Morphing Interstices
What is real anyway?
I would like to be able to post in the thread 'The Case Against the Elves' but I am too 'new' :lol: :lol: :lol:
Oh well, I'll just make my own thread about it. Those who have read the except for which a link was posted in that other thread might like to know that the entire book from which that except it drawn is actually freely available on that webpage if you open the table of contents.
It is worth a proper read. Kent is certainly very harsh about many kinds of attitudes he disagrees with and I find some of his claims objectionable. But it is certainly good to think with and a really valuable contribution to knowledge about psychedelics.
My main objections to his work are:
1. His use of 'computer' analogies to speculate about human brain function.... Yes, it was human intelligence that designed computers and therefore they probably do reflect us to some degree, but the same is not therefore automatically true in reverse....We cannot understand the human mind in all its complex potential just by looking at how computers work, so why use computer metaphors to describe us?
2. And this being my MAIN objection: while I do find Kent's caustic description of the beliefs he sees as deluded quite amusing, they are also lacking in curiosity about the function, structure and effects on us of our mystical beliefs. I too find it too much of a leap to assume that what we see on DMT proves there are aliens lifeforms, gods etc.. But then I think this is the wrong question to ask. I am less worried about whether it is 'real' (whatever that means anyway) and more fascinated by what it DOES to me to experience those hallucinations as other entities and places.
It is a mistake to think that you have to know whether it is real or not, the point is with all mystical experience that we NEVER do know, because the nature of the experience suggests a vivid alternate reality to us, but we can never prove that reality to exist outside our minds. So stop worrying about it and just pay attention instead to how it effects you to experience it. Frankly, weirdly, I don't think it matters much either way - if it is our minds able to be god or elves or if theses entities are out there, the point is that under the DMT our consciousness is expanded way beyond the categories of self that we are acculturated to take as 'us'. That is just such a fantastic thing in itself, I really don't see myself getting bored with it in a hurry...
So if you are really invested in believing in the 'reality' of the alternate worlds and entities you see on DMT, I don't think you are psychotically deluded, as Kent would say, because I think it is possible that this act of believing too is doing something to your consciousness that takes you somewhere. The problem with strongly identifying with realism in the way Kent seems to, is that this identification is lade with the baggage of a long tradition of thought in which mystical belief is seen as the enemy of science, rather than being seen as an object of curiosity in itself.
Oh well, I'll just make my own thread about it. Those who have read the except for which a link was posted in that other thread might like to know that the entire book from which that except it drawn is actually freely available on that webpage if you open the table of contents.
It is worth a proper read. Kent is certainly very harsh about many kinds of attitudes he disagrees with and I find some of his claims objectionable. But it is certainly good to think with and a really valuable contribution to knowledge about psychedelics.
My main objections to his work are:
1. His use of 'computer' analogies to speculate about human brain function.... Yes, it was human intelligence that designed computers and therefore they probably do reflect us to some degree, but the same is not therefore automatically true in reverse....We cannot understand the human mind in all its complex potential just by looking at how computers work, so why use computer metaphors to describe us?
2. And this being my MAIN objection: while I do find Kent's caustic description of the beliefs he sees as deluded quite amusing, they are also lacking in curiosity about the function, structure and effects on us of our mystical beliefs. I too find it too much of a leap to assume that what we see on DMT proves there are aliens lifeforms, gods etc.. But then I think this is the wrong question to ask. I am less worried about whether it is 'real' (whatever that means anyway) and more fascinated by what it DOES to me to experience those hallucinations as other entities and places.
It is a mistake to think that you have to know whether it is real or not, the point is with all mystical experience that we NEVER do know, because the nature of the experience suggests a vivid alternate reality to us, but we can never prove that reality to exist outside our minds. So stop worrying about it and just pay attention instead to how it effects you to experience it. Frankly, weirdly, I don't think it matters much either way - if it is our minds able to be god or elves or if theses entities are out there, the point is that under the DMT our consciousness is expanded way beyond the categories of self that we are acculturated to take as 'us'. That is just such a fantastic thing in itself, I really don't see myself getting bored with it in a hurry...
So if you are really invested in believing in the 'reality' of the alternate worlds and entities you see on DMT, I don't think you are psychotically deluded, as Kent would say, because I think it is possible that this act of believing too is doing something to your consciousness that takes you somewhere. The problem with strongly identifying with realism in the way Kent seems to, is that this identification is lade with the baggage of a long tradition of thought in which mystical belief is seen as the enemy of science, rather than being seen as an object of curiosity in itself.
