At first reading, it kind of sounds like "out of body" experience

Didn't say it sounds retarded. It's just that my opinion of religion is that it's something people use as last resort when they can't really explain something. We know very little about the human brain.

That's the difference between science and religion - science says "we don't know" and try to find out, and religion says "we do know" and, hey, the question's answered.

Here's an interesting article from New York Times on the subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/health/psychology/03shad.html

Hmmmm.. But I wasn't outside of my body. I was inside my body, not identifying with it anymore.

They then argue that it's not necessary to be electrocuted (hehehe), this can happen after serious nervous deprivation (similar to what you've described).

It always amuses me that people always assume the 'chemicals' are the cause and not the effect.

They're an effect of something else that had been the cause for their existence, which, in turn, had been an effect of something else. But to assume that the existence of "the final cause of something else" (if such a thing even exists - is might as well not) equals the undeniable proof of the Judeo-Christian God is simply, as Oscar Wilde had once put it, quite absurd.

That can usually be tested by stickin' the chemicals in there and seeing what happens.

(deleted)

(also deleted - sorry about this, guys)

...because assuming supernatural causes is just so much more sensible.

You may or may not find these articles to be of interest in your quest to discover what's happening to you.

• The God Chemical
• Searching For The God Spot
• Google "The God Spot"

**** I had a huge post typed out then it got lost. These are my ideas:




Thanks for this, this is the stuff I'm looking for.


-I'm not advocating supernatural explanations. This is a natural world which has natural explanations for everything.

-This state is the only thing that can be called god.

-This state is reproducible. All ancient traditions and religions that talked about 'god' talked about this state of love, joy, incredible peace, etc... The original goal of all 'holy' masters, texts and religions is not to follow them but to search for this state. The Bible is literred by subtle and blatant references to this (I reread the whole thing ). We haven't seen it. We all missed it.

-The goal is and always has been heaven, moksha, liberation, satori, the holy land, pure awareness, I AM, nirvana. All the same thing.
Search and you will find.

-Many people have known this state. Many live in this state still today (anonymous, somewhere). Jesus talked about this so YOU could search for it yourself. Not to follow and worship like goddamn brainwashed zombies. You know all bible verses by heart? You go to church every sunday? You hate women and homosexuals a lot? You believe people can walk on water? Good for you. Doesn't mean a thing! When the finger is pointing at the moon, all the ignorant (including me) see is the finger. We go to church every Sunday and do our little dance there, and say all the right formulas, oblivious to the fact we're all idiots. You think a dude in a dress in the Vatican knows anything about this state?

-We all have witnessed at least distant echoes of this state aka 'god'. Maybe you were playing sports and you were in the zone. Everything worked. Maybe it was while playing an instrument. There was a moment of surrender and in that moment everything clicked. Everything you did was pure. The crowd fell away. These are echoes of this 'being' all these holy texts are describing. Some people describe this state after having nearly drowned. Some people find this place in themselves when they're looking into the barrel of a gun. This woman found it while having a stroke:



-You find by searching inside. Notice this awareness looking at this computer screen. Now close your eyes. Notice, now that the world outside has gone away, there's something still as awake, still as bright and aware as before closing your eyes. Find THAT. Be still and know that I AM god.

/Babbling idiot out

It's Rhode Island, isn't it? To most people it's not even there...until they find it.

One can't ever really be in Rhode Island, my son

Haven't got time to check out those links now, but in a reaction to Tenshu's experiences:

I must say I have experienced similar sensations when I was under the influence of mushrooms. I have done mushrooms quite a number of times (at average I do it once or twice per year), and it's a different experience every time.

I am not a religious or spiritual person (although I used to be more 'spiritual' when I was younger.) But I can see how such a powerful experience can evoke feelings of spirituality. It is an experience I can recommend to anyone who is relatively mentally stable.

The first time I did it, it was an amazing moment of self-discovery. I gained a deep and profound insight into who I was; I saw my strengths and my weaknesses and my primal energy in a way I had never experienced before. Creative thoughts and associative thinking had never been more readily accessible. I was asking myself questions about the world and myself that I had never thought of before, and gained such a deep insight into it all.

It is truly a healing experience for the mind... when the effect wore off, the insight remained as well as that intense sensation of inner peace and knowing.

Every time it's different. But a sensation of the deepest, truest love and a feeling of an 'inner light' is almost always there.

I've done it outside, in a forest, and felt like I became one with all the plants, trees and animals. I know this sounds like hippy crap, but I'm really a very rational person. What I'm trying to say is that your surroundings will really influence the experience in a powerful way.

An exalted, blissful silence is something I have also experienced, as well as the sensation of observing yourself talking and doing things, while it feels like it's not you who's doing it.

The weirdest thing about mushrooms though, is how they can mix up the various sensations... you may feel like you can see sounds, smell pictures or breathe light... it's kind of inexplicable. Somehow I think things like 'knowing' are for a large part feelings or emotions, and thus a feeling of 'knowing' can be intensified by chemicals. At the same time though, the insights you may gain are actually deeper and more profound than normal, and not just because of the way they 'feel', but because you are better able to 'hit the nail on the head', so to speak. You will see beyond the superficial and have instant access to the underlying truths.

If that makes any sense.

I don't understand why Tenshu keeps calling himself an idiot. Does he not want to believe himself? Is he ashamed that he let his depression spiral out of hand until he experienced detachment, so he attacks his own attempts to explain it as something positive?

What happened here is a miracle, I JUST WANT YOU TO ****IN ACKNOWLEDGE IT!

I had something like what I would call a religious experience once. I was on mushrooms when Notre Dame came back to beat Michigan State a few years ago. That was pretty intense.

I think it's more that he wants to beat to the punch anyone who would call him an idiot over this, hoping to prevent them from doing so.

I don't see how experiencing such things makes anyone an idiot, though, and truly believing in it would be delusion rather than idiocy. Whether it's actually delusion, though, I know is not something I can claim to answer. And I'm sure the experience was really felt, whatever the cause of it.

I lost it.

It's something more practical than that. People tend to build huge egos around these experiences ('look how much I know! look how close I am to god! all you people, you know nothing!'), while in reality of course experiences like these change nothing. I'm just as small as everyone else. It's a reminder to myself, to not forget I'm still just an ass

Thank you for your report ORJ Jos, you describe exactly what I felt.

Now where do I get those 'shrooms?

Maybe because he feels like it was a religious experience but he knows that it isn't.

Unless you consider existence to be deterministic, your stance doesn't make any sense at all.

It does not require determinism, merely a lack of free-will. Existence could just as easily be random.

Maybe you could elaborate on what you meant, because now I have no idea.