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Communicating with people on psychedelics

qualiacomputing.com

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Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#111

Post by angersock »

sqlftw wrote: post #4

Many years ago I tried LSD, and for whatever reason, I never seemed to experience visual hallucinations. However, in recent years, cars have started having LED tail lights, which really bother my eyes. Several times I have asked my friends, "Aren't those terrible!?" to which they might reply, "They are pretty bright." Bright! They aren't just too bright, they are intensely STROBING! Can normal people not see that? Is…

I've got some screwy eyes (astigmatism, nystagmus, myopia) and have definitely noticed that sometime over the last few years the lighting situation has gotten more annoying. Some things I've noticed are particularly annoying:

The screens of cellphones and certain OLED displays having visible screen refresh rates, especially if my eyes are panning across them from a distance.

Shitty LED display lighting with a visible flicker. It's especially bad on a place nearby that has window frames outlined in what are effectively Christmas lights--almost enough to give me a headache just looking at them.

Certain LEDs and phone backlights tend to leave trails in the dark (once my eyes are accustomed to it). This is probably normal, but is a little disconcerting.

Projected images can have minor chomratic aberration, which can be distracting during a presentation. If I twitch my eyes purposefully back and forth, it gets worse.

~

I love graphics, but that shit is annoying IRL.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#112

Post by kbart »

sqlftw wrote: post #4

Many years ago I tried LSD, and for whatever reason, I never seemed to experience visual hallucinations. However, in recent years, cars have started having LED tail lights, which really bother my eyes. Several times I have asked my friends, "Aren't those terrible!?" to which they might reply, "They are pretty bright." Bright! They aren't just too bright, they are intensely STROBING! Can normal people not see that? Is…

I don't think it has anything to do with LSD. I've never tried LSD, but I also see moving LEDs (especially white ones) strobing that happens very fast and it's more like they are vibrating. It's hard to explain this feeling, but it's very distinct and distracting.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#113

Post by grkvlt »

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…

Occams razor suggests the latter, i.e. it's all in your mind. Unless you can get one of the beings to factor some huge number for you, of course.

- http://www.ayahuasca-info.com/data/articles/paralleldmt.pdf - http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the...

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#114

Post by grkvlt »

choosername wrote: post #104
zardo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LSD's effect isn't limited to visual perception. One of the most common reported phenomenon is a sort of understanding of the connectedness of things. That may be a result of the reality that all things really are connected when they are stored as concepts in a network of neurons.

and that the neurons are not, if briefly, connected anymore when a chemical acid destructs them.

That's not how LSD works.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#115

Post by cnp »

grkvlt wrote: post #113
cnp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Occams razor suggests the latter, i.e. it's all in your mind. Unless you can get one of the beings to factor some huge number for you, of course. - http://www.ayahuasca-info.com/data/articles/paralleldmt.pdf - http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the...

People always use the large number factor as an argument which pretty much assumes we and they are on similar wavelengths, so to speak. Its a strawman.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#116

Post by fapjacks »

rudolf0 wrote: post #84
fapjacks wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My running theory is that the machine elves from Dimension 9 are actually a heavily modified perception of one's self. This is purely just based only on research done in my basement with DMT, so nothing approaching academic research, but I think those little people are actually our "mind's eye" perception of ourselves, just twisted by the DMT. Like when you imagine yourself walking through a hallway to go to lunch, a…

That makes sense, but were you already aware of the "DMT elf" mythology before taking the drug? If so, that could've influenced a lot of your experience. Otherwise, I think that could be a plausible explanation. Though I've read about people actually talking to the elves, or hearing things from them, which would be weird if the elves were themselves.

The very first time I did DMT -- this is way before stuff like Erowid -- I was not aware of that, no, and I did sense what seemed to me to be some kind of otherworldly presence. In the times since, I have read all about it on Erowid but still haven't seen specifically the "machine elves" but have had similar "encounters". The presence was more aggressive and "dark" when I smoked it versus drinking ayahuasca (from a mix of B.Caapi and P.Viridis). Also sometimes I feel a similar (but different) "presence" when smoking salvia divinorum.

Re: Communicating with people on psychedelics

#117

Post by leemoore »

awl130 wrote: post #110
leemoore wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just popped over there. I haven't been in a while. It looks like one of my longer reports was linked up to their wiki. This chronicles my meditative exploits from when I really got into it up until an 8 month sabbatical I took and had some initial breakthroughs. http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/messa...

lee, i copy/pasted one of my hn comments below, that describes my meditation. there's a lot of lingo in your link that i don't understand. can you comment on what i describe as stage 1 and 2 below, and if that is related to stream entry, etc.? -- 2009: 1 hr 2010: 30 min 2011-2014: 10 min 2015-present: 0-10 min these are my daily averages. i have one rule: before I go to bed, I must assume the lotus position on the fl…

Stream Entry is a Theravada Buddhist term for the first of 4 stages or paths of awakening. A precise model has been created but it tends to be only useful if you have a certain mental makeup and you engage in the practices with a certain degree of intensity. Even then it feels to me like too much effort to make a subjective process set of experiences into a hard and fast model masquerading as authoritative and true.

I'm not so familiar with your stages model so I can't really comment. Based on your last paragraph, my engagement with meditation comes from a very different place than yours. It started in order to stabelize attention after an ADHD diagnosis; a way to get off meds. Quickly that was left behind and the real focus was enlightenment, spiritual awakening or whatever you want to call it. It was motivated by a deep spontaneous inner faith that there was something to it and it was important that I go 100% into it and discover for myself. It was not based on research or attempting to find the best approach to make my mind measurably more effective. I just felt a powerful internal yearning for awakening and I had to follow it.

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