Spiritual Experiences : Hallucinations/illusion or reality ?

[Tausif Ahmed]

How do we know that spiritual experiences produced by any means(psychedelics,meditation,concentration etc) are true and not illusions or hallucinations?

After all different people have had different experiences in past and the present hence we have different religions with all these different view points and teachings.

I will give 2 examples.

An Atheist YouTuber says that she tried Psychedelics out of curiosity and experiences the affects.She says she saw friendly seemingly un-harmful snakes coming towards her.Her friend had a different experience as she saw dangerous snakes trying to attack her.

Why did these people have different experiences?

Another example I can give is of an old American who was born in my country, Pakistan.His parents were christian missionaries so he was born here.

He is a spiritual person and says that during spiritual experiences he was told that Pakistan is a special spiritual country from where peace will prevail in the world.

Now this American has spent time in Pakistan,knows the language etc and has had been in contact with Mystics of Pakistan so he had this spiritual experience which is related to his knowledge and real life experience.

While another American living in America who never visited Pakistan is also practicing spirituality but never got any spiritual experience about Pakistan.Why??

Don't these two examples(which are real examples) prove that it is just our brain creating stuff and ultimately these are  all hallucinations?

how would one convince an Atheist or rationalist that spiritual experiences are real and not hallucinations ?

[pluto]

How do you know that all of this isn't a hallucination?

[Tausif Ahmed]

@pluto I see what you are saying but right now I am aware and I am sensible I am conscious.

When I am meditating or have  psychedelics or something that is not the case.If I am not wrong..

[Tausif Ahmed]

@pluto Just like dreams.They feel very real but they are just being created in our head.Now  I know you will say that everything is a hallucination including me and you but how do we really know?? maybe its not

[Shadowraix]

6 minutes ago, Tausif Ahmed said:

I am sensible

What is sensible? Is this not just an arbitrary standard?

6 minutes ago, Tausif Ahmed said:

When I am meditating or have  psychedelics or something that is not the case.If I am not wrong..

I would say both actually make me hyper aware and conscious. On psychedelics I am so aware of things I used to not be it can be overwhelming.

22 minutes ago, Tausif Ahmed said:

An Atheist YouTuber says that she tried Psychedelics out of curiosity and experiences the affects.She says she saw friendly seemingly un-harmful snakes coming towards her.Her friend had a different experience as she saw dangerous snakes trying to attack her.

Why did these people have different experiences?

Jaclyn Glenn! I was very much a follower of her in my atheist phase. The psychedelics really just enlighten you about yourself. What "you" are oh man that rabbit hole goes deep.

23 minutes ago, Tausif Ahmed said:

Don't these two examples(which are real examples) prove that it is just our brain creating stuff and ultimately these are  all hallucinations?

how would one convince an Atheist or rationalist that spiritual experiences are real and not hallucinations ?

Do you know the brain is creating it? And what if the brain is just a hallucination causing a hallucination?

Spiritual experiences ARE hallucinations. But thinking they are more hallucinatory than sobriety isn't very logical, no? You can sum drugs up as chemical reactions in the brain causing them, so why can't you apply this to sobriety? What does an objective reality look like with no subjective interpretation?

Psychedelics become so useful because they sort of unwire a lot of notions you had about reality. Such as a concept of you. You realize this concept is nothing but a concept. Separation is a perception. This can easily lead into ego death. Thats how psychedelics can provide an easy route to enlightenment. A lot of the work is unwiring things you once thought to be true and going back and questioning it.

[Jack Walter Leon]

I think every spiritual experience is subjective, therefore you can't draw conclusions that apply to everyone. It's all in your mind. 

[Shin]

23 minutes ago, Tausif Ahmed said:

@pluto Just like dreams.They feel very real but they are just being created in our head.Now  I know you will say that everything is a hallucination including me and you but how do we really know?? maybe its not

Who told you that ?

[Tausif Ahmed]

@Shadowraix Sorry about the 'sensible' part, English is not my mother language so bear with me.

Yes thats her I am talking about.

Guys I am seriously not getting what you all are saying....its going above my head

[Tausif Ahmed]

@Shadowraix

[Shadowraix]

@Tausif Ahmed This is complex stuff. Language barriers makes it harder. 

Let me ask you this: Is experience the only thing there is? You experience a rock, but is that rock there or a hallucination? 

 

What's the difference? Does real and hallucination not mean the same thing at this point? 

Imagine a person in your head, living their life having memories of the past having a good time. What makes that imagination different from you? If you can imagine someone living life, is it possible you are just imagined? That person in your head is basically hallucinating life, exactly as you are! That person in your head is you yet not all you are. 

[FoxFoxFox]

@Tausif Ahmed

Your immediate experience is the only thing you have of reality. In other words, what you experience is what you are, and that is reality, regardless of how that experience looks like. 

There is an important distinction between an spiritual experience and enlightenment. An spiritual experience, as the name suggest, should really only be used to refer to experiences that has something to do with the spiritual dimension of consciousness. In contrast, enlightenment is complete awareness of your true nature as consciousness, independent of whatever dimension the "I" experiences. From "I am" to "I-I" to silence and bliss. 

[Highest]

@Tausif Ahmed There is only Everything and It experiences everything. There is no such thing as unreal. There is only reality aka Everything. 

[Pouya]

Maybe imagine finite human within infinity perceiving a little little part of it.

You are not that human.

Infinite dreams within dreams and this is one of them.

@Tausif Ahmed

Edited March 23, 2019 by Pouya

[bejapuskas]

@Tausif Ahmed  I just wanted to say, that the „real world“ doesn't have any taste, colour, consistency etc... This is ALL created in our brains. The brain creates about 6 times more information that it accepts from the organs and creates models, which make everything non objective. Thus this arguments of yours doesn't make much sense. Everybody has different experiences, because everybody is different. If a person eats a nut, they just digest it, but another person, who is allergic, might die from eating it. Same with everything, it is all about the balance of the polar opposites, that compliment each other. Psychedelics are very tricky, I haven't tried them, maybe I never will, but make sure not to idealize them. If a person is not at their 100 % health, psychedelics might really hurt them and it is not like: Yeh, plug it into your ass, it all gets recontextualized, the substance is just one with the Universe blah blah... You would be causing violence by doing this. Also this what you see... Do you know why it exists, how it exists, whether it actually exists... etc? You don't know anything and you cannot describe anything that is happening here, if you simply let go of the mind and the language. It is truly a breath taking experience. I hope I showed you a new perspective by saying all this  

[Kensho]

5 hours ago, Tausif Ahmed said:

An Atheist YouTuber says that she tried Psychedelics out of curiosity and experiences the affects.She says she saw friendly seemingly un-harmful snakes coming towards her.Her friend had a different experience as she saw dangerous snakes trying to attack her.

Why did these people have different experiences?

Seeing snakes during a psychedelic trip is not a mystical experience. Spiritual-mystical experiences are one kind of psychedelic experience that doesn't happen every time. Somehow these girls thought that whatever you see during a trip is a mystical experience, hence they thought they debunked the whole eat-mushrooms-you'll-stop-being-an-atheist hype. It doesn't work that way.

When you have a true mystical experience, then you know. Then you are absolutely sure that is something beyond the ordinary level of existence. A friend of mine had his revelation in his 4th (!) 5-Meo-DMT trip.

Obviously the girls didn't experience something significant. The psychedelics gave them what they deserved ;-)

[Pouya]

@bejapuskas I've heard a research about how brain "guesses" the external world not perceive.

But with that argument the brain itself is in the illusions it creates.

[bejapuskas]

@Pouya  Yeh, sure, but not many people could shoot themselves in the head, because their brain is just an illusion  

[Shin]

To be extremely direct,

You're dreaming right now, except there is not a personal you to dream the dream.
You dream an infinite number of dreams simultaneously, and decided to be completely clueless about that in some of them,

Like that you could play the dream as if it was serious and risky, upping up the sensation of it being real.
You won't accept this untill you suffer so much in the dream that you open up to the possibility of it being a joke.

That's basically what's happening here, but you're infinitely smart, so you will use all the rationalization in the world as how it can't be the case !

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by Shin

[WelcometoReality]

@Tausif Ahmed Another way of looking at it is: Does the person that is experiencing it perceive it as real or not. 

Have you ever had a dream that felt real only to wake up confused and asked yourself was it really a dream? It felt so real!

Have you ever had a dream which you were aware all along that it was just that?

What if you had a spiritual experience. How would it differ if you perceived it as real or a hallucination?

[Jack River]

All experience is real. But what does experience derive its essential substance ‘from/as’ ?? 

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by Jack River