I didn't mean that they "exist" in your dreams, which of course they do, I meant that they exist even outside of your dreams, which is what you're implying when you say "it's reasonable to say that a spirit told you how to make it," you're implying that spirits exist outside of one's dreams and appear within the dreams.
I have stated over and over that personally, I am agnostic and am not making a claim either towards their existence nor non existence. I am perplexed by the experience, however, and I did say that when you consider a culture that has had experiences where spirits communicate, then it is reasonable to their pov to make the claim that they exist.
I do say that regardless of the truth value of their existence, you can have an experience where an 'other' is speaking with in a non physical form.
So please do not ask me to argue a case for their existence. I am arguing at most simply a case for open minded study on the matter for those interested.
Just exactly what do you think spirits are, and do you think the exist objectively?
I don't know. I often play with the idea that spirits are ideas, and ideas are spirits, the same internal phenomenon but from a different perspective. Do I think they exist objectively? hmmm, that's potentially a very confusing answer to give, because I think they are certainly personal experiences, but like dreams, can be shared. Just as my dream does not exist objectively, but dreams exist for all of us in some sense, so may be the case for these 'spirits'.
I am also intrigued by the value of Julian Jaynes work in this regard, it is possible perhaps that this phenomenon is nothing more than the bi-cameral mind, but that opens way more mysterious doors than it closes.
Like I said, the only thing I can say for certainty is that I am very perplexed by both the experience and the claims.
"The ayahuasca experience" is massively unclear. Do you mean:
1. The content of the experience; that is, I experienced a spirit, and the spirit is objectively real.
no
2. The experience itself is real to the individual; that is, my experience may be different from yours even if we ingest the same plant.
yes
3. The experience itself is the same across individuals.
hmm, this is interesting because the experience can have shared phenomenon and people can experience similar spirits that behave the exact same way. I can confirm this personally. But I am still perplexed by it.
The subjective realities exist - and they are very very elusive, obey absolutely none of the laws of objective reality - and can potentially be dangerous to navigate. The subjective realities are far more mysterious and subtle, on par I would suggest with 'Dark Matter' in physics. Consider that 96% percent of the universe is made of stuff that we cannot detect, obey no laws of physics as we understand them, are not comprised of atoms or molecules, do not bend or reflect light, are not comprised of matter and energy in any sense that the laws of physics can understand. Not to say that subjective reality is dark matter, but am saying that if we can allow for something as mind boggling as dark matter in our models of the cosmos, how can we not allow for a phenomenon of consciousness to be equally as bizarre and mysterious?
Subjectivity does not follow the laws of physics, rational thinking, or reason.
My reading list is already way too long, the whole point of blogging is to have a conversation, so feel free to summarize the crucial points.
Fair enough.
Okay, here is what I can present that has been supported by both critical field study into Upper Amazonian Shamanism as well as respected, peer reviewed research done by a credible research scientist sponsored by a major academic university.
DMT, which is the compound in Ayahuasca, which exists in our own brains, is responsible for very clear experiences that are so bizarre very few of them can be summarized simply, but what weaves through all of them consistently (as consistent as the simple dream experience the significant majority of us share) is a communication with 'entities'.
They may be pieces of our minds or brains, spirits, demons, angles, I don't know, but I do know that the experience is one of a back and forth, exchange with an other intelligence.
In the Amazon, we find DMT occurring in Ayahuasca, and it is consistent amongst virtually all tribes who partake in ayahuasca that their knowledge of the plant world comes from the ayahuasca. She is a 'teacher' and she instructs them on how to prepare concoctions from various plants to create medicines, poisons, or even 'spells'.
It gets interesting to me because there is a very real efficacy in those plant medicines, so much so that the vast majority of western pharmaceuticals are simply amazonian medicines taken into a laboratory and isolating the compounds found in our drugs.
So these entities dont just spat 'babble'. Things can be learned and these things are empirical, objective, and very real.
Are you saying means that the spirits that said to use the plants are objectively real?
I think I have covered this question already in this post, let me know if you are satisfied with what I mean.
Science doesn't work for existence? What does that mean? It won't work to determine if something exists? That would be news to a lot of scientists.
Science surely does deal with consciousness, chaos, and complexity.
The response was to the usage of Occam's Razor - Occams Razor is not the scientific method and is not infallible. The more complex the system, the more it fails when there are no simple answers, true or otherwise. It is a form of philosophy, and I find many skeptics like to use that as a scientific weapon to defeat ideas about consciousness, and when they do they do so irrationally, unscientifically, and most importantly illogically, from my point of view.
