X-Message-Number: 25318 Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:35:23 +0100 From: Eivind Berge <> Subject: Expanding the mind with LSD and mushrooms John de Rivaz wrote (#25295): "I would suspect that these substances work by **contracting** the facilities within the brain to produce their effects. You can see a pretty image by looking down a kaleidoscope, but it doesn't expand your view of the world..." Pretty images are merely part of the lightest, aesthetic level of psychedelic experience. At this stage the world is beautiful and novel, which may be viewed as a "contracting" of your facility of habituation, if you wish (which may itself lead to new insights and is at the very least a lot of fun), but that is not what I think Basie meant by expanding your mind. What may follow at higher dosages is so far beyond simply pretty sensual experiences that words cannot describe it--and it does expand your mind, at least subjectively, phenomenologically (and subjectively is all that counts, right? How well you can operate machinery does not directly relate to the content of your mind; a machine can do that). I have had a mystical experience on LSD--total ego-dissolution, cosmic consciousness, and if that is not expanding your mind then I don't know what is. Such experiences may not do good things for the kind of valuation of personal identity that is valued here on Cryonet, however. I used to be a functional atheist and materialist, regarding philosophies such as Buddhism as deathist crap, but now I am not so sure. I am still interested in cryonics and immortalism, but somehow the importance of preserving this personal, egoistic identity of mine seems slightly less overwhelming. There is a conflict between my ideology of atheistic sensualism and what I have glimpsed that reality might be like, and I don't quite know what to make of it yet; perhaps I am turning into some kind of mystic, which is weird. But one thing I am sure of is that it has expanded my mind. "A sadder and wiser man" is how I feel after LSD, like the wedding-guest. A little skepticism might be in order. How can you be so sure that your normal sober state is the optimal state of consciousness? How can you be so sure that the primary constituent of reality is matter rather than consciousness? How can you be so sure that consciousness is not something that descends from the gods, so to speak, as traditional people tend to believe, rather than emerges from evolution of matter. As is evident any day on Cryonet, scientific materialism is hardly closer to explaining the hard problems of consciousness, and has just as bizarre implications. Perhaps Plato's allegory of the cave is right, after all, and we have reason to believe that he too derived his outlook from drug experiences (his initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries). John may be right that it could hurt cryonics to be associated with talk about illegal drugs (though I strongly believe the war on drugs is a war on personal freedom that cryonicists should oppose for their own good whether they like drugs or not); however, when making claims that biased and uninformed, expect to stir up responses. I would like to see a reference, other than drug-war propaganda or urban legend, that supports the claim that LSD or psylocibin may produce "slight but permanent and cumulative damaging changes" or can be said to constitute "abusing your brain" in any reasonable sense, other than ideological. And we are talking about using these substances for recreation and to expand your mind, here, as well as sacramental use, not about addiction or compulsive behavior, which is hardly possible with these drugs anyway. John seems to regard any illegal chemical altering of your state of consciousness as "substance abuse" and thinks he can make sweeping statements about all chemicals that may have this effect. A little experience will tell you that it is not so simple. Eivind Berge Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25318