Wow Citta, your way of thinking definitely differs from mine, it is very interesting! I love all the unique ways one can interpret this universe. Thanks for sharing
I still believe in my own experiences to a fair degree of unshakable certainty. But I guess I should think twice before attempting to pass on these experiences to other's, they are simply subjective and for me only. Thanks for that reminder.

Exactly what I'm saying.. I see no use in arguing, discussing, or further elaborating on something that can't be factually proved either way. The only way to gain such knowledge is to die, and at that point it would be impossible to explain what would be the truth anyway. It is a concept that will forever remain unknown to all things that live.




I think that's one of the things that I have personally learned from psychedelics.. that the human mind can be persuaded to think and perceive things differently by simply being exposed to certain chemicals. After a while, it's hard to really determine what really IS real. Which is why I choose to not even worry about what's real and whether I can prove it or not. I just live my life knowing that one day I will die and on that day I will discover what the truth is.. or maybe I'll just disappear and cease to exist. No one knows for sure anyway.

Interesting thread, I was an atheist before taking DMT and I still am. No believer or atheist can prove the existence of a sentient higher being with 100% certainly.

Atheism is not a belief system, we are all atheists to a number of gods. I just go one further. However the OP asked about DMT and spiritual experiences. I have had several spiritual experiences on DMT, in fact it was my very strong atheism that lead me to try DMT. Like Alice I wanted to go through the looking glass.

DMT has changed me for the better with regard to my atheism. I still do not accept the presence of a higher intelligent being, mainly because of the illogical nature of such a being.

However since taking DMT, I have started to follow a spiritual path, I practice Ashtanga yoga every day. I have started to read the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and interpret them within my context.There is nothing that says I have to believe in a god to be spiritual.

DMT has shown me that my sprit lies within; it has shown me my animal nature and connection with the planet. I have become spiritual since I have started to look after my own peace of mind through meditation and practice.
Through this I am more understanding of why people hold religious beliefs. DMT has shown me where this belief can come from and peace that it can bring.

If there is a god, choosing not to believe in one and leading a life of spiritualityand acceptance, is better than some who preach hate and bigotry in their god’s name.

That is a wonderful post, Awakened. Seconded!

dont have time to go into detail right now, but i went from atheist to pantheist with one particularly potent brew.

Agnostic before DMT. Agnostic after DMT.

Raised christian, fooled, agnostic at heart, with and without the experiences I've had.

I wanted to give some thoughts on this. This is a very interesting sentence, and I'm starting to understand the views that you and Citta, and many atheists have.

At first it does indeed seem like atheism is the same as theism, because both have certainty of something. And agnostics (like me) are just the neutral dudes who don't have certainty of anything. But the thing why the atheist certainty differs from the theist certainty is because that is the default state or the empty-state. Any theist however can believe in an infinite amount of different gods. So in a way you could say that your certainty is more special.

BUT, think about this for a while. In the case of multiverses, any kind of a universe is possible. So if there is a universe out there where the organisms have the ability to directly observe their fabric of reality, and they can observe that it is intelligent, and they consider it the same way as we consider the word "god". Then that is their default state. And in their universe the concept of atheism falls to the same category as all the different kinds of other gods. Those organisms have certainty on what they're observing is true, therefore certainty that atheism is illogical.

The thing I'm trying to figure out now is whether I get too far out with thoughts like that, and if maybe I should just concentrate on this universe first...

Not sure how useful they are, but I enjoy your wild speculations!

I've heard it said, "Atheism is no more a belief system than abstinence is a sexual position".

Reading all these posts blurs that line a bit.

I tend to agree with Daeda that nonbelief is a fundamental natural state, while belief is something added on top of that, a human confection. That the believers should have the burden of proof thrust upon them. But if I had been raised among a bunch of true believers, perhaps I would feel the opposite way.

Hehe, speculating is cool, but perhaps focus on this universe at first (or at least when the thread is focusing on this universe)

There have been some really good discussions so far here...

citta said
"-But I guess we're flying off on a tangent here, as far as the OP's intent goes."

>>>>I knew that with this thread there might be tangents here and there...no big deal...
actually I love a good constructive tangent.

So I have really enjoyed reading about all of your beliefs...and non-beliefs or absence of belief.

I definitely am not trying to make a judgement on anyone but I would like to share my veiwpoint if I may because I do believe it is a somewhat unusual one...


I beleive the pathetic state of modern religion has to do with one huge problem...
That problem is non-mystical people trying to understand something that is purely mystical.

That is to say people who have no experience with actual mystical experience(the pope for example) trying to authoritatively elaborate on ancient doctrines and scriptures that were written by people who DID have mystical experiences and were trying to describe them sometimes using metaphorical systems.

Imagine this>>>>>>I am a goat herder who lived 2300 years ago...I drank some type of acacia bark potion that some old bearded guy gave me....So I end up having a DMT trip in some ancient forest 2300 years ago...during my DMT trip I have a mystical experience and I become one with the Godhead and the whole works...as a goat herder this pretty much blows my goat herding mind.
Now.... how am I going to describe my experience so future generations will also understand? Well, I am goin to describe it The best way I can with the linguistic tools my culture has given me to work with.

So, 2300 years later when some guy with no mystical experience and no understanding of my goat herding culture comes along with his white suit and his hidden agenda to take advantage of gullible individuals reads about my goat herder DMT trip...Then his interpretation of my ancient DMT trip automatically becomes not at all what I the author inteded to say.

Just imagine if you wrote down your DMT trip experience and then some person who has never had any mind altering substance reads your story...I'm pretty sure his interpretaion of your trip would be nothing like what you tried to write down. It would more than likely come across as total nonsense to that person.

So another point that this bring me to is that I do NOT believe in anything I cannot see,feel,hear.. I believe "blind faith" is no good. The western idea of faith as trust in something that you cannot see is nothing more than the result of a flawed interpretation of the Hebrew word Aman....The Hebrew root word Aman means firm, something that is supported or secure, this is the opposite meaning to "faith" as we know it in western culture...

So the only trouble is ...just because I can see it doesn't make it real to any one else...
but it does definitely make it more real to me...I personally do not understand how anyone could believe in something wholeheartedly that they cannot see.

I do however understand that just because I say I see it that doesn't make it sound any more realistic to some one who does not see it.

I would also add that I loathe how Church is this sort of money grubbing snake oil salesman of "cure all" spiritual remedies.

Most people are familiar with the idea of seperating church and state..this idea makes sense for obvious reasons....

What I am proposing is to seperate church from ancient spiritual docrtrine.
(Actually I would like to seperate church from Earth but I don't think that's possible)

I have personally never gone to church in my life exept for a wedding and to see a cheesy easter passion play(long story).
I actually kept asking my mom to take me to church at one point in my childhood... and she said she would...but she ended up just taking me to a scientology church and told me it was a Christian church so I would stop asking.

I believe that there are many valid observations about the universe that can be found at the heart of most if not all ancient mythical and religious spiritual doctrines and beliefs. I think it is amazing that two completely "different" religions such as Hebrew and Islam or Christianity and Mexican Indian shamanism could be saying the exact same things.

I think that ancient knowledge and mythology has over the mellenias been twisted into what religion is today.A meaningless and ego driven shadow of what were once original philisophical ideas. I believe that "half the story has never been told" as Bob Marley once put it. It is just my opinion that negative spiritual forces have intentionally made modern religion what it is today....completely unpalatable.


I think that word "religion" contains many drastic paradoxes...For example I do infact believe in the existence of a messianic Christ but at the same time my beliefs are absolute polar to all mainstream forms of evangelical-type Christianity.

I see this paradox inherent in some of your statements as alot of you are saying you have spiritual type experiences but absolutely do not want to classify them as religious.

I'm wondering if perhaps the WAY that religious information is presented to us early in our lives has to do with our acceptance or refusal to accept traditional spiritual models as adults...

---

This is a tale of mine,,,no proof or anything hre but possibly interesting reading.

I had a rather unusual upbringing as my Mother was a practicioner of darker type witchcraft. In a misguided effort to dicipline me she sent me to a Christian school when I went in to kindergaden. I hated this Christian school...they were brutish low I.Q tyrants and even as a 6 year old I could see through their shallow lies.....it made me hate christianity and all "religions"...So I tried to learn about what my mom was into but I found her beliefs to be mostly what I consider to be "phony bolony", at the time.


In high school I did start to get into Carlos Castaneda's books and I finally found something that captured my interest.
So I became pretty open to the idea of a spirtworld and so forth.

When I was home alone for one day while my mom was at work. I was 15 years of age and I ate three jumbo sized hits of "three little pigs" blotter acid..(early 90's Grateful Dead scene aquired). (guestamating dosage of atleast 250-300 micrograms per hit)

Anyways...I ate the acid, walked the dog, came home, put on some music. 45 minutes after eating the LSD..I was listening to the song Light my Fire and suddenly it was like I had never heard music before in my life.

Even though I had heard the song a thousand times it sounded like I had never heard this stuff before..It became alive so to speak..every instrument in the band sounded like crazy melodic machines harmonizing in haunting ways with one another...
So then all it once it felt like time stopped...and a being enetered into my room through what looked like a cosmic viel of some kind.

The being had the form of a man yet it was not like a man at all....it was similar to high quality type ghost effects from holywood.....I could not shake the vision of the being even though I tried my hardest to ignore it... it stayed in my field of periphial vision no matter what I did...
I started to play some electric guitar to try and ignore it,,,,,,but I just kept seeing it.

the entity wore elaboate ancient clothing that looked like it was made up of many different ancient cultures....I infact did not understand at the time all the different historical significance of his costume until years later when I started studying different ancient societies and looked back on my experience...

The jewelry, garment and sword of this amber and electric blue glowing entity were unbelievably ornate. His costume was made up of buddhist, hindu, north and south american andian,hebrew, mesopatamian andislamic attire.
he looked like some kind of guru genie of philosophy and spiritual thought..his face looked like a cross btween budha and Christ. The being had a shining aura of golden amber and electric blue

At one point while I was playing guitar and a mental game of cat and mouse...trying to ignore the "ghost"
when suddenly my fingers froze up and could not move...it was like something was stopping me....

I said to the ghost,,,,"I'm trying to create music here...why are you stopping me.?"

The "ghost" said "Create? I can create anything.

the entity whispered the word "Create" in my left ear and I instantly went out of my body,,, To a place that was like an enchanted garden of some kind,,,filled with emerald vines growing up solid gold trelaces and blooming with jewel encrusted flowers...it was the perfect picture of paradise as far as I could tell.

I heard "create" in my ear again and I was back in my room. I heard "create" one more time and suddenly there were thousands of minature identical buddah like "entities" all holding hands with each other and dancing around me..doing the "can can".

Eventually I started laughing when I realized that this being was not meaning to hurt me so I relaxed and had a chat with it...I ofcouse asked it what it was...

It said "I am evrything" and showed me the vision to prove that he was indeed everything.

During the conversation this being told me that "my father was in danger".

My father was in southern mexico at the time starting up an import-export business so It was quite feesable that this was true...

I asked the being what was wrong....The being just told me that 'his life was in great danger and I had to try and do something about it" I asked what I should do? The being replied that I should pray...pray like I had never prayed in my life." So I fell on my nees and began to say "please god help my dad etc" The being stopped me and told me that I should not pray using words but that I should instead use silence to focus my intention on my father being kept safe."

I did this without question...and the being stopped me after about five minutes saying "your father will be ok now..thatnks to you".

So the first time I spoke to my father I asked him if he had any thing bad happen.........

He told me he rented a volkwagen and the gas pedal snapped off when he was a mile down the roa from the car rental place.
He walked back to the rental place where they then accused him of breaking the car..they wanted 90$ or else they were going to call the poilice...my dad had no cash on him....he sked if he could go to an ATM to get the money...

They called the policia and federales with machine guns came and escorted him to an ATM across the litte town at gunpoint..
my dad pulled out his wallet and realized that his wife had the bank card and the only card he had was old and expired....

Out of desperation he put the expired card in hoping for a miracle and it actually spit out 100$ so they let him go...
otherwise they would have tossed him in a mexican jail.

This happened at the exact same day and time as my experience with the being.

I have had re occuring visions of this being now for more than 15 years..

I have also had several experiences over the years where I have seen this being at the same time as other tripping people..

Thanks for reading sorry my post went kind of on and on.

Anyways---great discussion so far everyone!

Wow sick post man! You should make that its own thread.

Thanks Olio!

I must also remark that I got a nice hearty chuckle out of your ---
----what if you were "assaulted" by a pink unicorn analogy.

You could say I was raised(loosely) Christian, had those influences and youth group and the like. But questioned things early on in life, became "atheist" out of rebellion, and grew into agnostic...then strayed from that path as well. By my own definition I don't fall into any distinctive classification of religious belief. Others say I'm atheist, I believe because its the closest Word for them to associate with my lack of belief "in the one true god".

I won't say DMT changed my view but more...broadened it a bit.

I believe if it were possible for an inter-dimensional being to exist it is FAR more likely it be one of a much larger community of these inter-dimensional beings.

"God" to me...is still just a word. What comes along with that word is far beyond my understanding to even begin to try and explain to others. Kind of like explaining a breakthrough trip to a person who has never experienced it. Only I know what I mean.

I just want to say that this forum is definitly the most impressive forum Ive ever been into.

The amount of respect is tremendous. We are talking about stuff quite important and yet we remain respectful.
I can relate to so much. everytone speaks so openly, without any ego involve, or the least possible. its beautiful to see. no stupid comment, always contrusctive and felt thinking.

I do not know nowadays wht I believe in. I believe that kindness, affection, peace of mind is what every living thing is heading for in their life. I believe that this means something.

Life is in evolution. everything try to survive, to defend itself, to feel strong in order to feelsafe and good. You dont see any animals all trying to kill them selves all the time. I think that we can draw some sort of evidence of a "tangant" in this universe. Everything try to survive, nothing wants to die, why is that? Its not the complete choas in nature, everything is perfectly balanced, always revolving around ccertain specific points. I dont know but myself, my guts tells me that indeed their might be no god other then me, but this "drive" of life, this desire to be happy, no matter what, tells me that this universe is doing something for him. Yes I could let those thought go for the sake oif "complete" logic, but I can't. I cant not entirely belief in anything. life is just to perfect to believe that this doesnt mean anything. that this wasnt intended somehow. All my life, everytime I discovered something that I knew would be benificial for me, there was something telling me that I already knew this. I already exist, this is what I think. its not a religion, it feels like a fact when I look around me. everything seems to have the same desire, to live and be happy. I cant not draw some conclusion when confronted with that fact. everything around me wants more or less the same thing, that makes me feel like the "end" of everything doesn seems right.


May I ask, what do you theist and agnostic think happens when you die? I guess the logical way of thinking is that there is no way to know, but somehow to tells me this seems for me to not look at all the facts nature gives me. I would love to be a atheist I think, that way suffering would be over for sure, but pleasure too. This subject interest me the most. I used to be a atheist until I did psychadelic.

Sometime I wonder if all this universe was a error because of the suffering around me, then I look at a rose and Im reminded that the "error" lies in my eyes and that I need to stop that negative thinking. Why is it so hard to believe in something I cant be 100% sure?

I hope this post doesnt sound arrogant..

Hi there, this is my first post on the forum. I have used Ayahuasca several times so far and through the use of it I have seen things I could have never imagined. One of the first things I had to think about was the very question in this thread. Many people describe their DMT experiences using terms like "plant teachers", 'godhead', and 'spirits'. As an atheist, those terms used to make me cringe and they delayed my own forays into DMT.

I cannot speak for other atheists, but personally, one of the biggest reasons I used to care about my stance on god was the typical religious idiot that you encounter in every day life. These people would invoke god as justification for restricting various freedoms and they would push twisted ideas such as repression of sexuality, paternalism, and all sorts of other forms of intolerance under the cover of god. I did not become an atheist because of those people. I actually became an atheist at 8 because my pastor did not do a very good job at transmitting the 'teachings'. He actually made a falsifiable claim (that god is literally in the sky) and I got a hold of a book on astronomy shortly thereafter. That said, once an atheist, I continued in that vein. But the main reason I cared had to with all the people who abuse the concept of god.

My experiences with DMT have made me into a more relaxed atheist. I now wholly accept (rather than merely understand)) that questions about the nature of reality have nothing to do with the sick behaviors I described above. In that sense, I no longer feel at all threatened by the possibility that there is a god. The fact that we are conscious is a profound mystery. At the present, I believe that consciousness is some sort of emergent phenomenon arising from a complex network of interlinked neurons. That is, consciousness is the product of a sufficiently complex but entirely physical system. In that light and given our infinite universe, consciousness might exist in various forms to which we are not privy at the moment. A consciousness that transcends human understanding could very well be called a 'god'. I am very open to the possibility that such a 'universal consciousness' exists.

But the reason I would still say I am an atheist is that I would not stop at simply identifying 'god'. To me the fundamental distinction between theism and atheism is that the theist wishes to declare a stopping point for investigation. Once the theist says 'god', that's it. There is no more intelligent discussion and one moves onto worship. This calls to Robert Pirsig's observation (though not exclusively his) that it would be impossible to have faith in god if we understood god. I do perceive the difficulties inherent in the study of 'god'. For instance, if there is a universal consciousness such as I hypothesized above, we--as parts of the universe--might be its constituents and it might be extremely hard for us to grasp the nature of this 'god' in the same way that I imagine any individual neuron in the brain cannot fathom the consciousness it produces together with all the others. Still, we appear to have some unit of consciousness that the neuron lacks and this appears to be sufficient to meaningfully study things beyond our intuitions such as quantum mechanics and mathematical infinities.

So I'd say overall, the atheist experience of Ayahuasca (and probably smoked DMT as well) is more fun. I refuse to attach spiritual significance to any entities I perceive simply because I wish to know their nature rather than to seek instruction from them about how to lead my life. I must say, merely writing about this helped me make my thoughts on this even more clear than they were in head.

I am an atheist because an anthropomorphic god is ridiculous. Are there other life forms that we cannot understand? Probably, the universe is damn near infinite and probability says yes.

Calling it a god, or God, well... That's just a human's attempt to glom onto something bigger than they are. Part of the pack mentality we have hardwired into our brains. Pfft. We are just silly less-hairy monkeys stabbing things with pointed sticks and cowering from thunder. Hard to take our species seriously, and I don't think we should anyhow.

That being said, I think our minds are fantastic and using psychedelics to open doors to altered perception is an amazing thing. Also, I'm not sure that we aren't possibly tapping into another intelligence a la Lovecraftian mythos.

Hells bells, anything is possible! Goddamn, what a crazy ride.

Superfree- great post, and welcome! good point about the semantics of God: that the definition of divinity is simply defined by the boundaries of our ignorance... And that to truly "know God" would be to erase that boundary and explore these larger universal phenomena via science and rational thinking. And yes, of course there are limits to how much a primate can understand... But this attempt at knowing more about our world could be one of the most worthwhile things our species has ever undertaken. We have to keep trying.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I've noticed less non-golfers trying to convince golfers that they're idiots.

Not to say that all atheists have an agenda of de-conversion (for lack of a better term), but I've met quite a few who fervently push their "anti-belief" very much like an Abrahamic fundamentalist.

It' may be fair to say there are two types of atheist, the ones who don't believe, and the ones who are attached to de-constructing others' beliefs.

I am not an atheist, but don't believe God is some anthropomorphic being. I had enough of that with mainstream religion. I would not characterize any of my experiences with DMT as having any kind of Godly or God-meeting or knowing experience. It does, for me though, reflect flavors of super-humanity that are very helpful in self-discipline, loving, and other key aspects of life that lend themselves to spiritual pursuit IMHO.

Well, obviously, people like me attack religion so much because organized religion is the source of sectarian violence and genocide, as well as backward belief systems forced upon others now and thoughout the centuries!
Personal beliefs are fine. Organized religion is mostly evil IMO. Just people banding together to force their belief system on others, mostly though funding of right wing nutjob political dictators and neo-cons.