taotemu

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.

@Blackhawk By all means don't take anyone's word for it. Don't believe anyone's experience. Anyone claiming to be enlightened is probably trying to sell you something. Stay skeptical. If you are interested, check it out for yourself. If not, don't waste your time. Just move on and go about your life. 99.9% of people simply aren't even interested and would rather just accept reality as they see it without question.

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.

I wouldn't recommend it. Psychedelics leave you in a pretty suggestible and vulnerable state. There is a reason most experienced psychonauts suggest only using them where you feel safe, and in a stable and good state of mind and with a sober trip sitter. At least the first few times you use them and have a better idea of how you will react on them.

Jerry Seinfeld is a Zen master of comedy. Watch "Comedians in Cars getting Coffee". Humor is basically social lubrication.

There is only a contradiction if you are wanting to improve this moment. Life is a flow. Evolution and change are part of the nature of the human experience. The desire to improve is not against loving the moment... it is part of it.

@OneIntoOne there is plenty you can do to distract from the experience of God. There are delusional stories we create about life and reality that can seem enticing to the ego mind. The seeking is the first step. The final step is in returning from where you started and realize what you have been seeking has always been right here in front of your nose and in your blood. You can't escape it if you tried. The only thing to seek is the clarity to see it as it really is. Now that is a worthy endeavor. Look at a classic statue of the Hindu God Shiva. He is dancing on the back of a man. The man is too distracted to notice. That is the human condition. We have a living God dancing on our backs, and yet we are looking for God in the dirt.

Feel what exactly? Something other than what you are feeling right now? You are chasing a paper tiger. What is real is this moment. This is it. The only difference between someone enlightened and the rest of us is they see clearly that this moment is "It" and relate to it with the reverence and bliss of seeing God. Nothing more. It may be that you want to have a profound, mystical experience or unity with all things. OK. Easy. Drop 200ug of good LSD in a safe and comfortable setting. Enjoy. 12 hours later you will be back to your normal consciousness. Unless you can take that experience and turn it into something you can experience in this moment completely sober it is no different than going to watch a good movie. It can be exciting and entertaining, but once the titles are rolling down the screen, the lights come on and you are back to your life. Now what?

It is actually intensely easy. It just doesn't look like you expect. It is too clear, and so it is hard to see. This moment, right here and right now is God. You are already seeing God 24/7 as there is no other possibility. The problem is you don't recognize it as the experience of God because you have a story in your mind about what that is supposed to look like and feel like. What if this very moment is the actual full experience of God? For most of us, that idea is full of disappointment as it doesn't match our story of some grand dramatic experience. But what if we can encounter this moment with the reverence and bliss of experiencing God? To me, that is enlightenment. It isn't some better version of yourself. It is simply a shift in perspective, a realization of the truth that has been as close as your breath your whole life.

Agreed. This life, here and now is it. The psychedelic state only offers a few hours of an awareness of other kinds of consciousness humans are capable of. It is still brain states induced by exogenous chemicals no matter how profound they feel and appear subjectively. Like so many other drugs, many users keep chasing that next high. I've done it myself. My first mushroom trip was 2 grams, then I went to 5 and then 7. I did the same thing with LSD. I kept wanting to push further and deeper into that state. In the end, in spite of how profound and powerful these experiences can be, I always come back to ego and I still need to clean the house, take my kid to volleyball practice and go do my job. I don't believe the mystical state is meant to be experienced 24/7. We need to return to our lives and function. In the best case we act from the insights and awareness of these perspectives to live a kinder and better life. Once we have used the tools to fix the car, we put them away and go drive the car.

@Raptorsin7 I’ve only done it one time and I probably did too much (20mg). I much prefer LSD but I may try 5MeO again at a much lower dose at some point. LSD for me is more controlled and provides a deep sense of oneness with everything. 5MeO basically blew me away and not in a good way. I think I was a little cocky with it since I have done a fair amount of psychedelics before and I thought I could handle a heavy dose. I had no visuals at all. It basically felt like I died and came back. It has only been a week and I keep getting flashbacks. My wife says I have changed in good ways. She says I’m more patient and less judgmental. I do look around the world and have the distinct feeling this is the hallucination most of the time. It really is like a different class of drug from a subjective perspective. Just start with small doses and work up no matter what you think you can handle based on other drugs.

@impulse9 I will say that NOTHING compares to 5MeO DMT. I’ve done 340ug of high quality LSD and it was 10% of what 20mg of 5MeO does. LSD opens the doors of perception. 5MeO DMT blows the house down.

@impulse9 I’ve done LSD about 30 times and mushrooms about a dozen times and just recently 5MeO DMT for my first time. I totally agree with your assessment that using psychedelics won’t get you enlightened. They are tools that can crack the ego temporarily to give insight into higher consciousness. But they will not get you there, only point the way.

From the horses mouth.

I actually agree with you on that point. From my understanding he only took LSD twice. The first time wasn't enough to break through but the second time was. He described it as profound and worthy to trying but it was not a means to enlightenment in itself (which I agree with). While I think revisiting the psychedelic state is worth while when done right, I do think it is possible to abuse the drugs in ever increasing attempts to get back into that state. Basically chasing enlightenment with a drug. It won't work.

For me discernment includes separating the message from the messenger. Carl Jung had insight into the human psyche like few other Europeans before him. Yet he was prone to bursts of anger that made him difficult to be around. I can separate his flaws from his genius. Watts opened the minds of millions of people in the West to another perspective on spirituality. I count him as one of my greatest teachers even though I never met him or saw him live. I simply don't care about his alcoholism because his message was so well articulated and clear. I'm open to learn from anyone who has wisdom to share. I'm not going to be dissecting their lives to make sure they are perfect in every way before I listen and learn from them. Anyone who claims to have transcended all human faults is lying. Sometimes the most profound wisdom comes from those who are most broken and those who struggle the most with their demons. The Shadow has much to teach us. Our faults and where we are broken is often where the light shines through.

He was an alcoholic, but he died of a heart condition. While I may not agree with him completely on the use of psychedelics, he was one of the greatest spiritual minds of the 20th century. Mozart was likely an alcoholic as well, but that doesn't change the fact he was one of the greatest composers of all time. Who else should we cancel for their personal failings? Van Gogh (psychotic)? Thomas Jefferson (slave owner)? Einstein (he married his cousin)? Steve Jobs (a megalomaniac who denied his own child)? This "Woke" culture of canceling someone's genius because of their personal failings is perhaps the saddest thing about our current cultural zeitgeist.

I can so relate to this. I spent most of my dating life feeling exactly the same. I have always been very sexually possessive. When my wife and I were dating and getting closer, we started sharing more and more details about ourselves. She knew i had been married before and had two kids from that marriage. She had been married before too. Her ex husband was actually a really nice guy. But what really sent me over the edge was when she told me she had a relationship with someone I also knew but did not respect. It almost ended our relationship. I just couldn't get past it. The woman I was falling in love with had had sex with a guy I knew and frankly thought was a low life. We had several fights over it and it came really close to ending the relationship. What finally got me out of my own crap was when she confronted the fact that I had been married to a woman for 7 years that she neither liked or respected, and she had to see her and interact with her because of my kids. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. My ego quickly started a defense, but I had luckily done enough work by this point to realize I had been check-mated. I had absolutely no room to judge. My past was about as colored as hers. We have been together for 10 years now and are VERY happy. Thanks to her and the work we did together, I have found freedom around this issue.

@Olivia24 The day my wife's ex-husband died. "He" showed up in our bedroom that night. I think he really was trying to contact my wife (they were still friends) but for some reason he couldn't contact her so I think he tried to communicate through me. It was a very clear sense of someone in the room. Enough I sat up and had to look around, but there was nothing my normal senses could detect. That night I had a very vivid dream about him (I only met him one time). The dream was profound about him leaving on a trip that we couldn't go on. When I told my wife about it it gave her a great deal of comfort.

I have never "seen" a ghost. But I have felt the presence of people who have passed. Once quite profoundly.

I second Byron Katie for working through trauma. What also helped me for serious grief / trauma, is to move into it and sit with it. It can be very painful, but it is really the only way. Carl Jung once said, "neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering."

The first time experiencing higher states, one tends to think they are the only ones or that they are somehow special. This was certainly true for me. Looking back now, that was all ego. The desire to feel special is all ego. It is a total distraction and antithetical to a genuine spiritual experience. I still can get caught in it, but I realize much better now that if we are all One, then this line of thinking is ridiculous. I will laugh at myself and my arrogance and then re-orient back to what the experience actually means.

Sounds like you had a very typical psychedelic experience. A feeling of oneness with everything. A feeling of disappearing or blending into the world. Boundary dissolving. Welcome to Wonderland.

Yes. It is a medicine, not a diet. I agree completely. Sometimes I feel like I need a booster and will trip again. Using these drugs more than once or twice a year is likely more about being hooked on the experience. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it isn't likely for spiritual development and there is a danger in thinking enlightenment is just one hit away.

Psychedelics are tools. They are not an end in themselves. I've had profoundly spiritual and enlightened experiences on LSD, but I always come back to my ego. In fact, in my experience the ego often re-asserts itself even more strongly in a kind of rebound effect for a few days. The real work takes place AFTER the psychedelic experience. Without that work you may as well of not looked behind the veil and just continued to live your life. The insight I got from my 5MeO experience is that I keep chasing the state of consciousness I have access to on psychedelics, but it is a fools errand just as Allen Watts suggests. There will be plenty of "time" to experience oneness with source / God once we are no longer bound to these bodies. The point of living a human life is to experience being human. Being enlightened is simply being fully present with this life. I think so many people are looking for an escape of the monotony, pain and conflict inherent in being human. At least that has been true for me. But this moment, right here and right now is it. There is nothing to do, no technique to follow, no drug to take. Just awareness, just being still with the silent witness, just not identifying with the monkey mind of the ego. Many people live their lives using religion as a guide. The one thing first hand, direct experiences of God can do is to bypass the trappings of religion and permit a direct access to the divine. Once we are living in accord to that perspective, our lives work.