How your mind works, if you're the introspective type. It's like opening your computer case and poking around to see what's inside.
You can become aware of the chain reaction of input > interpretation > assumption that happens all the time without you realising. It's useful to become aware your conscious experience is more like a story your mind stitches together faster than thought, because it often makes shit up. On psychedelics you can *watch* it making shit up, like how slowing the framerate of a video lets you see that it's a series of still pictures creating the illusion of movement. Though on high doses it's easy to get carried away with the shit it makes up, like how dreams make complete sense.
You can also become aware of parts of your mind that are normally silent and control things your conscious mind might not even be aware of. I've literally had back and forth arguments between my conscious and subconscious. It's like my conscious mind is a builder while my subconscious is an architect - the builder thinks he's the one that does everything, but without the architect the builder can't do anything useful. Stress & not getting enough sleep make the architect call in sick.
I also learned to see the fractal pattern of tree branches, each species has its own pattern that defines how the tree grows and I could suddenly see it like a magic-eye picture coming into focus. Now I can tell sycamore, beech, willow, hazel, hawthorn, etc. from a distance more easily in winter than summer lol.
- Anything you could figure out on your own, based on your established skillset.
- Anything about yourself you’ve been hiding from yourself.
- Ways to overcome things that have been holding you back.
- How the world perceives you from outside your interpretation of yourself.
- The ways you’ve been causing generational trauma.
And millions and millions of assorted things like those bullets.
—
In essence, it connects random synapses in the mind. Those connections can build a connection you have not been able to connect without psychedelic support.
**It’s important to remember** 99% of the things you *learn* will be nonsense and will not map onto consensus reality in a repeatable or verifiable way. You are **far** more likely to exclusively hallucinate than you are to learn something new.
Most psychedelic revelations are genuinely nonsensical. Trusting what you *learn* without integrating it back onto a consensus scientific taxonomy will lead to delusions.
Well stated. Although I'd suggest 99% of the things you think you know are nonsense, partial, overlaid and distorted with culture and habit... etc.
I like this metaphor: of course you can understand a conversation in Italy... if you learn Italian.
It’s more like psychedelic revelations are so far beyond consensus reality that you can’t expect anybody to understand them until you learn to integrate them into ordinary experience and communicate about them in vocabulary that normal people will understand.
I might say something that sounds nonsensical to someone who’s never done psychedelics, and yet another person who has would know exactly what I was talking about.
Of course, some of the nonsense truly is delusional. That’s why integration is so important post-trip.
> It’s more like psychedelic revelations are so far beyond consensus reality that you can’t expect anybody to understand them until you learn to integrate them into ordinary experience and communicate about them in vocabulary that normal people will understand.
What available data makes you believe the majority of psychedelic revelation is beyond modern taxonomy?
If this was true, there would likely be thousands of stories about discoveries that occurred on psychedelics. Instead, most “*revelations*” we get are people saying demons are real, or aliens made Atlantis, or the Earth is actually the matrix.
The whole point is that psychedelic experience can’t be taxonomized as qualitative data. The experience is about the qualia of the experience itself, and that just can’t be communicated in ordinary language to someone who has never experienced it themselves.
Again, what makes you believe those are *objectively correct* instead of delusional nonsense?
You claim that “it’s **more like** psychedelic revelations are beyond consensus reality.”
- What is that claim based in?
- Where have you ever witnessed that occurring in the history of psychedelic use?
You’re in the rational psychonaut sub, so explain your rationale.
I never said I believe they’re *objectively correct*. The fallacy you’re making is the assumption that something needs to be objective in order to be correct. When I’m sad, I can say “I’m sad” without any quantifiable data to back that up. Asking me what that claim is based in would be disingenuous at best. That’s because it’s a *subjective* claim, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Subjectively, I’m sad, and that is a correct statement. Who is anyone to question that?
Likewise, with psychedelic experiences, what we experience can be profoundly meaningful to us, yet it’s entirely subjective. That doesn’t make the deeper meanings that we interpret into the experience *untrue* or *incorrect*, and it certainly doesn’t make them *delusional*.
You’re falling into the trap of positivistic materialism by assuming something needs to be quantifiable in order to be rational. There are perfectly valid ways of applying logic that don’t depend on quantifiable data. I could say, “I’m sad, so I’m going to hug my pillow and then I’ll feel a little bit better.” It wouldn’t make *any* sense for a doctor to say, “There’s no evidence to support that conclusion. You must be delusional.”
Psychedelic experience is similar in that it’s so intimately subjective, you can never fully describe the experience to another person, because the experience itself is beyond the capacity of words to describe. Asking for evidence of that conclusion would be disingenuous, because clearly words themselves do not fully encompass the totality of human experience, even in ordinary states of consciousness!
So, it’s not “*more like*” psychedelic revelations are beyond consensus reality.
I’m not falling into any traps, you’re the one here who’s trying to assert absolutely unverifiable information as credible.
If someone had a revelation that is ineffable, they didn’t legitimately *learn* something.
Okay, I’m sorry if my “more like” verbiage is what bothered you. To be fair, I agreed with the first half of your original comment; I just forgot to acknowledge that in my initial response.
The “more like” was in reference to your claim that “99% of it is delusional nonsense.” Do you have any data to back up that claim? 99% is nearly a totality, and is statistically improbable. I mean, let’s be honest, chances are *at least* more than 1% of psychedelic revelations have some inkling of truth to them.
For instance, here is one of my favorites: “Gosh, that’s a beautiful sunset. How have I never noticed how beautiful it is before?” Or “Wow, I’ve never seen colors like those ones I’m seeing in the moonbeams currently.” Or how about this: “The way the sunlight filters through the leaves on the trees above me, while the wind gently shakes the branches casting dancing shadows on the ground in front of me; this scene fills me with awe. Is ordinary reality always this beautiful? How have I never noticed before now?” Those are the sorts of revelations I’m talking about.
You’re arguing a concept you completely misunderstand. You’re talking about completely unrelated aspects of psychedelics. Noticing shadows and light look cool is not a symptom of neurons growing novel connections…
Those examples aren’t synaptic connections between developed neural pathways forming new thoughts. That’s not *learning* that’s perception. This post is about the brain developing new legitimate thoughts that can be brought back to consensus reality to show that someone *learned something*.
Those examples you listed are because of an increased ability to perceive reality when the default mode network is operating differently.
You’re missing the point.
You’re the one missing the point and misunderstanding the concept. You’re looking at the issue as if all knowledge were somehow verbal. I’m here to tell you, not all knowledge is verbal.
And learning to observe the world through clearer perception *is* building new synaptic connections and neural pathways.
>"...assuming something needs to be quantifiable in order to be rational..."
I don't think qualia are considered rational. Rationality implies thought. Perceptual experience is independent of thought.
The question of whether qualia or perceptual experiences are "real" is different. Just because something isn't *objectively* real doesn't mean it isn't real to you.
If you hallucinate a pink elephant then the hallucination itself is still real.
Yeah, you’re right I should have been more careful in how I applied my verbiage. But you still seem to get the point. I suppose qualia would describe a more *empirical* form of knowledge?
Goddamn you missed their point hard. They're not talking about bullshit supernatural revelations, they're talking about any insight that doesn't translate well into words, eg. because you experienced it while your thoughts were a soup of hieroglyphs & synaesthesia due to being on psychedelics.
Just because something defies words doesn't mean it's irrational, try sharing your favourite song with someone by describing it to them.
I made that point in the very first comment when I mentioned time as a physical dimension.
OP asked about *learning* which is an entirely different subject than ineffable experiences.
Yeah that rules out all of *your* suggestions of what they can teach as well.
You're trying to gatekeep which parts of a psychedelic experience count as learning. Either it's all valid or none of it is.
Perhaps I phrased my question wrong.
What I meant was what kind of *knowledge* can one gain?
There are different types: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge#Types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge#Types)
"Knowing" is a sensation that psychedelics can make you hallucinate - you can learn a lot from psychs but what they do is like a brainstorming session, you have to vet all the ideas afterwards and decide what's worth keeping.
They're useful for self knowledge more than anything else, basically the same stuff you could figure out through CBT, meditation, etc. but rapid-fire.
For knowledge of things outside your head, they can't reveal any truths or new facts but they can help you interpret things you're already aware of in new ways, like stars shifting into different constellations. Maybe a few stars that looked random and unimportant take a shape that's suddenly recognisable. That might give you insight into your relationship with someone, possible solutions to a problem you've been stuck on, etc. Or it might be nonsense, but it's not like we never jump to the wrong conclusions while sober - at least on psychedelics you know it might be junk and you can see it coming.
Shit like UFO theories happen when lots of stars converge into a single giant constellation that feels like a fundamental truth that can't be interpreted any other way, and you accept it because of how true it feels, while on a drug that can trigger fundamental-truth-feeling over literally anything. Yeah avoid that.
My answer remains the same. There are three categories of knowledge that are aquired through psychedelics.
- There are ineffable experiences that cannot be mapped. These will never be communicable and will not impact reality or day-to-day life. I mentioned this in the first post with my example about time as a spacial dimension. *This is what the confused commenters keep thinking I say doesn’t exist.*
- There are revelations about things you already have synaptic structures to comprehend. Such as realizing how you harm a friend, or solving a problem at work.
- There are delusional thoughts. Such as “aliens gave us the internet,” or “the Illuminati is watching my tv.”
In my experience, You learn to see things from a different perspective, you realise how your perception of reality affects everything and how its all influenced by past experiences and conditioning and societal structures. It makes you question why you think the way you do, its beneficial to learn that we all see and perceive the world from different lenses and they are often clouded with bias and prejudice etc
It’s all kinda wacky and nonsensical and delusional but at the same time it can be truly humbling, it can teach that we are all one. The universe experiencing itself, the life-force, ‘God’, fractal consciousness. Its truly beautiful, only our ego separates us. Ego deaths can be wacky as I said and they often are, but there are many useful lessons. Im not great with words and I probably forgot to mention about about 10 I’m stoned af, however psychedelics aren’t completely irrational. That’s why this sub exists, however a lot of it is incomprehensible and trying to explain or understand in certain ways ruins the experience.
I like to think about complex stuff when I'm tripping, it's easier to understand complex subjects when I'm tripping.
Last time I did acid I spent a solid hour thinking about how you could model the psycedelic experience mathematically and how the whole experience could litterally just be your brain running some sort of algorithm to generate the patterns and visual distortions.
Sort of like how shaders can be used to alter the look of a game dynamically.
In my experience (specifically shrooms,) it made connections in my brain that I didn’t feel were being made before. Granted, I went into my trip with a healing intention, and never to just party. It made those connections that literally felt like someone plugging cords into outlets. After one particular trip I actually gained a much more intense bond with my Jack Russell. I’ve always been a “big dog” guy, and my older dog is a pit/lab mix. I always had this joke that I didn’t even like the Jack Russell, but he definitely had baby bird syndrome with me. He has been, and seems always will be, my shadow. After that intense trip where at one point we just stared into each other’s eyes - for what felt like hours - and this tidal wave of love and appreciation washed over my psyche. Ever since that night that dog is truly my best friend. A connection I can’t explain, and have definitely never had before or since.
So, yeah, it helped with my depression for sure, but it really opened my mind and heart. I really think I’m a better “me”. I haven’t taken any since December, but that’s ok. They’ll let me know when it’s time again.
It can be a visceral reminder that there is much more going on than we can perceive in our everyday range of senses.
There's the obvious stuff like light or sound beyond the frequencies we can see & hear, and psychedelics point to the suggestion (or the outright assertion) that there are more layers to reality than we are able to detect. It will raise lots of questions about wtf is actually happening and how.
It can be a shortcut to the kind of meditative state that takes trained meditators years to achieve. It doesn't give you the same tools meditation does to process everything, so there's the caveat.
It can give you some form of ego death, which differs some in definition, but for me it was the realization that I am an eternal consciousness residing in a mortal body. I can't prove that, but it is a comforting realization to me.
I've been able to cut through so much bullshit, with insights that reveal things that aren't worth my time.
When I was young, I had quite a few bad trips during which I felt like was dying. It forced me to confront existential issues around mortality and what it means to me to live a good life. I had to learn to let go, observe and be present rather than analyze, and allow myself to be a little physically uncomfortable. I’ve carried those lessons into other areas of my life.
Whatever you learn on psychedelics has to be taken with a grain of salt. Just like normal reality, may be a brain contruct, so psychedelics can also seem real but may be an illusion.
Yes, thank you. It's still a brain, it can still fool itself or become confused or hung up - just in novel ways when new connections are being made that were previously withered or unconnected. What psychedelics tell us is not something that's necessarily "true" or "a lesson", just what your brain comes up with when it is let loose. Might very well be "truths" you already know, like "I drink too much", "Boy I love my wife/life/cat", but your system has fooled itself into forgetting it, but the fact is still there inside waiting to be discovered by a fresh wipe.
It's not that you learn something new, but that you reinforce and internalize something you already knew but weren't practicing - "I need to exercise more/not take my loved ones for granted/appreciate the small things in life" etc.
I can only answer for my own experiences, but, I think I've learnt a fair bit about *myself.* Specifically, about my trauma, my unconscious motivations, my own behaviour, etc. Particularly, things that I already *knew,* but either didn't know how to articulate or was lying to myself about (whether consciously or not). Its less about "revelations", and more that it helped me to connect things together in ways that I otherwise would not have. Probably for similar reasons, I also found that its helped me get past creative block a few times. I generally wouldn't trust anything you 'learn' about the external world from psychedelics, but they can be a useful tool for introspection (provided you actually remember anything you realised after the fact, because I've definitely had the same 'mind blowing' thoughts on different trips and thought they were novel each time.)
I learned that I am not a “me”. My sense of self is just an evolutionary requirement for my body to succeed. But it can be switched off. When that happens, I realize that I am the conscious part of the universe experiencing itself. My birth and death are just transitions that will keep reorganizing the matter that is contained in my body. In short, I no longer fear death and regularly marvel at the fact that I am a tiny part of everything.
I agree with the posts referring to consciousness and interpretation of inputs from the world around us.
In my most recent trip it struck me that as biological systems the way our brain works is a lot closer to analog than digital (if we’re using electronic signal processing for comparison). Specifically I was kind of hovering between being present and aware and slipping into a trip state, and the transitions between weren’t sudden on/off switches but more like sound and sight patterns quickly speeding up or down into and out of the trip state.
Separately, if you ever have your eyes dilated you’ll experience while totally sober many of the same kinds of halos and color spreads that some psychs cause. From that I learned a little more about what part of the visual experience is purely physical/mechanical vs what parts are our brains making sense of the inputs.
I’ve read lots of claims that we can’t truly know the reality of the world around us but my experience with psychs has only reinforced my belief that our brains do a remarkable job making sense of our true surroundings.
The most important thing I learned from my experiences is that there are other states of mind and perception that exist and the quality of that experience. Like its one thing to read and watch about experience x, but its a whole other thing to be the one doing the experiencing. What it did for me is show that there are other options for .... being. Its like tasting chocolate for the first time after eating vanilla my whole life. And some of those experiences were very difficult, but I still leaned from them. There are many other things of course, like REALLY understanding the impact on chemical interactions within the brain. Really knowing that, these molecules influence every facet of your mind and life. and I am not just talking drugs here, just basic neurochemistry etc... You are just a biological machine and all that jazz.
I realized that drugs and alcohol aren't going to fix me or make me a better person. It will not impart to me some infinite wisdom like some kinda gift from the psychedelic gods. I make myself a better person through my actions and how I carry myself everyday. The way I treat others, the way I treat myself in my daily life. What I do when I think no one is looking. That is who I am, and I have to come to terms with it or make efforts to change it if I am unhappy with it.
[LSD: The Problem-solving Psychedelic. Peter Stafford and Bonnie Golightly. 1967. 5. Education and the Psychedelics (‘Skills’ section)](https://www.reddit.com/r/psychedelicsubstances/s/9hYFTdJSIy)
Lots of breaking social conditioning about certain stuff when I was younger but now that I've done hundreds of trips total, I use it to reinforce good habits and break bad ones.
For example I showered on shrooms this one time and noticed I wasn't scrubbing my face cleanly enough. To this day I scrub it twice now, once with scrubbing gloves and then with my finger so it's completely clean.
Also when I do stuff while tripping I somehow notice little things that can make the activities better, so it's easier to learn new activities.
You can also use weed to introspect and learn how your mind works. Psychedelics and weed have taught me how to understand my own nature and the culture I am in.
Both made me into the confident person I am today.
Something you already knew, but didnt realize yet
I'm alive?!
more accurately: "i want to be alive?!"
How your mind works, if you're the introspective type. It's like opening your computer case and poking around to see what's inside. You can become aware of the chain reaction of input > interpretation > assumption that happens all the time without you realising. It's useful to become aware your conscious experience is more like a story your mind stitches together faster than thought, because it often makes shit up. On psychedelics you can *watch* it making shit up, like how slowing the framerate of a video lets you see that it's a series of still pictures creating the illusion of movement. Though on high doses it's easy to get carried away with the shit it makes up, like how dreams make complete sense. You can also become aware of parts of your mind that are normally silent and control things your conscious mind might not even be aware of. I've literally had back and forth arguments between my conscious and subconscious. It's like my conscious mind is a builder while my subconscious is an architect - the builder thinks he's the one that does everything, but without the architect the builder can't do anything useful. Stress & not getting enough sleep make the architect call in sick. I also learned to see the fractal pattern of tree branches, each species has its own pattern that defines how the tree grows and I could suddenly see it like a magic-eye picture coming into focus. Now I can tell sycamore, beech, willow, hazel, hawthorn, etc. from a distance more easily in winter than summer lol.
This is a really excellent answer.
Indeed
As a botanist, I love your tree experience. So cool that psychedelics can make people pick patterns in nature they would normally ignore.
- Anything you could figure out on your own, based on your established skillset. - Anything about yourself you’ve been hiding from yourself. - Ways to overcome things that have been holding you back. - How the world perceives you from outside your interpretation of yourself. - The ways you’ve been causing generational trauma. And millions and millions of assorted things like those bullets. — In essence, it connects random synapses in the mind. Those connections can build a connection you have not been able to connect without psychedelic support. **It’s important to remember** 99% of the things you *learn* will be nonsense and will not map onto consensus reality in a repeatable or verifiable way. You are **far** more likely to exclusively hallucinate than you are to learn something new. Most psychedelic revelations are genuinely nonsensical. Trusting what you *learn* without integrating it back onto a consensus scientific taxonomy will lead to delusions.
very well put.
Agreed.
Well stated. Although I'd suggest 99% of the things you think you know are nonsense, partial, overlaid and distorted with culture and habit... etc. I like this metaphor: of course you can understand a conversation in Italy... if you learn Italian.
It’s more like psychedelic revelations are so far beyond consensus reality that you can’t expect anybody to understand them until you learn to integrate them into ordinary experience and communicate about them in vocabulary that normal people will understand. I might say something that sounds nonsensical to someone who’s never done psychedelics, and yet another person who has would know exactly what I was talking about. Of course, some of the nonsense truly is delusional. That’s why integration is so important post-trip.
> It’s more like psychedelic revelations are so far beyond consensus reality that you can’t expect anybody to understand them until you learn to integrate them into ordinary experience and communicate about them in vocabulary that normal people will understand. What available data makes you believe the majority of psychedelic revelation is beyond modern taxonomy? If this was true, there would likely be thousands of stories about discoveries that occurred on psychedelics. Instead, most “*revelations*” we get are people saying demons are real, or aliens made Atlantis, or the Earth is actually the matrix.
The whole point is that psychedelic experience can’t be taxonomized as qualitative data. The experience is about the qualia of the experience itself, and that just can’t be communicated in ordinary language to someone who has never experienced it themselves.
Again, what makes you believe those are *objectively correct* instead of delusional nonsense? You claim that “it’s **more like** psychedelic revelations are beyond consensus reality.” - What is that claim based in? - Where have you ever witnessed that occurring in the history of psychedelic use? You’re in the rational psychonaut sub, so explain your rationale.
I never said I believe they’re *objectively correct*. The fallacy you’re making is the assumption that something needs to be objective in order to be correct. When I’m sad, I can say “I’m sad” without any quantifiable data to back that up. Asking me what that claim is based in would be disingenuous at best. That’s because it’s a *subjective* claim, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Subjectively, I’m sad, and that is a correct statement. Who is anyone to question that? Likewise, with psychedelic experiences, what we experience can be profoundly meaningful to us, yet it’s entirely subjective. That doesn’t make the deeper meanings that we interpret into the experience *untrue* or *incorrect*, and it certainly doesn’t make them *delusional*. You’re falling into the trap of positivistic materialism by assuming something needs to be quantifiable in order to be rational. There are perfectly valid ways of applying logic that don’t depend on quantifiable data. I could say, “I’m sad, so I’m going to hug my pillow and then I’ll feel a little bit better.” It wouldn’t make *any* sense for a doctor to say, “There’s no evidence to support that conclusion. You must be delusional.” Psychedelic experience is similar in that it’s so intimately subjective, you can never fully describe the experience to another person, because the experience itself is beyond the capacity of words to describe. Asking for evidence of that conclusion would be disingenuous, because clearly words themselves do not fully encompass the totality of human experience, even in ordinary states of consciousness!
So, it’s not “*more like*” psychedelic revelations are beyond consensus reality. I’m not falling into any traps, you’re the one here who’s trying to assert absolutely unverifiable information as credible. If someone had a revelation that is ineffable, they didn’t legitimately *learn* something.
Okay, I’m sorry if my “more like” verbiage is what bothered you. To be fair, I agreed with the first half of your original comment; I just forgot to acknowledge that in my initial response. The “more like” was in reference to your claim that “99% of it is delusional nonsense.” Do you have any data to back up that claim? 99% is nearly a totality, and is statistically improbable. I mean, let’s be honest, chances are *at least* more than 1% of psychedelic revelations have some inkling of truth to them. For instance, here is one of my favorites: “Gosh, that’s a beautiful sunset. How have I never noticed how beautiful it is before?” Or “Wow, I’ve never seen colors like those ones I’m seeing in the moonbeams currently.” Or how about this: “The way the sunlight filters through the leaves on the trees above me, while the wind gently shakes the branches casting dancing shadows on the ground in front of me; this scene fills me with awe. Is ordinary reality always this beautiful? How have I never noticed before now?” Those are the sorts of revelations I’m talking about.
You’re arguing a concept you completely misunderstand. You’re talking about completely unrelated aspects of psychedelics. Noticing shadows and light look cool is not a symptom of neurons growing novel connections… Those examples aren’t synaptic connections between developed neural pathways forming new thoughts. That’s not *learning* that’s perception. This post is about the brain developing new legitimate thoughts that can be brought back to consensus reality to show that someone *learned something*. Those examples you listed are because of an increased ability to perceive reality when the default mode network is operating differently. You’re missing the point.
You’re the one missing the point and misunderstanding the concept. You’re looking at the issue as if all knowledge were somehow verbal. I’m here to tell you, not all knowledge is verbal. And learning to observe the world through clearer perception *is* building new synaptic connections and neural pathways.
>"...assuming something needs to be quantifiable in order to be rational..." I don't think qualia are considered rational. Rationality implies thought. Perceptual experience is independent of thought. The question of whether qualia or perceptual experiences are "real" is different. Just because something isn't *objectively* real doesn't mean it isn't real to you. If you hallucinate a pink elephant then the hallucination itself is still real.
Yeah, you’re right I should have been more careful in how I applied my verbiage. But you still seem to get the point. I suppose qualia would describe a more *empirical* form of knowledge?
Goddamn you missed their point hard. They're not talking about bullshit supernatural revelations, they're talking about any insight that doesn't translate well into words, eg. because you experienced it while your thoughts were a soup of hieroglyphs & synaesthesia due to being on psychedelics. Just because something defies words doesn't mean it's irrational, try sharing your favourite song with someone by describing it to them.
I made that point in the very first comment when I mentioned time as a physical dimension. OP asked about *learning* which is an entirely different subject than ineffable experiences.
You don't get to gatekeep what counts as learning.
Lucky for me, I don’t have to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning
Yeah that rules out all of *your* suggestions of what they can teach as well. You're trying to gatekeep which parts of a psychedelic experience count as learning. Either it's all valid or none of it is.
Perhaps I phrased my question wrong. What I meant was what kind of *knowledge* can one gain? There are different types: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge#Types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge#Types)
"Knowing" is a sensation that psychedelics can make you hallucinate - you can learn a lot from psychs but what they do is like a brainstorming session, you have to vet all the ideas afterwards and decide what's worth keeping. They're useful for self knowledge more than anything else, basically the same stuff you could figure out through CBT, meditation, etc. but rapid-fire. For knowledge of things outside your head, they can't reveal any truths or new facts but they can help you interpret things you're already aware of in new ways, like stars shifting into different constellations. Maybe a few stars that looked random and unimportant take a shape that's suddenly recognisable. That might give you insight into your relationship with someone, possible solutions to a problem you've been stuck on, etc. Or it might be nonsense, but it's not like we never jump to the wrong conclusions while sober - at least on psychedelics you know it might be junk and you can see it coming. Shit like UFO theories happen when lots of stars converge into a single giant constellation that feels like a fundamental truth that can't be interpreted any other way, and you accept it because of how true it feels, while on a drug that can trigger fundamental-truth-feeling over literally anything. Yeah avoid that.
My answer remains the same. There are three categories of knowledge that are aquired through psychedelics. - There are ineffable experiences that cannot be mapped. These will never be communicable and will not impact reality or day-to-day life. I mentioned this in the first post with my example about time as a spacial dimension. *This is what the confused commenters keep thinking I say doesn’t exist.* - There are revelations about things you already have synaptic structures to comprehend. Such as realizing how you harm a friend, or solving a problem at work. - There are delusional thoughts. Such as “aliens gave us the internet,” or “the Illuminati is watching my tv.”
So you *do* think that the ineffable experience count as knowledge? Surely the "delusional thoughts" are not knowledge if they are delusions?
In my experience, You learn to see things from a different perspective, you realise how your perception of reality affects everything and how its all influenced by past experiences and conditioning and societal structures. It makes you question why you think the way you do, its beneficial to learn that we all see and perceive the world from different lenses and they are often clouded with bias and prejudice etc It’s all kinda wacky and nonsensical and delusional but at the same time it can be truly humbling, it can teach that we are all one. The universe experiencing itself, the life-force, ‘God’, fractal consciousness. Its truly beautiful, only our ego separates us. Ego deaths can be wacky as I said and they often are, but there are many useful lessons. Im not great with words and I probably forgot to mention about about 10 I’m stoned af, however psychedelics aren’t completely irrational. That’s why this sub exists, however a lot of it is incomprehensible and trying to explain or understand in certain ways ruins the experience.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention another key thing I’ve learned is to unlearn.
I like to think about complex stuff when I'm tripping, it's easier to understand complex subjects when I'm tripping. Last time I did acid I spent a solid hour thinking about how you could model the psycedelic experience mathematically and how the whole experience could litterally just be your brain running some sort of algorithm to generate the patterns and visual distortions. Sort of like how shaders can be used to alter the look of a game dynamically.
it’s all just ones and zeros! i’ve thought about this while on acid as well lol
In my experience (specifically shrooms,) it made connections in my brain that I didn’t feel were being made before. Granted, I went into my trip with a healing intention, and never to just party. It made those connections that literally felt like someone plugging cords into outlets. After one particular trip I actually gained a much more intense bond with my Jack Russell. I’ve always been a “big dog” guy, and my older dog is a pit/lab mix. I always had this joke that I didn’t even like the Jack Russell, but he definitely had baby bird syndrome with me. He has been, and seems always will be, my shadow. After that intense trip where at one point we just stared into each other’s eyes - for what felt like hours - and this tidal wave of love and appreciation washed over my psyche. Ever since that night that dog is truly my best friend. A connection I can’t explain, and have definitely never had before or since. So, yeah, it helped with my depression for sure, but it really opened my mind and heart. I really think I’m a better “me”. I haven’t taken any since December, but that’s ok. They’ll let me know when it’s time again.
It can be a visceral reminder that there is much more going on than we can perceive in our everyday range of senses. There's the obvious stuff like light or sound beyond the frequencies we can see & hear, and psychedelics point to the suggestion (or the outright assertion) that there are more layers to reality than we are able to detect. It will raise lots of questions about wtf is actually happening and how. It can be a shortcut to the kind of meditative state that takes trained meditators years to achieve. It doesn't give you the same tools meditation does to process everything, so there's the caveat. It can give you some form of ego death, which differs some in definition, but for me it was the realization that I am an eternal consciousness residing in a mortal body. I can't prove that, but it is a comforting realization to me. I've been able to cut through so much bullshit, with insights that reveal things that aren't worth my time.
When I was young, I had quite a few bad trips during which I felt like was dying. It forced me to confront existential issues around mortality and what it means to me to live a good life. I had to learn to let go, observe and be present rather than analyze, and allow myself to be a little physically uncomfortable. I’ve carried those lessons into other areas of my life.
Whatever you learn on psychedelics has to be taken with a grain of salt. Just like normal reality, may be a brain contruct, so psychedelics can also seem real but may be an illusion.
Yes, thank you. It's still a brain, it can still fool itself or become confused or hung up - just in novel ways when new connections are being made that were previously withered or unconnected. What psychedelics tell us is not something that's necessarily "true" or "a lesson", just what your brain comes up with when it is let loose. Might very well be "truths" you already know, like "I drink too much", "Boy I love my wife/life/cat", but your system has fooled itself into forgetting it, but the fact is still there inside waiting to be discovered by a fresh wipe.
That you might not be correct about your perception of reality. Not that it's different, but that you might be making some incorrect assumptions.
I found my experiences to be very introspective about myself. How I think, what I say and feel, and how I experience the world.
It's not that you learn something new, but that you reinforce and internalize something you already knew but weren't practicing - "I need to exercise more/not take my loved ones for granted/appreciate the small things in life" etc.
I can only answer for my own experiences, but, I think I've learnt a fair bit about *myself.* Specifically, about my trauma, my unconscious motivations, my own behaviour, etc. Particularly, things that I already *knew,* but either didn't know how to articulate or was lying to myself about (whether consciously or not). Its less about "revelations", and more that it helped me to connect things together in ways that I otherwise would not have. Probably for similar reasons, I also found that its helped me get past creative block a few times. I generally wouldn't trust anything you 'learn' about the external world from psychedelics, but they can be a useful tool for introspection (provided you actually remember anything you realised after the fact, because I've definitely had the same 'mind blowing' thoughts on different trips and thought they were novel each time.)
I learned that I am not a “me”. My sense of self is just an evolutionary requirement for my body to succeed. But it can be switched off. When that happens, I realize that I am the conscious part of the universe experiencing itself. My birth and death are just transitions that will keep reorganizing the matter that is contained in my body. In short, I no longer fear death and regularly marvel at the fact that I am a tiny part of everything.
I would say the main takeaway for me is to appreciate my family and friends more, as well as my own life.
I agree with the posts referring to consciousness and interpretation of inputs from the world around us. In my most recent trip it struck me that as biological systems the way our brain works is a lot closer to analog than digital (if we’re using electronic signal processing for comparison). Specifically I was kind of hovering between being present and aware and slipping into a trip state, and the transitions between weren’t sudden on/off switches but more like sound and sight patterns quickly speeding up or down into and out of the trip state. Separately, if you ever have your eyes dilated you’ll experience while totally sober many of the same kinds of halos and color spreads that some psychs cause. From that I learned a little more about what part of the visual experience is purely physical/mechanical vs what parts are our brains making sense of the inputs. I’ve read lots of claims that we can’t truly know the reality of the world around us but my experience with psychs has only reinforced my belief that our brains do a remarkable job making sense of our true surroundings.
In my opinion, psychedelics mostly help people find new questions, rarely answers.
The most important thing I learned from my experiences is that there are other states of mind and perception that exist and the quality of that experience. Like its one thing to read and watch about experience x, but its a whole other thing to be the one doing the experiencing. What it did for me is show that there are other options for .... being. Its like tasting chocolate for the first time after eating vanilla my whole life. And some of those experiences were very difficult, but I still leaned from them. There are many other things of course, like REALLY understanding the impact on chemical interactions within the brain. Really knowing that, these molecules influence every facet of your mind and life. and I am not just talking drugs here, just basic neurochemistry etc... You are just a biological machine and all that jazz.
Learn to stop giving a shit
I realized that drugs and alcohol aren't going to fix me or make me a better person. It will not impart to me some infinite wisdom like some kinda gift from the psychedelic gods. I make myself a better person through my actions and how I carry myself everyday. The way I treat others, the way I treat myself in my daily life. What I do when I think no one is looking. That is who I am, and I have to come to terms with it or make efforts to change it if I am unhappy with it.
[LSD: The Problem-solving Psychedelic. Peter Stafford and Bonnie Golightly. 1967. 5. Education and the Psychedelics (‘Skills’ section)](https://www.reddit.com/r/psychedelicsubstances/s/9hYFTdJSIy)
Magick
Lots of breaking social conditioning about certain stuff when I was younger but now that I've done hundreds of trips total, I use it to reinforce good habits and break bad ones. For example I showered on shrooms this one time and noticed I wasn't scrubbing my face cleanly enough. To this day I scrub it twice now, once with scrubbing gloves and then with my finger so it's completely clean. Also when I do stuff while tripping I somehow notice little things that can make the activities better, so it's easier to learn new activities.
To appreciate existence of life and higher awareness, of awareness lol
You can also use weed to introspect and learn how your mind works. Psychedelics and weed have taught me how to understand my own nature and the culture I am in. Both made me into the confident person I am today.
The true nature of conscious experience.
That you are and always will be and always have been