Drug Induced Insanity or Thoughts of Revelation?

[MR.Kitty55]

I'm a philosophy major and have become obsessed with every aspect of human understanding since I discovered philosophy in high school...
This what I've conjured up as a possible solution to human potential and surpassing Plato's cave...

The history of post Socratic philosophy (which is where philosophy really started) all began with metaphysical inquiries about the world. This trend continued up until David Home destroyed metaphysics with ultimate empirical skepticism and his theory of causality.

When we adopt ultimate skepticism or relativism and take our conception of the world and it's meanings to the absolute reduction ad absurdum, we find that "we can know nothing" or "there are no absolute truths"...Both of which are paradoxes. Socrates responded to the first one (meno's paradox) by claiming that you can know of something when you know nothing because of "divine intervention" and the theory of recollection (the soul being the source of truth)...The other one is unanswerable, no absolute truth implies that there is an absolute truth (that being no truth)...extremely contradictory. When taking knowledge to it's extreme like that we find that all logic is founded on a contradiction of relativism and no truth. What does this mean? Either the world is relative and man creates his own values, or there is something unknown, innate ideas so to speak.

Now, innate ideas have been disproved because how do you explain their origin without god? (assume an atheist position). You can't it seems through our current perceptions (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch)...However, the very fact that we are constantly being led to and understand some kind of "unexplainable truth" must exist for some reason...We know that our current knowledge is founded on a paradox, there obviously must be some greater form of understanding we cannot comprehend. How can we know things and make conclusions which are verified time and time again (math/scientific laws for example) without some sort of truth? Obviously this conception of truth must have some logically coherent backing. After all how can we get closer to understanding if everything we base our reasoning on is false? There must be another unseen basis. I know this is some what of a leap of faith, but go with it. Why would we assume truth and reason if there was none? Where does this metaphysical idea come from?? Within.

The whole idea behind Platonism is reaching the world of true forms. A place where every object in the world has become the greatest essence of itself (perfection, so to speak). This world is only obtained through some sort of indescribable knowledge or perception which can only be experienced, not communicated after the fact. Once obtained, the world is so intense one cannot last so long to be there due to the familiarity with the false world which we call real. We come back and see the world differently. This world of pure form and meaning can be some what experienced through drug induced hallucinations, which vastly increase perception and understanding according to Aldous Huxley and many other respected thinkers. I personally have taken LSD and it seems to enlighten your world of meaning. You no longer begin to view things for their biological or social value, you begin to value things IN AND OF THEMSELVES...Just like Plato and Socrates described...You see things in their true essence...Like the world of forms...

Now, Descartes came along later in history and claimed that the path to true understanding of metaphysics lies in the connection of body and mind, if one can unlock all mental potential, perhaps they can view reality as it really is, without being concerned for biological or social meaning...True understanding of the world.

Descartes believed this mind/body connection lied in the Pineal Gland due to its position in relation to the left and right side of the brain. He was proved wrong later as the position held no value......

The drug known as DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is found in millions of different organism and is proven to give the most powerful psychedelic experiences known to man, so intense, it transports you to another world as described by users..........Now, here's where things start getting interesting, really interesting.......

It turns our that DMT is thought to be naturally produced in our brains, during REM sleep and has been hypothesized as what causes our dreams....And of course, where gland produces this substance? The Pineal Gland. Even more fascinating is the Pineal Gland has, for a fact, the same structures as an eyeball and is considered to be a third eye...An eye that views the world in a different way, a more complex way. The Pineal Gland is also hypothesized as what's responsible for near death experiences, transporting us to another world in the face of death, however, because we don't die we're brought back with knowledge of another conception.....

The course of human evolution and understanding has been nothing more than the development of the human mind and perception, along with the overcoming of animal thought (biological instincts)....Now, what if unlocking this third eye is our next step as humans? What if this expansion of perception will lead us to a new realm of understanding, revealing the answers to the true mysteries of life?What if the after life is nothing more than this induced hallucination which appears an eternity...Or what if death is the complete mental takeover of a new perception caused by physical death transporting us into a new world of metaphysical properties and human thought????

DMT users have often claimed experiences reminiscent of such ideas...After taking acid, I had a very similar experience, I've changed my method of action and become more in touch with myself and limited what is considered vice and increased what one would call "personal virtue"...What if the door to the meaning of life lies within and DMT is the key?

What do you think of this? Am I on to something?

[Big Steamers]

Highly unlikely. People can incurr hapiness through work, alcohol or sex. There are principal ways of getting high and each is very different. Quit taking acid, and stop citing so many cases, cite one, so that you may lower your post count.

[dal7timgar]

If a thought can be drug induced then shouldn't that drug produce the same thought in different people?

Wouldn't it be more correct to say that the drug removed the inhibitions on the thought? That it kept a person from recognizing that the thought mad no sense, a drug uninhibited thought.

DT

[MR.Kitty55]

Originally Posted by dal7timgar

If a thought can be drug induced then shouldn't that drug produce the same thought in different people?

Wouldn't it be more correct to say that the drug removed the inhibitions on the thought? That it kept a person from recognizing that the thought mad no sense, a drug uninhibited thought.

DT

The thing is that people experience a relatively similar experience on acid (its the object being perceived, not the drug that changes the trip)...

HOWEVER, on DMT, users all experience encounters with similarly described beings...The consistency in DMT trips has been noted.

It doesn't have to similar for it to be signal of coming closer. DMT won't answer the question but it will certainly get you closer it appears....

[Leary]

Originally Posted by MR.Kitty55

HOWEVER, on DMT, users all experience encounters with similarly described beings...The consistency in DMT trips has been noted.

Anecdotally?

[MR.Kitty55]

Originally Posted by Leary

Anecdotal?

Yes but it was still done in a scientific study where users repeatedly described encounters with "insect like alien beings"

To be honest I think I figured out my own question. I think drugs like DMT/LSD simply alter your perception of the world allowing you to further comprehend the subjectivity of the world and it's relationship to the individual mental image. Although these drugs can lead you to the door , I doubt they can open the door itself, something only obtainable through...I have no idea? But not drugs in themselves. Perhaps knowledge or death? Those seem to be my two best bets.

However, psychedelics can help in the process. However, it is just interesting to note on the consistency of the pineal gland in philosophy and this DMT/Pineal gland connection. If it means anything I don't know.

[alooha from hell]

i'd want to test adding LSD to the pineal gland.

[nshanin]

Originally Posted by MR.Kitty55

The thing is that people experience a relatively similar experience on acid (its the object being perceived, not the drug that changes the trip)...

HOWEVER, on DMT, users all experience encounters with similarly described beings...The consistency in DMT trips has been noted.

It doesn't have to similar for it to be signal of coming closer. DMT won't answer the question but it will certainly get you closer it appears....

SN's thread in BLTC about DMT elves shows that there have been people that never encounter elves or aliens or insects while on DMT. Psychedelics produce similar thoughts because they act upon the same receptors (in the case of DMT, it's some 5-HT receptor, probably 5-HT2A, with perhaps some slight assistance from MAOs) but since everybody has a different brain chemistry and variable amounts of (variably sensitive) 5-HT receptors, everybody's experience is different. Further, since brain development (and even epigenetic development) is effected by environment, there is no scientific study that would be able to determine if 2 subjects (they'd have to be identical twins raised in an identical, and preferably minimalist environment; thus there are moral concerns) could have the same experience (problems of subjective descriptions likely brought on by different integration styles aside). This is one of the main reasons why I want to go into neurochemistry.

Eventually, the science of tweaking receptor frequency and sensitivity by chemical or mechanical means (for one of the best interdisciplinary neuro-philosophical reads on this, see The Hedonist Imperative) will allow this to happen with radically different (albeit neurochemically "enhanced") patients whose only difference will be integrating the experience. Alas, as I've said before, there will never be a certain conclusion as to visuals and emotional effects of psychedelics. The closest science will ever come will be to say "2 neurochemically identical patients were given an identical dose of a psychoactive. Their receptor firings were identical [even my scientific worldview disputes that this would be the case, but it could!], thus they had the same experience". And thus we come to my next reason for my fascination with neurochemistry--determinism. If such a situation could be achieved where the preceding statement is true (and not "more or less true"; every last chemical imbalance would have to be either totally correlated or explainable by one of the random processes of molecular physics, perhaps Brownian motion or the interference of a stray molecule would do the trick)--then it would be the ultimate triumph of science. The final frontier for the libertarian is the mind. Physics, chemistry, and (increasingly) biology have all given no quarter to the philosophy of free will and the last stand of this idealism is the mind. With enough computing power, biology will show how initial neurochemical structure is predetermined. Neurochemistry will then ally with psychology to monitor minute changes in structure and function of the brain until a "genome" of experiences and corresponding neural changes (they need not be 1:1, but such relations would necessarily need to be explained by individual genetic differences) is discovered--there will naturally be a similar process with biology and epigenetics. And then, with a few advances in chemistry (geneticists still disgracefully refer to mutations as "random", this will eventually be explained by physical interactions) the God of the gaps argument of the libertarians will be snuffed out once and for all and science will enter a new age of not "science", but engineering. What will come after this is for the philosopher and the historian to describe.


There is a distinct glut of parentheses in this post.

[KikoSanchez]

Originally Posted by MR.Kitty55

I'm a philosophy major and have become obsessed with every aspect of human understanding since I discovered philosophy in high school...

Sorry if this if off-topic, but I was a phil major too. Advice: make it your minor and make your major something applicable to a job. A philosophy degree is about as good as a high school degree. Now I'm going back to get a master's in something useful in the real world. Still...philosophy classes are the best.

[nshanin]

Originally Posted by KikoSanchez

Sorry if this if off-topic, but I was a phil major too. Advice: make it your minor and make your major something applicable to a job. A philosophy degree is about as good as a high school degree. Now I'm going back to get a master's in something useful in the real world. Still...philosophy classes are the best.

I'm a philosophy minor (thanks Entheogenic!), but to get to major standing I'll probably need to spend (only) another semester at college, but this will have to be on my own tab because my scholarship runs out after 8 semesters. What do you think? Is it worth pursuing one of my life's dreams even though I'll need to spend more time at school for it? Oh, I'll have Chemistry and Biology majors done in those 4 years as well as a business minor. I'd leave the business minor (because I fucking hate business), but it's, as you said, "applicable to a job".