= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Multiheaded comments on Bayes for Schizophrenics: Reasoning in Delusional Disorders - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (154)
Heh. This is a lot like how Erik Davis describes Jewish mystics viewing the Torah as a compressed encoding of all possible texts ever, and the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, as the source of all the words in the Torah.
Now we know what they were smoking!
Yeah, not exactly - Salvia divinorum is native to Mexico - but I've read scholars implying that the Middle Eastern mystics often used psychoactive mushroooms in addition to generic techniques like prayer and fasting.
Isn't it much more likely they were brain damaged in a more permanent way? Religious people who use psychoactives tend to openly praise their drugs much like they praise their gods (think soma, peyote, ayahuasca) - middle eastern mystics didn't do that. And with malnutrition, rampant child abuse and almost no health care, there's bound to have been enough brain damage around.
That is also implied in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Or, maybe some of the Nephites returned to Jerusalem with a stash...
And of course, as Risto_Saarelma mentions in a comment further down, it may be possible to attain similar states through mental exercises without benefit of pharmaceutical remedies.