Jun Po Roshi on Psychedelics and the Work of Integration
There is a way of reading experience through the translation that happens between awareness, or consciousness, and matter that has taken form. When that reading lands, it can open into a kind of union, the tantra of the present moment, if you want to call it that. One living being, and then the small shift: "Oh." The integration arrives. You can also touch the plain purity of what I've described as the outer mind, or meditative mind, the deep mind, the Buddha mind. All of that is on the table.
The trouble with psychedelics shows up here. As the egocentric scaffolding begins to come apart and you start to see what is actually there, the mind tends to hallucinate, and that pulls you off course. So the substance is good at handing you an insight. What it cannot do is answer the next question: how do you carry that insight back into your days? How do you actually use it? That gap is what returned me to a philosophical and cultural and religious tradition, something that could hold the experience and give it a vehicle.
Which raises its own set of demands, and we will come to those later. Granting the insight, then what? How is it explained, how is it understood, how does it change the way a person lives, what are the mechanics, what is the felt experience, where do you go from here, what does the insight even mean once you have it? Buddhism does not open with correct meditation. It opens with correct understanding. So, what is your understanding? What is your vantage point? Where do you sit?
You can take your seat egocentrically or you can take it Buddha-centrically. The question underneath that is whether you are conscious, whether you are aware of the depth and clarity and steadiness of your own consciousness, or whether you are still being tossed around by the surface reactions of the ego mind. Can you see through all of that? A psychedelic may be one route to the experience. After that you are on your own to sort it, make sense of it, and bring it into your life.
Erik: For people who have never used a psychedelic, or who have only heard that these substances are dangerous and might cause mental illness, does that match what you have seen?
Jun Po: Not in my own experience. Overuse can be dangerous, yes. I have had a few friends who grew very self-absorbed and lost, you could say. I would not suggest it for anyone who is psychologically unstable, or still quite immature. And I would only recommend it, well, let me back up: I do not recommend it in the first place. But if a person is going to do it anyway, then do it carefully. I believe they have started working with LSD therapy again in Switzerland, looking into it. So if you intend to follow a psychedelic path, the real question is how you build a safe setting for it. At low doses I do not see a serious problem, and there is no statistical evidence I know of that low-dose LSD has produced the harms people worry about.