In any case, this is why I think philosophy is the required work to be done so that we can invite spiritualism and mysticism into our lives and potentially experience them with these reality altering drugs.
This is only true at the physical level. At another level, the only thing that “exists” is a mind. If all you have is a bunch of rocks floating through space with nothing to perceive it, the universe is indistinguishable from emptiness. Experience lives at the intersection of instantiated reality and thought / perception. You need both.
You can also imagine travelling along the axis of an idea or an archetype through time and space. For example, the idea of lovers or warriors or something. Each instantiation of that idea in someone exists along that axis. The idea can only come into being inside a physical reality or simulation. But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe.
Ideas aren’t made out of atoms.
Ideas are mental concepts, thoughts, or notions that exist in the mind.
As far as we know, there’s no evidence of mind-independent ideas. We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds.
> We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds.
Its symmetric. We can also only access the physical world through our minds too. We have no way to verify it exists without a mind. Actually we have no way to verify it exists at all in the form we perceive it - since it might just be a big simulation.
In that sense, I have more direct evidence of my ideas than I do the world, since I can perceive ideas directly. (I say "my ideas" not "our ideas" because I can't tell as easily if you exist.)
If you see a large enough, dangerous-looking enough animal in person and up close, you will respond physically without a single thought or idea. If you didn't, evolutionarily you wouldn’t exist.
This is because you are parallel systems. Ideas are not primary experience.
The physical responses that could save your life are pre-mind, and testably extant within you.
> I have more direct evidence of my ideas than I do the world, since I can perceive ideas directly.
Also, and perhaps to be considered separately, you have no evidence that your ideas are directly perceived, only that they are qualitatively different from what you have been educated to second-order understand as sensory input.
> The physical responses that could save your life are pre-mind, and testably extant within you.
Yes you’re right. There’s a mountain of things that we do that we don’t have conscious control over. There’s multiple ways to think about that.
First is that we simply aren’t masters of every corner of our minds and bodies. But so what? Nothing I said requires us to have full control or full knowledge of ourselves. The existence of reflexes doesn’t directly counter any of my claims.
Another way to think about it is by changing the definition of self / mind to only include the things in our direct perception and control. After all, the boundary of self and world is incredibly fuzzy at the best of times. Are your fingernails “you”? If I accidentally touch something hot with my hand, “I” don’t choose to flinch my hand back. I could consider that reaction part of the external world, not part of me. Interestingly that definition implies self mastery makes “you” bigger. When children stop having tantrums, they bring their emotions under control of their mind. In the process, the part that is them gets bigger to encompass their newfound control.
My physical reaction to tigers also in no way disproves the simulation hypothesis. None of us can directly perceive a tiger.
> you have no evidence that your ideas are directly perceived
Interesting! What do you think we do have evidence of directly perceiving? Surely not a tiger.
I perceive thoughts. I don’t perceive my sensory data - but I do perceive my interpretation of my sensory data. (I don’t see pixels or sound samples. I see blue chair, door, ... I hear dog barking (low pitch), I feel headache feeling, etc). I think that’s good evidence that a pattern of “chair” and “dog” exists in my mind. And I can think about the number 4. When I do that, something happens in my mind. I don’t think I’m perceiving “four” with my sensory system. But the thought has to exist somewhere, right?
This is a big conclusion to state with no justification and no definitions.
You seem to equate simulation hypothesis with solipsism. Are you actually equating these?
> I perceive thoughts. I don’t perceive my sensory data — but I do perceive my interpretation of my sensory data. (I don’t see pixels or sound samples…
You are missing the fact that in your view all of that sensory information, and all of what you learned about how it works, is simulation. You cannot rely on the fact that pixels are something you have observed to tell you that pixels should be your fundamental light sensory units.
It seems also to be mistaken reasoning that a simulation should emerge from present-era computing and electronic sensing principles.
> And I can think about the number 4. When I do that, something happens in my mind. I don’t think I am perceiving “four” with my sensory system. But the thought has to exist somewhere, right?
Yes, but think about how you got there. You thought about 4. How is that critically experientially different from looking at the door handle. Or listening to the rain.
To answer your question, without having considered the answer much: I think the only things I actually do are perhaps observe, explore and exercise volition.
Their instantiations are based on either some physical hardwiring (instincts) or cultivated though observations. If an idea has the appearance of being eternal, it's because either there's a process in place for that physical structure to be replicated though time, or because new minds are making essentially the same observations.
I suspect even some of the most "eternal" of ideas are less so than you might think. If we were capable of communicating with a human from 100,000 years ago, in detail, how many identical ideas would we share? I think it would be very few, given that many people's ideas already differ subtlety even when they live in similar environments.
Obviously humans perceive 2-ness. And if you crushed all our minds to dust, nobody would remember 2. But would that really destroy the number? If an alien civilisation in another universe counted things, I think it might be the very same number 2 that they use to count.
Numbers show up in a lot of different cultures. If we all independently reinvented / rediscovered the same thing, that’s interesting - don’t you think?
It's not hard to see why the same useful inventions emerged in similar environments.
And again, the physical cannot be perceived except through a mind of some kind. To play devils advocate, we can imagine the universe existing without a mind to observe it - but it’s just that - an imagination.
This is an amazing line. I must admit: the first time I tried LSD I had some code open on my laptop. Before the trip I was curious what programming on LSD would be like, so at some point dutifully I sat down in front of my editor. I was immediately utterly transfixed by the colours of the text cursor as it pulsed. Then I lost myself watching hover states as I moved the mouse around. Needless to say, I didn’t get any programming done.
I remember thinking how strange and hilarious it was that, while sober, I care at all about programming. It all seemed so hollow.
A lot more happened on the trip - the whole thing was incredibly profound and insightful. But all these years later, I still have a crystal clear image of that pulsing cursor etched in my memory.
And I also had my laptop close by to maybe take notes, but the screen was really stressfull.
Watching wild nature in the sun was much more enjoyable.
One time I played CSGO on acid, my brain might be exaggerating the memory but I swear I played like a master. Maybe I just had easy games but it really felt like I was playing much better than usual and I was dominating.
Also played satisfactory once, though with that I just ended up painting my factory in neon colors and stuff like that. It looked pretty cool though, I kept the color theme I made.
Ram Das said lsd didn’t do anything to him (though I find that an amazing claim). I think one of the Indian gurus said the same thing. I’m not sure if I believe them though.
It's not every trip but some of them really feel extremely profound and inspire me to change my life for the better.
One of the first psychedelics I tried was psilocybin mushrooms, made tea and I think we made it quite strong. I must have been around 17-18 or so, and what I remember most clearly isn't the crazy visuals, it's what came after. After the peak when I started coming back to reality I experienced this mental clarity where I felt like I saw my life from an outside perspective and I was ashamed of who I was. My parents didn't want me experimenting with drugs so I distanced myself from them and we always argued, had a really bad relationship. My two younger brothers were just annoyances to me, I just wanted them to leave me alone. But during this trip I thought back to when I was their age, chilling on the couch with our dad watching nature documentaries and stuff, and I just felt so incredibly bad about the brother I was to them.
Before that day I was on a pretty bad path, I was doing a bit more than experimenting with some pretty serious substances and i really think that trip changed my life. I turned things around, it was a bumpy road and it took some time but after that trip I started trying to do better and it worked. 15 years later I'm pretty proud of the person I am and I don't think I would be where I am today if not for that mushroom trip.
A lot of people make psychedelics seem like it's some kind of amusement park ride or just some druggie fun time, ooh pink elephants and blah blah. To me it's not about that at all. It's about the profound ways they can reveal things about yourself that you're too blind to see.
I am as agnostic-atheist as they come and would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense. But I've experienced the ego death parts of LSD, and consider I have come to know myself more through it. I don't think it reveals some fundamental truth outside myself so much as being simply a phenomenon of the action of psychedelics on my brain.
Frankly I think this idea that you have to be studied in philosophy or open to mystic woo-y nonsense to fully appreciate or even fully experience psychedelics is hilarious and self-aggrandising.
How come?
The mystics of all the religions are the most approachable to agnostic me. Mysticism to me means mainly, the universe as its whole is a great mysterium and those who claim "it is exactly like this and this, because this holy book says so!" are rather the aggressive fools to me. So genuinly curious, what do you perceive as aggressive from mysticim?
Mysticism usually seems to me to imply a poor grasp on reality and can be accompanied by all sorts of baseless claims to knowledge and (often naturalistic) fallacies. It often goes hand in hand with silly beliefs about crystals, alt-med and all sorts of other crap.
"We don't know" is fine. "We don't know, therefore these specific lines of bullshit" less so.
But I didn't post the above to say that my views on mysticism are correct or even to provoke a discussion about it. I posted it to provide a counterpoint to the bizarre notion that one must be into mysticism to experience aspects of the psychedelic experience.
We may interpret the experiences very differently, of course, but the claim that part of it is closed to those who don't subscribe to witter about "the goddess" is ironically very egotistic.
We know what we can observe. We know about gravity and astronomy and subatomic particles and how they interact etc, we know a lot of stuff. There's also a lot of stuff we don't know, and as far as I'm concerned we should try to figure those things out but until such time as we think we have figured them out we should leave them alone. The way to even attempt to know things is science, and if you can't use science to prove or at least support something then you're almost certainly wrong.
To me it's that simple. I don't believe in things, I either know or I don't care. Was the big bang just a spontaneous event that happened for no reason? Did some sentient being trigger it? I don't know, I can't know, there's nothing more to talk or think about. I do not respect people who pretend to know because i know they can't know. And the reason I know they can't know is because the people who believe in this type of crap typically know less about any given scientific topic than I do, which isn't a particularly high bar. If you don't even bother to learn the things we know then I don't know why you're speculating about stuff we'll probably never know.
Also none of this crap even makes any sense. The bible has more plot holes than a sieve. It doesn't explain anything, it just defers to "god works in mysterious ways". Not to mention that the god described in the bible seems like an absolute tit. Killing and torturing people for nothing, even killing a man's family and ruining his life just to win a bet. The people who believe in this crap are either indoctrinated from a young age, otherwise forced into it, or just plain stupid. I can't rationalize it any other way. They tried to indoctrinate me and it almost kind of worked in my mid teens, I really wanted to believe just to fit in with my friends but I just couldn't get past all the nonsense.
I vividly remember being on a church camp for our confirmation, the camp leaders told us their stories of how they found their faith and one guy stood up on the stage and said he was in a bad financial situation so he prayed to God for help and the next day a man he'd never met knocked on his door and gave him a briefcase with exactly as much money as he needed.
That was a pretty defined moment where I went "yeah these people are completely full of shit". I was 15 and ever since then it's only become clearer to me that religion and superstition is complete crap. There's prizes put there, James Randi offered a million dollars to anyone who can prove supernatural ability in a scientific setting, like psychics or mediums or any other quacks like that. it was first offered in 1964 and stood until 2015, in that time over a thousand people tried it and none succeeded. To me that's proof enough. If you make supernatural claims you're a quack and if you believe in them you're gullible and that's all there is to it.
Your decision, but other people do think and wrote papers about it.
https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-and-blogs/blogs/space-cos...
And mysticism isn't the same as superstition. In its broadest sense, it is a individual experience of the mysterium of the universe.
Just don't make shit up and present it as facts that's all.
If you're not that way inclined but are interested in experiencing psychedelics, then yeah - don't let them put you off. My subjective experiences of it, when it was good, were that it filled me with a childlike sense of wonder as I watched things melt and flow in enhanced colours, as I had weird and wonderful thoughts about all sorts of things. Everything was new again.
It did make me feel connected to the world, to the universe and to other people in a different way to something like MDMA, with some of the love but also through a blurring of sense of self. It can change your perspective on some things, and as others have said it often feels afterwards like you've had a bit of a reset on your stresses and worries. And I did get to watch my stereo do a little dance...
When it was not good, by the last time I tried it which was probably at least 20 years ago now, I just got bored and slept it off, though YMMV on ability to sleep because it is a stimulant.
I guess maybe I'm lucky never to have had anxiety or a 'bad trip', though there were a few occasions where the group of us would sit down and ask "so ... uh... anyone else find this is dragging? How much longer?". Usually it's when you're towards the tail end anyway, but it's just not tailing quite as much as you might want.
You describe it in terms that make sense to your culture. Perhaps the term mystic has been contaminated for you by all the nonsense and bullshit.
The experience is very difficult to communicate, generally relying heavily on metaphor. Those who are uninitiated often wildly misunderstand. We see this in other areas of life too, cargo culting for example, but the deep and very personal nature of the mystical experience pretty much ensures confusion.
A perpetual motion crackpot probably describes themselves as a "physicist", but that's nonsense and bullshit too.
You are a mystic in the real sense, having an esoteric experience and then integrating it into your worldview.
Psychedelic drugs are just one way of doing this, but one of the more accessible.
I think your attitude is completely appropriate, by the way.
This translates well to psychedelic drug use.
But yes, I do feel (in my limited experience) that for most people the thoughts they carry are more important to work on, than the environment they are in.
But then he noticed that the results really depend on who is taking it and what their world view is. If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death. It is as Eckhart Tolle said "just your senses turned up to 11", that is if there is nothing else you can get out of it.
As Douglas Rushkoff said "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics." There is no higher sense achieved.