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Hey, welcome.

Well, most people arrive at their beliefs through their experience and the credible testimony or evidence from others.  I believe things because that's what I experience.  Nobody told me to believe the things I do, but after the fact I've discovered others who have had remarkably similar experiences and come to the same conclusions.

I won't bore you with my explanation of the married couple reunion.  It's really really simple, but it's not exactly mainsteam.  You can find some interesting postings dealing with that sort of thing and there are several good possibilities for that which aren't too far out there.  The popular one is that you can appear to anyone anytime and look any way you want.  (I don't understand it ) It might be best to lay a specific aspect of your beliefs like that aside and approach it in a more general way if you want to learn the different theories out there.

I got from your post mostly what you don't believe in.  Even the positive statement was that you could "accept" it.  So, what do you believe in?  In your mind, how did the pool of consciousness come to be and why does it sustain itself as "one" rather than a collection of individuals?  What is the astral plane good for if not to be populated by other-dimensional spiritual "stuff"?  Looking forward to your reply on these, maybe it will stimulate conversation and more postings.

your such a card Dave   just wanted to add my 2 cents  that when Midnight Toker gets some of those personal experiences which a pen does no justice to, and which we must write it down anyway because it's like carbonated beverage and going to pop it's lid anyway...scuse me getting off track again...when he or she gets those experiences it is like you've been smoking pot all day...and you gave that up long time ago, oh, and you didn't have to pay cash for your high, nor puff your cheeks out and look silly. I saw my first husband did this holding the breath thing, and thats the day I walked out. best thing I ever did.

love, and if nobody wants my love, heres a salutation to y'all. alysia

MT,

Alysia is one of the wisest people on this board.

Rob

Hiya Alysia, Spooky-

I have a medically prescribed California Cannabis Card and I use a wee tad of the stuff to keep my fibromyalgia in check, so I'm not entirely free of holding my breath untilI turn mildly blue, plus the joy of gasping, wheezing and coughing. However, looking back 50 years the most important thing with respect to this thread, is that there is a path that opens to everyone who "tries out" a psychedelic drug like pot.

First, we go to a drug because we do not believe that there's anything open to us without it. Second, bloody few of us are theists - at least not at the beginning - and I seem to have found a God who is equally well expressed in math terms as in terms of Faith, Hope and Charity. Third, we go to a drug because we are looking for a way to get out of a tiny mind and highly restricted information. For example, we hear that if we take a pill of this, a spoonful of that, or a puff of something else, we can get to that place in which we suddenly see things that were not otherwise available to our initial mundane sight.  BUT we don't dare admit that we're searching for "something greater", mostly because we don't know what kind of "something" it is, and we dare not admit our feelings of insecurity, because that just makes it all worse.

Hindu tradition accepts ganja etc as a perfectly appropriate way to go into trance if we are otherwise incapable. The only caveat is that there is a great danger of side trips into a world of sensory pleasures, fascination with images and dreams, and of course the economic advantage of selling enough dope to keep your own stash filled. That path leads to an iron cage.  (And jailhouse food is a bit less than wretched.)

The other path, suggested by gurus everywhere, is to slowly reduce the amount of drug and increase the amount of meditation, pranayama, and exercises intended to ignite the fire of kundalini. When mastered (as I mentioned, Swami Sivananda suggested it only takes 6 months from nescience to enlightenment) you can more or less turn it up or down at will, running with high energy, great mental intensity, and greatly expanded awareness. That's the path that Mr Toker is seeking, I suspect.

Meanwhile, just as one eye sees things a bit differently than the other, allowing us to use parallax to have depth perception, as Mr Toker puffs his way into new and interesting situations, he has the option, if he desires to use it, to use the same kind of parallax (between straight and bent states) to study and learn from his world.  If he persists, he will not become one of those "theist" things, but he will enlighten himself and discover the utimate Cosmic Something.  We can't help him do this, but we can acknowledge that it is available to him, and reinforce any progress in that regard that he makes. 

The best way I have found to gauge progress is the ability to love unconditionally. It takes strength to be loving while your mind is "out there in hyperspace" trying to discover itself. Alas, some of us have a ways to go.

Love to you all- hyperspatial or not -
dave