Re: Drugs and God

[lilKING272]

all of you sound rediculous trying to use a bigger vocabulary to sound less "retarded." you don't know what the words mean. stop using them. molecular species? really? It is good that people are trying to sound smarter but please make sure you know what youre even saying

[ktorch]

I cannot bring myself to believe in spirits.  There are good people and bad people but they my have a brain chemical imbalance, but nothing is controlled by spirits. You will go around in circles over and over again trying to explain, define a spirit and you will never find a satisfactory answer. A belief in spirits will take you into a million different directions each person with different answers.

[cienciadeconciencia]

i've had experiences with ayahuasca and other sacred plants in a real shamanic context. this plants are really sacred and give an openning of mind like nothing else.

check out my channel, it's about spirituality, conciusness and all that :)

(but it's in spanish, i'm from colombia)

[leelwj]

you are beautiful

[seigneurvoland666]

matt growin the sole patch lol! looks g00d man

[shuddhatattva]

i like what you say about changing the filter. the brain really is just a filter for the consciousness and psychedelics change the filtering process. i agree with everything you say.

[andychaiwallah]

Thanks. I too have experimented with hallucinogenics; they were an initial opening which led me to a meditative spiritual practice. I think the main drawback with drugs in the context of a spiritual practice is they create a subtle attachment to experiences which are deemed to be 'spiritual' which one later tries to recreate or return to. All experiences are experiences of spirit or buddhanature. Why search consciousness through altering consciousness? This very moment is the awakened state.

[citricsystemz]

through my uses of hallucinogenics I have had spiritual revelations which I believe have come at the cost of my identity,but that I have also learned of something greater than myself.

PM me if you would like to know my experiences.

[UncannyRicardo]

Matt PLEASE MAN, I really do need your wisdom on this video.

watch?v=WsPn5dXfTvA

This guy has given simingly accurate points as to why consciousness is materalistic. So I would like for you and the other spiritual people on Utube to refute this guy.

[tanit]

People grow so used to fear, to murder, to contempt and hate that they become deaf to whatever in them whispers that maybe they are wriong and their attitude simply reflects what they loathe in their own lives. That is why they prefer drugs to suppress their despair - the illusion of instant cure keeps them going. But the canker which devours them remains.

- Raoul Vaneigem, The Book of Pleasures

[ChalfantMT]

How do you die before you die? that is how does the ego die? The ego, or what I think I am, seems to me to be the only thing that ever thinks it does anything... so how can you (being that your an ego) let the ego die?

[adorianvlad]

Hey, Matt, if I were you, I wouldn't rush into saying that such and such drugs are "innocent".

Drugs can have a serious impact on your immune system, liver functions, kidney, etc let alone hormonal balance and mental health.

I don't want to bring statistics regarding the cancer patients that had been using such drugs (legal or not), just think of Freud (mouth cancer), or McKeena (brain cancer).

Be vigilent and stay safe, don't fall for these kind of unsafe stuff!

Cheers

[36stylesofdanger]

@adorianvlad I think he addresses these concerns although he doesn't emphasize them. His point was that these drugs, used in a proper context (read: not abusively), can create enlightening spiritual experiences.

[9claudius]

Do you know any one who has had a mescaline mud facial at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mex. ?

[SunsetsCStudios]

I'll tell ya wot's psychedelic, Matt's lookin' pretty psychedelic right 'bout now. (y) haha

[hyperseauton]

"equally as valid"

I agree.

[HaleyMary]

I found it interesting what you said about consciousness being out in the world and not lodged in the body. By that do you mean like the world/the Earth existing co-dependently outside the body? More like waves of energy people pick up rather than brain waves?

[glenemma1]

Thouartthat,

thanks for these videos.I'm getting a lot out of them.I appreciate your thoughtfulness and sensitivity.I had an experience about 20 years ago of One ness which came to me out of the blue and lasted about 3 days.I had taken no drugs at the time.However,I have not been able to experience that again(or at times have only an inkling of it),and maybe it is trying for that experience that blocks it.

[roberto8ag]

Molecular species? sacred substances?

[gombet]

One does not need any substances in order to reach any state of mind or height. I one truly knows about the human body, then they will take care of it. Naturally you can reach higher highs that any drug could ever give you.

Learn about the human body, all the nerve endings, all the senses and you will begin to see that a well tuned body will give you so much more, such higher highs.

[doctorrin]

I don't disagree with that, but that does not mean there isn't a place for "mind altering substances" after all. What ISNT a mind altering substance? What isn't some sort of drug or cure what you do socially or physically? There is no such thing as a "pure" existance...but u not ready to pop a shroom.

[gombet]

What I am saying is the use of any mind altering drug, specifically is really not needed. If one truly knows the power each of us have then we all would realize what we each one of us can do with that power and it is literally unlimited.

It is lack of knowledge, lack of belief, lack of faith and not knowing what kind of true power is available to each of us.

[doctorrin]

Like I said...What ISNT a drug...What ISNT mind altering...What is a candybar from an acid tab? Nothing much.

Just because you think you can "tap" into something, doesn't make it so...As well, just because you don't have to use "drugs" which is a subjective term, doesn't mean it is rendered un-needed or useless...You are making a statement as though enlightenment is a scientific process...And it isn't...

[36stylesofdanger]

yeah you should actually explain what the hell it is you're talking about. it sounds like mumbo-jumbo

[Phinuix]

get a vocabulary, stylesofdanger. although i agree, this guy can get a bit verbose

[36stylesofdanger]

My vocabulary is fine. In fact, what bothers me about his posts is not that he is too verbose. More accurately--his comments are "mumbo jumbo". Maybe you would like me to use a less colloquial term to describe his comments. They are nonsensical, unwarranted, unfalsifiable, unqualified, etc. Mumbo jumbo just seems to get the job done a lot faster.

[gombet]

mumbo-jumbo is in the minds of unlearned individuals who refuse to educate and re-educate themselves in more ways than one. It's clear you have your opinion and that's all you care about. Look beyond the envelope and you just might see something beyond your current mind state.

[36stylesofdanger]

nothin like some drugs to squeegee ya third eye clean

[g00ch]

Ah the late and great Bill Hicks! a revolutionary mind (though more in politics/sociology then in his opinions on drugs)

[vbfl920]

You look like a young Adam Horowitz from the Beastie Boys.

[giordanellius]

I was wondering if you're familiar with E.J. Lowe's dualism and if so if you find it a plausible reconciliation of your separate but co-existent notions of body and mind?

[notonewhit]

The pleasure of drugs is more basic than the careful overlay of your rationalizations and spiritual theories. Psychoanalysis makes the distinction between primary and secondary process thinking. The first is related to childish satisfactions/ immediate gratifications. Your desire to return to the womb is not necessarily a bad thing (rationalize it!), but is it not escape-ism? From what do you flee and to what are you drawn? Pleasure and un-pleasure (unlust).

[g00ch]

Let me add too that the "Mysteries" component to ancient philosophy is very important to understanding the idea of philosophy as a spiritual path and a preparation for death according to Plato himself...really very different from our kind of superficial dialectical method that is currently taught in universities indeed! Do you believe it is possible to re-vitalize this type of attitude and practice in the (post)modern world?

[g00ch]

Matt, I have a very important question. Your creation of the Holon network has inspired me to grab people and begin to create my own team of superhero philosophers.

My question is this: Is the socratic method possible on the international level, utilizing technology as you have been, in order to take some of the power away from the marginalization and domestication of minds that go on in the college industrial complex today? Since I am shy, if you respond with a video I will post one as well.

[SageOfScience]

you fail

[plutodrvv]

Certainly entheogens plants and chemicals can have a spiritual side or spiritual link but it depends on the person and state of mind.

[boo1337z]

QFT.

[mistaspot1]

I think it's a total infringement of my rights that I have random drug testing at my job. Not to mention the laws. Ugh.

[KosmicCitizen]

The content of CONSCIOUSNESS indicates that said consciousness emerges and recedes. Said content points to determinism; our "consciousness", it's quality, as the symphonic consequence of causes "prior to perception."

That said, our difficulty in examining this question is that the apparent "source" of our conscious life is, for us, an object of said consciousness.

Though again, consciousness is nothing if not it's content.

At best, talking about a "soul" is shorthand. At worst, it's silly.

[haerverk]

Flein = Liberty Cap (Psilocybe semilanceata)

[haerverk]

I agree with lots of what you say on the topic of the substances themselfs. But would you mind point me to whatever indicates that consciousness is not dependent upon a brain?

I have been alot of places my brain dosnt have the utilities to make spatial or practical sense of, most noticably by doing flein (highly potent psilocybin), but I have reached the opposite conclusions on regards of materialism from these experiences. The fact that perception is affected to it's very core is an example.

[36stylesofdanger]

This seems to beg a larger question of what conscious experience is. while it is apparent that our consciousness is dictated by the material processes in our brains, it doesn't seem that we can reduce our consciousness to these material things. Because how is it that I came to understand these neuro-chemical processes to be what we describe as material? Through my conscious experience of the world.

[36stylesofdanger]

. It is hard for us to conceptualize existence in a non-material sense, because what we typically mean when we say something exists is that it manifests in a material form. But our capacity to know these material existences is predicated on our conscious experience of them. What is perplexing about the struggle to define consciousness is that we cannot pin it down in the way we can reduce material things (existing in a time, a place, a form, with certain spatial properties, etc.)?

[36stylesofdanger]

Our consciousness is self-reflective, but like staring into a mirror, we can reflect on our image but we will never be literally looking back at ourselves from the outside in. When we try to look into ourselves and figure out what our consciousness really is, the answer evades us because we are looking for a way to define it, to reduce it, to learn what it is that separates it from everything else; we are already trying to identify our consciousness by its material boundaries and forms.

[36stylesofdanger]

We miss the point which is that our consciousness is infinite, it has no form or shape that can be reduced because these typical properties through which we normally understand a things existence are merely an interpretation made through our conscious experience. I dont think he means that after we die our consciousness will just be floating around outside our bodies contemplating or being aware for the rest of time.

[36stylesofdanger]

The thing that makes our consciousness independent from our bodys existence is that our consciousness never manifested in material form or place to begin with. It is that which makes understanding something as material or immaterial, or asking what something is possible in the first place. It is not something that the boundaries of a material body or vessel can lay claim to, and that is what makes our consciousness communal and undying.

[haerverk]

Sorry dude, I have no idea what you are replying to as my comment seem to have been censored.

[WAHsu]

Great video !

If we (Earth & us) are fractal, then leaving our bodies, could indicate/prove we are just consciousness inhabiting the body, just like humans inhabit the Earth.

[IChoseTheRedPill]

fungi = the great decomposer, gift to mankind, gateway to heaven...

[breezyspreezy]

as long as the search for spirituality doesn't become an excuse to escape from that exact spirituality. and of course everything is relative. you are so smart!

[jmeiskues]

my cousin has taken acid before and he said it was a great experience, sound became colors and feelings.

[ThePointlessPoint]

"If you don't think drugs have done good things for us, then take all of your records, tapes and CD's and burn them."

--Bill Hicks

What's more spiritual than music?

[2bsirius]

Hey, Matt, Carlos Castaneda is dead, right?

I've watched this phenomena for a long, long time. At university I saw a lot of friends try to use drugs to enhance understanding...Seeing the ones who were enthusiastic and frequent 'experimenters' now is often a sad experience.

A good friend from my freshman year, for example, has damaged her memory to the point she STILL hasn't gotten a BA & having a coherent conversation with her is all but impossible.

[TWITfromURANUS]

Yes. To think that you can only be 'truly spiritual' if you adhere to some kind of notion of an 'unfettered intellectual process' is to do just that; reduce it. & in doing so, we miss the point entirely -- for me anyway. IE: When we can explain what 'spiritual' means, it could well be far from that ... if not its antithesis.

Drugs are as relevant as we make them ... just like everything else.

"Matter is spirit named." ~A.W.Watts

[SOCRATES012]

You make great videos Matt... Thank you

[matrixcmitech]

John Coltrane, Interstellar Space, Mars

[bobstheking]

Hey Matt, If you want to get your Third Eye Chakra Activated, try Shaktipatseer's youtube channel, he activated mine; It works!

[zezt]

Great video