Some people assume that taking LSD gives you some kind of super abilities which would make one more competitive in this world, but it's not what the experience is about.
Yes, while tripping, your mind can handle infinity or galactic-sized data sets, visualise abstract concepts and zoom in and out of matter or numbers, but I don't think that's the true power of this substance.
The real power comes from the realisation of who you really are and always have been, it's like you finally 'remember' that this life is just one in an infinity of previous and future 'lives' and that everyone and everything is you. It's the realisation of the fact that you (and everyone else) are in fact God who came into this body to feel separated from himself, that the Universe is some kind of cosmic simulation which you've created since the beginning of time.
This realisation is what frees people from the mundane reality of existence and gives one courage to embark on the craziest of endeavours, which sometimes have the side effect of changing the entire world.
Hm, it is too well articulated (people on LSD have trouble to explain even approximately their state of mind), and too precise match to Vedanta philosophy, that I have suspicion that you inherit this formulation either directly from Vedanta / Yoga / Sankhya or from people interested in eastern culture (as hippies and enthusiasts of "mind-expansion" in 60-ies), and then decided their drug experience was exactly this.
I've never practiced eastern philosophy, but it's not surprising that people arrive at the same conclusions on psychedelics.
See, psychedelic plants/fungi have been around since before humans and people who took them, say, 3000 years ago had the same trips and the same realisations that we have today.
Then they came back and wrote about their conclusions, which has sometimes led to the creations of new philosophies or religions.
This is one other realisation that you have while tripping - "I have been in this state before, many times before, but not in this body, I was a yogi in India or a shaman in South America or a philosopher in ancient Greece and I've always remembered: I am. It's always been me."
I thought maybe you was influenced by people accompanying you. But I also did some reading and see that loss of self-identity is an often symptom caused by psychedelics, so I don't know.
BTW, eastern practitioners explicitly advice against drug use, they employ other methods to achieve and retain this state of mind: bhakti (love), jnana (knowledge - means analysing the difference between thoughts and thinking process and Atman - the Self who perceives them), karma yoga, raja yoga, etc.
Some people fall into this state spontaneously, Ramana Maharishi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi) got this "enlightenment" at 16, and didn't speak several years after that.
I enjoy reading eastern texts, as artifacts of brilliant thought, also interesting in context of our development towards AI, where we still don't have satisfying theory for consciousness (that Vedanta calls atman). They have also accumulated interesting theories and terminology about mind mechanics. But I think it's worth to remain skeptical. After all, those strange states of mind may be just dysfunctions. For example, anoxaemia, inhaling vapors of glues and varnishes, sensory and motor deprivation induce "special effects" on cognition and mind too.
This is exactly what I've felt on a couple separate occasions (both on mushrooms and ayahuasca). The trouble is the rational/ego-based mind kicks in as soon as I'm off them and I begin to question the validity of these assumptions. Whilst sober it seems ridiculous, but whilst on these substances, it's sober everyday life which seems truly ridiculous, like it was so obviously staged and unreal and how could I have not seen it? Ultimately I'm always led back to the same conclusion: we don't and won't ever really know anything beyond our own qualia.
A really beautiful explanation! Here I was going to suggest you to try ayahuasca (since you came up with that from LSD, aya makes it so much more obvious and intense) but then I looked at your username and realized "ah he gets it".
Always nice to find other people with the same views regarding these substances and how they act on us! Specially since I never thought I'd find such interests on HN.
The real power comes from the realisation of who you really are and always have been, it's like you finally 'remember' that this life is just one in an infinity of previous and future 'lives' and that everyone and everything is you. It's the realisation of the fact that you (and everyone else) are in fact God who came into this body to feel separated from himself, that the Universe is some kind of cosmic simulation which you've created since the beginning of time.
This realisation is what frees people from the mundane reality of existence and gives one courage to embark on the craziest of endeavours, which sometimes have the side effect of changing the entire world.