What exactly are you seeing when you trip?

Idk I kind of feel like everything around me is going in infinite directions, and some inanimate objects make noises.

 

Not really sure of your point or intent with the above. If you are saying that we know nothing about LSD's mechanism of action, your mistaken.
How old is the statement you quoted from erowid?
Clinical research with LSD and other psychedelics has been restarted and much has been done in the last 10-15 years. We know a lot more about what and where LSD acts in the brain/nervous system then was known when such research was halted in 1973 (?).

(from the "musings" linked by Voyage)

1) It decreases the filtering and censoring of information being relayed to your cognitive mind. That results in more sensory stimuli reaching your awareness, both external and internal stimuli.
2) It causes information to be "leaked" or "broadcast" across the entire cortex, That is what accounts for synthesia, but can also happen with emotions and physical sensations as well.

The above effects are not just subjective interpretation, they are real physiological effects due to LSD binding to and effecting receptors in the reticular activating system which is key in the routing and filtering of sensory stimuli.

3) It causes the locus coeruleus to increase its rate of fire. That is the part of the brain that is responsible for alerting us to anything new or novel in our environment. It accounts for the feeling of "seeing everything for the first time" with psychedelics.

Just what it says.

EXACTLY how or why it produces the fantastic subjective effects are still in the realm of unknown, but the areas and mechanisms are beginning to be understood quite well. Given an understanding of how those areas function lends more understanding of how it translates into the subjective psychedelic experience.

Often people don't consider that EVERYTHING we experience is processed by this thing we call a brain and nervous system. I know it's a given and I sound stupid for pointing it out, but how often do we really consider how much and how profoundly such things can effect a wide array of human responses/emotions/experience?

The more I learn about brain functions and it's relevance too consciousness, as well as how and what psychedelics do in the electro-chemical process's of our nervous systems, the more it makes sense and plainly fits.

 

Ya, it's fascinating stuff. In that chapter I think he talks about the CCD, one of the devices used in digital cameras to capture an image and how colors look wrong in digital pictures in the shade vs full light or vice versa and how our eyes correct or 'fix' that so we don't see that difference like in a photo. That hit me particularly hard, anyone that knows anything about photography would look at that example and realize just how powerful our mind is at filtering our senses.

 

I can't remember who, but I was watching a documentary on DMT a while ago and someone talked about "The Invisible Fart". He described what you're talking about by saying that if we didn't have the sense of smell and someone let one off, just because we couldn't smell it doesn't mean it's not there.

Love topics like these


And slightly linked to the camera corrections, I think it's brilliant that our brains interpret the picture itself and gives it depth, and although it's not 3D - we can still relate to it and piece the whole picture together.
Same with art, but being able to come up with something that you havn't seen before in person and putting it down on paper/canvas etc. for other people to interpret just turns me on

 

Meaty, I don't think smell is such a mystery.... it's just a sense of taste, applied to the air. In effect, a particle counter and rough analyzer.

 

So further more, exactly how much do you trust the input from your senses?

If anyone try's to say with absolution that what one "sees" while sober is real, and while tripping is not, I will simply point them to these...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/...cloaking-time-space-and-experience?ft=1&f=100

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23519/

Of course there's an easier way to cloak time. Drop some psychedelics

 

I'm a bit of a mystic, but here's my take on hallucinogens. I believe that as they alter the "normal" chemistry of the brain - as a side effect - they diminish the brain's ability to filter out extra-dimensional time and space. I think that's why a good long trip feels like you've been gone for days - instead of hours. Some would argue that your perceptions are distorted - that what you're seeing isn't there at all - I tend to fall into the camp who believes that what you're seeing is there all along, but for practicality's sake (whatever the hell that means) - we've been conditioned as a species not to see it.

 

Was just trying to add some info from what is suppose to be a reputable source. Seems however to really not be much different then what you state yourself:

If what I posted is so far outdated that it is irrelevant then please accept my apologies and please disregard the info posted.

 

I tend to take the "agnostic" view... it may be that reality lies somewhere in between. We are definately conditioned as a species, over time, to have the perception we do. And it is quite possible that what you said about filters has scientific merit. One trait of psychedelics may be is that they dissolve those filters.

 

All this talk about filters has reminded me of something I read years ago.

What I remember reading was that it affected the serotonin levels in such a way that some of the light signals that are normally filtered out by the brain were let through instead of being filtered or something to that effect.

 

Conditioned by nature and evolution primarily, that's why we're different shapes, sizes, colors and such.

 

You might find this interesting, it's one of the best things I've read on the subject.

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/univcont.htm

 

And of course Hofmann himself, who wrote in his book about LSD...

Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous-that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego.
One can also arrive at this insight through scientific reflections. The problem of reality is and has been from time immemorial a central concern of philosophy. It is, however, a fundamental distinction, whether one approaches the problem of reality rationally, with the logical methods of philosophy, or if one obtrudes upon this problem emotionally, through an existential experience. The first planned LSD experiment was therefore so deeply moving and alarming, because everyday reality and the ego experiencing it, which I had until then considered to be the only reality, dissolved, and an unfamiliar ego experienced another, unfamiliar reality. The problem concerning the innermost self also appeared, which, itself unmoved, was able to record these external and internal transformations.
Reality is inconceivable without an experiencing subject, without an ego. It is the product of the exterior world, of the sender and of a receiver, an ego in whose deepest self the emanations of the exterior world, registered by the antennae of the sense organs, become conscious. If one of the two is lacking, no reality happens, no radio music plays, the picture screen remains blank.
If one continues with the conception of reality as a product of sender and receiver, then the entry of another reality under the influence of LSD may be explained by the fact that the brain, the seat of the receiver, becomes biochemically altered. The receiver is thereby tuned into another wavelength than that corresponding to normal, everyday reality. Since the endless variety and diversity of the universe correspond to infinitely many different wavelengths, depending on the adjustment of the receiver, many different realities, including the respective ego, can become conscious. These different realities, more correctly designated as different aspects of the reality, are not mutually exclusive but are complementary, and form together a portion of the all-encompassing, timeless, transcendental reality, in which even the unimpeachable core of self-consciousness, which has the power to record the different egos, is located.
The true importance of LSD and related hallucinogens lies in their capacity to shift the wavelength setting of the receiving "self," and thereby to evoke alterations in reality consciousness. This ability to allow different, new pictures of reality to arise, this truly cosmogonic power, makes the cultish worship of hallucinogenic plants as sacred drugs understandable.

 

Really nice and interesting discussions going on of late around here! Knowledgeable people, please keep pouring knowledge into the brains of the masses!

 

Sort of.

What we're "seeing" exists NOWHERE but in the brains of animals that can "see".

So when you consider that, sight's about as irrelevant as the rest of consciousness.

But the specific alterations to sight on psychedelics are usually/mostly side effects of other things that happen in your brain. It's not "revealing" anything, it's simply changing the interpretation of it.

 

Yeah but we've adapted to be able to interpret the "taste" as a smell, as have most other animal life forms.
That's the point, if we didn't adapt we wouldn't know it exists because we would have no concept of what a smell is. It's a possibility all the trips you go into actually exist, but we just don't pick up on them normally. Otherwise it's just the drug.

 

i've always felt like i was seeing the space inbetween everything..including the air

 

I see this as well. The space is filled with another dimension for me.

 

Your are seeing the underlaying patterns that form reality.

The truth beneath all truths....

the real truth and all that constructs reality is rooted in geometry

 

Im just wondering if it is true that these spirals actually exist why when I'm on acid do they form words in the way they spin like my name and such?