I'm new to all of this and have not tried DMT, but I have a couple of comments and questions to ask you all.

First, I personally was an atheist but after hearing and reading testimonies of people that have tried DMT, a lot of questions have arisen in my mind.

My questions:

1. Does anyone believe in any of the Abrahamic religions?
2. Is anyone here an atheist?
3. How has DMT affected your views on God, religion, and spirituality?

I hope you can comment on some of the thoughts I have had. I understand that it has not been definitively proven that DMT is primarily produced in your pineal gland, but let's assume it has. Then let us recall Descartes' quote about the pineal gland being the "seat of the soul". If that is the case, and if it is true that we released all (or a massive amount of) DMT when we die, can't it be that that is in fact our souls transition from our body to the hereafter?

Also, if that is the case, that would mean that our soul turns into energy, rather than turning into an apparition of ourselves. If so, how does that tie in to the testimony of so many people have tried DMT and say that they saw living organisms made of energy with no outline. Some have described these things as souls.

Does anyone have any comments about that? Do you think those intelligent living things you saw on DMT might have been human souls?

DMT showed SWIM that there is only one soul that we all share... with imaginalor illusionary bounderies composed of various densities of energy to create patterns/forms of energy for various purposes... but there is only one mind, one conciousness and one soul... with nearly infinite expressions, forms, faces, masks... from nebula's to amoebas... that one energy or conciseness exists as waves and particles is intelligent, has goals makes choices and IS all that is... including SWIM typing right now... and you reading what SWIM has typed...
Brain Swimmy (Ironic name eh?) is a great author on this subject as well...
A Universe Behind a Pair of Eyes...
SWIM believes that pychedelics ( which means mind manifesting) allows us to precieve this mind with enhanced senses, SWIM beleives that they are akin to insinuative stimulants...

The god concept its self was a usfull evolutionary concept with extreme limits, it is out dated and is actually causing more trouble then good these days... theism is based on a concept of a transpersonal other... or that part of us that is aware that we are the totality of existance, we take that perception of our transpersonal nature and turn it into an other, a deity that is seperate from who and what we are... and i think thats caused a quite alot of trouble... not all cultures do this though...
buddhism for example sees diety as just a manifestation of that one mind... it doesnt discount its reality, they just arent delludeding themselves into thinking its separate... kinda like a dog looking at itself in the mirror barking at another dog... thats western religion in a nut shell...

That is very interesting. Admittedly I have a very hard time grasping this concept of oneness. Do you think it is possible to understand this without taking psychedelics? I would assume that if we are one, one would be able to tap into the consciousness of another human being or animal. Do you think that it is our primitive and undeveloped senses that prevent us from doing this? Do psychedelics enhance ones senses to the degree that we can understand this concept of oneness? I recall McKenna talking about his brother being able to tap into his consciousness after taking a certain hallucinogen. I suppose if people can do this, than that might validate the point that we're all one.

Yes it is possible to be aware of our oneness... understand it eh well... im not sure thats really even all that necessary lol... but yes i think its possible in fact i know its possible with out psychedelics. people all over the world have been expereincing our oneness and talking about it for ever...


"For those who are awake the cosmos is one."
- Heraclitus
"Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one. "
-Heraclitus

can you atune your self to other sentient beings yes you can... and they you. shamans and mystics have been doing so since the very begining... i think its not a matter of our sense being primitive or underdeveloped... i think its matter of choice, we have the ability to choose to establish and maintain the awareness of our oneness yet many do not choose to do so? why is that? do psychedelics ones senses to the degree that we can understand this concept of oneness? well understanding is a biological function and on the scale of biological functions its below shitting as my old teacher used to tell me... psychedelics can give us opportunities to cultivate an awareness of our oneness but once again its a matter of choice and practice... and some times blind karmic luck lol... that conciouness is allways there... we are allways one and nothing can make us one, there is a part of us that is allready aware that we are one... ayahuasca showed swim that one... the lack of awareness of our oneness serves a purpose, which I pray some days is only temporary for our species... some times i see it as a gestation period...

check out the book the universe is a green dragon by brian swimmy its pretty interesting... some times i disagree with him due to the fact that he seems to think that human conciseness emerged just so that the universe could become self reflexive... i tend to disagree with him on this note... its true its added another flavor... but the universe was self reflexive prior to human emergence... his concept combined with his anthropocentrism can be easily looked past though for some nice insights into oneness from a cosmological perrspective... it puts the entire god concept into a whole different focus...

Interesting post, would be happy to share some of my thoughts.

1) Though I grew up Episcopalian, I do not believe in any Abrahamin religions. In fact I don't believe in any religion as they all propose only one way to the creator, which is through them. I do believe in the teachings of Jesus, I think he got it, but the religion of Christianity that came from it distorted his teachings such that the true message is harder to find than it should be.

2) I used to be an athiest, as recently as a little over a year ago. Richard Dawkins presents some compelling arguments and for a while I entertained this philosophy. Then I smoked DMT, and atheism just didn't make sense anymore.

3) DMT ripped my Dharma eye wide open. After smoking it there were far too many questions that all of my education did not answer for me, or even allowed me to contemplate on what had just happened. So therefore I needed to look for answers. That search took me to many places and many ideas, some interesting but obviously flawed, some ridiculous, and some that resonated with me. I now have a belief structure in place that makes a lot of sense to me, and I feel like I've figured it out. My spirituality came about as a direct result of smoking DMT and the subsequent questions it caused.

Energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, it only changes form. I believe that when we die, our consciousness changes form, and that consciousness energy transforms into something different. Something far truer to our actual self than the current bag of flesh we inhabit.

Those intelligent living things I've seen in the DMT World are entities of a type, whether human or not is a matter of debate. I would say that there are both human and alien souls inhabiting a different plane of existence.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

jesus was an astrological allegory...

Yeah I've seen that movie. There are many similarities in the stories. It doesn't matter whether he existed or not, there are valuable teachings and insights in the material/deeds credited to Jesus.

Jeebus was all about oneness too.

1) I don't believe in any religion especially the Abrahamic ones.
2) I am an atheist - even though I know that it is possible for god(s) to exist I don't believe that they do.
3) DMT and other hallucinogens reinforce my ideas that gods, religions etc are all bullshit. Although I can go for spirituality it has to be without any supernatural connotations.

Interesting. Could you give me an example of spirituality that is without any supernatural connontations?

Facinating how similar expreiences can take people to two completely different ends of a spectrum. I agree with you that all religions are BS, they are solely a means of control. But to have hallucinogens and DMT reinforce your ideas that god(s) don't exist is completely the opposite reaction I had to these substances. I believed they did not exist before, but once I smoked DMT there were too many questions, and in searching I found that gods(highly evolved entities, dislike that word "god" fit perfectly in my sense of cosmology now.

That's what I was thinking. Please explain geeg30.

Quite simply the feeling of connection, of oneness with nature etc. There is no need for the supernatural or external influences such as gods to feel that.

[/quote]Quite simply the feeling of connection, of oneness with nature etc. There is no need for the supernatural or external influences such as gods to feel that.[/quote]

Oh yeah? yah sure of that?
perhaps the supernatural and things like deities are not external influences separate from nature and perhaps there is no real internal/external dichotomy... perhaps deities and the supernatural are just facets of nature just as you are or a palm tree is... perhaps they are intelligent matrix's or natures emergent intelligence and consciousness... and perhaps the supernatural ie the paranormal is only supernatural and paranormal to those who have limited themselves to a cartesian dualism as well as a strict materialist perception of the world and have not included in their world view a concept of spirit or a way of precieving the mind of nature, the feild of consciousness, the subtle mind that the buddhists speak of, or the energy that newagers speak of...

SWIM knows this... SWIM feels and KNOWS the oneness with nature that SWIY speaks of... and SWIM has also interacted with deities and spirits and other than human persons a plenty, swim has observed many "supernatural" events and sees that as a part of an emergent natural intelligence that is nature and the cosmos itself.
To say that the phenomena of experienced deities and the paranormal doent exist because one does not need to believe in it is an odd notion...
one cannot say that they are not real pheneomena... but one can debate until ones blue in the face what they really are if one wants...

I'm not saying that the experience of deities or paranormal is not real, SWIM's had a few 'god moments' on his travels. What I am saying is that I don't believe the perceived notions/ideas that these experiences invariably lead to.

Just because I have a paranormal experience or feel that there is a deity doesn't mean that I believe that any of these experiences are actually real.

your contradicting your self...

"I'm not saying that the experience of deities or paranormal is not real"
"Just because I have a paranormal experience or feel that there is a deity doesn't mean that I believe that any of these experiences are actually real. "

real compared to what?
the mind experiences it as real, its you that decided whats real or not real... its a bias reality has no real basis in reality out side of what we decide is real or not perceptual speaking...

is what your trying to get at that one can have experiences of say deities but that doesnt mean that what you are experiencing is exactly what perhaps people think it is or what you think it is?

SWIM tends to think of deities as a collective of natures own thought forms as merged with human consciousness...
kinda like in the book american gods...

I'm backing up geeg here, his comments are valid. You don't need to believe in god etc to be spiritual.
And what is 'paranormal' and 'supernatural'? Either superstition, or stuff that science just doesn't yet understand. Of course an atheist can believe in oneness with the universe. Science shows 'oneness' more than conventional religion... science that says we are all made of energy, all made of the same thing and all having come into existence from the same thing. In contrast, the Abrahamic religions separate both man and 'god' from the rest of the world. An atheist can believe in life after death too if they feel that way inclined, depending on their preferred theories of the nature of consciousness. Science is more out there than religion in some ways, such as time and quantum physics. The religious do not have a monopoly on spirituality.
Nietsche was spot on when he declared science the new religion (I think he meant that in a different way, but it's a nice metaphor).
If other people want to made up additional mumbo-jumbo, then that's fine, but some people don't see that as necessary.

to hell with belief in general... to me belief is the problem...
your experiences are limited by what you believe and disbelieve...
I am not saying that you need to believe in a deity if you think im saying that your not reading what I am posting...

You nailed it.

What are we talking about when we say "supernatural"?

For me, the experience of Oneness is supernatural. I am something greater than myself, I consciously see myself in others, they are but a reflection of myself. There is no "god", that word is so incredibly inaccurate to what the meaning of creation is. In the end we are all part of the same essense, a part of creation, creating in our own way.

I don't need for there to be a god. There is something more than what we can percieve, all around us, every moment, because in the end, there is only the "now".

I subscribe to Alan Watts's ideas regarding the monotheistic traditions.

Firstly, this great Oneness that has been spoken of - it can't be pinned down to a single point of view. It probably operates in an infinity of aspects.

Some people see the Oneness through monotheism, and are fighting to survive in a war with the darkest power.

Some people see the Oneness through Hinduism, and are watching this great war from the perspective of the audience.

Some people see the Oneness through Buddhism and Tao, and have gotten out of their seats to peak back stage.

Atheists are the bastard sons of the monotheists, and they're playing the game harder than anyone.

To steal from one of my favorite movies, "The Princess Bride": I do not think Oneness means what you think it means.

Oneness is Oneness, it transcends all religions and most belief systems.

For me, Oneness is seeing all others in myself and seeing myself in everything: rocks, sand, water, wood, wind as well as in others. War and power are completely irrelevant. There is only One and we have strayed far from the truth and the life. Love and wisdom are always available to those who seek.