[atreestump]

Are religious or spiritual experiences real? How can something be real if there is only one person experiencing it? If we look at this question in western scientific terms, it is only a stimulation and does not reflect reality at all, but if we look towards the east or to a shaman for example, they might have a very different view.

Let’s say we ingest a mushroom, even though a state is caused by the mushroom, we might be seeing the spiritual realm as it is, rather than a false state.

Wearing glasses might offer an important analogy here. Without glasses the world is blurry, put the glasses on and the world becomes clear. They change the way the brain responds to the world. Are we seeing the world in a false way, or in a more accurate way?

Can we apply this analogy to different drugs or induced states from prayer and meditation, say?

[kFoyauextlH]

This is excellent, a really wonderful question and brings to light some great points. There is a great deal of focus on “the real” as more important or preferable or relevant as a qualifier. People want to insist things are real because of the prestige it gives those things to have the vague notion of “real” attached to it because of it meaning valid, worthy, and other things now.

In my view, everything is “real” in some way if it exists at all, and problems tend to occur regarding language and how things are described or should be described in the view of various factions.

I have a particular hatred for the flavors associated with people describing their religious experiences or love, I really get angry when anyone is too lovey dovey or ecstatic in their hippy descriptions of things. It comes down to being threatened by the whole thing and what that sort of stuff is associated with or represents to me.

I also have a particularly strong aversion to drug users, and ultimately this likely is due to feeling threatened by these things as well. I could make all sorts of apologetics and excuses about it. One of the best is that certain drugs may be responsible not only for deteriorating the body and causing dependency, but may change the way people normally function or act, leading to potential consequences or miscalculations or inaccurate assesdments which otherwise can’t be sustained without the drug continually being used.

The truth is, I just want to control people and make them most preferable to me or what I might call “healthy” which means no substance addictions or dependencies and to be able to simulate imagination or mind altered states in a way which does not require inducing drugs from outside. Other excuses could be about taking risks.

I am completely against any form of non-sobriety and I am very much a “square”, finding opiates or stimulants to be more harmful than good and not being relaxed about any form of “trying” either. When people “try” anything I really actually want them to suffer and die so that I can further prove that I am right and they were wrong.

I’ve known addicts of various sorts all my life, and people who experiment with all sorts of things and also fully seem to come out unscathed. I have generally never been able to successfully control or stop anyone. They always seem to do whatever they crave.

I am against permanent body markings, artificially induced pleasures like having happy sex with a physically abusive person while drugging oneself in order to seem to enjoy it while pursuing something I think is wrong or bad, and any forms of sharing sex or polyamory or anything the least bit threatening or anxiety inducing.

For me, the ideal person is sober, patient, stable, loyal, ethical, taking care of their health and body, having no tattoos, no fetishes, and no particular religious fanatacism or ecstatic type psychosis seeming states. I want them to be like me, but even more boring and straight edged than me in some ways, but also lax about some things, so not health fanatics either or extremists or dogmatics in any way, regardless how I may be. I want them to genuinely agree with me and hold or come to holding my sorts of views and ideas and mentalities. I want the total abolition of alchohol from the world or at least it being treated with extreme prejudice due to it being involved in so much domestic abuse, harm, and violence.

My stern views are usually seen to be far from endearing and further separate me from relating to most people, which also includes my strict views regarding loyalty, responsibility, and sex, as well as hygiene
[hr]
Such is my “religious experience”

[Rubsy]

I would really like to say I am relaxed about such things as drugs and alcohol,  but from experience I know they can consume too much of peoples life.  I think if one is to drink then one should be able to be dry for a month at least from time to time. Wine is a useful pain killer especially for cramps, I would prescribe it over ibuprofen. I think mushrooms can be taken once in a while and outside, not in a box room in the middle of the city. Mushrooms show you a different perspective and perhaps highlight things that have been annoying you that have kept in the background, for me it is straight lines, everything  in the city is made of straight lines as if the lines are herding you in certain directions. Whereas in nature eveything is very fluid and curved. I suppose that is a truth that I felt already, but it was uncovered by the mushroom experience. Meditation can also bring about new or clearer realisations, I would say yoga corrects postures and the way you feel and move in the world. As to things being real or not ? I suspect a false or too rigid dichotomy caused by our ontological realist assumed metaphysics, also the divisions we create with categories and words like objective and subjective. Is a rainbow real ?

[kFoyauextlH]

Great points. One area of particular interest to me is how shapes and the designs and flows of cities influence the way people think and speak and relate to their thoughts and one another. I don’t have too relaxed a view on any sort of intoxicants because I have seen too many people harmed by them, also in the sense of many women being made vulnerable by them or making themselves vulnerable with them and led into very unpleasant things that are then somewhat difficult to get out of, or falsely convinced of things by them like some genuine sense of profound connection with irresponsible or dangerous people.
[hr]
There is nothing “more real” than anything else though in my view, I think there is no “waking up”.

[atreestump]

I don’t think one should prioritise buffers on emotions as an essential means to ‘higher clarity’ of the unknown/spiritual reality, part of the journey is the way, not the destination anyway as the most important aspect.

What I will say however, is that I can’t really say for sure that what I have experienced on LSD is entirely ‘false’. I was incredibly disturbed because there was a harsh truth to my experience that I never wanted to face again, I was not the same person before the trip, I lost something and I knew it wasn’t coming back – upon reflection, a very fragile ego had been destroyed and I was in a place where my relational identity made no sense. I was to use a term from Levinas – in a ‘Radical alterity’ of a state and from that point on, I began to transform and I suffered, was devoured by anxiety and despair but eventually, I accepted it and when I took some shrooms six years later, I left the baggage I thought I needed behind and did not fear the future, or letting go anymore. 

Grief is what we experience, but I would say this is a part of being and not just experiential. 

So now I ingest shrooms, I laugh and I see what really matters – the here and now – we are fortunate to be here and we need to be reminded of that sometimes.

[Rubsy]

@”kFoyauextlH” 
I appreciate your worry about women getting into dangerous situations, when drunk especially and I agree. Learning to be responsible around intoxicants is important. Also make sure for certain you are with people you trust not to take advantage, especially never do much drinking at work do’s.

[atreestump]

I think trust is a prerequisite for these situations, who I do shrooms with requires absolute trust, if I have a bad time on acid, it’s partly due to who I am with and the fact I subconsciously dislike them.

I’ve seen this in other people – they have acid with their friends/partners and they see something evil in them, they dismiss it when the high wears off – but months later, they are no longer speaking.

[kFoyauextlH]

That is a major problem for me. I have no faith whatsoever at all. I do not trust intoxicants, revelations, God, Nature, humans, my health, mind, heart, Nothing at all. Nothing. I went on a rollercoaster and they didn’t put down the bars so I had to hold on to the dragon for dear life as I was flying out of the machine. I do not have Faith, I have Fear. I would never play with my body or mind or take any sorts of risks with it. People wake up and smoke cigarettes and go skateboarding and ride motorcycles and guzzle beers. I can not. They have incredible faith and get away with all they wish, I am jealous because they have everything I don’t have and I want them to die or suffer immeasurably because I can not have what they have. God favors them and I live under a curse and I only have ill will towards those who are not afraid.

So I dedicate my life to frightening people, to making them cowards, to make them shudder for all their boldness. To make women afraid rather than over-confident, to make them alert and paranoid and cautious not to go into mens homes and lay with them, not to emotionally allow trauma to occur or think its just fine. No one listens to me, so I wish them death and destruction, my prayer or mantra, that they be cursed as I am cursed and suffer as I suffer to know the hell I live in, where I can not do any such things, where everything goes wrong and requires
A monumental effort to achieve even the opening of a bloody can! Motherf*ckers! They just open the can in one try! It doesn’t become a Mr.Bean episode. Sons of bitches! Whores! They get ejaculated in over and over by perfect strangers and scarcely become pregnant or diseased, everyone, I watch them, they do whatever they want and there is no karma, no consequences, no kustice whatsoever in all the Earth! A I try to convince them of are lies! None of it is true! I tell them they should be afraid when indeed they will no doubt be able to do all things without any harm or danger, floating above the world while I slither on the ground! F*ck them!

I hate them so much! Their life of luxury which they never even thank God for! They are so hideous to me in their joy and beauty! Their health! Their Truth of Fearlessness! Damn their Eyes!

I have nothing they have and they have nothing I have which is Nothing!

Tell me about your experiences.

I can not even dare to take a chance with anything in the slightest.

I do not play with my things, and can barely protect them as it is.

I have survived numerous serious diseases under inhumane conditions since no one would help me. Meanwhile the f*ckers gleefully suck dicks and opiates and snort cocaine, God damn them!

They abuse women and women abuse themselves. They hurt people and hurt themselves and behave like the worst of creatures and terrors upon the world and emotions in wanton cruelty and arrogance and the incompetantincompetant administration of this world does not strike them down but gives them all the more rope, all the more wealth and luxury and ability to do more of it and hurt more people and animals! My curses fly nowhere, all evildoers live on!

This is my religious experience, in semblance to those called Prophets before me.

Lamentation! The Horror!
[hr]
I can never do anything because I have no Faith or Trust. I do not trust that the floor won’t fall through, that my leg won’t crumble, that the sun will rise. I live in endless perpetual unceasing fear, knowing the horror which is apparently my exclusive sight and knowledge which none share. You all trust your partners and friends, not believing their blood oaths and tear filled testimony could be switched off in the blink of an eye or before even the batting of an eyelash. No one can save you or help you! There is no Good. No one can be trusted because they are nothing and can hold on to nothing of themselves.

All the experiences are real experiences.

They can tell you either Joy, or Terror. If they tell you Joy, I will say it is false hope and deception. If they tell you Terror, I will say that Terror is the only Truth. To strip your eyes of Joy, to show that Terror is the underlying and NEVER changing finality and origin and basis, that Terror never ends while Joy is nothing but dependent, is all I try to do.

You do not have a true friend in Jesus, and God is your perpetual enemy, Nature needs to be obstructed and tamed like a wild beast or dragon, and this is just a little Hell of a ceaseless lineage of hells.

You will prosper in every wickedness to yourself and others, you will get away with everything you please, and you will live a blessed life of happiness so long as you remain deceived by glamours, distracted by the music, spinning in love to the tune of nature, ever revolving.

Stop the spin, and you may see, that wildly colorful blur is the bright mucus of an infected world.

[Socrates]

Mushroom experiences are not what I would call hallucinating as such, more a ‘highlighting’ of what is already there, it just makes you stop and actually look.

[kFoyauextlH]

Very cool, yeah I have heard the same.

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C3lWwBslWqg

[atreestump]

Yeah, the point was that at the time of my bad experience, it actually revealed a truth about the people I was involved with – we were outgrowing each other and the acid seemed to make that impossible for me (and them) to ignore. The Greeks had a word for truth, aleithea which means something like ‘revealed, disclosure, unforgettable and unavoidable’.
[hr]
While this all sounds negative and not very spiritual, it was the dawn of a new phase of my life that would lead to better things, I take the good with the bad.

[kFoyauextlH]

I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of fire
These dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire
And in the flames
Her shadows play in the shape of a man’s desire
This desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
And as she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realise that nothing’s as it seems
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of rain
I lift my gaze to empty skies above
I close my eyes, this rare perfume
Is the sweet intoxication of her love
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
Sweet desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
Sweet desert rose
This memory of Eden haunts us all
This desert flower, this rare perfume
Is the sweet intoxication of the fall
Songwriters: Gordon Sumner / Mohammed Khelifati
[hr]
I think it does sound spiritual and that drugs are part of the spiritual stories of many people throughout the ages, usually as only a part of the adventure rather than the end of it where the conclusion is a life of medication.

I have actually never heard a drug story which didn’t end up with some sort of changes involved, usually negative seeming things surrounding but leading to positive improvements, not dissimilar from stories of hauntings or possession.

My posts were about and leading inton”the religious experience” as both “the experience of being religious” and an implied description of The Fall, then I was inspired to post that song which I had no idea actually said what it did and perfectly fit my writing and implications and the whole set of themes I was driving at. It is really quite cool, though likely gets missed. I had positioned myself as the lamenting author or “religious person undergoing the experience of being religious while describing the experience of being religious” as the serpent figure.
[hr]
Speaking of roses, here is some Fragrance, referring to Spinning:

[Author]

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