3 ms·

It's important to have a spiritual practice to go alongside psychedelics to weather the ontological shock.

by cj17382 2mo ago

feoren 2mo ago
"Atheists are mentally incapable of handing psychedelics" is certainly a take.
- carljungslabtek 2mo ago
  I really don’t think the word spiritual precludes atheists, you could even read it as “the human spirit”. The point is just that you need some framework to ground yourself. Plenty of people have “spiritual” beliefs based purely around the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics or even simulation theory.
- crent 2mo ago
  Equating a belief in gods with spiritual discovery is also a take.
  - t-3 2mo ago
    Belief in spirits is just as absurd as belief in deities, which are just a specialized category of spirit as far as these things are usually classified anyway.
    - crent 2mo ago
      spirituality doesn’t have to mean you believe in spirits in the sense of ghosts etc. I believe that if that’s where the definition of exploring one’s own inner world ends, then that person has missed the point.
      - t-3 2mo ago
        If you don't mean to suggest you believe in some strange metaphysics without any grounding in reality, why do you call it spirituality? What "inner world" are you "exploring"? Can that be done in plain language without any mysticism? Why or why not?
        LocalH 2mo ago
        Militant atheists like you are almost as insufferable as militant theists
        dubbie99 2mo ago
        Or you could you know, answer the question…
        LocalH 2mo ago
        I don't believe in any "God". I believe that only the universe is any "supreme being". Is that woo? Maybe. But it helps me be kinder than any religion seems to teach others.
        psd1 2mo ago
        That raises an interesting point. The big religions of the world all explicitly teach kindness - personal and concrete kindness practiced by you, the follower. Is that what they effectively teach? Or is it just window dressing on top of underlying hegemonisation? A/B testing is likely impossible and i can't see how you would measure kindness. Nonetheless, my conjecture is that religion likely shifts people in the direction of kindness. I suspect that believers who are cruel would typically also be cruel without the religion. I assert that there are more direct and effective waits of developing compassion, but that they require a base level of self-awareness higher than the median found in neoliberal nations. Perhaps religion is close to optimal for those who need extrinsic motivation to develop any self-government. Furthermore, it looks to me like neoliberalism leaves a philosophical vacuum which demands filling with something, and that something is all too eagerly supplied by charlatans. We should evaluate religion relative to whatever philosophy would take its place. Tribalism, fascism, supremacy: these are perennially seductive. Religion is not incompatible with these, but it might crowd them out.
- nathan_compton 2mo ago
  I'm an absolute atheist and philosophical nihilist and I have done psychedelics and I've never had a problem with them. Typically find the experiences positive. So we have at least one counter-example.
bobbiebarker2 2mo ago
Good crutch for the weak. I've tripped plenty of times; I'm an atheist; it was great. Next time you trip, you should reflect on your need for "spirituality" and what it says about whatever is going on or not going on between your ears. One of the most amazing things about humans is their imagination and ability to convince themselves of almost anything. In my opinion, one of the points of doing psychedelics is to recapture your own imagination and flush out all the BS that other people have put in there to capture your mind. And here you are telling people to pour more programming back in there in the form of "spirituality."
- poncho_romero 2mo ago
  I'm surprised someone as enlightened as yourself can't imagine a person coming to spirituality themselves.
- hankbond 2mo ago
  > one of the points of doing psychedelics is to recapture your own imagination this also is my takeaway as to the primary utility. its so easy to accumulate ideas about how things _must_ be represented over time. every so often (maybe 5-10 years?) its probably good to have a way to shave them off and re-expose the surface.
- pfannkuchen 2mo ago
  I’m also an atheist, but just looking at the huge amount of anthropological information we have, from hunter gatherer bands to large scale civilizations, I am quite sure that a perception of god-like and spirit-like entities is built into the hardware layer in humans. That doesn’t make them “real”, of course, but it doesn’t seem to matter much whether or not they are real, and deleting them from life because they aren’t literally real is an ongoing experiment.
  - semolino 2mo ago
    Yes, perception of entities during psychedelic experience is unhinged paredolia: psychedelic substances obliterate the squelch for our pattern recognition systems, of which paredolia is one. Deepdream slugdogs are sort of a synthetic analogue to this.
tekla 2mo ago
What? No you don't. This kind of talk is how you get tech Bros paying 10 grand for some rando to be a "shaman" during a "retreat"
- Loughla 2mo ago
  We used to call them trip sitters and it was a friend who helped keep you grounded. Rich people will always find a way to buy their way into a subculture.
  - imhoguy 2mo ago
    For some a tent in a forest is enough, others need luxury hotels next to the forest.
Loughla 2mo ago
Spiritual doesn't mean religious, is my opinion. It means being grounded in something firm, whether that's inner strength or a reliance on an external deity. Religion is not required for psychedelics, but a strong grounding in something is, in my opinion. People have bad trips because there's something inside them that they haven't identified or dealt with properly. Anxiety and/or depression will ALWAYS flare up during your trip. It's best to deal with those properly (meaning change things in your life, not just medication) beforehand.
- stringfood 2mo ago
  I feel that looking for God is spiritual but saying you've already found Him, know Him, know His kids, etc - that is religious
  - jazzyjackson 2mo ago
    There are finders and seekers. I’m always impressed with people who ardently believe they know the truth, they can act without doubt, an interesting skill.
    - Loughla 2mo ago
      I'm with you. It's not for me but it's absolutely fascinating. There's something nice about letting go and just knowing that it's part of someone's plan. Again, not for me but I understand that appeal.
    - psd1 2mo ago
      I'm also impressed, but not in a good way. I consider certainty to be the biggest tell of falsehood, and I wish to deny the vote to people with certainty. Certainty of opinion on a complex topic reveals a belief that organic brains can, in practice, judge the correctness of their own reasoning - a conceit that borders on the psychotic, and at minimum a complete failure of self-awareness. These people don't need agency, they need thorazine.
      - 2mo ago
IncreasePosts 2mo ago
No, it isn't. What's important is "set", and "setting". Set is your mental mindset. Setting is where you're tripping. If you're mentally in a good place, and you're comfortable in your surroundings, you will probably have a good trip. If you're dealing with some shit mentally and you're not comfortable where you're tripping you'll probably have a really bad trip.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
kloop 2mo ago
The article mentions that the "pranksterish" groups who took psychedelics weathered it just fine. They didn't have an expectation to disappoint. Irreverence seems to be just as good It does sound like the opposite a bit, it sounds like attempting to create a spiritual practice, or assign spiritual significance at all was what did him in
antonvs 2mo ago
It's quite the opposite. When a drug trip conflicts with one's "spiritual practice" is exactly when you have a problem. That seems to be McKenna's problem in this case: he tried to assigning meaning to an experience he had while compromising his brain function with chemicals. All you really need is to understand that there's no magic involved here. If you deliberately compromise your brain function, you're going to have strange experiences. It doesn't "mean" anything except that you compromised your brain function.
quickthrowman 2mo ago
Not in the slightest. Telling yourself “this is a drug that is altering my perceptions and it will end” is enough for me. That’s all the grounding LSD and mushrooms require and I’ve never had a bad trip, but I have plenty of drug experience so perhaps I’m just used to being in an altered state. Psychedelics don’t reveal anything profound, they just alter your thinking and perception temporarily.
weezing 2mo ago
It's important to not do drugs that will fuck up your brain

It's important to have a spiritual practice to go alongside psychedelics to weather the ontological shock.

by cj17382 2mo ago

It's important to have a spiritual practice to go alongside psychedelics to weather the ontological shock.

feoren 2mo ago

"Atheists are mentally incapable of handing psychedelics" is certainly a take.

carljungslabtek 2mo ago
I really don’t think the word spiritual precludes atheists, you could even read it as “the human spirit”. The point is just that you need some framework to ground yourself. Plenty of people have “spiritual” beliefs based purely around the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics or even simulation theory.
crent 2mo ago
Equating a belief in gods with spiritual discovery is also a take.
- t-3 2mo ago
  Belief in spirits is just as absurd as belief in deities, which are just a specialized category of spirit as far as these things are usually classified anyway.
  - crent 2mo ago
    spirituality doesn’t have to mean you believe in spirits in the sense of ghosts etc. I believe that if that’s where the definition of exploring one’s own inner world ends, then that person has missed the point.
    - t-3 2mo ago
      If you don't mean to suggest you believe in some strange metaphysics without any grounding in reality, why do you call it spirituality? What "inner world" are you "exploring"? Can that be done in plain language without any mysticism? Why or why not?
      - LocalH 2mo ago
        Militant atheists like you are almost as insufferable as militant theists
        dubbie99 2mo ago
        Or you could you know, answer the question…
        LocalH 2mo ago
        I don't believe in any "God". I believe that only the universe is any "supreme being". Is that woo? Maybe. But it helps me be kinder than any religion seems to teach others.
        psd1 2mo ago
        That raises an interesting point. The big religions of the world all explicitly teach kindness - personal and concrete kindness practiced by you, the follower. Is that what they effectively teach? Or is it just window dressing on top of underlying hegemonisation? A/B testing is likely impossible and i can't see how you would measure kindness. Nonetheless, my conjecture is that religion likely shifts people in the direction of kindness. I suspect that believers who are cruel would typically also be cruel without the religion. I assert that there are more direct and effective waits of developing compassion, but that they require a base level of self-awareness higher than the median found in neoliberal nations. Perhaps religion is close to optimal for those who need extrinsic motivation to develop any self-government. Furthermore, it looks to me like neoliberalism leaves a philosophical vacuum which demands filling with something, and that something is all too eagerly supplied by charlatans. We should evaluate religion relative to whatever philosophy would take its place. Tribalism, fascism, supremacy: these are perennially seductive. Religion is not incompatible with these, but it might crowd them out.
nathan_compton 2mo ago
I'm an absolute atheist and philosophical nihilist and I have done psychedelics and I've never had a problem with them. Typically find the experiences positive. So we have at least one counter-example.

bobbiebarker2 2mo ago

Good crutch for the weak. I've tripped plenty of times; I'm an atheist; it was great. Next time you trip, you should reflect on your need for "spirituality" and what it says about whatever is going on or not going on between your ears. One of the most amazing things about humans is their imagination and ability to convince themselves of almost anything. In my opinion, one of the points of doing psychedelics is to recapture your own imagination and flush out all the BS that other people have put in there to capture your mind. And here you are telling people to pour more programming back in there in the form of "spirituality."

poncho_romero 2mo ago
I'm surprised someone as enlightened as yourself can't imagine a person coming to spirituality themselves.
hankbond 2mo ago
> one of the points of doing psychedelics is to recapture your own imagination this also is my takeaway as to the primary utility. its so easy to accumulate ideas about how things _must_ be represented over time. every so often (maybe 5-10 years?) its probably good to have a way to shave them off and re-expose the surface.
pfannkuchen 2mo ago
I’m also an atheist, but just looking at the huge amount of anthropological information we have, from hunter gatherer bands to large scale civilizations, I am quite sure that a perception of god-like and spirit-like entities is built into the hardware layer in humans. That doesn’t make them “real”, of course, but it doesn’t seem to matter much whether or not they are real, and deleting them from life because they aren’t literally real is an ongoing experiment.
- semolino 2mo ago
  Yes, perception of entities during psychedelic experience is unhinged paredolia: psychedelic substances obliterate the squelch for our pattern recognition systems, of which paredolia is one. Deepdream slugdogs are sort of a synthetic analogue to this.

tekla 2mo ago

What? No you don't. This kind of talk is how you get tech Bros paying 10 grand for some rando to be a "shaman" during a "retreat"

Loughla 2mo ago
We used to call them trip sitters and it was a friend who helped keep you grounded. Rich people will always find a way to buy their way into a subculture.
- imhoguy 2mo ago
  For some a tent in a forest is enough, others need luxury hotels next to the forest.

Loughla 2mo ago

Spiritual doesn't mean religious, is my opinion. It means being grounded in something firm, whether that's inner strength or a reliance on an external deity. Religion is not required for psychedelics, but a strong grounding in something is, in my opinion. People have bad trips because there's something inside them that they haven't identified or dealt with properly. Anxiety and/or depression will ALWAYS flare up during your trip. It's best to deal with those properly (meaning change things in your life, not just medication) beforehand.

stringfood 2mo ago
I feel that looking for God is spiritual but saying you've already found Him, know Him, know His kids, etc - that is religious
- jazzyjackson 2mo ago
  There are finders and seekers. I’m always impressed with people who ardently believe they know the truth, they can act without doubt, an interesting skill.
  - Loughla 2mo ago
    I'm with you. It's not for me but it's absolutely fascinating. There's something nice about letting go and just knowing that it's part of someone's plan. Again, not for me but I understand that appeal.
  - psd1 2mo ago
    I'm also impressed, but not in a good way. I consider certainty to be the biggest tell of falsehood, and I wish to deny the vote to people with certainty. Certainty of opinion on a complex topic reveals a belief that organic brains can, in practice, judge the correctness of their own reasoning - a conceit that borders on the psychotic, and at minimum a complete failure of self-awareness. These people don't need agency, they need thorazine.
    - 2mo ago

IncreasePosts 2mo ago

No, it isn't. What's important is "set", and "setting". Set is your mental mindset. Setting is where you're tripping. If you're mentally in a good place, and you're comfortable in your surroundings, you will probably have a good trip. If you're dealing with some shit mentally and you're not comfortable where you're tripping you'll probably have a really bad trip.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

kloop 2mo ago

The article mentions that the "pranksterish" groups who took psychedelics weathered it just fine. They didn't have an expectation to disappoint. Irreverence seems to be just as good It does sound like the opposite a bit, it sounds like attempting to create a spiritual practice, or assign spiritual significance at all was what did him in

antonvs 2mo ago

It's quite the opposite. When a drug trip conflicts with one's "spiritual practice" is exactly when you have a problem. That seems to be McKenna's problem in this case: he tried to assigning meaning to an experience he had while compromising his brain function with chemicals. All you really need is to understand that there's no magic involved here. If you deliberately compromise your brain function, you're going to have strange experiences. It doesn't "mean" anything except that you compromised your brain function.

quickthrowman 2mo ago

Not in the slightest. Telling yourself “this is a drug that is altering my perceptions and it will end” is enough for me. That’s all the grounding LSD and mushrooms require and I’ve never had a bad trip, but I have plenty of drug experience so perhaps I’m just used to being in an altered state. Psychedelics don’t reveal anything profound, they just alter your thinking and perception temporarily.

weezing 2mo ago

It's important to not do drugs that will fuck up your brain