Perennial philosophy - Atheism and Theism are DEAD

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Rek Init's picture
@ Xavier You didn't make that

@ Xavier You didn't make that clear, you said "the progenator," but does it matter? The fact of the matter still remains, the substance deteriorates the pineal gland.

@Nyarlathotep, I suppose you prefer your water undistilled, eh? Fine. You want brands like Smart Water, Neslte pure life, etc.? You're missing the point. I suppose I won't get a real criticism today.

Nyarlathotep's picture
Kafei - "You want brands

Kafei - "You want brands like Smart Water, Neslte pure life, etc.?"

Smart Water starts as distilled, but then has electrolytes added (and it says so in big letters on the front), so again, Smart Water does not sell distilled water. I'll only give you 5 points for this one.

Nestle Pure Life does not sell distilled water.

So that is 15 more points, with a 20 point kicker for repeating your previous mistake of listing brands of water that are not advertised as distilled, as being falsely labelled as distilled.

/e Anyone who has ever tried drinking distilled water can probably tell you why companies don't sell single serving bottles of distilled water packaged for drinking: it tastes like crap! No one would buy it. I've tried drinking it a few times, each time thinking to myself that it can't be as bad as I remember, but it always is.

Rek Init's picture
@Nyarlathotep, I'm not really

@Nyarlathotep, I'm not really concerned what brands offer "distilled water." No one cares about points or kickers except you, it seems. I'm willing to wager there's more tainted food in your local grocery store than not. Who cares what water you're buying? Chances are you didn't know off-hand whether to trust how distill it was, anyway. Why don't you address any point that was made in the original post? Some actual criticism would be appreciated.

Nyarlathotep's picture
Kafei - "I'm willing to wager

Kafei - "I'm willing to wager there's more tainted food in your local grocery store than not."

vs

Kafei - "Why is it that all the items at your local grocery store...destroy the very gland in your brain that produces DMT?"

Has the back-peddling begun already?
-------------------------------------------
Kafei - "Some actual criticism would be appreciated."

OK: Why should we accept any drug/chemistry advise from someone who doesn't know what distilled water is? /e Or that thinks that Dasani, Aquafina, Deja Blu, Smart Water, and Nestle Pure Life sells distilled water?

Rek Init's picture
Like most atheists, you take

Like most atheists, you take phrases too literally. It's no wonder you have such a disgust for Terence McKenna. By "all" with Xavier, I am of course referring to most. As I spoke to you, and the reason I adjusted my language was to appease you. Xavier didn't require that, he understood intuitively what I meant. You're a bit more pedantic, so I have to spell it out for you. Yes, by "all," I mean there's more tainted food in your local grocery store than not. I didn't mean "all" in a literal sense, but in the sense that there's more than not. There's no back-peddling involved, there's just your very autistic-like pedantic interpretation of certain phrases. You nit-pick on petty issues, like I pointed out in the first place, while completely disregarding the main points of the discussion and it's further emphasized on the fact that you keep wanting to come to back to these distilled brands of water. Like I said, no one gives a shit about that. You don't even know for sure yourself what brands are distilled from the looks of what you've typed so far, but like I said, it doesn't even matter because that's entirely missing the point.

Nyarlathotep's picture
Kafei - "You nit-pick on

Kafei - "You nit-pick on petty issues"

You are right, that is exactly what I do. If you can't get the small stuff correct, why should we listen to you about the big picture? If you know a better way to determine what is true and what is false without examining the nitty gritty details, please tell me.

I knew you were a crackpot on your first post; but that is only because I happen to know a lot about McKenna and had you pegged as a disciple. But fear not; after that rant about fluoride and government conspiracies, it should be obvious to everyone.

Rek Init's picture
You're the one missing the

Think about what you're saying here. You're saying that the "small stuff" is basically not finding fluoride in your favorite distilled brand of water. Do you truly know that water is free of any such impurities? You don't. However, mass produce water bottles are the least of your concern. These are subtle poisons. There's even more sinister tricks being played than that.

You're the one missing the bigger picture. Go ahead and believe the water you're purchasing is pure. That's fine with me. The fact of the matter is that there's more items in the grocery store tainted with these sort of ingredients than not. Fluoride may be a subtle deterioration, but it is deterioration nonetheless. Honestly, if you're so concerned about the "small stuff," it doesn't even sound like you're sure of what brands are truly distilled yourself. I'm not a disciple of McKenna, by the way. What I'm talking about is not a rant, but what's actually going on. Fluoride is in the tap water, mercury is found in canned foods, aspertame in chewing gum, etc. That's all the "small stuff." Those are just subtle things, but I believe my post is addressing the "bigger picture," not these petty things you're concerned with. Forget fluoride, the entire capitalist system is in place to keep you suppressed.

Nyarlathotep's picture
Kafei - "Do you truly know

Kafei - "Do you truly know that water is free of any such impurities?"

Actually yes, because:

1)It's illegal to label water as distilled when it isn't distilled, where I live.
2)Because we need pure water where I work for some applications, so we have to use distilled. Every few years someone gets the bright idea to try to switch to something cheaper and it is a nightmare.

Rek Init's picture
Legality doesn't always

Legality doesn't always ensure that every bottle of water is pristine. You've a lot of faith in your law. However, you're still missing the bigger picture and that is that the majority of what the average person living in a capitalist society intakes is impure. Unless you're some kind of paranoid vegan who distills his own water, and cultivates their own garden. All you've basically done is circumambulate around the more major points that I have made in my original post.

algebe's picture
@Kafei

@Kafei
"Forget fluoride, the entire capitalist system is in place to keep you suppressed."

It's funny, but I don't feel at all suppressed (or do you mean oppressed?) by capitalism, and I get a bit offended when a supercilious anti-capitalist presumes to teach me that we are all victims of a great big capitalist conspiracy. Capitalism, while not perfect, has brought far greater gains in living standards, longevity, health, education, and general well-being than any other system in the history of mankind.

CyberLN's picture
Katie,

Kafie,

You view him as "autistic-like" and a nitpicker. Hmmm...

In a forum like this, all one has is words. Precision with those words is absolutely critical for successful understanding.

Additionally, IMO, your apparent penchant for citing spurious examples to prop up your point, in combination with conspiracy talk, looks like pure alarmism. It's been my observation that most alarmists are actually looking to nose their way in to the center of attention.

Nyarlathotep's picture
Kafei - "By 'all' with Xavier

Kafei - "By 'all' with Xavier, I am of course referring to most."

Kafei - "Yes, by 'all,'" I mean there's more tainted food in your local grocery store than not."

I can't believe I missed this earlier! Too funny. I'm done for the night man. I'll come back tomorrow and see what additional false information you have posted. I'll make sure to have the self transforming machine elves bring me a glass of tap water with extra fluoride tonight. Night!

ThePragmatic's picture
Dude, ya gottha try dis...

Dude, ya gottha try dis...

Attachments

Attach Image/Video?: 

Yes
Seenyab4's picture
Haha, if there were captions

Haha, if there were captions saying "Witness me" it would've been better.

Seenyab4's picture
Hey guys, maybe its not my

Hey guys, maybe its not my place to say, but couldn't we give it a shot? I'm not saying the study isn't crazy or has an ounce of credibility. But why not see if it goes somewhere?

CyberLN's picture
"...but couldn't we give it a

"...but couldn't we give it a shot?"

You're certainly welcome to do so, but there is no "we" here...

Deforres's picture
"Hey guys, maybe its not my

"Hey guys, maybe its not my place to say, but couldn't we give it a shot?"

My advice:

1. If it looks like bullshit, it is.
2. If it is bullshit, don't trust it.
3. If you can't trust it, fight it with every bit if energy in your body.

Seenyab4's picture
I do think it is bullshit,

I do think it is bullshit, but I also think it is a little too early for that judgement to be plausible. Most of the thread thus far has been about water, so I don't really have much to go on.

Rek Init's picture
Forget about the water, that

Forget about the water, that was simply Nyarlathotep's hang-up. I only wanted to make the simple point that a lot of what we ingest does calcify the pineal gland, but that's a trivial point in comparison of what I want to really address here with this thread. What I'm talking about is definitely not bullshit. The research of which I am referring to has been peer-reviewed and published in the Scientific Journal of Psychopharmacology. Did you, by any chance, review the links contained in the original post?

Seenyab4's picture
Not just yet, I haven't had

Not just yet, I haven't had the time, and probably won't today or tomorrow. I'll get around to reading them though, as for how much I am able to comprehend that is a different matter.

ThePragmatic's picture
Of course. Keeping an open

@ Seenyab4

Of course. Keeping an open mind is good, as long as you also keep common sense. :)

Rek Init's picture
@The Pragmatic A psychedelic

@The Pragmatic A psychedelic experience isn't anything at all similar to huffing spray paints. Spray paints is actually quite detrimental to your brain. That stuff could literally make you retarded; N,N-DMT, on the other hand, is produced by your very own brain.

@Algebe, I'd say suppressed and oppressed. It's funny you say, "Capitalism while not perfect." If you read Michio Kaku's latest book, he talks about not only this concept I'm talking about here which is Perennial philosophy, but he also talks about "Perfect Capitalism" which is a more efficient form of capitalism that uses less resources and treats people more fairly than what is practiced today. The way capitalism is practiced in today in America is the upper class which makes up 1% of the population, and the rest of the 99% are slaves that does all the bidding for the upper 1%, basically. I'm not advocating a communism, but I do like Michio Kaku's idea of "smart capitalism." There's lots of misinformation out there, and lots of information that is not readily available to learn about things like N,N-DMT or psilocybin. Without such knowledge, you'll end up with a perspective such as Pragmatic's where he thinks N,N-DMT is something akin to huffing spray paints. Two very different substances that cause two very different effects. These two are not similar in any kind of fashion.

@Nyarlathotep Fractal imagery are actually common in mystical experiences. Terence McKenna's metaphor of "self-machine elves" is simply just another way to describe this hallucinatory effect that is universal. You may not use "machine elves" to describe the imagery seen on N,N-DMT, but if you don't know what fractals are, you might say "geometric patterns" or use the term "mandalic" or "kaleidoscopic" to describe these type of hallucinations. Most atheists have not had DMT, and the ones that have had it usually develop a different perspective than atheism; people like Alan Watts, Richard Alpert, Alex Grey, Aldous Huxley, etc. All these people had atheistic perspectives prior to their psychedelic experiences.

@CyberLN I've cited peer-reviewed research in the original post (that no one here has even addressed), and perhaps if you over-emphasize the fact that fluoride and other chemicals calcify the pineal gland, it might seem like alarmism, but as I pointed out these are subtle poisons. There are far greater evils out there such as alcohol that do far much worse, but these are simply things which destroy our natural ability to have a mystical experience. Well, if one cannot do it by their own endogenous means, then things like ayahausca or psilocybin-containing mushrooms are available to elicit what would otherwise be a natural experience. I'm willing to bet no one clicked the links contained in my original post.

chimp3's picture
Kafei:

Kafei:

I am late to the debate. As to the title of your post , how does your claim that religious experiences being chemically induced render atheism dead? This is a claim made by atheists all the time. Psychedics, psychosis, schizophrenia, epileptic states have all been used to explain religious experiences. Along with plain bullshit and greed for wealth and power.

Rek Init's picture
"chimp3: How does your claim

"chimp3: How does your claim that religious experiences being chemically induced render atheism dead?"

The way Christianity is practiced today has completely squeezed out the possibility for mystical experience. In the Perennialist position, Jesus was simply another individual who had a mystical experience, perhaps several. However, today he has been pedestalized by Christians and revered as the "one and only divine appointed son of God." That safely seals the possibility of mystical experience "upstairs" as Alan Watts once put it. Christians obviously have lost touch with the very thing that prompted the religion in the first place, and now attend church to relish in high abstraction. So, then each Christian develops their own unique interpretation of religious texts through various forms of eisegesis.

If you go back to 100 A.D., you'll find Christian mystics practicing quietism. This is a technique quite akin to Zen in Buddhism. It is a form of meditation that involves the cessation of volition. Dr. Rick Strassman has speculated in this book that these techniques are perhaps methods to induce endogenous N,N-DMT or a natural mystical experience. In fact, studies have been done on Tibetan monks that entered into this altered state through meditation exhibited similar brain states to the psilocybin-induced state via fMRI. The Christian mystics who practiced quietism that induced this "mystical experience" even referred to it as "Christ consciousness." They recognized that this potential or this experience that Christ had is a potential in us all, and I believe that is what science is just beginning to explore through the scientific investigations of the mystical experience.

You mentioned schizophrenia. Well, there’s different things to be said about this. I mean, first of all, how many psychiatric residents who are the people who come most in contact with schizophrenics (whatever that means) — how many psychiatric residents have ever seen an “unstoned schizophrenic”? Very, very few, because the very first thing that happens is for the convenience of physicians and the nursing staff is some outlandish drug is brought into the picture which then deflects this “healing process” from ever reaching any kind of natural conclusion. In fact, some professionals in the field such as Dr. Seth Farber believe that schizophrenia is simply a catch-all umbrella term for forms of mental behavior that we don’t understand. In the 19th century, there was a term “melancholia,” which we would now call bi-polar depression, so forth and so on, but all forms of sadness, unhappiness, maladaptation, so forth and so on, were poured into this label meloncholia. Now, schizophrenia is a similar thing. I have been studying these various topics such as mystical experience, schizophrenia, STPD, etc. for just a little over a decade and a half now, and I remember being in the Tolman library reading about some drug, and I stumbled across this book on a shelf and I just pulled it off, it was a book about schizophrenia, and it said if I may paraphrase, “The typical schizophrenic lives in a world of twilight imagining, marginal to his society, incapable of holding a regular job, these people live on the fringes content to drift in their own self-created value system.” I said, “That’s it! That’s it! Now I understand!”

You see, we have no tradition of shamanism, we have no tradition of journeying into these mental worlds; we are terrified of madness. We fear it because the western mind is a house of cards, and the people who built that house of cards know that, and they are terrified of madness. Tim Leary once said, albeit he supposedly has denied being the author of the quote, but whoever said it, it was a brilliant statement that can be interpreted as a very enlightening pun. Someone once said, “LSD is a psychedelic substance which occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who have not taken it.” Right? And I would bet you that more people have exhibited psychotic behavior from not taking LSD, but just thinking about it than ever exhibited from taking it. Certainly in my family, I watched my parents both go psychotic from the mere fact that LSD existed. They would never have taken it. There is a great phobia about the mind. The western mind is very queasy when first principles are questioned. Rarer than corpses in our society are the untreated mad, because we can’t come to terms with that.

A shaman, on the other hand, is someone who swims in the same ocean as the schizophrenic, but the shaman has thousands upon thousands of years of sanctioned technique and tradition to draw upon. In a shamanistic society, if you exhibit “schizophrenic tendencies,” then you are immediately drawn out of the pact, and put under the care and tutelage of master shamans. You are told, “You are special, your abilities are very central to the health of our society, you will cure, you will prophecize, you will guide our society in its most fundamental decisions.” Now, contrast with a person exhibiting schizophrenic activities in our society is told, “You don’t fit in. You are becoming a problem. You don’t pull your own weight. You are not of equal worth to the rest of us. You are sick. You have to go to the hospital. You have to be locked up. You are on a par with prisoners and lost dogs in our society.”

So, that treatment of schizophrenia makes it incurable. Imagine if you were slightly odd, and the solution was to lock you into a place where everyone was seriously mad? That would drive anyone mad. If you ever been in a mad house you know that it’s an environment calculated to make you crazy, and to keep you crazy. You see, the point is that this would never happen in an aboriginal or traditional/shamanistic society.

I really apologize for this long-winded response, but I feel passionately about these topics, and terms like schizophrenia and STPD are bandied around in this forum as they they hold some kind of concrete definition in neuroscience. They don’t. Truth be told, the very diagnosis of schizophrenia and its subsets are based upon its relative definition to the DSM-5 (Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) which is an out-dated book by three years. So, because they’re merely categorized based on a broad spectrum of behavioral patterns characterized by “social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.” (That’s straight out of the DSM-5) many people today in fact attempt feign schizophrenia in hopes to be diagnosed with it in order to benefit from the pharamceuticals handed out by health insurance companies, and paid for by governmental stipends. My point is that once someone has a mystical experience, there is a sort of metanoia that occurs.

You see, Perennial philosophy isn't a theist, atheist, or even agnostic point-of-view. Atheism is concerned with rejecting theistic claims which today have been completely contorted to the point where the atheist is basically rejecting the notion of a Santa Claus-like entity. The atheist interprets a religion, and develops their own abstract notion of the divine, and proceeds to reject the very notion they conjured and proudly announces him/herself atheist. Perennial philosophy, on the other hand, is saying at the core of all the major religions you'll find individuals undergoing a very specific type of altered state which contemporary neuroscientists, psychologists, psychopharmacologists, etc. are referring to as a "mystical experience." So, then God isn't abstract notion of a the "sky daddy" that George Carlin was famous for making fun of, but rather that these words have always been metaphors to describe the inner experiential aspects of this experience. So, atheism is then dead in the form that you're no longer rejecting silly abstract claims made by clueless theists, but now are addressing something concrete in existence, and so you can do away with a position that's generated simply by rejecting religion at the surface. Recall in the title I also mentioned that theism is dead for the same reason, because we now know what prompted these religions, it isn't as mysterious as Christians believe. You see, if you were to mention mystical experiences in a Christian church, it would probably be regarded as blasphemous, because that's how out-of-touch they are with what is supposed to be a pristine, natural state which is void of any conceptualization, volition, etc. and is available to each and everyone one of us.

One more thing I'd like to add, and I apologize for the lack of brevity... The term "mystical experience" evolved as a distinctive concept since the 19th century, laying sole emphasis on the experiential aspect, be it spontaneous or induced by human behavior. Richard M. Bucke also used the term "Cosmic consciousness" to label this phenomenon in cosnciousness, and there had been other terms used by psychologists such as "peak experience" and the "oceanic feeling," but William James popularized the term "mystical experience," and it took foothold. Alan Watts also spoke very eloquently on the topic of Perennial philosophy, and I want to link to a talk he gives on it below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2gYYeqomgE

CyberLN's picture
Unless you are McKenna, it

Unless you are McKenna, it appears you have lifted quotes from him. Because you do not cite them as his, you seem to be trying to pass them off as your own. Tsk tsk tsk.

This, in addition to the distilled water screw up of yours, further undermines your reliability.

Rek Init's picture
Yes, I am quoting McKenna,

Yes, I am quoting McKenna, because I happen to agree with a lot of his ideas concerning the psychedelic experience. However, Terence McKenna never explored Perennial philosophy, even though he didn't use the term, he did hold a Perennialist perspective without necessarily adhering to the term. He did spend a lot of time studying Neoplatonism which is basically a Perennialist perspective espoused by the ancient Greek philosophers. That would eventually evolve into the Traditionalist School of Thought, and then evolve into what is referred today as Perennial philosophy. I don't think I had a "distilled water" screw up. My point is that you cannot necessarily trust that every bottle of water claiming to be distilled is free from impurities, but as I mentioned to Seenyab4, that is one of the more trivial points.

CyberLN's picture
If you quote someone else,

If you quote someone else, cite them. To pass off their words as your own is plagiarism. It is completely dishonest, and IMO, undermines everything else you have to say.

Deforres's picture
All I see here is an

All I see here is an alternative form of religion. It still claims the mystical, which, spiritual or not, I am just as skeptical about. This person is a conspiracy theorist. Hell, runic magic is more credibal than this crap.

Rek Init's picture
@CyberLN, If you quote

@CyberLN, If you quote someone else, cite them. To pass off their words as your own is plagiarism. It is completely dishonest, and IMO, undermines everything else you have to say.

I'm not attempting to plagiarize here. If I could find the citation, I'll post it. However, simply because I quote McKenna and happen to agree with his ideas on these matters doesn't necessarily undermine what I'm trying to emphasize in my original post.

@Ivinski Borokove, All I see here is an alternative form of religion. It still claims the mystical, which, spiritual or not, I am just as skeptical about. This person is a conspiracy theorist. Hell, runic magic is more credibal than this crap.

It's not another form of religion. As I mentioned before, it's neither a theist or even atheist point-of-view. The term is not simply "mystical" by itself, but "mystical experience," and as I've pointed out previously, it has absolutely nothing to do with the supernatural, runic magic, or anything transcendental of the sort. It's based on a particular altered state of consciousness which is completely natural. I've addressed this in the original post, and also addressed it within the links I left, but the real issue here, I believe, is that if you're going to judge it like it's some alternative religion, that means you either don't care enough to take the time to understand what's being said here. If that's the case, then of course at the surface level, you're going to judge it hastefully and assume it's something that it's not.

Deforres's picture
I'm a trans humanist. Natural

I'm a trans humanist. Natural doesn't mean squat to me. Neither does this squishy form. If anything is going to alter my mind, its going to be a technological augment.

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