I thought it was informative in pointing out that meditation is not always a cosmic bliss-out, and difficult experiences often arise. This isn't talked about much by mainstream meditation teachers and centers.
a short-lived name for those substances (before Humphry Osmond coined "psychedelic") was psychotomimetic drugs. That's not quite right but it's understandable why a naive interpretation would lead there. psychedelic means "mind manifesting" and that's a bit more accurate.
-
-
other labels that have been proposed: phanerothyme (means "spiritedness") which Lisa Bieberman wrote about helpfully here http://www.csp.org/practices/entheogens/docs/bieberman-phanerothyme.html … entheogen (means "giving rise to the divine within") which is reasonable for the mushroom and ayahuasca shamanic traditions.
-
I would suggest this class of drugs might be usefully regarded as "path of perturbation" aids. where sitting meditation shows you your mind by making it still, the drugs show it to you by making it vibrate with enough amplitude to drown out the normal background noise.
-
we need not understand psychosis or clinical treatment of it. that's not what the psychedelic experience is, really. it's an awakening. it ought to be treated just the same as awakening from meditation.
-
All good points. I was actually trying to say that the current psychological understanding of psychosis is flawed, and this leads to viewing psychedelic and contemplative effects as psychosis, as many of the descriptive components can sound a lot like psychotic symptoms.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.