Disregard Everything I Say

I am writing this article to serve as a dedicated analysis and description regarding my current understanding towards what I consider to be the most profound and important freestanding component within the entirety of the hallucinogenic experience. In the past, I have already written about the experience of states of unity and interconnectedness within this article here. This piece of writing however makes the incorrect assumption that this state is exclusively associated with level 7B visual geometry. It was also written from a perspective which is extremely limited in comparison to the understanding which I have since built up over the past few months. However, it is extremely important for me to make it clear that I have not come even remotely close to fully grasping or even comprehending both the logic behind this experience and its many potential consequences.
This is a level of understanding which I do not expect to ever reach. Despite this however, I am determined to steadily progress what I have already learnt through a combination of constant analysis and in-depth discussions with an increasingly large amount of people who have undergone this component.

To begin with, I will describe the specific subjective experience and consistent effects of this component in as much detail as possible.
It starts with a change in perspective which is consistently interpreted as the lifting of a deeply embedded and all encompassing illusion. The destruction of this leads onto feelings that the tripper has undergone some sort of profound “awakening” or “enlightenment”.
This illusion feels as though it has always been in place, forcing a person’s perspective of the world into feeling as if their concept of “self” or “I” with which they identify themselves as, is assumed to intrinsically follow two fundamental rules. The first of these rules is that the self is inherently separate from the external environment and could not possibly extend into it. The second is that the self is specifically limited to not even the physical body as a whole, but exclusively a person’s ego or internal narrative and the image of their own personality as built up through social interactions with other people.
Once removed, the absence of this inbuilt illusion can lead onto two possible levels of cognitive intensities which both follow very consistent and interlocking themes.

The lower and more basic of these two levels can be referred to as external environment specific states of unity and interconnectedness. It can be described as a loss of perceived boundaries between the physical body and either the entirety of the external environment or specific things contained within it. This is felt to be the result of a person’s central sense of self becoming attributed to not just the internal narrative of the ego but in equal measure, to the human body in its entirety and the things around it which it is physically connected to through the senses. This creates the undeniable perspective that the external environment is no longer a separate world which the “I” is confronting and disconnected from, but a single unified system of behaviour. This experience provides the perspective that you are the external environment experiencing itself through the specific point within it that this body’s physical sensory awareness and conscious thought happens to reside in. This sensation is generally described by most people as “becoming one with the things around me”.
The most common and relatable examples of states of unity and interconnectedness, which are manifested as specific to the external environment, include but are certainly not limited to the following perspectives:

• Becoming one with a specific object which you are interacting with.
• Becoming one with a specific person which you interacting with.
  (particularly common if engaging in sexual activities)
• Becoming one with large crowds of people.
  (particularly common at raves and music festivals)
• Becoming one with immediately perceivable nature but not man kind.
• Becoming one with the immediate external environment as a whole.

The second and highest level of intensity for this component can be referred to as all encompassing states of unity and interconnectedness. It is at this point of intensity when the experience become infinitely more profound and limitless in its effects.
Once this level is reached, the external systems which a person’s central sense of self has become attributed to and one with is no longer limited to the immediately perceivable environment. Instead, it envelops and becomes attributed to the entirety of a person’s internally stored model of reality, existence and the universe as a whole.

This creates the sudden undeniable perspective that you are literally the entire universe experiencing itself, exploring itself and performing actions onto itself through the very specific point of space and time which your ego and conscious perception happens to reside in.
This is a feeling that when experienced, is immediately and universally understood to be an undeniable truth by anybody who undergoes it. It results in a number of profound consequences and changes in worldview or philosophical perspective which seem to follow fairly consistent themes across almost all people who experience this component. These include but are certainly not limited to:

• A new system of ethics which values the well being of the external as on par with the importance of the ego.
• The sensation that talking to others is the experience of engaging with another part of yourself.
• The sensation that the act of learning is the universe discovering itself and so extremely important this it is accompanied by pleasurable full body mind orgasms and frissons.
• The immediate interpretation of music, films and art as messages which are sent to you through the universe as a whole.
• A perspective which feels personally responsible for the entirety of histories human suffering, as well as every single human act of love and technological achievement which our species has committed onto itself.
• The obviousness of monogamy as a culturally bound tradition which stems from a combination of the ego’s sense of separateness from others and its deep psychological insecurities.
• A perspective which feels as if death can finally be accepted. This is because it is no longer felt to be the destruction of the self but simply the end of this specific point of conscious awareness which will continue to live on through everything else which it resides in.

This is a component which can either be felt as a temporary sensation that disappears as the tripper sobers up or it can become integrated into a new perspective of the world for weeks, months or years after the experience itself.

It is seemingly completely spontaneous in its rate of occurrence but seems to be particularly common during states of level 7B visual geometry when the tripper is by themselves. It also seems to occur when deep introspection results in the tripper truly resolving and coming to terms with each of their specific sets of insecurities in a way that has allowed them to become finally acceptant and content with who they are as a person.

In terms of the specific substances which are capable of inducing this component, the list currently confirms that it is possible within,

Psilocin, 4-AcO-DMT, DMT, LSD, MDMA, Ketamine, DXM and Salvia divinorum.

Similar notions of unity and the illusory nature of the self seem to be discussed heavily throughout a huge variety of religious, philosophical and psychological sources, which have been produced across both modern and ancient human history. Each of these exist independently from the experience of hallucinogenic substances. I have done my best to collect and list all of these below:

• The Buddhist phrase of anatta, which can be read about in detail here, specifically refers to the concept of “no-self”. This is the teaching that all things perceived by the senses (including the mental sense of thought) are not really “I” or “mine”, and for this reason one should not cling to them.
• Monism which can be read about in detail here, is a philosophical position which argues that there is only one thing, which all things are not separate from but working together within as a unified system of behaviour.
• The Hindu philosophy known as Nondualism can be read about in detail here. This is an idea which states that there is no difference between the concept of Brahman (the external environment) and Ātman (the self).
• The formally defined world view known as Interconnectedness, which can be read about in detail here, defines itself as the idea that all things are of a single underlying substance and reality, and that there is no true separation deeper than appearances.
• In psychology, egolessness, which can be read about in detail here, is an emotional state where one feels no ego (or self); of having no distinct being apart from the world around oneself. This is often described as feelings of oneness and being inextricably woven to the fabric of one’s surroundings or environment.
• In Freudian psychology, oceanic feeling which can be read about in detail here, is described as a sensation of an indissoluble bond, as of being connected with the external world in its integral form which is considered to be the source of religious energy. From this perspective, the feeling is referred to as an entirely subjective fact and is not an article of faith.
• The overview effect, which is described in detail within this documentary here, is a documented change in perspective experienced by astronauts who see the earth from above. It is described as perceiving the earth as a single unified system with which we are all a part of.
• Alan Watts, a famous philosopher spoke extensively about the illusory nature of the self. His lectures are extremely informative and can be found in full through torrents on the pirate bay and in parts within many videos across Youtube. His book “The book on the taboo of knowing who you are” is dedicated to a formal explanation of the philosophies and logic behind this perspective and can be found within the form of a free PDF here.

My personal interpretation or description of the themes within these philosophies (which may well be overly simplified or completely wrong) is that the individual and the universe cannot be logically defined as separate systems. This is because, to define a physical object of any sort in even the most basic level of detail, you must also provide an account of the way in which it physically interacts with and is completely dependent on its particular external environment. In turn, the external environment which the original object resides within cannot be fully defined without taking into account the surrounding systems which it is also contained within and so on outwards to encompass existence as a whole. This renders the self or any individual concept as something which can not logically be defined as a contained and separate system from the rest of the universe.
In the very same way that you cannot logically have up without down, left without right, something without nothing, light without dark or positive without negative. You cannot have self without other or each without all because the two concepts inter-depend and exclusively exist in an inseparable and unified relationship to each other.
This suggests to me that one is permitted to use terms such as “I”, “you”, and so on, not because they refer to an empirical and separate self, but simply because they are convenient linguistic tools for use in conversation which should not be considered as anything more than a symbolic approximation or measurement. 
 
Regardless of the legitimacy of these theistic and philosophical perspectives which may be inherently delusional or false, feelings of becoming “one with universe” which are pervasive within human culture, is undoubtedly one of the most profoundly positive changes in perspective that a human being could possibly go through.
Assuming however that this is a rational and logically sound perspective, I am left with two alternate hypotheses in regards to why this illusion seems to be so deeply embedded into each and everyone of us.
The first of these is that it perhaps this illusion formed because it is an evolutionary advantage for the ego to feel intrinsically separate from and more significant than, the external environment as a means of ensuring the motivation for survival. This was my previous theory but upon further analysis has proven implausible. I do not see any physical route through which a drug that simply activates or deactivates receptors could change something that is hard wired into the very structure of the brain.
The second of these personal hypotheses is that the illusion of separateness does not stem from a hardware problem but a software problem. I personally believe that unity may well be the default evolutionary perspective through which human beings originally operated, but it has been suppressed through a purely cultural or more specifically, linguistic problem. This could potentially stem from the way that despite the many obvious benefits of language, it pays a price through completely reorganizing our perception of the world into a system of intrinsically separate labels that in reality, are merely glimpses of a unified whole. It’s an overcoming of this deeply embedded illusion that hallucinogens could theoretically rise above through the way in which they forcibly induce embedded and otherwise hidden states of mind that exist within the subconscious.

If myself and the psychedelic community as a whole dedicate themselves to coming to a total understanding of this important component, the potential consequences could have historical significance. Were the subtle environmental triggers to be accurately determined, it would be theoretically possible to consistently induce permanent and all encompassing states of unity and interconnectedness in a clinical setting. This would provide the entirety of the human species to a total freedom from our psychological, unnecessary and purely ego driven suffering which consumes our entire perspective of the world.

If you have had any experience with this component whatsoever please do report this in the comment section below and the drug which it occurred on. This provides myself and everybody else with extremely valuable data and would be greatly appreciated.