Jill Bolte Taylor on rebuilding your own mind (thanks to NonE from Sunni Maravillosa’s blog):
My Comment
Ignore the canned laughter. How amazingly similar this is to the religious experiences of neti-neti (not this, not this) and samadhi... (back with more later)
Whomever said that her experience was akin to an LSD “trip” was on target. Having the experience once of consuming some very pure LSD that produced an 18 hour adventure, including about 4 hours of very intense hallucinations, what she describes is exactly what it was like. The strangest part is that after the whole thing was over, I never felt better in my life and after all these years (it was a long time ago), I still recall much of it.
Hi Jeff –
From what I understand mushrooms (like LSD) are hallucinogens used by many people for religious experience
Huxley has something on it – “Doors of Perception” I believe.
I’ve had somewhat similar experiences – but from just listening to music, more when I was young, but once in a while now.
And also writing, especially poetry, when I get a similar kind of feeling of being one with everything..
Oh yes. And when we were singing the Mozart Requiem once right in the middle of everything I had the feeling of everything spinning.
I used to journal these things… and practice lucid dreaming and I mean to go back to it some day. Trance states interest me…
It’s difficult to describe the experience. The easist way I can think of is that if natural being is 0 on a linear scale and various states of inebriation or other drug influences move consciousness down one axis, LSD moves it in the opposite direction. It isn’t simply an enhancement of spiritual essense but an enhancement of rational cognition as well, except that the brain is processing so much information at once that it’s difficult to concentrate on a single aspect.
Different people have somewhat different reactions. My own was to find a remote place (far from people and wander. I chose the ocean on a nice day and a place I knew I could walk for miles with the chance of running across another remote. Since normal senses (hot, cold, hunger, pain) are suppressed, it helps to choose a pleasant place where they can be largely ignored.
PS, Yes I have consumed various mushrooms (some grow naturally around here), as well as peyote…I was quite “into” hallucinagens for a few years in my youth. The highs each produce and their physical effects on the body vary. Peyote is the most extreme since there are very few aspects to it besides the hallucinagenic experience (which is much different than LSD)…although Peyote as “food” is vile, disgusting and invariably makes one vomit.
Once picking mushrooms in a field of dairy cows in a very rural area, early in the morning I encountered a local crouched in a blackberry bush with a rifle (there was a deer trail nearby). I was surprised to learn that the locals…farm folks…had been consuming these mushrooms for many years, LOL
The fact that hallucinogens are illegal is criminal. Having had many experiences with them I can only say they are a gift. The fact that other substances are illegal is also criminal, but for entirely different reasons.
Hallucinogens are the gift of allowing you to experience a different reality, one which can be achieved in other means, but which rarely is. Having once had this experience it is never necessary to repeat it, as the knowledge gained, the view from another angle, will never be forgotten. It would be the same as outlawing music and forbidding people from understanding the profound implications which music has for the human being. (Speaking of which, check out Oliver Sacks for his experiences in the musical realm.)
There is no excuse for this current prohibition, none whatsoever.
– NonE