Jun Po Roshi on Psychedelics, Ego Dissolution, and the Work That Comes After Insight
Speaking from a spiritual angle, the substance I have in mind is a genuinely pure psychedelic: fully denormal lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD 25, with nothing impure mixed in. Taken inside a ritual container, with the right people holding the space around you, it can take apart your ego and open you to the pure receptive consciousness, the spirit that sits underneath everything. The Sanskrit word is dhyana. That is one of the things that can happen.
Beyond that first opening there is another possibility, a non-dual integration with your actual circumstances. Call it one breathing, living God if you like, or the Universe, or simply reality. Whatever name you use, there is also a perspective on it, an interpretation that comes through the translation between sentience or consciousness and formalized matter, the reflection moving back and forth between them. And that realization can arrive as a kind of divine union, the tantra of the present moment. One living being, and then the quiet 'Oh' when the integration lands. You can also simply taste the clarity of the outer mind, the meditative mind, what some of us name deep mind or Buddha mind. All of that is on the table.
The trouble with psychedelics shows up right in the middle of the disintegration. As your egocentric arrangement comes apart and you begin to see what actually is, there is a strong pull toward hallucination, and that pull can throw you off the path. The chemistry is very good at handing you an insight experience. What it does not hand you is the answer to the harder question: how do you fold that insight back into an ordinary life? How do you actually use it?
That gap is what sent me back toward a philosophical and cultural religious tradition, something with enough structure to carry the insight forward and give it a vehicle. The tradition raised its own set of questions. Given that the opening is real, how do we explain it and understand it? How is a life supposed to change because of it? What are the moving parts, the mechanics, the felt experience? Where do you go from here? Once the insight has arrived, what does it mean?
Buddhism does not start with correct meditation. It starts with correct understanding. So the first thing to examine is your understanding, your perspective, the place where you plant yourself. Do you take your seat egocentrically or Buddha-centrically? Put plainly, are you conscious? Are you aware of how deep and clear and stable your own consciousness actually is, or are you still caught by the surface chatter, the reactivity and push-and-pull of the ego mind? Can you see straight through that layer or not?
A psychedelic can deliver the experience itself. After that the work is yours. You have to sort through it, make sense of it, and do the slow job of integrating it until it becomes part of how you live.