Sleeping dreams vs. Psychedelics

[Lento]

With the dream paradigm in mind instead of the materialist paradigm; why not use the night-time-sleeping-dreams instead of psychedelics? What more clarity can psychedelics offer over a dream experience? If it's simply a game of paradigms, then what's the difference? I mean if simply changing my perspective to a broader one is going to solve the problem, then what's the point of using psychedelics? Why not just expand my perspective and be done with it? Keep in mind that this expansion is supposedly infinite.

Edited February 21, 2020 by Lento

[TrynaBeTurquoise]

One must first actually develop the skill of becoming lucid at will in their dreams and manipulate the dream world and maybe work on your shadow. That is no easy task for the majority of people. Even so, the psychedelic experience is just different and shows you certain things that dreaming does not. Have you actually experientially confirmed that paradigm of reality being imagination? Its one thing to be lucid in a dream knowing you are dreaming, another to be awake in the middle of the day, take a psychedelic and have reality in the waking world transform. At least in my opinion, these things compliment each other for the complete picture of finding the truth about reality. 

[Lento]

11 minutes ago, TrynaBeTurquoise said:

One must first actually develop the skill of becoming lucid at will in their dreams and manipulate the dream world and maybe work on your shadow. That is no easy task for the majority of people. Even so, the psychedelic experience is just different and shows you certain things that dreaming does not. Have you actually experientially confirmed that paradigm of reality being imagination? Its one thing to be lucid in a dream knowing you are dreaming, another to be awake in the middle of the day, take a psychedelic and have reality in the waking world transform. At least in my opinion, these things compliment each other for the complete picture of finding the truth about reality. 

But then again, I could always dismiss it as hallucinations and brain activity, which can be proven through scientific studies (speaking from the materialist paradigm). So, what's the point?

To me, it seems more like an ideology to be honest.

[Trox097]

The dream state of consciousness helps you see how everything is just the dream of God, it is amazing to be completely conscious in your dream and be in another dimension and meditate into the absolute from there, consciousness upgrades happen very quick, psychedelics feel like a dream once you are there and this moment I am writing this feels the same, there is no difference, the house is empty. Pure Infinity.

[Forestluv]

From a nondual perspective, there is one singularity so there is no difference between dream states, sober states and psychedelic states. One can define a sober mindstate and a non-sober mindstate. The "non-sober" mindstate would include all states "altered" from the sober state, including dream states, psychedelic states and many other mindstates (flow states, schizophrenic state etc). This is a low-resolution bare-bones basic duality that loses all distinctions and nuances. . . It would be like saying the sport of soccer is the default and all sports not soccer are essentially the same. Then someone might ask "Isn't tennis and basketball the same?".

Ime, dream states and psycedelic states have very different essences. For example, dream states generally have much lower levels of awareness and people need to practice techniques to raise their awareness to basic entry-level awareness called lucid dreaming. I spent months practicing lucid dreaming methods and only reached begginner to intermediate levels.. . . In contrast, psychedelic trips are hyper-aware. For me, the awareness has become so intense that it was traumatic to my mind and body. . . Another difference I would say it that all my dreams are easily contextualized into imagery and language. Some may be whacky and hard to give meaning, yet they can be easily described. In contrast, many trips are post-rational and beyond anything the mind can put into words or images. 

Yes, one can dismiss a trip as a hallucination. Yet in doing so, one is giving more relevance to a non-psychedelic state than a psychedelic state. Why would you consider a sober mind "normal" and a psychedelic mind "hallucination"? If one calls a psychedelic state a hallucination, then one must call a sober state a hallucination as well. For example, from a materialist brain perspective -  in a sober mindstate colors don't exist. The brain converts wavelengths of light into chemical reactions within cone cells, which gets relayed through the thalamus to the visual cortex where the *hallucination* of color occurs. Even the hardest core materialist neuroscience would say colors are an hallucination created by the brain. This is no different than the mind creating another form of hallucination on a psychedelic. There is also further exploration into what is "real vs. imagined".

[Lento]

@Trox097 Very interesting! Thanks.

@Serotoninluv I'm not saying there's anything wrong with different states. I'm not denying them. What I'm trying to say is this; Leo said that the truth which gets revealed by psychedelics is a meta awareness of the states. But in my experience, this can easily be replaced by changing paradigms without necessarily having to experience a psychedelic state, because once you move to the dream paradigm, dreams will be viewed as states as well. It seems like open-mindedness is rather the most important factor in here. So, the point is that I don't see the point in using psychedelics for this purpose in particular. Maybe they help reveal insights or achieve a certain blissful state or do something else, but this 'meta awareness' that Leo is speaking of seems to have a stronger relationship with the paradigm from which you're approaching the whole understanding of reality, not from the method that is used to do so.

[Nahm]

@Lento Have “you” been “out of the bubble”?

@Trox097 “the house is empty”...Love that phrasing.  

[Forestluv]

@Lento Ime, it would be really hard to reach such meta awareness without psychedelics. Dreams have had a lot of value for me, yet I don’t think they would have been sufficient and it would have been very difficult to develop the skills fir such dreamwork. Dreams have given me some some deep insights, yet generally not the radical nature of psychedelics. 

In terms of paradigms, I would use an analogy of a hotel in which each room is a different paradigm/state. Dreams can allow me a fuzzy visit to some of the rooms within the hotel. Psychedelics can allow meta awareness of the entire hotel, becoming the hotel and any room in the hotel. As well as no hotel. This isn’t quite right either, yet the best I analogy I can come up with right now. 

To me, what you describe sounds like visiting some rooms within the hotel. And I see a lot of value in that.

For others, perhaps dreams are the key to revelations. If so, thats awesome. I’m not suggesting there are hard rules in what psychedelics and dreams are restricted to revealing. 

[Lento]

@Serotoninluv Thanks for sharing your insights and experiences. It sounds like my experience is kind of different from yours and Leo's. I agree, though. I don't think of reality as a hotel. I just think of it as Reality/Truth/God/Wonder/Awe/etc; and more recently as Love.

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, Lento said:

@Serotoninluv I don't think of reality as a hotel. I just think of it as Reality/Truth/God/Wonder/Awe/etc; and more recently as Love.

It is just a metaphor, not literal. Thoughts are just partial truths and can’t capture it all. 

[Lento]

@Serotoninluv

I was agreeing with you using my own language.

[Forestluv]

@Lento ok. Looks like I misinterpreted your comment. ??