Psychedelics, what are they? Why do they work?

[Dylan Page]

Psychedelics are used for enlightenment/non dual experiences generally. My question is, why certain compounds rather than other ones? Why is it that smoking dmt sends you into the 17365th dimension and weed just kind of makes you feel funny. There is obviously a difference in brain chemistry but is there anything more than that? If you gave 5-meo dmt to a lobster or something would they experience the same thing? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Preetom]

@Dylan Page

See if it makes sense.

Your 'human' subjective experience is nothing but a knowledge barrier or gate. A certain frequency. Different from a dog's subjective knowledge barrier.

Now there are infinite knowledge barriers and combinations, due to gods infinite creative force.

All these subjective knowledge elements have some sort of connection to the "objective, hard, physical reality". You see the color blue and that has a physical counterpart in the brain. Now make the same tweak in the brain, you see blue. So it seems to work both ways. With me so far?

Now this entire subject and object business appears to infinite, unchanging consciousness. So when a substance is taken, that merely lifts your 'human' knowledge barrier. Then it can either take to a subhuman knowledge barrier or a temporary cessation of all barriers, revealing the infinite Being of consciousness.

So by these substances, one is not recreating, enhancing or shrinking pure consciousness. One is merely screwing up their knowledge barriers thus ceasing to be humans and corrrspondingly feeling like a monkey in amazon(shrooms) or a god(5 meo) depending on which gate they've landed on.

The same results could be achieved through meditation, spiritual practices or tweaking the brain if the technology allows. But in all these cases, consciousness is ever the same, only knowledge barriers are being tweaked.

And in the lobster's case 5 meo may or may not work. Just because 5 meo lifts the 'human' knowledge gate, it doesn't say whether it could do the same tweak to the 'lobster' knowledge barrier.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Preetom

[Truth Addict]

I refuse to believe that anything inside the dream could get you outside the dream. If the truth is that there's nothing but dreams, then what better is that than Mario being stuck in the video game and thinking he's real?

Maybe it isn't that dreams are everything, but rather that dreams are the limit to what we can reach.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Truth Addict

[outlandish]

42 minutes ago, Dylan Page said:

Psychedelics are used for enlightenment/non dual experiences generally. My question is, why certain compounds rather than other ones? Why is it that smoking dmt sends you into the 17365th dimension and weed just kind of makes you feel funny. There is obviously a difference in brain chemistry but is there anything more than that? If you gave 5-meo dmt to a lobster or something would they experience the same thing? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Well, to be biological and reductive about it, 5-MeO-DMT hits a specific set of receptor sites on your neurons, especially 5ht2a if I recall. Weed is working on a completely different set of receptor sites, which are used by your system for completely different purpose. Weed isn't really a "true" psychedelic.

Even LSD hits different sites than 5-Meo, although it's much more closely related, and there is a lot more overlap with the sites that 5-MeO-DMT affects. LSD, DMT and magic mushrooms are good examples of true psychedelics.

A lobster couldn't experience the same thing because they are a completely different animal, but they might experience something analogous. It's pretty hard to imagine what it would be like to be a lobster, let alone a lobster on 5-MeO-DMT! I believe they do have 5ht2a receptor sites, but I could be mistaken. They at least have serotonin (5ht family) receptor sites, I think these are some of the most ancient neurotransmitters in our evolutionary tree.

There was a very interesting study where octopuses were given MDMA. The molluscs demonstrated pro-social behaviour on MDMA, so there might be a lot of overlap in the way these drugs affect animals. Molluscs are very distant to humans, so it's pretty remarkable that it had this effect.

[Dylan Page]

@outlandish Yeah it's interesting. It would be nice to know why we experience what we do on DMT, and if that experience could be replicated in animals with a different compound. There is the biological view of why we experience what we do, but changes in the brain don't seem to have any like, detectable CAUSE for why we have some experiences, just really strong correlations, which could just be another part of the illusion of self and body.  

[Enlightenment]

@outlandish 5-MeO is actually all about 5-HT7. Here is a good video explaining what 5-ht7 and 5-ht2 does

 

[outlandish]

@Enlightenment awesome thanks for the clarification! I've listened to that talk before, or at least read his stuff or listened to other presentations by him, but definitely need to revisit because it's such a big (and convincing) paradigm shift on how to understand how these drugs work - the mental organs model. And sounds like I had 5ht2a mixed up with 5ht7.

[Leo Gura]

All this talk of brains is ultimately wrong. The brain is literally a hallucination and you cannot explain the causes because reality is uncaused, amechanical, and totally direct.

The cause of everything is YOU! You imagine everything into being. Including your brain, 5-MeO-DMT, lobsters, and Leo.

At the highest levels of consciousness there is just you imagining the whole world into being. The end.

Do not try to shoehorn enlightenment into a scientific scheme. Science is a hallucination too.

[Rilles]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

All this talk of brains is ultimately wrong. The brain is literally a hallucination and you cannot explain the causes because reality is uncaused, amechanical, and totally direct.

The cause of everything is YOU! You imagine everything into being. Including your brain, 5-MeO-DMT, lobsters, and Leo.

At the highest levels of consciousness there is just you imagining the whole world into being. The end.

Almost every comment you post nowadays is a mic drop. 

[Dylan Page]

@Leo Gura Right, there is no reason that the brain CAUSES our experience, we can just say that there are correlations that are useful for medicine, understanding behavior, and everything else, etc. It would be the perfect illusion for creating a self, and especially a body. 

[Leo Gura]

@Dylan Page It is way more radical than you currently imagine. It simply cannot be stated in words.

[outlandish]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

All this talk of brains is ultimately wrong. The brain is literally a hallucination and you cannot explain the causes because reality is uncaused, amechanical, and totally direct.

The cause of everything is YOU! You imagine everything into being. Including your brain, 5-MeO-DMT, lobsters, and Leo.

At the highest levels of consciousness there is just you imagining the whole world into being. The end.

Do not try to shoehorn enlightenment into a scientific scheme. Science is a hallucination too.

Sure, but that doesn't leave much to talk about now does it? ?

[Leo Gura]

25 minutes ago, outlandish said:

Sure, but that doesn't leave much to talk about now does it? ?

Exactly

Carry on the masturbation then

[Enlightenment]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

All this talk of brains is ultimately wrong. The brain is literally a hallucination and you cannot explain the causes because reality is uncaused, amechanical, and totally direct.

No serious scientist will take you seriously with this attitude. 

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

[Shin]

24 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Exactly

Carry on the masturbation then

This is so ironic

[mandyjw]

2 minutes ago, Shin said:

This is so ironic

He must really want us to keep discussing then. 

Lobster used to be fed to prisoners, used as fertilizer and everyone hated it. Now it's a delicacy. Ancient Egyptians used to throw brains away useless when they mummified people because they thought they were unimportant.  

What creates a thing? What makes a thing useful or useless, desirable or unwanted? Do psychedelics have any meaning outside of whatever meaning you create for them to have? It seems like other people created the meaning and purpose for things, it doesn't seem like we created it.

 

[Dylan Page]

@Enlightenment What's your opinion on it? Also, the problem with trying to understand Leo's claim by asking for evidence is that that isn't the nature of the answer to the question, no amount of science or math is going to show this.

[Dylan Page]

@Enlightenment also, his claim isn't even an attitude, it's just a claim, the whole like, hardcore serious ultra rigorous scientist approach you are taking is really close minded, you should watch more of his videos on science.

[Enlightenment]

@Dylan Page Thing is, if I don't consider myself a solipsistic master of the universe then I can ask other people to look at my brain or give me propofol and then after propofol stops working they can tell me that I was lying there unconscious. So what is the nature to answer to the Leos claims? I guess the direct experience of 5-MeO ok but what if there are many people who have done it and don't make such claims as Leo do? I think a lot of it comes down to a specific personality that Leo has.

4 hours ago, Dylan Page said:

My question is, why certain compounds rather than other ones? Why is it that smoking dmt sends you into the 17365th dimension and weed just kind of makes you feel funny. There is obviously a difference in brain chemistry but is there anything more than that? If you gave 5-meo dmt to a lobster or something would they experience the same thing?

Obviously, there is more than just brain chemistry. I doubt lobster have a necessary set of receptors for 5-MeO. I'm more interested in brains EEG as it has to do more with ego than things like dopamine, oxytocin etc.

[Enlightenment]

2 minutes ago, Dylan Page said:

also, his claim isn't even an attitude, it's just a claim, the whole like, hardcore serious ultra rigorous scientist approach you are taking is really close minded, you should watch more of his videos on science.

My approach is not like you've described. Idealism makes a lot of sense to me. IMO Leos explanation of unconsciousness is ridiculous and he can't see his solipsism. The question I like to ask myself and I think is great for questioning my beliefs is if Leo tells me that it's just all infinite love, I ask myself what would have to happen for it to not be infinite love in the universe - generally I always try to find arguments against my beliefs to be less biased, something I don't see in Leo