rubbercok3000

Presupposition 1. If there is a God/transcendecant reality etc

Presuppostion 2. Than it could be possible to "experience" it through the consciousness.

How?

I dont beleive that any spiritual revelation would just "come out of nothing". You hear in spiritual texts such as the Bible/Gita etc of strange unexplained unions with God. Why would people write about it unless some form of "hallucination" really did happen. I am sure that you athiests would agree that there is some "vision" that these people have. Your question would be if it has any validity? You still hear of these strange hallucinations even today. NDEs, prayer healings and all that. What would be the cause of it? That is there has to be a biological catalyst in order to "tune" your thought processes to it. There has to be some kind of reductionistic "cause" of the religous experience. To tune your brain into the spiritual thought processes that we all possess. Are these spiritual motivations simply there just for the hell of it?

If these experiences can be deemed as merely biological does that mean that God does not exist?

Does a plant that is growing in the dark prove that there is no light?

Human beings have a natural propensity for a beleif in som sort of "higher power"?

Just because it can be shown to be a biological process does not mean that it is "false".

Many of the posts I have read here dealiing with athiests include strange stories with no meaning simply because of an undisiplined mind in respect to "altered states". If you just "do the drug" without knowing how to navigate it is worthless I would agree. Anyone can get on a boat but not everyone will make it past the first tide. Thank you guys for your thoughts.

BTW Do more drugs it is good for you!!!!

Defiant Heretic

No, but they don't provide evidence that it does, either.

sourdough

I've heard of someone taking this shit,then he thought he could fly and steped of a balcony at his 10 floor apartment,
sad to say;he couldn't
and the moral of the story is
IMHO anyone trying any such mind fucking drugs is a total idiot

RevDahlia

It's not salvia.

DMT is N,N-dimethyltryptamine. it naturally occurs in a number of wild plants, a though most of what you get on the street is synthetic.

the herbal preparation is called ayahuasca, after the vine from which the drug is extracted, and it is used to induce visions by some south american indian shamans. DMT is usually smoked; it is useless when taken orally, except in concert with MAOIs. the south american indians discovered that other plants combined with ayahuasca caused copious grand cosmic visions, those plants happen to contain naturally-occurring MAOIs.

commercially-available DMT (for lack of a better word) is a fine pinkish or whitish powder. it is usually smoked out of glass. effects occur immediately. basically, DMT trips you right out of your friggin' tree. the high happens instantaneously, peaks at about 10 minutes (although it seems like mmmmuuuuchhhhh llllloonnggerrrrrrrr) and then more or less dissipates.

ever seen the movie "contact"? remember the part where jodie foster was in the wormhole? it's like that, but more so. it's actually terrifying, and it's pretty useless listening to music on the stuff, because all you'll be able to hear is a kind of dull "whoooooossshhhhh" noise. ...howling silver vortex, spiky black-and-white fractals, weird supernatural critters chattering at you, a sensation of total disembodiment, sense of profound awareness of the grand scheme of things (as evidenced by our friend rubbercok)... at least that's how it was for me.

when peaking on DMT i remember being seized with the awareness that i was about to die, and that was perfectly fine with me.

cognitive scientists at major universities tend to know where to get it. there is a related chemical, called 5-ME-DMT, which has less traumatizing effects but is still hella weird, and which i hear can be mail-ordered.

much more unreliable stoner lore available on your friendly neighborhood internet. or from the writings of terence mckenna.

RevDahlia

i feel you, though my sympathy is somewhat tempered by the fact that versions of the stepping-out-a-window anecdote have been heard throughout history about everything from ganja to PCP.

i do not think that everyone who does mind-fucking drugs is an idiot. (i, for instance, am not an idiot. i may be many things, but not that.)

this goes for ALL substances, including and especially alcohol... if yer gonna do it, do it in a safe place, with people you trust to grab you if you go near any 10th-floor windows. don't do it if you have problems with heart irregularity, hypertension, odd allergies, depression or other mental illness. don't do too much. research fatal dosages.

oh yeah, and don't do drugs.

rubbercok3000

Let it be known that I never said I was "smart".

Corona688

This cause, of course, being an uncaused god.

Right.

Makes pefect sense.... IF YOU'RE SMOKING CRACK! Oh wait...

rubbercok3000

Actually I was refering to religious experiences as having a biological cause. Not religious experiences being caused by God outside of physical reality.