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I note that "It's like tripping your balls off on LSD" is missing from the list. But, funny thing: It's the most accurate. Instead you get a bunch of gobbledy

I note that "It's like tripping your balls off on LSD" is missing from the list. But, funny thing: It's the most accurate. Instead you get a bunch of gobbledygook about death, eternity, and direct messages from god. The fact that you might just be having an episode of impaired cognition does not actually enter your brain. Let's not make this more complicated than it is.

programnature 14y ago
All spiritual experiences sound like gobbledygook to those who have never had a spiritual experience. That they are beyond rational explanation is a feature, not a bug.
- mistercow 14y ago
  They aren't beyond rational explanation. We may not have models that can predict and explain this qualitative phenomena, but I end this sentence with a resounding "yet".
  - omarchowdhury 14y ago
    Don't mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon.
    - flatline 14y ago
      There is no finger. There is no moon. This is the fundamental Zen breakdown of the problem, at least. In Theravadan buddhism, the self is like a stick hut standing in a field: you can break it down and deconstruct it stick by stick, and thereby attain Buddhahood. In Zen, there is no hut. You are Buddha, right here and now.
      - virtualwhys 14y ago
        Right here, right now, what is Buddha? The Zen "approach" cannot be explained, much like the teachings of Krishnamurti or Ramana Maharshi, or, as in the case of this thread, the psychedelic experience, or, as in the case of this life, oneself.
  - oscilloscope 14y ago
    Characterizing a subjective experience is not the same as experiencing the phenomena. If I look at brainwave data of a monk meditating, my experience is of looking at and interpreting data. I am not meditating.
    - nessus42 14y ago
      The canonical thought experiment from philosophy is called "The Knowledge Argument". In it, you are asked to imagine a super-intelligent but color-blind since birth scientist named Mary who knows everything there is to know about human perception from a scientific point of view. (Btw, she's completely color-blind; she only sees in black & white.) Since she knows everything there is to know, surely she knows what it's like to see the color red, right? On the other hand, we feel pretty confident that when she is cured of her color-blindness and is then handed a ripe tomato, she'll say, "OMFG! I never imagined that red would like like that!" So one possible conclusion from this is that it is impossible to know everything (that can be known) scientifically.
      - gnosis 14y ago
        "Mary who knows everything there is to know about human perception from a scientific point of view. ... Since she knows everything there is to know" The second assertion does not necessarily follow from the first. There may well be more to understanding something than what science can know about it. Also, there's something that analytic philosophers like to call "qualia", which is what it's like to experience something. That's one thing that would be missing from the above account. To take another example: I could know quite a lot about the neurological processes that underly the sensation of pain in the human nervous system and the brain. However, such knowledge is very different from the sensation of pain itself. Same with sex. You can read up about its physiology all you like, but your knowledge of it is going to be of a quite different order from someone who's actually had sex.
        nessus42 14y ago
        > There may well be more to understanding something than what science can know about it. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that. But who knows? Maybe I just did too much acid back in the hippy days. The amount of literature on The Knowledge Argument is staggering, and there are many ways out of the apparent paradox. Frank Jackson who came up with the Knowledge Argument was using it to argue that mental states do not supervene on physical ones. I.e., one's mental states are not uniquely determined in the space of all possible worlds by one's physical state. (He later changed his mind about this, however, and is no longer a dualist.) One way out of dualism is, as you hinted at, is to maintain that even if dualism is false, there are things that you can't know without having a certain concept in your head, and the only way to get the concept in your head is to have a certain experience which puts your mind into a state that you could not get to via pondering alone. Another way out of dualism is to deny that Mary acquired any new knowledge when she sees the ripe tomato. Etc, etc. And the philosophers will probably be arguing about Mary for the next thousand years.
  - orasis 14y ago
    The "pragmatic dharma" crowd does a pretty good job of this. Daniel Ingram's book, "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" represents a nice collection (http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ http://integrateddaniel.info/book/) There is also a good pragmatic map of awakening at http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six... I am also creating an iPhone app for tracking meditation experiences at http://mindblownapp.com/ http://mindblownapp.com/. We currently have a database of over 100 interesting experience that can occur during meditation such as "no self" experiences, spontaneous movement, etc.
    - deleted 14y ago
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- michaelochurch 14y ago
  This is one of the reasons I generally avoid discussing spiritual experiences, or reading others'. It's like sex. There are years you spend obsessed with it. Then there are years when it's a normal part of your life-- enjoyable, but not worth moral compromises or stupid risks-- and the obsession seems silly and you're embarrassed to have had such a fixation. I also tend to believe that using any experience as a trophy cheapens it. When you remember something, you actually retrieve the memory and store an updated copy, which means the state in which you recall it will influence the long-term memory. If you turn an experience into a social token, you're recalling it with a cheap mind, and the memory will turn cheap over time. I talked to an experienced meditator about this, and he said he never discusses experiences (except with his guru, when he was younger) because people are either less advanced and will not understand them, or more advanced and have no use for them. Experience isn't the only point, which is my problem with psychedelic drug culture. There are people who use psychedelics for genuinely spiritual purposes, but they seem to be a minority in that world. The culture as a whole seems to be heavy on experience and light on insight and self-development. Look at what Tim Leary turned into. The other thing is that you don't need psychedelic drugs to have "trippy" experiences. Six hours in a sensory deprivation tank will do it. Brainwave synchronization can also have some pretty neat effects-- and safely.
omarchowdhury 14y ago
Oh, hush.
drzaiusapelord 14y ago
Anything with the phrase (paraphrasing) "but I must warn you, you must be surrounded by evolved people" sounds so incredibly condescending and pretentious it really shows how these people see themselves as superior to others, like your friend who travels a lot and brings it up all the time. Except his stories are rational and meaningful, while stories about tripping balls are so subjective, they're meaningless. Yes, I'm sure it was a positive experience, but the idea that you can learn wisdom and maturity via chemistry, well, that idea never panned out. Instead you get the typical empty-head drug talk about "seeing god" and "being nothing." And for all the elaborate salesmanship, what do these people get in the end? They're extremely ineloquent and whatever wisdom is purported to be there, just doesn't seem to be there. They've obviously invested into some kind of "rebel" personality and drug culture panders to them. I should know, I was invested in drug culture myself for longer than I care to admit on the internet. Meh, the counter-culture petered out for a reason. Turns out ingesting random chemicals isn't the big statement so many thought it was. There's no shortcut to being an interesting and clever person. You gotta put the hours in.
- orasis 14y ago
  The insights available through meditation and psychedelics are insights into the workings of conceptualization and the odd subject/object split we habitually do with thought and language. Being able to experience reality below the lens of conceptualization is the most powerful experience of my life. I can now clearly see the fake reality created instantly by thought and the truth that there is only this moment of experience and it is totally inherently free from meaning. In this is realization is liberation from limiting thoughts and ideals and an existence that is free from anxiety, boredom, or any sense that something is wrong or needs doing. Describing what its like is like describing an orgasm to a person who has never had one. "Uh...its like a really good sneeze." I did this through the path of meditation, but I know others who have used psychedelics to similar ends.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    I did this through the path of meditation, but I know others who have used psychedelics to similar ends. Based on what I've read and observed, the people who get real benefit out of psychedelics are those who are already fairly meditative people, who use them in reasonable settings (with people they trust) and know what they are doing. There clearly are people who are able to make good use of these chemicals, but they seem to be fewer and farther in between than people who succeed on other, less risky, paths. What seems to be the mainstream in psychedelic drug culture (although it's hard to tell what the mainstream of an underground, illegal subculture is) is just lazy. The idea that one can pop a pill and have a spiritual experience (instead of context-free noise) is ridiculous. LSD seems to be a magnifying glass, so people who use it as part of their spiritual practice seem to get real benefit, but those who use it as a "party drug" are just magnifying crap and polluting their minds.
anigbrowl 14y ago
That seems a rather odd comparison, just as it would be odd to say that riding a bicycle is like riding a bicycle. I don't think it's as simple as labeling it as a cognitive impairment; since the effect/impairment in question is highly characteristic it's understandable that people reach fairly widely for terminology that's adequate to describe it. It has a lot of descriptive utility even though it doesn't have an objective basis. Not that I'm endorsing massive dosing as described here.
mistercow 14y ago
But for those who haven't experienced LSD, metaphorical descriptions can be helpful. And it certainly is more complicated than "impaired cognition", even though the heavy handed spiritual claims are silly.
pithon 14y ago
A compiled executable is nothing more than a series of instructions; why do people have to make it more complicated than it is?
PavlovsCat 14y ago
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. -- Albert Einstein There. No drugs, just reflection, same result. And there is something to be said about experiencing something you know intellectually to be true. And then there are people who don't come to such conclusions through thinking; I dare say even if it's "just" tripping your balls off, a lot of people could use such an experience. Maybe not this particular one though, that seems a bit heavy. Also, what is "impaired cognition"? Compared to what, exactly? I mean, what makes thinking you're person A with attributes X and Y and possessions Z not impaired cognition? They're both "just in your head", after all, and the view that "there is just everything" seems to be closer to what we know so far about reality, than our nonsense about individuals, nations and corporations. I mean, just because you call something a chair doesn't mean there is such thing; it's just practical and we don't think much of it, so we divided "whatever this is", into a trillion of such concepts, none of them able to withstand examination, but taking on a life on their own in our imaginations. They kind of become our masters, and I'm pretty sure letting go of all such delusions in one big go feels awesome, and a bit of "gobbledygook" is to be expected... just don't mistake nonsensical utterances with not understanding them.
- jpdoctor 14y ago
  > Also, what is "impaired cognition"? Compared to what, exactly? How about this for an operational definition: When you open your eyes and are seeing shit that isn't there, you're suffering from impaired cognition. It's really not that difficult, unless you want it to be. Edit: OK Fine. I give up: It's mysterious cosmic stuff that puts you in touch with the everlasting oneness of all humans and the universe. Good luck with the whole enlightenment thing, I'm sure the chemicals will fast-track you to exactly the right path.
  - PavlovsCat 14y ago
stephth 14y ago
The fact that you might just be having an episode of impaired cognition does not actually enter your brain. It depends. I agree that it should. That said that realization doesn't make it less spiritual. Experiencing a different reality, seeing through different eyes, isn't that the quintessential spiritual experience? We believe what we see. If one never experiences a different point of view, one might continue to believe her limited window to the world is the truth. Experiencing other realities can help subjects realize how subjective things are. How to form a perception, imaginary fluff is added to fill the gaps. Like your comment. It's not a silver bullet. One has to be curious, and brave enough to second guess the ego, which is probably one of the most challenging things we face (and might define how and how well we can last as a race). But it doesn't do us any good to underestimate the spiritual power of psychedelics.
gosu 14y ago
I generally agree with you, and find myself revolted by pseudo-(or not-pseudo-)-religious tripe of the sort in the OP. But I also don't think that it's unreasonable to say that altering your manner of cognition for a while can cause you to reflect on yourself in a new way and realize something new. In practice, though, I've never really seen this theory come to fruit. Having acid trips was really fun, but my cognition really was more impaired then altered, and I didn't learn or realize anything.
Tichy 14y ago
My first thought was "those people are high" :-)

programnature 14y ago

All spiritual experiences sound like gobbledygook to those who have never had a spiritual experience. That they are beyond rational explanation is a feature, not a bug.

mistercow 14y ago
They aren't beyond rational explanation. We may not have models that can predict and explain this qualitative phenomena, but I end this sentence with a resounding "yet".
- omarchowdhury 14y ago
  Don't mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon.
  - flatline 14y ago
    There is no finger. There is no moon. This is the fundamental Zen breakdown of the problem, at least. In Theravadan buddhism, the self is like a stick hut standing in a field: you can break it down and deconstruct it stick by stick, and thereby attain Buddhahood. In Zen, there is no hut. You are Buddha, right here and now.
    - virtualwhys 14y ago
      Right here, right now, what is Buddha? The Zen "approach" cannot be explained, much like the teachings of Krishnamurti or Ramana Maharshi, or, as in the case of this thread, the psychedelic experience, or, as in the case of this life, oneself.
- oscilloscope 14y ago
  Characterizing a subjective experience is not the same as experiencing the phenomena. If I look at brainwave data of a monk meditating, my experience is of looking at and interpreting data. I am not meditating.
  - nessus42 14y ago
    The canonical thought experiment from philosophy is called "The Knowledge Argument". In it, you are asked to imagine a super-intelligent but color-blind since birth scientist named Mary who knows everything there is to know about human perception from a scientific point of view. (Btw, she's completely color-blind; she only sees in black & white.) Since she knows everything there is to know, surely she knows what it's like to see the color red, right? On the other hand, we feel pretty confident that when she is cured of her color-blindness and is then handed a ripe tomato, she'll say, "OMFG! I never imagined that red would like like that!" So one possible conclusion from this is that it is impossible to know everything (that can be known) scientifically.
    - gnosis 14y ago
      "Mary who knows everything there is to know about human perception from a scientific point of view. ... Since she knows everything there is to know" The second assertion does not necessarily follow from the first. There may well be more to understanding something than what science can know about it. Also, there's something that analytic philosophers like to call "qualia", which is what it's like to experience something. That's one thing that would be missing from the above account. To take another example: I could know quite a lot about the neurological processes that underly the sensation of pain in the human nervous system and the brain. However, such knowledge is very different from the sensation of pain itself. Same with sex. You can read up about its physiology all you like, but your knowledge of it is going to be of a quite different order from someone who's actually had sex.
      - nessus42 14y ago
        > There may well be more to understanding something than what science can know about it. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that. But who knows? Maybe I just did too much acid back in the hippy days. The amount of literature on The Knowledge Argument is staggering, and there are many ways out of the apparent paradox. Frank Jackson who came up with the Knowledge Argument was using it to argue that mental states do not supervene on physical ones. I.e., one's mental states are not uniquely determined in the space of all possible worlds by one's physical state. (He later changed his mind about this, however, and is no longer a dualist.) One way out of dualism is, as you hinted at, is to maintain that even if dualism is false, there are things that you can't know without having a certain concept in your head, and the only way to get the concept in your head is to have a certain experience which puts your mind into a state that you could not get to via pondering alone. Another way out of dualism is to deny that Mary acquired any new knowledge when she sees the ripe tomato. Etc, etc. And the philosophers will probably be arguing about Mary for the next thousand years.
- orasis 14y ago
  The "pragmatic dharma" crowd does a pretty good job of this. Daniel Ingram's book, "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" represents a nice collection (http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ http://integrateddaniel.info/book/) There is also a good pragmatic map of awakening at http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six... I am also creating an iPhone app for tracking meditation experiences at http://mindblownapp.com/ http://mindblownapp.com/. We currently have a database of over 100 interesting experience that can occur during meditation such as "no self" experiences, spontaneous movement, etc.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
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michaelochurch 14y ago
This is one of the reasons I generally avoid discussing spiritual experiences, or reading others'. It's like sex. There are years you spend obsessed with it. Then there are years when it's a normal part of your life-- enjoyable, but not worth moral compromises or stupid risks-- and the obsession seems silly and you're embarrassed to have had such a fixation. I also tend to believe that using any experience as a trophy cheapens it. When you remember something, you actually retrieve the memory and store an updated copy, which means the state in which you recall it will influence the long-term memory. If you turn an experience into a social token, you're recalling it with a cheap mind, and the memory will turn cheap over time. I talked to an experienced meditator about this, and he said he never discusses experiences (except with his guru, when he was younger) because people are either less advanced and will not understand them, or more advanced and have no use for them. Experience isn't the only point, which is my problem with psychedelic drug culture. There are people who use psychedelics for genuinely spiritual purposes, but they seem to be a minority in that world. The culture as a whole seems to be heavy on experience and light on insight and self-development. Look at what Tim Leary turned into. The other thing is that you don't need psychedelic drugs to have "trippy" experiences. Six hours in a sensory deprivation tank will do it. Brainwave synchronization can also have some pretty neat effects-- and safely.

omarchowdhury 14y ago

Oh, hush.

drzaiusapelord 14y ago

Anything with the phrase (paraphrasing) "but I must warn you, you must be surrounded by evolved people" sounds so incredibly condescending and pretentious it really shows how these people see themselves as superior to others, like your friend who travels a lot and brings it up all the time. Except his stories are rational and meaningful, while stories about tripping balls are so subjective, they're meaningless. Yes, I'm sure it was a positive experience, but the idea that you can learn wisdom and maturity via chemistry, well, that idea never panned out. Instead you get the typical empty-head drug talk about "seeing god" and "being nothing." And for all the elaborate salesmanship, what do these people get in the end? They're extremely ineloquent and whatever wisdom is purported to be there, just doesn't seem to be there. They've obviously invested into some kind of "rebel" personality and drug culture panders to them. I should know, I was invested in drug culture myself for longer than I care to admit on the internet. Meh, the counter-culture petered out for a reason. Turns out ingesting random chemicals isn't the big statement so many thought it was. There's no shortcut to being an interesting and clever person. You gotta put the hours in.

orasis 14y ago
The insights available through meditation and psychedelics are insights into the workings of conceptualization and the odd subject/object split we habitually do with thought and language. Being able to experience reality below the lens of conceptualization is the most powerful experience of my life. I can now clearly see the fake reality created instantly by thought and the truth that there is only this moment of experience and it is totally inherently free from meaning. In this is realization is liberation from limiting thoughts and ideals and an existence that is free from anxiety, boredom, or any sense that something is wrong or needs doing. Describing what its like is like describing an orgasm to a person who has never had one. "Uh...its like a really good sneeze." I did this through the path of meditation, but I know others who have used psychedelics to similar ends.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I did this through the path of meditation, but I know others who have used psychedelics to similar ends. Based on what I've read and observed, the people who get real benefit out of psychedelics are those who are already fairly meditative people, who use them in reasonable settings (with people they trust) and know what they are doing. There clearly are people who are able to make good use of these chemicals, but they seem to be fewer and farther in between than people who succeed on other, less risky, paths. What seems to be the mainstream in psychedelic drug culture (although it's hard to tell what the mainstream of an underground, illegal subculture is) is just lazy. The idea that one can pop a pill and have a spiritual experience (instead of context-free noise) is ridiculous. LSD seems to be a magnifying glass, so people who use it as part of their spiritual practice seem to get real benefit, but those who use it as a "party drug" are just magnifying crap and polluting their minds.

anigbrowl 14y ago

That seems a rather odd comparison, just as it would be odd to say that riding a bicycle is like riding a bicycle. I don't think it's as simple as labeling it as a cognitive impairment; since the effect/impairment in question is highly characteristic it's understandable that people reach fairly widely for terminology that's adequate to describe it. It has a lot of descriptive utility even though it doesn't have an objective basis. Not that I'm endorsing massive dosing as described here.

mistercow 14y ago

But for those who haven't experienced LSD, metaphorical descriptions can be helpful. And it certainly is more complicated than "impaired cognition", even though the heavy handed spiritual claims are silly.

pithon 14y ago

A compiled executable is nothing more than a series of instructions; why do people have to make it more complicated than it is?

PavlovsCat 14y ago

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. -- Albert Einstein There. No drugs, just reflection, same result. And there is something to be said about experiencing something you know intellectually to be true. And then there are people who don't come to such conclusions through thinking; I dare say even if it's "just" tripping your balls off, a lot of people could use such an experience. Maybe not this particular one though, that seems a bit heavy. Also, what is "impaired cognition"? Compared to what, exactly? I mean, what makes thinking you're person A with attributes X and Y and possessions Z not impaired cognition? They're both "just in your head", after all, and the view that "there is just everything" seems to be closer to what we know so far about reality, than our nonsense about individuals, nations and corporations. I mean, just because you call something a chair doesn't mean there is such thing; it's just practical and we don't think much of it, so we divided "whatever this is", into a trillion of such concepts, none of them able to withstand examination, but taking on a life on their own in our imaginations. They kind of become our masters, and I'm pretty sure letting go of all such delusions in one big go feels awesome, and a bit of "gobbledygook" is to be expected... just don't mistake nonsensical utterances with not understanding them.

jpdoctor 14y ago
> Also, what is "impaired cognition"? Compared to what, exactly? How about this for an operational definition: When you open your eyes and are seeing shit that isn't there, you're suffering from impaired cognition. It's really not that difficult, unless you want it to be. Edit: OK Fine. I give up: It's mysterious cosmic stuff that puts you in touch with the everlasting oneness of all humans and the universe. Good luck with the whole enlightenment thing, I'm sure the chemicals will fast-track you to exactly the right path.
- PavlovsCat 14y ago

stephth 14y ago

The fact that you might just be having an episode of impaired cognition does not actually enter your brain. It depends. I agree that it should. That said that realization doesn't make it less spiritual. Experiencing a different reality, seeing through different eyes, isn't that the quintessential spiritual experience? We believe what we see. If one never experiences a different point of view, one might continue to believe her limited window to the world is the truth. Experiencing other realities can help subjects realize how subjective things are. How to form a perception, imaginary fluff is added to fill the gaps. Like your comment. It's not a silver bullet. One has to be curious, and brave enough to second guess the ego, which is probably one of the most challenging things we face (and might define how and how well we can last as a race). But it doesn't do us any good to underestimate the spiritual power of psychedelics.

gosu 14y ago

I generally agree with you, and find myself revolted by pseudo-(or not-pseudo-)-religious tripe of the sort in the OP. But I also don't think that it's unreasonable to say that altering your manner of cognition for a while can cause you to reflect on yourself in a new way and realize something new. In practice, though, I've never really seen this theory come to fruit. Having acid trips was really fun, but my cognition really was more impaired then altered, and I didn't learn or realize anything.

Tichy 14y ago

My first thought was "those people are high" :-)