Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
i've never tried LSD. no interest. i've seen it really screw people up. however, i was struck by a few lines in this article about the creator of LSD:
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Mr. Hofmann will turn 100 on Wednesday, a milestone to be marked by a symposium in nearby Basel on the chemical compound that he discovered and that famously unlocked the Blakean doors of perception, altering consciousnesses around the world. As the years accumulate behind him, Mr. Hofmann's conversation turns ever more insistently around one theme: man's oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing inattention to that fact.
"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature," he said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. "In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature." And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his "problem child," could help reconnect people to the universe.
Rounding a century, Mr. Hofmann is physically reduced but mentally clear. He is prone to digressions, ambling with pleasure through memories of his boyhood, but his bright eyes flash with the recollection of a mystical experience he had on a forest path more than 90 years ago in the hills above Baden, Switzerland. The experience left him longing for a similar glimpse of what he calls "a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality."
"I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature," he said, laying a slightly gnarled finger alongside his nose, his longish white hair swept back from his temples and the crown of his head. He said any natural scientist who was not a mystic was not a real natural scientist. "Outside is pure energy and colorless substance," he said. "All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings."
He became particularly fascinated by the mechanisms through which plants turn sunlight into the building blocks for our own bodies. "Everything comes from the sun via the plant kingdom," he said
[...]
"LSD spoke to me," Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. "He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' "
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/i...an.html?pagewanted=1&incamp=article_popular_1
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what strikes me is how much his experiences and convictions -- that we are more than we can merely sense -- has in common with many religious discussions we've had on here. it seems to me that telling someone to reach out to god, to call to him and he will listen, to seek and find him, that God can't be understood but must be felt and experienced ... these seem not so far from the experience that Hoffman was trying to replicate in his lab.
so, to pre-empt -- i am not comparing the taking of illegal drugs to the practice of organized religion.
i am, however, trying to find a link between drugs, between religion, between our needs of what we might call "a religious experience" -- i have those every 4 years or so when i go to a U2 concert -- and what this might tell us about human nature, about ways in which we are almost hardwired to feel incomplete (i.e., the sense that we all have of "there must be more than just this" or the flip-side, "is this all?").
bono has spoken about this, how he's not a part of drug culture, but what he does admire about those who do drugs is that they are ready and willing to admit to the "other side" of life -- that we are more than just chemical compounds, that we are a part of nature and the universe, that feeling of "one-ness" that some feel when on drugs, when in the throes of intercourse, while singing in church, while in the midst of zen meditation, or when the lights come on during "streets."
perhaps LSD is right -- this isn't it.
or, perhaps the feeling of connectedness that can only be produced through LSD (or U2, or religion, or mediation) is proof that, no, there is nothing external to us.
that, yes, this is all.
[q]
Mr. Hofmann will turn 100 on Wednesday, a milestone to be marked by a symposium in nearby Basel on the chemical compound that he discovered and that famously unlocked the Blakean doors of perception, altering consciousnesses around the world. As the years accumulate behind him, Mr. Hofmann's conversation turns ever more insistently around one theme: man's oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing inattention to that fact.
"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature," he said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. "In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature." And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his "problem child," could help reconnect people to the universe.
Rounding a century, Mr. Hofmann is physically reduced but mentally clear. He is prone to digressions, ambling with pleasure through memories of his boyhood, but his bright eyes flash with the recollection of a mystical experience he had on a forest path more than 90 years ago in the hills above Baden, Switzerland. The experience left him longing for a similar glimpse of what he calls "a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality."
"I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature," he said, laying a slightly gnarled finger alongside his nose, his longish white hair swept back from his temples and the crown of his head. He said any natural scientist who was not a mystic was not a real natural scientist. "Outside is pure energy and colorless substance," he said. "All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings."
He became particularly fascinated by the mechanisms through which plants turn sunlight into the building blocks for our own bodies. "Everything comes from the sun via the plant kingdom," he said
[...]
"LSD spoke to me," Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. "He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' "
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/i...an.html?pagewanted=1&incamp=article_popular_1
[/q]
what strikes me is how much his experiences and convictions -- that we are more than we can merely sense -- has in common with many religious discussions we've had on here. it seems to me that telling someone to reach out to god, to call to him and he will listen, to seek and find him, that God can't be understood but must be felt and experienced ... these seem not so far from the experience that Hoffman was trying to replicate in his lab.
so, to pre-empt -- i am not comparing the taking of illegal drugs to the practice of organized religion.
i am, however, trying to find a link between drugs, between religion, between our needs of what we might call "a religious experience" -- i have those every 4 years or so when i go to a U2 concert -- and what this might tell us about human nature, about ways in which we are almost hardwired to feel incomplete (i.e., the sense that we all have of "there must be more than just this" or the flip-side, "is this all?").
bono has spoken about this, how he's not a part of drug culture, but what he does admire about those who do drugs is that they are ready and willing to admit to the "other side" of life -- that we are more than just chemical compounds, that we are a part of nature and the universe, that feeling of "one-ness" that some feel when on drugs, when in the throes of intercourse, while singing in church, while in the midst of zen meditation, or when the lights come on during "streets."
perhaps LSD is right -- this isn't it.
or, perhaps the feeling of connectedness that can only be produced through LSD (or U2, or religion, or mediation) is proof that, no, there is nothing external to us.
that, yes, this is all.
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Visiting that state artificially and prematurely can be very destructive. Most people lose their balance and sometimes their minds. That's also the problem with kundalini yoga. I don't know any longterm practicioners of kundalini yoga who aren't a little crazy. As my spiritual teacher says, "slow and steady wins the race."
