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Communicating with people on psychedelics

qualiacomputing.com

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Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#91

Post by danneu »

leemoore wrote: post #24

I believe the main factor at play in the first pair of images, is that on LSD and other hallucinogens as well as intensive meditation is that there are little mind programs that run on our perception that smooth out reality for us. If you notice, even just sitting still we are constantly moving our head just a little, constantly moving our eyes. Without these programs, our visual field would seem far more jumpy and u…

    > I believe ... there are little mind programs that run on 
    > our perception that smooth out reality for us
http://psychedelic-information-theory.com/The-Control-Interr...

Our cortex’s main role is to provide inhibitory control on thalamic activity. The serotonergic activity of psychedelics blocks this control signal, and thus prevents the swift extinction of qualia once the triggering stimuli (whether internal or external) is removed.

The OP article cites it to explain lingering visuals, but the source generalizes the mechanism. How would we ever sit at a desk all day or argue about Javascript on HN if we didn't evolve inhibitory processes to dull life down?

It's a thought easy to marvel at when you're on acid, and a mechanism easy to appreciate when you take too much.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#92

Post by overdrivetg »

imesh wrote: post #60
rudolf0 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so odd how there's a near-universal reporting of small elf- or dwarf-like creatures from that drug. Is there any proposed mechanism of action for how it works?

I dit DMT once. No elves or other creatures.

Just for clarity, someone told me that 5-MEO-DMT is sometimes mistakenly called "DMT", but it is totally different from the "machine elves" N,N-DMT version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-MeO-DMT

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#93

Post by cubix »

What I found most remarkable about my LSD experience were the auditory effects. It seemed like my hearing had been dramatically enhanced. I could readily pick out a conversation being held between two people standing a hundred feet away. Of course, that could just be an illusion, but I was curious if anyone had studied this phenomenon.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#94

Post by 4ad »

leemoore wrote: post #24

I believe the main factor at play in the first pair of images, is that on LSD and other hallucinogens as well as intensive meditation is that there are little mind programs that run on our perception that smooth out reality for us. If you notice, even just sitting still we are constantly moving our head just a little, constantly moving our eyes. Without these programs, our visual field would seem far more jumpy and u…

Anecdotally, I can perceive the smoothness turning into jerkiness even after something benign as caffeine.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#95

Post by leemoore »

awl130 wrote: post #51
leemoore wrote: post #24

I believe the main factor at play in the first pair of images, is that on LSD and other hallucinogens as well as intensive meditation is that there are little mind programs that run on our perception that smooth out reality for us. If you notice, even just sitting still we are constantly moving our head just a little, constantly moving our eyes. Without these programs, our visual field would seem far more jumpy and u…

i've been meditating for 6 yrs now and i'm interested in your meditation experience. do u have a blog or social media account or something publicly available about it?

I don't have that. However if your not familiar with the Dharma Overground, I'd check it out. There are lots of dedicated geeky practitioners over there that share experiences and to whatever degree possible attempt to document the results with more scientific rigor than a typical spiritual community. http://www.dharmaoverground.org/

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#96

Post by leemoore »

leemoore wrote: post #24

I believe the main factor at play in the first pair of images, is that on LSD and other hallucinogens as well as intensive meditation is that there are little mind programs that run on our perception that smooth out reality for us. If you notice, even just sitting still we are constantly moving our head just a little, constantly moving our eyes. Without these programs, our visual field would seem far more jumpy and u…

To take this phenomenon further down the Rabbit Hole, if you pay close enough attention, a defined sense of self is just a feeling or thought that rises from time to time. However addiction/compulsion to perpetual thinking (which 99.99% of humans are caught in) plus the smoothing programs that provide a sense of continuousness and continuity begin to act on that sense of self firmly establishing a deep continuous sense of me. And there is a tremendous amount of conscious energy wrapped up in the perpetuation of a continuous sense of me. Certain states and activities more deeply lock the sense of me in including anger, conflict, proving yourself right, proving someone wrong.

Meditation and Hallucinogens can quiet the mind (or more dramatically short circuit habitual mind loops) and allow you to see the gaps in the self-ing process. The self-ing process never really stops. You never really stop having a sense of self arise from time to time, but when you see the frames and gaps of self-ing you begin to question a lot of who you think you are. And you begin to see the amount of time and energy you spend protecting the self from paper tigers.

Spiritual circles generally call this awakening and tend to over-emphasize it's specialness and idealize those who have deeply conditioned themselves to reside in that state. But it is real and mostly desirable phenominon (with a few drawbacks). Putting aside questions of full enlightenment and mind blowing transcendent unitive states, simply freeing up the consciousness that gets locked up in perpetuating the continuous sense of self and all the efforts to defend as if you are defending your physical body from harm allows for a richer, higher resolution and more textured moment to moment experience of life.

From my subjective experience it is the same sorts of filters that smooth out reality, that also give you a continuous sense of a psychological self which basically manufactures the vast majority of our problems and suffering.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#97

Post by callesgg »

cnp wrote: post #82
notthegov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DMT is much different than LSD. I have never heard anyone talk about machine elves and LSD. DMT is a legitimate mystery of science and is not a drug in the traditional sense.

I spent a good amount of time a few years ago exploring the DMT realm, and its totally, completely and inexplicably mysterious. Either consciousness is a non-local phenomena and when you smoke it you end up in some kind of parallel dimension or for whatever crazy reason evolution decided it was important to incorporate these alien beings into our subconscious mind. Those with a rigid reductionist perspective would do…

I have not tried DMT and to be honest i do not intend to, based on what i have read. So my insights might not be so cleaver as i think.

But here is an article that makes sense to me.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/2...

Our brains are really not that good at letting us know what is going on in our lives. Our brains are however really good when it comes to making us believe that we know what is going on in or lives.

Just look at this list for some examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#98

Post by taternuts »

cnp wrote: post #80
8d7a8 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought elves were limited to the DMT experience. At least I hoped that was the case. I found this interesting at the end of the article, regarding the Control Interrupt model: This inhibitory control mechanism occurs a discrete number of times per second. Therefore “control interruption” caused by psychedelics, in this model, is conceived as a periodical failure of inhibitory control that allows aspects of one’s e…

One lesser known psychedelic, Salvia Divinorum, when taken responsibly and with a measured dose derived from incremental experimentation , tends to bring a person into the weird world too. Lots of beings, lots of entities.

That wasn't the case for me when I experimented with that in high school years ago. Definitely no hallucinations or anything really close to that, though the extracts will put you in a weird (and very uncomfortable - it is not fun; about as fun as being tickled against your will) world for a brief period of time. Really the only thing that makes Salvia Divinorum worth trying is the "after glow" affect that lasts a couple weeks that can alleviate depression.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#100

Post by taternuts »

cnp wrote: post #82
notthegov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DMT is much different than LSD. I have never heard anyone talk about machine elves and LSD. DMT is a legitimate mystery of science and is not a drug in the traditional sense.

I spent a good amount of time a few years ago exploring the DMT realm, and its totally, completely and inexplicably mysterious. Either consciousness is a non-local phenomena and when you smoke it you end up in some kind of parallel dimension or for whatever crazy reason evolution decided it was important to incorporate these alien beings into our subconscious mind. Those with a rigid reductionist perspective would do…

I'm both fascinated and very scared of DMT. As I get older and my want to experiment with unfamiliar substances wanes, I'm pretty confident that I'll probably never try DMT, but I wish I had when I was younger and more brash. I've had friends who have taken too much and went down the DMT-hole, and their description of it (as best they can recollect anyways) is absolutely terrifying. One example was a friend who felt he spent years in a completely different world, with completely different laws of physics - he had to literally give up his idea of how the world worked in order to embrace what he thought at the time was his new world/being. Once he accepted it, apparently he started to come out of it.
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