Where is my teacher?

[Monochromatic_Knight]

I've been lurking on this board for a while and I'm often surprised to find how zealous some contributors are about psychedelic substances. Sure, "we're psychonauts", that's what this site is about, right? Some of you may have heard of Stanislav Grof, who has an interesting phrase to describe these substances. He says they act as "nonspecific amplifiers". And here is a key idea that I find some people on this board are forgetting. These drugs may just be amplifying that which is in our mind and/or aspects of ourselves. I feel slightly uneasy each time I come across a post that mentions psychedelic experiences as enlightenment, salvation, satori, nirvana, God, the key to our existence, and that which will save us from the "imminent global collapse".

I hope you're all tripping safely, learning from your experiences, and integrating them into your daily life. These substances can teach a thing or two, but if you're putting all your eggs in this proverbial basket, you may want to reconsider. Psychedelics can be whatever you want them to be, even your escape from maya. But where does that get you?

Consider this, whether you are tripping or not... You cannot be beyond the reach of your teacher. Your teacher does not live on a mountain, your teacher is not found in a fungi, in a pill, or on a blotter... in fact your teacher does not have to be found at all.

"If a man follows the mind given him and makes it his teacher, then who can be without a teacher? Why must you comprehend the process of change and form your mind on that basis before you can have a teacher? Even an idiot has his teacher. But to fail to abide by this mind and still insist upon your rights and wrongs - this is like saying that you set off for Yueh today and got there yesterday. This is to claim that what doesn't exist exists. If you claim that what doesn't exist exists, then even the holy sage Yu couldn't understand you, much less a person like me!"

-Chuang Tzu

 

[buffachino]

Yes, you are correct.
Yet as amplifiers of inherent elements of the self, this can pertain to the perceptive illusion of the ego,
Or the all pervading self that is eternal consciousness.
Both are considered self, yet one is a construct of perception, and the other is the awareness of that construct.

So it is pertinent to learn from your perception,
rather than regard this perspective as objective truth from which you do not have to learn.

Psychedelics are just as much a tool as perception itself.
This is because they amplify the awareness and fluidity of these perceptions,
Their nature as a variable interpretation, among an endless plethora of others,
And in so much, no interpretation can be called reality,
Yet can become a reference to what we all share in our existence,
Which is the infinite essence of awareness itself.

We use perception as a ladder, each interpretation is a step,
But to continue moving upward, one cannot be afraid of transcending their interpretation.
One must learn from it, and move on.

Perception is your teacher, but as a teacher, it can’t tell you what is and is not real,
It can only help you to understand it for yourself.

Peace.

 

[Guest]

i fully agree with you and have spoken about this in several other threads. psychedelics are just a branch of psychonautics, and do not acheive per se the full enlightment. i belive that they do, but only temporarily. many people have claimed here and in another forums that if they spend more than a year, or two years or so without having a psychedelic session, they seem to forget some experiences that have been taught to him about the ego, for example. it is like a pill that you have to take always at the same time, so the continuous effect is not lost.
through meditation, this effects are much more persistent.this is just my opinion and none of this can be obviously proven.
but i think that in this forum, the users are too turned to psychedelics and are not used to think in other kinds of psychonauting, like sensory deprivation, the aforementioned meditation, lucid dreaming, dream logging (this last two have had some really nice topics in the last year or so), brainstorming (although this one is realy boosted with cannabis)l, between so many others.
i have now turned to meditation for some time, and i find it so much rewarding than psychedelics. i now have the idea that psychedelics are very agressive, because they pump this enormous amount of information in a single afternoon, that perhaps would be learned for 20 years with meditation. meditation can take you to the same places, i belive. though it is much softer in the long run and mild at first.
anyway, good post!

edit: grammar. ich do not parler very nice da inglés.

 

[Forkbender]

I mostly agree with the above. Psychedelics can help you learn to listen to the teacher that is always within. The hardest part (and the most rewarding for that matter) is to sustain a level of insight and conscious awareness into daily life, practicing that which you have learned.

 

[tryptonaut]

These drugs may just be amplifying that which is in our mind and/or aspects of ourselves. I feel slightly uneasy each time I come across a post that mentions psychedelic experiences as enlightenment, salvation, satori, nirvana, God, the key to our existence, and that which will save us from the "imminent global collapse".

Well, enlightenment/salvation/nirvana is nothing but an amplification of your unconscious so that you suddenly see what you are and what you need to do.
My first break-through mushroom trip was an enlightenment in that I saw my subconscious had always known supporting cruelty against animals was bad, it had always known that I believe in karma (i.e. do good and believe that every action has consequences). In my break-through experience (the "enligthening") I was shown these things with massive force, so I could not deny them anymore. These ideas been in my mind forever, but I had been pushing them aside all the time!

And I totally agree that however enlightening and spiritual an experience might have been, you can forget about it in the long time. I have to remind myself about it every day and once in a while try to repeat the experience to stay tuned in. What has definitely changed is that I try to stay tuned in to the new thinking (although it hasn't been "new", only suppressed in my subconcious!)

 

[BrainEater]

very good replies!! i agree mostly!! it's like eat the red pill or the blue pill too? i mean you can believe whatever you want to believe.. you can either believe what you want to be true is true oor something you have learned or you can find out more about it and see how deep the rabbit hole goes... maybe psychadelics are like a shortcut or like a tool yeah...

Peace!! 8)

 

[silv]

I think this is a good point to make, so we aren't allowed to forget why we use psychedelics.
However, for me it still is mainly curiousity to where my own mind can take me with a little assistance from other substances.

 

[spice]

tryptonaut, you said ;

"Well, enlightenment/salvation/nirvana is nothing but an amplification of your unconscious so that you suddenly see what you are and what you need to do.
My first break-through mushroom trip was an enlightenment in that I saw my subconscious had always known supporting cruelty against animals was bad, it had always known that I believe in karma (i.e. do good and believe that every action has consequences). In my break-through experience (the "enligthening") I was shown these things with massive force, so I could not deny them anymore. These ideas been in my mind forever, but I had been pushing them aside all the time! "

Yes. Awesome example.

For me, I did too many to forget the lessons, regardless of how long I was away. When I did time, I went a couple of years without anything, but I kept my psychedelic attitude, and my thought patterns never left me, they never reverted to the way I was before I changed.

When I returned to the real world and smoked some cannabis, it was a full blown psychedelic experience, like acid. I realized then that the only thing these substances are, are catalysts. A side-effect thereof, that they feel good, sometimes....if one approaches these types of experiences with a serious mindset, generally, one obtains serious results, to whichever end of the spectrum....conversely, if you approach these experiences as a kind of playtime, a roller-coaster for the mind, then, generally, that is what you get.

Hell, no, drugs aren't instant enlightenment. That's naive.

Amplifiers is a better way of thinking of them.....power amplifiers for certain types of thinking....the problem is, that psychedelics affect the emotions as much as the linear mental thought processes, and everyone has emotional work to do on themselves.
Sometimes it's easy to get your wires crossed and lose your way on powerful psychedelics.....this is why a good sense of grounding is a valuable asset for any psychonaut to have.....,.

If you approach it as a lost soul, then you may be in for a long, wild ride.....and no one knows where, or if, it will stop.

Psychedelics aren't toys, and the sad reality is that they aren't for everyone, hence the necessity of a body of knowledge about them to be available. The more that is known about them, the less will the govt be able to polarize us with fear of the unknown, and the chances
of negative experiences are reduced as well.

 

[tryptonaut]

This discussion just reminds me of something - a colleague (I don't really know him that well, he only works in the same company and we say hi whenever we see each other but we don't talk that much) recently married. He said that his decision to marry his girlfriend was triggered by the experience of his mother's sudden death. When she died, he said he suddenly realized that life can be really short and that one should live it to the full extent.
When I heard it I thought he really had had a psychedelic experience there. I don't think he has ever taken any drugs at all, but the sudden outbreak of grief and emotions was kind of a psychedelic experience for him that led him to marry his girlfriend on the spot and think about life in a different way.

A side-effect thereof, that they feel good, sometimes....

Hell yeah, they do feel extremely good sometimes. I tend to think that the feeling well on psychedelics is their appeal to do them again and again - if you only went through hell with them without a reward, nobody would do them. The point is you sometimes go through hell with psychedelics, but whenever you do so, you get rewarded very generously with the best feelings you could ever imagine. Some of my most memorable and sublime spiritual experiences started out as a nightmare - I hardly ever got the nice feelings without going through the dark side first. But that's the good point about psychedelics, and it's why I think they aren't addictive.

 

[HeartCore]

Some of you may have heard of Stanislav Grof, who has an interesting phrase to describe these substances. He says they act as "nonspecific amplifiers".

I read most of his books and have a few in my bookcase. He says way more about psychedelics than that, the holotropic mind is very inspiring in my opinion, written with a scientific background and not loosing touch with the magic.

And I think that's the key thing, keep in touch with the magic. Trip and go all out, return and integrate. You don't need to make plant teachers into 'non specific amplifiers' to be able to use them responsibly. This is not science, it's magic, art, culture, religion all at once, maybe. Looking at entheogens as plant teachers automatically make you respect them, or better worded, respect the experience.

feel slightly uneasy each time I come across a post that mentions psychedelic experiences as enlightenment, salvation, satori, nirvana, God, the key to our existence, and that which will save us from the "imminent global collapse".

Have you ever had such an experience yourself?

If not, why judge it? And if so, please explain