Does anyone know what people banging on about psychedelics used to talk about before quantum physics was invented?

Was it all 'mind of god' waffle?

As far as I know, it was actually a bit more 'inner mind', 'power of thought' than external conclusions. Of course now there is some spillover with the near death experience chasers (chasers as in they want to find out about them, not like 'the plot of flatliners'). This conception of the beyond that is being popularized...if I understand things properly, is partly due to DMT and its intense effects.

So many that take the stuff in large doses do feel incredibly moved to the point it can change their life outlook (according to the research involved), as if they have touched something beyond themselves. And, some of the people that have this experienced are not prepared or armed to think critically about this and question whether a convincing sensation has to mean that they've contacted something outside of themselves.

I heard of this in conversation with sensory deprivation enthusiasts (though only recently did I feel that I likely understand what they were getting at). They'd smoke DMT, come down, smoke a lot of marijuana, and then climb into a sensory deprivation tank and muse on their thoughts.

I'm sure it was quite entertaining, but they called it traveling, and I'm not at all in a hurry to presume they were really going anywhere.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:As far as I know, it was actually a bit more 'inner mind', 'power of thought' than external conclusions. Of course now there is some spillover with the near death experience chasers (chasers as in they want to find out about them, not like 'the plot of flatliners'). This conception of the beyond that is being popularized...if I understand things properly, is partly due to DMT and its intense effects.

So many that take the stuff in large doses do feel incredibly moved to the point it can change their life outlook (according to the research involved), as if they have touched something beyond themselves. And, some of the people that have this experienced are not prepared or armed to think critically about this and question whether a convincing sensation has to mean that they've contacted something outside of themselves.

I heard of this in conversation with sensory deprivation enthusiasts (though only recently did I feel that I likely understand what they were getting at). They'd smoke DMT, come down, smoke a lot of marijuana, and then climb into a sensory deprivation tank and muse on their thoughts.

I'm sure it was quite entertaining, but they called it traveling, and I'm not at all in a hurry to presume they were really going anywhere.

As I said early on in this thread I participated in sensory deprivation experiments using deprivation tanks in college in the '70s. I did it totally straight and experienced pretty much the same effects as taking LSD, mescaline, or eating mushrooms. It helped me understand what was going on when under chemical influence. The brain making shit up because it was operating faster that sensory input.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Hey Kafei, I popped over here, since I wonder where you disappear to! We have these long conversations, and then you disappear for weeks or longer at a time, then come back with these HUGE long dialogues with so many new claims. Since you're having a conversation here, let me interject a tad!

Hey, what's up, my friend? Nice to see you in the discussion. Let's get to it! I have, by the way, responded to your YT comment, but for some reason, perhaps because the length of our posts, it continues to be deleted. Would you send me the link to the YT vid we were commenting on?

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:So, in this way, it's not seen as a "dysfunction" in the sense that it's some kind of impairment. Perhaps it's a dysfunction in that you're experiencing an abnormal experience or an experience apart from the norm, but during these experiences your thinking is quite intact. You're still able to intellectualize and all of that, it's simply that reality as you know it has been replaced, and that's why it'd be a bad idea to take a high dose in an undesignated social setting.

This is an assumption, and it is part of why this claim is in the general debunking category of this forum. Though I agree that we cannot prove that taking these drugs (in the dosages you recommend) DOESN'T replace reality in some way shape or form... That does not mean we should assume it does. It could quite simply be that your brain hallucinates - i.e. has experiences that are not at all dictated by external events such as other dimensions - and that this hallucination creates an experience that is convincing to you.

Well, I don't think it's a claim at this point. John Hopkins has proven that these substances can reliably induce what has classically been described as a "mystical experience." That there are elements of this experience that are universal to anyone who undergoes this experience. Of course, they make you hallucinate, after all, these things are called "hallucinogens," but this is a response to thinking that the claim that people are saying that whatever external reality they are perceiving under the influence of psychedelics is "real." No one's claiming that. There's other implications involved as in we may be seeing a brain undergoing heightened neuronal activity, this could be a possible explanation for the feeling of interconnectedness, also the heightened emotional state may also be due to the fact that these compounds effect the serotonergic system.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Again, I think this "understanding reality" is the wrong way to think about this. I mean, what reality? Consensus reality?

We only know of one reality that does not change regardless of the consensus we may reach to try to vote certain factors into or out of existence. The idea that there are multiple realities, it is an assumption.

Yes, and again, the "only one reality" we know of is consensus reality. But I believe this is besides the point. I mean, this is more done, I believe, for insight whether that be spiritual or if you don't like the word spiritual, then psychological. As I mentioned before, that preparations are made so that the risks involved in the "here and now" are no longer an issue. Then, you can allow this experience to take over. Tryptamine-based hallucinations will appear as fractals even behind closed eyelids. As an aside, there is a fellow by the name of Jason Padgett who is afflicted with acquired savant syndrome. He was brutally attacked by two muggers that hit over the head and caused brain damage. As he was recovering from the brain damage, this caused his brain to overcompensate in areas that are dormant in most people. As a result, he now sees fractals in every direction. He went from being an average joe that could care less about mathematics to a mathematical genius. I believe these psychedelics are very capable of eliciting untapped potential that may reside in us all, and people aren't taking them at these higher dose ranges because they believe "hallucinations are real," they're taking them because the hallucinatory content implies something about our psychology, and perhaps something about the nature of reality itself, and it's in this respect that they feel the experiences are insightful.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:I believe it goes to the power of psychedelics, without a doubt.

This is responding to tolman positing what the 30 years of therapy in one night analogy might say about drug usage. You say it goes to the power of psychedelics, I ask: To do what? We know that anti depressants can change moods, I do not deny that drug usage is capable of meaningfully affecting mindset. However, the idea that they allow you to contact something higher is not something anyone should accept without evidence.

I know this is a response to Tolman, but I believe some of my output here has been misinterpreted, and this is why I don't believe this thread should have been moved here, because no one here, anyway, is claiming that these things are literally connecting us to a "higher reality." The medicinal benefits are much more effective than that of the best pharmaceuticals on the market. Chris Kilham's anecdote of his ayahuasca experience is attest to that, and if you haven't seen it, TinyTypingDragon, I'll post it below. He talks about the "thoroughness" of ayahuasca's healing. Also, I'd add that, by and large, a good majority of the people who undergo this experience at the very least feel as though they're contacting something beyond themselves. Of course, I'm not saying that this is proof that they are, in fact, experiencing something beyond themselves, but this is a common aspect of the experience, and I'll also provide links to people describing their experiences relative to feelings of the transcendental.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, of course, I'm aware of that. That's why I said "in a sense," and used the term "Einstein-Rosen." However, I'm not the only one to point out this parallel between the imaginary world of Alice in Wonderland.

I get this a lot with theists. You can find a thousand 'parallels' with the genesis accounts and scientific findings to try to talk around any specific flaws in the account of creation as the bible puts forth. However, these parallels are interpretations, and not intrinsic to the work you are referring to. In other words, that you feel Alice in Wonderland could be interpreted to be referring to the Einstein-Rosen bridge, does not mean that Lewis Carroll had a sense of it during his writings.

Well, I wasn't doing what you've experienced with these theists. I was using this example in the same fashion that Michio Kaku speaks about Charles Dodgson.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:I disagree. Alan Watts has actually had extensive experiences with these psychedelics.

This is responding to oldskeptic denying that Alan Watts knew what he was talking about when he said all of existence was yin and yang. To respond to a comment that states he doesn't know about everything in existence to be able to make that claim, with 'he had extensive experiences with these psychedelics' is a fallacy of irrelevant theses.

I think however, the problem is that the concept of yin and yang implies universal opposition (where opposition requires both anthropomorphism and context, i.e. the star being consumed by a black hole has no feelings about what is happening even if its gravitational force is working to keep it from being consumed) actually leading to universal interconnectivity, where that may be perception bias. Let me undeepity this real quick.

Water puts out fire, but if you put water in a pot under the fire and get it boiling, now I can make rice, wow! The yin-yang works, man.

Yes yes, good good. But it is we that implied that these forces were in opposition in the first place. It may be these all these forces simply are, and simply share space. In that way they are all interconnected, but we have no evidence of them being interconnected in any way other than that.

Well, the idea behind the yin-yang is that it represents a fundamental principle of the universe, and the simplest form of it is in vibration, the trough and the crest. It's a representation of interconnected opposites so that you cannot have a crest without the trough and vice-versa, and it's applied to every conceivable set of opposites.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, I disagree. I believe it is an experience that is in some sense universal. What makes it seem one of a kind is that it's simply filtered through the individual's unique personality.

Then you STILL have my dragon rebuttal to contend with. So many cultures around the world see dragons, people catalog the different claims and then point out perceived similarities, perceived interlinking ideas or concepts, then they claim to have all this 'evidence' for dragons. We reject that just as we must reject your interpretations that these experiences are all universal IN THE SENSE that they all come from a similar source, all touch the same thing. In other words, there is no evidence that you've touched hyperspace.

Well, I'm not sure I understand this analogy completely. When you say people "see" dragons, and this is reported throughout various cultures, do you mean they hallucinate dragons or that they only reportedly see dragons? If it's the case that they all hallucinate dragons, then that'd mean that it's something intrinsic to the mind, that everyone subconsciously has a dragon in a similar fashion of Jung's concept of the "collective unconscious." However, I don't think that's the case. You're going to have to reiterate this analogy, because I'm not sure I'm getting it. As for "touching hyperspace," that's a little vague. Could it be that three-dimensional is always interconnected with hyperspace? Perhaps it's a sectioning of it. Kaku often throws sentences around like, "Sound is a vibration in the fourth dimension" or "light is a vibration in the fifth dimension." I wouldn't even pretend to know what that is about, but I know we experience light and sound in our everyday life. Are they connected to hyperspace? Wouldn't it be convenient if we had a theoretical physicist posting alongside us here?

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Of course ignoring all that, it could still simply be that brains work in a similar way, and respond to these chemicals in a similar way.

Well, yes, this is a better explanation, and better than what most people think hallucinations are. Some people have the impression that psychedelics are like dreaming awake, like they're projecting bits and pieces of your subconscious, your memories, and that these things can manifest as hallucinations like the dream. Well, it isn't anything like that. Yes, people are having similar experiences, and it tends towards these archetypes that are described in classical mystical experience.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:The threshold dose amount isn't a point in your psychology where you say, "Okay, the experience was profound, therefore I had a breakthrough," or "I did not experience anything spiritual/transcendent, and therefore I dismiss this experience." It doesn't work that way. The threshold amount is something relative to your physiology. It's not psychological, it has to do with pharmacodynamics. So, it doesn't equate to a "No true Scotsman" fallacy for this reason.

What you said is completely irrelevant to oldskeptics point. He's saying that you're committing a no true scotsman fallacy, people who claim to take what you would call heroic doses you dismiss as either misunderstanding what you mean by heroic dose, misunderstanding how much they took, or being disingenuous about taking them at all.

Well, what I'm saying is that if someone takes the heroic dose, then they will experience these phenomena. There's no fallacy involved here. What OldSkeptic is saying that if someone takes a heroic amount and comes back saying that they didn't experience anything, then they can dismiss this endeavor. Well, if they didn't experience anything, they probably didn't take a heroic dose. I mean, these things must cause hallucinations, they're called "hallucinogens," after all. It is possible to have an experience where no hallucinations occur at all, and that's if you're taking recreational or "light" doses.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:To then say 'no I'm so super not committing a no true scotsman fallacy because taking the right amount is super duper pharmacodynamical!'

That should just mean if you take the right amount, you will experience an expected result physiologically. To deny people have taken the right dose if they disagree with you would still be a no true scotsman fallacy. We understand that you claim that the proper dose is something you can predict, that is in no way a response to the statement set forth however.

The only issue is I haven't had someone disagree when they've had the proper dose. So, I don't really see any fallacy here. I mean, we could get deeper into it, if you'd like, because I feel that this point isn't coming across.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Years of being told by who? People who've never tried this stuff? The only person who admitted to having intense psychedelic experiences also admitted to having these themes occur within these experiences. So, that didn't go against my point, it was actually for it.

This is in response to oldskeptic referring to you repeating the same things when others point out they are fallacies.

The claim that others haven't taken the drugs (presumably in the proper amounts) it is irrelevant to whether your argument is fallacious. It's as I said to you in our other conversation, the one that started with the definition of atheism and the epistemological stance of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, not the one that discussed the idea that the kalam isn't fallacious if you interpret it through perennial philosophy...

Let me rewind the clock a bit. You said this with regard to the threshold dose experience:

Kafei wrote:"I don't think we necessarily know what we're contacting. Neuroscience doesn't have much of an explanation in this area. Neuroscience can't even explain consciousness at this point, and consciousness is the very thing these active compounds have an effect on. For all we know, it may be something "outside the mind"

I responded thusly:

TinyTypingDragon wrote:We don't know if we're contacting anything, in point of fact. And for all we know, it may be something outside the mind, or we may not be contacting anything at all, to conclude anything based on what we don't know would be an argument from ignorance, so since you admit we don't know, I hope you realize why I cannot accept these claims at the current moment.

And then you said this.

Kafei wrote:Sure, I don't think most people who've never had such an experience can. I believe people are intellectually set-up to doubt these concepts that are born out of this experience, and it is probably because most people have not had this experience, atheists and theists alike.

I responded:

TinyTypingDragon wrote:This is a retelling of a common phrase I hear often: "The fool has said in his heart: there is no god", and since the book said it, I have just proven the book true by disbelieving the claim.

So too with you, you seem to believe I've never had the experience, and you think because of this I can't understand. Therefore, anyone who disbelieves you, you automatically have an ego defense out. "They just don't get it like I get it."

If you can agree there is no evidence, then it shouldn't be a matter of asserting people are set up to doubt. It should simply be accepted that it's reasonable to withhold belief.

As I said then, so I reiterate now. If you agree that we don't know we're contacting higher dimensions, then I don't have to be 'set up' to doubt anything for it to be not only justified, but reasonable that I withhold belief. That is the most reasonable stance.

I disagreed with this because the quote from the bible is an unproved statement coming from a supposed unproven God. This is something else, it's a direct experience, and yes, I do assume that you've never had such an experience because you seem a bit naïve about it.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:And finally something I want to touch on...

Kafei wrote:I've never taken ayahuasca, sure. Yes, I admit that. I'd like to try it someday, but I have taken a heroic dose of psilocybin. Personal testimony is evidence in this endeavor, especially when you've dozens of volunteers taking the threshold dose and reporting this topos of universality.

I hope you do agree that 5% of the population does not hallucinate when taking some of these substances? Are you saying you disagree with the John Hopkins research, which puts the number of 'mystical experiences' for the dose at closer to 60% of the subjects involved? If you agree, then the experience wouldn't be universal among people.

This leaves your assertion that 'personal testimony is evidence' down to one simple question, evidence of what? Can you agree that it's not evidence of something outside the mind, i.e. that it is not evidence of the drug users contacting hyperspace?

Well, it's evidence that you can reliably induce a mystical experience as described in ancient religion.

Kafei wrote:Hey, what's up, my friend? Nice to see you in the discussion. Let's get to it! I have, by the way, responded to your YT comment, but for some reason, perhaps because the length of our posts, it continues to be deleted. Would you send me the link to the YT vid we were commenting on?

Want me to copy our last replies here instead? It'd be easier if we focus it on one place, and I'd prefer a place where you're not constantly having to rewrite, over, and over, and over. I mean like I said, that happened to me on youtube for a while...but nothing like seems to happen with you!

You let me know what you're most comfortable with.

Kafei wrote:Well, I don't think it's a claim at this point. John Hopkins has proven that these substances can reliably induce what has classically been described as a "mystical experience." That there are elements of this experience that are universal to anyone who undergoes this experience. Of course, they make you hallucinate, after all, these things are called "hallucinogens," but this is a response to thinking that the claim that people are saying that whatever external reality they are perceiving under the influence of psychedelics is "real." No one's claiming that.

There's a lot of prior claims to parse through, but you spoke of dreaming, DMT and cosmic background radiation. Do you reject the idea that the 'static' that can be perceived through this experience must be cosmic background radiation, and do you agree there is no evidence that there is?

As to your rebuttal that it's not a claim, it simply is. If you said 'your perceptions of reality have been altered', that would be one thing, however you said 'it's simply that reality as you know it has been replaced'. I do not immediately see a scenario where it is reasonable to accept that as anything more than assumption or hyperbole or perhaps imprecise language.

Kafei wrote:Yes, and again, the "only one reality" we know of is consensus reality.

Thank you.

And can you agree that rather than DMT being an ink into the waters of the mind to teach us its flow, allowing us to glimpse a reality hithero unseen, it may be hallucination within the mind that alters perceptions without having to be a glimpse into a reality beyond our current perceptions. Can you agree?

To this I mean - by the by - I get the idea of being able to parse your cognition, to feel you can understand the mechanics of thinking as it is done, the way consciousness flows. It's simply that A> a chemically altered mind is likely a less reliable device for memory and cognition so I wouldn't necessarily say it's as reliable as putting ink into water and recording the flow instrumentally. and B> I don't accept that we're experiencing sensations beyond our dimensions to gain this knowledge. I.e. the fish may well have been the first to discover water, he just didn't name it.

Kafei wrote:know this is a response to Tolman, but I believe some of my output here has been misinterpreted, and this is why I don't believe this thread should have been moved here, because no one here, anyway, is claiming that these things are literally connecting us to a "higher reality."

Can you then agree that it is very reasonable to withhold belief that the mind is a fourth dimensional organ?

Or, to me more precise, would it be accurate now to presume you are only arguing that hallucinogens can have a positive effect? If that is your only argument now, I believe you'll find far less opposition.

Kafei wrote:The medicinal benefits are much more effective than that of the best pharmaceuticals on the market.

Well, if you believe that, I suppose I have to ask what did Steve Jobs do that was flawed in his usage of these medications. I didn't study his alternative medicine experimentation. Are you saying that if he took the medicines in the way you think he should, he would have been cured of cancer? Or did you not mean your statement to be that broad? It's a bit of an aside, but you let me know.

Kafei wrote:Well, I wasn't doing what you've experienced with these theists. I was using this example in the same fashion that Michio Kaku speaks about Charles Dodgson.

You're very eager to give your interlocutors homework. I'd prefer to hear what you meant in your own words, because it's your words that I'm responding to.

Kafei wrote:Well, the idea behind the yin-yang is that it represents a fundamental principle of the universe, and the simplest form of it is in vibration, the trough and the crest. It's a representation of interconnected opposites so that you cannot have a crest without the trough and vice-versa, and it's applied to every conceivable set of opposites.

You're responding to an aside. The main point was, to respond to 'Alan Watts doesn't know what he's talking about (when he refers to knowledge about all of existence' with 'I disagree, he HAS had extensive experience with psychedelics', is a fallacy of irrelevant theses.

Kafei wrote:Well, I'm not sure I understand this analogy completely. When you say people "see" dragons, and this is reported throughout various cultures, do you mean they hallucinate dragons or that they only reportedly see dragons? If it's the case that they all hallucinate dragons, then that'd mean that it's something intrinsic to the mind, that everyone subconsciously has a dragon in a similar fashion of Jung's concept of the "collective unconscious."

First of all, it is only assumption that experiencing imagery in hallucination means that everyone subconsciously 'has' that thing in any meaningful sense.

But my analogy is as follows. A dragon hunter collects all the imagery, stories, literature, and anecdotal accounts of dragons throughout various cultures, and then 'connects' them via what he calls universal motifs, things he has decided are interconnected...all of that cannot be considered proof that dragons exist. This is because it is not meaningful evidence, it is interpretation.

So too with your mystical experience. You say the evidence is in the experience, and this is the problem. If you're saying it's not necessarily touching fourth dimensional space, then it doesn't need to be connected with superstring theory, there's no need to quote michio kaku, you can simply say "I think it's evidence that it can lead to a positive outlook."

Is that all you mean?

Kafei wrote:Well, yes, this is a better explanation, and better than what most people think hallucinations are. Some people have the impression that psychedelics are like dreaming awake, like they're projecting bits and pieces of your subconscious, your memories, and that these things can manifest as hallucinations like the dream.

But you can agree things that you experience and have memories of can be part of a hallucination, yes?

Kafei wrote:Well, what I'm saying is that if someone takes the heroic dose, then they will experience these phenomena. There's no fallacy involved here. What OldSkeptic is saying that if someone takes a heroic amount and comes back saying that they didn't experience anything, then they can dismiss this endeavor

Firstly, by your own words, what you're saying is wrong. You yourself have stated that 5% will not be affected by the drug. The John Hopkins research, in a controlled environment, got a 60% rate for the mystical experience not a 100% rate.

Secondly, I recall oldskeptic saying specifically that if he doesn't interpret it as you do, you'll say he didn't take enough. If you're saying that's not true, that's one thing. If it is true however, as I recall he said he took greater doses of drugs than you have, can you accept that he may be among the 40% who did not have this mystical experience when exposed to what you term the 'heroic dose'?

Kafei wrote:The only issue is I haven't had someone disagree when they've had the proper dose.

Not going to go through this whole thread now, but you're saying no one in this thread has claimed to imbibe as much if not more hallucinogens than you have in a sitting?

Kafei wrote:I disagreed with this because the quote from the bible is an unproved statement coming from a supposed unproven God. This is something else, it's a direct experience, and yes, I do assume that you've never had such an experience because you seem a bit naïve about it.

You disagree? So you think this experience IS evidence of contacting higher dimensions? Previously in your post you seemed to be conceding that it isn't evidence of that.

Quite simply, your personal interpretation that you may be contacting higher dimensions is not compelling. AS SUCH, my own experience that I felt I was contacting a higher dimension, even if I felt it was very convincing, would not be evidence. We have no conception of what other dimensions may be, and the only evidence we do have is that hallucinogens work solely on the physical brain to cause it to hallucinate without any outside stimuli.

Either way, I thank you for admitting that you're operating on assumption, so I guess we'll go with one more claim here, why not after all these months! Specifically what in our conversations have led you to believe that I seem naive about 'it'. And please define the 'it' that you feel I am naive about clearly.

Kafei wrote:Well, it's evidence that you can reliably induce a mystical experience as described in ancient religion.

That the experience is described in ancient times, I'm now uncertain if you agree, does not have to mean it is contacting something outside the mind. And the evidence is not universal among humans it seems.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:To this I mean - by the by - I get the idea of being able to parse your cognition, to feel you can understand the mechanics of thinking as it is done, the way consciousness flows.

Personally, I can get that 'feeling that I see how my mind is working' experience with non-heroic doses of the right kind of weed.

From a sober perspective, I'm pretty sure that the feeling and associated imagery is hugely influenced by prior knowledge of how people think the mind works, as well as knowledge of how computers work, but I could see how seductively 'real' or deep such imagery might be to the unwary.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

To then say 'no I'm so super not committing a no true scotsman fallacy because taking the right amount is super duper pharmacodynamical!'

That should just mean if you take the right amount, you will experience an expected result physiologically. To deny people have taken the right dose if they disagree with you would still be a no true scotsman fallacy. We understand that you claim that the proper dose is something you can predict, that is in no way a response to the statement set forth however.

Kafei wrote:

The only issue is I haven't had someone disagree when they've had the proper dose.

And if they don't agree with you then they haven't had the proper dose.

Kafei wrote:

So, I don't really see any fallacy here. I mean, we could get deeper into it, if you'd like, because I feel that this point isn't coming across.

If you don't see the fallacy then it's probably because you don't want to see the fallacy.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Hey, what's up, my friend? Nice to see you in the discussion. Let's get to it! I have, by the way, responded to your YT comment, but for some reason, perhaps because the length of our posts, it continues to be deleted. Would you send me the link to the YT vid we were commenting on?

Want me to copy our last replies here instead? It'd be easier if we focus it on one place, and I'd prefer a place where you're not constantly having to rewrite, over, and over, and over. I mean like I said, that happened to me on youtube for a while...but nothing like seems to happen with you!

You let me know what you're most comfortable with.

Sure, if you want to copy and paste it here, that's fine. If you have the link to the YT page, that might save you the trouble.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, I don't think it's a claim at this point. John Hopkins has proven that these substances can reliably induce what has classically been described as a "mystical experience." That there are elements of this experience that are universal to anyone who undergoes this experience. Of course, they make you hallucinate, after all, these things are called "hallucinogens," but this is a response to thinking that the claim that people are saying that whatever external reality they are perceiving under the influence of psychedelics is "real." No one's claiming that.

There's a lot of prior claims to parse through, but you spoke of dreaming, DMT and cosmic background radiation. Do you reject the idea that the 'static' that can be perceived through this experience must be cosmic background radiation, and do you agree there is no evidence that there is?

Well, there is no evidence for the 'visual snow' seen in psychedelic experiences being the Cosmic Microwave background radiation, but there is evidence for the 'visual snow' or noise on your television set being a remnant of the Big Bang. This effect also happens if there is localized radio wave noise from a nearby electronic device. The implication being that the brain is, perhaps, something like an antenna that tunes into this particular reality which we've dubbed the "Planet Earth of the here and now" which is embedded in the larger universe or perhaps multiverse. String theorists do believe that we tune into this universe, but we simultaneously exist in the very room you're sitting in with all possible universes. In your room, there's the wave function of aliens and all sorts of crazy things, and Nobel Laureates espouse this point-of-view, but your radio or your brain is tuned to one frequency. You select that one frequency which is called Earth of the year 2015. In an interview, Michio Kaku was asked, "What if that tuning device gets out of kilter?" He responded with something that I thought was interesting, he said, "You would have to be God-like to have the ability to take one wave function and then turn it into another wave function." And isn't interesting that these substances have taken the name "entheogen" which means to "to make God-like." It's not uncommon to have a trip report of something like psilocybin or DMT where in which you have the overwhelming impression of perceiving into alien worlds filled with alien technology, etc. In other words, something akin to glimpsing a parallel universe. There's also people who have the impression of perceiving beyond dimensionality. This is a common report in Dr. Rick Strassman's clinical trials which he records in his book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule." Of course, Michio Kaku's ultimate response is, "Who knows for sure?" but he doesn't say, "Well, no, it's simply impossible, due to decoherence, the wave functions of these parallel universes have completely separated, they no longer interact with each other." I posted a link to a piece of an interview done with Terence on this type of view, perhaps you've heard it before. I'll post it once more below, but this 'visual snow' phenomenon is simply something that seems to imply that the brain does work like an antenna, and it tunes in this reality. Is there evidence? Of course, not. String theory is itself unproven, so if we can't even prove that there is, in fact, infinite parallel universes, then why would there be any evidence for this type of speculation? It's merely speculation based on these interesting facts.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:As to your rebuttal that it's not a claim, it simply is. If you said 'your perceptions of reality have been altered', that would be one thing, however you said 'it's simply that reality as you know it has been replaced'. I do not immediately see a scenario where it is reasonable to accept that as anything more than assumption or hyperbole or perhaps imprecise language.

Kafei wrote:Yes, and again, the "only one reality" we know of is consensus reality.

Thank you.

Well, what I mean by "reality has been replaced," I don't mean that it's replaced with a parallel universe, although it can have this impression. I mean that 45 seconds after three good tokes of DMT, you will be subdued in 100% hallucination. One moment, you might find yourself in a badly furnished apartment with your scruffy friends doing drugs, then in the next moment, you're in a dome-like room with iridescent fractals and geometries racing across what look like walls, and things that just look like they're impossible to manufacture, things which resemble objects that might've fallen off a UFO just bounding forward like badly trained rotweilers. These are all common elements within the DMT experience.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:And can you agree that rather than DMT being an ink into the waters of the mind to teach us its flow, allowing us to glimpse a reality hithero unseen, it may be hallucination within the mind that alters perceptions without having to be a glimpse into a reality beyond our current perceptions. Can you agree?

Well, I can agree that it's a possibility that it may be our own minds. Sure. But we ultimately do not know.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:To this I mean - by the by - I get the idea of being able to parse your cognition, to feel you can understand the mechanics of thinking as it is done, the way consciousness flows. It's simply that A> a chemically altered mind is likely a less reliable device for memory and cognition so I wouldn't necessarily say it's as reliable as putting ink into water and recording the flow instrumentally. and B> I don't accept that we're experiencing sensations beyond our dimensions to gain this knowledge. I.e. the fish may well have been the first to discover water, he just didn't name it.

Well, the thing about DMT is that it leaves the cognitive portion of your mind intact. The portion that allows you to intellectualize is not effected. It seems to be more of a visual phenomenon. At least that's how many people describe it.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:know this is a response to Tolman, but I believe some of my output here has been misinterpreted, and this is why I don't believe this thread should have been moved here, because no one here, anyway, is claiming that these things are literally connecting us to a "higher reality."

Can you then agree that it is very reasonable to withhold belief that the mind is a fourth dimensional organ?

Well, mind is an epiphenomenon of brain. I could agree that the brain is a three-dimensional organ.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Or, to me more precise, would it be accurate now to presume you are only arguing that hallucinogens can have a positive effect? If that is your only argument now, I believe you'll find far less opposition.

Well, in some instances, they can have really diverse effects. The point that I don't think I have to argue, because it's already been scientifically proven and addressed by peer-review is that psychedelics have the potential to elicit 'mystical experience.'

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:The medicinal benefits are much more effective than that of the best pharmaceuticals on the market.

Well, if you believe that, I suppose I have to ask what did Steve Jobs do that was flawed in his usage of these medications. I didn't study his alternative medicine experimentation. Are you saying that if he took the medicines in the way you think he should, he would have been cured of cancer? Or did you not mean your statement to be that broad? It's a bit of an aside, but you let me know.

Well, I'm not sure if you went through it, but where these psychedelics have had tremendous effectiveness is in their therapeutical use. That's why I posted the video of Chris Kilham's anecdote, because he speaks about the "thoroughness" of ayahuasca. Its thoroughness in its therapeutic potential. In the Johns Hopkins study, psilocybin was given the the terminally ill that were suffering from severe depression, and these people came out of that experience with beneficial results. They were more content with their situation, at peace of mind with the finality of their lives.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, the idea behind the yin-yang is that it represents a fundamental principle of the universe, and the simplest form of it is in vibration, the trough and the crest. It's a representation of interconnected opposites so that you cannot have a crest without the trough and vice-versa, and it's applied to every conceivable set of opposites.

You're responding to an aside. The main point was, to respond to 'Alan Watts doesn't know what he's talking about (when he refers to knowledge about all of existence' with 'I disagree, he HAS had extensive experience with psychedelics', is a fallacy of irrelevant theses.

Irrelevant to what? We were discussing these psychedelics, and Watts wrote a lot of material on these substances, not to mention eastern philosophy.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, I'm not sure I understand this analogy completely. When you say people "see" dragons, and this is reported throughout various cultures, do you mean they hallucinate dragons or that they only reportedly see dragons? If it's the case that they all hallucinate dragons, then that'd mean that it's something intrinsic to the mind, that everyone subconsciously has a dragon in a similar fashion of Jung's concept of the "collective unconscious."

First of all, it is only assumption that experiencing imagery in hallucination means that everyone subconsciously 'has' that thing in any meaningful sense.

I don't think it's an assumption. It's pretty well documented at this point when referring to tryptamine-based hallucinations.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:But my analogy is as follows. A dragon hunter collects all the imagery, stories, literature, and anecdotal accounts of dragons throughout various cultures, and then 'connects' them via what he calls universal motifs, things he has decided are interconnected...all of that cannot be considered proof that dragons exist. This is because it is not meaningful evidence, it is interpretation.

Well, if everyone that smoked DMT saw penguins, I wouldn't necessarily say that "penguins exist." It may be that we have an innate instinct to recognize patterns that we're familiar with in the same way that pareidolia works. So, the penguin might be some kind of embedded archetype within the species that will manifest throughout various cultures. Of course, I've never heard of a ubiquitous penguin, but I wouldn't say that due to this "penguins exist." That is, of course, if there were really no such thing as penguins, and the penguin was a mythological character like the dragon, but we do have penguins. Perhaps that example would have been better if I did use a mythological creature. Just replace penguins with Baba Yagas or something.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:So too with your mystical experience. You say the evidence is in the experience, and this is the problem. If you're saying it's not necessarily touching fourth dimensional space, then it doesn't need to be connected with superstring theory, there's no need to quote michio kaku, you can simply say "I think it's evidence that it can lead to a positive outlook."

Is that all you mean?

No, I believe these things should be properly studied. Perhaps if Michio Kaku smoked DMT, he could spell it out for us. I doubt that would ever happen, though. Well, I'm not simply saying that they'll lead to a positive outlook, although I do believe if taken under the right set and setting, they can definitely help someone develop a positive outlook. This is not just me saying it, either. This is pretty much the consensus of everyone who deals with this stuff. That they have the ability to induce mystical experience, and this experience can be therapeutically beneficial.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, yes, this is a better explanation, and better than what most people think hallucinations are. Some people have the impression that psychedelics are like dreaming awake, like they're projecting bits and pieces of your subconscious, your memories, and that these things can manifest as hallucinations like the dream.

But you can agree things that you experience and have memories of can be part of a hallucination, yes?

Well, perhaps part of what is called a "cognitive hallucination," but definitely not part of the visual hallucinations. The visual hallucinations do not draw upon the subconscious of the individual's psyche. They're not part of your memories. In other words, they seem to elicit an experience that could not have been previously imagined. It can present itself as completely alien, alien not as in extraterrestrial, but as in completely abstract, completely unfamiliar and new. People’s beliefs about the DMT experience are also influenced by pre-existing beliefs. Those who are very attached to a materialistic view of reality will strive to explain the DMT experience in terms of brain chemistry. Perhaps they’re right, and maybe not.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, what I'm saying is that if someone takes the heroic dose, then they will experience these phenomena. There's no fallacy involved here. What OldSkeptic is saying that if someone takes a heroic amount and comes back saying that they didn't experience anything, then they can dismiss this endeavor

Firstly, by your own words, what you're saying is wrong. You yourself have stated that 5% will not be affected by the drug. The John Hopkins research, in a controlled environment, got a 60% rate for the mystical experience not a 100% rate.

Well, it was under laboratory conditions, and each volunteer were administered various doses ranging from 5mg to 30mg/kg. And it was 72% of the volunteers that were given the higher doses that had the mystical experience, not 60%. While they were instructed to eat a low-fat breakfast, the data wasn't recorded. And like I said, everyone has a unique ADME. 20-30 miligrams is considered a mid-range to approaching a high dose, and 30+ miligrams of psilocybin is considered a high dose. Again, these numbers aren't concrete, but I'm willing to submit if that the study used doses beyond 30mg that percentage would be much higher, if not 100%.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Secondly, I recall oldskeptic saying specifically that if he doesn't interpret it as you do, you'll say he didn't take enough. If you're saying that's not true, that's one thing. If it is true however, as I recall he said he took greater doses of drugs than you have, can you accept that he may be among the 40% who did not have this mystical experience when exposed to what you term the 'heroic dose'?

I never admitted here how much I had taken. So, to say that he had taken greater doses than I have, that's an assumption. He hasn't expressed enough about this experience to make any conclusions, but from the output so far, I'd say that he hasn't had a heroic dose, but like I said, there's not enough information to go on. So, I really don't know whether he's taken a heroic dose or not or whether he has even had a psychedelic experience.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:The only issue is I haven't had someone disagree when they've had the proper dose.

Not going to go through this whole thread now, but you're saying no one in this thread has claimed to imbibe as much if not more hallucinogens than you have in a sitting?

Well, that question seems irrelevant to what I said. I mean, sure people could make these claims, but how do we know whether they're true? Spearthrower actually claimed to have taken more psychedelics than me. However, he didn't deny that they have the potential to elicit these archetypes that define the mystical experience, the feelings of oneness, the heightened sensitivity to emotion, etc. He actually agreed, he just didn't believe it was anything beyond the brain. He didn't believe that it was a glimpse into hyperspace or a parallel universe.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:I disagreed with this because the quote from the bible is an unproved statement coming from a supposed unproven God. This is something else, it's a direct experience, and yes, I do assume that you've never had such an experience because you seem a bit naïve about it.

You disagree? So you think this experience IS evidence of contacting higher dimensions? Previously in your post you seemed to be conceding that it isn't evidence of that.

No, I'm saying we ultimately don't know. There is speculation, it does seem to offer itself that way and present itself in that fashion, and people often do come back with radical tales of meeting the alien or God or attaining a hyperspatial point-of-view. What the experience is evidence of, without a doubt, is mystical experience. What the implications of that means? Well, that's the part we're working on.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Quite simply, your personal interpretation that you may be contacting higher dimensions is not compelling. AS SUCH, my own experience that I felt I was contacting a higher dimension, even if I felt it was very convincing, would not be evidence. We have no conception of what other dimensions may be, and the only evidence we do have is that hallucinogens work solely on the physical brain to cause it to hallucinate without any outside stimuli.

Well, it seems we have no evidence either way. We've no evidence that these hallucinations are illusions created by the brain or that, like the interviewer said in interviewing Michio Kaku, is a brain out of kilter. Neuroscience cannot sufficiently explain consciousness, and so we're left with a huge question mark, and I believe it'll remain that way until we properly study these substances or perhaps until we solve string theory. In the words of Michio Kaku, "Who knows for sure?"

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Either way, I thank you for admitting that you're operating on assumption, so I guess we'll go with one more claim here, why not after all these months! Specifically what in our conversations have led you to believe that I seem naive about 'it'. And please define the 'it' that you feel I am naive about clearly.

Well, about the psychedelic experience. Have you drank copious amounts of ayahuasca or have you eaten an outlandish amount of psilocybin-containing mushrooms?

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, it's evidence that you can reliably induce a mystical experience as described in ancient religion.

That the experience is described in ancient times, I'm now uncertain if you agree, does not have to mean it is contacting something outside the mind. And the evidence is not universal among humans it seems.

Well, it is evident that these experiences are often accompanied by geometric visuals, that's a universal phenomenon. The iridescent, mandalic, kaleidoscopic fractals; everyone gets 'em. It's also accompanied with intense emotion and feelings of a deep sense of interconnectedness, this feeling of 'we're all one.' As for it being "outside the mind," I'm pretty agnostic on that.

tolman wrote:

TinyTypingDragon wrote:To this I mean - by the by - I get the idea of being able to parse your cognition, to feel you can understand the mechanics of thinking as it is done, the way consciousness flows.

Personally, I can get that 'feeling that I see how my mind is working' experience with non-heroic doses of the right kind of weed.

From a sober perspective, I'm pretty sure that the feeling and associated imagery is hugely influenced by prior knowledge of how people think the mind works, as well as knowledge of how computers work, but I could see how seductively 'real' or deep such imagery might be to the unwary.

I think you'd be interested in some rational attempts by skeptics who wanted to tackle DMT with Ockham's razor sharpened. I'll post a few links below.

Oldskeptic wrote:

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

To then say 'no I'm so super not committing a no true scotsman fallacy because taking the right amount is super duper pharmacodynamical!'

That should just mean if you take the right amount, you will experience an expected result physiologically. To deny people have taken the right dose if they disagree with you would still be a no true scotsman fallacy. We understand that you claim that the proper dose is something you can predict, that is in no way a response to the statement set forth however.

Kafei wrote:

The only issue is I haven't had someone disagree when they've had the proper dose.

And if they don't agree with you then they haven't had the proper dose.

Precisely, if they do not experience these phenomena, then it's quite likely that they've had a subthreshold dose.

Oldskeptic wrote:

Kafei wrote:

So, I don't really see any fallacy here. I mean, we could get deeper into it, if you'd like, because I feel that this point isn't coming across.

If you don't see the fallacy then it's probably because you don't want to see the fallacy.

Or it's probably because there is none.

Kafei wrote:Sure, if you want to copy and paste it here, that's fine. If you have the link to the YT page, that might save you the trouble.

Nah, I got your back, I remember how frustrating it was for me when it happened...the idea it's STILL happening to you, blech. It's just that feeling where you worked so cautiously to say what you mean and get your ideas out and then in one fell swoop it just disappears.

Awful.

Kafei wrote:Well, there is no evidence for the 'visual snow' seen in psychedelic experiences being the Cosmic Microwave background radiation,

Thank you. That was my only concern there.

Kafei wrote:Well, what I mean by "reality has been replaced," I don't mean that it's replaced with a parallel universe, although it can have this impression. I mean that 45 seconds after three good tokes of DMT, you will be subdued in 100% hallucination. One moment, you might find yourself in a badly furnished apartment with your scruffy friends doing drugs,

Hey now, my friends and I dressed nice! That futon was a disaster though...

Alright, and can you agree that hallucination means that you're experiencing something not dictated by outside influences?

Kafei wrote:Well, I can agree that it's a possibility that it may be our own minds. Sure. But we ultimately do not know.

Alrighty! And can you agree that to draw conclusions based on what we do not know would be an argument from ignorance?

Kafei wrote:Well, the thing about DMT is that it leaves the cognitive portion of your mind intact. The portion that allows you to intellectualize is not effected. It seems to be more of a visual phenomenon. At least that's how many people describe it.

You have said before the entire brain is flooded with information, and now you say that certain aspects of the brain aren't affected. If your brain is flooded with information, it would make it very difficult to think, to parse data. Regardless, this sounds like conjecture.

Kafei wrote:Well, mind is an epiphenomenon of brain. I could agree that the brain is a three-dimensional organ.

There are a few meanings for your phrase there. My unconscious habits are (in part) an epiphenomenon of my daily patterns, my desires, and my psychological coping mechanisms. However, my unconscious habits are distinct from the factors that create it. I was going to object because 'secondary traits' implies more than one factor involved, in this case it would be implying the brain and something else work together and the mind is a secondary trait thereof, but as long as I understand you, that's all I'm really concerned with.

Can you agree that what we call the mind is a concept, a descriptive meant to encompass our known expectations for that three dimensional organ, and we have no proof the mind is anything more than that?

Kafei wrote:Well, in some instances, they can have really diverse effects.

That wasn't my question, let me reiterate my question.

Would it be accurate now to presume you are only arguing that hallucinogens can have a positive effect, i.e. you agree they don't have to be connected to m-theory and brahman and the like?

Is that your only factual claim, the only thing you're trying to get across, and the other things you are saying are by way of making your point, or are there other claims at play?

Kafei wrote:Well, it was under laboratory conditions, and each volunteer were administered various doses ranging from 5mg to 30mg/kg. And it was 72% of the volunteers that were given the higher doses that had the mystical experience, not 60%.

Citation please.

My question still remains, can you agree that not everyone that takes these drugs at what you like to coin a 'heroic dose' has the mystical experience?

Kafei wrote:In the Johns Hopkins study, psilocybin was given the the terminally ill that were suffering from severe depression, and these people came out of that experience with beneficial results. They were more content with their situation, at peace of mind with the finality of their lives.

Okay, it seems you meant 'medicinal' as in 'therapeutic' rather than 'with healing properties'? That's not something I'm arguing against, my concern was to guard against unproven claims of affecting the body, spontaneous healing and the like.

Kafei wrote:Irrelevant to what? We were discussing these psychedelics, and Watts wrote a lot of material on these substances, not to mention eastern philosophy.

Irrelevant to what he said to you.

Alan Watts LITERALLY made a claim regarding everything, ALL things. oldskeptic challenged that he doesn't know what he's talking about in regard to all things. You responded with his experience in drug usage. That is irrelevant.

Board leader:
"Good morning, did you sleep well?"

Prospective CEO:
"Yeah I slept well, had a great breakfast, wheaties."

Board Leader:
"Excellent, I had corn flakes, myself. Listen, we both know that we need new blood to be a ceo of Century First Aeronautics, and I know your name is in, but we have some concerns that you do not have the necessary qualifications."

Prospective CEO:
"I'll have you know I can eat five bowls of corn flakes in a sitting if I need to."

Board leader:
"That...whew. That's not really relevant."

Prospective CEO:
"Irrelevant to what? We were discussing breakfast, and I have extensive experience in consuming breakfast."

The answer is: Irrelevant to the direct statement to which YOUR STATEMENT is a response.

Kafei wrote:I don't think it's an assumption. It's pretty well documented at this point when referring to tryptamine-based hallucinations.

It's documented that when people all hallucinate about something, that they actually have that thing in some sense? Because that's what I was referring to.

Kafei wrote:Well, if everyone that smoked DMT saw penguins, I wouldn't necessarily say that "penguins exist." It may be that we have an innate instinct to recognize patterns that we're familiar with in the same way that pareidolia works. So, the penguin might be some kind of embedded archetype within the species that will manifest throughout various cultures.

Or it may be that some people have a more direct experience, and others do not, and that is explained away as metaphor. That some have this experience strongly and talk about it, and others go through it afterward with that expectation in mind and because of that feel that they get the same experience.

Kafei wrote:No, I believe these things should be properly studied. Perhaps if Michio Kaku smoked DMT, he could spell it out for us.

That wouldn't help. If Michio Kaku and all the leaders of all the nations at once all smoked it, their subjective experiences still wouldn't be evidence of something outside them. The similarities in their experiences would not be evidence of something external. His explanations would carry no more weight than any others. The fact that the mystical experience itself exists is interesting, and it's nice that we can elicit it in relative safety, but that doesn't have to imply anything 'else' or 'other'.

Kafei wrote:Well, that question seems irrelevant to what I said. I mean, sure people could make these claims, but how do we know whether they're true? Spearthrower actually claimed to have taken more psychedelics than me. However, he didn't deny that they have the potential to elicit these archetypes that define the mystical experience, the feelings of oneness, the heightened sensitivity to emotion, etc. He actually agreed, he just didn't believe it was anything beyond the brain. He didn't believe that it was a glimpse into hyperspace or a parallel universe.

How do we know whether they're true is one question, do you assume they're being false based on whether you feel they agree with you is another. If you do, you are committing a no true scotsman fallacy.

Regardless, if your only argument is that hallucinogens can lead to positive mindset, you need not invoke quantum mechanics or michio kaku or any of that, because that's not relevant to your statement.

Kafei wrote:Well, perhaps part of what is called a "cognitive hallucination," but definitely not part of the visual hallucinations.

That wasn't my question, let me reiterate my question.

You can agree things that you experience and have memories of can be part of a hallucination, yes?

Kafei wrote:No, I'm saying we ultimately don't know. There is speculation, it does seem to offer itself that way and present itself in that fashion, and people often do come back with radical tales of meeting the alien or God or attaining a hyperspatial point-of-view. What the experience is evidence of, without a doubt, is mystical experience. What the implications of that means? Well, that's the part we're working on.

That's correct, we don't know, and to draw conclusions from what we don't know, such as tying it to string theory or such things, would be an argument from ignorance.

However, 'mystical experience' is what the researchers CALLED the experience, so saying that the experience is evidence of the experience is not even true. Our perceptions could be? Anecdotes could be? Depending on how you are defining evidence, sure. But the experience simply is, and what we use to detect and measure the experience would be the evidence for it.

Kafei wrote:I never admitted here how much I had taken. So, to say that he had taken greater doses than I have, that's an assumption. He hasn't expressed enough about this experience to make any conclusions, but from the output so far, I'd say that he hasn't had a heroic dose, but like I said, there's not enough information to go on. So, I really don't know whether he's taken a heroic dose or not or whether he has even had a psychedelic experience.

There you go! You don't know, so to assume he hasn't taken enough because you have no evidence that he has would be an argument from ignorance. To assume he hasn't taken enough because he doesn't agree with your conclusions would be a no true scotsman fallacy.

Kafei wrote:Well, it seems we have no evidence either way. We've no evidence that these hallucinations are illusions created by the brain

Actually we have plenty of evidence that hallucinations are created by the brain. That there may be other factors involved we cannot prove, but the fact that hallucinations occur within the brain is the only thing we have evidence of.

Kafei wrote:Well, about the psychedelic experience. Have you drank copious amounts of ayahuasca or have you eaten an outlandish amount of psilocybin-containing mushrooms?

...What odd terminology. Ignoring the fact that your statements are completely relative, and what one may call outlandish, others might call the amount they used to think was large in their early 20's and now are embarrassed to remember they thought that...

I was the one with the near death experience, that was me. I haven't had a drug experience to match that yet.

Edit - By that I mean drug experience as produced by external dosing, the statement above was not meant to deny or imply denial of the possibility of DMT creation in the body, I simply remain uncertain and therefore withhold judgement in that regard.

Kafei wrote:Well, it is evident that these experiences are often accompanied by geometric visuals, that's a universal phenomenon. The iridescent, mandalic, kaleidoscopic fractals; everyone gets 'em. It's also accompanied with intense emotion and feelings of a deep sense of interconnectedness, this feeling of 'we're all one.' As for it being "outside the mind," I'm pretty agnostic on that.

Alrighty, can you agree it is sensible to withhold belief that it is tied to hyperspace, etc until evidence of that is forthcoming?

Kafei wrote:Precisely, if they do not experience these phenomena, then it's quite likely that they've had a subthreshold dose.

Exactly, so if your criterion for having the dose is coming to your preferred conclusion, it is fallacious. But before we go back and forth on this a million times. A better way to state what you seem to want to get across is 'Though anything is possible, all the people who I'm confident have had the proper amount have agreed with me thus far.', that's it! It's an assumption that your interlocutors who may disagree are either misinformed or self aggrandizing because you feel they are trying to embrace its 'chicness' that really seems to step you away from the bounds of your point.

If people want to argue about the simple experience, they will likely ask the relative dosage needed to see if they've had the dose and their experience matches (and odds are people have had the dose and have not had the experience, by the way). But this thread is here in general debunking not because these drugs can't illicit hallucinations, or even that the hallucinations can't be somewhat consistent in their presentation. It's more because of a marriage of these hallucinogens with string theory and the like.

Okay, here's my attempt to recreate our thread, I didn't truncate your comments so you should be able to see the full context.

Kafei wrote:"Well, yes, if this is the case, then it is both inside of us and somehow "outside of us." I mean, that's why I said that in order to truly answer a question like that,"

This discussion began with you trying to say after I was pushing you on hyperspace, that it was not necessarily outside the mind. I'm glad you agree it is, and that's all I meant by that.

Kafei wrote:Well, I'm not sure how saying "both" is agreeing that it is still "outside." Did you, by any chance, take an opportunity to Wiki the Planck scale or look into Calabi–Yau manifolds?

Because it's either outside of us or it's not, if it's both outside of us and inside of us (like air) then you're agreeing that it exists outside of us.

If you're agreeing it's something outside of us, then your previous statement that it's not necessarily outside of us would be something you no longer agree with. And we have no evidence that drug usage can get us in contact with hyperspace, as the only thing we have evidence of is drug usage affecting the inner workings of the brain.

To refactor all the way from the beginning of this, yes I agree this can be a powerful experience within the mind, but that doesn't mean I have to accept it as contacting hyperspace.

As to your question, yes but it's not relevant to my point. My point was that you first said you wouldn't say hyperspace is outside our mind, but to agree it's both IS agreeing that it's outside. That shouldn't be controversial.

"Are the Omega 3 protein scans copied, I saw the complex riboflavin scans earlier, what's on the drive."

"Both scans are there on the drive."

"Good, it's good to have the omega 3 scans on the drive."

"I just told you it's both, I don't see how saying that is agreeing that the Omega 3 scans are on the drive."

Because if it's both, then each proposition is true as opposed to solely one or the other.

Now, you're saying hyperspace is outside the mind, and if you're saying that drug usage gives us access to that...once again going back way to the original point of what I said...we have no proof of that.

Kafei wrote:"Well, the Big Bang theory is now accepted by most scientist"

Stopping you there, my question was much more specific. Although, even this statement misses the point. The big bang theory doesn't talk about the MOMENT of the big bang, we don't know the conditions of the universe at that point.

But my question was, what scientists claim it happened in hyperspace?

Kafei wrote:Well, pretty much all scientists that deal with things like string theory or M-theory. Michio Kaku is the first person I heard this idea from, however, if you want a name.

Thank you. I figured that's where you heard it from, but I was open to there being some study I missed. I invite you to note this:

http://mkaku.org/home/articles/hyperspa ... c-odyssey/

"Do higher dimensions exist? Are there unseen worlds just beyond our reach, beyond the normal laws of physics? Although higher dimensions have historically been the exclusive realm of charlatans, mystics, and science fiction writers, many serious theoretical physicists now believe that higher dimensions not only exist, but may also explain some of the deepest secrets of nature. Although we stress that there is at present no experimental evidence for higher dimensions,"

Now I'm not discounting theoretical physics, but to say that scientists consider the big bang occurring in hyperspace as settled science really, honestly is not accurate.

Kafei wrote:"Yes, these Calabi–Yau manifolds exist whether or not minds exist."

Then they exist outside the mind. Previously you said "Well, I never really implied that this may be something "outside the mind,"

And you may not have meant to say 'yes it's definitely for sure something outside the mind', but as to what I meant by 'outside the mind'... If you think we MAY be contacting 11th dimensional space or whatnot, then it would be – in that instance – outside the mind.

Kafei wrote:Well, I'm referring to Bohm's concept of Quantum Mind that posits this idea that the physical brain and conscious phenomena are intertwined. There's a quote that I like to borrow from Steven Pinker in order to describe this. He said, "_The way I think of mind is as a 4th dimensional organ of your body, you cannot see it, because it resides in a higher dimension, but you experience a sectioning of it within the phenomenon of consciousness, but that is only a partial sectioning of it in the same way a plane is a partial sectioning of a cone when it transects it._"


I agree that mind may be the current physical state of the brain, but I think there’s more to it than that. I know that quote sounds like something Stuart Hameroff might suggest, but what’s implicit here is that this emergent property of matter, what we call “consciousness” is somehow intertwined with what M-Theorists rave about, the “higher dimensions” which make up String Theory. For instance, to give an example of this “sectioning” in the quote, when you imagine, say, a tree in the daytime spring scenery, you can see it in your mind’s eye quite vividly, you can make out brilliant colours and and even hear the wind as it brushes against its branches and leaves. But where is this tree, really? Where is it being projected? We can’t make the analogy from the computer’s output to a monitor, you see, because the tree isn’t really anywhere in your mind. If we were going to take a look at the physical brain, we wouldn’t find the tree, instead we may find certain electrical neural patterns, the breaking and forming of chemical bonds and various other fast chemistries, etc. But if we were going to use the computer analogy, then the monitor, where the image is being projected is in within this “sectioning” of hyperspace while the hardware is a direct correlate in the physical brain, they go together. So, what seems to be happening here is that the potentiality to imagine the tree was already there, perhaps had always been there. Graham Hancock had an interesting take on this issue, he said, “I don't believe that consciousness is generated in the brain any more than that television programs are made inside my tv.” So, it may be that the brain is the dipstick into this field of potentiality, and can entertain a certain degree of this potentiality.

One may think of it that way, but there is no reason to assume that the mind is not just the concept we use to describe the aspects of a functioning human brain, rather than something which exists in a higher dimension.

Kafei wrote:"I disagree. A lot of what I've found is that you can tell that it's being filtered through ..."

Stopping you there, it's irrelevant whether you disagree that people who were into drug culture and mind expansion via drug experimentation found jesus. They did, they joined a different collective assertion from you. This is all sent back to this though, there are other collective assertions as well, and we don't take any collective assertions as evidence.

Kafei wrote:Well, it isn't necessarily a different conclusion. It's exactly what someone like this person would conclude, especially if they're heavily influenced by something like Christianity. However, if they pursue it, and delve into these experiences more often, I believe this concept would definitely be expanded to a Perennial philosophy or perhaps a new paradigm altogether that puts all this into a better perspective as in an advancement of the Perennial philosophy into a neurotheology or something like that.

You do not conclude god as an extant being as your ultimate conclusion, so it is, necessarily, a different conclusion.

And yes, I know you believe if they truly delve into things deeper, they will come away with new thoughts. Just as they believe if you truly looked into this spiritually, the scales would fall from your eyes and you would see the grace of god.

In other words, it's not a unique claim. I know you are eager to reiterate this, but no matter how often you do, it will return back to this conclusion. Even then it's not speaking on my ultimate point here, that collective belief is not evidence.

Kafei wrote:"I don't think we necessarily know what we're contacting. Neuroscience doesn't have much of an explanation in this area. Neuroscience can't even explain consciousness at this point, and consciousness is the very thing these active compounds have an effect on. For all we know, it may be something "outside the mind" "

We don't know if we're contacting anything, in point of fact. And for all we know, it may be something outside the mind, or we may not be contacting anything at all, to conclude anything based on what we don't know would be an argument from ignorance, so since you admit we don't know, I hope you realize why I cannot accept these claims at the current moment.

Kafei wrote:Sure, I don't think most people who've never had such an experience can. I believe people are intellectually set-up to doubt these concepts that are born out of this experience, and it is probably because most people have not had this experience, atheists and theists alike.

This is a retelling of a common phrase I hear often: "The fool has said in his heart: there is no god", and since the book said it, I have just proven the book true by disbelieving the claim.

So too with you, you seem to believe I've never had the experience, and you think because of this I can't understand. Therefore, anyone who disbelieves you, you automatically have an ego defense out. "They just don't get it like I get it."

If you can agree there is no evidence, then it shouldn't be a matter of asserting people are set up to doubt. It should simply be accepted that it's reasonable to withhold belief.

Kafei wrote:"Well, you still need the drug..."

Stopping you there, I said TAKE the drug, as in from an external source. I was accepting your worldview for the sake of this statement, agreeing that the drug may not need to be externally taken to evoke this experience.

Kafei wrote:Well, but we cannot cut away "drugs" from this experience. The drug still seems necessary, but I agree, yes we probably don't need to take the drug, but if you consider how this experience can happen naturally. Alan Watts nicknamed the natural occurrence of this experience a "natural satori." Meditation is believed to be one path, in some instances as in the case of Jill Bolte Taylor, a stroke can induce this experience, there is also the belief that a near-death experience can cause this phenomenon to occur. Psychedelics just seem the most reliable and effective path without serious risk to the organism.

Okay, for that section, that was all I was saying. I was accepting your world view for the sake of the discussion, I don't feel confident saying 'yes, dmt is definitely made in the body', but for that part, I was saying I can agree it's possible the experience can happen without the need for external dosing (oh, and by external dosing, I mean active use of a foreign source of DMT as opposed to DMT being made natively in the body, just so I'm completely clear)

Kafei wrote:"Well, I was quoting Watts to make a point. He said..."

Exactly, and that point is that once you cut away the mistakes and misinterpretations, people eventually conclude your preferred claim, which is EXACTLY what I said at the beginning of this. It's still not a unique claim.

Kafei wrote:Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it a "preferred claim." I think it's just something that people naturally come to. As in the analogy of the iron filings that are attracted to the magnet. If you keep pushing it, eventually you'll come to a place where you cannot push any further, and you arrive at this Perennial philosophy.

As do the various religions, and for people that do not come to their conclusion, they feel the people have not delved deep enough.

Kafei wrote:"I assure you, it's not [an assumption]."

You're assuring me that everyone who takes this dose of the drug will have this experience and attribute it to mystical causes? If that's what you meant, as that's what I was referring to, then no matter how confident you are, it's still, by necessity, an assumption.

Kafei wrote:Well, if you look at the John Hopkins research, when they use the phrase "mystical experience," they're referring to something very specific. It's an experience that exhibits certain attributes, and so by mystical, they're not talking about the "supernatural" or something that defies some kind of physical law.

Alright, that's different, I thought the John Hopkins study was in the 60% range, not 100%, but that's not what I was concerned about with this comment.

Yes, many people in the study had what the study itself coined the mystical experience, but the study itself is not evidence of something external to the brain, and there is no evidence that the mind is anything but a concept of the brain.

So as I said, evidence that drugs can illicit an experience reliably in humans does not have to mean that the people who have the experience are all experiencing something from the same source, it could just be that human brain chemistry is similar enough that people who take these drugs experience similar things.

Kafei wrote:"Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "collective" here."

I also used the word combined, mind you. Either way I mean something external you're all sharing an experience of.

Kafei wrote:Well, I don't want to confuse you with what is already quite a confusing topic in the first place to attempt to describe to someone who has no relationship by direct experience with these altered states. It may be a "shared state." I'm not too sure. Is it something that can be elicited in each individual that expresses itself universally? I wish I had the answers to these questions. It's something I'd definitely like to pursue. I've heard stories of use of ayahuasca where synaesthesia would occur, and synaesthesia is often in the ayahuasca experience. It would be such that the shaman would begin singing the icaro, and the tones would switch from being heard to be being seen to the extent where a certain tone would produce a hallucination of a magenta scarf flowing through the air, and where you left off describing what you were seeing, someone else would pick up and finish off the description, and you'd have this consensus that you two were seeing one and the same thing. It was as though there was a translation from one sensory modality to another, and this is reported quite often.

It could in fact be that their sense of oneness and wonderment was such that while they were high, they completely believed they were sharing something, and their memories matched that belief due to their suggestibility.

Kafei wrote:"Believe it or not, it goes on quite often in this experience. I mean, Terence talks about this point, too. You see, there's a certain chicness to taking these substances."

Feeling slightly better. Alright, first of all, you yourself admit that it's also taboo. So people admitting it might seem chic to you, but it might be something others are loathe to admit rather than eager to try to embrace.

But this could be taken to imply that when someone says they've taken a heroic dose and don't attribute it to what you attribute it to, you don't believe they've really taken the dose. That's a great way to protect your belief, but it's just an assumption. It's also common to say 'well I remember when I used to talk a big game on drugs before I really got into it, so that's what they're all doing.'

Kafei wrote:Well, I find if you question people closely, you can tell if they've gotten the "stiff hit." If someone's flat out lying about it, this is easily detected if you've had the experience for yourself. However, I will add that there is a lot of factors when it comes to this full-spectrum experience. Everyone has a unique ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion). So, the "heroic dose" isn't a concretely defined dose. You have to break your unique brain-blood barrier, and often that means for some people taking higher doses. There are other factors such as how much sleep you've gotten or lack thereof, if you've fasted, if you're combining substances, etc. With psilocybin, one way to gauge it is that it should flatten you. In other words, when I first got into this, I remember listening to Terence describing what a "heroic dose" experience was like, and I'll link to that talk below. It was the talk that convinced me to try this out. Someone asked from the audience, "Will I be able to drive on a heroic dose?" Terence replied, "No! In every sense of the word, you will not be able to drive. Hanging on to the ground will be the major program to be executed." Now, I was about 17 when I first heard this, and so I assumed naively that he was talking about how intense the hallucinations would be, I didn't believe that these substances would literally have you nailed to the ground. That is, of course, 'til I finally got around to finding a connection to try this out, and this was years later. I was 22, and at the height of the experience, I was floored. I couldn't stand. I mean, I could try, but it was pointless. Y'ever seen that movie Face Off with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage? Remember that scene where they're in that Alcatraz like prison and they've got these metal boots on that, upon activization, could lock them to the floor? Well, this experience felt as though my whole skeleton was magnetized. Doesn't found fun, does it? Well, this is what people have to put up with if they're willing to induce this so-called "mystical experience." That's why most people never get there, because they're not looking for that. They're looking to have a good time, they want a recreational dose that'll allow them to attend the party/concert, etc. and still allow them to socialize in these settings. Another thing that should occur is, of course, hallucination. The experience must cause hallucination. After all, these things are called "hallucinogens," and you don't get these profound hallucinations behind closed eyelids on recreational doses. You might get distortions, macropsia, and things of that nature, but you won't get these intense
closed eye visuals of iridescent morphing fractals and geometric patterns.

The idea that people don't take hallucinogens solely to hallucinate is an assumption. I have been party to gatherings involving, and know many people that took part in, drug usage not to go out, but instead taking drugs to go inward. The entire point of preparation was to create a safe environment where needs are met during vulnerable periods, and drugs can be taken not just to go dancing or something, but for the sake of the experience and that alone. So to just assume that you're in a minority of people because most who claim to do drugs really don't do it for the drug experience proper, that isn't necessarily true.

Kafei wrote:"Well, yes, the France analogy is really more applicable to this experience. Which other analogy were you referring to that fails? Maybe I was misunderstood there."

I wasn't referring to another analogy. I said that the france analogy works by assuming misattribution, and therefore it fails at trying to make your point that you aren't referring to misattribution.

Kafei wrote:Well, I wasn't including assumed misattribution in the analogy. I was saying that if you got all these anecdotes, you could tell that they were describing some area of France.

The analogy itself did that, as a way of saying that what a tourist may assume is one thing based on their background, and a native describes it differently because they knew what it really is, someone who compares the two accounts might divine that they're talking about the same thing. As with the france analogy, so with your concept of divine revelation experiences.

You think people who have them get the idea, they just aren't getting things quite right, they need to dig deeper.

Kafei wrote:"Well, it does provide a vast array of hallucination. These visuals aren't incoherent or fuzzy or blurry. They're sharply defined, vivid, and often are geometric, fractal, and iridescent. They move in a very coherent manner. So, obviously the brain is being flooded with information."

That's not only assumption, it's incoherent, why would you assume that fuzzy or blurry things cannot contain information, and why do you assume that vivid things must? Hallucinations can be both and still be hallucinations, which do not carry new external data.

Kafei wrote:Well, of course, fuzzy and blurry things would contain information, but if they were fuzzy and blurry, then you'd probably have a hard time telling them apart. The point I was trying to make is that these things are concretely defined to the degree that you could tell that they are, in fact, universal. That the archetypal imagery within these experiences are universally seen.

"Concretely defined" does not mean "universal". Moreover, "concretely defined" doesn't mean "providing more information" or "providing information more clearly". A painting with sharp lines and fractal patterns does not, because of this, have more 'information' than a painting with fuzzy lines and more haphazard brush strokes.

Kafei wrote:"Which claim am I backing away from?"

The claim that people experience this through the 'rap' of their personality. If that were so, it should not make this experience invalid if a vision or impression of a unicorn or leprechaun would be a part of it. My point being that you said this:

Kafei:
"If you think this is about believing in hallucinations of the unicorn and leprechaun sort, then you've already missed the point."

And I responded thusly:
"As for the unicorn and leprechaun, you are just assuming that those images cannot be metaphors for facets of the cosmic consciousness, so yes, by your belief system, if someone has this experience and sees unicorns and leprechauns, that would be a way of their brain trying to interpret something grander."

Do you agree or disagree? Keeping in mind this isn't 'hah if you agree it's leprechaun fuffle!' or something. It's not, for instance, a trap, but I need to know if what I've studied from you is consistent in the way I thought it was. I also know that to have leprechauns or unicorns in your experience they'd have to be something your culture or you personally perceive more seriously, rather than say, if you take DMT at heroic doses you experience a cartoon romp. This isn't about saying it's silly, either, I'm just talking about imagery and interpretation.

Kafei wrote:Well, the only way I could imagine this happening if that if in the Christian myth, Christ was a unicorn. Then, sure, you'd have a whole slew of people attributing the experience to a unicorn. However, that isn't the case, and in no culture is a leprechaun or a unicorn held to such supremely divine regard.

Thank you, that was a hypothetical, I know that is not so for unicorns in the current major religions.

With that on hand... Is there anything one can experience while having what you call this mystical experience that could not be explained as metaphor for something else? Couldn't attributing this experience to anything other than the drug be assumption?

Kafei wrote:"Well, again, we don't know if this experience is a "contacting of hyperspace." I mean, what Joe Rogan was trying to point out is that whether your call it a "hallucination" or "meeting divine wisdom," there's no discernible difference between these two experiences."

And if there is no discernible difference, there is no reason to assume we're contacting hyperspace, having an experience of something external that people who have the experience are sharing, no reason to assume we're being provided with wisdom, etc.

Kafei wrote:Well, you're assuming a hallucination is something that is meaningless and pointless. I believe they may be a of great import. Terence once said of the psychedelic experience, "Psychedelics are to psychology what the telescope was to astronomy during the time of Galileo." I whole-heartedly agree with that.

No I'm not assuming it's pointless, you're just assuming that. I'm saying that hallucinations don't need to imply reaching something outside the mind.

Kafei wrote:"Well, like I said, the hallucinatory phenomena are geometric..."

Woah woah, easy. My point was...
"There is profundity in many things, and to assume a sense of the profound implies the profound is assumption."

In other words, what may seem or feel profound doesn't necessarily mean it's more than simply a hallucination, a drug experience that feels very convincing but is simply a short lived sense of wonderment.

Kafei wrote:Well, I think you're using hallucination in the same sense of a delusion here. There are many types of hallucination. The hallucination that I think most people associate with psychedelics who've a) never experienced hallucination and b) only know what they've picked up from textbooks or movies are often those of dream-like phenomena. They often believe it's something like dreaming awake. That it's some kind of projection of the subconscious. That bits and pieces of memories or abstract imagination is somehow placing itself as a hallucination in your visual field. There are such hallucinations, but these are not the hallucinations of tryptamine-based compounds. Datura can produce hallucinations akin to dream-like phenomena. I mean, if that's what you're looking for, take an oneirgen, because entheogens produce something far different from that type of phenomena.

I am using hallucination in the sense of an experience that is not dictated or influenced by outside stimuli. I.e. something within the brain.

Kafei wrote:"Well, it's evidence that anyone who undergoes this experience will have these archetypes and motifs occur. It's evidence that these transpersonal experience do, in fact, exist."

Swing and a miss. Close, but it still bumps into a problem. Let me explain, the experiences do not have to be transpersonal, and the 'archetypes and motifs' (though you never explain them, so I'm giving a best guess here) can be explained into the experience just like someone can find them in near death experience if I understand what you mean by them.

Kafei wrote:Well, neurotheology is an attempt to describe this phenomenon in neuroscientistic terms and has comprised a list of attributes that occur within this experience. This experience will induce a profound sense of interconnectivity, it is also considered a vastly different altered state in comparison to ordinary consciousness, it is also accompanied with the feeling of great understanding. It doesn't mention emotion, but I believe that is also an integral part of it. I felt something at the height of the expeience that I couldn't describe other than agapé. Agapé is a Christian word that means "the love felt by Christ" that is not sexual in nature, but rather spiritual or perhaps maternal might be a better word. It was not like anything else I've ever felt in my life. It was so profound that it felt as though everyone on Earth from that vantage point was emotionally asleep. I have elaborated in forums on this experience, and I believe you've read the post in where I've mentioned it, but I was under the impression that I did explain some of these archetypes and motifs. You said... I never explained them?

To my knowledge, not in any way that made it clear that they are what you were referring to.

What is the definition of an archetype in this context, and what are some examples? In that line of thought, what is the definition of a motif in this context, and what are some examples? I might have just missed you connecting your lines of thought as I read.

Kafei wrote:Well, that's the thing, I've never met anyone who had the "proper dose" who didn't report these things. However, about this "proper dose," I've read that some people who smoke DMT experience no hallucination. Apparently, 5% of people are completely ineffected by DMT. If that's true, I'm not sure what that means. Do they lack the receptors that N,N-DMT attaches to? The pineal gland is located in the center of the brain where the corpus collosum is located. Do people with agenesis of the corpus collosum lack a pineal gland? I've never looked into this, but I find it interesting. But most people are effected by DMT when they smoke it, that's for sure, and lo and behold, once they do that, everyone gets the same closed-eye visuals of racing geometries and feelings of interconnectedness.

Okay, but from your example, it seems you accept that people do not have to. And as before, it seems you accept it does not have to be evidence of brains contacting something outside.

Personally, I can agree with the research that suggests it leads to positive mindset as well. I may not think it is proof or even meaningful evidence of divine claims, but that doesn't mean I dismiss it offhand.

Kafei wrote:"Well, it's not my assumption, it's based off people who have been affected in this way. Even the founder of A.A. (alcoholics anonymous) experimented with LSD with his patients and was quite successful with a 50% cure rate without recidivism. That's pretty impressive, if you ask me. And that's just a modest example."

You think he experimented with giving AA members LSD? I haven't heard of any such study, I knew he personally believed that, but that's all I'd heard. Watcha got?

Kafei wrote:When all these substances were legal prior to '66, there were many trials done in psychotherapy that were reporting great success with MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, etc. John Hopkins University is a good modern example, because some of the people dosed were terminally ill volunteers who were so humbled and grateful for this experience that they were able to cope with the remaining years of their life.

I know of Bill Wilsons interest, I just didn't know he was involved with any clinical trials of AA members. Where were those studies, the 50% cure rate without recidivism?

Kafei wrote:"Well, I believe it's meaningful evidence, otherwise all the hard work done by Strassman's team and the work done at the John Hopkins University was done in vain, and I don't believe it was."

That's an appeal to consequences, that you believe it's meaningful evidence because otherwise the work to find evidence would be in vain. Regardless, the experiments simply speak on the phenomena, not that they are evidence of something outside us. That means, as I once said, the experiments aren't saying what you originally seemed to think they were saying.

Kafei wrote:Well, no, I didn't mean that just because they worked hard, they deserve credit. I just feel a lot of people dismiss evidence they've found because they cannot accept that anecdotal evidence holds any weight. In this case, it definitely does if you're talking about the phenomena, sure, I wasn't trying to say that it was evidence for "something outside." That's a deeper question that would require more thorough research.

Well, it is considered the weakest form of scientific evidence at best - and even then there is dispute. However among those who agree it is, they essentially say it's useful only for identifying potential avenues of research and not considered evidence for claims.

However, that does not mean it's without value. It does, however, mean that it can't be considered significant weight toward, or confirmation of, a claim.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Sure, if you want to copy and paste it here, that's fine. If you have the link to the YT page, that might save you the trouble.

Nah, I got your back, I remember how frustrating it was for me when it happened...the idea it's STILL happening to you, blech. It's just that feeling where you worked so cautiously to say what you mean and get your ideas out and then in one fell swoop it just disappears.

Awful.

It truly is. I've lost probably hours of typing to that.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, what I mean by "reality has been replaced," I don't mean that it's replaced with a parallel universe, although it can have this impression. I mean that 45 seconds after three good tokes of DMT, you will be subdued in 100% hallucination. One moment, you might find yourself in a badly furnished apartment with your scruffy friends doing drugs,

Hey now, my friends and I dressed nice! That futon was a disaster though...

Alright, and can you agree that hallucination means that you're experiencing something not dictated by outside influences?

Well, there's many types of hallucinations, but to make a distinction here. There are types of hallucinations of which I'd prefer to call distortions that are more common of the light to mid-range doses. These seem to be somewhat influenced by outside influences in that they seem to distort what you perceive. So, for instance, if you take a light dose, things in your perception might slightly shift or sway back and forth. It's as though you were looking through a glass piece that was being warped lightly as you looked through it to make everything appear as though it was subtly shifting. Now, go a little higher, and what appeared as very subtle is now shifting is now coalescing into a more concrete pattern. As an analogy, if you could imagine a magnet slowly descending down to some iron filings. If the magnet is held high enough so that its magnetic influence over the iron filings is barely noticeable, then you could move the magnet in small circles and watch as the iron filings waver as they are drawn toward the magnet then recede as the magnet moves away. Well, with the higher doses, to continue with the magnet/iron filings analogy, you're now descending the magnet lower, and so the magnetic influence is stronger, and now the iron filings are pulling and receding towards a more coherent pattern. So, this pushing and pulling will overlay what you're perceiving at that moment, and what these patterns coalesce into are fractals. The higher you go, the more like looking through a glass with fractal contours bend the light so that whatever you perceive contorts into these fractal patterns. At the "heroic dose," then it's as though you now have placed the magnet directly upon the iron filings, and they now all contort to this pattern, and now the background of perceived light is no longer visible, because it's replaced with this mandalic, fractalline iridescent pattern that has taken over your sight whether your eyes or open or closed, and it's at that point where the external influences are no longer there.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, I can agree that it's a possibility that it may be our own minds. Sure. But we ultimately do not know.

Alrighty! And can you agree that to draw conclusions based on what we do not know would be an argument from ignorance?

I could agree with that, but I haven't made any conclusions. A lot of what I've said thus far in this thread is speculatory and conjecture based not entirely on ignorance, but what I've read about these topics concerning entheogens and how these experiences are compared to eastern mysticism, the parallels between the insights there in M-theory, and a whole other bunch of assorted facts such as the "visual snow" seen on television being a remnant of the Big Bang.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, the thing about DMT is that it leaves the cognitive portion of your mind intact. The portion that allows you to intellectualize is not effected. It seems to be more of a visual phenomenon. At least that's how many people describe it.

You have said before the entire brain is flooded with information, and now you say that certain aspects of the brain aren't affected. If your brain is flooded with information, it would make it very difficult to think, to parse data. Regardless, this sounds like conjecture.

What sounds like conjecture? What I mean by the mind is flooded with information, I was specifically referring to the hallucinations. Most people keep the part of the mind that allows them to think about the experience, so the experience itself can be very introspective.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, mind is an epiphenomenon of brain. I could agree that the brain is a three-dimensional organ.

There are a few meanings for your phrase there. My unconscious habits are (in part) an epiphenomenon of my daily patterns, my desires, and my psychological coping mechanisms. However, my unconscious habits are distinct from the factors that create it. I was going to object because 'secondary traits' implies more than one factor involved, in this case it would be implying the brain and something else work together and the mind is a secondary trait thereof, but as long as I understand you, that's all I'm really concerned with.

Well, I'm borrowing 'epiphenomenon' in the context that it's used in Philosophy of Mind.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Can you agree that what we call the mind is a concept, a descriptive meant to encompass our known expectations for that three dimensional organ, and we have no proof the mind is anything more than that?

Sure, I can agree with that, only it seems redundant to call it a concept in that the very consciousness that is considering it a concept would also be considered a concept, but even a concept has no material form. It's sort of like the "ego." When we say "I," what is the "I" which we refer to? When you look closely at the "me" under a microscope, it's a series of cells being created and destroyed. Even skeleton is completely renewed after several years. So, even this "I" is an illusion that we seem to perpetuate by memory which is the engine of concepts.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, in some instances, they can have really diverse effects.

That wasn't my question, let me reiterate my question.

Would it be accurate now to presume you are only arguing that hallucinogens can have a positive effect, i.e. you agree they don't have to be connected to m-theory and brahman and the like?

Is that your only factual claim, the only thing you're trying to get across, and the other things you are saying are by way of making your point, or are there other claims at play?

Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm arguing these points. I think a lot of research has been done to prove that this is so. That under the right conditions, and with the proper guidance from an experienced shaman or psychiatrist, these experiences can be supremely beneficial and positive.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, it was under laboratory conditions, and each volunteer were administered various doses ranging from 5mg to 30mg/kg. And it was 72% of the volunteers that were given the higher doses that had the mystical experience, not 60%.

Citation please.

Citation.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:My question still remains, can you agree that not everyone that takes these drugs at what you like to coin a 'heroic dose' has the mystical experience?

So far, I haven't come across that. I'm not sure I can agree with that. I have heard of people being unresponsive to DMT, but this was hearsay, and I'm not sure if that's true. I don't know if that's made up, but if it's not, then there might be people out there who don't respond to DMT for whatever reason. If that's the case, then I'd say they're an exception, because if they cannot even respond to the substance, then of course they're not going to have any experience. However, of the people that do, if they take the sufficient dose, I believe they're guaranteed this experience.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:In the Johns Hopkins study, psilocybin was given the the terminally ill that were suffering from severe depression, and these people came out of that experience with beneficial results. They were more content with their situation, at peace of mind with the finality of their lives.

Okay, it seems you meant 'medicinal' as in 'therapeutic' rather than 'with healing properties'? That's not something I'm arguing against, my concern was to guard against unproven claims of affecting the body, spontaneous healing and the like.

Spontaneous healing? They're neurotransmitters. Why would you believe they do something like that?

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Irrelevant to what? We were discussing these psychedelics, and Watts wrote a lot of material on these substances, not to mention eastern philosophy.

Irrelevant to what he said to you.

Alan Watts LITERALLY made a claim regarding everything, ALL things. oldskeptic challenged that he doesn't know what he's talking about in regard to all things. You responded with his experience in drug usage. That is irrelevant.

I don't believe it was irrelevant. These experiences and the insight go hand-in-hand. Eastern philosophy is a comment on everything.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:No, I believe these things should be properly studied. Perhaps if Michio Kaku smoked DMT, he could spell it out for us.

That wouldn't help. If Michio Kaku and all the leaders of all the nations at once all smoked it, their subjective experiences still wouldn't be evidence of something outside them. The similarities in their experiences would not be evidence of something external. His explanations would carry no more weight than any others. The fact that the mystical experience itself exists is interesting, and it's nice that we can elicit it in relative safety, but that doesn't have to imply anything 'else' or 'other'.

I disagree. I think it would help if it got more attention, even by people such as Michio Kaku. I don't think that we're necessarily looking for something "outside." We're simply trying to understand these experiences, and that's why it would help.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, that question seems irrelevant to what I said. I mean, sure people could make these claims, but how do we know whether they're true? Spearthrower actually claimed to have taken more psychedelics than me. However, he didn't deny that they have the potential to elicit these archetypes that define the mystical experience, the feelings of oneness, the heightened sensitivity to emotion, etc. He actually agreed, he just didn't believe it was anything beyond the brain. He didn't believe that it was a glimpse into hyperspace or a parallel universe.

How do we know whether they're true is one question, do you assume they're being false based on whether you feel they agree with you is another. If you do, you are committing a no true scotsman fallacy.

I'm not doing that. I don't gauge it on whether I disagree. I gauge it on the archetypes, of course. Because the motifs are universal. If someone says they took LSD, and their desk turned into an M. C. Escher sketch, and a lizard jumped out and crawled across the table, then it's likely this person is making all this up. I don't believe that this has anything whatsoever to do with a "No True Scotsman" fallacy, and if someone believes it does, then they're not really understanding what this experience truly involves, and this is always due to the fact that most people who think that usually have no experiences with these "heroic doses."

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Regardless, if your only argument is that hallucinogens can lead to positive mindset, you need not invoke quantum mechanics or michio kaku or any of that, because that's not relevant to your statement.

Well, I'm not the only one who does this. There have been a lot of authors, including theoretical physicists, that have written about the parallels between mysticism and modern physics. I believe my own psychedelic experiences have even helped me to better grasp some of these concepts in M-theory and string theory that most people find quite confounding.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, perhaps part of what is called a "cognitive hallucination," but definitely not part of the visual hallucinations.

That wasn't my question, let me reiterate my question.

You can agree things that you experience and have memories of can be part of a hallucination, yes?

Well, if by "part of the experience," you mean they can influence one's experience, then sure. I mentioned this before, I'm not sure if it was in this thread. I said people’s beliefs about the DMT experience are also influenced by pre-existing beliefs. Those who are very attached to a materialistic view of reality will strive for a more reductionist explanation of the DMT experience in terms of the physical brain, its chemistry, etc. Whether they're right or not is undetermined.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:No, I'm saying we ultimately don't know. There is speculation, it does seem to offer itself that way and present itself in that fashion, and people often do come back with radical tales of meeting the alien or God or attaining a hyperspatial point-of-view. What the experience is evidence of, without a doubt, is mystical experience. What the implications of that means? Well, that's the part we're working on.

That's correct, we don't know, and to draw conclusions from what we don't know, such as tying it to string theory or such things, would be an argument from ignorance.

Well, quantum mind is a hypothesis that is built upon many different concepts. I mean, in one sense, we could say that we're truly ignorant about everything. We cannot fully describe a single atom, so from that standpoint, everything could be said to be an argument from ignorance, but I believe people have an innate nature to understand. That's why we have philosophy, this is why we extrapolate. Some people aren't content to simply say, "We don't know, therefore we've no right to say or think anything about it." Consciousness, despite how closely intimate it is to each of us, is one of the most mysterious aspects in neuroscience. Terence McKenna once said, "Psychedelics are to consciousness what the telescope was to astronomy during Galileo's time." If that's true, then it's a shame how they've been tainted and ignored all these years. So, I see QM as an attempt to grasp something that will probably remain a mystery unto our own death, but it doesn't hurt to try.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:However, 'mystical experience' is what the researchers CALLED the experience, so saying that the experience is evidence of the experience is not even true. Our perceptions could be? Anecdotes could be? Depending on how you are defining evidence, sure. But the experience simply is, and what we use to detect and measure the experience would be the evidence for it.

They simply didn't refer to it as "mystical experience," they referred to it that way because people reporting a classical 'mystical experience' as described in ancient religion.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:I never admitted here how much I had taken. So, to say that he had taken greater doses than I have, that's an assumption. He hasn't expressed enough about this experience to make any conclusions, but from the output so far, I'd say that he hasn't had a heroic dose, but like I said, there's not enough information to go on. So, I really don't know whether he's taken a heroic dose or not or whether he has even had a psychedelic experience.

There you go! You don't know, so to assume he hasn't taken enough because you have no evidence that he has would be an argument from ignorance. To assume he hasn't taken enough because he doesn't agree with your conclusions would be a no true scotsman fallacy.

He hasn't said anything about his experience, so I've nothing to say. But this "No True Scotsman" thing I believe is completely irrelevant either way. The way I see it, because this could also be described as being ultimately a physiological response, it's like saying, "I drank a full bottle of Everclear, and I didn't even get drunk!" That defies pharmacodynamics. It's impossible. If that doesn't get you completely wasted, it'd probably kill you.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, it seems we have no evidence either way. We've no evidence that these hallucinations are illusions created by the brain

Actually we have plenty of evidence that hallucinations are created by the brain. That there may be other factors involved we cannot prove, but the fact that hallucinations occur within the brain is the only thing we have evidence of.

The only thing we really have evidence of is that hallucinogens cause hallucinations. Where the hallucinations come from? Sure, we could say the brain, but this is an assumption.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, about the psychedelic experience. Have you drank copious amounts of ayahuasca or have you eaten an outlandish amount of psilocybin-containing mushrooms?

...What odd terminology. Ignoring the fact that your statements are completely relative, and what one may call outlandish, others might call the amount they used to think was large in their early 20's and now are embarrassed to remember they thought that...

I was the one with the near death experience, that was me. I haven't had a drug experience to match that yet.

Well, you'd have to elaborate. You mean, you thought you were going to die?

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, it is evident that these experiences are often accompanied by geometric visuals, that's a universal phenomenon. The iridescent, mandalic, kaleidoscopic fractals; everyone gets 'em. It's also accompanied with intense emotion and feelings of a deep sense of interconnectedness, this feeling of 'we're all one.' As for it being "outside the mind," I'm pretty agnostic on that.

Alrighty, can you agree it is sensible to withhold belief that it is tied to hyperspace, etc until evidence of that is forthcoming?

I'll take the position of empirical agnosticism on this one.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Precisely, if they do not experience these phenomena, then it's quite likely that they've had a subthreshold dose.

Exactly, so if your criterion for having the dose is coming to your preferred conclusion, it is fallacious. But before we go back and forth on this a million times. A better way to state what you seem to want to get across is 'Though anything is possible, all the people who I'm confident have had the proper amount have agreed with me thus far.', that's it! It's an assumption that your interlocutors who may disagree are either misinformed or self aggrandizing because you feel they are trying to embrace its 'chicness' that really seems to step you away from the bounds of your point.

There's no fallacy involved. They don't necessarily have to agree with my conjecture about the implications of the experience, and I think that's what you think I mean by "agreeing with me." What I'm saying is that they will experience, necessarily, the motifs, the universal archetypes which accompany the "heroic dose" experiences. There's no fallacy there, and this is all peer-reviewed, scientifically-proven, etc. It'd be pointless to argue that.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:If people want to argue about the simple experience, they will likely ask the relative dosage needed to see if they've had the dose and their experience matches (and odds are people have had the dose and have not had the experience, by the way). But this thread is here in general debunking not because these drugs can't illicit hallucinations, or even that the hallucinations can't be somewhat consistent in their presentation. It's more because of a marriage of these hallucinogens with string theory and the like.

But no one's arguing that smoking DMT is a glimpse into 11-dimensional hyperspace. That's why I don't believe this thread belongs here. No one here is arguing that these things should be married. Sure, there's descriptions of some experiences where people have felt as though they attained a hyperspatial point-of-view, that they've felt intuitively omniscient, etc. And there have been parallels made between mysticism and psychedelic experiences, between mysticism and string theory/M-theory, but a parallelism is quite different from a radical claim of 11-dimensional perception.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Okay, here's my attempt to recreate our thread, I didn't truncate your comments so you should be able to see the full context.

To refactor all the way from the beginning of this, yes I agree this can be a powerful experience within the mind, but that doesn't mean I have to accept it as contacting hyperspace.

You know, if you truly have a grip on M-theory, what it's saying is that our three-dimensional reality now is a slice of hyperspace. That everything, in a sense, is "contacting hyperspace." Are you familiar with conic sections? If you make a two-dimensional slice through a three-dimensional cone, you can draw out various two-dimensional shapes such as a parabola, a circle, ellipse, etc. Well, now if you make a three-dimensional slice through a hyperdimensional object, what you can draw out is quite akin to what you perceive right now. In a sense, it is all connected, and I think part of the psychedelic experience is an understanding of this interconnectedness.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:
As to your question, yes but it's not relevant to my point. My point was that you first said you wouldn't say hyperspace is outside our mind, but to agree it's both IS agreeing that it's outside. That shouldn't be controversial.

"Are the Omega 3 protein scans copied, I saw the complex riboflavin scans earlier, what's on the drive."

"Both scans are there on the drive."

"Good, it's good to have the omega 3 scans on the drive."

"I just told you it's both, I don't see how saying that is agreeing that the Omega 3 scans are on the drive."

Because if it's both, then each proposition is true as opposed to solely one or the other.

Now, you're saying hyperspace is outside the mind, and if you're saying that drug usage gives us access to that...once again going back way to the original point of what I said...we have no proof of that.

I think we both need to read some Rudy Rucker.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:"Well, the Big Bang theory is now accepted by most scientist"

Stopping you there, my question was much more specific. Although, even this statement misses the point. The big bang theory doesn't talk about the MOMENT of the big bang, we don't know the conditions of the universe at that point.


But my question was, what scientists claim it happened in hyperspace?

Kafei wrote:Well, pretty much all scientists that deal with things like string theory or M-theory. Michio Kaku is the first person I heard this idea from, however, if you want a name.

Thank you. I figured that's where you heard it from, but I was open to there being some study I missed. I invite you to note this:

http://mkaku.org/home/articles/hyperspa ... c-odyssey/

"Do higher dimensions exist? Are there unseen worlds just beyond our reach, beyond the normal laws of physics? Although higher dimensions have historically been the exclusive realm of charlatans, mystics, and science fiction writers, many serious theoretical physicists now believe that higher dimensions not only exist, but may also explain some of the deepest secrets of nature. Although we stress that there is at present no experimental evidence for higher dimensions,"

Now I'm not discounting theoretical physics, but to say that scientists consider the big bang occurring in hyperspace as settled science really, honestly is not accurate.

Kafei wrote:"Yes, these Calabi–Yau manifolds exist whether or not minds exist."

Then they exist outside the mind. Previously you said "Well, I never really implied that this may be something "outside the mind,"

And you may not have meant to say 'yes it's definitely for sure something outside the mind', but as to what I meant by 'outside the mind'... If you think we MAY be contacting 11th dimensional space or whatnot, then it would be – in that instance – outside the mind.

It's pretty mind-boggling to think about. If it were the case, that minds could contact 11-dimensional hyperspace, then it might imply that consciousness at its root is, in some sense, 11-dimensional hyperspace. So, why would it be "outside"? Are we talking "outside" in a physical sense, as in outside the three-dimensional skull? It may be that "outside" and "inside" no longer mean anything in hyperspace, because hyperspace contains both. These are all interesting concepts, and they could keep you ruminating for days.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:
One may think of it that way, but there is no reason to assume that the mind is not just the concept we use to describe the aspects of a functioning human brain, rather than something which exists in a higher dimension.

Everything could ultimately said to be a concept. You may believe that there's no reason to think it's nothing more than a concept, but of course, other people feel differently.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Sure, I don't think most people who've never had such an experience can. I believe people are intellectually set-up to doubt these concepts that are born out of this experience, and it is probably because most people have not had this experience, atheists and theists alike.

This is a retelling of a common phrase I hear often: "The fool has said in his heart: there is no god", and since the book said it, I have just proven the book true by disbelieving the claim.

So too with you, you seem to believe I've never had the experience, and you think because of this I can't understand. Therefore, anyone who disbelieves you, you automatically have an ego defense out. "They just don't get it like I get it."

If you can agree there is no evidence, then it shouldn't be a matter of asserting people are set up to doubt. It should simply be accepted that it's reasonable to withhold belief.

It is reasonable to withhold belief. That's what I did prior to my own experience. That's why I can't blame someone who does that, but I understand their ignorance.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Yes, many people in the study had what the study itself coined the mystical experience, but the study itself is not evidence of something external to the brain, and there is no evidence that the mind is anything but a concept of the brain.

So as I said, evidence that drugs can illicit an experience reliably in humans does not have to mean that the people who have the experience are all experiencing something from the same source, it could just be that human brain chemistry is similar enough that people who take these drugs experience similar things.

Well, by "same source," I was referring to Perennial Philosophy. It one aspect, it could be as the "same source," in that the founders of the major religion are all drawing from mystical experience.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, I don't want to confuse you with what is already quite a confusing topic in the first place to attempt to describe to someone who has no relationship by direct experience with these altered states. It may be a "shared state." I'm not too sure. Is it something that can be elicited in each individual that expresses itself universally? I wish I had the answers to these questions. It's something I'd definitely like to pursue. I've heard stories of use of ayahuasca where synaesthesia would occur, and synaesthesia is often in the ayahuasca experience. It would be such that the shaman would begin singing the icaro, and the tones would switch from being heard to be being seen to the extent where a certain tone would produce a hallucination of a magenta scarf flowing through the air, and where you left off describing what you were seeing, someone else would pick up and finish off the description, and you'd have this consensus that you two were seeing one and the same thing. It was as though there was a translation from one sensory modality to another, and this is reported quite often.

It could in fact be that their sense of oneness and wonderment was such that while they were high, they completely believed they were sharing something, and their memories matched that belief due to their suggestibility.

Well, I think you'd be surprised at some of these awesome stories of this type of shared synaesthesia. I think there may be other more viable explanations, as in when people enter these states of minds in a group setting, they may take ritualistic amounts, meaning similar heroic doses, and when the synaesthesia of something like ayahuasca occurs, the range of pitch of the icaros or tonality of the instruments could trigger synaesthetic audio/visual phenomena that may appear quite similar to each individual. So, I'm hesitant to pin it on mere suggestibility, because I believe there's more going on here.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:"Concretely defined" does not mean "universal". Moreover, "concretely defined" doesn't mean "providing more information" or "providing information more clearly". A painting with sharp lines and fractal patterns does not, because of this, have more 'information' than a painting with fuzzy lines and more haphazard brush strokes.

The implication being is that if it were all a blurry mess, then one experience couldn't really be distinguished from another experience. However, if it is concretely defined, then a coherent overlap can be drawn, and that's why these archetypal patterns, these motifs are said to be universal.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, no, I didn't mean that just because they worked hard, they deserve credit. I just feel a lot of people dismiss evidence they've found because they cannot accept that anecdotal evidence holds any weight. In this case, it definitely does if you're talking about the phenomena, sure, I wasn't trying to say that it was evidence for "something outside." That's a deeper question that would require more thorough research.

Well, it is considered the weakest form of scientific evidence at best - and even then there is dispute. However among those who agree it is, they essentially say it's useful only for identifying potential avenues of research and not considered evidence for claims.

However, that does not mean it's without value. It does, however, mean that it can't be considered significant weight toward, or confirmation of, a claim.

Okay, I know I I omitted a lot here, but only 'cause I felt some of it was answered in the previous post I responded to. Sure, I suppose it's the "weakest form of scientific evidence," but in this particular endeavor, it's all we got when we're talking about the "psychedelic experience."

Kafei wrote:It truly is. I've lost probably hours of typing to that.

Sit back, relax, have a coffee! The nightmare is over. Also, realizing the size of this, if you feel the need to parse it down, I think we can reduce it to some core points of contention here, I think we're moving that direction pretty well just by eliminating things we aren't disagreeing on. Of course if you think I'm being presumptuous there I leave myself open to your disagreement, but if I'm not mistaken we can probably neaten up the discussion a bit, it will lessen my time away from other things and it will likely also increase the readability of the discussion, I know how eager you are to have people exposed to these ideas and it could help in that regard.

You think about it!

Kafei wrote:You know, if you truly have a grip on M-theory, what it's saying is that our three-dimensional reality now is a slice of hyperspace. That everything, in a sense, is "contacting hyperspace."

And that is a hypothesis which is unproven, A.

and B: By 'contacting hyperspace' I mean giving we three dimensional beings an ability to perceive a fourth dimension.

Kafei wrote:I think we both need to read some Rudy Rucker.

Good stuff. If that was an invitation to comment let me know, it just made me smile.

Kafei wrote:If it were the case, that minds could contact 11-dimensional hyperspace, then it might imply that consciousness at its root is, in some sense, 11-dimensional hyperspace. So, why would it be "outside"? Are we talking "outside" in a physical sense, as in outside the three-dimensional skull? It may be that "outside" and "inside" no longer mean anything in hyperspace, because hyperspace contains both. These are all interesting concepts, and they could keep you ruminating for days.

I've responded to this already. 'both' would still mean it's ALSO outside. Also, the way you're looking at extradimensionality might not be how I would describe it. If there was a two dimensional plane in front of us, we could see all of it, let's say a little blip person, a two dimensional entity was drowning in a patch of blue, we could pull him into the third dimension and deposit him back anywhere we so wish. That does not mean that I, the three dimensional being, am everywhere, both inside and outside of him, at all times.

My dimension is alien to his, and when I deposit him back to his own, he has no access to mine.

Kafei wrote:Everything could ultimately said to be a concept. You may believe that there's no reason to think it's nothing more than a concept, but of course, other people feel differently.

You have a reason, but is it a good reason? Is this reason based on evidence? Because withholding belief is justified without evidence, and that is what I'm referring to. Which leads me to...

Kafei wrote:It is reasonable to withhold belief. That's what I did prior to my own experience. That's why I can't blame someone who does that, but I understand their ignorance.

Bingo! You had an experience within your mind, that you feel could be, might be, maybe sensing dimensions beyond the observable dimensions. You (seem to) agree that your feelings are not evidence that your interpretation of what you felt is correct, and that your experience is not evidence that your interpretation of what you felt is correct.

So I withhold belief based on my ignorance, and I offer that your experience does not provide evidence of the things I was discussing. If you feel it does, it is based on your own assumptions of knowledge, not actual knowledge.

Kafei wrote:Well, by "same source," I was referring to Perennial Philosophy. It one aspect, it could be as the "same source," in that the founders of the major religion are all drawing from mystical experience.

A> That's not necessarily true, they may not have had what these scientists coin 'the mystical experience'.

B> Even assuming they all did, that they all had this experience in some way and decided to create religions based upon it, that does not mean that they were 'kinda right' to draw these divine conclusions and only mistook it. It could be that it is completely divorced from anything extradimensional, anything outside of their own minds. Without evidence, we are justified in withholding belief that they did.

Kafei wrote:The implication being is that if it were all a blurry mess, then one experience couldn't really be distinguished from another experience. However, if it is concretely defined, then a coherent overlap can be drawn, and that's why these archetypal patterns, these motifs are said to be universal.

A> Why would blurry things be a 'mess', and why would clear images be 'concretely defined'?

B> What is the definition of an archetype in this context, and what are some examples? In that line of thought, what is the definition of a motif in this context, and what are some examples?

Kafei wrote:Well, I think you'd be surprised at some of these awesome stories of this type of shared synaesthesia. ... So, I'm hesitant to pin it on mere suggestibility, because I believe there's more going on here.

I would not posit the power of suggestibility as something minor. 'Mere' nothing, suggestibility can be quite powerful. With that said, you are agreeing it could be. So that we're not going back and forth more than necessary, I'm not setting a trap here, it's not 'if you agree it's possible then it's all out the window!'. If it is a possible explanation, and other explanations exist that do not require extradimensional contact, that (as you seem to agree) would mean that until evidence presents itself withholding belief is justified.

Kafei wrote:Okay, I know I I omitted a lot here, but only 'cause I felt some of it was answered in the previous post I responded to. Sure, I suppose it's the "weakest form of scientific evidence," but in this particular endeavor, it's all we got when we're talking about the "psychedelic experience."

Michio Kaku doesn't even have that, and we don't consider the ideas of theoretical physicists to be hard science. Well, by that I mean there's no evidence, so there's no scientific consensus whether it's accurate or wildly innacurate. It's impossible to know with our current data.

Kafei wrote:At the "heroic dose," then it's as though you now have placed the magnet directly upon the iron filings, and they now all contort to this pattern, and now the background of perceived light is no longer visible, because it's replaced with this mandalic, fractalline iridescent pattern that has taken over your sight whether your eyes or open or closed, and it's at that point where the external influences are no longer there.

Alright, I actually reread this, I have people nibbling my ear at the moment, I may have to stop in my response soon if I do, I'll get to the rest of the next post. However it sounds to me as if you're saying hallucinations aren't always divorced from stimuli, it's only at the 'heroic dose'.

If I understand you, say something very very limited like trails, the trails are a hallucination, but they require the movement of something in the world (for instance a light pen) to come into being and therefore they are not completely within the mind. If that's what you meant I would say the trails still are completely within the mind, but that yes I can agree that you could influence them, I hope what I mean by trails was clear.

And what I mean by not dictated or influenced by the outside world is that to get stronger hallucinations, you'd have to affect the brain, perhaps with more drugs or some orange juice. If I get you right, I think we're at an accord there.

Kafei wrote:I could agree with that, but I haven't made any conclusions. A lot of what I've said thus far in this thread is speculatory and conjecture based not entirely on ignorance, but what I've read about these topics concerning entheogens and how these experiences are compared to eastern mysticism, the parallels between the insights there in M-theory

I was really tempted to stop here at this question, but I'll keep going, this however is the crux of my concern.

You agree that to draw conclusions based on what we do not know would be fallacious. Can you agree that we do not have evidence of the things you find interesting, that it is very reasonable for everyone, including yourself, to withhold belief?

Kafei wrote:What sounds like conjecture? What I mean by the mind is flooded with information, I was specifically referring to the hallucinations. Most people keep the part of the mind that allows them to think about the experience, so the experience itself can be very introspective.

What sounds like conjecture is to posit that part of the mind is unaffected, what you describe seems to be something that would necessarily impact all of the mind. If it does, it may be that these overwhelming sensations are simply very convincing.

Kafei wrote:Well, I'm borrowing 'epiphenomenon' in the context that it's used in Philosophy of Mind.

In your own words, how does your borrowed context use of 'epiphenomenon' stack up to my description thereof, was I accurate, inaccurate, are you left uncertain?

Kafei wrote:Sure, I can agree with that, only it seems redundant to call it a concept in that the very consciousness that is considering it a concept would also be considered a concept

That seems no more redundant than a vehicle with a large flatbed carrying another vehicle. Of course to be semantically precise I would say it is the physical processes of the brain that do the ACTUAL considering, and what we call the mind is our concept of what that physical brain is doing.

Kafei wrote: It's sort of like the "ego." When we say "I," what is the "I" which we refer to?

The current state of our brain. Our perceptions and personality. If you get a railroad spike through the noggin, and survive, your neurology would likely change, and you could well become a very different person. Same thing with strokes in some cases. What we think of as our individual selves is not some sovereign thing, immutable, as you point out. But "I" in this case, is an abstraction, what I consider to be an individual, is a collection of countless interworking organisms. That doesn't make it 'an illusion' anymore than the ocean is an illusion because it is made up of many individual drops of water.

Now, with all that settled, if you can agree the mind is a concept, proposing that it may be something more is not something I or even you should BELIEVE. Consider as potentially possible, maybe, but it isn't something you should believe because there is no evidence for it.

Kafei wrote:Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm arguing these points. I think a lot of research has been done to prove that this is so. That under the right conditions, and with the proper guidance from an experienced shaman or psychiatrist, these experiences can be supremely beneficial and positive.

You aren't arguing for that position? ...Moreover you aren't arguing for the position but you believe it is proven?

Wait, I think I got it. I'm using the term arguing as in 'making a case for the reasonableness thereof' rather than 'pointless kerfuffle'. Let me reiterate and see if I've touched on it.

With regards to factual claims, are you solely invested in pointing out that research has given rise to evidence that hallucinogenic usage can lead to positive results including lifestyle improvements and positive mood shifts, etc? And are the other claims something you consider secondary, things that fascinate you and that possibly you might feel that you intuit from the experience but have not invested yourself into it enough to say "I believe this is true"?

Kafei wrote:Citation.

"Eighteen volunteers wererandomly assigned to receive the active psilocybin doses in either an ascending dose sequence or a descending sequence. Although each volunteer received the 0 mg/70 kg condition once, across the nine volunteers in each of the ascending and descending sequences, the 0 mg/70 kg condition occurred twice on sessions 1, 2, 4, and 5, and once on session 3."

Everyone got the highest dose, which means even if you interpret their Pahnke–Richards item responses at 72%, edit- which I'm fine with, that's still not 100%, but 100% did get exposed to the highest doses.

Kafei wrote:So far, I haven't come across that. I'm not sure I can agree with that.

The study seems to have come across that.

Kafei wrote:Spontaneous healing? They're neurotransmitters. Why would you believe they do something like that?

Asking something is not akin to believing the thing you are asking, I asked that so as to be clear your stance on the issue.

Kafei wrote:I don't believe it was irrelevant. These experiences and the insight go hand-in-hand. Eastern philosophy is a comment on everything.

Then it seems your response should have been that you believe yes, he does understand about everything. Because to respond to a statement saying he doesn't know about everything, with 'he does have experience with this one thing' is still irrelevant to the statement. That you feel that means he knows about all things is your interpretation, but for it to be a viable response to oldskeptic, you have to point that out.

Kafei wrote:I disagree. I think it would help if it got more attention

That is irrelevant to what I was saying, I'm saying that Michio Kaku explaining a personal hallucinogen experience would not be meaningful evidence.

Kafei wrote:I'm not doing that. I don't gauge it on whether I disagree. I gauge it on the archetypes, of course. Because the motifs are universal. If someone says they took LSD, and their desk turned into an M. C. Escher sketch, and a lizard jumped out and crawled across the table, then it's likely this person is making all this up. I don't believe that this has anything whatsoever to do with a "No True Scotsman" fallacy, and if someone believes it does, then they're not really understanding what this experience truly involves

The point I was making has everything to do with a no true scotsman fallacy, and if you believe it doesn't, you're not really understanding what that fallacy truly involves.

Oldskeptic has assured you that he's taken hallucinogens in greater amounts, to assume he's wrong because he doesn't agree with you would be a no true scotsman fallacy. You admit you do not know because he hasn't explained it to you. Being unaware of his experiences doesn't mean you get to assume he's not taken enough, I hope you agree.

Kafei wrote:Well, I'm not the only one who does this. There have been a lot of authors, including theoretical physicists, that have written about the parallels between mysticism and modern physics. I believe my own psychedelic experiences have even helped me to better grasp some of these concepts in M-theory and string theory that most people find quite confounding.

You believe that, but you have said to someone else some weeks back that you don't think this experience will help you find your car keys. If you don't think it can give you knowledge in that regard, why do you think it can in this regard? It could simply be a convincing sensation.

Regardless, that you're not the only one who does this is irrelevant, many people go to church, that doesn't mean the god they worship within the church is real.

Kafei wrote:Well, if by "part of the experience," you mean they can influence one's experience, then sure. I mentioned this before, I'm not sure if it was in this thread. I said people’s beliefs about the DMT experience are also influenced by pre-existing beliefs. Those who are very attached to a materialistic view of reality will strive for a more reductionist explanation of the DMT experience in terms of the physical brain, its chemistry, etc. Whether they're right or not is undetermined.

Thank you.

So you can agree that in fact someone who you coin as materialist can have a conception of this experience which would not lead them to ground-of-all-being conclusions, even if you think they're incorrect?

Kafei wrote:The only thing we really have evidence of is that hallucinogens cause hallucinations. Where the hallucinations come from? Sure, we could say the brain, but this is an assumption.

No, we do have research that shows hallucinogens affect the brain.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles. ... lic-Brain/

That you could posit that the evidence we have doesn't necessarily mean the two are interrelated is one thing, but we do have evidence for consideration.

Kafei wrote:Well, quantum mind is a hypothesis that is built upon many different concepts. I mean, in one sense, we could say that we're truly ignorant about everything. We cannot fully describe a single atom, so from that standpoint, everything could be said to be an argument from ignorance, but I believe people have an innate nature to understand. That's why we have philosophy, this is why we extrapolate. Some people aren't content to simply say, "We don't know, therefore we've no right to say or think anything about it."

That is a straw man fallacy. I didn't say you had no right to say or think anything about it. I said it would be fallacious to draw conclusions based on what you do not know. And we have no evidence of the things you propose in this section.

Kafei wrote:They simply didn't refer to it as "mystical experience," they referred to it that way because people reporting a classical 'mystical experience' as described in ancient religion.

Citation please.

I think it had much more to do with the marsh chapel experiments, and the phrase didn't come about by comparing to descriptions of ancient experiences in religion, but by how the people in that experiment described them.

Kafei wrote:Well, you'd have to elaborate. You mean, you thought you were going to die?

I was put under sedation, during surgery prep I went into arrest, my heart stopped, my brain was becoming starved for oxygen, they resuscitated me.

Kafei wrote:He hasn't said anything about his experience, so I've nothing to say. But this "No True Scotsman" thing I believe is completely irrelevant either way. The way I see it, because this could also be described as being ultimately a physiological response, it's like saying, "I drank a full bottle of Everclear, and I didn't even get drunk!" That defies pharmacodynamics. It's impossible. If that doesn't get you completely wasted, it'd probably kill you.

EXACTLY, you believe it's IMPOSSIBLE for someone to take these drugs and not have the experience you expect them to. That you believe this is pharmacodynamics at work is your assumption, not set fact. That is why we're telling you you're committing a no true scotsman fallacy.

Kafei wrote:I'll take the position of empirical agnosticism on this one.

That would be a 'yes, it is reasonable to withhold belief'.

To refactor back to our Neil deGrasse Tyson days...Lack of belief does not require positive knowledge of something.

To say "I can't say I lack belief in god because I don't have a definition of god." is flawed. Do you have an active belief in a god? if not, then you lack belief. Belief is active, disbelief (as in not believing, not as in asserting falsehood) is passive, one does that at any time in which they are not believing.

For instance, I can lack belief in a well on an old Texas farm. That well could certainly exist, and it is not going a step too far to say someone can lack belief in that well without knowing about it. To think that I can't withhold belief because I don't know enough about the question at hand it implies a requirement for lacking belief that simply is not there.

Kafei wrote:There's no fallacy involved. They don't necessarily have to agree with my conjecture about the implications of the experience, and I think that's what you think I mean by "agreeing with me." What I'm saying is that they will experience, necessarily, the motifs, the universal archetypes which accompany the "heroic dose" experiences. There's no fallacy there, and this is all peer-reviewed, scientifically-proven, etc. It'd be pointless to argue that.

The citation you showed me seems to disagree with you, and it was the exact study I was thinking no less.

But I'm glad you agree that they don't have to agree with you about the implications, if you made that clear at first, you would likely get less pushback. "Research shows the high dosage of hallucinogens can give these sensations" is not a very controversial claim, after all.

Kafei wrote:But no one's arguing that smoking DMT is a glimpse into 11-dimensional hyperspace. That's why I don't believe this thread belongs here. No one here is arguing that these things should be married.

But you do interlink them, and you have made arguments that extend far beyond simply stating that taking hallucinogens can produce certain sensations. That is why this thread is here.

Now, that was long, longer than I expected. I can't go through and edit it, much, so this may be messy and if so let me offer my apologies.

Edit - And, one thing I've asked a few times now...

Kafei wrote:Well, it's not my assumption, it's based off people who have been affected in this way. Even the founder of A.A. (alcoholics anonymous) experimented with LSD with his patients and was quite successful with a 50% cure rate without recidivism. That's pretty impressive, if you ask me. And that's just a modest example.

Where is that study, I know of Bill Wilsons interest, but where is that study?

And let me end with this question.

What is the point you are hoping to make here, and would you kindly spell it out in detail in your own words?

Kafei wrote:There's no fallacy involved. They don't necessarily have to agree with my conjecture about the implications of the experience, and I think that's what you think I mean by "agreeing with me." What I'm saying is that they will experience, necessarily, the motifs, the universal archetypes which accompany the "heroic dose" experiences. There's no fallacy there, and this is all peer-reviewed, scientifically-proven, etc. It'd be pointless to argue that.

I think 'universal archetypes' is a rather loaded description.

It does somewhat carry baggage of a of Jungian-style connection to a currently-existing common source of experience, when in reality what happens when a brain isn't functioning properly may be no more than a historical artifact resulting from the way brains happened to evolve and function.
Indeed, there seems to be no evidence that what happens actually is anything more than that.

For example, when I wake up in the morning, and before opening my eyes, I look at the drifting light/dark bands slowly rippling across my vision, I'm not looking at a 'universal archetype', I'm looking at something between a free-running understimulated sensory system and a visual-system calibration pattern. What I see is just what eye/brains do in a particular state, with no particular high meaning.

Kafei wrote:

I'm not doing that. I don't gauge it on whether I disagree. I gauge it on the archetypes, of course. Because the motifs are universal. If someone says they took LSD, and their desk turned into an M. C. Escher sketch, and a lizard jumped out and crawled across the table, then it's likely this person is making all this up. I don't believe that this has anything whatsoever to do with a "No True Scotsman" fallacy, and if someone believes it does, then they're not really understanding what this experience truly involves

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

The point I was making has everything to do with a no true scotsman fallacy, and if you believe it doesn't, you're not really understanding what that fallacy truly involves.

I think that he does understand what the fallacy involves because he's tried to argue his way out of it with his Everclear analogy. What we have is a steadfast refusal to admit that he is committing the fallacy because a great deal of his argument is based on it. It's really no different than a Christian saying that if you pray enough you will experience God, and when someone says that they prayed and didn't experience God the Christian saying, "Well then, you didn't pray enough." In fact this form Kafei:

It is reasonable to withhold belief. That's what I did prior to my own experience. That's why I can't blame someone who does that, but I understand their ignorance.

Could be right out of the mouth of the Christian or any true believer. Not believing as Kafei does is due to ignorance pure and simple. And that ignorance has to be because they didn't take enough of the drug, there can be no other explanation. An explanation that Kafei is simply wrong will not do.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Oldskeptic has assured you that he's taken hallucinogens in greater amounts, to assume he's wrong because he doesn't agree with you would be a no true scotsman fallacy. You admit you do not know because he hasn't explained it to you. Being unaware of his experiences doesn't mean you get to assume he's not taken enough, I hope you agree.

Well, I can't assure Kafei that I've taken greater amounts than he has of anything because I don't know what he has taken. What I can assure him of is that I have taken very very large does of LSD, synthetic mescaline, mescaline, and mushrooms. And I have had most of the hallucinatory experiences he has described. Where we differ is that I don't believe that I had any type of mystical experience.

It takes some kind of religious disposition to have a religious experience, and that is what Kafei and his guru promote; religious experience to be believed not known. Everything else, from timeless and universal motifs and archetypes to parallels to QM and M-theory are only apologetics for a new age type religion lacking any foundation. I've heard arguments as good as Kafei gives for everything from the healing power of crystals to the existence of angels to the ancient wisdom of Atlantis to the Great Pyramids being built by aliens.

Oldskeptic wrote:Well, I can't assure Kafei that I've taken greater amounts than he has of anything because I don't know what he has taken.

My apologies! I wasn't paying proper attention to the conversation before my arrival it seems. It was a lot of material to cover in a short time.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:Well, I can't assure Kafei that I've taken greater amounts than he has of anything because I don't know what he has taken.

My apologies! I wasn't paying proper attention to the conversation before my arrival it seems. It was a lot of material to cover in a short time.

No problem, just keeping the record straight.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:It truly is. I've lost probably hours of typing to that.

Sit back, relax, have a coffee! The nightmare is over. Also, realizing the size of this, if you feel the need to parse it down, I think we can reduce it to some core points of contention here, I think we're moving that direction pretty well just by eliminating things we aren't disagreeing on. Of course if you think I'm being presumptuous there I leave myself open to your disagreement, but if I'm not mistaken we can probably neaten up the discussion a bit, it will lessen my time away from other things and it will likely also increase the readability of the discussion, I know how eager you are to have people exposed to these ideas and it could help in that regard.

You think about it!

Kafei wrote:You know, if you truly have a grip on M-theory, what it's saying is that our three-dimensional reality now is a slice of hyperspace. That everything, in a sense, is "contacting hyperspace."

And that is a hypothesis which is unproven, A.

and B: By 'contacting hyperspace' I mean giving we three dimensional beings an ability to perceive a fourth dimension.

Yes, this is definitely the impression that many people have during the experience. Of course, we have no evidence, but what we do have evidence of is that this seems to be a commonly reported description of the experience. If you take a look at Dr. Rick Strassman's book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" (which is available to view for free online), you'll find that he points out that many people used the description "fourth dimensional" or "beyond dimensionality" to describe the experience.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:I think we both need to read some Rudy Rucker.

Good stuff. If that was an invitation to comment let me know, it just made me smile.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:If it were the case, that minds could contact 11-dimensional hyperspace, then it might imply that consciousness at its root is, in some sense, 11-dimensional hyperspace. So, why would it be "outside"? Are we talking "outside" in a physical sense, as in outside the three-dimensional skull? It may be that "outside" and "inside" no longer mean anything in hyperspace, because hyperspace contains both. These are all interesting concepts, and they could keep you ruminating for days.

I've responded to this already. 'both' would still mean it's ALSO outside. Also, the way you're looking at extradimensionality might not be how I would describe it. If there was a two dimensional plane in front of us, we could see all of it, let's say a little blip person, a two dimensional entity was drowning in a patch of blue, we could pull him into the third dimension and deposit him back anywhere we so wish. That does not mean that I, the three dimensional being, am everywhere, both inside and outside of him, at all times.

There's this book that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. wrote titled "Slaughterhouse-Five." He wrote about a fictional race of extraterrestrials that are able to perceive in the fourth-dimension called Tralfamadorians. Since they exists in all times simultaneously, they have total access to past, present, and future; they are able to perceive any point in time at will. However, this is only one spatial dimensional higher. The parallels made between eastern mysticism, as on the notion of Brahman are compared to the 11-dimensional hyperspace of M-theory, so that what you call "you" is no longer constricted to your three-dimensional being or what Alan Watts called the "skin encapsulated ego." In Hinduism, it is referred to as "Self" with a capital S. In other words, self is redefined to mean this "one with all" sense. In the previous page, I posed this question to tolman, and I'll link to that page here. I asked, "In what sense is everything interconnected?" or "In what sense is everything one?" It would seem that the Self is redefined by the mystic to encompass everything. The Hindus refer to this as "non-duality." This is transcendent of any dualism, so that's why I think it's hard to say whether we can call this an "inside" or an "outside." It would be like saying the "inside" of a mobius strip or the "edge" of an ouroboros. You may have listened to this before, but I'd like to bring to your attention once again. It's a clip of Watts. Listen out for "Final Self," because this "voidness" or the insight which the mystics speak about is defined here.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:It is reasonable to withhold belief. That's what I did prior to my own experience. That's why I can't blame someone who does that, but I understand their ignorance.

Bingo! You had an experience within your mind, that you feel could be, might be, maybe sensing dimensions beyond the observable dimensions. You (seem to) agree that your feelings are not evidence that your interpretation of what you felt is correct, and that your experience is not evidence that your interpretation of what you felt is correct.

No, I was talking about the experience itself eliciting the mystical experience. I was intellectually set-up, like most rationalists and skeptics, to doubt that such an experience could be induced, that such an experience was even a possibility in consciousness. I don't think I could have been convinced that something like that did exist without having the experience itself.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:So I withhold belief based on my ignorance, and I offer that your experience does not provide evidence of the things I was discussing. If you feel it does, it is based on your own assumptions of knowledge, not actual knowledge.

Well, you're referring to the feelings of it being some sort of glimpse into a higher topological manifold. I feel that the experience offers evidence of this type of religious experience.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, by "same source," I was referring to Perennial Philosophy. It one aspect, it could be as the "same source," in that the founders of the major religion are all drawing from mystical experience.

A> That's not necessarily true, they may not have had what these scientists coin 'the mystical experience'.

Scientists didn't coin mystical experience, they borrowed the term from religion.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:B> Even assuming they all did, that they all had this experience in some way and decided to create religions based upon it, that does not mean that they were 'kinda right' to draw these divine conclusions and only mistook it. It could be that it is completely divorced from anything extradimensional, anything outside of their own minds. Without evidence, we are justified in withholding belief that they did.

Well, of course, people then didn't interpret it as being "higher dimensional," but used equally powerful metaphors as in the transcendental, that which is beyond, the spiritual, etc. Heaven, in a way, could be viewed as a kind of hyperspace.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:The implication being is that if it were all a blurry mess, then one experience couldn't really be distinguished from another experience. However, if it is concretely defined, then a coherent overlap can be drawn, and that's why these archetypal patterns, these motifs are said to be universal.

A> Why would blurry things be a 'mess', and why would clear images be 'concretely defined'?

Well, the experience itself is in no sense blurry. These vivid and sharp images are reported even by those with poor vision. You see, if it's highly detailed, then it could be described more descriptively, and it's within these descriptions that you can arrive at a consensus.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:B> What is the definition of an archetype in this context, and what are some examples? In that line of thought, what is the definition of a motif in this context, and what are some examples?

Well, I'm referring to various recurring themes that aren't unique to the individual, but are universal to anyone who has this experience. One example is the archetype of Agapism or the Agapé that is felt within the experience, a powerful emotive sensitivity that is not sexual in nature, but rather spiritual or, if you prefer, maternal. The overwhelming feeling of interconnectivity is another one, the feeling that we are all one. Then, you have the visual motifs of which there are many, but most common are the mandalic patterns, the kaleidoscopic iridescent fractals are probably the most reported. Chris Kilham, if you had watched that link I left, mentions a few more, but those are probably the major ones right there.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, I think you'd be surprised at some of these awesome stories of this type of shared synaesthesia. ... So, I'm hesitant to pin it on mere suggestibility, because I believe there's more going on here.

I would not posit the power of suggestibility as something minor. 'Mere' nothing, suggestibility can be quite powerful. With that said, you are agreeing it could be. So that we're not going back and forth more than necessary, I'm not setting a trap here, it's not 'if you agree it's possible then it's all out the window!'. If it is a possible explanation, and other explanations exist that do not require extradimensional contact, that (as you seem to agree) would mean that until evidence presents itself withholding belief is justified.

Well, for instance, if you were under the influence of ayahuasca right now, and I hit an instrument that made a "ping" sound, it's possible to undergo a synaesthesic effect upon hearing this sound. It would manifest as visual modality where you'd see the "ping" grow in intensity as the sound reached its highest pitch, then disappear into nothingness as the sound faded away. What I was trying to hint at is this synaesthetic effect of ayahuasca might occur similarly in individuals with normal color vision.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Okay, I know I I omitted a lot here, but only 'cause I felt some of it was answered in the previous post I responded to. Sure, I suppose it's the "weakest form of scientific evidence," but in this particular endeavor, it's all we got when we're talking about the "psychedelic experience."

Michio Kaku doesn't even have that, and we don't consider the ideas of theoretical physicists to be hard science. Well, by that I mean there's no evidence, so there's no scientific consensus whether it's accurate or wildly innacurate. It's impossible to know with our current data.

Sure, with our current data. Kaku will often say that there's no one smart on Earth to prove string theory, and we lack the technological sophistication to create an experiment that would attempt to prove string theory, but on the other hand, a lot of what M-theory and string theory is are huge leaps of logic based on what we know today about physics and extrapolated into the future.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:At the "heroic dose," then it's as though you now have placed the magnet directly upon the iron filings, and they now all contort to this pattern, and now the background of perceived light is no longer visible, because it's replaced with this mandalic, fractalline iridescent pattern that has taken over your sight whether your eyes or open or closed, and it's at that point where the external influences are no longer there.

Alright, I actually reread this, I have people nibbling my ear at the moment, I may have to stop in my response soon if I do, I'll get to the rest of the next post. However it sounds to me as if you're saying hallucinations aren't always divorced from stimuli, it's only at the 'heroic dose'.

Yes, that's one good way to gauge a heroic dose, too. I mean, if you still had some sort of grip on reality, then you probably didn't take a heroic dose, because 'your' heroic dose is going to be that which will confer this experience for you. That's why it's not a concrete or specific amount. It's based on a whole slew of factors such as your bodyweight, your ADME, whether you've fasted or eat at the time of taking these things, etc. If we're talking about psilocybin mushrooms, then one big factor is the psilocybin content contained within the mushrooms. This varies greatly amongst species of psilocybin-containing mushrooms.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:If I understand you, say something very very limited like trails, the trails are a hallucination, but they require the movement of something in the world (for instance a light pen) to come into being and therefore they are not completely within the mind. If that's what you meant I would say the trails still are completely within the mind, but that yes I can agree that you could influence them, I hope what I mean by trails was clear.

We're definitely putting out a better picture.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:And what I mean by not dictated or influenced by the outside world is that to get stronger hallucinations, you'd have to affect the brain, perhaps with more drugs or some orange juice. If I get you right, I think we're at an accord there.

I think we're getting close to a congruence.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:I could agree with that, but I haven't made any conclusions. A lot of what I've said thus far in this thread is speculatory and conjecture based not entirely on ignorance, but what I've read about these topics concerning entheogens and how these experiences are compared to eastern mysticism, the parallels between the insights there in M-theory

I was really tempted to stop here at this question, but I'll keep going, this however is the crux of my concern.

You agree that to draw conclusions based on what we do not know would be fallacious. Can you agree that we do not have evidence of the things you find interesting, that it is very reasonable for everyone, including yourself, to withhold belief?

I never claimed there was evidence. I mean, we have no real theory, we have conjecture, we have hypotheses, but we have very little that is concrete to go on. What I think these various efforts are is trying to get some kind of intellectual handle on this phenomenon.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:What sounds like conjecture? What I mean by the mind is flooded with information, I was specifically referring to the hallucinations. Most people keep the part of the mind that allows them to think about the experience, so the experience itself can be very introspective.

What sounds like conjecture is to posit that part of the mind is unaffected, what you describe seems to be something that would necessarily impact all of the mind. If it does, it may be that these overwhelming sensations are simply very convincing.

You see, now if you had this experience, why would you ask such a question?

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, I'm borrowing 'epiphenomenon' in the context that it's used in Philosophy of Mind.

In your own words, how does your borrowed context use of 'epiphenomenon' stack up to my description thereof, was I accurate, inaccurate, are you left uncertain?

Well, let's see, here's what you said:

TinyTypingDragon wrote:There are a few meanings for your phrase there. My unconscious habits are (in part) an epiphenomenon of my daily patterns, my desires, and my psychological coping mechanisms. However, my unconscious habits are distinct from the factors that create it. I was going to object because 'secondary traits' implies more than one factor involved, in this case it would be implying the brain and something else work together and the mind is a secondary trait thereof, but as long as I understand you, that's all I'm really concerned with.

Well, in the context I was using it in, I meant mind as something as a byproduct of the physical brain, but nevertheless unexplained. PoM talks about qualia, mind-body dualism, and a whole bunch of other elements related to irreducibility.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Can you agree that what we call the mind is a concept, a descriptive meant to encompass our known expectations for that three dimensional organ, and we have no proof the mind is anything more than that?

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote: It's sort of like the "ego." When we say "I," what is the "I" which we refer to?

The current state of our brain. Our perceptions and personality. If you get a railroad spike through the noggin, and survive, your neurology would likely change, and you could well become a very different person. Same thing with strokes in some cases. What we think of as our individual selves is not some sovereign thing, immutable, as you point out. But "I" in this case, is an abstraction, what I consider to be an individual, is a collection of countless interworking organisms. I don't disagree with you there.

Yes, but the countless interworking organisms that you had in your body several years ago are different from the ones you have now.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm arguing these points. I think a lot of research has been done to prove that this is so. That under the right conditions, and with the proper guidance from an experienced shaman or psychiatrist, these experiences can be supremely beneficial and positive.

You aren't arguing for that position? ...Moreover you aren't arguing for the position but you believe it is proven?

Wait, I think I got it. I'm using the term arguing as in 'making a case for the reasonableness thereof' rather than 'pointless kerfuffle'. Let me reiterate and see if I've touched on it.

With regards to factual claims, are you solely invested in pointing out that research has given rise to evidence that hallucinogenic usage can lead to positive results including lifestyle improvements and positive mood shifts, etc? And are the other claims something you consider secondary, things that fascinate you and that possibly you might feel that you intuit from the experience but have not invested yourself into it enough to say "I believe this is true"?

Yes, that's right. However, what I find more interesting than the beneficial aspect (which can be important for some people) is the fact that this can induce mystical experience. It can induce an experience that can challenge your point-of-view whether you're a Buddhist or an atheist. I believe things like DMT or psilocybin are like objects that have fallen off a UFO. They're like miracles.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Citation.

"Eighteen volunteers wererandomly assigned to receive the active psilocybin doses in either an ascending dose sequence or a descending sequence. Although each volunteer received the 0 mg/70 kg condition once, across the nine volunteers in each of the ascending and descending sequences, the 0 mg/70 kg condition occurred twice on sessions 1, 2, 4, and 5, and once on session 3."

Everyone got the highest dose, which means even if you interpret their Pahnke–Richards item responses at 72%, edit- which I'm fine with, that's still not 100%, but 100% did get exposed to the highest doses.

The highest doses relative to the experiment. You know, the LD-50 of psilocybin is very high. That means you could potentially take 3x the highest amount in the experiment, and still be far away from a toxic or fatal dose. I believe if you went even 1.5x or 2x, then you'd see that 70% drastically change. I believe it could potentially reach 100%.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:So far, I haven't come across that. I'm not sure I can agree with that.

The study seems to have come across that.

Well, like I said, they only went up to 30mg per 70kg of bodyweight. Some people may require more than that. I don't believe the test showed that, because they were operating at the very edge of this threshold, and I'm sure of those 30% of those individuals who had the high dose and reported no so-called "mystical experience" might've had not much of an experience at all.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Spontaneous healing? They're neurotransmitters. Why would you believe they do something like that?

Asking something is not akin to believing the thing you are asking, I asked that so as to be clear your stance on the issue.

I've been trying my best to be as clear as possible, but I always find myself attempting again and again to disambiguate.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:I don't believe it was irrelevant. These experiences and the insight go hand-in-hand. Eastern philosophy is a comment on everything.

Then it seems your response should have been that you believe yes, he does understand about everything. Because to respond to a statement saying he doesn't know about everything, with 'he does have experience with this one thing' is still irrelevant to the statement. That you feel that means he knows about all things is your interpretation, but for it to be a viable response to oldskeptic, you have to point that out.

Well, it seems I only have to point it out to you, to others it may have been intuitively understood without need to point whatever it is that you thought was irrelevant out.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:I disagree. I think it would help if it got more attention

That is irrelevant to what I was saying, I'm saying that Michio Kaku explaining a personal hallucinogen experience would not be meaningful evidence.

Meaningful evidence relative to what? I'm saying it would help to understand the experience in and of itself.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:I'm not doing that. I don't gauge it on whether I disagree. I gauge it on the archetypes, of course. Because the motifs are universal. If someone says they took LSD, and their desk turned into an M. C. Escher sketch, and a lizard jumped out and crawled across the table, then it's likely this person is making all this up. I don't believe that this has anything whatsoever to do with a "No True Scotsman" fallacy, and if someone believes it does, then they're not really understanding what this experience truly involves

The point I was making has everything to do with a no true scotsman fallacy, and if you believe it doesn't, you're not really understanding what that fallacy truly involves.

I'm quite aware what it involves, but... what's the point of this statement?

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Oldskeptic has assured you that he's taken hallucinogens in greater amounts, to assume he's wrong because he doesn't agree with you would be a no true scotsman fallacy. You admit you do not know because he hasn't explained it to you. Being unaware of his experiences doesn't mean you get to assume he's not taken enough, I hope you agree.

Yes, he said he had taken greater amounts relative to what I've taken. There's just one issue here. I never said how much I had taken. He's just assuming that whatever I took, he had taken greater, but never admitted anything more than that about the experience. So, like I said, there's not much to base a conclusion on here.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, I'm not the only one who does this. There have been a lot of authors, including theoretical physicists, that have written about the parallels between mysticism and modern physics. I believe my own psychedelic experiences have even helped me to better grasp some of these concepts in M-theory and string theory that most people find quite confounding.

You believe that, but you have said to someone else some weeks back that you don't think this experience will help you find your car keys. If you don't think it can give you knowledge in that regard, why do you think it can in this regard? It could simply be a convincing sensation.

Well, finding 'car keys' is something very particular. I believe that the feeling involves is so immense, so titanic that it can only arrive through a very powerful intuition. I mentioned this in a previous page, but it's worth mentioning again. You mentioned 'car keys,' and that's not an easy thing to answer. Kaku talks about that the original location for the LHC being in the U.S.A., but in a conference, when a physicist was asked the key question by a congressman, "We will find God with the super collider?" The physicist's response was, "We're going to discover the Higs Boson." Jaws dropped and it was cancelled. It would've been 3x bigger than the current LHC. Kaku said that he would've answered that question like this:

"God, by whatever signs or symbols we ascribe to the deity, this machine will take us as close as humanly possible to his greatest creation: Genesis. This is a genesis machine. It's a machine designed to probe the greatest event of the history of the universe, its birth."

Now, this is just Kaku, if you're familiar with his work, just pleasing the crowd there to get a project like that going using such words as "deity." But the point is that the LHC, aside from describing the birth of the universe and fulfilling mathematical hypothesis concerning "higher dimensions," its fruits couldn't solve San Antonio's drought problem or find your keys. Billions of dollars would've have spent, yet its practically doesn't really affect your life very much except in that you'll have certain questions answered regarding the Big Bang. Well, this experience I'm referring to is something like that, that what you come back with is an insight so (for lack of a better word) deep that the only real thing it could help you find in the here and now is peace of mind. Yogananda Paramahansa, a Hindu yogi, once said, "Intuition is the soul's power for knowing God."

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Regardless, that you're not the only one who does this is irrelevant, many people go to church, that doesn't mean the god they worship within the church is real.

Well, I wasn't striving for an argumentum ad populum here. I'm saying that even people who aren't associated with mysticism, such as theoretical physicists, have noticed these parallels.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:So you can agree that in fact someone who you coin as materialist can have a conception of this experience which would not lead them to ground-of-all-being conclusions, even if you think they're incorrect?

Did you, by any chance, look at the posts I left Tolman? They were self-described rationalists and skeptics attempting deduce the DMT experience. They wrote some pretty interesting material. The "ground of all being" is a religious metaphor, and if you're not familiar with that, then you're probably not going to have it enter into your interpretation, but it could nevertheless be assimilated once introduced.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:The only thing we really have evidence of is that hallucinogens cause hallucinations. Where the hallucinations come from? Sure, we could say the brain, but this is an assumption.

No, we do have research that shows hallucinogens affect the brain.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles. ... lic-Brain/

That you could posit that the evidence we have doesn't necessarily mean the two are interrelated is one thing, but we do have evidence for consideration.

That page didn't account for the hallucinations. Just that psychedelics effect the brain. Well, of course, we know this. I don't think it takes a scientist these days to realize that. The sort of things people report on psychedelics. As Terence would famously describe, "What I'm interested in are full-field, 360 degree visionary scenarios of jungles, deserts, ice fields, ruined cities, machine scapes and a whole bunch of other stuff that which is not so easily dropped into any category of experience that we're familiar with, but highly organized, three-dimensional, self-sustaining transformed modalities that you cannot pour language over. I mean, when you try and say what it is, all you can say is what it isn't." - Terence McKenna

Someone also posted this article which is interesting, but based on assumption.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, quantum mind is a hypothesis that is built upon many different concepts. I mean, in one sense, we could say that we're truly ignorant about everything. We cannot fully describe a single atom, so from that standpoint, everything could be said to be an argument from ignorance, but I believe people have an innate nature to understand. That's why we have philosophy, this is why we extrapolate. Some people aren't content to simply say, "We don't know, therefore we've no right to say or think anything about it."

That is a straw man fallacy. I didn't say you had no right to say or think anything about it. I said it would be fallacious to draw conclusions based on what you do not know. And we have no evidence of the things you propose in this section.

It's not a straw man fallacy, because I am not drawing any concrete conclusions. I was referring to conjecture. Just because we don't know, doesn't mean we can't speculate. I may satisfy myself with what I believe may be an answer, but I don't parade it as truth.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:They simply didn't refer to it as "mystical experience," they referred to it that way because people reporting a classical 'mystical experience' as described in ancient religion.

Citation please.

Citation This is the questionairre used in the John Hopkins study. You'll find the description in the introduction, and it clearly states that it's referring to a classic mystical experience as described in religion throughout history.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:Well, you'd have to elaborate. You mean, you thought you were going to die?

I was put under sedation, during surgery prep I went into arrest, my heart stopped, my brain was becoming starved for oxygen, they resuscitated me.

Do you have any recollection whatsoever or do you remember any form of consciousness at all?

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:He hasn't said anything about his experience, so I've nothing to say. But this "No True Scotsman" thing I believe is completely irrelevant either way. The way I see it, because this could also be described as being ultimately a physiological response, it's like saying, "I drank a full bottle of Everclear, and I didn't even get drunk!" That defies pharmacodynamics. It's impossible. If that doesn't get you completely wasted, it'd probably kill you.

EXACTLY, you believe it's IMPOSSIBLE for someone to take these drugs and not have the experience you expect them to. That you believe this is pharmacodynamics at work is your assumption, not set fact. That is why we're telling you you're committing a no true scotsman fallacy.

It's not a No True Scotsman fallacy because it's not how I expect them to react, it's how they should react according to pharmacodynamics, according to their physiology, etc.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:There's no fallacy involved. They don't necessarily have to agree with my conjecture about the implications of the experience, and I think that's what you think I mean by "agreeing with me." What I'm saying is that they will experience, necessarily, the motifs, the universal archetypes which accompany the "heroic dose" experiences. There's no fallacy there, and this is all peer-reviewed, scientifically-proven, etc. It'd be pointless to argue that.

The citation you showed me seems to disagree with you, and it was the exact study I was thinking no less.

I think you got to read more into dose response, what constitutes as a threshold dose, etc. You'll find that it was possible for some people in the study to not have been effected at 30mg/70kg., and then you'll see that 70% actually makes sense.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:But I'm glad you agree that they don't have to agree with you about the implications, if you made that clear at first, you would likely get less pushback. "Research shows the high dosage of hallucinogens can give these sensations" is not a very controversial claim, after all.

I suppose I was operating under the impression that I had made all that clear. I'm quite careful as to what I type here.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:

Kafei wrote:But no one's arguing that smoking DMT is a glimpse into 11-dimensional hyperspace. That's why I don't believe this thread belongs here. No one here is arguing that these things should be married.

But you do interlink them, and you have made arguments that extend far beyond simply stating that taking hallucinogens can produce certain sensations. That is why this thread is here.

It's here 'cause people misinterpreted it as that. As though psychedelics allow you to do that in a believed literal sense. That was never the claim. I believe they have been interlinked through the parallels that have been acknowledged by physicists, by mystics, etc. Whether 11-dimensional hyperspace and Brahman are truly synonymous, who knows for sure? I was pointing out parallels made between the two concepts, because the phrase "Ground of All Being" is often used to describe Brahman in Hinduism.

TinyTypingDragon wrote:Now, that was long, longer than I expected. I can't go through and edit it, much, so this may be messy and if so let me offer my apologies.

But, let me end with this question.

What is the point you are hoping to make here, and would you kindly spell it out in detail in your own words?

Well, I'd like to elaborate on the parallels and the mystical experience, but the people in this thread do not seem interested in that in the least. I've noticed, and I don't know how true this is, that most people I encounter on the net who take this position of "rational atheism" seem to have a disliking for things like String Theory and M-Theory. It's not considered science in any sense of the word to them, and isn't ultimately worth their time. Kaku believes it's the only game in town to having an ultimate description of the universe. Go figure.

So are you guys smarter than everyone else because of this drug use? Do you have insights into 'reality' that actually affect anyones day-to-day? If so, please share. If not, what is the point? Why not do science instead?