"[W]hy this[psychedelics] is not four-inch headlines on every newspaper on the planet I cannot understand because I don’t know what news you were waiting for, but this is the news that I was waiting for. It’s an incredible challenge to human understanding to try and make sense of this."
from https://www.asktmk.com/talks/Rap+Dancing+Into+the+Third+Mill...
Psychedelics might reveal to you that the neat little reality that you thought you had all figured out is a lot stranger and different from from what you thought it was, that your understanding of it might be all wrong, and that your place in it might not be all that cozy and secure. The experience could put everything in to question for you.
A lot of people feel threatened by that, so they try to push it away, lock it up, turn it off, or dismiss it.
Contrast that reaction to that in some other societies with a long tradition of psychedelic use. Psychedelic experiences there usually confirm the world view of the society, and tend to be very positive and accepted.
"The British enzymologist, J. B. S. Haldane in the 1920s, in an essay, said, "The universe may not only be stranger than we suppose; it may be stranger than we can suppose," and I suggest to you that as we look back over human history, every pinnacle of civilizationf whether it be Mayan or Greco-Roman or Song dynasty, has believed that it was in possession of an accurate description of the cosmos and of man's relationship to it. This seems to go- this seems to go along with the full flowering of a civilization. But, from the point of view of our present civilization, we regard all those conceptions as, at worst quaint, at best half right, and congratulate ourselves that our civilization, at last, has its finger on the real description of what is going on. " from https://www.asktmk.com/talks/Psychedelic+Society?query=stran...
That being said, the belief that the scientific method can build up arbitrarily accurate models of any observable phenomena is without foundation, yet some behave as if it is obviously true.
Until we have something like a unified model of physics, there is no reason to believe that statement to be true.
(and in fact, the scientific method has led to results like Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, which makes it perhaps more likely for it to be false)
Maybe numbers and language (especially written) are more important. Oh ya, and fire.
But the scientific method is way up there in important, no argument there.
Often though, we try to (or pretend we are applying this method to achieve unscientific questions (a la Karl Popper's criticisms of Scientism) or try to add up scientific answers in an unscientific way.
When we do that, we are using the (well earned and underappreciated) cultural authority of science in ways that do not promote truth seeking.
You hit the nail right on the head.
It reminds me about how we want and need security, particularly around our beliefs. What I think is true in that regard is what Adyashanti, a spiritual teacher, once noted: "The magical part is that the more you let go, the better it feels. The more you step into insecurity, the more you notice how secure and safe it is. Where you just stepped out of was unsafe. Everyone is so miserable because they seek security in things that are limited and always moving and changing unpredictably."
Something happens, and we judge it good and feel good about it. Then something else happens, and we judge it bad and feel bad about it. And so on. Our feelings are put on a roller coaster according to our judgements. But we don't have enough information to judge anything good or bad. It always remains to be seen. Deeply internalizing this results in equanimity.
Could you name one? For maximum utility in this conversation, can you pick something likely to happen more than once in an ordinary life, some common case?
Death of a loved one.
Unequivocally good:
Birth of a child.
Most people tend to experience these things more than once in a normal life. They represent a reality more real and more final than even psychedelics could manage: life and death. Impermanence.
Imagine how it would be if we didn't die. So is death good or bad?
I have a family friend whose first wife died of cancer. After mourning for years, he found another woman and married her. Unlike his first wife, she was insistent on having a baby. When their baby was born, he told us that, having held his child in his arms, he understood now that it would have been a huge mistake not to have had a child as he originally planned with his first wife. So was the death of his loved one good or bad?
> Unequivocally good: Birth of a child.
My sister was born and it must have been a very happy event. When she died it was very hard for my parents. Was her birth good or bad?
This is what the story is getting at. It doesn't make sense to assign good or bad to things. We don't have enough information yet. And we never do. It perpetually remains to be seen.
It's not apathy or learned powerlessness to accept the fact of reality that you just don't know enough to say whether something is good or bad. It's wisdom.
Distorting perception doesn't reveal truth, it simply allows you to experience something "other" than reality. It's not that this is bad, but I don't accept that it offers enlightenment or wisdom.
Brain in a jar/The matrix style VR perception altering technology could make me experience a different world - but it wouldn't be reality. I actually could still see this resulting in wisdom under certain circumstances, so I guess I have to cede that actually :)
It's like hearing a song or a joke in a dream which seems really beautiful or funny, and turns out to be utterly dull when you wake up and replay it.
So sure, altered perceptions give the lie to some of our assumptions about the world, and can lead to some interesting insights, but they also add a lot of new assumptions which are not healthy, and certainly aren't adapted to functional life in the non-psychedelic world.
Curious though, what kind of new assumptions do you consider unhealthy?
That said, I largely agree with your perspective as well: "The opposite is also true".
Or for people that are severely depressed, that your broken reality and thought loops that are deeply ingrained can actually be healed without a major neuronal shift.
The difference between a psychedelic experience and mental delusion is that the former brings a newly found perspective on and (knowingly or unknowingly) appreciation for the "big illusion". The latter usually reflects a degenerative condition and the delusion may never end.
Both no doubt lead to fascinating experiences but they're intrinsically non-sense. There are tantalizing connections to be made that are _just_ out of grasp, and always will be.
As a child I once had a fever so high that Lego blocks began to fall from the ceiling and stack up around my bed. I ran out of the room before I could be crushed. Also as I child I learned how to lucid dream; only marginally less non-sensical, though at least there's the interplay between conscious thinking and the dream world. I've also befriend a few far-gone schizophrenics over the years; quite fascinating but, again, it's pointless to try to unpack the delusion. For me these personal and recounted experiences _reinforce_ my appreciation for the "big illusion".
What bothers me about people who promote psychedelics is that they ignore the utter fragility of the human mind. Most people will come back from their experience but in others it can instigate or hasten mental decline (e.g. schizophrenia, psychological dependency). That may or may not have happened regardless, but if you want to promote self-knowledge, IMO the most important thing to _know_ is how precious and fragile the "big illusion" is, and maybe lead with that.
It's sort of like promoting fasting by exclaiming that hunger is awesome. I don't think starving people think hunger is awesome. Fasting isn't a way to learn that hunger is an illusion; it's a way to appreciate what you have and your relationship to it. (I've also experimented with fasting.)
I've never taken psychedelics and wouldn't do it recreationally because, frankly, I'm too scared. And it's unnecessary. More power to people who do but it'd be nice if they were less flippant about it.
I am apparently very sensitive to THC, because under what seem like mild doses to most people, I feel like I have lost my grip on reality in a deeply uncomfortable way. I have never tried more serious psychedelics due to fear for my safety and sanity.
I suspect many people have experiences that feel much more manageable. But I agree with your skepticism about the maximalist viewpoint.
We don’t yet fully understand exactly how these alterations work objectively. But they do suggest that our subjective constructions of reality are just that: constructions.
So the only illusion to lose is the entire nature of reality: in some sense there is more than one “reality”, as far as your brain is concerned.
I think this is the sober, science backed version of this notion and I think it is profound.
The human experience of the world (thoughts, vision, audition, pleasure, fear,...) is triggered by the nervous system (including the brain) that reacts on bio-chemistry.
Changing the bio-chemistry changes the human experience but gives no super powers. Most likely your thoughts on drugs are less smart but appear smart to you. Similar to other drug intoxications that disturb the normal brain activity and the sober judgement of your thoughts and experience of reality.
Granted, some people have been able to solve some of their problems with psychedelics because they are strong destabilizers.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/how-doctors-tr...
I am in favor of using psychedelics as last resort medicine under supervision of a medical expert.
But I am against the promotions of psychedelics by people who are either lucky (no bad life changing effects for months or years because of drug induced trauma with PTSD or bad neuroplasticity) or suffer already from psychosis.
Nothing like a blanket statement in your first sentence to immediately discredit your argument.
"All black people... All psychonauts... All Americans..." When you look at it yourself... doesn't it sound stupid to try to argue this way?
There are now hundreds of studies showing numerous benefits to psychedelics, from anxiety, depression, OCD, anxiety, Autism, etc.
What more evidence and data do you need?
My opinion is as valid as the opinion of psychonauts. Maybe more so because I do not rave about great insights about the universe or gods or aliens or chakra or kundalini or third eye or old souls; New Age stuff whose proponents are famous for the promotion of altered states (!) by meditation or yoga or drugs.
> "There are now hundreds of studies showing numerous benefits to psychedelics, from anxiety, depression, OCD, anxiety, Autism, etc.
> What more evidence and data do you need?"
All noteworthy (positive) studies are published by medical experts.
All medical experts warn against the casual use of psychedelics. They all promote a therapy that might include psychedelics under supervision of a medical expert.
Only people who suffer from psychosis defend their delusions as real and important.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psychede...
http://www.taraspringett.com/kundalini/kundalini-psychosis/
https://www.livescience.com/16287-mushrooms-alter-personalit...
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/how-doctors-tr...
What more evidence and data do you need?
Disclaimer: NOT intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment
For example, if you imagine the brain as a big Bayesian classifier, which is filtering and shaping the inputs through the prior "knowledge", then the psychedelics block the prior and let you experience the inputs in a different way from your sober, usual, daily experience. Now they don't completely block all the priors all the time, so you can consciously understand what's happening. Also, "inputs" don't come exclusively from the external world, they can be your thoughts, memories and so on. And without the priors blocking and shaping them, they re-surface (which is the basis of the name psychedelia) and show themselves in a new light. So you can process them again, in a better way, for example.