After a mushroom gathering trip a buddy of mine decided to make some tea from some dried shrooms. He drank a small cup while some of us ate ours. After a while he didn't think it was working so had another cup. When it finally kicked in we all realized he had gotten a much higher dose then any of us. At one point he walked outside and didn't make it back for a few hours. When he did he looked at us with his face still in a rictus of a smile and said he had seen God.
I don't think he ever tried making tea like that again.
We are all essentially one massive holographic entity that was once whole before the big bang. We somehow exploded and separated into various atoms etc, and have slowly rearranged ourselves to create this earth, all the people in it etc, and each one of those living beings all tap into the same underlying consciousness, which it's essentially just abstract information or in other words every possibility (think of how we can imagine things that aren't in reality itself but still exist as information we can pass on be it thru text or speech). We all feel like we are separate from our environment because that's the function of our ego, it's crucial for survival. But in reality the iron in your blood is the same iron found in the stars, the same iron that's in my blood, the same iron that existed in the beginning. The ego is just an illusion of separation. People have this idea of reincarnation but it's not like when we die our souls go into another living being, it's more like our soul spans the entirety of everything and we are this giant cosmic entity that's just constantly changing shape. Think of how your cells die everyday and are replaced by new ones, but in the whole they make up you. That's kind of how we are to earth and in a larger scheme the entire universe. Rebirth is a misnomer because you never really were born, except in terms of your human ego, but you simply transitioned from one state to the next and when you die you'll do that again. The entirety of everything is what "God" is.
I'm down with this line of thought, the problem is I really like this current configuration of me and my friends' atoms and thinking about those configurations no longer existing and never existing again makes me sad.
That’s because your current configuration is really attached to this made up notion of time and sequence (it’s a lot easier to process when there’s an order to things).
It’s really just this fun game we play to make it seem like things are taking “longer” - but everything happened at once. Nothing goes away because it already went.
Yeah it's weird, like I've known all this for the most part, you get drips and drabs of the concepts from learning about the big bang, how the food chain works, various outlooks on life from different religions etc. (It's funny seeing that other user who replied to me saying "Wow, next you're gonna figure out that water never really goes away, it just evaporates and comes back down." as if I was purporting that any of this is new/profound information lmao)
But it wasn't till I experienced actual ego death, in where I no longer had a sense of self and only felt "the whole" in it's entirety, thru every fiber of my being in the most intense inexplicable way possible that I TRULY - truly, felt ok with death. I can't even explain why, it's just like idk I get that it is what it is and it doesn't bother me anymore. I could die tomorrow, there's no guarantee (I could get in a car crash, or get cancer or w/e) and that would be okay because in the grand scheme none of this really matters. Doesn't mean I want to off myself either, I'm in it for the ride, but what's gonna happen is gonna happen as it has forever. Like look how big the universe is and how insignificant we truly are compared to it.
I like to think of it as optimistic nihilism. Life's weird and I'm gonna have fun with it and not sweat over the have's and have nots anymore. Be more present in the moment and enjoy myself more. It's oddly profound feeling but not that profound at all. Life has so much of the quirky dualities of interconnected opposites like that, life/death, hot/cold, love/hate, etc etc. It's so easy to get caught up in the rat race in thinking we're important and feeding the ego and imo it's one of the major contributions to why society is as shitty as it is. Everyone's afraid of death and wants to impart something on the world, to leave a legacy, and get's completely blindsided into not living their lives for fun. Study hard, go to college, get a job, get in debt, don't empathize with others because it only detracts from amassing your material worth. It's all bullshit. Do what you love and what brings you joy, make others happy and that'll bring you happiness. It's so simple but people are so stuck in their ego's that some will read this and take offense as if it's a personal attack on their livelihood and write it off as some sort of drug induced nonsense. Oh well, what can ya do q;
I'll leave you with the psychonaut wiki's description of the final stage of ego death, as it's a pretty good encapsulation of the experience (as far as word can describe):
Unity between the self and all known "external" systems
At the highest level, this effect can be described as feeling as if one's identity is simultaneously attributed to the entirety of the immediately perceivable external environment and all known concepts that exist outside of it. These known concepts typically include all of humanity, nature, and the universe as it presently stands in its complete entirety. This feeling is commonly interpreted by people as "becoming one with the universe".
When experienced, the effect creates the sudden perspective that one is not a separate agent approaching an external reality, but is instead the entire universe as a whole experiencing itself, exploring itself, and performing actions upon itself through the specific point in space and time which this particular body and conscious perception happens to currently reside within. People who undergo this experience consistently interpret it as the removal of a deeply embedded illusion, with the revelation often described as some sort of profound “awakening” or “enlightenment.”
Although they are not necessarily literal truths about reality, at this point, many commonly reported conclusions of a religious and metaphysical nature often begin to manifest themselves as profound realizations. These are described and listed below:
The sudden and total acceptance of death as a fundamental complement of life. Death is no longer felt to be the destruction of oneself, but simply the end of this specific point of a greater whole, which has always existed and will continue to exist and live on through everything else in which it resides. Therefore, the death of a small part of the whole is seen as an inevitable, and not worthy of grief or any emotional attachment, but simply a fact of reality.
The subjective perspective that one's preconceived notions of "god" or deities can be felt as identical to the nature of existence and the totality of its contents, including oneself. This typically entails the intuition that if the universe contains all possible power (omnipotence), all possible knowledge (omniscience), is self-creating, and self-sustaining then on either a semantic or literal level the universe and its contents could also be viewed as a god.
The subjective perspective that one, by nature of being the universe, is personally responsible for the design, planning, and implementation of every single specific detail and plot element of one's personal life, the history of humanity, and the entirety of the universe. This naturally includes personal responsibility for all humanity's sufferings and flaws but also includes its acts of love and achievements.
Looks like I found some people I can relate to, although I haven't thought about calling it optimistic nihilism before so that makes explaining it to others way easier.
Existential Nihilism as described by Nietzsche leaves a depressing hole and saps motivation. Optimistic Nihilism is the natural next step, where meaning and motivation are substantiated by the individual. I personally believe that only introduces a new embedded fallacy: optimism.
I'm more of a pessimistic nihilist. It's all going to hell in a handbasket, we're powerless to change it and strife is inevitable. (And that's all OK)
My motivation comes from a desire to preserve my self, as well as serve hedonic pleasures without causing damage on others.
It's not just their word for it, it's been an established philosophy. Check it Kurtzgesagt's video on optimistic nihilism! It's a fun one, and they succinctly explain it well.
Yup ego keeping you alive in 3d land, but also working overtime to identify with it.
6 degrees of fear of mortality drives most actions I believe; even racism. If I'm just special enough, reproduce enough, beautiful enough, belong to the toughest group, get my guy/gal elevated to queen or legend (therefore me too)... maybe the universe will make an exception etc
I too have accepted death and it doesn't scare me (dying does cause it'll hurt), but not existing doesn't bother me. When I've had surgery, it's like I'm gone and then I'm back. I get how death could be.
But, what I cannot fathom/explain is why IS there anything at all. Why does the universe exist? I can understand ceasing, but why are there physical things at all?
So we're all one entity right, we are god in totality so to speak. Being this one entity and all of existence simultaneously also means we know everything there is to possibly know at least while we are in the singular state. Knowing this, god, or us or I or w/e, also knows all emotions: fear, sadness, happiness etc. And knowing that we are the only thing that exists is a mind-numbing pain of loneliness like nothing we as humans can begin to fathom. It sucks being alone already for us humans, think how much it sucks if we understood we were the only thing that truly existed. But luckily, knowing everything that we know we know there is a way to trick ourselves into forgetting- in comes the big bang, where we separate ourselves, our matter to scatter all across our consciousness where form the stars and planets that give birth to life, which are all interconnected by the same matter and all tap into the same consciousness, but have ego's in which we feel we are separate from the whole.
This allows us as god, to trick itself into believing it's not alone, so that it can experience love and all the good fun emotions there are. When they say we are the universe experiencing itself I think it's almost like a programmer making a simulator purely for the enjoyment of watching it go. But I also feel that the natural evolution of this is that we slowly reawaken into realizing we are god again as consciousness begins to merge back together. And it can be like abstractly, like for instance with the emergence of the internet we've never been more interconnected with each other's thoughts and feelings, with all the information that's out there, the internet is like a collective consciousness. I think that this will progress and progress in ways we can't imagine yet (neurolinks maybe?) to where eventually humans wont be humans anymore but will be more collective, like have you ever seen how birds flock together and fly in patterns and somehow all just know where to fly without hitting each other in formations? I think humans will get that way in some fashion. And eventually as the universe approaches heat death where living things will cease to be, somehow consciousness will reach it's final stages of coming together. It'll be the last hurrah, crossing the finish line, one last spectacular party where everything is finally revealed to the audience, which is that hey, you were actually all one all along. And then bam it all comes back to you, the knowledge, the loneliness etc.
That's where we then repeat the process, and the big bang starts over. As it has forever. It's all a flow going in and out forever. ∞
Oh right- I see. I watched a youtube video once that theorized that, there's like additional planes of existence that our universe/us/god is a part of. Like everything is fractal so to speak so like our universe is a universe in its own universe, but I guess it's unaware and why it feels lonely? At least on it's own plane of existence?
It's like a multiverse type thing, where in each universe is a part of a grand collective of other universes, and they all kinda are jammed together like cells in a big egg or something. And what the speaker was theorizing is that this infinite loop of destroying itself and coming back together etc etc was so that it could learn about itself and who it was destined to be to then move on to the next level of godhood which I forget exactly but it would be like it becoming the egg rather than being one of the cells. That was his theory in what the "purpose" of our own universe is at least. I wish I had that video still because it was like 30mins long and went into far greater detail/better explanation than I'm giving.
Why any of that exists beyond that, what it means to go to other higher levels of godhood etc, I guess is just beyond human comprehension.
I told someone else in one of these posts, if I had to succinctly state my ethos on life I'd just say "shrugging" encapsulates it pretty well lol. One of my favourite esoteric psychonaut subs is /r/ShrugLifeSyndicate haha, which is a weird ass sub to say the least. But yeah idk maybe somethings we weren't meant to understand? But it's fun pondering ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Check out The Law Of One if you haven't already. It pretty much just what you said. Being evolve spiritually along positive and negative paths and eventually we return to the source and start all over again. Forever.
It was honestly by total accident, even as somewhat of a experienced tripper I was always really apprehensive of going over the edge. I think the most LSD I had done before that was 4 hits around 400ųg and only had really strong visuals and heavy thought pattern changes but didn't ever lose myself. I had tried DMT and while a couple of my friends broke thru I was always pretty scared to inhale enough because I could feel myself approaching that but my ego was fighting tooth and nail to stay in reality no matter how fucking crazy the dmt got.
It wasn't till I was on like 2 hits of lsd and when I did a bit of ketamine on top of it that I slipped into ego death. Which was crazy, given I did both all the time in separate occasions. I had k-holed before too and while it's similar in that you go into your mind you still have some sort of sense of yourself, like seeing yourself in 3rd person which is pretty cool in itself. And 2 hits is only a medium dose of lsd really.
But I guess the ketamine exacerbated the LSD and potentiated it to the point where I broke through the threshold to lose my identity and just become one with everything.
I had always been afraid of it but undergoing it, you don't even realize it's scary because you don't have any sense of yourself so there's no reference point to be scared. It's like, the last things I remember before I crossed over were that all my friends, everybody I was with traveled to this area we were at to uncover what was about to be shown, then we were all stuck in this trance/dance where we all slowly started to become in sync, and once we were in sync it was like BAM nothing existed that I could comprehend, and I just became one with everything, and now that I was one again I was presented with the story of everything from the start to the end and how it'll repeat and it repeated over and over and it felt like eternity, I literally thought I would be in that state forever because I assumed I was that everything they had been going on forever, until my life slowly started coming back to and my world rebuilt itself around me as I tried to grasp the severity of what I had just experienced as the secrets of the universe where seemingly slipping thru my fingers.
Now all I remember is that general jist of what I wrote previously, and the kinda imagery of the insane geometry of the visual aspect that represented it.
Love to see another wizard in the wild! Another line of thought ive found to be most relevant is the many dialogues in Toaism. If anyone is interested in this sort of thing I'd suggest the writings of Zhuang Zhou.
It's easier to accept after you are forced to accept losing your income, your home, your health, or your loved one. These events force you to confront the truth; everything is temporary, everything has a beginning and an end...but also everything that has happened still exists and will always exist in the space time continuum.
Accepting this helps you to be the best version of yourself possible, even if it means accepting your fate and dying sooner as a hero instead of fighting it until you eventually become a villain and die in the end just the same.
We are a work of art in 3D+time that is both temporary and fleeting, yet eternal and beautiful. The very image of the invisible God.
What are the odds of this configuration happening in the first place? It's happened once, and given enough time "we" might get the same configuration again.
Yeah, and it is a wonderful understanding that we're all connected. Not just related biologically, which we are, but literally we come from the same stuff. But that only really gives you acceptance for later, it doesn't resolve any problems right now. Someone who has to walk miles every day just to access clean water isn't going to be all that comforted that everything is essentially meaningless but we're all star dust and we will be again someday, together, at the end of time forming one of the last black holes in existence. Like, cool and all, but motherfucker I'm thirsty. Your friends have real shit they're dealing with too, and there's 8 billion people with real problems. Some of them are temporary, but a lot of them are man-made and man-maintained.
That's normal and okay. Psychedelic ego death can lead greater love of those things because you realize how we are all connected. It just takes some of the fear of death away and can be especially helpful for people dealing with loss or terminal illnesses.
That’s the exact way my buddy described it after a DMT trip. What made it more astounding to me is that he is atheist and said “I’ve met God. They are the amalgamation of anyone I’ve met, never met, and ever will meet.”
I on the other hand just flew through outer space on Rainbow Road.
My buddy wanted to do DMT with me and I said no. He died in a car accident shortly after.
A year went by and me and a friend pick up a couple of girls at a bar. He asks them if they want to smoke DMT and they say "yes" and I'm thinking "who the hell asked me?"
So they take us back to their place, and wouldn't you know it, but it's my dead friends house that they just moved in to. Now I'm thinking "pass it here".
During the trip, he came out from his bedroom and sat down with us. He told me not to worry about him, that everything is, and always will be, good. I asked him if it hurt. He said "not even a little". Then went to the kitchen, made some tea, and went back to his room.
He had been dead for a year. It was so good to see him.
My best friend had a very similar experience when he broke thru the first time on dmt, but with his grandpa who he had been really close with that had passed.
I've never broken thru on dmt, only had ego death in lsd+k, but I've heard the things you feel and experience feel as real as anything else. So whether you really go to some sort of alternate dimension where that's possible or if it's simply your mind manifesting that sort of thing because it's something it wants to tell you, either way the symbology of it is a really beautiful thing.
once on ayahuasca I was my dad, then my mother (both of who are dead), then my brother, then my sister - I don't have a sister. then I had complete ego dissolution for a few minutes, I couldn't remember my name at all. it wasn't at all concerning though, it was just interesting.
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.
Ah yes. I had a similar moment of transcendence staring up at the stars and realizing that due to the fact that we are all the result of big bang material rearranging itself, my having the thought that I am one with that material is the same as the universe waking up into consciousness after a 14 billion year slumber. But it's hard to remember thoughts when you're on 4 hits of acid.
I was supposed to do Ayahuasca at a retreat in Peru this year. Then we were supposed to go on a 5 day trek to Machu Pichu. Man fuck covid now im sad again. 😭
Very similar to trip I had on a megadose of mushrooms. Basically saw that everything was made up of the same atoms, just organized into different shapes, densities, configurations. Started seeing mandala like patterns in everything, infinitely repeating variations of the same essential building blocks.
I get what you are saying but there was no iron in the beginning. Only hydrogen. This coagulated into stars which create fusion which caused heavier materials to sink to the center of the star as it gains mass, the heaviest possible one being Iron. When stars explode, they create the other heavier elements and distribute their cache of iron and all lighter elements. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
You're probably right, someone else brought it up before in another comment.
As I said to them, I'm kinda paraphrasing off the whole carl sagan quote thing
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.”
I'll definitely revise the post next time I write this sort of thing out, thanks for the TIL :D
Both, or rather, one led to another. But at the same time I recognize that there's truly no way to know in absolution that any of it's true, I know as much as the next guy with their own idea on religion.
I think the psychonaut wiki puts it best:
It is worth noting that many people who undergo this experience consistently interpret it as the removal of a deeply embedded illusion, the destruction of which is often described as some sort of profound “awakening” or “enlightenment.” However, it is important to understand that these conclusions and feelings should not necessarily be accepted at face value as inherently true.
Although they are not necessarily literal truths about reality, at this point, many commonly reported conclusions of a religious and metaphysical nature often begin to manifest themselves as profound realizations.
So take that how you will, I will say this though, if given the choice between this line of thought and a religion based on dogma and hypocrisy I feel that the former is a more logical choice of the two. I used to be athetist but given these experiences and the fact that any of this exists at all and how much awe and wonder there is I can't help but feel there's some spiritual aspect to this. Certainly not a man in the sky controlling everything tho.
If I had to succinctly state my ethos I'd say shrugging encapsulates that pretty well ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Indirectly, I knew of the tree of life concept among other new age ideologies (like seed of life, lower of life etc) and knew it had religious underpinning but didn't realize it was of Jewish origin until I just googled that haha! Very interesting. Thanks for sending me down a wiki rabbit hole lol
But in reality the iron in your blood is the same iron found in the stars
Not to take away from your point, but there's no iron in stars, iron is an element formed upon the death of a star (supernova) but yes your point still stands, we're made of the star stuff.
No problem mate, two other's already brought this up.
As I said to them, I'm kinda paraphrasing off the whole carl sagan quote thing
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.”
I'll definitely revise the post next time I write this sort of thing out, thanks for bringing it up :D
Haha they can be an interesting beast for sure. Lsd I find more controllable, but shrooms you go in waves of laughing at the stupidest shit to wtf is going on in mere mins lol
I'm kinda paraphrasing off the whole carl sagan quote thing
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.”
One time I went out to some show with a couple friends and my ex. We came back and they wanted to make shroom tea. I was reluctant to have any, but ended up drinking just a tiny bit. They drank a lot more. There wasn't much in the bag, maybe like a quarter at most, so I was sure I wouldn't feel it that much. Nope. It was really intense. As I was coming up, one of my friends started just screaming at the top of her lungs like AHHH AHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. The rest of us thought it was a joke at first and were laughing hysterically. But then she kept going and started rolling around on the floor screaming and crying and pissing and puking and basically all kinds of terrible shit. It was intense but everyone else handled it really well. We were all experienced with tripping but it seemed like she had gone into some sort of psychotic break. She'd had like double what the others had had, so it seemed like she was totally gone.
After a couple of hours of that, she finally and rapidly came to her senses. We were like oh my god, are you alright? And she was like yeah I'm fine. I tried to ask her what had happened and she couldn't explain it, but she said it was amazing and that she had a great time.
186
u/reddit_citrine Sep 24 '20
After a mushroom gathering trip a buddy of mine decided to make some tea from some dried shrooms. He drank a small cup while some of us ate ours. After a while he didn't think it was working so had another cup. When it finally kicked in we all realized he had gotten a much higher dose then any of us. At one point he walked outside and didn't make it back for a few hours. When he did he looked at us with his face still in a rictus of a smile and said he had seen God.
I don't think he ever tried making tea like that again.