Do psychedelics lead to enlightenment?

Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), and Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

Meditate? I want a magic pill! I'm an American: Give me convenience or give me death!

Project Awake is not a typical awareness program (projectawake.org)

Are you a spiritual seeker? Yes...

What is the Psychedelic Sangha (psychedelicsangha.org)?

Psychedelics are entheogens, and a sangha is a spiritual community, which can refer to a monastic or lay community.

For example, the "community of noble ones" is mostly composed of lay people who have attained one of the four stages of enlightenment or awakening (bodhi).

PsychedelicSangha.org/welcome

Since the time of the Buddha, this has always been mostly laypeople. Monks and nuns have a better chance of attaining per capita, but there are many more lay practitioners, which accounts for the difference.

Do cybernauts ("mind explorers") have any chance of attaining what the historical Buddha called "enlightenment" rather than simply bedazzling mental states?

The reality of getting wasted and being a hippie differs from the ideal of actual awakening.

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It seems highly unlikely, for such exalted mental states are arrived at by eightfold practice. The bedazzling states or DMT-induced visions of oneness/nonduality may inspire one to become a sincere practitioner, aiming for purification and insight. The necessary conditions for insight are virtue (sila) and stillness (samadhi).

Psyche-delic means "mind-making."

Others, spiraling in self-deception, will come to a bad end for violating the fifth precept (to abstain from intoxicants that occasion heedlessness). Are entheogens a shortcut to knowing-and-seeing, to knowledge and vision?

A shortcut is no "shortcut" if it leads to a dead end rather than the dreamed of destination.

It's like The WoQ likes to say, "We mean two opposite things when we talk about getting 'high': we're either striving for mind expanding or getting obliterated. One sensitizes us (getting high), the other dulls (getting stoned). One is about awakening, the other about knocking ourselves out."

Drug abusers make drug users look bad. If drugs led to enlightenment, wouldn't there be a lot more awakened hippies instead of so many burnouts with all the same old problems?

Redd Kross: "Burn Out"

• PsychedelicSangha.org/welcome
• Having Sex on Mushrooms | Reality Sandwich