The Paradox of Psychedelics

[axiom]

New podcast from Sam Harris. Whether or not you agree with his views, it should be an interesting listen.
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/286-the-paradox-of-psychedelics

Quote

Sam Harris shares an audio essay exploring how psychedelics are, for many, the only way to glimpse "the vast firmament beyond the prison walls” of the “conceptual mind”—and often serve as the gateway to meditation. He also discusses how the very profundity of the psychedelic experience can distract us from the true purpose of mindfulness—the recognition that consciousness is always already free, in every moment. 

 

[Kksd74628]

@axiom

Psychedelics are meant to show you that there are diamonds on the ground you could pick up later sober.

-joNi-

[VeganAwake]

Sometimes they can have effects years later also. There's usually no need to take them over and over again until your brain is half fried! 

 

[puporing]

Yeah that can be a trap if one is not mindful of this dynamic becoming another form of "chasing". Best to be used mindfully.

 

[Vibroverse]

The main paradox is if reality is imagination, and the psychedelics shows that to you, then it also shows you that you having taken the psychedelics also is an imagination, so it is an imagination that is showing you that reality is an imagination. If you take a psychedelic in a dream, then it is the same thing as taking a psychedelic here in this reality, then. 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Vibroverse

[SamC]

19 hours ago, Kksd74628 said:

@axiom

Psychedelics are meant to show you that there are diamonds on the ground you could pick up later sober.

-joNi-

Wow

[Kksd74628]

@SamC

Did you understand the meaning of that analogy? It was all about integrating the trip so you can have realization of those insights that stay with you 24/7.

[VeganAwake]

When I was in my late teens(40 now) I would take LSD and or mushrooms to escape anxious reality and have a crazy fun trip with friends.

During one particular trip with liquid LSD, the habitual identification with thinking was completely shattered because the monkey mind was shut off or quieted for hours due to the drugs effects.

20 years later during meditation I started quickly having very similar effects of the monkey mind being hushed for a couple hrs here and there. 

This rather quick resulting phenomenon seemed to be related to taking psychedelics....almost like they created a path of excessability. 

When it's recognized that there isn't a thinker of thoughts, it's not that the thoughts completely end.... it's that there's no longer anyone listening!

❤ 

 

[SamC]

58 minutes ago, Kksd74628 said:

@SamC

Did you understand the meaning of that analogy? It was all about integrating the trip so you can have realization of those insights that stay with you 24/7.

Yeah I did and I thought it was amazing. Thats why I said wow.

[puporing]

@Kksd74628  yes things "merge" more and more with the "baseline" I've noticed.. that has been the latest "gift" I received..

[Breakingthewall]

the human mind by its nature forms barriers. a normal adult mind is fragmented, rigid, parcelled, with multiple walls that block the free flow of energy. seeing this is normally beyond what the mind can do, and breaking down those barriers, far beyond. psychedelics remove the rigidity of the mind, make it plastic. they make the energy flow through new channels. then the mind returns to its original form, but somewhat less solid, somewhat less rigid. This deformation and reformation gives the mind the opportunity to understand itself, to smooth out and flow more freely. And the possibility of the total flow, the absence of barriers, enlightenment