Psychedelics + Meditation = Enlightenment?

PsychedelicSociety.org; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The mystic experience is far out, gone beyond.

Psychedelics can be a gateway to incredibly profound experiences, many matching what mystics have talked about (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) throughout the ages:

• a deeply felt peace and joy
• interconnectedness between all things
• undifferentiated awareness
• the sense of transcending time and space.

While these experiences are often felt to be deeply "true" and "real," perceptions can appear paradoxical and impossible to express in words.

Ram Dass: Timothy Leary gets it, Man.

As science slowly turns its gaze toward psychedelics, similar peak experiences have been studied as religious epiphanies, meditative trances [absorptions or jhanas]. and "flow states" in sports and performing arts.

Recently, fascinating correlations between psychedelic and other peak experiences are being uncovered at institutions that include Johns Hopkins, Imperial College London, and Kings College London.

The Psychedelic Experience (Dr. Timothy Leary)

For some, these events can be life-changing catalysts, and strong hope is emerging that these substances will assist people in overcoming addictions and depression and other treatment-resistant disorders.

They may even offer a renewed sense of meaning to those facing life-threatening illnesses (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).

There is, however, another category that is far less studied. Indeed, it is often viewed with suspicion as to whether or not it even exists: That is the state of a continuous day-to-day experience sharing many of the features mentioned above.

The Science of Meditation

Such reports can range from a simple background feeling that everything is okay to a complete falling away of any sense of individual agency or boundaries.

Rather than being a temporary peak state, it is reported as the way a person experiences his or her everyday existence, whether deep in meditation or while making a sandwich. It can persist over the course of weeks, months, or an entire lifetime.

“Real peace is when your mind goes 24 hours a day with no fear, no anxiety”

- The 14th Dalai Lama, speaking to an MIT audience

Dharma Meditation (psychedelicsangha.org)

If such a way of experiencing life is indeed possible, it is a natural intuition among many psychonauts that psychedelics should assist in moving toward it.

If a substance lends itself to a temporary glimpse of an altered state, surely it should contribute to this becoming an altered trait as opposed to a mere temporary state. But as it turns out, the story is a little less straightforward. More