Not in the sense I meant. The “enlightenment” confidence and awe-struck assuredness is the feeling and it comes from deep inside.
Recognizing that confidence and assuredness are not knowledge is not quite the same as those feelings themselves. Though I do recognize this is sort of recursive and cyclical and ultimately there’s nothing but some type of faith to build everything on, including doubt/skepticism.
Actually we overload the word "feeling" to include thoughts and perceptions which are not feelings. Like "I feel sad" is a feeling. "I feel like you are being a jerk" is not a feeling it is a thought or perception.
> Feeling "I solved the world, everybody listen to me" is... not.
Does this apply to the preceding paragraph in your comment?
How about to science, and various other The Way's currently popular bordering on mandatory (if you want to be respected at least) in this era, culture, geographical region?
Not really, have you ever tried to articulate one of your "big epiphanies" while on hallucinogens? In my experience (and experience of people I'm with) it inevitably comes out as babble. Maybe that's just because the insight is too profound to capture with language but somehow I doubt it
I have never taken hallucinogens, but I suspect I have undiagnosed narcolepsy, which causes me to occasionally experience normally unconscious sleep states in more conscious way: lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, and (the weirdest of all) being conscious of falling asleep.
My experience with the latter sounds a lot like what some people are reporting in this thread. When I am in this state where I am falling asleep, but still fully conscious, I start thinking complete nonsense — sort of like wooliness is profoundly connected the concept of leftness or like ovals are one of the primary colors (but honestly much less coherent than that).
My suspicion is that it's caused by various neurons firing stochastically as part of the process of falling asleep, and it gives me the sensation that these unrelated concepts are connected to each other. I think we are supposed to be unconscious when this happens so we don't inadvertently take meaning from what is essentially random noise.
Yeah, I think you hit upon what I was trying to describe. It's also so crazy because when you're in this mindstate you truly feel that not only are ovals a primary color but also that this is a deeply profound idea
That being said, i'm a fan of this category of drugs and do feel like they can be very useful tools for introspection and other mental exercises (and they're fun lol).
I just think "drug people" take this stuff too far and often I find my reaction to things they're saying be eye rolling or thinking "it's just drugs man relax"
