My position, or lack thereof makes this shit intimidating. What i mean is with regards to my orientation to the space. There's the unresolved and possibly unresolvable inquiry as to how much of our experience is merely a drug reaction, how much of it is ontologically extant outside our minds, and how much collaboration is there between the two.
I feel like if I could be convinced and oriented to the idea that it's all a drug interaction and it's all in my head, it would be much easier to shrug off or to assuage myself regarding any difficult, scary, or challenging content.
But I can't convince myself of that.
On the other end, if hyperspace is a place unbound from the mind, in the same way you or the Eiffel Tower are relative to me, then there's a whole lot of weird and potentially scary implications to that. It's a great deal to consider. And I don't know what to do with that without a proper orientation to myself and my wants and needs. But maybe at this point, the only point is to be there, subjectively.
And I am stubborn. I can't/won't pick an orientation. I play with them all. But it would be easier if I could have certain convictions about the space. As familiar as we are to each other, I don't believe anything about the space. And I am inclined to keep it that way due to felt encouragement from the space relative to my skeptical position! It's like a catch-22. But should I expect anything different from hyperspace?
However, as I write this, maybe it's not that serious
And here's my good morning to you (have yet to get out of bed).
One love
While remaining open minded and skeptical is in many ways an essential facet of this work, I found that altering my levels of various suspicions regarding what we are accessing proved quite useful in relaxing and not worrying so much about what awaits, or interpreting what I just experienced. You really can drive yourself mad about that sort of thing - I sure know I have.
The idea that it is some kind of alien multiverse in there that we must somehow learn to deal with - and at times perhaps even protect ourselves from - is understandably very intimidating. This possibility was preventing me from relaxing into deeper states. If juggling a particular possibility is detrimental to progress then, true or not, it might be useful to let it go and see how that feels?
Kind of like how John Lilly used to advocate skepticism, but suggested trying to also employ the utility or power of belief too, and temporarily suspending skepticism during experiences - since disengaging the analytical/skeptical mind helps one fully immerse and let go into the experiences potential. We can always analyze the experience afterwards with healthy skepticism and worry about juggling the possibilities then.
For over a decade I found myself leaning towards a McKenna-esque interpretation of "hyperspace". The experiences were just too weird, and realer than real, of course. But as you say, I found this interpretation difficult to relax into, as the implications are scary. This interpretation had become rather ingrained in my thinking (more ingrained than I was willing to admit to myself at the time, because lets be honest that "meme" has taken over the culture to a significant degree now, as much as we try and stay skeptical. Many are far more attached to it than they will ever admit IMO, even while trying to remain skeptical).
There was many holes to this that I ignored for years, and I think people tend to drastically exaggerate the clarity and coherence of their experiences with these "beings"...They seemed too intimately tied into my thinking and masked by memories to be autonomous and external. Not to mention variably decoherent compared to other types of experiences.
The neurological data seems to show our dominant left hemisphere is constantly filtering reality with heavy alterations, confabulations, or misinterpretations based on our conditioning and beliefs... So I don't know why it would suddenly stop doing that on psychedelics (unless you heavily inhibit it somehow...). Add that to the fact that Michael Persinger found many people sense a "presence" when you stimulate the right hemisphere with electrodes (the hemisphere other research has shown is primarily responsible for these states) and the picture gets more complicated.
These things clearly blow open the doors of perception, but the filter is still usually attempting to make sense of it throughout the experience. The world our physics instruments tells us is out there is nothing like what we normally experience through this filter, and it might as well be completely alien to our sober self. But we try and make sense of it, hence the faces in the tree bark etc. After hearing perspectives like this I tried to more honestly suspend long held ideas and got more interested in Joseph Campbell, Jung, Eastern philosophy, 5-MeO-DMT experiences and so on.
Ironically McKenna himself said "People are so alienated from their own soul that when they meet their soul they think it comes from another star system". Though whose to say actually facing ourselves is any easier than facing aliens?
As things got deeper via combined techniques, my suspicions shifted away from these interpretations. By adding sympathetic resonance (acoustics etc) during sessions at supposedly powerful ancient locations in nature, things changed for myself and those doing this. What my ego would initially interpret as external entities was either gone or would eventually be pulled into far greater perceptual resolution, with relaxation quickly revealing mind boggling standing waves and fields of cymatic wonder, with a shift in my sense of self as mind turned inside out and perception of my immediate environment transformed into something entirely unexpected yet oddly familiar. Perhaps more akin to what people report with 5-MeO-DMT experiences which, in a way, are usually deeper, yet relatively entity-less.
When honestly re-assesing all of my past experiences, it seemed that it was more about a transformation of self and perception of reality rather than launching through a portal to some alien dimension, even if it often seemed that way at first during the weird transition from typical mammalian brain to cosmic oneness. It was as if the brain was an instrument or speaker in the ocean that we (the universe) grew to pull more of itself into the waveform of consciousness, resonating with the fabric.
I'm reminded of my first DMT experience in my backyard at night, nearly 17 years ago now, where on a subbreakthrough dose I relaxed and felt as if I'd become the entire neighborhood. My most profound experiences throughout the years were always punctuated by a shift in my sense of self to some kind of oneness - which was largely the goal that got me interested in psychedelics in the first place and defined some of my earliest experiences.
But who knows, that was just my subjective experience and while I have suspicions, I try and remain open and skeptical. I don't want to debate or convince anyone of anything, since I'm never really convinced myself, but I wanted to highlight other perspectives that we don't see much of around here.
Maybe it isn't a portal to another dimension or just internal psychology on drugs. It might be something quite peculiar that is in many ways entirely beyond the normal dichotomies we are used to thinking about. That seems to be what the Vedas were raving about for example, at least to me. (I know you don't only juggle those two views, but that is of course the general paradigm culturally - to put it in an overly simplified way).
Well I didn't mean to write a book. Sorry bout that. In any case my point is that I really get where you're coming from there and can relate a lot. It's certainly tricky as hell to navigate such matters, and it takes a TON of friggin courage to do what you're doing, that's for sure
