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plant spirit rant

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Why in 2015 is it still ok to say that this plant has a dark spirit or this plant has a healing spirit ?

Or this mushroom has a really dark spirit but this different mushroom ( same strain different location) has a really happy spirit

I mean we could perform chemical analysis on the plant to make a measurement of the compounds in the plant but we cant do an extraction to measure the spirit of a plant so how can we say with any certainty that we understand the qualities of a plant spirit ?

surely by now we understand that the trip is a combination of the compound and your current mental state. Not the state of the plant spirit

If plants had spirits in them that made them psychoactive then why aren't we finding a heaps of psychoactive plants that contain zero psychoactive compounds?

As far as i can see the psychoactive plants contain psychoactive compounds which is what makes them psychoactive.

If a spirit inside a plant created psychoactive properties then why is synthetic changa just as psychoactive as changa from a tree?

If you have a dark time on a strain of fungus, how does that reflect on the spiritual qualities of the fungi instead of the current state of your mentality ?

I know its eazy to point the finger and blame something for your dark experience but it just sounds like your to scared to be honest with yourself

Im not directing this at anyone in particular here, this is just something i needed to have a rant about,

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i understand why people would have thought the Willow Tree had a healing spirit that helped reduced pain a few hundred years ago

But today in 2015 we understand acetylsalicylic acid (Asprin) is produced by the Willow Tree

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Can you rationalise everything and measure it?

Why does it matter? If you can reduce life down to a set of numbers then that's a hollow and sad existence to me.

Life is magical, do you doubt that?

In 2015, when the world is in the most abominably fucked up state, why put down someone's beliefs if that makes them happy?

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I can rationalise and measure everything i consider to be real :)

i get life is magical and full of mystery, so why the need to make up things when we could be working on solving the mysteries of life

In 2015 when the world is as fucked up as it is i think its more constructive to be working on understand the world we live in, not making up things to help us feel more comfortable with facts that we currently do not understand.

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It matters because the world is full of miss information and miss information is dangerous to young minds that are trying to understand how the world works

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I think, just figure it out for yourself.

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Everyone is doing in it, in their own way. Just get on with your own shit ;)

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Can you measure feelings? Can you quantify happiness? Are they real enough?

In 2015, I'm afraid there are far more dangerous things for young minds than believing that a plant may have a spirit.

Maybe tolerance is more important than truth?

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Good rant Change. :)

why put down someone's beliefs if that makes them happy?

I've got no issue with people believing whatever the hell they like. But when they start spreading misinformation like saying that this material is "toxic" or dangerous just because they happened to have a bad time on it, this I object to. Like Change said, these problems often come from within, and blaming them on the spirit (or contents) of the plant/drug seems unfair, both to the drug's reputation, and to anyone who might have benefited from that material if accurate information had been available.

People should just acknowledge the power of set & setting on experiences, and accept the contents of their own heads. So stop blaming a drug for showing you your problems - it didn't create them. I think we need an ethnobot version of "PEBKAC" to describe this tendency. :P

But I think people often use the word "spirit" more to describe the character of the experience, rather than actually referring to some kind of entity.

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Can you measure feelings? Can you quantify happiness? Are they real enough?

In 2015, I'm afraid there are far more dangerous things for young minds than believing that a plant may have a spirit.

Maybe tolerance is more important than truth?

I spent a month or so asking all the Biological Scientist @ uni how to measure love

The best response i got was "beats per minute" lol

Seriously tho dont you think its dangerous when shamans say this plant will allow you to talk to your dead relatives ?

Or do u think i should just tolerate watching people induce psychosis in an attempt to find some closer on an issues they aren't dealing with very well.

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I will confess I have given subs a fair bashing by being mental and overdoing it you only ever do that once. or twice.

but that's not subs fault that im a tool. apologies to Psilocybe suberiginosa, Pimento was right, I am a rat.

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subaeruginosa* for the young minds.

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Do you think you have a soul or a spirit ?

Or do you just believe that you are a conglomerate of atoms ?

If you think you have no soul or spirit then maybe you don't. Maybe no-one or nothing does. Many people live their whole lives with that belief and some die with that belief. It seems like that type of thought is only entertained by some people on their death bed.

Is it totally unreasonable for for humans & other forms of life (that science is yet to be able replicate from scratch) to have a lifeforce that science is yet to quantify ?

I've been pronounced dead four times and every experience has been the same - deja vu, which is proof of nothing and has even been refuted by scientific investigations and in some cases can be replicated chemically, but all those experiences I've had leave me with the feeling that some part of us can transcend this existence after we die.

I don't know man, but I do hope there is something that science will never quantify that transcends reality.

My reality sucks, so I have to admit am I biased.

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Can you rationalise everything and measure it?

Why does it matter? If you can reduce life down to a set of numbers then that's a hollow and sad existence to me.

Life is magical, do you doubt that?

Yes ok, life is magical. But why does that have to be an external thing? Surely the most magical part is our own experience of it - that is reality as far as most people are concerned. Why do our own personal beliefs about the nature of that reality need to have anything to do with consensus reality? So yes, I'd say that most people do doubt it, simply because they seem so desperate to have other people acknowledge and agree with their experiences.

And why does everyone talk about "reducing" things down to their scientific explanations? Why not accept science as an addition to your other beliefs and ways of thinking? Things can still be magical if you understand how they work, and I would argue that this understanding often makes them more amazing, not less. Looking at your hand while tripping can be a mind-blowing experience, I'm sure. But doing the same thing after studying microbiology - learning about energy transfer in cells, hunger cascades, blood biochemistry and so on - looking at all that information, then thinking about all the work that went into learning it & distributing it so other people could learn about it too, and the entire edifice of 'science' behind that - and then looking at your hand and seeing all those chemical & cellular processes underneath, understanding why your skin is pink & what makes it warm & what bacteria live there symbiotically & what sweat is made of & how the hair grows ... are you really telling me that that is somehow less magical, less amazing?

Science is not about reducing stuff down to numbers, it's about getting good answers to your questions - the numbers are just a means to an end, a method of checking ourselves to help make sure we don't get lazy with our thinking and just go "yeah, that looks about right". The only reasons I can see that anyone wouldn't need it is if they either had no questions (which is just sad), or didn't care whether they got good answers to them (which is just lazy). Either way, apathy or lack of curiosity, that's the kind of existence that seems sad and hollow to me.

(note: I'm talking about 'science' as an ideal mode of thought, not as the practical institution - in practice scientists are guilty of every kind of bad thinking imaginable, and causing myriad problems in the world to boot. But that's true of most human institutions, we're just idiots like that - no reason to blame the tools just because we use them badly)

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Where has it ever been stated that the soul creates our personality ?

Put the same soul into a king, a pauper and a thief and chances are the personality would be vastly diiferent.

If you seriously believe that nothing but science is of any consequence or importance then lie, cheat, steal and take advantage of all others in the name of science and rejoice in the fact that there is no soul or spirit.

Is spirit or soul something that needs to be proven by double blind studies or just an abstract notion that relates the the human condition ?

People have struggled with this issue for thousands of years.

In my mind it's all just an allegory to morality - do we believe it's all about the here and now or is there a bigger picture.

Choosing the here and now is a convenient excuse to cash in at other peoples expense. You never struck me that way Change.

You always seemed like you could believe in the bigger picture.

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Where has it ever been stated that the soul creates our personality ?

This is a fair point, but as for the rest...

Do you think that believing in the existence of souls is really all that keeps people moral?

Do we need to believe in the concept of an immortal soul to appreciate "the bigger picture" or to take the long view of the consequences of our actions? Are people who believe in the afterlife more environmentally conscious or something? Somehow I doubt it. They're the ones who think that they have another plane of existence to look forward to - maybe us soulless creatures who believe that here & now is all we've got, will be more inclined to take good care of 'here & now'.

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Reality is a mirror. A dark 'plant spirit' reflects the darkness within.

But darkness is not 'bad', it is an essential part of the whole. We prune plants and propagate cuttings, the violence of these actions allows new growth that might not have previously been possible. Embrace the darkness. :)

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Do you think that believing in the existence of souls is really all that keeps people moral?

Not really Anodyne, but you've only seen a tiny little piece of this picture.

Change has taken an allegorical representation of an issue I posted years ago and extrapolated it into a literal misrepresentation of facts.

Is there a bigger picture or do we just try to score points on misunderstood points of moral superiority?

You've taken everything I wrote totally out of context.

I've tried to remain as neutral as possible and most of my comments have been in the form questions in an effort to inspire some deeper thought.

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Change,

Its up to you how you accept or reject your experiences. The rational mind seeks to explain everything, and science is its religion. Perhaps what you experienced was a projection of your subconscious, perhaps you did communicate with his spirit, perhaps you tapped into a collective unconscious that we return to when we die. If one clings to the 'facts' of the experience, one could diminish the significance of the experience, trying to explain it all away.

It sounds to me like you have been through some profound experiences. My advice is to accept them and learn from them, and keep it personal, because it makes many uncomfortable to hear such things. They will apply labels and make explanations, but ultimately only you know what you experienced.

All the best.

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"Why in 2015 is it still ok to say that this plant has a dark spirit or this plant has a healing spirit ?"

Because it's true. That's why. Everything you need to answer your own questions is written, by you, in your post here.

Think about it.

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Now in hind sight im pretty sure that my sub conscious mind created that vision to make us all more comfortable with the situation, myself included.

 

I mean if i actually communicated with the dead then why doesn't it happen regularly, and why did i need to be off my head for it to happen

 

i'm sure you didn't 'really' communicate with your deceased friend. But the fact is you aren't 'really' even who you think you are. Reality isn't linear, reality isn't even 'real'.

this 'self' we think we are is nothing but a amalgamation of thoughts, memories & emotions that have formed into a temporary psychological structure within an organism that is in fact entirely indistinct, except in a superficial sense, from the rest of the entirety of the multiverse.

If you had a meaningful 'communication' with your deceased friend & it was helpful for you then perhaps in some sense you did communicate with him, as the distinctions that give the impression that you are separate from him or anyone or anything else are entirely a product of thought forms that are nothing more than a high frequency holographic projection inside your mind. The fact is though too, that, along with the data from your senses that is decoded by your nervous system, everything you have ever experienced or thought about & in fact the entire universe, as far as you have experienced or thought about it is also a holographic projection inside your mind. This is science. Science tells us that the universe & 'reality' is probably a lot more complex & bazaar than science will ever have time or scope to fully quantify.

People are free to believe what ever they like about souls etc, but what we can say is that when your friend passed away, his temporary physical cohesion cycled back into the biosphere & apart from that temporary physical cohesion, all that really came to an end was his particular temporary amalgamation of thoughts, emotions & sensations that together formed his 'ego'

Perhaps when you were tripping balls you also temporarily transcended ego's illusion of separateness & were privvy to a 'reality' beyond our tiny little self absorbed ego, where 'communication' with the 'dead' was possible. So maybe you did communicate, but it doesn't mean it was actually him, but the fact is, he was never really actually him even in life, just as you are not actually you & i am not actually who i think i am either.

It's this concept of self that makes these things so confusing. death is an illusion, because the 'self' is an illusion. When there is no 'self' then there is literally no distinction between 'you' & the rest of the universe. All phenomena are part of one great, seemingly infinite fluctuation of form & emptiness

(to put it simply) & what we call 'death' is just another form of fluctuation & the end of a temporary, self reflective amalgamation of thought. It only hurts because our survival as an ape throughout our evolution has favored our being strongly identified with this temporary amalgamation of thought & emotion.

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I'm impressed that we've managed to have a discussion that hasn't degenerated to some of our recent levels.

I like to live both paradigms, I pick and choose my beliefs whenever I feel like one is more fitting than the other. That's my prerogative.

Now, if anyone can give me advice on how to prepare for the day that my son finds out that Santa Claus isn't real, that would be some really useful information!

 

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Let him believe what he wants to believe. My girl knows Santa ain't real but she loves the fantasy. Reality is subjective :)

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