Your brain on AYAHUASCA

[Jonathan Österman]

My dear friend Cleric, with all due respect, there's a simple misconception in what you wrote above.

What you, my dear friend Cleric, call 'spiritual reality' is, with all due respect, an obvious falling from one experience of Maya into another.

OK, let's take it slowly and synchronize our vocabularies.

Let's start with an analogy. Imagine what reality is for an animal. A stray cat or a bird certainly adapt very well to our city environment and this environment certainly impresses in certain ways in their instinctive consciousness but I guess most will agree that when a the cat stands in front of a courthouse it certainly doesn't experience what man experiences (we put aside that there could be men who don't experience much more than the cat either). A courthouse makes sense in human consciousness only if we grasp the intricacies of human existence - civilization, society, ideologies, religions, morals, norms, laws, enforcement, freedom, architecture and so on. All of these things are part of our thinking life - our life in ideas. We don't simply navigate the stream of existence by instinctively pushing towards pleasure and pulling away from pain, but we live in an intuitive context, we have some form of a World conception. We have some idea about what existence is, what our place in the world is, how we should direct our life and so on. This whole ideal stratum of our existence can be considered to be occult (hidden) from the perspective of the animal. The stray cat moves through the elemental landscape, it climbs the trash bin, finds food scraps there but it doesn't understand the industries that have mined the tin ore, forged the metal sheets, formed them into a bin, it doesn't understand the business of waste management, it doesn't understand the complicated food market, it doesn't understand the inner reasoning of the human that led him to throw the food away. Yet we as humans know very well that the bin and the food scraps are there only because all these things are facts in the stratum of our ideal life.

Now what you call spiritual reality is really the impression taken from an altered state of consciousness. Think about it: in what ways your intuition of existence has expanded after you beheld the etheric landscape? Do you understand better how life originated? Did you see why there are stars and planets? Why there are mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms? Did you see what the place of man is within the Cosmic mystery? What is the direction worth pursuing? Did you see what happens with the soul after death? Whether it returns back in the sensory spectrum?

And before listing the insights you have received, ask yourself if they were really given to you by the altered state or they were things that in one way or another you had already heard or read about, but the psychedelic experience made them much more graphic, much more convincing and worth taking more seriously.

In order to synchronize our vocabularies, it has to be clear that when I speak about spiritual reality, I mean it in the sense that what our human condition is towards that reality, is what the stray cat's condition is towards the world of human ideal life. In other words, what we perceive and think about - including the psychedelic landscape - is only what we can make out of existence through our present human scale intuition.

If the stray cat finds a new fancy trash bin with LED lights and subwoofers, it can go to its pals and say "You know nothing, I've seen the real stuff. Come with me and I'll show you." Yet in the end these trash bins serve the same old purpose - to find food scraps there. No matter how shiny they are, it will never occur to the cat that there's a whole world of ideas without which that trash bin would never exist.



I hope that it is clearer now what I mean by 'spiritual reality'. It is the higher order experiences of the human spirit which unites with the ideal flow of the Cosmos and can comprehend the occult reasons for the picture of the World being what it is. This understanding is not simply to satisfy our curiosity but the only way in which we can find a proper direction for our existence.

Is this explanation clear? Is it conceivable that there could a whole Cosmic World of meaningful intents, which constitute the 'curvature' through which our existence flows, so to speak, and that without any effort on our side, this World remains just as occult as the human world is for the cat?

If this is understood and you still dislike the term 'spiritual reality' maybe simply propose another term and say why you find it better suited. Maybe you disliked my previous explanations because they looked too intellectual, too schematic and dry compared to the mindboggling intensity of the psychedelic state. Probably I look like those poor old academics that spend their lifetime in shadowy concepts chasing each other in a cold lonely mind-void with cobwebs and age old dust. It is conceivable that from this perspective it looks like one has wasted their life if they have never experienced the intensity, the infinite fractal resolution of the psychedelic state.

But let me state that just as human understanding doesn't diminish the perception of the flashy garbage bin - instead it makes the experience even more deep and meaningful - so the spiritual reality we're talking about doesn't diminish the intensity of the inner spectrum but organizes it and makes it much more meaningful through the higher order intuition. The intensity of the states the we reach through proper inner development far surpasses anything that we can achieve through tweaking of brain chemistry.

My dear friend Cleric, does Ashvin completely agree with everything that you wrote above?



.

[Cleric K]

No I am not suggesting this . . . I am rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar, and unto the Father what is Fathers. I am using words correctly.

Which still circumvents the question: how do you recognize what is Father's? If we'll be speaking with the language of the scriptures, do I need to remind of the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30)? How do we understand the fact that the servant who simply buried his talent in the ground and idly waited for the master to return, was punished?

You see, things are not so simple. What you said above makes it seem as if it is transparently obvious that the Father wants us to recoil from existence (since anything manifested is seen as golden calf) and wait for transcendental salvation after death.

This was my simple question: can you describe what gives you the inner confidence that we do the best thing for our stream of becoming (and that it is what the Father intends) by closing our eyes for the world contents (both sensory and subtle) and avoiding to gain any experiential knowledge of the ways our spirit can grow into the greater reality?

I'll mention once again, even though it is obviously not registered, that what we're here speaking of is not a suggestion to become enmeshed in the relative existence, lost in the myriad reflections of the Cosmic Source, in order to manipulate them for our egoistic pleasure. Instead, it is precisely in order to gain deeper intuition of what is Father's, so we can render it unto Him. Otherwise, if we simply choose to bury our talent in the ground, because it is more convenient and also gives us the feeling that we are free from and above whatever reality is (since working the talent requires us to extend our spirit into the world), then what makes this decision different from a simple gamble?

[Cleric K]

My dear friend Cleric, does Ashvin completely agree with everything that you wrote above?

Jon, so far I haven't seen you address anything of what I have said.

Maybe it's worth noticing how quickly your initial appreciation of the 'high quality' posts turned into antipathy. This has been witnessed many times on the forum. There have been also others who in the first moment feel like "Wow, this is really a direction I have never considered, so much things fall into place!" But very soon the initial enthusiasm is downcast into terror when we realize the gruesome manner in which we have to become acquainted with whatever lives beneath the surface of our ego mask. This produces a quick bounce back. The person rationalizes "I don't know what got into me. At first I thought that there's something of value here but I have been mistaken." Then this troublesome perspective is buried below layers and layers of intellectual 'proofs' which give us the piece of mind that there's nothing there, that it was a simple mistake. Then, the best thing we can do is to imagine that the reality of our being ends at the inner surface of the ego mask. As soon as we imagine it away, we're already in 'pure consciousness'. We are uncreated (which doesn't explain why we still continue to walk the Earth).

Clearly, there's no point in continuing one-sided dialogs of this sort. Things are explained and supported from the most varied directions, while you say "In my opinion that's blah." Well, it is anyone's right to hold whatever opinion they enjoy. But what we're talking about here demands precisely to question "Why is my opinion such? How have I arrived at it? Am I willing to augment that opinion in the face of the ever expanding horizon of experiential facts? Or I would rather die standing while defending it - thus practically identifying myself with it?"

This is what people call "blah" these days. The idea that there could be deeper layers of existence beneath our ego mask, which we don't in the least uncover by simply imagining that as soon as we stop thinking we're already at the verge of the uncreated Cosmos, is seen as "blah".

PS: You seem to be very aggravated by the number of Ashvin's posts, but even though you joined the forum some three years after him, with your current rate of 14.4 posts per day, you'll very soon fly past him and be the new record keeper

[AshvinP]

NO NO NO
There is nothing wrong with seeking influence in the world - just call it what it is!!! Don't call it 'spirituality'.

Then you aren't using words correctly, Lorenzo. Every spiritual tradition of the world has embraced and continues to embrace the development of 'influence', in the way you have characterized it. For ex. Buddhism embraces the development of deeper insight and virtues via the eightfold path.

Right View or Right Understanding: Insight into the true nature of reality
Right Intention: The unselfish desire to realize enlightenment
Right Speech: Using speech compassionately
Right Action: Using ethical conduct to manifest compassion
Right Livelihood: Making a living through ethical and nonharmful means
Right Effort: Cultivating wholesome qualities and releasing unwholesome qualities
Right Mindfulness: Whole body-and-mind awareness
Right Concentration: Meditation or some other dedicated, concentrated practice

The word translated as "right" is samyanc (Sanskrit) or samma (Pali), which means "wise," "wholesome," "skillful," and "ideal." It also describes something that is complete and coherent.

Is this 'spirituality', according to you, or just seeking the golden calf of influence in the relative world?

The list of right actions in the world is what traditions offer as a substitute when they've lost their spiritual edge (and all traditions lose their edge) . . . or if they offer a spiritual technique, the list is offered as secondary.
The Golden Calf is selling something shiny as spiritual.
Angels, Knowledge of Atlantis, knowledge of person-beings of planets, cognition of fire-breathing early humans . . . this is all shiny stuff which if is what you're into, fine . . . just call it what it is.

I don't see any 'list of right actions' above. My question was simple - are you redefining 'spiritual' to exclude the Buddhist eightfold path? What is an example of spirituality that still had its edge, according to you?

[lorenzop]

No I am not suggesting this . . . I am rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar, and unto the Father what is Fathers. I am using words correctly.

Which still circumvents the question: how do you recognize what is Father's? If we'll be speaking with the language of the scriptures, do I need to remind of the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30)? How do we understand the fact that the servant who simply buried his talent in the ground and idly waited for the master to return, was punished?

You see, things are not so simple. What you said above makes it seem as if it is transparently obvious that the Father wants us to recoil from existence (since anything manifested is seen as golden calf) and wait for transcendental salvation after death.

This was my simple question: can you describe what gives you the inner confidence that we do the best thing for our stream of becoming (and that it is what the Father intends) by closing our eyes for the world contents (both sensory and subtle) and avoiding to gain any experiential knowledge of the ways our spirit can grow into the greater reality?

I'll mention once again, even though it is obviously not registered, that what we're here speaking of is not a suggestion to become enmeshed in the relative existence, lost in the myriad reflections of the Cosmic Source, in order to manipulate them for our egoistic pleasure. Instead, it is precisely in order to gain deeper intuition of what is Father's, so we can render it unto Him. Otherwise, if we simply choose to bury our talent in the ground, because it is more convenient and also gives us the feeling that we are free from and above whatever reality is (since working the talent requires us to extend our spirit into the world), then what makes this decision different from a simple gamble?

I've addresses your questions many times - really can't keep doing it. I admit I made a mistake referring to a Bible verse . . . it's pretty much a worldwide phenomenon that whenever anyone invokes the Bible all hell breaks loose.
I have not suggested burying talents or banishing any aspect of the world - this is your projection.

[lorenzop]

Then you aren't using words correctly, Lorenzo. Every spiritual tradition of the world has embraced and continues to embrace the development of 'influence', in the way you have characterized it. For ex. Buddhism embraces the development of deeper insight and virtues via the eightfold path.

Right View or Right Understanding: Insight into the true nature of reality
Right Intention: The unselfish desire to realize enlightenment
Right Speech: Using speech compassionately
Right Action: Using ethical conduct to manifest compassion
Right Livelihood: Making a living through ethical and nonharmful means
Right Effort: Cultivating wholesome qualities and releasing unwholesome qualities
Right Mindfulness: Whole body-and-mind awareness
Right Concentration: Meditation or some other dedicated, concentrated practice




Is this 'spirituality', according to you, or just seeking the golden calf of influence in the relative world?

The list of right actions in the world is what traditions offer as a substitute when they've lost their spiritual edge (and all traditions lose their edge) . . . or if they offer a spiritual technique, the list is offered as secondary.
The Golden Calf is selling something shiny as spiritual.
Angels, Knowledge of Atlantis, knowledge of person-beings of planets, cognition of fire-breathing early humans . . . this is all shiny stuff which if is what you're into, fine . . . just call it what it is.

I don't see any 'list of right actions' above. My question was simple - are you redefining 'spiritual' to exclude the Buddhist eightfold path? What is an example of spirituality that still had its edge, according to you?

Depends on the context - for civilians on the street - I would refer to Christianity\Buddhism\etc. as spiritual practices even with their faults.
In this forum I reserve spirituality to refer to 'recognizing one's true nature'.

Christianity\Buddhism\etc. have lost their way and as a substitute largely offer right behavior, giving back, justice, compassion, etc. There is nothing wrong with this - it's not anybody's fault - this is the best most pastors\rabbis\priests can offer.

Anthroposophy suggests the self can be 'fixed', just get your thinking\feeling right and you can extend the self into a World Content of Eternal Ideas . . . you'll even be able to report on all your past and future deaths. It's better than biological immortality.

[Jonathan Österman]

Jon, so far I haven't seen you address anything of what I have said.

I would like you to know that I have carefully studied all your posts that were addressed to me, and after meditating on their meaning, I have come to completely agree with everything that you wrote, except your speculations about what might be happening inside my mind, because I know it first-hand that you were not correct.

Cleric, we both could debate some specific interesting philosophical & spiritual questions, like for example: What is self : viewtopic.php?t=961

Or, Is Western thought marching towards Eastern Idealism? viewtopic.php?t=963

I enjoy asking good penetrative questions about specific interesting philosophical & spiritual issues.

I have asked several such questions on this forum, and sadly, most of them haven't been debated at all, so far.

No offence to you & Ashvin, but generally, I prefer not to spend my time on reading long vague general spiritual narratives full of acronyms referring to ideas and concepts that have no clear academic definitions, and have no equivalent or comparable meaning in Buddhism or Hinduism.

No offence, but Anthroposophy, Rosicrucianism, and the rest of such historically respectable European schools of spirituality & mysticism, are all rooted in the ancient spiritual Wisdom of the East, mainly in Buddhism and Hinduism, these Western schools being a westernized "modernized" simplified and often water-downed versions of the original.

We should be rightfully impressed with Dr. Bernardo Kastrup PhD, and with his massive intelligent and smart efforts to bring philosophy of Idealism to the masses of dummies (among them many academic scientists).

However, not everyone realizes that philosophy of Idealism was NOT created by Bishop Berkeley in Europe, but 2500 years ago in Buddhism, and at least 5000 years ago in Hinduism.

I have travelled to India and Nepal to have a direct spiritual experience of these still living and thriving spiritual traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, and with their presently living spiritual Masters, like the XIVth Dalai Lama of Tibet, and the XVIIth Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, who is the spiritual head of the 900 years old Karma Kagyu Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism: viewtopic.php?t=963

[AshvinP]

The list of right actions in the world is what traditions offer as a substitute when they've lost their spiritual edge (and all traditions lose their edge) . . . or if they offer a spiritual technique, the list is offered as secondary.
The Golden Calf is selling something shiny as spiritual.
Angels, Knowledge of Atlantis, knowledge of person-beings of planets, cognition of fire-breathing early humans . . . this is all shiny stuff which if is what you're into, fine . . . just call it what it is.

I don't see any 'list of right actions' above. My question was simple - are you redefining 'spiritual' to exclude the Buddhist eightfold path? What is an example of spirituality that still had its edge, according to you?

Depends on the context - for civilians on the street - I would refer to Christianity\Buddhism\etc. as spiritual practices even with their faults.
In this forum I reserve spirituality to refer to 'recognizing one's true nature'.

Christianity\Buddhism\etc. have lost their way and as a substitute largely offer right behavior, giving back, justice, compassion, etc. There is nothing wrong with this - it's not anybody's fault - this is the best most pastors\rabbis\priests can offer.

Anthroposophy suggests the self can be 'fixed', just get your thinking\feeling right and you can extend the self into a World Content of Eternal Ideas . . . you'll even be able to report on all your past and future deaths. It's better than biological immortality.

I agree, the core of all ancient spiritual practices has been 'recognizing one's true nature'. And many of those practices have fallen into decadence more recently. In a certain sense, they came to rely on the outermost expression of the original practices, which stemmed from genuine insight into the interweaving threads of spiritual activity and forms. The ideas of charity, justice, compassion, etc. used to be based on genuine insight into how our inner activity relates to the inner activity of many other beings and how our corresponding deeds feedback into the quality of those inner streams of experience. All of this was known in an instinctive or dreamy way, the same way we intuitively know that we exist, that we have certain memories that constellate our stream of experience, and that we have a certain orientation to the places, things, and beings around us. We don't need to know all those things in clear-cut concepts for them to be integrated into the way we experience and interact with the World.

Modern initiation, which includes but is not limited to Anthroposophy, is simply about recovering that original wisdom, the original genuine insight into one's true nature, in full lucidity. It is about bringing that intuitive insight of our stream of experience into clearer focus. All of this begins at the place where that stream of experience is already in clear focus - our rhythm of sensing and thinking. It is from here that we can radiate out into the deeper layers of feeling and willed activity that inform all genuine spirituality and their corresponding practices. 

For ex. imagine you are stopped at a stop sign and need to turn left. For that, you need to cross two lanes of traffic going from your left to right and merge into another lane of traffic going from right to left. What do you do? First, you visually sense the oncoming cars in either direction, looking left and right. These visual sensations stimulate your thinking to expand into a broader intuitive context of principles that help you anticipate the future. In this case, you expand into the intuition of how distance and speed relate to the time it takes for moving objects to reach certain locations, both the other vehicles and your own. The whole time you are also rhythmically moving back to the sensations and allowing those to feed back into your expansive intuitive context that anctipates the future. All of this rhythmic activity takes place very quickly and smoothly without you needing to explore it in clear-cut concepts. Even without such concepts, we can know it is actually happening and we can later use our concepts to make this experience clearer to ourselves like we are doing now. 

If we're not willing to concretely experience what we are already doing with our inner activity at all times, then there is no chance of attaining a genuine spirituality that recovers the original wisdom, i..e that goes beyond the outermost expressions of dogmas and moral precepts and penetrates the inner reasons for why those expressions came into being and how they help us attune to our true inner nature. As we can see, there is nothing at all shiny or secretive about this process, unless we call our current experience of reality and how we engage with it, such as when we need to turn left at a stop sign, 'shiny and secretive'. It is not a matter of debate, either. We cannot deny this rhythmic experience of reality any more than we can deny the rhythms of day and night, waking and sleeping. That following the threads of our living experience happens to lead into the profound reservoirs of ancient wisdom is not surprising either. The only question is whether we have any interest in delving deeper into that living experience or we would rather remain speculating and philosophizing about 'spirituality' from a safe distance. 

[Cleric K]

I've addresses your questions many times - really can't keep doing it. I admit I made a mistake referring to a Bible verse . . . it's pretty much a worldwide phenomenon that whenever anyone invokes the Bible all hell breaks loose.
I have not suggested burying talents or banishing any aspect of the world - this is your projection.

I’m asking these questions not in order to interrogate you or ensnare you with words. It’s simply that it is interesting to me to understand your world conception. From your answers I’m still unclear on how you see things.

So far I understand that you hold as the most important thing ‘to recognize one’s true nature’ and in the widest sense I don’t think anyone here disagrees with this.

Now I appreciate that you are a tolerant person and you always tell that anyone is free to do whatever they want, even if it is to chase the golden calf. But I’m still unclear whether you think that the experience of the world serves any purpose for spiritual development besides being the experiential arena that needs to be transcended.

I’ll try with a somewhat brutal example, continuing with Jon’s license to kill. Let’s say that you can commit murders in such a way that you can never be caught by any human authority. So being punished by human laws is completely out of the question. Also, let’s say that you can do that with such calmness that it’s no different than having breakfast. There’s no regret, no gnawing conscience. In other words, it in no way interferes with your ability to meditate and feel oneness with your true nature.

Now do you think that this matters in any way? Or if you don’t want to imagine this for yourself, do it for someone else. Say that you have a friend who kills somebody and then goes on to meditate. Do you think that it makes any kind of difference? Or as long as he can spend time in meditation, merged with his true nature, it doesn’t matter in the least what he’s doing the relative world?

[Stranger]

Depends on the context - for civilians on the street - I would refer to Christianity\Buddhism\etc. as spiritual practices even with their faults.
In this forum I reserve spirituality to refer to 'recognizing one's true nature'.

Christianity\Buddhism\etc. have lost their way and as a substitute largely offer right behavior, giving back, justice, compassion, etc. There is nothing wrong with this - it's not anybody's fault - this is the best most pastors\rabbis\priests can offer.

There are Buddhist practices such as Mahamudra or Dzogchen which are exactly about 'recognizing one's true nature'. However, if one has not yet learnt right behavior, giving back, justice, compassion, which are natural expressions of love, then 'recognizing one's true nature' will not help them and they will likely become a spiritual narcissist. That is why any Tibetan Buddhist masters will not teach Mahamudra or Dzogchen until they make sure you sufficiently practiced Bodhichita (i.e. right behavior, giving back, justice, compassion) which are considered preliminary but still important practices on the Buddhist path. In simple words, 'recognizing one's true nature' does not work without love and compassion, and that is because the absolute ('one's true nature') is inseparable from the relative (the world and our active participation in it).