Paranormal events

[entheogenresearcher]

Hi everybody!

I am back with phase two of my academic study of entheogen use, which looks specifically at how entheogens are used as a part of a spiritual practice. If you are engaged in such use of entheogenic drugs I would love to talk with you - either right here on this forum or more personally and in-depth via email. If you or anyone would like to participate, I have a simple homemade website for the study at entheogenstudy.org, and you can reach me at [email protected].

Here is one question that I would like to know more about:

Have you ever experienced paranormal events like telepathy, out-of-body travel or precognition while under the influence of entheogens?

 

[Finarfin]

I never experienced any paranormal events. My experience with psychedelics are spiritual in nature and not paranormal.

 

[entheogenresearcher]

Ok, so I read you as saying that a focus on the paranormal is inferior to a focus on the spiritual. That is of course a legitimate view, although the history of religion is full of paranormal and miraculous events. (But maybe the "history of spirituality", if that is a meaningful phrase, is not?)

I had the impression that reports of paranormal experiences were rather common among users of psychedelic drugs, but perhaps that is a misunderstanding from my side?

 

[Finarfin]

I can only speak for myself and my own experience.
I know that in ayahuasca circles there is telepathy and some people say they contact spirits or aliens other dimensions.
I would advise you to seek contact with some of the ayahuasca or peyote groups like santo daime or udv and talk to them.

Personally i have never experienced something that i would call paranormal or miraculous (with or without psychedelics) i think the experience of being alive on this earth is an amazing and miraculous event on it,s own.

The psychedelic experience is hard to discribe. You can not understand the experience without experiencing it for yourself.
For someone who has no experience with psychedelics the closes thing to it might be the dream state. Is a dream paranormal? I don,t think so. Everybody dreams.
I think it has to do with believe. If you believe dreams are paranormal then you might find the psychedelic experience paranormal.
I never had an experience of precognition (knowing what is going to happen) or telepathy (reading minds). I never had an out of body experience where i could walk around without body and sort of be invisible.
Walk to another room and see what is going on, without leaving the room i am in.
When i think of the paranormal and the miraculous i think of spectaculair and sensational events.

 

[Finarfin]

Some people may think that the spiritual and the paranormal are the same thing.
Paranormal is a relativly new word. Paranormal implies something outside(para). Something outside of the norm (normal) and outside of the limits of our scientific understanding. Something outside of the self such as ghosts aliens the future other peoples minds and such. Now spirituality had to do with what is within. It has to do with innerstanding. It has to do with finding your inner core your centre. The symbol of the centre is the symbol of the sun. A circle with a point in the middle. It,s an alchemical symbol. I see the sun itself as spiritual it gives us warmt and energy. Without the sun we could not exist. But there is nothing paranormal about the sun. Maybe we do not know everything there is to know about the sun or the universe. I think we know very little. But there is nothing unscientific about believing in the energy of the sun. We also have this inner energy. Inner strengt. We breath we have a hearthbeat we grow: life energy. Everybody dreams and has imagination there is nothing paranormal about it.

 

[entheogenresearcher]

I love to read your thoughts on what spirituality is. Is it possible to describe how psychedelics help you go within and find your centre?

Some people say that a drug-based spirituality is fake and inferior to the real thing (whatever that is), and that when you use drugs as "crutches" to go inside, you are just failing to develop your natural ability to do so. How would you respond to those critics?

 

[Finarfin]

What is spirituality?
I think spirituality is: making contact with ones inner self and inner strenght (energy). I think spirituality has to do with awareness.
Psychedelics are like a key that can unlocks the door to the inner world. We have a mind and a hearth or a ego and a soul. Psychedelics can produce what is called ego death or ego loss. What happens with ego loss is that the ego (thinking mind) becomes silenced and more space is created for the soul (feeling hearth) to manifest. Psychedelics can help us restore the balance between hearth and mind or soul and ego. Psychedelics can make us aware of things about ourselfs and our behavior that we may need to change.
Psychedelics (plants and fungi) can make one feel a (re)connection with nature and the universe.

Now about the critics.
I think that people who never took a psychedelic themselves don,t know what they are talking about. I don,t care for there opinion because it,s like someone who never had sex saying sex is no good. I also would like to point out that most of the psychedelics are plants or fungi and are natural. Psychedelics are no crutches they are part of nature just like any other plant people use. Native people have been using plants for healing for very long time. Calling them drugs is totally missing the point. If people say using psychedelics is an inferior path they also miss the point.
It,s not an either or situation. Psychedelics do not prevent one from developing a natural ability to go inside.
Psychedelics instead open up this natural ability. Psychedelics are a key to the self and the spiritual. They are not a magic pill, you have to do the work yourself. Psychedelics do not do the work for you. They are a key to open up the possibility. They show you how the mountain top looks like but you have to climb to the top yourself. I do not see a dualism between the natural and the psychedelic. The psychedelic are natural.
Having a non psychedelic practise such as meditation or yoga will help you get more out of the psychedelic experience.

 

[entheogenresearcher]

Thanks Finarfin - you give a spirited and convincing defense of the spiritual value of psychedelics.

When you say "plants and fungi", are you implying that chemicals like LSD don't have the same ability to reconnect people to nature and the universe?

 

[Finarfin]

I am not implying that LSD or other chemicals don,t have the same ability.
For me personally it is all about plants and fungi. I grow most of the plants and fungi myself. I do not need to go to any dealer or anything.
With chemicals like LSD you need a very clean source. You need to know if it is really LSD. I saw a programme about the boom festival, where they tested drugs. When they interviewed the person testing the drugs she said that half of all the LSD that was going around was actually something else (not LSD). With xtc pills and such people often don,t know what they gonna get and they don,t know what they put in there body. People have died (not a lot) from bad xtc pills. If you don,t want to go to the trouble of finding a dealer and testing your drugs i would advise using plants and fungi
Traditionally the shamans use plants and fungi for healing. With plants and fungi there ussualy is a longer history of human use.

Plants and fungi are very powerfull. You really don,t need chemicals. I think that plant based psychedelics such as ayahuasca mushrooms iboga mescaline cacti and salvia are amongst the most powerfull psychedelics you can find.

 

[entheogenresearcher]

Sounds very reasonable. I have no further questions on this subject

PS I sent you a PM - did you see it? Would you mind if I asked you a few general questions about your life circumstances (occupation, family, home) ? Nothing very specific

 

[Demahdi]

I'm only beginning to understand. Has anyone ever experienced a room filled with static energy that caught you into submission and by giving in the most unbelievable things happened?
The most powerful event in my life was on a trip, looking at a woman, giving into my instincts and charged her off to an orgasm we both never ever experienced or heard off in life.

 

[PlantWarrior101]

What university are you affiliated with?

 

[entheogenresearcher]

Hello PlantWarrior - I'm with the University of Bergen.

 

[Dhan]

Entheogenic drugs are definitely capable of producing profound effects. I have done a lot of experimentation with psychedelics for philosophical and spiritual purposes, typically meditating while under the effects. A high dose of 690ug of LSD has put me into a completely comatose state in which I experienced many religious phenomena and complete bliss. After complete obliteration of self, I felt like I experienced and knew everything, was absolutely amazing. Went in an atheist, came out a Buddhist and continue to use psychedelics to reconnect with this divinity. In my opinion, definitely something below the surface here

 

[joeroot9357]

Yeah i have experienced some paranormal activities in my life and i believe that some other world exists other than humans

 

[applestam]

Interesting.

 

[psihonaut]

Hi, not sure if you still can use the info and I see the thread is active.

First the 'paranormal' is actually normal, natural, only people tend to call it para-normal as they are common to be ab-normal. Most of the super powers you read about and watch in the movies are real and duable by humans. By my definition, 'normal' is whatever repeats enough times.
Check out this great video of Kilindi Iyi as it also mentions people from Africa don't make difference between 'normal' and 'paranormal':

I've experienced moments of collective consciousness, telepathy (with humans and animals). Sense enhancements are normal on shrooms, and its sometimes breathtaking what is world made of and how it looks like, when you see it, objectively.
I'm pretty sure other, usually called paranormal abilities are reachable and possible. Maybe not for everybody.

As always, you are your worst enemy.

 

[Sophia]

Not sure if this counts, but once on psychoactive cacao, and twice on MDMA, I experienced a negative spiritual entity sticking into my aura. How did I know? Cause it made me feel terrible for 1-3 hours and I could do nothing to feel better, until I realised it was an entity and tried a quick exorcism. Then I felt better essentially instantly. The first two times, I realised when I noticed the creature gloating at me (I presume it thought I wouldn't hear).