[quechimba]

They exist. Shamans work with different spirits and even have names for ones they work with.

I was skeptical in the beginning but it's a different reality. Just because we can't normally see them doesn't mean they don't exist.

I don't see spirits most times I drink, but I once had a gecko-like plant spirit climbing all over me... I often see beautiful patterns and landscapes.

It's an amazing medicine. It cured my depression and my daily panic attacks. It wasn't easy, and I even packed my bags a few times to leave, but if it wasn't for ayahuasca I wouldn't be alive.

    “We are completely unaware of the magical world of the shaman. It is quite simply stranger than we can suppose.“ 
    — Terrence McKenna

[nso]

You seeing something when on strong drugs that you can't see when not is not strong evidence for its existence.

[bheadmaster]

Depends on how you define "existence".

In general, we define existence in context of consistence of stimulus with everyday experience, including other people's reports of experience. Dreams are very rarely consistent with each other, so we know they're dreams. But imagine if every time you went to sleep, you woke up in a "dreamworld" with all the experience sequentially consistent with your previous dreams. How would you know that the "dream" is the dream, and that the real world is the real world?

I'm not saying that hallucinations are real - I strongly believe the opposite. But I can see such how powerful and consistent hallucinations could make the person believe in their existence, especially if combined with low life satisfaction/self-esteem and strong desire to feel special in some sort of way, to know something that the "unenlightened" don't, or to be a part of something. It's a similar mechanism to one that makes people join religions - psychedelic experiences have a lot in common with religious experiences. One could also hypothesize that religion was invented when humans found psychedelics, and couldn't explain their effects.

[z3c0]

People have reported achieving identical experiences solely through meditation, though it takes much more work.

Believe it or not, most people who toy with DMT are aware of what hallucinations are, and wouldn't conflate them with reality without a good reason. You're being quite reductive and inconsiderate of your audience - this isn't /r/trees.

[quechimba]

Most people I know in the Amazon have never had ayahuasca, or consume any psychoactive substances except alcohol. Everyone will tell you it's real. I think if you just spend enough time in the jungle you're gonna start noticing things. It's very strange.

One time, a girl I know came crying because she had been chased by duendes. The men went out in the forest to blow tobacco smoke to keep them away.

[pmoriarty]

"You seeing something when on strong drugs that you can't see when not is not strong evidence for its existence."

This assumes that the sober state of mind takes precedence over the altered state of mind. But there's no evidence that the one is superior to the other.

One could equally claim that things that one experiences when sober does not exist, and only things that one experiences while altered does.

Which is the more real? There's no "objective" standpoint one could take to evaluate the two and compare them to the "real real" to judge which is closer.

[ilyt]

>This assumes that the sober state of mind takes precedence over the altered state of mind. But there's no evidence that the one is superior to the other.

First, define "superior".

Second, if you have 20 sober people looking at thing and reporting it looks the same, then you drug them and every one of them reports someone else, I'm giving that to the "sober mind", even when some tiny minority might be reporting in "sober" state what others would classify as "drugged"

[pmoriarty]

This assumes we all share the same reality, and further assumes that the criteria sober people use to judge reality must be the right one.

Ask people in a different state of mind and they can give you plenty of other criteria... such as that what they are experiencing is to them "more real than real", or that they're able to commune with their god in that state while they're unable to in a sober state, or that they're able to communicate with their dead relatives in the altered state, or that it's more spiritual, etc...

Why should some sober people's consensus trump the criteria of people in altered states of consciousness?

[bheadmaster]

> Why should some sober people's consensus trump the criteria of people in altered states of consciousness?

Because hallucinating people usually aren't in consensus about what is real, while sober people are. Consensus is the only criteria for reality we have, don't we?

Not saying that consensus makes it a reality, but it's the best indicator of whatever we're calling reality.

[quechimba]

In the Amazon rainforest, the consensus is that spirits are real.

Why would they be hallucinating? Most people don't drink ayahuasca.

[bheadmaster]

> But there's no evidence that the one is superior to the other.

I believe the fact that people cannot drive a car properly while hallucinating seems to be a bit of evidence of "superiority" of the sober mind over the intoxicated, at least in the real world.

[pmoriarty]

Why did you pick car driving as the measure of reality?

Why not pick love making, or singing, appreciating or making music, laughing, communing with spirits or gods, feeling empathy for others, or making art?

[bheadmaster]

Because when you hit someone with a car, they die. When you have bad sex, it's just bad sex. In other words, driving a car requires much better connection with reality in order to make sure you're doing it right, and doing it wrong has much harder consequences than the things you've listed.

Sure, all those things are pleasant to people, but that doesn't have anything to do with them being "real". When you watch a good movie, the scenes feel real, but they are very much not.

[euroderf]

Driving a car is just conditioning yourself thru repetition to operate one particularly dangerous mechanical device thru dynamic environments. No biggie.