Because I'm tired of arguing with nerds talking theory over matters that ultimately are experiential, I'll say the following two points and I don't mind being downvoted.
1) Whomever says the experiences of meditation are akin to those of psychedelics is plainly full of shit. I've done psychedelics for about 4 years, and western ceremonial magic which involved plenty of meditation daily and consistently for about a decade. Apples and oranges. And thats including all the freaky spectacular shit I've experienced.
2) Practically, how much of "all that exists in the unknown" you think you will or can experience living a basic run of the mill western life in a human body? As I said, ingest 5 dried gramms, then come to talk to me about what will get trumped in your realm of experience. Until then, its only thinking you understand sex because you read dirty magazines, only for something that is several orders of magnitudes out there.
The psychedelic experience is the most intense experience anyone can have on this planet, and it cannot be compared or described by anything else one has experienced in his/her life.
Surely there's no good reason to assume anything but you do assume and in the most cliche way. Maybe first you should chuck 5 gramms of dried mushrooms with some lemonade and come back and tells us what you think after that.
I'm not sure if the parent was advocating or saying this. It was in reference to Terrence Mckenna's view of the present assumptions that mankind has about what aliens should look like and how one should go about contacting them (and that DMT and mushrooms are probably an alien artifact).
And certainly one can lose the plot and spend his entire life tripping. Noone is saying thats a good thing.
There are several parallels depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. Reports of feeling accepted and loved, and the "tone" sound in the beginning which seems to me really similar with the one you hear when you astrally project out of your body.
But we are fast getting out of HN accepted topics of discussion so.. :-)
Ultimately one should (not must) explore these things on his/her own instead of reading it on the web. All this quickly degenerates to entertainment if one only reads about them online.
DMT no. These are all coming from reports (and from Terrence himself) which I have no problem believing since I've witnessed my fair share of weird shit in general.
I've only done my share of LSD in the past, which by comparison, seems quite tame and merely "psychological" than DMT.
It is weird because it is present in many "mundane" plants and in the human organism, allegedly released at the time of death. It lasts 10 minutes which is strange for a psychedelic substance, which after the experience you can go back as Terrence said "answering phonecalls". Apparently the human body knows perfectly well how to metabolize it completely without any taxing effects.
From my personal experience in psychedelics, all of them, LSD, mushrooms and so forth, the user still maintains a reference point to reality around him however weird it might look. With DMT, the whole content of present reality disappears and you are seemingly transported in a completely different reality booming with alien intelligence (described by DMT users as self transforming machine elves) that purportedly is also very happy to see you "broken through".
Users also report an incredible amount of information being transmitted to them, albeit completely indescribable by present human language and concepts and find themselves being under a dome-like structure (called the "DMT Dome").
From what I know, these effects are only present if you follow a specific dosage and no less than that.
Another strange fact is that while all other psychedelics are boundary dissolving substances with your ego first to get booted, with DMT you apparently "maintain" your present self throughout the trip.
This is what the "Death by astonishment" quote of the same author, refers to.
All this seems like a slightly more socially accepted way of hating yourself and cutting your forearms.
It's not a surprise to see goths in every single video/article about body hacking. Whether they operate safely or not is not a concern, because obviously this isn't about research or science, or becoming a cyborg by sticking wires up your ass.
Its about making a fashion statement in the club and drawing attention. And while not every goth person or community is like that, it is a very prevailing characteristic.
I understand, but forgive me, when I try to argue about consciousness using logic or read scientific studies about it, I always feel like being a 14 year old talking about sex, so I don't talk about it anymore. I prefer doing it.
Quite possibly its arrogance, or jadedness. But I've come to develop my own opinions about issues like that, through other means of acquiring knowledge than science, which I feel is grossly inadequate to address such issues. And no, I'm not talking about secular/clinic types of mindfulness.
Probably that makes me a weirdo in circles like HN, but oh well.
When I was writing the chips from nand2tetris in HDL I noticed how cleanly they could be expressed with function composition in SML. I dismissed the ideas as a bit weird, if cool, but after a few weeks I came across HardCaml http://www.ujamjar.com/hardcaml/ and some references to HML (Hardware ML). Unfortunately only the thesis survives and not any actual code, but still.
The moral of the story is to take your weird ideas more seriously I guess ;-)
Actually, something akin to that is already being done. Take a look at this http://www.persado.com. The co-founder is a guy from Upstream (a Greek mobile marketing company)
Tibetan Buddhists and other weird occult folk knew about them for ages, and required years of training before approaching them as a subject. They considered them as highly dangerous too. I shiver at the thought that this concept evolved enough so as to be picked up by reddit subculture. Let's see how many lives will get fucked.
It's just a larger scale of leaving high-school (or leaving any significant period in your life behind). Things, people, problems from back then don't bother you anymore and you remember them only a little bit better than a novel you read, being out of context. Also you dive in nonexistence everyday when in deep sleep. And the universe winding down, well, like you said, its just an idea :-)
1) Whomever says the experiences of meditation are akin to those of psychedelics is plainly full of shit. I've done psychedelics for about 4 years, and western ceremonial magic which involved plenty of meditation daily and consistently for about a decade. Apples and oranges. And thats including all the freaky spectacular shit I've experienced.
2) Practically, how much of "all that exists in the unknown" you think you will or can experience living a basic run of the mill western life in a human body? As I said, ingest 5 dried gramms, then come to talk to me about what will get trumped in your realm of experience. Until then, its only thinking you understand sex because you read dirty magazines, only for something that is several orders of magnitudes out there.