Twenty-two of the 36 volunteers reported having a "complete" mystical experienceWow. This does seem a very high ratio. Either they were not ordinary volunteers or the experimenters had some damn good 'shrooms. None of this explains why we should treat these subjective reports with any more credibility that we treat the ravings of a drunk. We do of course, even the Wall Street Journal admits a grudging respect, but why?
Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept... The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances...^Please, do tell me more about the ordinary processes of the brain... I'm sure your comprehension of them and their subsequent interactions is bulletproof.
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.When one trips, you aren't communing with God, or the universe, or whatever; you're communing with yourself, with the way your organism perceives and conceives, and when those barriers of ego (and other constructions of consciousness) are pushed back, feelings of deep communion with nature, etc., often result.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru' narrow chinks of his cavern."
I am always resistant to this type of trip report, since they always peddle to a populist notion of what a profound experience must be like, which always boils down to a holistic vision of universal suffering and absolute love (in other words, a remarkably Christian experience.) The trip itself is invariably a kind of carnival of ghouls and spirits who emanate by turns terror and empathy. It feels as though they are mapping a complex experience along very simple, readymade literary conventions.The infuriating thing about the mystical is that it cannot be approached with words, yet that seems such a cop-out, surely everything can be expressed in words if you try hard enough. Make an effort man! As you try you find yourself expressing cliches of various kinds and before long have completely misrepresented the experience.
My personal experience had been that the higher the dose, the less you can account for the derangement using simple narratives. Certain meridian experiences are like vanishing horizons of comprehensibility. They are plateaus of consciousness so far beyond language that it is impossible to talk about them; I can only describe them negatively, as non-lingual, non-sensical, etc.
Overwhelmed as one would be placed in my positionI think the passage reflects on the inherent duality involved in the experience. You become a bit selfless by definition, performing a cognitive Jekyl & Hyde. To a point, your motor functions may even become impaired or modified, all the while the most grand visions you've ever experienced dance through your head. Yet you can't share them, you can't relate them.
Such a heavy burden now to be the one
Born to bear and read to all the details of our ending
To write it down for all the world to see
But I forgot my pen shit the bed again
Typical
Place your hand over one eye and stare out of the window for thirty seconds. It's important not to move your head.A couple of things about this. Firstly you can understand what it is for an experience to contain its own validation. Secondly, imagine describing the experience to someone who has never experienced stereo vision - without using concepts that presuppose binocularity.
Imagine, during those thirty seconds, that you've always been like this, one-eyed, your head fixed in position. That what you see now is all you have ever seen.
Now take your hand away from the other eye.
That's what it's like.
When William James was researching "The Variety of Religious Experience", he checked out nitrous oxide. While high on the drug, he "discovered the secret of the universe". He quickly wrote down his discovery, so that he wouldn't forget it when he came down off the drug. Upon later reading what he wrote, he found the following: "higgimus hoggimus, woman's monogamous. Hoggimus higgimus, man is polygamous".When I'm tempted to say that "All is one" I remember that rhyme.
[... ] our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question,-for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge toward a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance.(Also, I applaud your conversational determination. I'm not sure what you've been out to prove--intellectual points aside--but I hope you've proved it.)
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Boo yahh.
posted by NeoSpud at 11:23 PM on July 10, 2006