On the fringe of myself
The new show on Fox – Fringe – got me interested in fringe science (since it’s based on fringe science) whereupon I did a little light reading. To begin, fringe science isn’t all fantasy. Granted the show is beefed up display of this pseudoscience, but it’s not all untrue.
In the pilot episode it was theorized that LSD (that’s Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) strips the human mind down to its bare essentials; releasing it of the world and of all outside influences, and that in this state we are most real.
And I started thinking about the validity of that assumption. I gotta tell you, just thinking about how the world affects me (even when I think it doesn’t) makes the basis of this seem extremely plausible. And I can’t even imagine what it would be like to step outside my body… kind of let it continue doing what it’s doing, but somehow be floating above it – unseen.
To be honest, I’ve always been curious to experience LSD. I mean, who wouldn’t be curious? I mean, Albert Hoffman tried it himself first and documented his experiences in his journal; they’re quite fascinating.
And now to get deep, what if we aren’t really ourselves in our normal day-to-day activities? What if… what if we only know so much about ourselves because we let the world “block” us the rest of the way? I mean, it’s got to have some validity to it because that’s one of the main concepts behind Buddhism – tuning the world out to focus and see yourself.
What sucks is the more we focus on trying to be our “real” selves the further from them we get. Which is why I think LSD might work so well, because it forces us to relax and almost… severs our body from our mind (reminds me of a Tool lyric). Explains why it was used in military and psych tests earlier last century.
Sigh. If any of you know me and have seen my tattoo know that I’m really into this kind of thing… the self and finding the self. I’m fascinated by the Pineal gland (also known as the Third Eye) which is the center of creativity and dreams in our brains and I wonder if our dream state is as close to “reality” as we’ll get, as least as far as our selves are concerned. We see ourselves from that birds’ eye view… separated from the body and able to see ourselves from the outside.
Ah, it’s all too interesting…