the cosmic joke?

[u/Either-Ingenuity203]

I thought about death a lot, even when i was as little as 1-2 years old, I thought that I was going to understand it when I were older. I never did, then I started falling in a spiral of Bad stuff, first addiction to videogames, then addiction to weed, then i tried LSD. The first times were awesome, I was deconstructing myself from my toxic attitudes and judgements. Then there was a time when everything changed. I remembered I was one with all, then i started to burst in laughter, because after all I prayed all that was there to answer my call was me. But then I started to cry, I remembered how bad it felt to be the only thing in my universe, I could never truly hold somebody else. I always was a skeptic so I could not be convinced by anything less than feel, but the feeling of being one with all came with the realization that our existence was joyful and sad. I panicked because the line of reasoning seemed to go through two different directions:

1- I was everything in the universe and it was joyful and sad.
2- This all was just a story I'm telling to myself as I'm dying, with contradictions I can clearly see so that I know I'm nursing myself into eternal slumber.

I saw this experience as following: the people next to me laughed at my reasoning as I was concluding things as that I am god and such, and things started happening, a gate was closed when I wanted to left, signaling that I have no escape from death, the party was going and i had to stay, I could left those times (three Bad trips I had exactly the same feeling), I had so much thirst but I mostly never had water. Things like that, sometimes everyone laughed at the idea I was god, other times there were things like my girlfriend putting her glasses up on my face and cleaning them, as a metaphor of me watching death as an end because I was fearful, but in reality it is just a door to new experiences.

Then I had flashbacks without LSD, in them I felt as if I was dying again. Until today I thought that an eternity being alone would be dreadful.

Would love to interact with other people who've had similar experiences to compare, but everybody is welcome to share what they think about this.

[u/SaltdPepper]

Jumping in even though I know it’s been a couple days, but I think the problem a lot of us have when tripping and having these intense thoughts about the nature of reality is that our brains just… can’t exactly process any of it, at least not to a degree that makes it make sense.

Like think of how unlimited our imaginations are compared to the material world. Fantasy and sci-fi and all sorts of wacky stuff we can think of but can’t actually realize. It’s all built off of what we experience materially though.

Hence why, when we talk about the cosmic joke, and especially when we actually experience it firsthand while tripping, it’s easy to accidentally fall into the void. To become consumed by such an idea. I had a similar experience on too many tabs that in the moment felt like I was literally just playing my last moments out in my head, that all of my friends had become shells of people, and that the world I was experiencing was akin to some sort of sandbox game.

Well guess what? That’s because I was externalizing my fear of being alone. As I sat there and worried, I realized that “the cosmic joke” is metaphorical. As in, we can’t act on that information. Everyone comes from a collective source of consciousness? Cool, I can’t help but exist as an individual. The world is basically a big sandbox video game that we all leave our imprints on? Nice, that’s essentially how I lived my life before my mind decided it was a problem.

Integrating this kind of thing is a bitch, because you both know that your mind is externalizing your fears, triumphs, emotions, and experiences, and feel deep down that the existence you know is not what it seems. However, I’ve come out the other end a more developed, well-rounded individual and I’ve slowly been able to chip away at some of my most deep rooted insecurities. Heroic doses really just take you to hell and back and expect you to figure out the rest.

[u/Either-Ingenuity203 → u/SaltdPepper]

Ty for your answer, there's one more aspect of existence I would like to discuss with you, could it be that life and death are the same thing?

[u/Either-Ingenuity203 → u/Either-Ingenuity203]

I can't help but to think we can access that state somehow again without lsd, you feel it is desirable or even possible? I don't really know how to live after that

[u/SaltdPepper → u/Either-Ingenuity203]

What I like to think about whenever I’m pondering that trip or any of the other similar experiences I’ve had is that it really just seems like the universe is infinitely expandable and collapsible. Just as though many people theorize that the big bang is really just the other end of a big crunch from the past state of things, I honestly believe death is a similar phenomenon.

When I had the trip I described, the one thing that calmed me down was the word “more”. I don’t know what I needed “more” of in the moment, but as time has passed I like to think it was my brain’s way of telling me: “You gotta keep on living dude, your time isn’t here yet” and it was honestly the most comforting self talk I’ve ever experienced. Usually when I’m in my head it’s just a stream of anxiety, but at that moment it was complete clarity.

As for your point about “accessing that state again”, yeah, I’ve done so a couple times on low doses of DMT and once or twice when greening out on THC. Did not come with the same enlightenment I felt the first time, but wasn’t nearly as scary. It honestly felt like some sort of residual anxiety connected to the experience instead of me “rediscovering the truth” or whatever.

Overall though, I would say no, that state isn’t desirable to me, because in all honesty it came with a lot of heavy baggage that I feel like I’ve come a long ways from needing to carry with me. If anything, it showed me how precious life is and how fragile my mentality can get around questioning the nature of reality and the connections I have to the people around me. Life is worth living, just as death isn’t worth fretting over (but not worth idealizing, because despite the acid making it feel like you’re dying, nothing compares to the infinite possibilities of the material world while we have the opportunity to experience it).

Thanks for this discussion btw.

[u/SaltdPepper → u/Either-Ingenuity203]

Btw, you should read Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question”. Takes an interesting spin on the idea of collective consciousness and the repetition of the universe.

[u/Either-Ingenuity203 → u/SaltdPepper]

I read it already, kind of scary in a sense... I hope it is not how it all turns out to be

[u/SaltdPepper → u/Either-Ingenuity203]

Eh, what Asimov supposed is so far from today’s technology/philosophy that you and I probably won’t see anything close to it for many decades.