you have the desire to understand. Once you ask the universe will unfold for that. Being said you can to an extent carry ritual. Keep it free thoug. Prayer, mediation, this is ritual and free. Incense. Step into the higher vibration with a desire and God willing it will unfold.

Emotional Growth is paired with spiritual growth and as you perform intospection and examie the universe your see the downward pull. Its okay. It happens. The you of the moment is in divine communion. So you take things as a learning experiance and are always growing. Letting go is an art.

You are the universe, it is within you. It is outside you. There is a holy space in you that is pure white light, holy spirit. God, the Most high still exist outside of that. You return from unity to duality. Back to this from there. Learning to meditate helps intergrate that perception into your daily life. Your getting the right idea.

Where do thoughts come from? A question I often ask. Your vibration changes as you have experiances. Higher vibrations changes the frequency of thoughts you pick up.

"Phsycosis" can be caused by seeing to much. Take it slow. Meditate.

You are a toroidal field.

I focous on God beforehand, during, and afterward. I watch my breath, sometimes to get into it. I feel my connection with the universe, my mind observes my feeling the connection. You cant think about infinity but the mirror of holy spirit in your heart can allow you to feel.

 

[Global]

Some thoughtful questions in here. I'll give it a go.

-To what extent do you have an 'agenda' when you trip? One end of the scale would be that you just want to experience whatever you will experience. The other end would be having a concrete question to resolve like "what is the answer to this math problem?" If you had some sort of agenda, how often did the trip defy your expectations? When it did, how often did you find that you still got the answer, but in a very strange fashion?

It varies. Sometimes I try and go in as empty-headed as possible. Sometimes it's with a vague intention like "I'll take what you think is best [even if it's a bit of a rough experience]" Sometimes I'll be more specific like requesting knowledge on Egypt. In one experience for example, I was stuck in a mild sub-breakthrough loop. I had seen it before, and I was just kind of getting bored, so I said (in my head) "what can you tell me about Egypt?" ...No response. So I repeat this in my head two more times and then suddenly, out of no where, just when the experience should have been dying down, it started ramping up out of no where as I was submersed in Egyptian imagery, concluding with an emergence of the godhead (which was the first time I saw the godhead without any harmalas)

These entities can be very coy. Their answers are often not very straightforward. They like to present visual metaphors. Sometimes you may not realize that they've answered your question until you're well done with the experience itself.

-How do you experience telepathic communication? Is it between yourself and 'entities', between yourself and another person who is immediately present, between yourself and a person not immediately present (or does immediate presence disappear as a concept?), is it sourceless? Also, how do you come to conclude that your communication was telepathic? Is it a sort of visceral feeling of knowledge like how you intuitively "know" that you heard something? Or was it a feeling of receiving information that could not be accounted for by your normal human senses so you reasoned by process of elimination? If the telepathy was to somebody immediately present, did you try to perform a test or to confirm the experience through speech?

I experience telepathic communication between myself and entities. I consider the bulk of these exchanges to be telepathic because their means of communication is through using the "channel(s)" typically reserved for my own internal thoughts and narration. The voice in my head is going, but I'm not controlling the semantic content in the slightest. Since it seems to have the clear source of the entity, it comes across as telepathic.

Not all entity communication appears to me as telepathic (or if it is, it's telepathy on a whole other level). Both elves and the godhead communicate with me with what I perceive as actual sound (though no one else in the room would hear it of course) but to me, it seems to be sound-based and not thought-based. I can hear their voices coming in my ears. If an elf is displaced to my left for example, I will hear him more in my left ear than my right. While the elves tend to have pip-squeak voices, the godhead has this deep, resonant, thundering, echoing kind of voice. Yesterday I had an experience where it seemed like the godhead was being infected by this negative entity. It was strange to hear these two go back and forth between the majestic, mighty godhead voice contrasted with the wacky sinister musical code (sounds like the wizard music from Super Mario) of this malignant entity.

-How do you experience "past lives"? Do you see the events of a 'life' that you know cannot be the events of your current life and conclude that it was a past life? Or does the notion that you are viewing a past life present itself as part of the unfolding of the experience? Do these memories remain with you when you are sober? Do you get the sense of having lived finitely many past lives or infinitely many? Were all your past lives as a human? If so, how do the mathematics work out? If not, how did you perceive the non-human past lives? Did you see yourself as animals or did you see extra-terrestrial past lives?

I've often wondered this myself. I'm not quite sure how others distinguish between having a vision of someone else's life (or some other place) and then making the jump to say that it was a past life. I'm not saying these people aren't having past-life visions, but I'm just as clueless as you are as to how they conclude that it must be a past-life.

-How do you experience a trip insight such as "I haven't been a good person?". Do you just have the thought and it feels very true? Do you recall various events that you know occurred but which you did not lend much significance? (ie. cheating on partner... not a big deal) Do you experience any tension during such insights, the possibility of taking a contrary stance?

A couple years ago, my older brother was marrying an Asian (a first in the family). I don't consider myself to be racist (at least consciously) but nonetheless, I suppose it's a hard detail to "not see" that she is Asian. So anyway, I ended up having this experience that was Asian to the T. I was in a small oriental house with cute little cups of tea and rice on a low wooden table. The small house was made of wood. My "teacher" (and this was a downright lesson) was the disembodied voice of an elderly Asian woman (speaking English). I don't remember the exact contents, but it was pretty much like a lesson in racism was unpacked in all its glory from finish to end, with teacher and classroom included and all.
When I remember that experience, as it is long past, it has helped me with other discriminatory thoughts/feelings towards others that I may have had since.

-How do you deal with "unacceptable" experiences? Say you thought that you were God during a trip and then you return to 'ordinary' self-perception. Do you dismiss the entire experience as a big "brain fart"? Do you affirm the reality of your 'experience' but deny the correctness of your initial interpretation? (ie. "I thought I was god, but really I was experiencing egolessness" ) Do you dismiss the very notion of reality or actually adopt the "unacceptable" belief?

This idea of "unacceptable" beliefs can be very subjective. That is to say, what you may find to be "unacceptable" I might find to be ideal and vice-versa. It's important to bear in mind symbolic displays (as opposed to literal displays) at times. My current stance (which in all liklihood will change at some point) is that the experience isn't one thing or another. All too often, it is several things at once. It is both real and not real. It is both good and bad. I've had a number of these godhead experiences, and my best estimation is that you (and me, and everyone else) is both god and not god. I put the "unacceptable" belief in the context of all prior experiences (as do we all), and evaluate from there. As my experiences with DMT have diversified, and as my beliefs are in a constant state of flux, so too my interpretation of the experience varies, which can make it harder or easier to deal with depending on context.

-For people who describe their psychedelic use as a "relationship", how did the belief originate? Do you come from a shamanic or animist background or did the belief spontaneously come to you during an experience? How do you personally view the idea of having a relationship with, say, ayahuasca? Do you see it as a figure of speech (an extension of phrases like 'alcohol is a cruel temptress')? Do you view it as simply a useful conceptualization? Do you view from the lens that humans unfairly privilege human-human relationships over all other ones? Do you view it as an actual relationship with a 'spirit'? In case of the latter view, do you see the spirit as being embodied in the plant or do you see the terrestrial plants as the "phone numbers" that the spirit leaves for you while itself existing beyond what we ordinarily call "reality" or do you see the plants gateways to a 'spirit world' in which you can have relationships with all sorts of spirits?

I have long-considered DMT and I to have a long-standing (mostly positive relationship). What I mean is that when I treat it with respect (including hyperspace, the entities, how I share it and the information I receive, etc...) DMT, it tends to respect me back: repaying me with extraordinary loving, informative and beautiful experiences. Even when no entity is overtly present, there is still often the sense that there is an intelligence at play controlling the vision. The experience itself can seem to have a personality to it, and a continuous one at that. I suppose people can mean all sorts of things when they talk about having a relationship with ayahuasca, but personally, I would just include everything I just said about DMT as being analogous as it is with ayahuasca. I don't know if it's a spirit world or what it is, but I feel like I do have some kind of relationship with the thing-behind-the-scenes in hyperspace.

-Has a psychedelic experience led you to consider things you've never thought about or even read about? For instance, you never really thought about the self or religion and then suddenly you are thinking about how "you" don't exist. Did you seek to ground the experience in language that was already out there or did you invent new terminology for what you experienced? In your 'final analysis', did you favor the language you used at the time of the experience or the language you invented when sober or borrowed from elsewhere?

The energy from the DMT experience has caused my limbs to move involuntarily in precise Qi Gong-like motions though I am entirely unfamiliar with Qi Gong. I looked minimally into it, but ultimately I feel that when the DMT energy is flowing through me, those motions are right. I don't have to learn a bunch of stances because if I'm doing it "right" then it will just happen, and I will assume the right stances. I have since learned to summon this energy without DMT, though DMT makes it so much easier to effortlessly access. My DMT experiences have also spurred me to researching Egypt voraciously as per my multitudinous Egyptian experiences. There have definitely been some experiences where an entity will use a certain word to refer to a very specific phenomena that I won't be able to recall, and then I'll sort of make up a "best fit" for the word like I had this one experience that was all about these "dimensional octaves". Now "they" used a very specific word to refer to them, though I don't know what that word is, so "dimensional octaves" is my description of what they were trying to convey.

-If you have been led to "unusual" beliefs through the use of psychedelics, how did you deal with any tension you may have had between your new beliefs and your old beliefs or your new beliefs and the beliefs of most other people? Did you see yourself as going to an expanded perspective where previous beliefs are seen as valid but simply arbitrarily privileged in society? Did you see your initial characterization of the belief as 'unusual' to be a remnant of previous prejudice and that in fact the belief is commonly held in various forms? Did you see yourself as advancing from false beliefs to true beliefs?

Sometimes you just have to know when to cut the cord with old beliefs. Hey, maybe you'll end up coming back to them one day, but I can't always be bothered with what I once believed or I'll never get anywhere. I concentrate on what I believe in the hear and now. It can be difficult to communicate with people who don't even share your remote ballpark of beliefs, but that's life. You can't please everybody, so don't get too frustrated trying. Having said all that, I try to remain as open as possible. I try not to get too fixed to beliefs. The way I phrase everything (even if it's just in my own head) is often with the open ambiguity needed to avoid pigeon-holing myself into a corner.

-During psychedelic experiences, what do you primarily focus on? Your thoughts? Your mind's eye? CEVs? OEVs? Sound? Sensations that have no analogy in ordinary reality? Do you find a considerable degree of "unity" between all these different senses (like the way a good music video reinforces the music)? Do you perceive the experience as internally consistent at the time? That is, when the walls are shifting, does putting your hand on them feel "natural"? When an object just can't seem to settle on having a consistent location, can you still grab it and make sense of what just occurred?

What do I focus on? Let's go through your examples one by one. I tend not to focus on my thoughts. The experience is short, and time is money and I have the entire time following the experience to focus on my thoughts. Not exactly sure what the mind's eye is or how it would contrast to CEVs and OEVs, but those are definitely something of a primary area of focus. From my observations (at least in my experience) the CEVs and OEVs are really one and the same, they just appear different with the contrast against the eyelids, and being the only visual information present (as opposed to the environment). I've noticed that the more I focus on any particular visual, the closer it gets to me, and the more it develops in detail and complexity (typically). If sound is present, then it is definitely something that I pay attention to, but if it's some low volume scramble, maybe not so much so, as opposed to a bonafide hyperspace musical composition.

There is most certainly often a unified connection between all the senses. Sometimes I may get visual buzzing (the whole scene vibrating) coupled with auditory buzzing coupled with tactile buzzing, and all at the same frequency. It has been my observation that it seems to me that the entities and landscape in hyperspace depend on these frequencies to facilitate their own motion, actions, and "magic". It's all coordinated. Therefore by introducing outside frequencies (such as with music), it can override hyperspace's initial frequency signals, thus causing different actions to take place in hyperspace. I believe this might be part of how icaros work.

The experience seems to be internally consistent. Placing my hands on a moving surface, when my hands make contact, it definitely feels dynamic and not static as it would when sober. That's I think the best answer I can give.

 

[Sihran Rap]

Thank you for taking the time to read and reply to my questions. I especially liked Global's response as it provided the kinds of information I'm looking for. I am very satisfied with the quality of the response so far, but not so much with the quantity. I wish more people would contribute.

I would like to encourage more members to post. I am not expecting you to answer all of my question prompts or even most of them. You can answer only one or two questions, you can go to a great deal of detail on a single phenomenon if you want to. What I'm really looking for is to understand how people arrive at beliefs rather than the beliefs themselves.

 

[Ilex]

Alright, I'll give this a shot...

-To what extent do you have an 'agenda' when you trip? One end of the scale would be that you just want to experience whatever you will experience. The other end would be having a concrete question to resolve like "what is the answer to this math problem?" If you had some sort of agenda, how often did the trip defy your expectations? When it did, how often did you find that you still got the answer, but in a very strange fashion?

Sometimes (especially when trying a new substance) my agenda is just to be a "blank slate" for the substance to reveal itself on, I try not to have expectations. Sometimes I like to consciously state an intention - especially with DMT, having a clear intention gives a framework to interpret what I experience. When I don't consciously state an intention, often it feels that my subconscious is running one for me anyway (which can lead to more chaotic, challenging experiences). I usually get what I need, not always what I expect, from the trip.

-How do you experience telepathic communication? Is it between yourself and 'entities', between yourself and another person who is immediately present, between yourself and a person not immediately present (or does immediate presence disappear as a concept?), is it sourceless? Also, how do you come to conclude that your communication was telepathic? Is it a sort of visceral feeling of knowledge like how you intuitively "know" that you heard something? Or was it a feeling of receiving information that could not be accounted for by your normal human senses so you reasoned by process of elimination? If the telepathy was to somebody immediately present, did you try to perform a test or to confirm the experience through speech?

I've had entity contacts where they seemed to talk directly into my head. I formed their communication into english words, but only for convenience. I've had telepathic experiences with other people such as sharing a vision and talking about it after. Sometimes thoughts just flow seemlessly together, and it is possible to communicate clearly with very few words. I don't know if this is telepathy, or just keen observation of body language and other minute clues.

-How do you experience "past lives"? Do you see the events of a 'life' that you know cannot be the events of your current life and conclude that it was a past life? Or does the notion that you are viewing a past life present itself as part of the unfolding of the experience? Do these memories remain with you when you are sober? Do you get the sense of having lived finitely many past lives or infinitely many? Were all your past lives as a human? If so, how do the mathematics work out? If not, how did you perceive the non-human past lives? Did you see yourself as animals or did you see extra-terrestrial past lives?

Past live experiences for me were visions in the mind that felt like memories, or I get that deja vu feeling when I see them. I had a vision one time of my soul as a ball of blue light with tubes coming out of it, and connecting to different lives in other places and times. The number of "lives" I've "remembered" are finite (only a few) and all human. I'm pretty ambivalent about whether they are really past lives, or perhaps some kind of cosmic consciousness, genetic memory or whatever.

-How do you experience a trip insight such as "I haven't been a good person?". Do you just have the thought and it feels very true? Do you recall various events that you know occurred but which you did not lend much significance? (ie. cheating on partner... not a big deal) Do you experience any tension during such insights, the possibility of taking a contrary stance?

Psychedelic revelations tend to have that instinctive feeling of being true, although sometimes they loose their feeling of "trueness" when I come down. The ideas worth keeping for me are those that still ring true, even months later. Some "revelations" just seem like delusions after the fact. I do get unique and valuable insights due to the shift in perception and interpretation that happens with psychedelics, but not everything I experience as "true" ends up being real.

-How do you deal with "unacceptable" experiences? Say you thought that you were God during a trip and then you return to 'ordinary' self-perception. Do you dismiss the entire experience as a big "brain fart"? Do you affirm the reality of your 'experience' but deny the correctness of your initial interpretation? (ie. "I thought I was god, but really I was experiencing egolessness" ) Do you dismiss the very notion of reality or actually adopt the "unacceptable" belief?

I start with just accepting that I had an "unacceptable" experience. Any attempt to explain them away fails to do them justice. To me, they are "experientially real" and when I think about it, that's as real as we ever get. What constitutes my "reality" is simply what I am experiencing right now, and what I choose to believe in (how I interpret the experience). Beliefs are strongly conditioned into us, and I do find it challenging to shift my beliefs. I often debate with others, it might seem like we are arguing, but I am planting seeds in them that might eventually change their beliefs, and they are planting seeds in me that might eventually change my beliefs. Ultimately we are all free to believe whatever we like, so it is funny how often we censor ourselves for believing in "the wrong thing".

-For people who describe their psychedelic use as a "relationship", how did the belief originate? Do you come from a shamanic or animist background or did the belief spontaneously come to you during an experience? How do you personally view the idea of having a relationship with, say, ayahuasca? Do you see it as a figure of speech (an extension of phrases like 'alcohol is a cruel temptress')? Do you view it as simply a useful conceptualization? Do you view from the lens that humans unfairly privilege human-human relationships over all other ones? Do you view it as an actual relationship with a 'spirit'? In case of the latter view, do you see the spirit as being embodied in the plant or do you see the terrestrial plants as the "phone numbers" that the spirit leaves for you while itself existing beyond what we ordinarily call "reality" or do you see the plants gateways to a 'spirit world' in which you can have relationships with all sorts of spirits?

I believe that all life is intelligent and if I can have a relationship with a person or a dog, then it makes sense I can have a relationship with a plant or fungus too. I would consider them to have a spirit of some kind that I can build a relationship with. I resonate with Albert Hoffmann, when he was asked whether he preferred LSD or mushrooms. He said LSD, because it seemed to just be a reflection of the human mind, whereas with mushrooms he had a sense of some "other" presence with its own agenda, which was unsettling for him (though, I like mushrooms more than LSD for that exact reason).

Purified chemicals are a conundrum for me. Sure, they all have a unique vibration, so I can get a sense of their "personality" when I take them. But is DMT extracted from a plant any different than DMT made in a lab? Personally, I think it is. DMT from a plant is coloured by the experiences of the plant it came from, synthetic DMT is coloured by the experiences of the chemist who synthesized it. I think intent has a big influence here. When a chemist with the purest intent for expanding consciousness synthesizes the most beautiful, perfect crystals of a substance, isn't that different than a shoddy chemist whose crystals don't form as nicely, and who is only in it to make some money? Can you feel the difference?

-Has a psychedelic experience led you to consider things you've never thought about or even read about? For instance, you never really thought about the self or religion and then suddenly you are thinking about how "you" don't exist. Did you seek to ground the experience in language that was already out there or did you invent new terminology for what you experienced? In your 'final analysis', did you favor the language you used at the time of the experience or the language you invented when sober or borrowed from elsewhere?

Yes, many times, one of the big reasons I take psychedelics. It can be hard to put the experiences into words, even if you invent new language for it. The problem is, what a word means to me is different than what it means to you, or other people. Most of us agree enough that there can be communication, but when communication breaks down it is usually because we are using the same words, but each person means something different by it. Pretty much all philosophical argument is simply arguing the meaning of words, that's something I hadn't considered before doing psychedelics.

-If you have been led to "unusual" beliefs through the use of psychedelics, how did you deal with any tension you may have had between your new beliefs and your old beliefs or your new beliefs and the beliefs of most other people? Did you see yourself as going to an expanded perspective where previous beliefs are seen as valid but simply arbitrarily privileged in society? Did you see your initial characterization of the belief as 'unusual' to be a remnant of previous prejudice and that in fact the belief is commonly held in various forms? Did you see yourself as advancing from false beliefs to true beliefs?

I take beliefs to be the way I understand the world, and so my beliefs are constantly changing (even without psychedelics), as my understanding of things deepens. I don't believe (haha) that beliefs are really "true" or "false", but they are required for us to interpret our experiences. I try not to get too hung up on particular beliefs, and if someone else has really strong beliefs that I disagree wtih, I might debate with them, but often I just let them be.

-If you've had psychotic experiences and also psychedelic experiences, did you find that the language you used to describe one of these experiences was useful in describing the other one as well? Has using psychedelics led you to view your psychotic experience as more or less removed from reality? To what extent did the contents of your psychedelic experiences incorporate content from your psychotic experiences? If you've experienced psychotic episodes before and after using psychedelics, did the post-psychedelic psychotic episodes feature content from your psychedelic experiences?

The only notable psychotic experiences I have had have all been under the influence of psychedelics. It seems to be one of the many places psychedelics can take me, when I go too far out and loose my "anchor" on reality. It's hard to draw the line and say, this is psychotic or delusional, and this is not. But if what I experienced seems wrong after the fact, or if it is so far out that I can't integrate it into my day-to-day life, then I might call it delusional. Psychedelics can destroy my normal "logical" thought processes, and combined with the feeling of "trueness" I can see why psychedelics have sometimes been called psychotomimetic.

-During psychedelic experiences, what do you primarily focus on? Your thoughts? Your mind's eye? CEVs? OEVs? Sound? Sensations that have no analogy in ordinary reality? Do you find a considerable degree of "unity" between all these different senses (like the way a good music video reinforces the music)? Do you perceive the experience as internally consistent at the time? That is, when the walls are shifting, does putting your hand on them feel "natural"? When an object just can't seem to settle on having a consistent location, can you still grab it and make sense of what just occurred?

Any or all, it really depends on the individual experience.

 

[Sihran Rap]

Great response so far! Also, do not feel limited by the questions I asked. If you want to talk about something else like astral projection, go ahead. I'd be happy to read about how you come to see the experience as astral projection.