Thread by @owenbroadcast

recently a big topic of conversation on here has been why taking ayahuasca seems to result in these large changes for people. the stereotype of someone taking one of these drugs and then radically shifting their life path is accurate. but why? heres an attempt to explain it

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https://twitter.com/sporadicalia/status/1842240849721115087

i do obviously have religious views, believe in the spirit, spirit things, literal demons, and so on - but i think there is also a mental explanation that accounts for some percent of this. i see people grasping in this direction, and its difficult. heres the missing piece (imo)

the popular model of "the mind" is pretty bad. in fact, im not really clear on what it is, at all. i guess most people believe in a subconscious - something like that - and then after that, its unclear. the problem with subconscious is that it implies being underneath, hidden.

in my opinion, through some work and studies i have come to the conclusion that, while that is real, theres also a "higher" aspect to knowledge where knowledge becomes automatic. in that sense, it is hidden - but not like being under a blanket. it just becomes an innate knowing.

if you drive, and you know how to drive, you don't think about all the little things you do. they're just automatic - innately known with no effort. to me, that is different than the subconscious. its like "super-knowing". one guy i know said its the highest degree of knowing.

i think that is more accurate. if you're extremely well versed in thomistic philosophy, for example, you can approach a problem with that framework in total - without thinking about it. thats not really subconscious, to me. its like super conscious. you super-know it hyper-well.

so, when you really know something, you dont have to think about it. so, you dont. its effortless knowing

that clarifies the above problem in two directions. firstly, when you have realizations on those substances, they feel very extreme and go very deep. but, where do they go?

they can go directly into this type of innate super-knowing, and they start "running" automatically. they just become part of you.

thats significant because it means that when you ask someone about them, they might not even know. they probably can't even explain it themselves.

i have a lot of insights about painting while painting. could i explain them? some of them, yeah. but there are probably several thousand i had, cognized, and filed into this super-knowing category. they just run as automatic knowledge when i paint now. i don't know theyre there

so you assume you could ask someone, and they could explain it.

thats not a given, and puts it behind a veil (hence the general popular outsider confusion).

secondly, and this would be the larger factor, you naturally normally have a ton of stuff running "up there", every day.

i think most of these 180 degree turns and major life shifts result from people poking around up there while having these intense experiences. on a surface level, that explains why you see the career shifts. someone has incorporated "i want to be a lawyer" into that superknowing

its just been running as an automatic process. so then they take it down and change it, to: actually i want to be a beet farmer. and they do, they go be a beet farmer. its subjective if thats good, but that happens.

you also have less explicable foundational posits up there.

i would guess thats one reason why it hits the tech scene so hard. you have someone who has incorporated foundational posits about technology (correct or incorrect, whatever) into that superknowing, and then if they change one, it becomes difficult to continue their career path

personally i've experienced that with art. when art dovetails with hardcore psychedelic drugs, it often becomes "art about art" or "art about the process" or more meta, for that exact reason. you start tinkering with all the processes that were previously running automatically.

that could be good or bad, but with the popular fuzzy conception of the mind, you can feel and see that people have a hard time pinning down why exactly drugs made their friend change careers. i think this model, even if just imagined, points to something true about that process