The subjective, psychedelics and insanity

[taotemu]

The whole Solipsism discussion is predicated on the per-eminance of the subjective.  I can't know with any certainty that anything other than my consciousness is truly real.  Objectivity has a bootstrap problem because it itself is experienced subjectively (though consciousness).

Now insert the psychedelic experience of compete unity without boundaries.  This is still a purely subjective experience no different than my awareness of "world" apart from me when sober.  

So how can we know, with any certainty, that our psychedelic experience isn't just another kind of delusion?  For someone on the street, who is just going about their lives, the language Leo and others are using here can sound down right psychotic.  Playing devils advocate, how do we know that Leo's experiences and interpretations of them are not psychotic (delusional)?  How can I possibly know that my experiences of complete unity and love, while my brain is awash with exogenous chemicals disrupting normal serotonin functioning, are experiences of higher levels of a reality just because they are powerful? 

Terrence McKenna was pretty convinced that DMT revealed other dimensions full of aliens, elves, self bouncing balls and other entities.  He had come up with all kinds of bizarre beliefs about the future.  Are these experiences of another dimension or a drug induced hallucination?  Most people would probably say the latter. 

I have had profoundly powerful experiences on psychedelics.  I have encountered "forest creatures" looking back at me during a few of my mushroom trips.  They seemed as real as anything I experience with my sober mind.  Do I think they were "real"?  Probably not.  I recognize them as projections of my altered mind state due to the influence of a drug.  They are real in the purely subjective sense, that is true.  But if science teaches us anything, how things appear, and how they truly are can be very different.  So how can we come up with conclusions about the absolute nature of reality based on a drugged state of mind?

Edited August 7, 2021 by taotemu

[Tim R]

2 minutes ago, taotemu said:

So how can we come up with conclusions about the absolute nature of reality based on a drugged state of mind?

It's not about the "drugged state of mind". The question you're asking is essentially "how to know what is true?". And the answer is: you don't know. 

If you knew how to discern between truth and falsehood, you wouldn't have to.

Another form of the question "what is truth?" is "what is?" because by definition, the truth is that which is (the case).

Being = Truth     

[Goldzilla]

Why don't we listen to our breath and find it out for ourselves? Because there is no guide out there on what is what and why. 

Leo and others did a great job on a exposing term by term. I think we have to take what is true and useful, move on and make our own path, own words, practice, experience, etc. 

[Leo Gura]

All experience is Absolute Truth.

If you're not conscious of this, you're not really awake.

Forest creatures are as much a product of your mind as the Eiffle Tower.

Don't get stuck on the content of consciousness. The content is irrelevant and it is always imaginary.

[justfortoday]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

All experience is Absolute Truth.

So there are no other instances of conscious but mine at this moment? Since my experience is absolute, there is nothing else?

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, justfortoday said:

So there are no other instances of conscious but mine at this moment? Since my experience is absolute, there is nothing else?

Don't ask me. Become conscious of what is absolutely true. Believing my stories is not going to help you. Take back your sovereignty.

[justfortoday]

49 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Don't ask me. Become conscious of what is absolutely true. Believing my stories is not going to help you. Take back your sovereignty.

What is absolutely true to me is that I exist as a bubble of sentience, nothing else. 

So I would say yes, indeed my bubble of sentience is all there is right now. Everything else is imagination.

Edited August 7, 2021 by justfortoday

[Nahm]

Consciousness is neither real nor yours.

[justfortoday]

20 minutes ago, Nahm said:

Consciousness is neither real nor yours.

So why do I experience this bubble of colors, sounds and feelings if consciousness isn't real? And since there isn't anything but THIS it has no opposite, therefore it is absolute, eternal, and indeed, mine, at the highest levels.

[RendHeaven]

4 minutes ago, justfortoday said:

So why do I experience this bubble of colors, sounds and feelings if consciousness isn't real? And since there isn't anything but THIS it has no opposite, therefore it is absolute, eternal, and indeed, mine, at the highest levels.

why must something be "real" for it to be manifest? and what meaning is there in saying that it's "yours" when there are no others? redundant...

[Nahm]

2 hours ago, justfortoday said:

So why do I experience this bubble of colors, sounds and feelings if consciousness isn't real? And since there isn't anything but THIS it has no opposite, therefore it is absolute, eternal, and indeed, mine, at the highest levels.

Because consciousness is not real and is not yours. Nothing could really be added. 

[Mason Riggle]

Reality is always exactly how it seems, until it seems otherwise, in which case, it's still exactly how it seems. 

Edited August 7, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[wildflower]

These conversations on this forum all run the same way, as no one seems able to understand, or perhaps just not willing to engage the other person on the level they are obviously trying to communicate.

It's just a big game of one-upmanship. Who can act like they know or understand Absolute Truth more than anyone else. How is that not tiring, isolating and boring

Anyway to answer the OP question, you hit the nail on the head, anything you can ever know can only be about your own conscious manifestation of what seems to be a reality or non-reality (form or formless), everything beyond that is a hypothesis or postulation. 

The highest Truth you can ever know is existence right now in whatever form or formlessness that takes. Including anything you class as an hallucination or not. It just serves no pragmatic purpose on the relative domain of materialism to behave as though hallucinations are true

Ultimately if you contemplate this long enough, things will reduce down to pragmatism, utility and suffering. And you just drop the rest

 

[Breakingthewall]

It's not that psychedelics show you the truth, it's that they soften, blur, dissolve the ego. the ego as the active part, as a software that seeks, projects, desires, needs to interpret. the ego takes us away from the truth, although ultimately the ego is the truth, but prevents us from seeing it. I start to meditate and there is a wall, formed by all that, a motor running. I take a 5 meo vape and the engine slows down. I give another and it disappears, and I see the unlimited without event that is behind the ego. It is no truer than the ego, but when I embody the ego, its nature made of desire, proyection, concept, prevents me from seeing it. that of the trees that prevent you from seeing the forest. You remove them and nothing prevents that remains is perceived, or manifested, or embodied. the problem is that it is very short, and seeing through the ego permanently very difficult, a great job. but at a point it will have to be done

Edited August 7, 2021 by Breakingthewall

[taotemu]

If reality is always exactly as it seems then what about illusions and delusions?  We often mistake our thoughts, perceptions and beliefs as true and real, only to find out later they were not true.  Truth loses all meaning if everything is true, even things that turn out to be false.  The Earth appears to me to be flat.  But that is a false perception.  How I know it is false is the piles of evidence to the contrary.  Matter appears to be solid, yet that is also an illusion.  Someone in an ICU my be in complete denial about having Covid but it doesn't change the fact that the virus is ravaging their lungs.  We know this because of scientific investigation.  Clearly there are closer approximations of what is true and real.  

I understand that our consciousness is manufacturing our experience of reality.  But that is quite different than it being true.  It seems to me there is a danger in thinking "Everything I am experiencing is true".  It is probably far more likely that everything I'm experiencing is an illusion. 

[Breakingthewall]

5 minutes ago, taotemu said:

The Earth appears to me to be flat. 

That is a concept. the truth is not that it is round, and flat falsehood, the truth is to go beyond the concept, which is the ego, it is a limited function that absorbs us and prevents us from seeing anything, it is the pointing finger, not the thing, and our mind is basically made up of that, that's why it's so hard to see and we stay on the finger

[Inliytened1]

4 hours ago, justfortoday said:

What is absolutely true to me is that I exist as a bubble of sentience, nothing else. 

So I would say yes, indeed my bubble of sentience is all there is right now. Everything else is imagination.

Consider that self and other is a duality.  "Your bubble" is actually absolute Being  and you are only imagining that you are in a snow globe..(it presumes there is something behind the scenes that you are closed off from) .i.e. that you are a self with perceptions.  Perception and perceiver are illusory or imaginary...there is only Absolute Being.

 

[gettoefl]

truth is what lasts

what lasts?

change

rhetorical question

will you be here in a hundred year's time

[Purple Man]

@wildflower

18 hours ago, wildflower said:

These conversations on this forum all run the same way, as no one seems able to understand, or perhaps just not willing to engage the other person on the level they are obviously trying to communicate.

I

 

So true. A question can (and must) be answered from a higher level than the one the question was formulated from, but I find it hilarious when a legit, mid-leveled spiritual question is answered with a "Consciousness does not exist. You don´t exist. Nothing exists". Well, true from the Absolute perspective, but answering the question that way is as silly as  letting oneself die of hunger because we ultimately are not our bodies, and reminds me of a comment a spiritual master said about one of his disciples getting late everywhere, and doing it without remorse because "time does not exist"...

Edited August 8, 2021 by Purple Man

[taotemu]

1 hour ago, Purple Man said:

So true. A question can (and must) be answered from a higher level than the one the question was formulated from, but I find it hilarious when a legit, mid-leveled spiritual question is answered with a "Consciousness does not exist. You don´t exist. Nothing exists". Well, true from the Absolute perspective, but answering the question that way is as silly as  letting oneself die of hunger because we ultimately are not our bodies, and reminds me of a comment a spiritual master said about one of his disciples getting late everywhere, and doing it without remorse because "time does not exist"...

This.  What is the value of deep spiritual understanding if it leaves one sounding delusional and leads to bizarre, dangerous or even criminal behavior?

I'm not my body, so why eat?  Time doesn't exist, so being "late" isn't real.  Money is a fictional social fabrication that means nothing from the absolute perspective, so why pay my bills?  Look at interviews of Charles Manson.  He talked like he was an enlightened master, but based on his behavior he was a psychopath who drove people to murder.  "Oh, but nobody really ever dies." may be an accurate statement from an absolute perspective, but it comes across as cold, lacking any empathy, and in the hands of a psychopath can lead to murder. 

Bottom line is, if a spiritual practice disconnects us so much from the experience of being human, what is the use?  There will be plenty of time to be one with the absolute when we are dead.  Ego and duality is the experience we all share, illusion or not.  Living with the paradox of being fully human AND knowing the perspective of the absolute unity and love of God, must both be present at the same time for enlightenment to mean anything.