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It sounds like tripping scrambled his brains a bit and he's having trouble reconciling this with the rational part of his brain. There is no evidence that any

It sounds like tripping scrambled his brains a bit and he's having trouble reconciling this with the rational part of his brain. There is no evidence that any of these spirits exist so I don't know why people seem to think that taking a hallucinogenic drug somehow connects them to another plane of existence or w/e. As for why these spirits seem to have a history with humans, I can think of a number of possible explanations. Perhaps human brains are wired in such a way that we tend to hallucinate similar things? or perhaps the various religious symbols he was surrounded by somehow triggered specific thoughts? Or maybe the peruvian environment causes certain mental associations. Either way, I feel like I've read and heard similar stories before. This seems like yet another story like "hey guys, so normally I'm a rational person, but I did some drugs and now I think higher-dimensional beings exist." EDIT: Another interesting thought. It's been shown that AI tends to "compress" data into forms that seem weird and trippy when visualized. I wonder if the spirit Pachamama is really just how our brains tend to "compress" information about animals.

galaxyLogic 5y ago
> now I think higher-dimensional beings exist." I think he said something more like I am now open to the possibility that they might be real. But ... we know there are people who are schizophrenic, who switch from one personality to another. Which of them is "real"? They probably all are. But that does not mean they exist anywhere outside of one's head. If you can experience another you, then it seems not implausible that you would also experience "God" inside your head. It is fun to think that there might be higher-dimensional conscious beings around us or even within us. But that's all it is, fun. There doesn't seem to be any practical implications of whether there are or not. Another part of the article considers (quite materialistically) the possibility that "God" is something society creates in our heads. I think Sigmund Freud called that the "Super Ego". It is what makes us better survive as a species. It causes us to co-operate rather than just selfishly abuse others as much as we can. It is clear how such a function could evolve by evolution. We see it in all species, they don't spend their energy trying to kill other individuals of the same species. It's the Selfish Gene.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "It is fun to think that there might be higher-dimensional conscious beings around us or even within us. But that's all it is, fun. There doesn't seem to be any practical implications of whether there are or not." Well, it is fun, when you assume those spirits to be friendly. But if they exist and they are not allways friendly - then there would be very practical implications because of that. Is your bad luck random, or did you anger some god or spirit? Then you would benefit from doing things to calm them. Many, many people believe that. But yes, the point is, why assume their existence in the first place, when science so far is very good at creating a working model of the universe. But since we do not have a complete model at all and maybe never will, I would not assume it is proven that billions of people on this earth who believe in magic etc. are all wrong. Because if you do that - then you would never find hints that they do exist. There is a theory in the spiritul world, that there is a mind censor in ourself, that is blocking all information on those magic things as we would not be able to focus on the tasks at hand, if we would be distracted by ghosts all the time. So main technics there, are how to control your inner censor and open your eyes to see and do much more. Well, what I can say for certain, is that the various magic traditions developed very powerful psychological technics to achieve various things with your mind. Whether there is real magic one has to see and decide for themself.
  - bckr 5y ago
    > the various magic traditions developed very powerful psychological technics to achieve various things with your mind This alone is reason enough to study/practice "magical" concepts, which can range from CBT to various forms of meditation and cue spooky sounds sorcery. Having a hammer with which you can form your own mind is, like, extremely important. The spookier stuff you can just think of as either A) fun, existential decorations or B) embarrassing accretions to otherwise useful ways of thinking. Or heaven forbid you fall into the C) camp where you start to believe you're in some kind of spirit war for the aeons.
- splithalf 5y ago
  “ doesn't seem to be any practical implications of whether there are or not.” On one hand everything is material and deterministic (whether you confess to it or not — eg Dan dennet), on the other hand you have the possibility of free will, of human nobility and virtue. Selfish genes sounds like doublespeak to me. I’m sure it’s true to some extent, but I’m confident that it’s not the whole Truth.
waterheater 5y ago
>Either way, I feel like I've read and heard similar stories before. Yes, stories like this one are reasonably common. >There is no evidence that any of these spirits exist so I don't know why people seem to think that taking a hallucinogenic drug somehow connects them to another plane of existence or w/e. This topic is fraught with pseudoscience and charlatans exploiting people, so I do understand your intense skepticism and desire for hard evidence. What evidence would you require for proof of these spirits? Is there a minimum number of independent testimonies you need, which all claim the same event happened? I've found most people have never given those questions serious thought. The most common initial answer is "I'd need to see these spirits for myself," but this answer is unscientific, as published research articles must automatically be dismissed (Have you ever seen CRISPR work in person? How do you know it's real?). I'm genuinely curious as to what evidence you would need.
- uh_uh 5y ago
  I have an idea: how about a spirit telling me a piece of information that I have no way of knowing myself? It can be a specific prediction of the future, location of an undiscovered artefact, or simply a sentence written on a piece of paper that I couldn't have seen. As far as I know, nothing of this sort happened, ever.
  - throwawaygal7 5y ago
    So solipsism basically?
  - tigen 5y ago
    Exactly. Why are these spirits completely irrelevant, and "communicate" only thoughts one could already have? The basic premise of minds as being independent from physical brains is desperate fantasy in any case.
    - throwawaygal7 5y ago
      The traditional pre modern formula in the west was that they were necessarily linked, in a union that was separable only death.
splithalf 5y ago
“ human brains are wired in such a way that we tend to hallucinate similar things?” Yes, somewhere between jung and Oliver sacks — a biological basis for the collective unconscious. Religion IMO offers the most parsimonious explanation, to date.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "a biological basis for the collective unconscious" This is in fact what Jung believed... long before Oliver Sacks.
- serverholic 5y ago
  I think it is much more likely that what he is hallucinating is a representation of how the brain stores information.
dsego 5y ago
Sounds like my brother after his 4th or 5th psychotic episode and medication not working anymore. I guess you could call it spiritual.
- oceanghost 5y ago
  "The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight." - Joseph Campbell
aaroninsf 5y ago
There's something a bit more subtle than whether DMT elves or Ayahuasca gods exist agents in the fashion imagined. It is pretty certain that the do not; there are anecdotal first hand accounts to be found of DMT cosmonauts putting the screws in and never TMK got anything verifiable, e.g, requests for factoring for large numbers, etc. Nothing. But, the consistencies in how humans report and "feel" about these things, is also interesting, and this is a kind of gray area existence that is more than just word-play. I'd describe it as a domain in which one can experience and prod first-hand one of the higher levels of the "stack" of the human psyche, that is: the order, categories, logic, projected agency, etc., our own perceptual->cognitive processes imposes on the world. One of the promises that psychedelics realize is the rare opportunity to see something akin to the console/debugger view of these processes, which by design are usually imperceptible to us. The low levels of the stack (trippy visuals, coarse emotional tides) are popular entertainment. The high levels of the stack (awe and foundational meaning and divine agency/purpose) are more dangerous maybe to engage for the lolz but there seems to be a lot there we can work with to our betterment which is real, in the sense that he universe we perceive and inhabit is real, whether we analytically know that it is fabricated or not. Analogy that comes to mind: walking a 2x4 plank placed on the floor, while inhabiting open air 50 stories up with VR googles. I knew damn well there was drop. I couldn't step forward, or off, and had to crawl. What we know to be real, is not always what is causally and experientially real...
pmoriarty 5y ago
Why people believe what they experience while tripping is one of the great open questions regarding psychedelics. It is quite common for psychedelic experiences to feel "more real than real", and often what has been revealed under their influence can feel like The Truth with a big fat capital T. I suspect that most people who become true believers after such experiences (and there are a lot of them) are just not very critical thinkers, and don't have a habit of questioning themselves, the world, or what they experience, and so are more liable to swallow the revelations they get line, hook, and sinker without critically diving in to them or coming up with alternate explanations for what might have happened. Then there are the die-hard atheists and materialists/physicalists, who may be err on the other extreme and hand wave everything they experience as "neurochemical noise" or whatnot. There are a bunch of these also, and when I read their dismissive reports I often wonder how strong their experiences were and how many of them they've had. Sam Harris, a prominent figure in the so-called "new atheist" movement, actually gave a strong dose of a psychedelic mushroom a try, and reported on his experience.[1] It's a fascinating account, given by a clearly intelligent and famously critical, anti-religious physicalist which I personally expected to be very negative and glibly dismissive, but to his great credit he treated it very respectfully, seriously, and not dismissively at all. He did not become a true believer after his trip, but it really made me suspect that if he'd continued taking strong doses of psychedelics even he would have. Such powerful, convincing experiences are how religious movements start, and no small number of them have started from psychedelics. In fact, some have theorized that many (all?) of the world's great religions ultimately had their roots in psychedelic experiences (see, for example, Allegro's "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross"[2]). I hope one day there'll be some serious research in to what is going on here, beyond simply reporting that mystical experiences are common on psychedelics. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKGddvmU0fA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKGddvmU0fA [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr...
- neonological 5y ago
  Do you trust a man experiencing a high or a "powerful experience" to drive? If such a man cannot be trusted to drive why should we trust anything that comes out of his mouth. For all intents and purposes physical evidence points to a brain that is compromised and intoxicated. There has been a lot of serious research into LSD. The research points to an intoxicated brain just as common sense does.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
alexanderthe- 5y ago
Psychedelics have the ability to bring, through subjective experience, evidence of the mystery that has been passed down through the worlds spiritual traditions; mankinds' relation to that mystery is ubiquitous throughout the worlds civilizations. I give due respect to anything that stands the test of time, irrespective of our ability to measure it with modern instruments or understand it with our primate mind.
tootie 5y ago
While drugs like ayahuasca can produce a wild and vivid experience, I think it's pretty ordinary to "talk" to characters in your dreams. Sometimes they're bizarre creatures and sometimes people you know, sometimes morphing between things and ideas. I always have the sense that I know what they're saying and what they're thinking even when I can't really "hear" them. This is obviously because they are created by my own brain.

galaxyLogic 5y ago

> now I think higher-dimensional beings exist." I think he said something more like I am now open to the possibility that they might be real. But ... we know there are people who are schizophrenic, who switch from one personality to another. Which of them is "real"? They probably all are. But that does not mean they exist anywhere outside of one's head. If you can experience another you, then it seems not implausible that you would also experience "God" inside your head. It is fun to think that there might be higher-dimensional conscious beings around us or even within us. But that's all it is, fun. There doesn't seem to be any practical implications of whether there are or not. Another part of the article considers (quite materialistically) the possibility that "God" is something society creates in our heads. I think Sigmund Freud called that the "Super Ego". It is what makes us better survive as a species. It causes us to co-operate rather than just selfishly abuse others as much as we can. It is clear how such a function could evolve by evolution. We see it in all species, they don't spend their energy trying to kill other individuals of the same species. It's the Selfish Gene.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"It is fun to think that there might be higher-dimensional conscious beings around us or even within us. But that's all it is, fun. There doesn't seem to be any practical implications of whether there are or not." Well, it is fun, when you assume those spirits to be friendly. But if they exist and they are not allways friendly - then there would be very practical implications because of that. Is your bad luck random, or did you anger some god or spirit? Then you would benefit from doing things to calm them. Many, many people believe that. But yes, the point is, why assume their existence in the first place, when science so far is very good at creating a working model of the universe. But since we do not have a complete model at all and maybe never will, I would not assume it is proven that billions of people on this earth who believe in magic etc. are all wrong. Because if you do that - then you would never find hints that they do exist. There is a theory in the spiritul world, that there is a mind censor in ourself, that is blocking all information on those magic things as we would not be able to focus on the tasks at hand, if we would be distracted by ghosts all the time. So main technics there, are how to control your inner censor and open your eyes to see and do much more. Well, what I can say for certain, is that the various magic traditions developed very powerful psychological technics to achieve various things with your mind. Whether there is real magic one has to see and decide for themself.
- bckr 5y ago
  > the various magic traditions developed very powerful psychological technics to achieve various things with your mind This alone is reason enough to study/practice "magical" concepts, which can range from CBT to various forms of meditation and cue spooky sounds sorcery. Having a hammer with which you can form your own mind is, like, extremely important. The spookier stuff you can just think of as either A) fun, existential decorations or B) embarrassing accretions to otherwise useful ways of thinking. Or heaven forbid you fall into the C) camp where you start to believe you're in some kind of spirit war for the aeons.
splithalf 5y ago
“ doesn't seem to be any practical implications of whether there are or not.” On one hand everything is material and deterministic (whether you confess to it or not — eg Dan dennet), on the other hand you have the possibility of free will, of human nobility and virtue. Selfish genes sounds like doublespeak to me. I’m sure it’s true to some extent, but I’m confident that it’s not the whole Truth.

waterheater 5y ago

>Either way, I feel like I've read and heard similar stories before. Yes, stories like this one are reasonably common. >There is no evidence that any of these spirits exist so I don't know why people seem to think that taking a hallucinogenic drug somehow connects them to another plane of existence or w/e. This topic is fraught with pseudoscience and charlatans exploiting people, so I do understand your intense skepticism and desire for hard evidence. What evidence would you require for proof of these spirits? Is there a minimum number of independent testimonies you need, which all claim the same event happened? I've found most people have never given those questions serious thought. The most common initial answer is "I'd need to see these spirits for myself," but this answer is unscientific, as published research articles must automatically be dismissed (Have you ever seen CRISPR work in person? How do you know it's real?). I'm genuinely curious as to what evidence you would need.

uh_uh 5y ago
I have an idea: how about a spirit telling me a piece of information that I have no way of knowing myself? It can be a specific prediction of the future, location of an undiscovered artefact, or simply a sentence written on a piece of paper that I couldn't have seen. As far as I know, nothing of this sort happened, ever.
- throwawaygal7 5y ago
  So solipsism basically?
- tigen 5y ago
  Exactly. Why are these spirits completely irrelevant, and "communicate" only thoughts one could already have? The basic premise of minds as being independent from physical brains is desperate fantasy in any case.
  - throwawaygal7 5y ago
    The traditional pre modern formula in the west was that they were necessarily linked, in a union that was separable only death.

splithalf 5y ago

“ human brains are wired in such a way that we tend to hallucinate similar things?” Yes, somewhere between jung and Oliver sacks — a biological basis for the collective unconscious. Religion IMO offers the most parsimonious explanation, to date.

galaxyLogic 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...
pmoriarty 5y ago
"a biological basis for the collective unconscious" This is in fact what Jung believed... long before Oliver Sacks.
serverholic 5y ago
I think it is much more likely that what he is hallucinating is a representation of how the brain stores information.

dsego 5y ago

Sounds like my brother after his 4th or 5th psychotic episode and medication not working anymore. I guess you could call it spiritual.

oceanghost 5y ago
"The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight." - Joseph Campbell

aaroninsf 5y ago

There's something a bit more subtle than whether DMT elves or Ayahuasca gods exist agents in the fashion imagined. It is pretty certain that the do not; there are anecdotal first hand accounts to be found of DMT cosmonauts putting the screws in and never TMK got anything verifiable, e.g, requests for factoring for large numbers, etc. Nothing. But, the consistencies in how humans report and "feel" about these things, is also interesting, and this is a kind of gray area existence that is more than just word-play. I'd describe it as a domain in which one can experience and prod first-hand one of the higher levels of the "stack" of the human psyche, that is: the order, categories, logic, projected agency, etc., our own perceptual->cognitive processes imposes on the world. One of the promises that psychedelics realize is the rare opportunity to see something akin to the console/debugger view of these processes, which by design are usually imperceptible to us. The low levels of the stack (trippy visuals, coarse emotional tides) are popular entertainment. The high levels of the stack (awe and foundational meaning and divine agency/purpose) are more dangerous maybe to engage for the lolz but there seems to be a lot there we can work with to our betterment which is real, in the sense that he universe we perceive and inhabit is real, whether we analytically know that it is fabricated or not. Analogy that comes to mind: walking a 2x4 plank placed on the floor, while inhabiting open air 50 stories up with VR googles. I knew damn well there was drop. I couldn't step forward, or off, and had to crawl. What we know to be real, is not always what is causally and experientially real...

pmoriarty 5y ago

Why people believe what they experience while tripping is one of the great open questions regarding psychedelics. It is quite common for psychedelic experiences to feel "more real than real", and often what has been revealed under their influence can feel like The Truth with a big fat capital T. I suspect that most people who become true believers after such experiences (and there are a lot of them) are just not very critical thinkers, and don't have a habit of questioning themselves, the world, or what they experience, and so are more liable to swallow the revelations they get line, hook, and sinker without critically diving in to them or coming up with alternate explanations for what might have happened. Then there are the die-hard atheists and materialists/physicalists, who may be err on the other extreme and hand wave everything they experience as "neurochemical noise" or whatnot. There are a bunch of these also, and when I read their dismissive reports I often wonder how strong their experiences were and how many of them they've had. Sam Harris, a prominent figure in the so-called "new atheist" movement, actually gave a strong dose of a psychedelic mushroom a try, and reported on his experience.[1] It's a fascinating account, given by a clearly intelligent and famously critical, anti-religious physicalist which I personally expected to be very negative and glibly dismissive, but to his great credit he treated it very respectfully, seriously, and not dismissively at all. He did not become a true believer after his trip, but it really made me suspect that if he'd continued taking strong doses of psychedelics even he would have. Such powerful, convincing experiences are how religious movements start, and no small number of them have started from psychedelics. In fact, some have theorized that many (all?) of the world's great religions ultimately had their roots in psychedelic experiences (see, for example, Allegro's "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross"[2]). I hope one day there'll be some serious research in to what is going on here, beyond simply reporting that mystical experiences are common on psychedelics. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKGddvmU0fA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKGddvmU0fA [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr...

neonological 5y ago
Do you trust a man experiencing a high or a "powerful experience" to drive? If such a man cannot be trusted to drive why should we trust anything that comes out of his mouth. For all intents and purposes physical evidence points to a brain that is compromised and intoxicated. There has been a lot of serious research into LSD. The research points to an intoxicated brain just as common sense does.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

alexanderthe- 5y ago

Psychedelics have the ability to bring, through subjective experience, evidence of the mystery that has been passed down through the worlds spiritual traditions; mankinds' relation to that mystery is ubiquitous throughout the worlds civilizations. I give due respect to anything that stands the test of time, irrespective of our ability to measure it with modern instruments or understand it with our primate mind.

tootie 5y ago

While drugs like ayahuasca can produce a wild and vivid experience, I think it's pretty ordinary to "talk" to characters in your dreams. Sometimes they're bizarre creatures and sometimes people you know, sometimes morphing between things and ideas. I always have the sense that I know what they're saying and what they're thinking even when I can't really "hear" them. This is obviously because they are created by my own brain.