GENIUS FORUMS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grcqs9cDuN8

Some of you may know Joe, hes a comedian, announcer, host of fear factor and some other stuff...anyway hes describing DMT and some other interesting ideas, its pretty funny.

What do u guys think?

Joe Rogan is Terrence Mckenna for dummies.

The trough from where Rogan drinks

terence mckenna - meditation vs hallucinogens

T.McKenna - culture is not your friend

Rogan kept going back to his idea about how when we dream at night, that's when we're tripping out man!

It was retarded.

His stick was an obnoxious and watered down rip off of everything Mckenna has aleady said.

But if you've never heard anything like it before [and you are mentally 18 years old] then I can understand how Rogan's speil was pretty thrilling.

One thing that perks my interest is the question of whether or not there is indeed an order of consciousness and life that is beyond the sort of physical sensation that appears to us. , Mckenna's descriptions, along with Rogan's speil, and others make it seem like there is a greater reality beyond this one, a reality that is consistently encountered despite it is varying individuals who are supposedly breaking through to these realities privately.

As for my own psychadelic expeiences, I hadnt broken through to a hyperspatial perception of a higher order reality. But I did experience something in particular that seems to indicate that reality isnt as solid and physical as it appears.

Although, I've never done DMT before. Only psilocybin.

Terence Mckenna’s description of the experience is much more tolerable compared to Rogans because he is less emotional, vulgar, and more articulate.

Terence Mckenna's DMT Description

One recurring theme of these stories of DMT, is that the beings that the users encounter always tell them not to be so astonished by the new environment.

Interesting stuff, but potentially dangerous for yearning minds. Overall, psychedelic drug use isnt all that useful.

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Terence Mckenna’s description of the experience is much more tolerable compared to Rogans because he is less emotional, vulgar, and more articulate.

Terence Mckenna's DMT Description

One recurring theme of these stories of DMT, is that the beings that the users encounter always tell them not to be so astonished by the new environment.

Interesting stuff, but potentially dangerous for yearning minds. Overall, psychedelic drug use isnt all that useful.

Ya I've heard of Terence before...
Terence Mckenna's description is amazing.
Amazing how he can make such an interesting experience seem so fucken boring and dull.

I liked Rogan's much more.

Hades wrote:

I liked Rogan's much more.

that's because you enjoy being stimulated by vulgar emotions.

Ryan wrote:One recurring theme of these stories of DMT, is that the beings that the users encounter always tell them not to be astonished by the new environment.

Yeah, I find that a bit strange. It doesnt follow that the subconscious mind should be that intelligent.

And there will be some who believed that McKenna's imagination was an anomally - so powerfull that he just convinced himself that the things he was dreaming up were real.

But I personally can't help but find McKenna to be someone who is hard to totally discredit.

Cory wrote:

It doesnt follow that the subconscious mind should be that intelligent.

Yes, Rogan compares the DMT experience to something along the lines of dreaming, but I think the comparison is not adequate.

For instance: DMT experiences consist of specular environments, with peaceful beings that try to communicate through a variety of different means.

Whereas dream environments aren’t all that detailed at all, for instance I have never felt amazed or astonished by a dream environment, actually I’m usually just duped into thinking it is the same as our present reality, and the characters in dreams are anything, but peaceful. My dreams usually express unfulfilled desires/fears with people, and usually there is some sort of bizarre conflict playing out.

Whereas the DMT environment seems to be one of exploration, by learning new ways of communicating with peaceful beings.

therefore Rogan shouldnt compare the two experiences because they aren’t all that similar at all. Overall, Rogan is a bit of a Doofus.

his last rant really illustrated his lack of awareness - "Humans are like bacteria man, we're like mold on a sandwich, that's are only purpose dude, to procreate and stuff, holy shit buddy pass me that bong..."

Has your recent phase been chemically-induced, Hades?

-

Ryan wrote:Yes, Rogan compares the DMT experience to something along the lines of dreaming, but I think the comparison is not adequate.

For instance: DMT experiences consist of specular environments, with peaceful beings that try to communicate through a variety of different means.

Whereas dream environments aren’t all that detailed at all, for instance I have never felt amazed or astonished by a dream environment, actually I’m usually just duped into thinking it is the same as our present reality, and the characters in dreams are anything, but peaceful. My dreams usually express unfulfilled desires/fears with people, and usually there is some sort of bizarre conflict playing out.

Yes, these were my thoughts exactly. Rogan goes from describing his DMT experience as a hyper-realistic, psychadelic, sureal mode of perception - -- but then enthusiastically tells the listerners that: every night when we dream we're tripping out man!

No Rogan, despite a compound similar to DMT may be detected while we sleep -- people's dream states are not mind blowing trippy experiences of higher dimensional perception. On the contrary dreams for most people are rather dull and vulgar.

Rogan is like a mischievous, hyperactive 8 year old, gleefully and over-confidently playing with Daddy's gun in front of his friends who he's trying to impress.

Cory wrote:

On the contrary dreams for most people are rather dull and vulgar.

This might not work, but I’ve always thought of defragmenting a hard-drive as a good metaphor for dreaming. You’re operating system or (consciousness) reorganizes and deletes bad sectors or (neurons) and as the process occurs, there is playback happening in the background that uses some of the memory sectors to create a storyline.

To strengthen the argument, I always dream about my ex-girlfriend, which was quite traumatic, so I believe that these sectors or neurons in a certain area of the brain are damaged from the experience so when the defragmentation happens at night, the process always finds the same area of the brain where the damaged neurons are located, and she is always there, and a similar storyline is created.

Does that work? Or am I way off?

Usually dreams are replays of usual daily activities, with literal and symbolic components. If there is a replay of something, especially if it is something that is not quite current, or if it is a particularly intense dream, it indicates that something has not yet been worked out.

Since you say it was something traumatic, I would guess there is something not worked out in your mind about what happened. Are there any questions you have about what happened, or how something happened, or is there something you feel is still somehow "unfinished" either about the relationship itself, or more likely, something about you that you feel needs to be worked on as evidenced by the relationship - either how it ended, or how you got into it in the first place?

To Elizabeth,

how you got into it in the first place?

A beautiful sex goddess (nymph from the underworld) came into my life, without any effort on my side.

about what happened

Over a two year period, I became incredibly attached in my ignorance.

how it ended

devastating suffering, and the search for wisdom. That pretty much sums it up.

What doesn’t make sense about the dreams is I always behave like a retard without any self-awareness, I’m always hunting her down, investigating, trying to figure out where she is, things I would never do in the waking state.

that is why I explain the repeated dreams through by damaged neuron theory because I believe I understand what happened totally.

From "devastating suffering" I take it that it was she who ended the relationship. You say in the 2 years, you became incredibly attached in your ignorance - then describe your behavior in the dreams as that of a retard. Ignorance...retardation...sounds pretty similar.

In your dream you are trying to find her in particular - which you would not do in waking life - so this may be symbolism. Perhaps it isn't exactly her that you would necessarily like to find since one can not go back and get exactly what was lost, but perhaps it is more what she represented to you... maybe how your life might have gone differently had your relationship with her continued rather than how it has gone.

Why did she break up with you?

Elizabeth wrote:

Why did she break up with you?

I started to become a philosopher and she interpreted it as weird. Looking back I was quite insensitive to the shortfalls of women, I expected her to change with me, so I imposed on her values willfully to correct her imperfections, and obviously this pushed her away.

But at the time, I wasn’t wise in the slightest, I was a greenhorn and controlled heavily by animal consciousness. Instead of breaking up, she decided to sleep with another guy to make me jealous, it worked, I reacted like a violent animal, and destroyed all the gifts I had bought her, it was total madness/insanity, and there was intense suffering on both sides.

We had a long history as well because we had sustained a romantic relationship from junior high, into high school, and the latest two years occurred while I was in university.

We had created many long term dreams together, and once these delusional link was severed, it was quite painful indeed.

So why the ongoing dreams?

Elizabeth wrote:

So why the ongoing dreams?

Damaged neurons because of trauma is my theory, but the dreams are less frequent than they used to be so perhaps the brain is healing itself over time.

Ryan Rudolph wrote: Damaged neurons because of trauma is my theory, but the dreams are less frequent than they used to be so perhaps the brain is healing itself over time.

Seems to be something to this. Stress causes brain damage

At any rate, I never have dreams about normal daily stuff. I fly, and my teeth fall out. Two things which are yet to happen...

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Cory wrote:

On the contrary dreams for most people are rather dull and vulgar.

This might not work, but I’ve always thought of defragmenting a hard-drive as a good metaphor for dreaming. You’re operating system or (consciousness) reorganizes and deletes bad sectors or (neurons) and as the process occurs, there is playback happening in the background that uses some of the memory sectors to create a storyline.

To strengthen the argument, I always dream about my ex-girlfriend, which was quite traumatic, so I believe that these sectors or neurons in a certain area of the brain are damaged from the experience so when the defragmentation happens at night, the process always finds the same area of the brain where the damaged neurons are located, and she is always there, and a similar storyline is created.

Does that work? Or am I way off?

Hard to say. It's sounds somewhat right.

(the following is my theory on dreams - highly speculative)

For the length of time you were with her, I'm guessing that an extremely concentrated network of neurons was established. The question is, for what purpose was the network created? I'm guessing it was for the sake of emotinal stability, security.

Do you find that your dreaming is less dominating during periods where you are hopefully working on projects? Often, projects that we males work on after a break up are often quite ambitious if you know what I mean ;)

But often these ambitious dreams become foiled, scrapped, we hit a dead end. And then its seems that our dreams resurface powerfully, causing us poor sleep.

If I really feel that I am progressing with something, then that something has become my new security. Thus, I find my dreams, during that period, arent as blatantly obvious and crude when I'm feeling good about where I'm going. I get a better sleep. But often, my sensation of progressing was based on yet another unwise way of getting security.

I realize that it's just another facet of samsara. and so I let go - but only to find that this latest optimistic pursuit, aside from being a failure, has become the material for my future dreams. As far as I can tell, dreams are just residues shedding from all the old ways we attempted to get security.

I have all kinds of recurring themes in my dreams, as I've had all sorts of different ways of getting security. There have been some major figures and objects of my past that I've concentrated on, for security reasons, more so than others, and likewise, there have also been some major figures of my past that I've been particularly overwhelmed by. The major accumulated ingredients of two forces, security and insecurity, create our dreams, as far as I can tell.

I don't know if we're braindamaged - - - unless being in samsara is being braindamaged. Perhaps.

These days I don't feel like I have much direction or hope - - - and of course my dreams have therefore been quite excessive and ridiculous. I write them all down when I wake up.

Sometimes, when I wake up, I feel like I can't bear to face my consciousness and write down my dreams, because I find it is just an unbearably depressing way to start the day.

But it makes for interesting and humorous reading when I get home. ;)

Tragedy in the morning, comedy in the evening.

Cory,

I thought I'd write a counter-argument to what you've said just for fun, although I do agree with much of your observations regarding the security/insecurity pattern of many dreams.

Moreover, I agree that the pursuit of security is a common theme in dreams, and I agree that some degree of insight can be gained by certain dreams, but there are few properties of dreams that make their overall importance questionable:

1. First of all, what makes them completely nonsensical is that fact that one’s self-awareness in the dream does not mirror one’s actual self-awareness in the waking state. As I said before one behaves foolishly and does not realize that one is doing so, you’re basically duped by the whole experience. It is almost as if ones consciousness projects a movie screen over your eyes, and you’re duped into thinking you’re the main character. And then you say and do things that you normally wouldn’t do in the waking state.

2. Many times, dreams have no relationship to what is happening in my personal life so it’s difficult to make a general rule as you have done. For instance: I can watch a documentary and then dream about certain aspects of it that night.

3. Dreams for the most part are quite disorderly, you have storylines that weave together, and characters that vanish without warning, environments will change in a blink of an eye, the whole thing is a mess. That is why I compared dreams to defragmenting a hard-drive.

4. And if you don’t write them down or think about them for a long time as you get up, the dreams are lost, it is almost as if there is a small window to remember because of some sort of temporary chemical state in the brain. If they were more important, wouldn’t they be easier to remember?

5. Also, I think it’s a bit of a stretch saying that if one dreams at night, one is caught in the cycle of Samsara, Samsara implies a cycle of suffering, but it may be an exaggeration to suggest that dreams can solely bring the individual down into a state of Samsara, especially if they are rational throughout the day.

How can I be in Samsara If I don’t feel anything from the dreams, and I can’t remember most of the dreams? Dreams make me feel groggy as I get up, that’s about the extent of it, but to call grogginess Samsara maybe taking it a little too far.

What do others think about this? Can a person can enlightened and still dream at night?

Ryan,

earlier you said:

for instance I have never felt amazed or astonished by a dream environment, actually I’m usually just duped into thinking it is the same as our present reality, and the characters in dreams are anything, but peaceful. My dreams usually express unfulfilled desires/fears with people, and usually there is some sort of bizarre conflict playing out.

I think that, despite you may be more conscious and skeptical in your waking state, the motives driving you to do what you do in the waking state are fearful, animalistic, vain, proud, etc.

If your dreams are the way you say they are, then perhaps any sophistication you have in the waking state, are actually rooted and dictated by much more crude and animalistic forces.

Scientists for instance, are incredibly clear minded - - but they are also quite motivated by social recognition, often because they are motivated by attracting a partner for marriage, or making their parents proud, and with those comes jealousies, envy, fear, etc.

Katy wrote: At any rate, I never have dreams about normal daily stuff. I fly, and my teeth fall out. Two things which are yet to happen...

But they are very common dreams you mention. And they probably are just a more symbolic representation of daily stuff like fears and desires, what can be more daily and stuffy? For example fears for the earth and the well-being of the body or desires for freedom of/and expression. The imagery itself is not so important but most people tend to go with the same imagery in dreams nevertheless. Same wiring.

To Cory,

I think that, despite you may be more conscious and skeptical in your waking state, the motives driving you to do what you do in the waking state are fearful, animalistic, vain, proud, etc.

If your dreams are the way you say they are, then perhaps any sophistication you have in the waking state, are actually rooted and dictated by a much more crude and animalistic forces.

It’s all possibilities, but these motivations are not all bad. For instance: to plan for the future, one needs to be motivated. One just has to assess ones goals to make sure they are reasonable.

To survive in this world, one cannot be completely liberated from all animalistic forces, we are biological organisms.

Eg:// one could say an aversion or fear of suffering is animalistic, but it is ones greatest ally.

But overall I agree, there’s probably always some degree of subconscious forces at work, but trying to empty the subconscious is like trying to drain the Atlantic Ocean with a $50 water pump from Canadian Tire, it’s kinda futile if you ask me, big guy ; )

Ryan,

Cory: I think that, despite you may be more conscious and skeptical in your waking state, the motives driving you to do what you do in the waking state are fearful, animalistic, vain, proud, etc.

If your dreams are the way you say they are, then perhaps any sophistication you have in the waking state, are actually rooted and dictated by a much more crude and animalistic forces.

Ryan: It’s all possibilities, but these motivations are not all bad. For instance: to plan for the future, one needs to be motivated. One just has to assess ones goals to make sure they are reasonable.

So have you established for yourself a set of goals that you feel very certain about?

Is everyday a passionate working towards these goals? Or are you full of doubt, confusion, uncertainty, etc? My hypothesis is that our dreams become repetitive and burdensome when we are in the later state, rather than the former.

When we are in the former, then our dreams are diverse, a light processing of the daily events.

When we are in the later, our dreams dwell on past resentments.

Just a hypothesis.

And hey, would I be insane if I were motivated by the idea that I could be free from all animalistic motivation?

To survive in this world, one cannot be completely liberated from all animalistic forces, we are biological organisms.

How do you know it's not possible to master of these forces, and diffuse their power?

This quote by Kierkegaard, I always found provocative:

I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.--Soren Kierkegaard

Eg:// one could say an aversion or fear of suffering is animalistic, but it is ones greatest ally.

A healthy reaction to physical pain, recoiling from a hot stove, etc - I would say that is a great ally. But I'd be wary of not tending to the distinction between the defense mechanisms of the body and the defense mechanisms of the ego.

There is physical pain, and there is egotistical pain.

trying to empty the subconscious is like trying to drain the Atlantic Ocean with a $50 water pump from Canadian Tire, it’s kinda futile if you ask me, big guy ; )

I wasnt even neccearily advocating that to you. I was offering an alternative explanation to your repeated dreams.

Rather than a damaged brain, I think your brain, like everyones, is struggling for some sort of emotional equilibrium, and since you havent single-mindedly devoted yourself to anything (perhaps you have), your brain is firing off old programs that were once employed for stability. This might always be the case until you become wholeheartedly devoted to new woman, or a new passion for a project, or something.

To Cory,

This might always be the case until you become wholeheartedly devoted to new woman, or a new passion for a project, or something.

I’m content writing on genius for now.

So have you established for yourself a set of goals that you feel very certain about?

My goals at this time period are simple, survive. Maintain minimal food, clothes and shelter in a way that causes the least amount of burden to myself and others.

Perhaps my goals will change, but that’s all I’m certain of in terms of goals - Minimal survival and post on genius.

How do you know it's not possible to master of these forces, and diffuse their power?

You can manage these forces by diffusing their power, but I suspect that is the best one can do. As you say there is always an infinite sea of subconscious lingering below the surface. Awareness is management of this subconscious, so is it possible to bring an indefinite end to that stream? What do you propose? A dam? Lol… I just don’t know.

I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.--Soren Kierkegaard

Didn’t Kierkegaard leave his entire lifesavings to Rosalind on his deathbed? I like to question what many thinkers have said because hypocrisy is the rule, and not the exception in the lives of most philosophers.

I am open to the idea that perhaps perfection is a relative approximation and not an absolute.