Comment by flanked-evergl
8 months ago
I have taken boatloads of psychedelics in my life. If I could do my life over again I would have traded every single trip for having read Orthodoxy and the Everlasting Man by Chesterton before I was 25. Tripping gives you zero insights into the divine, it is not revelation, you don't get closer to God. There are real answers, but we as civilization have been deliberately moving away from under false premises, and the world has gotten worse and worse. Drugs can't fix this. If you want a better world, you should not dull your perception of it.
Something that would be much more beneficial for all humanity is if more of the clergy actually preached the bible, instead of trying to explain it away, which is almost exclusively what the clergy I have engaged with tries to do.
I take this book was life changing to you, would you mind explaining a bit more on why? If you read it before 25, do you think it would have the same effect, given your different experience at that age?
Psychedelics caused me to isolate from society and those around me. It makes you feel more connected while actually becoming less connected, it makes you feel that you understand while actually understanding less.
I see now that the real pleasure in life is in being connected with your local community, with those around you — not because you agree with them, not because they think or look the same as you, but because they are yours, and you are theirs in a very deep sense.
I also see now that the Church of Christ makes this possible, it's a vehicle for fulfilling our purpose in life. No other thing exists which provides the same avenue, nothing else even comes close.
The specific changes the books made in my life is that it helped me get over my superficial objections to Christ (I was an atheist from the age of about 14), it helped me see the whole, and thus helped me adopt Christ as my saviour, and the Church as my Church, and it brought me to a point where I have faith without doubt.
> We know better than the scholars, even those of us who are no scholars, what was in that hollow cry that went forth over the dead Adonis and why the Great Mother had a daughter wedded to death. We have entered more deeply than they into the Eleusinian Mysteries and have passed a higher grade, where gate within gate guarded the wisdom of Orpheus. We know the meaning of all the myths. We know the last secret revealed to the perfect initiate. And it is not the voice of a priest or a prophet saying, ‘These things are.’ It is the voice of a dreamer and an idealist crying, ‘Why cannot these things be?’
Thank you for commenting. The believer's perspective on life's questions is much too sparse on HN, and it often gets downvoted.
Given current major religions are visibly inventions of men to cover basic existential fears we all face and were done during roughly iron age era with corresponding illogical parts and conflicting statements, no amount of drugs are going to move any normal person to whatever god or God represents in this universe.
The introspection part is where true gold is - and to be honest that tells a lot about where we feel above topic is in our cores (and as you yourself confirmed from your experiences, like it or not).
More religion and preaching got us medieval dark ages and tons of endless wars and genocide, I think mankind deserve a bit more these days.
> More religion and preaching got us medieval dark ages and tons of endless wars and genocide
This is false.