Neurochemistry and Mystical Experiences

i'm sorry....could you explain to me how your "psychoactivity" and my "chemical" statements might be disagreeable? chemical (ie, drugs) reactions do cause "psychoactivity".

 

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No I'm sorry, I was expecting you to mind read.

I was disareeing with the idea that it was interesting or useful to know anything about the neural correlates of mystical experiences. It is the experiences themselves that are interesting, (I do mean scientifically interesting). The way you were talking was as if chemical substances and patterns of neurons could tell us something important about the experiences themselves.

Mystical states caused by drugs are certainly artificial and they take many forms, in fact they are all different to each other to some degree. However neither of these things entail that the meanings embodied in the experience are false, or even illusory. Human beings use many artificial means of seeing things more clearly. We do not study electrons by looking at the causes of our observations of them.

I'm not going spiritual on you. But the fact that chemicals and neurons interact to produce mystical experiences is well known and we know that doesn't tell us much, however much we fill in the details. So I'm just trying to refocus attention on the nature of the experience itself, which is not to be undertood via neurons and chemicals. The experiences are scientifically strange in themselves (as long as one can accept the first person reports as truthful). This seems to be overlooked. My objection was therefore to your general tone, which I appreciate I may have misinterpreted.

 

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http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.cgi?A=Search&S1=0&S2=-1&S3=-1&C1=9&Str=

 

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Hello!

You might like to take a look at the following links:

http://education.vsnl.com/nimbkar/thought.html


http://nariphaltan.virtualave.net/thought.pdf

Cheers.

 

Thanks for Erowid - fascinating collection of experiences.

 

1. As for personal mystical experiences there are 2. (ONE) I had two shots of an incredibly strong mix of tequila and brazilian (forgot name) and about a few minutes later I saw ants crawling all over my pillow. I could have literally reached out and touched them. (TWO) I distinctly remember being 5 years old and this man comes into my room and starts rubbing my cheek. I don't have my eyes open but can see him through my eyelids. I reach up and take his finger in my hand, he backs away slowly and as he does so his finger stretches like play dough or wet clay. I keep his stretching finger in my hand until he's no longer in the room and the finger breaks off. WEIRD.

2. Yes, there's a very good book by philosopher William James, more of a collection of essays and lectures than a book called "The Varieties of Religious Experience". Try also Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things" and anything written by James Randi just so you don't get duped by soothsayers.

 

Extract from note written after a LSD like trip (Locally called microdots) from 1992 (best ever trip, I've had around 30).

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Mystic experience is the discovery of something new. A small trigger and a cascade of relations flow through the mind, countless Revelations made in minutes

LSD just pushes you to the side of reality. Then a simple thought is bent so that the normal learnt pathways don't have the same force, your mind traverses a new path and the revelations are laid before your.

A revelation made in the altered state still has force under normal circumstances. There seems to be a subconscious force that still applies strong logical structure to the thoughts.

I can still catch a ball, drink water, and make my heart pulse.

And with method to madness you push your mind (with LSD) till you cant explain the very existence your in. To enter a new realm of existence so far from normality that it can't be explained in word or thought but forever remembered.

The door opened and so the balls on the roof started to pop. The things that approach are strange and are making the room shrink. Suddenly eye's look at me. They fill every thing they move and must be caught. (fellow trippers)

(.. Un decoded paragraphs ...)

And so you find your self flying over dew covered grass wondering about the new discoveries.

(fell asleep on the oval across the road.)
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Trails are cool.. The next step even cooler.. All young humans should be allowed to enter controlled trips, safe reliable source of LSD and a slow build up to the ultimate mind bend. So much can be learnt.

Being an artist I have learnt alot about light, form and motion. As a philosopher I learnt that there are other forms of reality. As a human I found a new appreciation of nature. As a scientist I learnt rules are fleeting. As a sports man I learnt to trust my movement.

To learn about mystical drugs, take a few. You can then write an informed paper.

 

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I've had a mystical experience, not cause by any sort of drug, which indeed felt like it brought me something I had been looking for for a long time, and a lot of happiness afterwards. It was so ground-shattering that it felt like the whole reality I'd ever known to be true was an illusion. And, in a sense, I think that was true, because my brain had finally come in contact with something beyond the idea of concept and definition, both which tend to serve as a barrier to reality that language creates for us so we can mold a construct model of reality in our minds as a tool. It was the releasing of energies from my brain from getting a glimpse of the reality that is outside of concept, and it was quite liberating ("the true substance of reality can't be defined" kind of thing). A lot of people who haven't had mystical experiences kinda look at me funny when I try to explain it, and say something like, "Are you doing drugs?" or, "Maybe you were just dehydrated." No, it changed my life.

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I wrote an essay on it too, but it wasn't focusing so much on the neuroscience aspect of it.

 

Good books for this type of reseach:


PIHKAL and TIHKAL by Alexander Shulgin
These two are now becoming the de facto for (educated) psychoactive drug users. Shulgin is a chemist who has synthesized hundreds of chemicals with the express purpose of finding psychoactive activity. He also doses himself on these chemicals to find their ranges and activities.

DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman
Excellent, actual scientific study about the effects of DMT (N,N,dimethyltryptamine) on human subjects with the express purpose to gain more information about mystical experiences.

Erowid is always a good place to find more information. There is also the Lycaeum website which is also very useful.

http://www.issc-taste.org/index.shtml is The Archives of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences

There are also all kinds of other webpages that deal with these issues and many have good information and cite their literary sources.

 

Well how about couscious dreaming?

Very vivid, almost real...

And I believe extreme couscious dreaming lead to Out of Body Experiences, etc..

There is plenty of stuff regarding that..

Oh, and we have Remote Viewing sites that approach this in a new way, without the use of drugs.. just pure meditation, and a different use for "hallucionations"

plenty of books regarding this, you just need to look on the web, amazon,etc..

 

The answers are in Matthew Alper's "The God Part of the Brain"

:a scientific interpretation of human spirituality and God (www.godpart.com) which surveys almost all the neurophysiological studies being done that are seeking the physical causes underlying hat all cultures have described as the "mystical" experience. It has been highly acclaimed by everyone from Edward O. Wilson to Dr. Fuller Torrey, the head of NIMH (the national institute of mental health). Not to seem biased, but, as the book's author, I offer a money back guarantee, if you don't find it a satisfactory read, offering cognitive solutions to man's spiritual quest

 

Re: The answers are in Matthew Alper's "The God Part of the Brain"

Have not read it yet (I'll buy one, honest) but I'm interested to know how you prove that brain changes cause mystical experiences rather than that mystical experiences cause brain changes. As far as I know nobody else has managed to do this.

Outside of consciousness studies there is no known case of a causal relationship working only in one direction.

 

I joined the US Army in 2002 and then got deployed to Afghanistan, while I was in Afghanistan I got tried to make the best of it. My friend one day came up to me with such excitement and said follow me. I was like what the hell... He took out this envelope and had some stamps in it... He said eat one when you get off shift (I worked telecommunications) and lock yourself in your room and make sure you have everything you need. I never tried LSD before and was a little worried. Anyways about an hour after I took the hit, it started to really hit hard.
I started hearing everything at once, the clock, my computer, creeks and everything. Just too much commotion and I started to freak out, I wanted it to stop soo bad and then I remember my friend telling me to meditate. I sat with my spine perfectly straight, closed my eyes and still had wild hallucinations even with my eyes shut. I started breathing deeply in through my nose and out my mouth and then the hallucinations slowed down and I was able to control, no I harnessed it. It ended up being the most enlightening experience of my life. The problem is I am back in Hawaii and there is no LSD to be found, can it be found where you are? If so there would be an extreme amount of happiness in my world if there was a way some tiny pieces of paper could make it out this way. If there is anything I could do for you, let me know,

Kevin
dejasol@gmail.com

 

to original poster-----you should really research te term 'mystical'. manypeople use it maybe not realizing its actual meaning. from my research it means the idea of a separation between 'spirit' and matter
te idea of the 'mystery schools' was to have initiation break you through .mundane' reality so as to begin a journey t the 'source'. they'd do this with and without psychoactive sacraments and 'purifiction'-----they were called 'mystery' schools cause the initiate had to swear an oath not to share the cult's secrets with outsiders

The first mystery school in ancient Greece was Orphism. Their belief was first written down andvery much separated Nature from 'spirit', denigrating the former nd glorifying te later

so i personally HATE th term is whati am saying. theinfluence of the ideaoloy of mysticism has caused much cnflict for the individual and hir sense of being in Nature. wit this clear i will address the rest of your post

yes. i took LSD when 15, and it was absultely amAZIN. complete life changer. i , with hidsight, had been dulled by the culture to dismiss Nature and to worship the 'City'---i got off with semantic reality. LSD completely blew all tis indoctrination away and i wasopen to te wonders of Nature agin
i also have had a major 'OBE' --non-sacrament/LSDetc--where i have interacted wit entities

You should also research about CONSCIOUSNESS. this is a central teme for science now. bascially it is not understood--see 'the hard problem' (David Chalmers)---so peole in this thread claiming :SD just 'dsitorts' or makes you 'hallucinate' etc are talkin blind. they really haven't a clue what is actually happening, cause like i said, consciousness is not only NOT understood, but we are all indoctrinated into a materialistic ideology which claimes consciousness is a 'product' of complex matter/brains. this is a theory--a myth, and a VERY VERYoppressive one

you might also like to research Dr Stanislav Grof's work. i am not happy with all his summations. but it ges without saying he has a lot of LSD experiences of people recrded you sureloy will find interesting

and donna forget,Albert Hofman. he is much more in tune with me or vice versa. for he promotes the experience of Nature inspired with LSD as a means for us as a species to break out of ths materialisti nightmare where we are dulled to the wonders of Nature and sustainable living