Whenever my imagination starts to run wild with the possibility of a huge announcement of this variety, I always like to remember what Terence McKenna said about this: "if aliens were to land on the front lawn of the white house tomorrow, it would not change the fact that the weirdest thing in the universe is DMT."
By all accounts NASA's getting ready to announce they've found an earth-like planet and you guys are like "yeah but I'm sure it won't compare the experience of taking my favorite drug." That's a sad and closed-minded way of looking at things.
It reminds me of Jon Stewart's character in Half Baked who thought everything was better "on weeeeed!" If your drug of choice prevents you from enjoying other experiences, like staring in wonder at the mysteries of the universe, that's like being in an abusive relationship.
There's no good reason the existence of a drug should prevent you from enjoying an announcement like this. There's definitely no good reason to assume that in this 16 billion year old universe which you've been part of for a negligible amount of time, which you've physically experienced only a negligible amount of, that you've already found the weirdest or most interesting thing ever.
This is a ludicrous reduction of the point McKenna was making. You're acting like he didn't directly address this fallacy. Go read The Invisible Landscape, listen to one of the lectures that covers this material (such as Eros and the Eschaton and / or his address to the Jung Society), and then address the whole of what he was saying.
If you don't think that human neurochemistry is astonishing, I think that's weird. But don't sit here and straw man his research; that doesn't help anyone.
Neurochemistry and the experience of consciousness are very astonishing, I just think it's a bit egocentric to assume they're the most astonishing things in the universe.
Nobody said they were the "most astonishing things in the universe" - I'm not sure where you get this stuff. It's another straw man.
McKenna says that neurochemistry, and its material application called "the psychedelic experience," is the most astonishing thing you can personally suppose, or in some cases, even that you can't suppose. But that doesn't say anything about the (real or imagined) notion of a totality of "things in the universe."
The psychedelic experience is the most intense experience anyone can have on this planet, and it cannot be compared or described by anything else one has experienced in his/her life.
Surely there's no good reason to assume anything but you do assume and in the most cliche way. Maybe first you should chuck 5 gramms of dried mushrooms with some lemonade and come back and tells us what you think after that.
I'm not sure if the parent was advocating or saying this. It was in reference to Terrence Mckenna's view of the present assumptions that mankind has about what aliens should look like and how one should go about contacting them (and that DMT and mushrooms are probably an alien artifact).
And certainly one can lose the plot and spend his entire life tripping. Noone is saying thats a good thing.
> ...and it cannot be compared or described by anything else one has experienced in his/her life
Many long-term meditators who have previous experience with psychedelics would disagree with you.
I'm only making the assumption of agnosticism, that it's fundamentally impossible for you to know that something already within your realm of experience will trump all that exists in the unknown.
Because I'm tired of arguing with nerds talking theory over matters that ultimately are experiential, I'll say the following two points and I don't mind being downvoted.
1) Whomever says the experiences of meditation are akin to those of psychedelics is plainly full of shit. I've done psychedelics for about 4 years, and western ceremonial magic which involved plenty of meditation daily and consistently for about a decade. Apples and oranges. And thats including all the freaky spectacular shit I've experienced.
2) Practically, how much of "all that exists in the unknown" you think you will or can experience living a basic run of the mill western life in a human body? As I said, ingest 5 dried gramms, then come to talk to me about what will get trumped in your realm of experience. Until then, its only thinking you understand sex because you read dirty magazines, only for something that is several orders of magnitudes out there.
From a glance I wouldn't expect this "western ceremonial magic" to bring anything but confusion and maybe the illusion of not-confusion. But if it works for you do your thing.
I've been around enough to reject the notion that an amalgamation of 1001 chemicals is fundamentally different from an amalgamation of 1000. With that goes the illusion of being "deep" while tripping balls. I'm not rejecting the intensity of the psychedelic experience, I'm rejecting the ideas that it's wholly unique in intensity, that it brings unique insight and that it reliably brings insight.
As far as meditation vs psychedelics I defer to people who have done enough of both to have informed opinions on the matter.
> Many long-term meditators who have previous experience with psychedelics would disagree with you.
See, the problem here is that you are debating an argument you haven't bothered to fully read.
Terence McKenna has literally volumes to say about this argument. So now that we've moved beyond this simpleton back-and-forth, what say you about his position vis a vis meditation?
Specifically, what do you say about his argument that, without being willing to ingest a drug, you haven't humbled yourself to the basic notion that your brain is physical and its operations electrical and chemical?
> Terence McKenna has literally volumes to say about this argument. So now that we've moved beyond this simpleton back-and-forth, what say you about his position vis a vis meditation?
If somebody makes a living telling people things like aliens brought us mushrooms and that's why evolution happened they aren't worth my time. They're too far gone. I responded to a comment on a message board encouraging people to not get excited about space exploration and instead focus on the wonders of DMT.
I simply don't care what he says about meditation.
> Specifically, what do you say about his argument that, without being willing to ingest a drug, you haven't humbled yourself to the basic notion that your brain is physical and its operations electrical and chemical?
Narcissistic, egocentric, closed-minded, a little horrifying. I don't understand why he thinks doing drugs is not only the best path but the only path to understanding the realities of being a human. That's how cult-leaders operate, they teach their followers there is no other way and everybody on the outside of their bubble just doesn't get it. Then when people try to help them get out they say "You just don't understand how great our leader is! He even said this would happen!"
It is weird because it is present in many "mundane" plants and in the human organism, allegedly released at the time of death. It lasts 10 minutes which is strange for a psychedelic substance, which after the experience you can go back as Terrence said "answering phonecalls". Apparently the human body knows perfectly well how to metabolize it completely without any taxing effects.
From my personal experience in psychedelics, all of them, LSD, mushrooms and so forth, the user still maintains a reference point to reality around him however weird it might look. With DMT, the whole content of present reality disappears and you are seemingly transported in a completely different reality booming with alien intelligence (described by DMT users as self transforming machine elves) that purportedly is also very happy to see you "broken through".
Users also report an incredible amount of information being transmitted to them, albeit completely indescribable by present human language and concepts and find themselves being under a dome-like structure (called the "DMT Dome").
From what I know, these effects are only present if you follow a specific dosage and no less than that.
Another strange fact is that while all other psychedelics are boundary dissolving substances with your ego first to get booted, with DMT you apparently "maintain" your present self throughout the trip.
This is what the "Death by astonishment" quote of the same author, refers to.
Ah, the white light at the end, the flow of knowledge, being close to the all-knowing and other statements as described by those who had near-death-experiences. This seems logical and is quite fascinating. Thanks for describing it in detail.
There are several parallels depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. Reports of feeling accepted and loved, and the "tone" sound in the beginning which seems to me really similar with the one you hear when you astrally project out of your body.
But we are fast getting out of HN accepted topics of discussion so.. :-)
Ultimately one should (not must) explore these things on his/her own instead of reading it on the web. All this quickly degenerates to entertainment if one only reads about them online.
DMT no. These are all coming from reports (and from Terrence himself) which I have no problem believing since I've witnessed my fair share of weird shit in general.
I've only done my share of LSD in the past, which by comparison, seems quite tame and merely "psychological" than DMT.
I wonder if you would consider it heretical to question whether and how well Terrence can differentiate between what he does know and what he does not actually know?
For example, you used a rather non-rigorous descriptor, "weird". What constitutes a weird phenomenon?
Can we subject said constituents of a weird phenomenon to the same kinds of validations we can make about known true facts, i.e. observable existent things?
He says it in a few different ways in his lectures, but he believed that the psychedelic experience is so strange and full of content that, even if aliens landed on the White House lawn and it made the biggest story in the history of news, it's still not as astonishing as human neurochemistry.
I'm not sure I agree, but I think it's good to keep this perspective in mind any time we find ourselves tempted to think of something as 'the biggest thing ever.'
I really keep trying to think whether aliens existing would actually radically change my life, individually. On one hand, maybe, but on the other, probably not (and this is more likely).
I feel like I already experience my existence like I am alien to everything that is not me, whether it is talking to a cat or a person or a tree, the whole thing is like 'reality blob' that I am not really sure how all of this happened, nor do I ever have any hope whatsoever of finding the answer to that question. When I wonder thoughts to myself I wonder who it is that thinks the question and who it is that responds with an answer. So many thinkings are just permutations of what has already been heard, and they form patterns and it's really weird.
It's easy to get 'used to things' and 'acclimated to things', I just feel like I have it hardwired in me to perpetually be weirded out by my own existence. Complexity doesn't even describe it, strange doesn't either, as these are all human concepts. You really just have to learn to observe with a completely blank mind. Then it's just like being in this interface that's always super weird and confusing, and it's ridiculous how some people really think they know what they are doing (like in their deepest philosophical and spiritual core, not like 'have to go to work today to feed the kids').
I wouldn't be so quick to say the two are identical. It's different for everyone obviously but they are very different psychedelic experiences for most. DMT is VERY powerful when administered correctly.
