Any Athiest LSD Users?

When I talk about "something greater", I mean it in the sense of scale The earth is good enough for me (too good, really), but it's nice to fantasize about what may lie beyond.

 

There are two things that made me think that there might not be too many athiest LSD users.

The first was work done by Stanlislav Grof. Grof reported a natural progression of almost all subjects under LSD psychotherapy. In early sessions (with a small or "psycholytic" dose of LSD - say under 100ug), the subjects would first recognize and deal with their present problems. This would progress back through traumatic events and problems that occurred during childhood, then (in some cases) to problems encountered in the womb. The next stage would be "karmic" problems from previous lifetimes. Grof said that this pattern was pretty much universal. Under large or "psychedelic" doses of LSD, the same progression would occur, but much faster - and sometimes subjects would deal with multiple above levels at once. So I would think anyone who underwent LSD psychotherapy either with multiple small doses or just a few large doses would at least start to wonder about things like karma and reincarnation. Not that this would prove to them that such things were real, but would certainly raise the possibility. Perhaps though it only applies is psychotherapy occurs during the LSD sessions. Someone who (as soaringeagle describes) just sit around playing video games under the influence of LSD maybe never has much in the way of spiritual insight at all?

The second is that I read somewhere (maybe MAPS?) recently that a few new studies had been approved with LSD. These studies are to be done on people with terminal cancer. The reason is that the LSD supposedly shows them that this life is not all that their is, thereby decreasing their anxiety about death. However, I'm not sure of the arrangements in the sessions which would supposedly facilitate these insights.

Oh of course we have the old Marsh Chapel experiments where people did indeed have religious experiences under LSD. But in that case they presumably already had religious beliefs.

 

Why does there have to be a "higher consciousness" that created everything? When I think about such things, I think to the past - gods used to be used to explain what humans didn't understand, and as of now our science is far too complicated even for people with the mental capacity of Hawking to understand. I think that the various theories being worked on currently that fall under the quantum theory category offer the path to which we will be able to understand the creation of our current universe.

If you really do believe in the Creation by a Higher Being, then I must ask you - where did this being exist before he/she/it/they created the universe they are said to inhabit and/or have complete control over? I ask you to consider the mind-boggling size of the universe....Millions of billions of galaxies, each of which contains anywhere from a million to tens of billions of stars, each of those containing a number of planets where life might be present. Larger than galaxies there are clusters of galaxies, and higher than that there are superclusters, spanning trillions of lightyears across the universe. You end up with an extremely large number of places that life could have evolved - it's almost absurd how large the number is. Given that assumption (that Earth is not the only place where there is intelligent life, and that there are a large number of planets with such life) - God must be a VERY busy being.

Because I mentioned it - evolution - I don't necessarily think that Darwin's theory was complete. I believe that he outlined the general idea, but we still don't fully understand the physical mechanism by which life makes changes to try out.



I commented to my friends the other day, more as a joke that has serious undertones - back in the day, God used to come talk to people all the time in the Old Testament. But now, he's all quiet and shit - where'd he go? I also don't trust the Bible as an accurate source of whether or not God exists - it was written by mankind, and there are many, many gospels which did not make it into the Bible - the Bible was created by man, who decided which stories to include so as to make the story seem more believable.

I don't think it matters though, we're not going to the past; we're going to the future. It matters not as much where we came from as where we are going, and from a literal perspective, we're all going to the same place. Religion serves a purpose for mankind, among other things to help us deal with the ultimate unknown, the one unknowable in our lives - death.

 

Well said. I agree with you. How can someone even begin to believe in the bible as fact if it was writtin by man? I mean people have the ability to lie and do so every day.

I think religion could have been created by man on purpose. I'm thinking that it was probably created as a way to keep order and control over people. And i have to say it works pretty damn good. And to keep people thinking that there is some meaning to life. But the more i thought about that. The more i realized that living for forever isn't really that much better then ending one day. Actually i'm kind of freaked out by the thought of living for eternity.

 

On shrooms one time I decided that a conciousness as infinitely complicated as the human mind cant possibly just fade off into nothingness, it has to go somewhere, or be recycled, or something.
Then I came to and realized I'm probably just going to die and rot in a hole... but oh well, you never know until it happens right? and even then you may not no, so why worry.

 

I'm agnostic, I think the mystery makes it even better. In fact, I was an atheist until I started using psychedelics.

 

Ditto on that. If things were just to end I wouldn't care, because I couldn't. Eternal life would absolutely get boring. There's no way around it.

 

Basically, whatever the "reality" of this is, IS, and therefor is meant to be so, so there isn't any point wishing it was any other way, because if it should have been different, it wouldv'e been.

we're stuck with this, and it's a blessing.

 

I think the word Fantasize is the key word here. Imagination going crazy. Ego death and connection with everything, the onenessness of it. That is wisdom, understanding, no question of what is a greater conciousness, it is all the same. What exactly is a higher concious anyway? Nothing we could percieve I bet.

 

As long as there is something out here, some energy that is doing its own business...There is the global consciousness ... Not like us in term of conscious , but its doing its business . . God , creating everything is its own image.... And we, part of it, fuck everything up. Creations can fuck everything up. But its still all made of god at the base. The perfection ,the chaos???

We have a window on it all... A hole where the rain gets in ...

Thats what I think for now...But damn is the road ever changing.

I think the universe dies and is born right away...Kinda like us , maybe

 

i haven't done acid. but i had an experience on mushrooms that was really symbolic and amazing...

i was sitting on the arm of this couch that was in front of a window. there was a dead bug on the windowsil. it's parts were all scattered. out the window you could see the indent of where the foundation of a house used to be, and the concrete steps that lead to the door. the person who lived in the house i was in had a compost pile going in that hole. there was fresh healthy grass growing all over it. the house i was in had originally been an addition to the old house, but the addition got bigger and the old house rotted away. now the new house, and it's inhabitants, where returning the land back to how it was. i saw the tiny bug's face, and i could almost match it up to my own. there are the eyes, there's the mouth, there was a brain in there, and it used to think little bug thoughts. right now i am the fresh grass growing out of the compost of things that used to be living, in a place that was both created by design and left to nature, but someday i will be the compost. i will be the tree that becomes the next house.

that process is God, and the recognition of the process, the ability to step outside of it and see it and think about it, and feel how beautiful and perfect it is, is why we are said to be made "in the image and likeness of god". having faith in god isn't, to me, believing there is a supreme absolute conscious being controlling everything. having faith is trusting that there is a process, an ebb and flow, that we can only start to understand, and that it is always beautiful and good. and if we feel that it isn't beautiful or good, it's because we don't see the big picture, how all of the pieces fit. we don't believe that they do. we believe that it's possible for something to be random, or wrong. if you see a fraction of the perfection you can believe in all of it, and it will all be revealed to you as you become ready to accept it.

"she's a full on monet" "what's a monet?" "it's like the painting. see, from far away, it's all right, but up close it's just a big old mess!"

(yes, i quoted Clueless. it fits with what i'm trying to say .)

so i guess i am an athiest and a thiest... like a yin yang, polarities so opposite that they are really exactly the same... yes, this is all there is, but there is so much more to "this" than we can ever know.

 

I'd consider myself an atheist. God is hard to believe in.

 

so i guess i am an athiest and a thiest... like a yin yang, polarities so opposite that they are really exactly the same... yes, this is all there is, but there is so much more to "this" than we can ever know.[/QUOTE]



I couldn't agree more with that. I don't necessarily agree that because a person holds no religion, that they can't still be humble and have an awareness that they are only a tiny part of a larger whole, and that our understanding is something that can always evolve and expand...

It's not necessary to use quasi-religious or spiritual language to take joy in your experience of the world around you. :bigear:

 

Awesome.

 

You've really misunderstood what the concepts of Yin and Yang are. To say that they are so opposite that they are the same is really missing the point.

It's more of a "night and day" kind of relationship (and actually, yin and yang translate to 'shady place' and 'sunny place', respectively), one can turn into the other; they are interconnected: day cannot exist without light, light cannot exist without darkness, and so on.

And I disagree that there is more to this than we can ever know...indeed, we may not be able to explain it all, but it call all be sensed.

 

Also you can't be atheist and theist. You can be agnostic which is where you have no belief toward the issue at all and are neutral, but you can't be both.

 

okay. i'm trying to think about that. i think we're saying the same thing, but i guess i need to find a way to clarify.

the most Night time of the night is right before the morning starts. day is night's extreme opposite but the world never gets there and then stops spinning. if there is a Pure Night and a Pure Day it only lasts a few seconds until one starts to become the other. ever get on a really strange sleeping schedule, and wake up, and not be able to judge what time it is by the way it looks outside? i guess if you knew which way was east that wouldn't happen, but it has happened to me before. it's a bizarre feeling, to look at a clock and not know "which ten it is". you're just existing. or ever run bathwater, and test the temperature, and for just a second it's so hot that you think it's cold? what i meant was that there is no such thing as Absolute anything. Pureness is an illusion that is essential to our existence because it seperate us from god. i was speaking in context of religion so i should probably get back to that... i guess what i mean is, i do believe there is a god, but it is so all encompassing that there is nothing it isn't, and so, it by definition cannot "exist". i believe god is infinity, and infinity is immeasurable, and is everything, so, is nothing.

i'm not agnostic because i'm not neutral or undecided. i am a very religious person and i honestly do believe there is a god that doesn't exist.

and i disagree... and agree on some level, that it all can be sensed even if it can't be explained. i believe that it all CAN but i don't believe we will or should or want to, or can even fit all of it into this lifetime or a million seperate lifetimes. i think that if a person spent five years studying one square foot of land, inhabited only by inanimate objects and bugs and plants, doing nothing but paying all of their attention to that space, in the end they still wouldn't know all there is to know about it, or experience it in all ways possible. and there are a lot of square feet in this universe, and there are words and music and tastes and personalities and theories... and EVERYTHING...

 

I think that on some level you get it, but the concept of Yin and Yang is not REALLY about opposites.

This isn't real in-depth, but it describes the concept fairly well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_yang

Sure you can't know EVERYTHING about say, a four by four plot of land, because that implies knowing everything that HAS taken place there, and that's impossible, though irrelevant to know. Maybe it's just me then, that I can see the connection between everything, even if I can't explain it.

 

Duality son

 

i like that night & day / day & night description of yin and yang.

i always thought of it as being "in every good there is evil and in every evil there is good."


which i think really sums up nearly all existance.