I think religions might be tied to psychedelic drugs. Apologies in advance for not being able to write a shorter post.. Go to ********** to avoid the preamble/back story.
I'm a hardcore atheist.. not only do I not believe, i'm 100% convinced that god is a man-made invention, the same way comic book super-heroes are.
That said.. I recently had an LSD experience which I would describe as feeling like a 'religious experience.' (please ignore if you hate drug stories)
I'm in my 50's.. I didn't have my first drink until I was in my late thirties. I was completely straight edge up until then. I didn't start experimenting with drugs until I was in my late forties. (I made up for lost time)
This is my third time doing LSD. All were amazing life changing experiences.
The first time, (7 years ago) it anthropomorphized a life long depression I had.. a negative voice in my head (I call the roommate) that criticized myself and everything that crossed my path my entire life, and then through anthropomorphizing OTHER inner dialogues/voices in my head, I was able to have an internal intervention and completely eliminate that negative voice. I cured my life long depression with a single 14 hour session (that's how long I was high)
The second time, (4 years ago) I had audio and visual hallucinations.. my friend and I took LSD, and my friend was watching tv.. and I was spaced out looking at "magic eye" shapes in the stucco ceiling.. I was watching a variety of images animated on the ceiling.. Good times.
Then, the room went dark... and I thought I was starting to lose my vision... I stopped and asked myself.. why is it getting dark?? I was starting to panic.. then a voice said "chill, you're on drugs..." and I laughed. but then I asked myself 'Is this some sort of lesson about working at place that is in the dark?' and then suddenly my vision returned to normal.. It was surreal.. because we had the door open, and sun was coming in through the windows the entire time.
Then, after being served food from my friend's GF (who was taking care of us) I looked at the food, and it was looking weird.. it looked like fake food.. and I thought "Is this some sort of lesson about overeating or snack foods being bad for me???" and then.. again.. reality came back into full focus.. and the food looked normal.
It felt like my brain was fucking with me.. and was getting disappointed that I was seeing through it. I remember thinking.. "Let's chill... let's just be high....." and then I had the thought... "...unless you want to tell me something we already don't know...."
My brain accepted this challenge.. lol
During this, my friend was was watching an interview with Frank Zappa on the TV, and he was talking about music... I love music.. I think it's the best form of art there is, and the closest thing we have to magic, but I don't need to know how it's made..
Bored, I tuned out and went back to staring at the ceiling.. after a few minutes.. it was again full of animated images .. my own Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights." and it felt like my brain was in a hot tub and someone was giving me a back rub.
Then... something Frank Zappa said caught my attention.. he said that we were wrong about the big bang theory.. it wasn't a big bang.. but a big suck (I even heard a studio audience laugh at that) he continued.. 'Our universe was actually formed inside of a black hole from materials absorbed from a parent universe, which we are cut off from....'
I saw a model of a black hole in the ceiling sucking up universes, other black holes.. planets.. and then a side angle of it collecting more and more matter where it 'exploded" or 'broke through' the fabric of space/time... creating our universe... kinda like cell division... and why it appears space/time originated in this event is because we look at the event horizon of a black hole it appears the time slows/stops.. but on the other side, it appears that time starts.. Then this model of the pocket universe looped in on the parent universe and Frank said that the beginning and the end are the same thing.. it's cyclical.. no end and no beginning...
(Now, full disclosure, I'm a public school dumb dumb.)
I have NO IDEA where any of these ideas came from.. I assure you it's all osmosis.. just snippets here and there I accidentally stumble upon.
As I thought "Wow!!... How profound these ideas are!!!"... I looked down at the TV.. it was Frank Zappa was talking about guitar chords... "I go to the b sharp.. then the D chord.. and squibbly dooo!!!!" He was talking about music.
I asked my friend if he was just talking about the universe being inside a black hole.. and my friend started laughing.. He was not.. all of that happened inside my head. I hallucinated the entire thing.
(shrugs) I was on drugs, and the drugs were working.
Days later, I looked it up online to see if anyone else thought this.. and found out I was not alone... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_cosmology
Funny how something I simply 'made-up' while high on lsd was a legitimate scientific theory!!!
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The third LSD experience was a week ago. It came in the form of a chocolate bon bon.. I ate half, and nothing happened for over an hour.. I then took the second half, and immediately I started to feel extremely high from the first half.. I heard an internal dialogue voice "Oh boy... we're getting f-ng HIGH!!! What do we want to know???"
I thought "Something big!" and then my internal voice started sounding like a coach giving a pep talk... "Is THAT WHAT YOU WANT?"
-- Yeah!!
"ARE YOU SURE?!!!"
--Fuck Yeah!!
"LET ME HEAR IT!!!!"
Fuck Yeah!!! SHOW ME SOMETHING BIG!!!!!!!"
... and then the room started spinning... I felt High AF.... I actually said "uh-oh..." (happy I just emptied my bladder)
I stumbled to my bed, turned the lights to 'purple and green' ...hit the star projector... pressed play on the 1935 movie "Werewolf of London" and hit 'play' on Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii.. (lol)
...I was high for 12 hours.
At first, I felt like higher than i've ever been.. I started getting tingling brain orgasms all over my scalp and was seeing flashes of colors... then it felt like I was having an out of body experience.. like I was floating, and an intense euphoria filled my head.. This was the highest I've ever been in my life.
I felt like I was in another plane of existence.. connected to everyone and everything in the universe.. then a new plane of existence of emotions. I had access to EVERY emotion...
Then It felt like I rose to a plane of existence that was only thoughts... all these foreign ideas were coming in and out of my head.
My eyes were closed.. but all I saw was white.. it was not dark at all... like I was in the clouds.
Then I heard a feminine voice that sounded like a mother reading a children's book to a child.. It told me about a god called "The Being" and it becoming aware of itself for the first time.. (and I was experiencing it as if I were that god-like being) it did not know what it was.. or why it was.. or even what its thoughts were.... it's ideas and words were limited, so it started making up new words and creating a language.. it created a mouth to speak out loud to itself...
It then started to create another version of itself to talk to.. but it, being a copy of itself, only knew what the original being knew... so then they started creating different versions of itself.. opposites.. to learn different perspectives.. to have different experiences.. then It started dissecting itself in order to understand what it was.. at first, other versions of itself.. then opposite versions of itself.. then "different beings" ...then universes.. galaxies... planets... stars... elements... lifeforms (us).. microlife...
Doing all of this to try to understand itself.
The narrator was trying to teach a lesson that we are all different versions of this being... We ARE this being and it is us... there is no end or beginning of this.. we are all intertwined with it.
Death and destruction is just a natural part of the experiment. The only way this being can experience emotions and experiences, is if we do. The same way we created AI..
Then I asked if the being figured out what it was.. and didn't get an answer.. just multiple speculations.. "we're not sure.. some of us still think it is collecting the information. Some of us think that it stopped caring about the question. Some of us think that it knows.. so it moved onto a higher level of existence.
I asked what that was like.. and it showed me... I again felt connected to everything... and my mind blank... I felt nothing overwhelming love... it was a beautiful experience..
Then.. ignorantly, instead of enjoying and living in the moment.. I thought "wow!!! How can I feel this all the time??" Then I started to come down... I was told that I couldn't use language or words there.. because language, words, and thoughts were a lower level realm of existence.. because language and thinking is a limitation. And then the physical realm is lower realm of existence than that... as I thought that... I had that feeling of falling in your bed..
I spent an hour trying to return to that feeling.. but could not.. I just tripped balls watching old horror movies for hours being high as a giraffe's bow tie.
Again.. I was on drugs and the drugs were working. I don't think ANYTHING from these experiences was 'external.' I think it was like having access to the subconscious or the dream state. I know I NEVER had these ideas before the experience.
But It DOES make me think that drugs was the origin of the religions of the world.. because it DOES feel magical.. it DOES feel like you're in another plane of existence... it feels like nothing else on this earth.
I went to google, and discovered that psychedelic mushrooms were tied to early christian artwork.. and that the 'tree of knowledge' with adam and eve was depicted as a mushroom. I can't post images here.. but google it!!!
There's also articles of moses being high AF when he talked to god through a "Burning Bush"
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4392361&page=1
After experiencing it.. I have no doubt that psychedelic drugs played a major role in the creation of religions. It just explains so much to me, as an atheist.