Theres a river and on one side is everyday life and on the other is a higher state of consciousness. Psychedelics are a bridge across the river as they make it much easier to reach a higher state of consciousness. You can swim across the river with meditation and other ways. The thing is you never know if that bridge will break, it might never but you dont know.
How about if reason is a river running through the wilderness, surrounded by chaos, superstition, and madness on both sides. We are typically on a boat making our way down the middle of the river where things make sense. (Ala Heart of Darkness, etc.) But psychedelics are like a seaplane that allows you to look down and see consciousness in its totality, the river of reason wending its way through the jungle of chaos. Actually, time is split between the plane, boat, and peeking out from the bush. And some times are spent in all three places at once.
holy shit, i was going to say the plane analogy without reading your posts. It fits good because you actually do see things from a higher view, you are high. You take the risk of falling out mentally... When you land you realize what you've seen is only something you can see from far out.
The analogy is highly flawed. If one side happened to be "a higher state of consciousness," one would never want to return from the other side of the bridge. here is my analogy. just thought it up on the spot. you know the whole ski lifts at mountain resorts....they take you all the way up the mountain very quickly and then you must ride down the mountain in your own way avoiding all the bumps and trees(fuzz and other authority figures) and hopefully you won't wipe out(have a bad trip) or worse become injured(psychological damage)...the journey is a steep one that only the daring will take.... i could elaborate on this but i choose not to.
The trick is not to look for the answer, trick is to live without it and accept what ever comes your way.... I guess.....
I don't think so. I never wanted to return from the other side of the bridge, so I worked to make it so that I don't have to. I'm probably halfway now, just blowing in the wind (I imagine a rope bridge, as it can be shaky in the wrong conditions.)
That analogy I came up with is old but what reminded me of it was a video, "The Beyond Within". It says one who takes pyschedelics is driving up a mountain instead of taking it step by step. They both have the same view but the one who climbed it sees it much better because he knows what it really took to get there. It was something like that and I thought this was really good.
