Why do I talk about Psychedelism So Much

Such a good question! I praise myself for asking it because it demonstrates, to myself, my keen awareness of the processes moving inside of me. I wish you be as keen as I am at the moment when I wrote the title. Truly special.  

  

This doesn't answer the question though, but I'm warming up for that. I'm not the kind of person to purport that "psychedelism" isn't a real word. What is a real word, anyway? A "cat", a "dog", a "socialism", are those the only things I'm supposed to work with? The "correct" word to use instead of Psychedelism would be "Psychedelia", but these two are different words and I don't equate them. The "-ism" suffix lifts Psychedelia up to a more abstract level. The primary reference for understanding Psychedelia is "The Doors of Perception" by a Guy Who Wrote Something Other Than A Dreamwidth Blog. It's associated with seeing "true nature of things".

 

Buddhism also teaches about the "true nature of things", which, in its essence, boils down to "all you see is your perception, and that's it". Seeing "true nature of things" is recognizing your perception. Non-psychedelic perception is trained very hard since birth to ignore the fact of perception. The brain deludes itself into believing that it sees the world as it is. But the Guy Who Wrote… after doing a particular thing claimed to finally see things how they are. "They're so infinite! And we're so united!" That's only partly true. Things appear infinite and appear united. And they appear finite and disjoint. And they disappear after a while, after an enigmatic episode known as death, which is the end of all Perception.

 

I talk about psychedelism so much because that's the kind of thing that I've preoccupied with lately, since I started studying Buddhist philosophy. Because this idea of perception, the very fact that it's all I've ever had in my life and there will be nothing by that, I'm internalizing it. And I'm writing about it.