Opinions on Psychedelics related to the occult?

[Shade]

I only take peyote.

How has that affected your spiritual practices/beliefs/meditations?

 

[Morell]

I've seen a lot of people online worshiping or taking advice from DMT "Entities" or things they saw during a mushroom trip. What are the odds that these entities are actually real in the sense that they are conscious and self aware apart from being a trick your brain is playing on you due to psychedelics?

I never took DMT, I lean towards opinion in Entering the Desert, that it can help the one who already has a lot of experience, to deepen it, but to one, who has no experience and cannot even say difference between real entity and his own thoughts it is unlikely to bring genuine info.

Judging by how alcohol affects people, the drugs, even psychedelic ones, can only increase what is already within you. If it is real sensitivity, then it can become really intense experience. If it's imagination, then it will me images, if it's problems, then the nightmare comes.

 

[Lord_Cthulhu]

My verdict is, he's an engaging writer. But there's a bit too much Aleister Crowley in Aleister Crowley. He's always working an angle on the reader.

Didn't Crowley plagiarise everything he's most famous for?
He's an important modern occultist, no doubt, but he pretty much just revitalised a lot of way older ideas before he kinda lost it at the end.

And I can't imagine being able to do anything other than dance or sit completely still on dmt haha. No chance I could conduct myself properly

 

[MofoMojo]

Can you give a brief summary? The link is blocked where I live.

I posted it in the library...

 

[JGVDRG]

Maybe I'm referring to entheogens, but not everyone uses this term, so, here we go. Leaving synthetic stuff aside:
If nature offers you such tools for spiritual development, you're a tool yourself for not accepting it. Or maybe you just don't want to mess up your mundane senses, which is more than understandable depending on the swag you want to roll the lifestyle you adopted. But I personally don't respect any sort of dogmatic or moral affirmation against psychedelics or entheogens.

But the source of the aversion to these experiences is often raw primate fear of the unknown. There is zero possible comparison between any sort of practice void of mind altering substances and the rituals that involves those substances. Meditation on a substance is not really meditation. Astral projection is one thing, visual experience while on the substance is another, and so forth. It is a work of it's own.

Also, I wouldn't rely on books/texts/videos/reports while missing the real deal. "Come and see, my friend", as they say.

 

[Altan]

For example: if you study physics, a mountain (which you consider real) is discovered to be mostly made up of empty space, and the rest of it made up of probabilities. Then, later you find out how this almost nothingness actually forms a solid object.

I agree, and I find the dynamic interesting as knowing being about information and patterns. It's like the Knowing, Understanding, Wisdom triad in Cabalistic philosophy. The first is contact with what is being known. The second is embodiment and ownership of the information, and the third is being able to apply it.

In the case of the Zen phrase, the senses give you the mountain. Meditating makes it disappear because you internalize. Then the reality of the senses and that of the meditation merges, and it all just is. That's a bit similar to the triad Knowledge, Understanding, Wisdom- names of sacred centers on the Tree of Life.

As one who spent years undergoing psychedelic journies for transformation purposes, the folks that just trash that path are wrong. I can testify to that. However, they are also statistically correct. That means most humans are better off not touching that path unless they are well-prepared psychologically, not beginners in esoteric exploration, and very careful regarding who is with them, and where they do it and why (the real why).

What I did was an orchestration with art, nature and technology to create the right environment. There is something I read somewhere that I observed: people with a deep and unaddressed shadow if doing stuff with people of a deeper consciousness can under high doses end up trading places with their shadow persona. They tend to undergo an identity crisis, after which they emerge as an archetype form of their own shadow.

The quote I had read, or maybe a study, claimed that one will either come out of a trip as one's better self, or fall into a narcissistic or psychopathic mental hamster wheel that can be like possession. Or in some cases, the real nasty persona some folks have...comes out but with a more dramatic status than just a petty human nastiness.

So nobody just turns on an automobile without having a clue about driving other than turning the car on and getting it moving...fast, unless they are wanting to risk a crash. Sticking unpredictable substances in the body can also make one crash, even when the substances are safe, but the atmosphere that opens into one's perception on these substances may not be.

The perception opening up is just that. It isn't just made up. And one can end up drawing the attention of some of what is "out there". Interestingly, after a few years of people leaving this group and only the stable diehards remaining to push the envelope, a friend of mine got seduced by a girl that was sent by some Kali temple in California by the High priestess to check out a certain psychic irregularity that she traced to us.

Then she tried to poison my friend after seducing him....So, yeah,....caution is a good thing.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Psychedelics have been researched and interesting things have been revealed about their effects with promoting neuroplasticity. It sounds boring, but it's profound when you consider spiritual "growth".

The brain is malleable, physically, but the process of change is slow and usually we don't have much say in long-lasting changes. With Paychedelics, brand new ideas are glimpsed, new modes of seeing and thinking are discovered just through the mind being taken off its tracks. When Will has a chance to develop, it can then guide the formation of the brain with disciplined training, training that can be enhanced through use of psychedelics. The things the brain could achieve when this practice is taken to the extreme... the expansion of awareness is at the very least a given.

There is a misconception around psychedelics: your senses go wonky, and your thoughts become strange, but with a disciplined grown-up sense of self, lucidity remains and real, serious growth is possible. The issue is that many people who take psychedelics aren't grown-ups, many people alive today qualify as adult-children thanks to westernization.

Now, with the OP's opinion on DMT entities, I see a lot of irony. The belief in demons and spirits are common on this forum, but I sense a lack of... depth to the implications of this view. If these spirits are real, we cannot see them because they are made of subtle energies... if DMT activates latent suprasensory facilties (let's be clear here that the best neuroscientists still don't entirely understand how the brain works or what DMT actually does, but that those trained in meditation have shown incredible self-control in governing brain activity) then these spirits and the shit that makes up their world would become visible to us. That, or our astral bodies are jolted awake from the drug and we have a dual experience.

Psychedelics have been used around the world by witchdoctors and shamans for as long as people have been living together. They should be taken very seriously. A shallow mind will have shallow effects when taking them

 

[MofoMojo]

(let's be clear here that the best neuroscientists still don't entirely understand how the brain works or what DMT actually does, but that those trained in meditation have shown incredible self-control in governing brain activity

Absolutely.

As a Neuroscientist Andrew Gallimore has a

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. Even he thinks there's something uniquely different about DMT than compared to just other Psychedelics. A fascinating read/listen are his two books:
Alien Information Theory
Reality Switch Technologies

Dr. Rick Strassman's books on DMT are pretty interesting covering his experiments in the 90s too and then an additional "DMT Dialogues" by David Luke, Rory Spowers and more (it's a print of lectures given during the Tyringham Hall symposium in 2015 or 2017.

Covering shamanistic and other drug use I have a few recommendations:
Antipodes of the Mind by Benny Shanon
Flesh of the Gods by Peter T. Furst
Selections w/Maria Sabina

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Covering shamanistic and other drug use I have a few

Let me throw in Visionary by Grahm Hamdcock

 

[Altan]

One rather simple theory I recently encountered, based on research, is that these substances inhibit the neural states that were generated to inhibit perception between birth and adulthood, mainly through conditioning and the brain itself "solidifying" its experiences. Certain methods of transmuting consciousness (meditation is a bit too simple a term) have the same effect over time.

A mantra, for example, needs to be repeated (even in thought if one has the ability to focus in that way) over a hundred thousand times in the right state of consciousness to activate and do what it's supposed to. That's a generic assessment, but most mantras require preparation that amounts to neuroplastic conditioning.

This is the basic nature of learning, after all, at the neurological level.

I remember back in the day I spent six months of weekly sessions applying advanced forms of "meditation" in those states. At the most chaotic moments, my consciousness could simply not register what the heck I was perceiving. All I knew was that time itself was "different", but I had no words or even rational comprehension of what the even meant.

I am still not sure. It wasn't some kind of multiverse thing. Just that linear time is one thing, and geometrical planar or volumetric time quite another (although still "time"). But I would lose consciousness or white-out for half an hour before I came too, unable to get back to that. Interestingly, after those six months I was able to stay conscious and lucid, but instead of flying into undulating, organic time, I sustained a backbone of normal linear time within the expanded state. The sense I got (more like something was telling me) was that I have a body for a reason and will not really connect to anything for real unless it is taken into consideration (including neuronal nature).

 

[djcullgirl]

I've seen a lot of people online worshiping or taking advice from DMT "Entities" or things they saw during a mushroom trip. What are the odds that these entities are actually real in the sense that they are conscious and self aware apart from being a trick your brain is playing on you due to psychedelics?

about the same as if youre sober and experience the same thing, it seems obvious to me. You will never forget your first contact with a higher power, your first glimpse through the veil.

and besides that, is your point not discrediting untold millennia of trance-state, entheogen-enduced folk magic? thats kind of where magic comes from.

and i need to reiterate, i think thats the same question/feeling people get whenever anybody starts talking about metaphysics or spirits or anything remotely outside the narrow confines of what most people would insist is the limit of reality

 

[Accipeveldare]

about the same as if youre sober and experience the same thing, it seems obvious to me. You will never forget your first contact with a higher power, your first glimpse through the veil.

and besides that, is your point not discrediting untold millennia of trance-state, entheogen-enduced folk magic? thats kind of where magic comes from.

and i need to reiterate, i think thats the same question/feeling people get whenever anybody starts talking about metaphysics or spirits or anything remotely outside the narrow confines of what most people would insist is the limit of reality

This does make sense. Essentially, you are implying that many humans are not used to divine enlightenment and will do pretty much anything to attain it. And once they believe they have seen such an entity/deity the psychology indicates that they would most likely worship this entity in question.

 

[djcullgirl]

Humans.... are the medium through which divinity is experienced. Surely not the only.

Much like what i said about how this path of logic, from what i am getting from you, discredits the very roots of any type of magical system, traditions or what have you.

Tell me, at what point did the human experience exist without experiencing contact with the divine? That is what makes us human, according to some. Our ability to experience things bigger than us, bigger than survival, bigger than instinct. Thats supposedly what separates us from beast.

At what point has mankind ever not had a direct, symbiotic or mutual relationship with entheogenic plants and mind altering substances?

similarly, at what point has mankind, under the influence of mind altering substances or not, been separated from their experience of the divine?

the answer to both those questions is never.

You can not separate the experience of conciousness we call the human experience from either experimentation with mind altering, or expanding, substances. Just like you can not separate the human experience from the experience of the divine. its impossible. as above and all that.

Essentially, you're implying that magic wasnt accessed in altered states since the before we even differentiated the divine from the mundane.

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I would also add that most people who are open to or seeking the divine through psychedelic substances, its not their first glimpse of the other side of the veil. I would hazard to guess that anyone who is willing to commit to something that can profoundly alter their view on reality, psychic state, and potentially have "religious" type experiences, they are in an "impressionable state". as my hypno-self would say, to these experiences because they have experienced things that made them question. Or maybe theyre naturally just curious, and had no idea they could experience such a thing.

Either way, i dont see how that discredits the actual experience. Why does it matter how we get there? Who cares what system, substance, incantation, incense, or other details, attribute to that experience. does that change the nature of the experience? If so, how? And if they do experience the divine, or the divinity of reality, GOOD! isnt that what we all reallly want anyways?

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no disrespect btw, i dont even remember the flow of conversation and how we got here. I just know im triggered, sorry if i come off as hostile, i assure you i am not.

 

[Galahad]

I've seen a lot of people online worshiping or taking advice from DMT "Entities" or things they saw during a mushroom trip. What are the odds that these entities are actually real in the sense that they are conscious and self aware apart from being a trick your brain is playing on you due to psychedelics?

I have experienced this.

The greatest benefit of DMT in the spiritual life is the after-effect of feeling like you've been taken apart, cleansed and put back together again. It feels like ten hours of deep meditation rolled into one moment.

The visionary aspect of things is, in my opinion, a bit of a blind alley. It is interesting that so many archetypes appear in so many different accounts (I have had the Jester and the Goddess appear in mine) but I think there's an equivalence there with paganism. Mother Goddesses, tricksters, etc. appear in mythologies around the world and it's interesting that they do, but knowing that these archetypes appear in lots of different cultures is a different thing to experiencing the divinity beyond conception.

Those who aren't aiming for that, those who just want the visuals, are playing in the shallow end.

 

[Altan]

I am completely on board with the potentials of entheogens. Because I am, I cannot ignore that the experiences are powerful, and that either society has to acknowledge the situation fully and get behind it to call for doing it right, or the individual is tasked to learn one way or another to know what they are doing. It is rare that anyone looking for serious outcomes will enter into such things cold and without some form of preparation that is more committed than a few conversations or reading a few books, recreation motives notwithstanding.

It is a tool, you might say, like an automobile. Likewise, it doesn't take much to get it started once you have the keys, and it is all too easy to crash without ample training. That isn't just about safe operation, but driving in traffic. With psychedelics, you also drive in "traffic" of sorts, and it is very different from what you encounter just walking around- if I can extend the metaphor.

 

[djcullgirl]

I prayed to beat a very serious court case which hinged totally on falsified statements and evidence, and to overcome my drug addiction, before smoking DMT. I met a beam of light that told me id achie all that. I let out a roar that rippled in the aether that existed between nothingness, the whole universe vibrating with my cry. 4 of the most traumatic and difficult years later and i have indeed accomplished more than i could ever imagine in the way of healing, and during that time too. Psychedelics are INTEGRAL to my experience of reality.

The separation of ritual and recreational psychoactive compounds and plant medicines from the evolution of humanity itself and civilization as a whole is not possible, imo

 

[Grako]

I not only consume mushrooms, but I also grow them myself. I've been doing this for about 4 years now, but I've been studying the occult for over 20 years. And I believe that was all the time I needed to get closer to something so powerful in a healthy way.

I used to be very prejudiced against the idea of chemical-induced experiences in general. Until, after a lot of studying and other types of mystical experiences, I decided that it was finally time to understand what was the deal with the so-called "plants of power".

My first time was at a quiet party at a friend's house when I was in college. At first I was very scared, but in the end it ended up being one of the most remarkable experiences of my life!

The thing is that we are not just psyche or matter, but an amalgam of both. Some people can connect better with their more physical side, while others can connect with their immaterial ramifications. Mushrooms are like one of the many material aspect of nature that is trying to lead things towards the immaterial with intention (some will kill you doing that lol )

The thing about psychedelics is that they are an incredible tool in the hands of those who know the way. In the hands of a neophyte, it can lead to great confusion about the nature of things, just as in the hands of a nobody, it can lead to a great metaphysical paradigm shift in your life in a completely beneficial way.
The thing is that going down this path without due preparation, respect and knowledge about the substance (whatever it may be) is to hand the result over to luck.
Psychedelics are a tool like any other in magic with all its benefits and risks. When I talk about risk, I am not referring to chemical-body issues but rather to damage to the psyche as a whole that can generate traumas that could have been avoided.

Regarding the entities that one encounters, based on my experience and that of some friends who are equally knowledgeable about both the world of psychedelics and mysticism, some are indeed real and are directly associated with mushrooms (which have accompanied our mystical journey for over 60 thousand years). However, some are, as we call them in analytical psychology, autonomous complexes. This does not make them any less real, but rather in a different category, as they are "internal entities".

For anyone who wants to explore this path: study a lot about what you are going to consume; have someone you trust who is sober to accompany you on your first experience; harm reduction always includes "set and setting"!

I personally believe that growing what you are going to consume yourself makes it much more special. Here in Brazil, it is not forbidden to grow mushrooms and it is actually quite simple and cheap, as they literally grow in wet raw rice. The experience of growing and consecrating yourself is something quite unique and brings you much closer to the most fundamental questions involved in both the culture surrounding mushrooms and their relationship with plants and human beings.

Unfortunately, part of the story of how they came to be popularized in the West is quite tragic and involves the appropriation of rituals by a group of people who only wanted to profit from the innocence of the person mainly responsible for their knowledge, María Sabina. She used to call mushrooms "little children" and after having this relationship of planting and consuming them for a while I understand what she means by that, especially when certain entities start to appear in my dreams.

I usually use them only once or twice a year and that is enough for me to find what I am looking for at certain times. But this frequency is something extremely personal.

In short, I do not recommend starting the journey into mysticism with such a complex tool. It is interesting to have enough experience before sailing these seas so as not to drown in the first wave that hits you. But it is definitely a very rich tool that offers an interesting path for those who feel comfortable with the swing

And sorry for the giant text i'm just a big fungus nerd