"

In the widest sense of the word, to name is to interpret experience by the past, to translate it into terms of memory, to bind the unknown into the system of the known. Civilized man knows of hardly any other way of understanding things. Everybody, everything, has to have its label, its number, certificate, registration, classification. What is not classified is irregular, unpredictable, and dangerous. Without passport, birth certificate, or membership in some nation, one’s existence is not recognized. If you do not agree with the capitalists, they call you a communist, and vice versa. A person who agrees with neither point of view is fast becoming unintelligible.

That there is a way of looking at life apart from all conceptions, beliefs, opinions, and theories is the motest of all possibilities from the modern mind. If such a point of view exists, it can only be in the vacant brain of a moron. We suffer from the delusion that the entire universe is held in order by the categories of human thought, fearing that if we do not hold to them with the utmost tenacity, everything will vanish into chaos.

"

Alan Watts
2 months ago
 307
Posted by ikenbot
# lit
# experience
# alan watts
# philosophy
# labels
# theories

"In my own experience, which is shared by very many others, psychedelics expand attention. They make the spotlight of consciousness a floodlight which not only exposes ignored relationships and unities but also brings to light unsuspected details—details normally ignored because of their lack of significance, or their irrelevance to some prejudice of what ought to be. There is thus good reason to believe that the psychedelics are the opposite of hallucinogens insofar as they decrease the selectivity of the senses and expose consciousness to events beyond those that are supposed to deserve notice."

Alan Watts “A Psychedelic Experience Fact or Fantasy?” 1964
1 year ago
 259
Posted by ikenbot
# Drugs
# Psychedellics
# Consciousness
# Experience
# Mind
# Barriers
# Alan Watts

»  Recreational Drug Creates Out-of-Body Illusions

cwnl:

A popular “club drug” promises to open a scientific window on the strange world of out-of-body experiences, researchers say.

Recreational users of a substance called ketamine often report having felt like they left their bodies or underwent other bizarre physical transformations, according to an online survey conducted by psychologist Todd Girard of Ryerson University in Toronto and his colleagues.

Ketamine, an anesthetic known to interfere with memory and cause feelings of detachment from one’s self or body, reduces transmission of the brain chemical glutamate through a particular class of molecular gateways. Glutamate generally jacks up brain activity. Ketamine stimulates sensations of illusory movement or leaving one’s body by cutting glutamate’s ability to energize certain brain areas, the researchers propose in a paper published online Feb. 15 in Consciousness and Cognition.

1 year ago
 79
Via ikenbot
Posted by ikenbot
# Drugs
# Ketamine
# Substance
# Recreational
# Out of body
# Experience
# Science

Explanation: The Light at The end of The tunnel

It’s to do with what’s happening to your vision. During fainting, for instance, there’s a blackout because the eye isn’t getting enough blood, so the eye begins to shut down even though the brain is still going. As it shuts down first from the sides and then into the centre, it’s like looking through a tunnel.

The light that people tend to see has a few sources. To start with, the eye might only be capable of seeing smudges of light because of the tunnelling and lack of blood flow. Then, as the brain enters REM consciousness, the visual system becomes strongly activated - that’s the rapid eye movement that defines REM consciousness. When the visual system is activated, you get light.

2 years ago
 16
Source
Posted by ikenbot
# nde
# near
# death
# experience
# light
# explanation