Psychedelics and Religious Experience

[bodhi]

For those in conflict, great essay by Allan Watts

Psychedelics and Religious Experience

 

[Felnik]

interesting how he says:
Through subsequent experimentation with LSD-25 and the other chemicals named above (with the exception of DMT, which I find amusing but relatively uninteresting)

amusing but relatively uninteresting ? i'm speechless

 

[DoctorMantus]

This whole this is interesting thanks for sharing.


A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me thro' repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true life.6

 

[gibran2]

interesting how he says:
Through subsequent experimentation with LSD-25 and the other chemicals named above (with the exception of DMT, which I find amusing but relatively uninteresting)

amusing but relatively uninteresting ? i'm speechless

I had the same reaction when I read that.

 

[corpus callosum]

Does Mr Watts mention his ROA with DMT?

I reckon that for exploring the religious experience paradigm with the agents he mentions, he should have tried the oral route and then passed comment.After all, isnt he the origin of the quote about aiming atomic cannons at ones head and pulling the trigger as a metaphor for DMT? This description fits the bill for vaporisation or IV, but is less applicable to the oral route, IMO, and is less likely to give the 'spiritual experience' that can be made sense of than say aya.

 

[Global]

That was a good article. I thought he made some valid points, particularly towards why psychedelics are illegal and why they should be legal. On a side note, someone has to hit up Mr. Watts with a ready-to-go GVG while he's on ayahuasca to make him reconsider the mystical-inducing capabilities of DMT :twisted:

 

[AllIsDistraction]

Thank you for sharing, that was very interesting to say the least.

He puts into words so clearly why psychedelics should not be illegal. We all know it's asinine, but the way he stated it is nearly impossible to ignore. Maybe one day we'll have a society that nourishes and permits experimental hallucinogenic journeys... but until then psychonauts will live as "criminals".