We could say that psychedelics are all the rage right now, but the truth is it’s beyond that. They’re mainstream. It’s not a big deal to talk about psychedelics. There is scientific proof that they are good for your health, your mental health, and can help with PTSD, depression, anxiety, and a slew of other mental conditions that you may want to improve, whether they’re in the DSM or not.
They are also used “spiritually,” which can mean a lot of different things depending on who you’re talking to. But for the most part, this means that people who are generally mentally healthy in order to make themselves more spiritual (usually) or more awakened (sometimes) or rarely to help them dissolve the structures that make the ego so goddamned tenacious.
This article is going to tell the difference between these approaches and make a case for the one single way that I believe they can be used to good effect for the purpose of awakening to the nature of reality.
In order to have this discussion we have to talk about what awakening or enlightenment is. I won’t repeat here what others have already done quiet elegantly, I will simply direct you to: What Spiritual Awakening Really Means, The Stages of Awakening, Exploring Life After Awakening by Adyashanti, Awake — And Then by Rupert Spira. So you can go educate yourself on this matter before continuing, or read on at your own risk. To put it succinctly, awakening is abiding in increasing intimacy with direct experience and the falling away of belief in ideas about experience, seeing through the fiction of our own lives, seeing our sense of self that is made up of preferences and beliefs and concepts all to be the ephemeral changing content of the mind that is not “real” any more than a fictional character in a movie is real, and at the same time sensing the true nature of reality, which cannot be put into words but is comprised of the whole of your experience right now, which includes your thoughts but it not defined by your thoughts and is a singular whole from which nothing can be separated out and regarded singularly because everything is so intimately interconnected that it actually defies our ordinary cognition to try to apprehend this fact. Hence, practice is called for.
Ok, so how can psychedelics help us with that?
Many people, both psychedelics users and advocates, as well as their detractors, think that the best way to use them is to tap into high states of consciousness (those in which the experience of the above definition of awakening are immediate and laughably obvious) and the more you can tap into these high, expanded states of consciousness while on psychedelics the more those high states will become available to you without taking those psychedelics. That seems to be the theory that many people take as established fact. These high or expanded states of consciousness are ones in which you can perceive reality more intimately, more fully, where you feel intrinsically right and that all is well with the world and you see that your thoughts and beliefs are utter bullshit, just jetsam and flotsam that is completely arbitrary.
If you haven’t had this experience before, this can be quite a valuable experience to be gained from psychedelics, especially if you take it as true insight instead of writing it off as a hallucinatory joyride. If you have this experience on psychedelics it can be a true insight that changes the trajectory of your life and spiritual path in a very genuine way and does not necessitate that psychedelics remain a part of your practice at all. But so many people have psychedelic experiences recreationally and they write them off as hallucinations, or *mis*perceptions of reality because psychedelics have for so long been portrayed by the media as things than alter our perception so much as to show us things that AREN’T reality.
Think about that for a minute. What could you possibly perceive that is not part of REALITY?
How do we define reality?
Okay, maybe that’s a question for another blog. But still, everything that you perceive or think or experience is by definition a part of reality. So even if you’re having a so-called hallucination on drugs, that is still part of reality. Dreams while sleeping are a part of reality, they’re just the dreaming part. And we’ve all had at least one revelatory dream that gave us some insight into our own lives. Psychedelics are like that, but much more reliable. They show us reality often unmediated by our thinking mind. See The Default Mode Network
Why not seek out high states while on psychedelics? If we’re trying to get in touch with reality, it’s right here. We’re not separate from it, we’re not apart from it, we have everything we need to see reality as it is right now in this very moment. Taking a drug to see reality is a bit ludicrous. It’s wrong view. It comes from an idea that I don’t have access to reality right now and I need to get access to reality, which is not true. Conversely, avoiding drugs because you want to stay “in reality” is equally wrong view. You cannot get away from reality. “I need to take a drug that will open up my doors of perception and somehow show me something that is veiled that I cannot see without the help of the drug.” And the tantric tradition disagrees with this entirely.
The great Tantrik philosopher Abhinavagupta wrote:
“This very Highest Divinity, the self-manifest Light of Consciousness, is what I am—when that is the case, what could any method of practice achieve? Not the attainment of my true nature, because that is eternally present; not making it known, because it is already illuminating itself; not the removal of obscurations, because no obscuration whatsoever exists; and not the entry into it, because [to enter it I would have to be other than it and] nothing other than it exists to enter it. What method or practice can there be here, when there is an impossibility of anything separate from that which I am?
Therefore, everything is One: all this is a single reality consisting of Consciousness alone, free and blissful, unbroken by time, uncircumscribed by place, unclouded by attributes or adjuncts, unconfined by forms or appearances, unexpressible by words, and not unfolded by the ordinary means of knowledge. For it is the cause, through its own will alone, by which time, space, forms and so on each attain their own natures.
This Reality is free & independent, a mass of bliss, and That alone am I; everything is reflected within it—within me.” Abhinavagupta, Tantrasara 2, as translated by Hareesh Wallis
So not only will drugs not help you do this, taking them with this idea that they are going to help you see something you can’t see now, is actually driving a wrong idea deeper into your psyche. Taking drugs with this intention and this mental framework can entrench wrong view into your system even deeper and make awakening to the true nature of your self and reality even harder than it was before taking them.
If you’re taking drugs (or meditating drugless, for that matter) with this viewpoint, then I urge you stop now and rectify this before continuing, if you ever decide to continue.
Now lets just remember that what I’m saying applies only to people who are taking psychedelics to become awakened. This does not apply to people trying to heal themselves, trying to improve their personality, improve their life, feel better about themselves, heal the collective consciousness, remember past lives, or whatever other worldly goals you can come up with. If you thought those were spiritual goals, please updated your definitions now. People take ayahuasca with all kinds of intentions, including to grow their client-base, to conceive a child, or to become closer to their partner. ALL VALID REASONS AND GO ON WITH YOUR BAD SELF. I have done this myself and it frequently, (though not always, thankfully) works. I fully approve.
What approach or intention can we take towards psychedelics that would be in line with non-dual view, include pure motive and not get us addicted to high and blissful states of consciousness that we try to return to over and over again through repeated, or even sparse, psychedelic use?
Here is the intention I would set at the beginning of each journey that I believe helped. “Ayahuasca, please do not give me any high or blissful experiences that are not absolutely necessary to help me abide in the true nature of reality when I am not on drugs. I do not need any more encouragement or reassurance that I am on the right path. Whatever I need to see, whatever I need to feel, whatever I need to experience, if it is for my highest good and the highest good of all, I am willing to go through it. I want the truth, always. Thank you. I love you.”
And then I went in with the singular practice of being with what is, allowing what is, and surrendering to what is, without trying to manipulate or drive my experience at all. I used to have intentions about getting clear on some particular issue in my life, or healing my relationship to this person, finding out what direction to take my career, etc. Psychedelics are highly malleable and they will follow where your mind goes and very often they will give you the answers to those questions. I didn’t want my mind to be in charge, because I know from experience that my mind does not always know what is best for me when it comes to the spiritual path and what I wanted spiritual awakening and liberation. No reason to put the ego in charge of that project! If you want to control your experience, with some practice, you absolutely can. But control is not the purpose. What is the purpose?
To be continued…in Part 2