[HN Gopher] Oneness via gurus, psychedelics and the hidden code ...
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       Oneness via gurus, psychedelics and the hidden code in Jordan
       Mechner's Karateka
        
       Author : schmudde
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2021-01-30 16:11 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (schmud.de)
 (TXT) w3m dump (schmud.de)
        
       | jnathsf wrote:
       | I'm not sure the author read Ram Dass' book or knows of his life
       | as the author mentions Buddhism several times but clearly Ram
       | Dass is a Hindu (his name means servant of Ram, a Hindu god, and
       | his guru was Hindu).
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | PragmaticPulp wrote:
       | From the article:
       | 
       | > Ram Dass spends the first part of the book describing his
       | journey. It involves a dive into the world of psychedelic drugs
       | and their benefits and limitations. His experience essentially
       | opens him up to Eastern mysticism.
       | 
       | There is some evidence that supports the notion that psychedelics
       | increase openness to new ideas. This is the basis of psychedelic-
       | assisted therapy, in which psychedelics are thought to make the
       | patient more open to accepting the therapy intervention while
       | unlearning their previously unhealthy thought patterns.
       | 
       | However, that openness to new ideas is a double-edged sword.
       | People who use psychedelics in uncontrolled environments with
       | excessive frequency can pick up a lot of strange ideas along the
       | way.
       | 
       | Increasing one's openness to new ideas might be a good thing in
       | the presence of a trained therapist or other well-meaning
       | environments. However, it may become counterproductive in
       | uncontrolled environments where users are prone to picking up
       | conspiracy theories, new age mysticism, pseudoscience, or other
       | misinformation that bombards us from all angles on modern social
       | media.
       | 
       | Modern news article about psychedelics skew heavily toward the
       | positives while burying the risks and downsides. For example,
       | many people glorify Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR and 1993 noble
       | prize winner, for his love of LSD. Few people know that he also
       | believed he talked to a glowing raccoon in the forest, was a
       | climate change denier, and didn't believe that HIV was related to
       | AIDS. Being too open to new ideas is not unilaterally positive.
        
         | alan-crowe wrote:
         | There is a wonderfully written article, Why Were the Early
         | Psychedelicists So Weird?
         | https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psyched...
         | 
         | that expands on your important point.
        
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