> Ram Dass spends the first part of the book describing his journey. It involves a dive into the world of psychedelic drugs and their benefits and limitations. His experience essentially opens him up to Eastern mysticism.
There is some evidence that supports the notion that psychedelics increase openness to new ideas. This is the basis of psychedelic-assisted therapy, in which psychedelics are thought to make the patient more open to accepting the therapy intervention while unlearning their previously unhealthy thought patterns.
However, that openness to new ideas is a double-edged sword. People who use psychedelics in uncontrolled environments with excessive frequency can pick up a lot of strange ideas along the way.
Increasing one's openness to new ideas might be a good thing in the presence of a trained therapist or other well-meaning environments. However, it may become counterproductive in uncontrolled environments where users are prone to picking up conspiracy theories, new age mysticism, pseudoscience, or other misinformation that bombards us from all angles on modern social media.
Modern news article about psychedelics skew heavily toward the positives while burying the risks and downsides. For example, many people glorify Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR and 1993 noble prize winner, for his love of LSD. Few people know that he also believed he talked to a glowing raccoon in the forest, was a climate change denier, and didn't believe that HIV was related to AIDS. Being too open to new ideas is not unilaterally positive.
Definitely true. In my experience taking mushrooms when in a depressed state was transformative. My experience taking them when I’m doing well is that they tend to make me question parts of myself or society that I truly believe are useful and good. For instance, after a trip I found myself terrified of driving a car for an entire week, and I’m still somewhat uncomfortable with driving years later.
> Increasing one's openness to new ideas might be a good thing in the presence of a trained therapist or other well-meaning environments. However, it may become counterproductive in uncontrolled environments where users are prone to picking up conspiracy theories, new age mysticism, pseudoscience, or other misinformation that bombards us from all angles on modern social media.
I wonder, might it be possible for you to add some quantitative information to this so readers have some idea what kind of a risk profile they're dealing with here? I spend a fair amount of time in various communities, and I've never picked up on any noteworthy abnormal tendencies toward conspiracy theories or pseudoscience - plenty of new age mysticism though, and the more the merrier I say (provided it's not too far out there, of course).
> Modern news article about psychedelics skew heavily toward the positives while burying the risks and downsides.
99% of anything I've encountered in the community skews heavily toward the positives. I suppose it's possibile that all those who encounter problems disappear, never to be heard from again, but it seems fairly unlikely. Now and then you do encounter someone with symptoms of mania, but it's fairly rare, and it isn't guaranteed that their state is entirely due to psychedelics. Out of curiosity, where are you reading about all of these risks and downsides (I'd like to read up on the topic to broaden my horizons)?
As for Ram Dass, I highly recommend checking out a few of his lectures on YouTube, this article really doesn't do him justice, at all. He's not for everyone, but those who like him tend to really like him, and I am one of those.
> I've never picked up on any noteworthy abnormal tendencies toward conspiracy theories or pseudoscience
Is immediately contradicted by this statement:
> - plenty of new age mysticism though, and the more the merrier I say (provided it's not too far out there, of course).
This is a prime example of why self-reporting doesn't work. If someone holds a set of beliefs to be true, they won't identify them as pseudoscience, misinformation, or false.
Ah, pardon me, I googled "new age mysticism" and it seems off, what I had in mind was more so things like Eastern religions, and general ideas about the oneness of the individual with humanity and the universe, that sort of thing.
All of your allegations, these we shall accept as fact without evidence I take it?
Even the "controlled environment" might not be adequately controlled. People go to take ayahuasca in ceremonies with a guide who can supposedly keep them steady, but they still come out of the experience claiming that DMT really opens a portal to another dimension inhabited by godlike beings. Happened to two friends of mine (unknown to each other) who did the controlled ritual, and they get very offended at any suggestion that this psychedelic simply messes with one’s neuroreceptors for a time.
> and they get very offended at any suggestion that this psychedelic simply messes with one’s neuroreceptors for a time
Perhaps the "simply" doesn't belong in there - messing with neuroreceptors may be all it does at a biological level, but what happens at the neurological level when those neuroreceptors are messed with is not adequately covered by the word "simple".
Neuroscience make no claim to have any kind of a sophisticated understanding of these other-wordly phenomenological experiences, so I'm not sure where you are getting information superior to that.
More importantly is if they are necessary to model a brain. Because then we are effectively created by them. And any psychadelic experience will therefore be inherently numerical :-)
Well, I think it depends on what meaning one ascribes to the word dimension. Psychedelics can certainly open up more dimensions of perception, to the degree that I consider it a completely different "dimension" of reality.
I can also easily see why people who have been through a DMT ceremony get "very offended" at people who literally don't know what they're talking about (in more than one way) characterize their experiences as simply messed up neuroreceptors. Psychedelic trips can have several different kinds of reality bending phenomenological effects, some of which can have a fair amount of permanence to them, a very common one being extreme empathy and compassion for your fellow man. As someone says says in a different thread [1]:
> I think I experience a lot of stress. I always wanted to change the world growing up, and in the last ten years (I am 36 now) I really learned a lot about how awful some aspects of the world are. I am a deep empath so I have a hard time feeling okay when I know others are suffering. And with the US economy putting the poor at such a disadvantage, I feel pretty unhappy about that stuff all the time. I am in therapy and have been for 8 years, but I still just think a lot of stuff sucks and I can't really ignore that. Just think of the 2 million people in prison in the US. That system needs to change, and it's very easy to learn about that and struggle to not feel okay on the day to day because of that knowledge.
I have had seemingly permanent alterations to my default empathy levels, in large part due to psychedelic usage (at least, I would say it was a prerequisite), and I too get "very offended" when people say objectively incorrect things like "it's just chemicals in your brain", especially when those same people (or the community such conversations take place in) then gets their panties in a knot about how we all have to (or you're an evil person) "do whatever it takes to beat this pandemic" to "save lives"...but then if one is to ask about the lives of people in prison, or dying from drug overdoses or suicide, or war, or malnutrition (in numbers large than global covid deaths despite being geographically concentrated, and this has been happening for decades, and will continue to happen)....well "that's different". First world senior citizens, most of whom have lived a relative life of luxury: spare no expense (literally); third world children: "that's different". Which of these two parties actually has the "messed up neuroreceptors" seems like a valid question to me, but then contemplating such ideas would require actually acting as seriously as we take ourselves to be.
Anyways, best not engage in ideological battles - curious conversation is fine, but not too curious.
I'm not sure the author read Ram Dass' book or knows of his life as the author mentions Buddhism several times but clearly Ram Dass is a Hindu (his name means servant of Ram, a Hindu god, and his guru was Hindu).
All that which exists comprises a Whole, and you are a figment of that Whole. So am I, and we can speak to each other across our grand self. Isn't that neat?
"According to studies that determine the subconscious mind's ability to absorb subliminal messages, the subliminal phrase "Mommy and I are one" is considered the most effective subliminal message to aid in self motivation."
How do you test if a subliminal message is effective?
This part is interesting:
In a game of darts, researchers found the the phrase "It's OK to beat dad" improved scores.
I'd be curious about the opposite sex too. The notion of love (in the deepest) is surely one of the strongest source of mental energy there is for a human being.
23 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 63.3 ms ] thread> Ram Dass spends the first part of the book describing his journey. It involves a dive into the world of psychedelic drugs and their benefits and limitations. His experience essentially opens him up to Eastern mysticism.
There is some evidence that supports the notion that psychedelics increase openness to new ideas. This is the basis of psychedelic-assisted therapy, in which psychedelics are thought to make the patient more open to accepting the therapy intervention while unlearning their previously unhealthy thought patterns.
However, that openness to new ideas is a double-edged sword. People who use psychedelics in uncontrolled environments with excessive frequency can pick up a lot of strange ideas along the way.
Increasing one's openness to new ideas might be a good thing in the presence of a trained therapist or other well-meaning environments. However, it may become counterproductive in uncontrolled environments where users are prone to picking up conspiracy theories, new age mysticism, pseudoscience, or other misinformation that bombards us from all angles on modern social media.
Modern news article about psychedelics skew heavily toward the positives while burying the risks and downsides. For example, many people glorify Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR and 1993 noble prize winner, for his love of LSD. Few people know that he also believed he talked to a glowing raccoon in the forest, was a climate change denier, and didn't believe that HIV was related to AIDS. Being too open to new ideas is not unilaterally positive.
that expands on your important point.
I wonder, might it be possible for you to add some quantitative information to this so readers have some idea what kind of a risk profile they're dealing with here? I spend a fair amount of time in various communities, and I've never picked up on any noteworthy abnormal tendencies toward conspiracy theories or pseudoscience - plenty of new age mysticism though, and the more the merrier I say (provided it's not too far out there, of course).
> Modern news article about psychedelics skew heavily toward the positives while burying the risks and downsides.
99% of anything I've encountered in the community skews heavily toward the positives. I suppose it's possibile that all those who encounter problems disappear, never to be heard from again, but it seems fairly unlikely. Now and then you do encounter someone with symptoms of mania, but it's fairly rare, and it isn't guaranteed that their state is entirely due to psychedelics. Out of curiosity, where are you reading about all of these risks and downsides (I'd like to read up on the topic to broaden my horizons)?
As for Ram Dass, I highly recommend checking out a few of his lectures on YouTube, this article really doesn't do him justice, at all. He's not for everyone, but those who like him tend to really like him, and I am one of those.
> I've never picked up on any noteworthy abnormal tendencies toward conspiracy theories or pseudoscience
Is immediately contradicted by this statement:
> - plenty of new age mysticism though, and the more the merrier I say (provided it's not too far out there, of course).
This is a prime example of why self-reporting doesn't work. If someone holds a set of beliefs to be true, they won't identify them as pseudoscience, misinformation, or false.
All of your allegations, these we shall accept as fact without evidence I take it?
Perhaps the "simply" doesn't belong in there - messing with neuroreceptors may be all it does at a biological level, but what happens at the neurological level when those neuroreceptors are messed with is not adequately covered by the word "simple".
Neuroscience make no claim to have any kind of a sophisticated understanding of these other-wordly phenomenological experiences, so I'm not sure where you are getting information superior to that.
But this is also a deeper philosophical question around where things like numbers come from.
Numbers come from people looking for a way to model the world and measure things...
I can also easily see why people who have been through a DMT ceremony get "very offended" at people who literally don't know what they're talking about (in more than one way) characterize their experiences as simply messed up neuroreceptors. Psychedelic trips can have several different kinds of reality bending phenomenological effects, some of which can have a fair amount of permanence to them, a very common one being extreme empathy and compassion for your fellow man. As someone says says in a different thread [1]:
> I think I experience a lot of stress. I always wanted to change the world growing up, and in the last ten years (I am 36 now) I really learned a lot about how awful some aspects of the world are. I am a deep empath so I have a hard time feeling okay when I know others are suffering. And with the US economy putting the poor at such a disadvantage, I feel pretty unhappy about that stuff all the time. I am in therapy and have been for 8 years, but I still just think a lot of stuff sucks and I can't really ignore that. Just think of the 2 million people in prison in the US. That system needs to change, and it's very easy to learn about that and struggle to not feel okay on the day to day because of that knowledge.
I have had seemingly permanent alterations to my default empathy levels, in large part due to psychedelic usage (at least, I would say it was a prerequisite), and I too get "very offended" when people say objectively incorrect things like "it's just chemicals in your brain", especially when those same people (or the community such conversations take place in) then gets their panties in a knot about how we all have to (or you're an evil person) "do whatever it takes to beat this pandemic" to "save lives"...but then if one is to ask about the lives of people in prison, or dying from drug overdoses or suicide, or war, or malnutrition (in numbers large than global covid deaths despite being geographically concentrated, and this has been happening for decades, and will continue to happen)....well "that's different". First world senior citizens, most of whom have lived a relative life of luxury: spare no expense (literally); third world children: "that's different". Which of these two parties actually has the "messed up neuroreceptors" seems like a valid question to me, but then contemplating such ideas would require actually acting as seriously as we take ourselves to be.
Anyways, best not engage in ideological battles - curious conversation is fine, but not too curious.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25975887
https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Mommy_and_I_are_one
"According to studies that determine the subconscious mind's ability to absorb subliminal messages, the subliminal phrase "Mommy and I are one" is considered the most effective subliminal message to aid in self motivation."
How do you test if a subliminal message is effective?
This part is interesting:
In a game of darts, researchers found the the phrase "It's OK to beat dad" improved scores.
(Was that a Freudian slip, I wonder.)