<story><title>When Aldous Huxley opened the doors of perception</title><url>https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/when-aldous-huxley-opened-the-doors-of-perception/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mapcars</author><text>Important thing to understand is that psychedelics can be used at most as an easy incentive for people to see if they interested in this direction of experience. There are reasons why most profound mystics don&amp;#x27;t value substances much and rather focus on developing people&amp;#x27;s own perception. Yes it takes time but results come above all expectations.&lt;p&gt;From my experience it&amp;#x27;s much healthier to realize I can go into states of bliss and ecstasy completely by myself without any external help.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scarecrowbob</author><text>I see this idea a lot, and in the main, I wholly agree with the understanding that it&amp;#x27;s personal work and not drugs which help people develop their understanding of the world.&lt;p&gt;At the same time, this mode of saying &amp;quot;at most&amp;quot; undercuts the actual value of a psychedelic experience: that kind of experience is so profound that I often liken it to discovering sex for the first time.  Knowing how to bring yourself and&amp;#x2F; or a partner into some state or other isn&amp;#x27;t in itself useful, it&amp;#x27;s awkward and confusing to become initiated into that practice, and there are a myriad of ways where becoming sexually activated is violent and traumatic.&lt;p&gt;But done well a) these experiences can be fun&amp;#x2F;useful as ends in themselves and b) these experiences are often the ones which open up entire realms of possibility for our minds and bodies.&lt;p&gt;For instance, without a psychedelic context I certainly would not have had a way of parsing the effects of kundalini yoga, and I might not have even been inclined to work in that direction if I didn&amp;#x27;t have a first hand understanding of how dramatically our physiology can so directly impact our perceptions.&lt;p&gt;And I find the people who discount the profound impact of initiation into that realm of experience almost tautologically fall into two camps:  people who have moved past psychedelics as a mode (which is a legitimate and good mode, in my epereince) and people who have never had psychedelic experiences (which is also a wholly legitimate way to be in the world).&lt;p&gt;The thing is, the first camp often seems (at least to me) to understate the actual impact of psychedelia in their development and the second camp doesn&amp;#x27;t have the personal experience to make those claims at all.&lt;p&gt;While I am happy at your personal development and ability to enter states of bliss or ecstasy without psychedelic drugs, you may consider that this general bend of argumentation (that the drugs aren&amp;#x27;t valuable and may be unhealthy in general in this movement) is just as much of a shortcut as thinking that the psychedelics in themselves can lead to some sort of enlightenment.</text></comment>
<story><title>When Aldous Huxley opened the doors of perception</title><url>https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/when-aldous-huxley-opened-the-doors-of-perception/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mapcars</author><text>Important thing to understand is that psychedelics can be used at most as an easy incentive for people to see if they interested in this direction of experience. There are reasons why most profound mystics don&amp;#x27;t value substances much and rather focus on developing people&amp;#x27;s own perception. Yes it takes time but results come above all expectations.&lt;p&gt;From my experience it&amp;#x27;s much healthier to realize I can go into states of bliss and ecstasy completely by myself without any external help.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mylons</author><text>Maynard Keenan from Tool had a good line about this he’d use in interviews. Something like, “you get a shortcut to transcendence that you spend the rest of your life developing the ability to get their naturally“</text></comment>