SilenceMonkey wrote: ↑Sun Aug 22, 2021 6:35 pm
I also know people who were led into shamanic practices from doing these things, and I'm sure many who've had spiritual problems as a result. Who knows?
Honestly, mostly people who regularly use substances - including hallucinogens, do not have amazing experiences that lead to a spiritual awakening, they end up in other places. Anecdotes about one or two people having some kind of spiritual awakening are interesting and a valid exception to the rule, but I can give you anecdotal reports from my profession in the 100's or 1000's of people having the opposite tendency.
With hallucinogens it's a little different because people tend to use these during a very specific time in their lives - usually from 18 to their early 20's, and then they tend to ween off. That age is also (not coincidentally) the age where people are less likely to be developmentally capable of making measured decisions and weighing risk well.
I can tell you straight up though, IME there are many more negative than positive results. You could say that's the bias of my profession, but that is not really true because I am directly doing interviews with people based on their subjective view of their personal experiences. Some claim positive experiences, but it is often obvious by life circumstances etc. that they are at best sort of "pleasant escape" experiences. Almost universally both professionally and personally, many of the people I know who became avid, regular consumers of any hallucinogenic drug ended up confused, scared, or both. I've also hung out with people who used LSD "spiritually" and much of the language around Ayuhausca and DMT looks to be pretty much the same thing.
That doesn't preclude valid spiritual uses (which I acknowledge exist) but it does imply to me that 1) Most people using it have no idea how to properly use it "spiritually" and do not have the needed guidance, nor do they seek it seriously, and 2) having a spiritual experience is often used as an excuse for the sense of adventure and fun that comes with experimenting with drugs.
I mean, people are gonna do that, I'm not some teetotaler, it's gonna happen. I think it's important to call it like it is though, if people want to go do that stuff for fun, they should sort out their real motivations. The same people rarely say "hey, I'm going to feed the homeless once a week for spiritual practice" or "I'm going to get teachings at the Dharma center and put them into practice"...it's usually a quest for an interesting, stimulating experience and not much else, actual spiritual practice seems boring in comparison.
Also anecdotally/incidentally, a lot of my friends got temporarily pretty messed up from their LSD use, the ones who felt is was "spiritual" actually seemed more prone to the paranoia, etc. If you understand how different drugs work int he brain this makes sense, paranoia is very close to the experiences most people classify as religious or spiritual.
The guys who were just frying for fun seemed to handle it much better - the ones who assigned meaning to every little thing when tripping were just asking for trouble, you can see the same thing if you read the link in the OP.
So let's just say these beings are "real", some sort of sentient being from other dimensions or whatever.
Well, if they are, and most people using DMT have questionable, or just immature motivation in trying to "contact" them, even having a sometimes unhealthy longing for contact or cool experiences...it sounds like a door best only opened when one is really, really
sure, which demographically, most users of these drugs probably are not. So either way, IMO most of the time it won't end well.
To make the analogy clearer, IME most users who believe such beings are "real" (which may very well be true to some degree) are doing the equivalent of walking into a cosmic dive bar and looking for someone to take home for a one night stand, we can imagine the results of such an adventure might be temporarily pretty fun, but not so good in the long term.
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