Psychedelics and the Spiritual Path

Snackrabbit said to me, ‘Drugs are stupid. They are great, but they are stupid’. Well Said!

I have several posts on this site about psychedelics and I was thinking that it might not be clear that I am not recommending that someone tie the use of drugs in with their Buddhist practice. I have had some experience with psychedelics and I am interested in their relationship with society, their importance in cognitive freedom, but I do not recommend using them for spiritual practice.

Here is an account of a trip a kid had on Morning Glories in 2003. In this excerpt you will see that he comes to the conclusion that it is inappropriate to use drugs to get any spiritual experience. This echoes ZaChoeje Rinpoche’s advice to not use drugs to practice meditation. He said if we are doing it to just have fun with them, that is okay, but not to use them with spiritual practice.

I have been all over the map with psychedelic experience. Luckily when I did them I didn’t know much about spiritual states in meditation so I didn’t identify with anything. At one point I was under the delusion that I was the sun. I experienced only intensity and brightness without any center. I have no idea if that experience was anything like what yogi’s realize during deeply absorbed states, but even if it was, I was just a party crasher. I didn’t belong there and so the experience was sandwiched on either side by great delusion and anxiety. This is because I didn’t work for it - it was atrifically gained and to pursue such experiences through drugs is only showing a great lack of faith in our Buddha Nature.

Enough about me.

The closed eye visuals began again, and I started to see colorful mushrooms. Suddenly, I realized that the understanding of the middle path - the knowledge of everything and nothing - that I attained earlier in the trip was the exact same conclusion about life that I had come to when I shroomed months ago. It became clear to me that the drugs were not responsible for this greater understanding of life. The drugs are only a catalyst. The ability to comprehend the middle path, to achieve complete clarity, to reach nirvana, lies within our minds. Yogis do it, Buddhas do it, Shamans do it. And they do it through natural meditation, without the use of drugs. I decided in that instant that no longer would I use drugs to try and achieve these levels of meditation. It seemed to me almost like cheating. And the more one uses the drugs to reach these levels, the more one comes to depend on it.

I am a firm believer that one can ‘trip’ naturally, through meditation. I wont even begin to pretend that tripping on drugs isn’t one of the most incredible experiences I can ever have. But as an American in the early 21st century, it is not the time nor the place to experiment with drugs (in my opinion). The risks are simply too great. I am still a crusader for the legalization of all drugs, and I still believe that more good than harm can come from many natural drugs. However, if a person is using the drugs to try to achieve spiritual epiphanies, I would recommend they try meditation. It is more difficult than just swallowing some seeds, or eating some mushrooms; but like anything else, practice makes perfect. The irony of it all is that I needed to use drugs to allow me to realize I don’t need drugs. A paradox. But then, so is life. It only seems fitting that my use of drugs should end in such a way.

We shouldn’t get too fixated on some experience anyway when we meditate. Rinpoche recently said among other things that our meditation should be free of expectation. So we should not meditate with the expectation to see nirvana, or emptiness. We shouldn’ t meditate to trip. We should be on the spot, in the present moment. Enlightenment does not happen some time in the future - it happens where we are. Our basic situation is already full of Buddha potential so by being present and free of history (past) and mystery (future), we can discover our True Self - ordinary mind.

Why oridinary mind? Because a mind free from grasping at future and past is our natural state - it is our spring board - our before thinking mind. Before thinking mind is oridinary mind. Mind attached to concepts is deluded. This isn’t to say that there is no room for thought - when you see your true nature then you see that you can use your words and actions to help other beings. The whole situation becomes expedient means.

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