Is there a spiritual dimension
I have created an argument that attempts to prove the existence of a spiritual dimesion. Please feel free to criticise it.
My argument relies heavily on the experiences individuals have when taking a large dose of DMT. If you are unaware, dmt is the strongest psychedelic drug. There is a consensus between almost all that have taken DMT that they experience a real experience of leaving their own body and going to another dimesion (where they are a mere soul).
My argument;
P1 - DMT produces convincingly real hallucinations / realities of going to a spiritual dimension.
P2 - This visionary experience of a spiritual dimension exists.
C1 - this spiritual dimension is either a mere hallucination or is real.
*now lets assume the experience is not a reality, but rather a hallucination
P2–1 - this hallucination derived from the drug is an inherent part of the characteristics of the universe (CoU) (the drug is found in plants, which are a material thing in the universe. Furthermore, the hallucination of going to another dimension is consistent with most that take it and therefore a CoU)
P2-2 - for this hallucination to exist as a part of the CoU; the principles that the CoU are governed by, must be knowing and/or accounted for this this hallucination (spiritual dimension)
P2-3 - for the principles that govern the CoU to be knowing of this concept of a spiritual dimension, it must be a real characteristic of the universe that does exist (qualities these hallucination abide by have been fine tuned and developed with deep complexity by the principles in which the universe follows).
C2- if DMT creates a hallucination, the hallucination must be representing something real.
Or C2 may be - DMT can not create a mere hallucination.
My argument relies heavily on the experiences individuals have when taking a large dose of DMT. If you are unaware, dmt is the strongest psychedelic drug. There is a consensus between almost all that have taken DMT that they experience a real experience of leaving their own body and going to another dimesion (where they are a mere soul).
My argument;
P1 - DMT produces convincingly real hallucinations / realities of going to a spiritual dimension.
P2 - This visionary experience of a spiritual dimension exists.
C1 - this spiritual dimension is either a mere hallucination or is real.
*now lets assume the experience is not a reality, but rather a hallucination
P2–1 - this hallucination derived from the drug is an inherent part of the characteristics of the universe (CoU) (the drug is found in plants, which are a material thing in the universe. Furthermore, the hallucination of going to another dimension is consistent with most that take it and therefore a CoU)
P2-2 - for this hallucination to exist as a part of the CoU; the principles that the CoU are governed by, must be knowing and/or accounted for this this hallucination (spiritual dimension)
P2-3 - for the principles that govern the CoU to be knowing of this concept of a spiritual dimension, it must be a real characteristic of the universe that does exist (qualities these hallucination abide by have been fine tuned and developed with deep complexity by the principles in which the universe follows).
C2- if DMT creates a hallucination, the hallucination must be representing something real.
Or C2 may be - DMT can not create a mere hallucination.
Comments (39)
When I refer the spiritual dimension being real, in my opinion, for it to be real the system would have to continue to exist and function outside of the hallucination experienced by the person (not just a product of the human mind).
So, yeah, I'd say it's as real as calling pain receptors opioidergic, immunomodulatory pertaining the endocannabinoid system or that pertaining cognition-nicotinic...
DMT is also found in plants, so it would appear to have more extensive uses than just dreaming.
A-ha!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45812-w
So this leads me to the belief that either the spirit lives on after the death of the body, or the spirit dissolves into the rest of the universe. If we are more than the body, there is no reason that the ‘more’ would suddenly disappear into nothingness while the visible body remains.
One characteristic of the experience that seems to be common is the sensation/hallucination of what they retrospectively refer to as their 'ego' breaking apart or something similar.
To me i've always thought that the experience may not be one of another dimension but could be simply perceiving more (or less) of this dimension. Perhaps DMT affects the way the brain interprets sensory data and therefore augments our perception.
I've also heard people say that their perception of time is impacted.
The 'ego breaking down' and the fact their perception of time is affected sounds like the limitations on our sensory intake are being effected.
Our 'perceived reality' is greatly determined by the limitations of our senses. Perhaps when these senses are affected by DMT for example, we are able to perceive the same reality but with a different lens/filter. Not sure if we are seeing more or less or just simply a different perspective.
I guess what I was getting at is, is it reasonable to define these “schemes” as other dimensions?
And if so, does that necessarily mean they are “spiritual dimensions” as OP’d?
I agree that brain activity is not the experience lived, but I do not see what your point is.
Quoting armonie
You simply misunderstood what I said, “the spirit dissolves into the rest of the universe” precisely doesn’t mean that the spirit ceases to exist, it continues to exist in some way, like the material parts that composed the body keep on existing.
Yes this is what I’m asking.
It seems that before the propsed conclusions within the OP can be further explored, we would require some elaboration on his concept of dimensionality, spirituality and also their relationship to one another.
What do you mean by “developing the concept”?
I like that, tell me more.
Indeed the experience is real, I would say all experiences are real. But to what extent is the experience an experience of something separate from us (such as of a spiritual dimension), or a creation of ourselves (of our mind)?
But then we can ask the same of the world we see with our usual senses, do other people exist or are they a creation of our mind (solipsism)? If we assume from our experiences of other people that other people exist, it is natural to assume from experiences of other spirits that other spirits exist.
In any case psychedelics tell us something important. But even though the experience is real, it could be that the interpretation of the experience is mistaken. For instance not all people who take DMT (or another psychedelic) react the same way. But then it can also be said that not all people see the usual world the same way (for instance there are blind people), so as we explain why some people don't see the usual world it could be that later on we come to explain why some people don't see the spiritual dimension.
One of the things that prevents me from being absolutely certain that the spiritual dimension exists (as in a place where our spirit goes to when we die) is that in the past I have had vivid and lucid dreams that would have really strange implications if they were experiences of something separate from me rather than a creation of my mind. For instance when I was a kid I once had a vivid dream of a Tyrannosaurus rex chasing me in our garden, that would be strange if that was a real thing that happened and not a creation of my mind based on things I had seen (such as depictions of dinosaurs and Jurassic Park).
How do we know whether an experience we have is coming from outside us or from within us? Is 'outside' or 'inside' a label that we assign arbitrarily?
The characteristic of dmt that makes it unique is that it creates an experience that previously one could not possibly imagine (the experience of literally leaving your material body and floating through some strange place). The only way this could still be a product of the mind is if it were some fundamental information that is subconsciously stored in the brain.
If this were the case, where would this information originally be derived from?
I know what you mean, for instance the best way I can describe psilocybin is that it allows one to see/imagine/understand things that one is not capable of seeing/imagining/understanding usually.
That information being subconsciously stored in the brain is a possibility, however that’s doubtful because studies have shown that brain activity decreases while under the effect of psilocybin, instead of increasing as would be expected if it allowed to access more information from the brain.
Another possibility is that the mind is more than the brain (which to me is a necessity for other reasons, if the mind reduced to the brain we couldn’t explain the existence of qualia), and that the mind is able to create experiences that are more than combinations of previous experiences, that it transcends causality, and that there are ways to help it express that ability through psychedelics. I have heard that some people have found a way to relive similar experiences without using psychedelics, I’ll have to look into that.
But if the mind has that incredible ability then indeed why would it be entirely causally dependent on the physical body?
So I do think that when the body dies the mind doesn’t instantly cease to exist, but the big mystery is does it go on to keep living in a spiritual realm, or does it remain partly connected to matter and dissolves into the universe just like the matter that makes up the body disintegrates without being destroyed? As the atoms that make up the body do not cease to exist, they move on to other places within the material universe.
Since the mind is at least partly connected to the body, it seems equally strange that the mind would suddenly disappear upon death of the body, or that the mind would go on to exist independently in another realm. Maybe then the explanation that makes the most sense is that the mind neither disappears nor goes on to exist independently, but that it dissolves into the rest of the universe, which would make reincarnation real in some way.
Jokes aside I think there is a spiritual dimension and people live in it and lead quite satisfactory lives until they meet just that someone who'll break that world into a million pieces.
Minds, in my view, inhabit a world in itself, separated from the physical and is itself subdivided into different worldviews, one of which is spiritualism. However I don't think the mind can detach from the physical and live exclusively in the spiritual dimension a la soul.
Now that I have described a recent dream, a bit abstractly, and thought about it. I could try to think about something like that. Try to combine a few different people and imagine a conversation with that composite, while in that composite environment and as a person not quite like my wakign self experiencing this. I could try to do that. I don't think I have the skill to end up with that even already knowing what it was like.
You are focused on nouns. And most of my dream objects and entities are nouns I am aware of in every day life, However some are not even that. They are composites or things that make no sense on waking. There are landscapes that make no sense and have no real life correlates.
The hallucination while on DMT is fundamentally different. Experiencing the spirit leave your body and enter a strange 'spiritual dimension' is completely inconceivable. No past experience I've had correlates with that at all.
But even going beyond that: I have had dreams that were sort of two dimensional visually, but with the sense that the patterns I was looking at were beings, but not like beings in this universe. There were feelings - unpleasant in the specific one I am thinking of that I had semi-regularly when I was younger. I I did make a couple of descriptive statements here, ones that gesture to what I experienced, but that's as far as I can go.
Most of my dreams I can give more description, like I did for dreams that while I cannot create them in waking life, I can describe to some degree. But now and then I have experiences in dreaming sleep that are not describable.
real life is a hallucination. but the mind has no other reality to compare it to that is more real in order to call this reality unreal. in fact the only other reality the mind has is itself, which it can see is less real.
and this hallucination has reliability, so the mind can use it to avoid pain and attain pleasure. which is all it really cares about.
so it calls this hallucination real
if you were born with a VR helmet on and everytime you ate something in the VR i put food in your real mouth then that would become your reality which you would argue is real.
even if pain was an illusion people would still avoid it. so its real enough.
three things can be said about this reality:
1- its the realest thing i got
2- its reliable
3- its real enough
Real life can't be a hallucination if there isn't anything else more real to compare with. A hallucination implies it is less real than something else.
Personally, life is real. Mental images and events are real because the mind or brain is real. It is the same with a storybook, the book is real and the story is real too. The story can only be fiction in relation to what we call factual records, otherwise it is real because it exists.
the brain is in the mind
Quoting BrianW
and yes the mind is real because it exists
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream