Critical listening and altered states


Ok, this is not a question about relaxing, but about listening to evaluate how the system (or a piece of gear is sounding).

What, in your experience, are the pluses and minuses of altering your state of mind for listening? This can include anything you've used to affect your everyday state of mind, from coffee, beer, scotch, tobacco, to much stronger — and psychoactive, dissociative — additives.

What do you gain by altering your consciousness in terms of what you notice, attend to, linger on, etc?
What causes more details to emerge?
What allows you to stick with a thread or, alternately, make new connections?

Or perhaps you like to keep all those things *out* of your listening; if that's you, please say a bit about why.

hilde45
@mikelavigne Exactly. We know the scientific structure for salt, but not for salty. As Aristotle pointed out, not everything affords exactitude.
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these arguments are much about words and semantics. if we all were talking face to face and could work out our exact meanings our differences would be minor.

but no doubt they are enjoyable exercises as long as we don't take ourselves too seriously. :-)  
Umm..yes we are humans. We didn’t land here on a UFO space ship.

Are you sure.
The first chapter of Ezekiel 
http://spaceshipsofezekiel.com/html/ships-05-b.html#:~:text=Verse%205%3AEzekiel%20sees%20the%20four%....

Sounds to me like they were just checking up on their science experiment.