Blind faith and evolution

[Angrboda]

As long as we're doing highlight reels...

By peace of mind i mean a state of mind that is not constantly tortured by worries of any kind and feel total bliss and happiness.
It is only that state that can put an end to the human search for something able to bring the real rest.

This state of mind can be described in three ways: drugged, insane or dead....

It is possible to reach similar results with drugs...

Rico, how do you know that these feelings that you are interpreting as "higher consciousness" are not simply the effect of neurochemicals upon the brain brought about by deep relaxation techniques? Especially since we know and can prove that such chemicals do exist and actually do affect the brain in such ways.

Drugs and chemical reaction affect the brain ok but those effect last as long as the drugs or chemical reaction last which put a time limit to the process.

This is simply false. We know that many drugs, if administered repeatedly, like meditation is repeatedly administered, can result in permanent changes to the brain which persist even in the absence of the drug. And the normal brain processes such as learning, memory, and development are themselves chemical processes, so to deny that chemical processes can result in durable changes to the brain is simply absurd and provably false.

Drugs effect affect the brains ok and in a bad way but meditation goes well over the brain.

My question, which you dodged a second time, is how do you tell the difference between the effect of neurochemicals on the brain and an actual "higher consciousness" experience giving you these fuzzy feelings?

How can you experience one of these alleged episodes and know, either at the time or later, if it's a genuine one and not chemically-induced? Indeed, how do you know that there is in fact a difference at all?

Deep love and a feeling that you done the right thing.

Which brings us back to the start of the loop:

It is possible to reach similar results with drugs...

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Oxytocin the so-called "love hormone" is being increasingly shown to trigger a wide variety of physical and psychological effects in both women and men ... "It's like a hormone of attachment, you might say," said Carol Rinkleib Ellison, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Loomis, California and former assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco. "It creates feelings of calm and closeness."

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Research done on prairie voles showed that those separated from their siblings exhibited signs of anxiety, stress and depression that abated after they were injected with oxytocin.

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Spontaneous erections in rats were observed after oxytocin was injected into their cerebrospinal fluid in a 2001 study in the journal Physiological Review. And a cocktail of brain chemicals that includes oxytocin is released in men during ejaculation. These chemicals can intensify bonding between sexual partners...

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According to a 1999 article in the journal Progress in Brain Research, some studies indicate that oxytocin inhibits tolerance to addictive drugs, including opiates, cocaine and alcohol , and reduces withdrawal symptoms. "It's an antidote to craving," Ellison explained.

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"It has a calming effect," she said. "It leaves you feeling tranquil and loving, and certainly that helps our path to sleep." [in a study of its effect on sleep]

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Our modern conception of the link between depression and chemicals in the brain was sparked quite by accident in the middle of the last century. In the autumn of 1951, doctors treating tubercular patients at Sea View Hospital on Staten Island with a new drug — iproniazid — observed sudden transformations in their patients’ moods and behaviors. The wards — typically glum and silent, with moribund, lethargic patients — were “bright last week with the happy faces of men and women,” a journalist wrote. Patients laughed and joked in the dining hall, as if a dark veil of grief had lifted. Energy flooded back and appetites returned. Many, ill for months, demanded five eggs for breakfast and then consumed them with gusto. When Life magazine sent a photographer to the hospital to investigate, the patients could no longer be found lying numbly in their beds: they were playing cards or dancing in the corridors.

(The Science and History of Treating Depression)