Psychedelics warping interpretation?

[sford88]

Hi Bernardo,

Thanks for all your work I'm a huge fan! Your work has really helped me recover from a lifelong fear of death. Forgive me - I am just a inconsequential young man from Scotland, so I hope you don't mind me posting here.

I have a question if you don't mind, and it's regarding the role of neurotransmitters in the psychedelic experience and their subsequent impact on how we translate experience beyond the ego, and therefore death.

I have experienced the blissful relief of ego dissolution from a psilocybin trip, and the feeling of peace from identifying as a more "cosmic" version of myself. This led me to believe that the after death state could likely be as blissful and euphoric. However, whilst tripping one is also flooded with strong neurotransmitters that must majorly have an impact on the translation of experience. This has made me wonder whether the experience itself is being too "filtered" to adequately depict dying or dissolution of the ego.

For example, I remember feeling so euphoric whilst psilocybin that I thought it would be absolutely fine if I died right where I was...but when I reflect on this afterwards, I realise that, whether ultimately illusory or not, it would have caused a lot of suffering for my son and my wife, and therefore wouldn't have been absolutely fine. This showed me how neurochemistry can warp our perceptions.

My question is whether psychedelics give us a false sense of security about death, and that upon the death of the body (and therefore the absence of these "happy" chemicals flooding our system) we would experience no peace or bliss, and instead just dull benign awareness...or even our subjectivity existing in an unpleasant state without an ego to buffer us from raw reality.

I've heard you imply that beyond death there is probably bliss (after the uncomfortable dissolution process). So on what do you base this possibility of it being blissful?

Many thanks.

[MaartenV]

(The chances that Bernardo will answer here on the forum are small I think: he is very busy now these days. I hope he will answer you, but be aware of that fact.)

However, whilst tripping one is also flooded with strong neurotransmitters that must majorly have an impact on the translation of experience.

In 2012 there was a first study where they found only reductions in brain activity during psilocybin trips. Even more surprising: they found that the intensity of the trip correlated with more reduced brain activity. The more intense the trip, the more reductions of neural activity were detected. Nowhere was there more neurochemistry in the brain detected by the researchers during the trip. So, 'flooded with neurotransmitters' is not true, I think.

The brain lowers its activity while using psychedelics.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/109/6/2138.full.pdf

[Simon Adams]

What Bernardo has said on psychedelics is something I agree with him on. They don’t give you an experience of truth. What they do however is change your mode of consciousness enough to give you some insights into the wider nature of consciousness. Never hold anything as true based purely on a psychedelic experience.

In terms of ‘bliss’, and ‘euphoria’, these are quite common in the likes of meditation, and enlightened sages in the east report permanent states on ‘ananda’ etc. So I suspect Bernardo is basing it on that.

Near Death experiences sometimes are blissful, and sometimes the opposite, so the answer is no one knows, and it may be different for different people. Bernardo tends to believe it’s ultimately the same for everyone, and so assumes there will be something like the peak transcendence experiences in meditation.

That’s my take anyway…

[Jim Cross]

(The chances that Bernardo will answer here on the forum are small I think: he is very busy now these days. I hope he will answer you, but be aware of that fact.)

However, whilst tripping one is also flooded with strong neurotransmitters that must majorly have an impact on the translation of experience.

In 2012 there was a first study where they found only reductions in brain activity during psilocybin trips. Even more surprising: they found that the intensity of the trip correlated with more reduced brain activity. The more intense the trip, the more reductions of neural activity were detected. Nowhere was there more neurochemistry in the brain detected by the researchers during the trip. So, 'flooded with neurotransmitters' is not true, I think.

The brain lowers its activity while using psychedelics.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/109/6/2138.full.pdf

Neurotransmitters can be excitatory or inhibitory. They can reduce activity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotran ... inhibitory

[Adur Alkain]

Hi sford88,

You may ask yourself this question: what is more real and valuable for you, the experience you had in your psilocybin trip, or all these thoughts about neurotransmitters (or whatever) you are having afterwards?

I personally, after dozens of life-changing psychedelic experiences, have no doubt about it: there is more truth and insight about the nature of reality (life, death, consciousness, everything) in those experiences than in all scientific theories, especially the quite sketchy theories neuroscientists have about what happens in the brain during psychedelic trips.

The important part in the term "psychedelic experience", though, is not "psychedelic", but "experience". Experience is the source of all true knowledge.

My advice is: trust your own experience. Don't trust so much the thoughts you are having afterwards, thoughts that make you doubt your own experience.

Believe me: if you were in the middle of a mushroom trip right now, you wouldn't give a damn about neurotransmitters!

What you say about feeling during your psilocybin trip that you would be absolutely fine if you died right then... That is a universal experience that everybody who has had a deep psychedelic experience can recognize. There are studies that show that psychedelics pretty much cure the fear of death... But again, we don't need to rely on outside studies. The experience itself is more than enough.

The experience of bliss when the cage of the thinking mind (or ego) is dissolved during the psychedelic experience is universal. Given that physical death will also dissolve and extinguish that cage, it is logical to expect that beyond death we will experience bliss...

Unfortunately, it isn't so simple: in the same way that in our psychedelic trips (especially if we persevere, instead of quitting after a few tries, like most people do) we often encounter own shadows, and have to delve into our childhood traumas, our self-loathing, our emotional wounds, etc., I tend to believe that our death will probably be something like that: an encounter with all our inner demons, our fears, our regrets, our self-judgments... That's the purpose of most spiritual traditions: to prepare us for that transition.

So, I believe eventually we all will find bliss after death, but some of us will have a hell of a trip before we get there...

But here is the key: I believe (well, I would say I know, because all my being tells me this is true) that what you call "raw reality" is pure bliss. This is the core of all spiritual traditions. The essence of reality is perfect bliss. Satchitananda. All the suffering, the darkness, the struggle, exists only in the limited perspective of the unenlightened soul (the ego). So when the ego dissolves, we go back to bliss. It is only the transition that can be difficult.

Of course, this is just my own take (consistent with all spiritual traditions I know of, but that's not the point). Maybe you'll find something completely different if you go on searching... But again, don't look for answers from some outer authority. You can only find the truth in your own experience.

One last thing: wondering about what your son and wife would have felt if you had died... that's all in your head. What if....? None of that is true. That is your mind trying to bring you back to familiar territory: "death is a bad thing, and I should be afraid", etc.

Psychedelics are all about freedom. They free our minds, for a little while, from the conditioning we have received all our lives. We have been conditioned by our parents, our culture, our society, to stay inside this narrow (sometimes cosy, sometimes claustrophobic) worldview. And those forces of conformity are still active in our minds, trying to take us back to sleep.

This isn't about "happy chemicals". It isn't the chemicals (neurotransmitters or whatever) that make you blissful. Bliss is the default, the given. It is the conditioned activity of the mind (brain activity) what makes us lose contact with that essential bliss which is our birthright, our home. Psychedelics simply interrupt that brain activity, dissolve the prison of incessant (anxious, depressive, fearful...) thoughts.

Anyway. I don't expect any of this to help you. But I was very touched by your post. I hope you find the answers for your vibrant questions!

[Cleric K]

Adur, you say

Psychedelics are all about freedom. They free our minds, for a little while, from the conditioning we have received all our lives. We have been conditioned by our parents, our culture, our society, to stay inside this narrow (sometimes cosy, sometimes claustrophobic) worldview. And those forces of conformity are still active in our minds, trying to take us back to sleep.

I agree with that. Psychedelics do have the potential to shake the snowball and in the process to recognize many of these conditioning factors. But I guess you'll agree that even this is wholly dependent on the individual. There are plenty of people who can't see these things. And even those who do, lack the discipline and methods of work to really work on to free their spiritual activity from these conditioning factors in everyday life. All too often these things are seen while tripping but then in normal life one is still completely enslaved by them.

You also say

But again, we don't need to rely on outside studies. The experience itself is more than enough.

I can argue that the bolded text is not exactly the case. What we said above already points in this direction. Let's use an analogy. If I can't read and I find a book that I look through and enjoy the forms of the letters, does this mean that the experience itself is more than enough? In fact my experience is only the surface, the form. The content and the meaning are simply nonexistent for me. From my personal experience I can say that this is precisely the case with psychedelics. They truly provide fascinating experience and have the potential to arouse interest in spirituality but the greatest danger is if we believe that this experience provides some objective view. Only through patient and conscious work on self-development can one appreciate the way his inner world metamorphoses. Without such work we can only follow thinking as far as it capitulates before the wall of imagery (ego dissolution). This is one of the most unfortunate results of the psychedelic exploration - when instead of provoking us to search for the methods of higher cognition which allow us to read the world of imagery, it simply divides the world in two halves - the here of the ego state and the beyond we expect after death.

The psychedelic experience actually reveals in imagery the processes of our etheric and astral body (sometimes even outside them). But when we approach these experiences with our mental habits acquired through the intercourse with the senses, we can never gain proper self-consciousness in that realm. We need completely different ways of reading the experience. As long as we approach it with our sensory habits as "I with my ego am here, the images are there in front of me", the contents of the higher worlds will forever remain as script written in unknown language. Some time ago I compared higher cognition with Magic Eye. In certain sense (but only in a limited sense) it is really the case that through the development of higher cognition the wall of imagery receives ideal depth. Then we begin to recognize how what we have formerly called flatly psychedelic experience, is actually an interplay between the organs of our subtle bodies and physical nervous system. Of course when we reach that state we no longer need the psychedelic substances because our whole life becomes a Magic Eye experience with unprecedented ideal depth. Both the sensory and the psychic world become for us a book that we need to read through cognitive activity so that the world of forms may be complemented with the world of content and the world of meaning. Every stalk of grass, every cloud, every pebble, every being become for us letters of the occult script that must be read. The core difference with ordinary reading is that normally the book is external to us and we simply recreate the ideas within our soul. In occult reading the reading consists in experiencing how the ideas of higher beings create us and the environment.

[Adur Alkain]

You also say

But again, we don't need to rely on outside studies. The experience itself is more than enough.

I can argue that the bolded text is not exactly the case.

Hi Cleric,

I'm not saying that psychedelics provide instant freedom and enlightenement for everybody. Obviously they don't. If you loook at the context, you will see that when I said to sford88 "The experience itself is more than enough", what I meant was that, if after his psychedelic experience he finds that he isn't afraid of death anymore (or less so), he should trust his own experience. I was noting that many people report the same experience after a deep psychedelic trip (which could provide some support), but I meant that our own experience should be our main guidance.

He was doubting his own experience (like we all do at some point, especially when we rely on some outer authority), and I was just trying to help.

[Cleric K]

Hi Cleric,

I'm not saying that psychedelics provide instant freedom and enlightenement for everybody. Obviously they don't. If you loook at the context, you will see that when I said to sford88 "The experience itself is more than enough", what I meant was that, if after his psychedelic experience he finds that he isn't afraid of death anymore (or less so), he should trust his own experience. I was noting that many people report the same experience after a deep psychedelic trip (which could provide some support), but I meant that our own experience should be our main guidance.

He was doubting his own experience (like we all do at some point, especially when we rely on some outer authority), and I was just trying to help.

Got it. Thanks!

[AshvinP]

Hi Cleric,

I'm not saying that psychedelics provide instant freedom and enlightenement for everybody. Obviously they don't. If you loook at the context, you will see that when I said to sford88 "The experience itself is more than enough", what I meant was that, if after his psychedelic experience he finds that he isn't afraid of death anymore (or less so), he should trust his own experience. I was noting that many people report the same experience after a deep psychedelic trip (which could provide some support), but I meant that our own experience should be our main guidance.

He was doubting his own experience (like we all do at some point, especially when we rely on some outer authority), and I was just trying to help.

Got it. Thanks!

This reminds me of studies in which they showed people who ingest certain dose of psychedelic (forgot exactly what kind) and have "spiritual" experience from it are able to quit smoking. People who ingest and do not have associated spiritual experience are no more likely than control group. I think there was one regarding positive outlooks of terminal cancer patients as well.

[Lou Gold]

Good question about experience. My way is to trust the experience and be skeptical of an interpretation until I see it integrated into ordinary life. In other words, can one be a blissful householder and a blissful tripper? In the American Indian Lakota approach, it's said, "It's a good day to die" meaning simultaneously, "It's a good day to live." Holding an experience means being able to live it. If one can't it doesn't mean the initial experience was warped as much as there's more mundane work to do. Living and dying well seem connected.