How do psychedelic elevate consciousness?

[Unio]

Hey.

So I'm way too young to have ever tried a psychedelic (17 y/o) so I can't really explore this with my direct experience. Im wondering how it is that psychedelics elevate consciousness. I get that after taking the substance you get a peak experience of what it feels like to have ultra high consciousness only to later fall back down into your normal "bass line consciousness". Does it elevate your consciousness slightly after taking it?, so maybe if 100 was infinite consciousness and 0 was nothing and you are normally at a 30, it bumps you upp to 31? Or is it that it just makes you more conscientious to work harder with meditating/self-inquiry after seeing behind the vail for a moment? 

thx

Edited April 19, 2021 by Unio

[The0Self]

Precisely all of the above.

Part of the mechanism seems to be a sort of sensory-overload more accurately described as "mind-overload" wherein the mind is so full with the present, memory suppression occurs, leading to ego-death.

Also allows you to see impermanence, resistance, and the illusion of control much more "in your face"

And you feel part of a greater whole, and it's like, almost "out of the corner of your eye," so to speak, there's a greater being that's running the Earth -- Gaia... And Gaia is part of an even bigger being... and so on to the infinite ever-present creator.

And one-ness experiences and general profundity of all sorts are much more likely to arise, and enhanced.

Your level of consciousness is directly proportional to both: 1. to your ability to view things as miracles, and 2. your ability to experience gratitude in the present moment. This can be cultivated with or without psychedelics.

An insight I've had is that, in a really profound way, "hell" is literally nothing more than simple non-forgiveness of any sort. There is an omnipresent dimension wherein there is never non-forgiveness, since it knows nothing of duality or anything other than pure infinite intelligence and whatever seems to be happening.

Edited April 20, 2021 by The0Self

[Javfly33]

On 19/4/2021 at 8:21 PM, Unio said:

so maybe if 100 was infinite consciousness and 0 was nothing and you are normally at a 30, it bumps you upp to 31? 

Lol

Normally at 30 he says...

 

[Godishere]

@Javfly33 ? more like a 3. Baseline conciousness just seems to be a normal state where you are more "aware" of what reality is at a deeper and deeper understanding. This is achieved through having these states of awakening. In my limited experience anyway, and I have had many facets of awakening.

[The0Self]

58 minutes ago, Godishere said:

@Javfly33 ? more like a 3. Baseline conciousness just seems to be a normal state where you are more "aware" of what reality is at a deeper and deeper understanding. This is achieved through having these states of awakening. In my limited experience anyway, and I have had many facets of awakening.

The thing is, even though when you come back down — after a trip, or an intense insight experience through other means — you are essentially at normal everyday baseline ordinary consciousness... Well, if the insight and subsequent understanding has been seen deeply enough times (while practicing mindfulness on the side, to enhance your subconscious’s absorption rate of insight), then that understanding can be fully lucid in ordinary mind, and you can choose to plunge into it and basically trip right here and now, completely sober / i.e. not even in serious sitting meditation. This can be used as a gateway to accelerate the insight process and you can find yourself unable to stop contemplating new realities that you can experiment with. If this happens, just be grateful for this miracle, as increases in levels of consciousness is directly proportional to increases in gratitude, miracles, and just general alright-ness.

Edited April 21, 2021 by The0Self

[4201]

I would be careful with the quantification of consciousness. Consciousness is the present moment, it's what you see, hear, smell, taste, feel, touch and sense right now. It never changes, it just is.

We could then start using thoughts as the basis for quantification and say that 0 thoughts is pure consciousness and try to count how many beliefs we are currently holding but even this is not so reliable. How many thoughts are you thinking right now? We only can think one thing at the time although we can have the thought of there being lots of thing going on. So you can either be stuck in thought or not. There's no mid-way to duality. You can make more dualities to your dualities but it's all the same.

One could judge the quality of thoughts instead and make some sort of scale. But then it's much simpler and honest to say "I feel irritation" than saying "I'm 58% awake".

This whole idea that there is some sort of consciousness level in there and everytime you take a psychedelic you get spiritual XP is quite nonsense. There is no brain, no neurotransmitter to "upgrade" and certainly no spiritual XP or awakening level. All there is is the present moment. You are 100% awake and enlightened right now. If you object to this statement, this objection is exactly the thought that is believed and which gets in the way of pure consciousness.

[The0Self]

@4201 Level of consciousness can be something of a useful term though. For instance:

If a person has the misfortune (meaning amazing luck, in actuality, one could say) of being hoisted abruptly to a sufficiently higher level of consciousness the likes of which they are extremely undeveloped for — though anyone is at least somewhat underdeveloped relative to their current least-distorted / most-profound view or insight — then they will not experience the full gamut and usual auspices of a high level (gratitude, wonder, miraculousness, speechlessness)... rather, they will exclusively experience the accompanying shadow of Raised Consciousness Level: Raised Stakes Level. Possibly leading to a breakdown.

Edited April 21, 2021 by The0Self

[4201]

17 minutes ago, The0Self said:

@4201 Level of consciousness can be something of a useful term though. For instance:

If a person has the misfortune (meaning amazing luck, in actuality, one could say) of being hoisted abruptly to a sufficiently higher level of consciousness the likes of which they are extremely undeveloped for — though anyone is at least somewhat underdeveloped relative to their current least-distorted / most-profound view or insight — then they will not experience the full gamut and usual auspices of a high level (gratitude, wonder, miraculousness, speechlessness)... rather, they will exclusively experience the accompanying shadow of Raised Consciousness Level: Raised Stakes Level. Possibly leading to a breakdown.

Whether you think of gratitude or you go back to neurotism is really a function of what you "use to think". Think a lot in a certain way and it becomes easy to think like this in the future. In the materialist paradigm, we would call this learning. In the absolute, there is no learning because there is no past in which we hadn't learned it yet, this past is imagined.

This is all just thought quality measurements though (how good are you at thinking positive thought). In this case you are defining level of consciousness as quality of thought, which is all just thought and not consciousness. Essentially if what you focus on is having positive thoughts of gratitude, wonder, etc. you are focusing on a self which isn't thinking what it should be thinking instead of focusing on the present moment.

How good you are at thinking positive thoughts isn't directly a function of how much 5-MeO you put in your ass though. There are other way to cultivate gratitude and other positive feelings.

[The0Self]

15 minutes ago, 4201 said:

Whether you think of gratitude or you go back to neurotism is really a function of what you "use to think". Think a lot in a certain way and it becomes easy to think like this in the future. In the materialist paradigm, we would call this learning. In the absolute, there is no learning because there is no past in which we hadn't learned it yet, this past is imagined.

This is all just thought quality measurements though (how good are you at thinking positive thought). In this case you are defining level of consciousness as quality of thought, which is all just thought and not consciousness. Essentially if what you focus on is having positive thoughts of gratitude, wonder, etc. you are focusing on a self which isn't thinking what it should be thinking instead of focusing on the present moment.

How good you are at thinking positive thoughts isn't directly a function of how much 5-MeO you put in your ass though. There are other way to cultivate gratitude and other positive feelings.

I could certainly see how someone could have used the words I wrote to intentionally communicate what it seems you think I’m trying to communicate, but I’m referring to something quite different than positive thoughts. It really seems it’s not something that I can find a way to accurately describe. When you have an experience that you label afterwards as The Godhead, etc, that’s generally at least somewhat related to what I’m talking about, in that The Godhead (or whatever THAT is) is an experience usually accompanied by 1. what could be called a “higher level of consciousness,” 2. gratitude, and 3. an obvious miracle.

Edited April 21, 2021 by The0Self

[Unio]

6 hours ago, Godishere said:

@Javfly33 ? more like a 3. Baseline conciousness just seems to be a normal state where you are more "aware" of what reality is at a deeper and deeper understanding. This is achieved through having these states of awakening. In my limited experience anyway, and I have had many facets of awakening.

So you're saying that in your experience: people who are more "conscious" are really just wiser and can think differently about reality using lenses that are less distorted and more aligned with the truth and what psychedelics do is just demonstrate these facits of reality so that when you come back down from the trip you just try to remember?

[Nahm]

If Kirk Lazarus was a troll.

[Unio]

40 minutes ago, Nahm said:

If Kirk Lazarus was a troll.

What do you mean?

 

[Nahm]

@Unio

Can you describe what you meant by baseline consciousness a bit? 

[WaveInTheOcean]

They just do. Not so relevant why do they do it:D

They break down the default mode network, we could say (a lot of science points to that), making it easier for you to "step outside" of yourself and view your life from a 3rd person's kind of view.

They trigger neuroplasticity, making you more open-minded and more able to change behaviour, beliefs, etc.

They increase the entropy of the brain-signaling. Neural networks normally never "talking" to eacher other in your brain begins talkin' to each other, while other networks normally communicating stop communicating. 

I believe psychedelics sort of shuts down many of the survival-network-structures running in your brain, thus increasing your raw consciousness... like consciousness without focus on physical and social survival.

Edited April 21, 2021 by WaveInTheOcean

[BipolarGrowth]

Psychedelics are spiritual catalysts. It’s that simple. You will accelerate your development with them. Not every case is the same, but generally they will give increases to your baseline over time and make it easier for you to experience mystical states more often. They’ve made my meditation far more effective and enhanced literally every aspect of my spiritual life. 
 

I paid some hefty prices for this stuff though. It’s not all fun and games, but it is certainly incredibly worthwhile for the person who is truly seeking spiritual development and willing to take the risk. 

[The0Self]

38 minutes ago, BipolarGrowth said:

I paid some hefty prices for this stuff though. It’s not all fun and games, but it is certainly incredibly worthwhile for the person who is truly seeking spiritual development and willing to take the risk.

For real...

Idk how many of y'all have experience true psychosis before, but psychosis + artificially expanded consciousness can be so brutally terrifying it's basically unspeakable.

[Unio]

5 hours ago, Nahm said:

@Unio

Can you describe what you meant by baseline consciousness a bit? 

I realise (After you asking), that I 'm currently acually pretty unclear on that. Let me contemplate it for a bit and I'll get back to ya.

[outlandish]

Psychedelics are nonspecific mind-amplifiers.

An analogy could be that normally you have a sink to fill with the water of your experience, and taking a psychedelic enlarges it to a bathtub. After the trip you're back to having a sink, but you've had that experience of being a bathtub. So you have direct experience of what it's like to expand past the limits of being a sink. Before that it might have been really hard to imagine what that would even be. And then you might get the idea that maybe you can grow your sink, and you have a better grasp of which way to go, and what that might look like. 

[Forestluv]

Imagine living in a town your whole life. You've never left the town or seen anything outside of the town. One day you climb up a mountain and look down on your town from above. This is a very different perspective. In one sense, it is "higher", yet it's not a "better" perspective. Rather than calling it a "higher" view, I'd prefer the term more "expansive" view, because "higher" has a connotation of a hierarchy and being "better".

Yet, you would be amazed by this view. For the first time, you would see how all the roads, houses, shops, parks etc are all inter-related within the town. You would be able to see how your town relates to neighboring hills, mountains, forest and other towns in the distance. This would massively expand ones mind. . . 

When you return to the town, it may be hard to make sense of it all. Was the mountain view a dream? Was it real? What does it mean for my everyday life experience within the town?

[Grateful Dead]

20 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

Imagine living in a town your whole life. You've never left the town or seen anything outside of the town. One day you climb up an mountain and look down on your town from above. This is a very different perspective. In one sense, it is "higher", yet it's not a "better" perspective. Than that a "higher" view, I'd prefer the term more "expansive" view, because "higher" has a connotation of a hierarchy and being "better".

Yet, you would be amazed by this view. For the first time, you would see how all the roads, houses, shops, parks etc are all inter-related within the town. You would be able to see how your town relates to neighboring hills, mountains, forest and other towns in the distance. This would massively expand ones mind. . . 

When you return to the town, it may be hard to make sense of it all. Was the mountain view a dream? Was it real? What does it mean for my everyday life experience within the town?

??