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Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

psychedelics.community

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Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#61

Post by LocalH »

t-3 wrote: post #48
crent wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spirituality doesn’t have to mean you believe in spirits in the sense of ghosts etc. I believe that if that’s where the definition of exploring one’s own inner world ends, then that person has missed the point.

If you don't mean to suggest you believe in some strange metaphysics without any grounding in reality, why do you call it spirituality? What "inner world" are you "exploring"? Can that be done in plain language without any mysticism? Why or why not?

Militant atheists like you are almost as insufferable as militant theists

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#62

Post by dubbie99 »

LocalH wrote: post #61
t-3 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mean to suggest you believe in some strange metaphysics without any grounding in reality, why do you call it spirituality? What "inner world" are you "exploring"? Can that be done in plain language without any mysticism? Why or why not?

Militant atheists like you are almost as insufferable as militant theists

Or you could you know, answer the question…

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#63

Post by LocalH »

dubbie99 wrote: post #62
LocalH wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Militant atheists like you are almost as insufferable as militant theists

Or you could you know, answer the question…

I don't believe in any "God". I believe that only the universe is any "supreme being". Is that woo? Maybe. But it helps me be kinder than any religion seems to teach others.

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#64

Post by TZubiri »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #10
neuralkoi wrote: post #5

> Terence told friends, “history’s going to end any day now.” Friends worried they’d “gone off the rails,” and Dennis later conceded they had a point. I always imagine the recklessness of psychonauts like McKenna as something like dragging a high powered electromagnet across the skull to force altered states while doing who knows what to the membrane.

Every time I read about either tDCS or psychedelics, I'm reminded of altering random hex values in games on my Apple II+ as a kid. One tweak got me a score of 100,000,000 in Falcons, and the screen dump made for nice bragging rights on the school bus the next morning. The next one crashed the game and wrote a bad sector to the floppy.

Maybe the first such experimentation actually teaches you something? By destroying a part you get to understand the true shape of the self. But by repeated use I imagine you get diminishing effects on the knowledge, and exponential damage, as you are left unable to self heal or develop adaptations to the missing corrupted sectors

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#65

Post by TZubiri »

comrade1234 wrote: post #27

I tried lsd with friends in undergrad. It was to me a very interesting experience. Not spiritual in any way - it was like I could tell that my neurons were firing off all over and incorrectly. It was fun and I enjoyed it very much and I've never had the desire to do it again. My friends from that night did still continue doing lsd after that. For one of them he stopped when he had what sounds like a horrible trip whe…

I remember feeling that once with cannabis, I was feeling some sensations and emotions and initially I tried to explain them rationally, but eventually I came to the theory that some brain areas were just being activated by the drug.

Don't do drugs kids.

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#66

Post by profsummergig »

state_less wrote: post #39

I wouldn't know what to tell someone about what entering a (the?) void is like, but the closest i can imagine is a situation where you're 1000 nautical miles out to sea in a small sailboat on a pitch dark cloudy moonless night, far away from anyone. A storm is brewing and the seas are getting large, though you can't see them, it's too dark for your eyes, though you feel the force as it throws your small boat around.…

Thank you. I was curious about what the experience is like.

Now, can you share what an OBE feels like?

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#67

Post by robobro »

LocalH wrote: post #61
t-3 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mean to suggest you believe in some strange metaphysics without any grounding in reality, why do you call it spirituality? What "inner world" are you "exploring"? Can that be done in plain language without any mysticism? Why or why not?

Militant atheists like you are almost as insufferable as militant theists

There's an XKCD for that! https://xkcd.com/774/

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#68

Post by tokioyoyo »

t-3 wrote: post #48
crent wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spirituality doesn’t have to mean you believe in spirits in the sense of ghosts etc. I believe that if that’s where the definition of exploring one’s own inner world ends, then that person has missed the point.

If you don't mean to suggest you believe in some strange metaphysics without any grounding in reality, why do you call it spirituality? What "inner world" are you "exploring"? Can that be done in plain language without any mysticism? Why or why not?

I can see how they mean "the search for the unknown" in itself is already some sort of spirituality.

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#69

Post by sibeliuss »

profsummergig wrote: post #66
state_less wrote: post #39

I wouldn't know what to tell someone about what entering a (the?) void is like, but the closest i can imagine is a situation where you're 1000 nautical miles out to sea in a small sailboat on a pitch dark cloudy moonless night, far away from anyone. A storm is brewing and the seas are getting large, though you can't see them, it's too dark for your eyes, though you feel the force as it throws your small boat around.…

Thank you. I was curious about what the experience is like. Now, can you share what an OBE feels like?

I can. An OBE feels utterly real, minus the "oh shit... this is happening!" aspect of it all. It is not like a dream, even a lucid dream. And like a cliched cinematic experience you lift out of your body intact, as if there were two of you, one there and one here. It is legit and strange and the 'reality' of it is a lot to handle, after the fact.

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#70

Post by sibeliuss »

xvxvx wrote: post #16

I remember discovering McKenna in the late 90’s when I first got internet access at home. The comparison with Alex Jones is a good one: he was initially very interesting, sparking the imagination that whole worlds existed out there that I didn’t know about. But quickly it fell apart and I understood it was just horseshit, a form of fantasy. I’ve never tripped but it sounds similar to fever dreams I had a few times wh…

McKenna to Alex Jones? That is an offensively bad comparison for someone as philosophically astute and well-rounded as he was.

And tripping to a fever dream... You know, sometimes it's best to just not respond if you know nothing about a subject at all.

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