Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Mystical Experience

6 comments:

Penny Lane said...

I just sat through this whole thing.. interesting.. being slightly obssessed with 1960s culture, I knew some of this information while some shifted me completely sideways.

I think I am off to the pub now to write a short story about my first acid trip....

Great find.

Lorne Roberts said...

i watched the 1st 10 mins-- will prob'ly watch more.

i guess maybe in the brain, the physiological responses to LSD replicate a mystical/religious experience, but ultimately, it's really a pretty lazy, second rate way to understand the "divine".

as hunter s. thompson put it about the acid generation-- "a bunch of poor fools who believed you could buy consciousness for ten bucks a hit."

jesus, joan of arc, and any # of other "holy" people embarked on lifelong quests, which, in jesus' case for e.g., included a 40-day 40-night fast in the desert. there's no way anyone can tell me that dropping a substance mixed in a lab by a biker gang, and sold by kids on the street for 10 bucks, can duplicate that.

and anyway, the real "holy" people take what they've learned and experienced, and then go out and change the world with it. for most people i know, taking drugs isn't altruistic--it's simply about getting cukoo in the head, and therefore ultimately selfish.

i dunno...

i don't want to completely write it off, but i feel like real spirituality and enlightenment require a lot more effort, discipline and sacrifice.

as someone else once said: "if it were easy, everyone would do it."

or the old "snail crawling along a razor's edge" metaphor, meaning that the path to enlightenment is a hard path.

Lorne Roberts said...

p.s.

penny lane-- the above was a response to the video, not to your comments. by that i mean that i wasn't taking exception to your experience/ideas, so much as some of the ideas expressed in the video.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad it was enjoyed; it was posted for interest's sake.

And the only path is a natural one in my estimation, not to include any other chemicals other than the ones that sprout from the ground.

Damn bikers...

:)

Penny Lane said...

No Worries Wolfboy. To be honest, I have to say I agree with you on most points. In my young, foolish days, I never tried LSD with the purpose of having a 'spirtual' experience, or to really get in touch with something divine...

It was just, well, curosity.

There was a quote in that doc.. something along the lines of divinity being like a mountain. If you take LSD to reach the peak or actually climb to reach the peak - well both folks have climaxed and both have seen the same things, but one has had it handed to them, the other hand to work for it.

And so on and so forth.

History of these strange sub-culture events always peaks my interest, as did this post.

And yes, enlightenment is much better when worked at on a intimate level, and not handed to you in sugar cube...

:)

CaptainGoldStar said...

I don't think the poison path is an easy one at all. And don't be so amazed that the experiences so difficult to achieve for mystics in the past have become so 'easy'. This is the age of science where such chemical breakthroughs have become possible. The dedication comes with how to use them and how to use the knowledge that you gather from the experience. Everything has become excelerated. If Jesus were around today I reckon he would be taking advantage ofall the enlightenment pills he could. Like supermario picking up powerplants so that he can shoot lasers.