'Vers'ification of the Universe

The universe is never static. Nothing in it ever is; from the Magellanic Cloud to subatomic particles, changes happen in ceaseless cycles. The universe itself is happening; everything in it is continually happening, without pause, thought, malice, or benevolence. It happens, within it things happen; in these happenings, another other happenings happen.

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Pravin wrote:

I am reminded of "Across the Universe" song of the Beatles. It seems those who hallucinate get a direct vision and understanding of the Universe. Ask Paul McCartney:
Words are flowing out like
Endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe.
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
Are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me.

Jai Guru Deva. Om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Images of broken light, which
Dance before me like a million eyes,
They call me on and on across the universe.
Thoughts meander like a
Restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.

Jai Guru Deva. Om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my opened ears
Inciting and inviting me.
Limitless undying love, which
Shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on across the universe

Jai Guru Deva.
Jai Guru Deva.
Jai Guru Deva.
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world"

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My reply:


Paul McCartney, his clan called the Beatles, and their ilk all over the world, found dealing with life difficult, if not altogether impossible, and therefore found shelter under obfuscation of its complexity and incomprehensibility. That the Beatles were also creative was not the certain, ordained outcome of being stoned, but one of the outlets from which they profited, and so did the spiritualists of various hues who deigned to offer them guidance.

Anyway: Since, provably, the universe is not hallucinating, either we humans are, or have to, to deal with our quotidian, transient and minuscule concerns.

All of us humans survive because we can hallucinate, be it in self-deceit, self-aggrandizement, manic-depression, or in generating means for elation.

Incidentally, you may find this interesting:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/08/out-loud-oliver-sacks.html

-- a podcast in which the neurologist Oliver Sacks talks about how his drug experiences / hallucinations in the sixties affected his life and career.
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Bhupen wrote:

I am sure I have heard the song without knowing the words.  Reading them, I find them interesting, except for the chanting of 'Jai Gurudeva, Om".

In the sixties drug culture provided escape into the altered state of mind in real time.  It was more than imagining, dreaming, fantasizing without any physical control and thus hellucinating. 

Since you mentioned scientist and others experimenting with LSD, here is another famous one.  He dropped out for a while, came back with a revived career in computer science, turned little crazy (he wanted to die on Public television).  Here is a brief of his early career.  

TIMOTHY LEARY WAS another early advocate of LSD experimentation. Leary taught psychology at Harvard and by 1960 was doing experiments with LSD and other hallucinogens, first on prison inmates and then on himself and his friends. LSD was not illegal at the time. In 1960, Allen Ginsberg, supervised by Leary, ingested psilocybin mushrooms, (under the influence of the drug, he phoned Jack Kerouac, identifying himself as God to the telephone operator), and began to spread the word about the new powerful psychedelic drugs. When Harvard dismissed Leary in 1963, he set up the Castalia Institute in Millbrook, New York, to continue his studies. Leary's approach to taking LSD was the opposite of Ken Kesey'sÐLeary believed in "set and setting," a practice of taking the drug in a controlled environment, as a safeguard against bad trips. He coined the phrase "Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out," and formed the "League of Spiritual Discovery," an LSD advocacy group. In the mid sixties, he began attending numerous musical events and public forums that promoted the use of LSD. Leary spent a number of years in prison for various charges related to drug possession.

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My reply:

Your statement about hallucination raised the thought that a single strand of DNA is capable of hallucinating. An amoeba can hallucinate; plants. trees, flowers can hallucinate, as can fish, cats, cockroaches, etc.

If an animal or insect or plant ingests a substance which causes it to hallucinate, it will return to ingest that substance again.

In other words, it means that apart from its self-ordained purpose to only exist (survive by sustenance and reproduction), there is this slight unexpected aberration somewhere in that minuscule and first fundamental form of life. The unicellular DNA, whether in amoeba and its ilk, static or evolving, or in humans; but containing the fundamental potion that we call life, inclines towards hallucination, mostly without volition and ignorantly; sometimes even with literate knowledge, purposefully.

I will write separately, later,  about Timothy Leary, or, earlier than him, Albert Hofman, among people who consciously studied chemical, physical or biological agents, which created altered states of human (and perhaps other) minds.