This undistracted state of [the] ordinary mind is the meditation. One will understand it in due course. Gampopa (d. 1153)
Or it may aid in processing traumas that were blockades to meditation, with a net result of it being easier to do meditation practice afterwards even without psychedelics. It's all speculation until further research is done into how all this works exactly, no?
But FWIW, this research seems to suggest one does not need to keep using psilocybin to have its long-lasting beneficial effects:
> Compared with placebo, psilocybin enhanced post-intervention mindfulness and produced larger positive changes in psychosocial functioning at a 4-month follow-up, which were corroborated by external ratings, and associated with magnitude of acute self-dissolution experience
Or it may aid in giving one even more trauma. The outcome differs from person to person, I'm only offering my anecdotes based on my experience and people I know who dabble in psychedelics and meditation. The risk can be distilled to the simple idea of a crutch. Of course, not everyone will take it as a crutch.
> But FWIW, this research seems to suggest one does not need to keep using psilocybin to have its long-lasting beneficial effects:
And I relate this risk precisely because, in my opinion, most or many people will not deploy the same discipline in using psychedelics as conducted in the study or even use the psychedelics for the same purposes as the study. Once faced with the boredom of the non-psychedelic state of mind, people get agitated. But it's precisely facing this boredom and this agitation which will help them grow -- boredom and agitation are as much apart of reality and the human experience as is excitement and ecstasy.
There is no reason to believe that such a community of people is representative of the general population or the effects that psychedelics would have on them when combined with meditation and the guidance of one or more therapists.
Are there any psychedelics that are openly prescribed the way other "prescription drugs" are? I mean just saying "Abuse of prescription drugs" is such an ambiguous thing. If you're referring to opioids, etc that have an extreme physically addictive effect, that's not at all like how psychedelics work.
I do agree that always combining meditation with any substance could lead to a dependence on that substance to experience the deepest meditative states. However, used once in a while (which is the most I really want psychedelics anyway), I can agree with the findings in this paper, the experience sticks with you and can be remembered.
pazimzadeh's analogy is spot on.
> Right. If you're trying to metaphorically reach the peak of a mountain, psychedelics are like a helicopter that lets you fly around, find the path and even reach the top.
> It's possible that you'll grow to rely on the helicopter to climb the mountain, but hopefully what you take away from it is that there is in fact a path (or accept that there's not - and you might has well climb a different mountain).
In total I might have taken magic mushrooms maybe 10 times. Now I don't really feel the need to anymore, but I think it could be interesting to try some time in the future with my girlfriend.
Most of my friends don't use psychedelics in any way anymore. Perhaps in part because many friends are starting families now and it's hard to find the time when having a girlfriend and/or children, etc...
That is a very different claim than:
> Combining psychedelics with meditation opens the very real risk of conditioning one's meditation practice to require psychedelics to have any efficacy.
... which is what the discussion started with.
I'm not going to argue that some people are not helped and I think there is a lot of interesting research.
But there seems to be a lot of people who think there must be some deeper meaning when you use psychedelics so they sit down and try and think about negative things to work them through, get stressed out and starting to spiral in a negative thought loop that is not really based in reality (like "my friends do not really like me, I suck").
Then they have a horrible trip and really did not learn from it because, your brain is often pretty stupid on psychedelics, but frame it as a positive experience on forums. It would be like people not handling alcohol saying "Yeah, sure I really went crazy and fought my dad, destroyed my car and ended up crying in a bush, but I really learned something about myself". No, the drugs made your brain think in a shitty way.
Maybe I'm just cynical but I'd say don't try to get deep with psychedelics until you are really used to them. Have fun and do the "abusing party drugs" part or watch a funny movie instead.
You don’t need to “really get used” to psychedelics by abusing them at parties in order to use them effectively. You just need to learn proper technique. You won’t learn that at parties or funny movies.
Steps for productive psychedelic sessions:
Choose a calm, quiet, pleasant environment.
Have someone you absolutely trust present. No other distractions. Fewer people the better, ideally only one other.
Lie down. If psilocybin makes you nauseous, you may want to purge if you can’t handle it. Nausea will die down as the trip builds up.
Close your eyes. Wear a sleep mask if you want.
Listen to calming, ambient music or calming white noise, headphones are best.
Dive in. I repeat, dive in. Focus should be inside not outside.
After the trip, write everything down.
That is just elitist talk about thinking there is a correct way to use those drugs. "Abusing drugs" while listening to calm music is not better than "abusing drugs" while watching a funny movie. There is no higher purpose and there is so much myth around these drugs that people say to make themselves feel good.
The best way to ensure a good trip is to be comfortable yes but to be alone with your thoughts listening to some calming music that they usually not listen to is not comfortable for a lot of people. That is how people end up thinking they must think about rough stuff, end up in negative thought loops and as they are not used to the drug it scares them and they cannot easily get out.
If they instead focus on just enjoying the serotonin and fun visuals while doing something that you almost certainly know you will love it will usually work out better. That could be watching a movie, listening to music they love, chat about fun memories, watch a tv-show that they have seen tons of time before but always gives them comfort.
If they then become uncomfortable their brain will be back on topic quickly because they are doing something that love. Meditation and shit like that can come later when they know how a trip is, know it will end, know how it can feel in their body and mind.
For most people that is NOT being alone with their own thoughts while listening to music they usually do not listen to. If you usually meditate and listen to ambient music, go a head and try it. If you never do that then do something you are comfortable with, if you love watching old episodes of The Office you will love it even more and be even happier if tripping. You will not have a bad trip and if you start to feel uneasy you will snap out of it easily.
Because your state of mind is where you want it to be and you are where you are comfortable, watching a for example a tv-show.
As marmadukester39 says, research - and there has been tons of it since the 50s, John Lilly was the pioneer - disagrees with you.
Not only is your advice based on assumptions that do not hold ("it will usually work out better", "enjoying the serotonin", "brain will be back on topic") but it's actively dangerous since it introduces non-deterministic outside inputs that experienced psychonauts _all agree_ can be devastatingly hard to deal with.
Doing psychedelics at a party is playing russian roulette with your sanity, fullstop.
I urge you to read John Lilly's autobiography "The Scientist" to see how a scientific framework for psychedelic research can be created from scratch and lead to useful experiments. You also get to learn about productive models to apply when doing this sort of work.
Except that is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you should be in a set and setting that you are really comfortable with. I.e. a lot of people love watching sitcoms for example and feel very comfortable doing that. Their mind will react very predictable because the set and setting is insanely familiar. It will guide your mind through a very predictable trip.
Trying to meditate when you are not used to it when doing psychedelics for the first time? That is a non-predictable setting and then when people start worry because they feel bad they are also thinking about why their parents never really hugged them and start spiraling.
I would say bad trips are pretty rare in practice but I would say almost all I have noticed among people or people have written about have been:
Chaotic outside influence like people behaving badly, them being in an unfamiliar environment or becoming scared because they feel ill.
or
People in perfectly fine settings sitting down and start spiraling because they suddenly think they are not doing well in life, are not liked or whatever. That usually starts by them seeking depth or thinking about things to get more out of a trip. Which is perfectly fine but it is not the best way to avoid a bad trip.
>Doing psychedelics at a party is playing russian roulette with your sanity, fullstop.
I did not say that you should do psychedelics at a party even if I think that roughly the same case of bad trips as trying to "be deep" when tripping.
I do agree that you shouldn’t ascribe too much weight to certain things, but personally I’d say this is applicable more to specific spiritual conclusions, “seeing god,” etc. No, you didn’t see god, you were taking a hallucinogen and were high as balls.
The overwhelming majority of anecdotal stories I've read suggest the exact opposite, in that people perceive a lasting (for some time at least) sense of peace, not agitation.
Or perhaps by agitation you were referring to desire to re-experience the psychedelic experience rather than remaining content with peacefulness. I'd say this is quite common, and I can appreciate that a disciplined meditation practice is a fine idea, but I've yet to see any particularly compelling reason to believe a disciplined meditation practice is the only answer.
My guess at it is that for most (but not necessarily all) people:
(Disciplined psychedelic practice + Disciplined meditation practice) >
(Disciplined psychedelic practice + decent meditation practice) >
Disciplined meditation practice >
Disciplined psychedelic practice >
Undisciplined psychedelic or meditation practice
But this is just a guess. I feel quite certain no one actually knows the proper answer to the question, but there's certainly no shortage of people who think they do.....which is kind of at the heart of what this whole business is all about, as far as I can tell.
Its predictable:
Have a bad experience?
“Whaat no way dude, you must have taken something else or you were predisposed to schizophrenia you should have predicted that and checked your family history and genetics first! This experience is totally invalid to us and anyone considering using our favorite psychadelic”
Develop schizophrenia?
“[abbreviated version of the same response]”
Have an interesting idea?
“Just an anecdote! More research necessary”
Psychosis valuable? The difference between clinical psychosis and a psychedelic breakthrough experience is that the latter is integrated. The Psychonaut finds a way to make it part of his psyche and thus neutralize the dissonance.
Those who talk about predisposition really have no clue regarding proper psychedelic use. Psychosis is the whole point. But, taking place inside a framework that allows for integration. There is a reason shamans have rituals.
But if that's true, replace "psychosis" in the preceding arguments about the dangers with "failure to integrate the experience".
Same danger, different name.
It still needs to be acknowledged, not brushed away. Frameworks and rituals do not remove this danger. They may alter the risks, but it still occurs within them.
It's possible that you'll grow to rely on the helicopter to climb the mountain, but hopefully what you take away from it is that there is in fact a path (or accept that there's not - and you might has well climb a different mountain).
There are people that let themselves go: eat unhealthy and gain weight, exercise too little and lose muscle and cardio, etc. Then when one day they look in the mirror, realize what they've become, and it motivates them to eat healthy for a period of time, hit the gym etc.
In other words, they wait until they have an issue then solve it. They are re-active, not pro-active.
Alternatively, you can maintain your physical health by always being mindful of what you eat and making sure to get adequate exercise, etc.
Meditation is the same deal: don't wait until the day you have serious trauma to deal with in order to start a practice of mindfulness. Do not be reactive about it. Like physical health, it is far better to Maintain and be Proactive than to let it go then React.
So if you reach the top of the mountain: do you just roll back down to the bottom and then have to start all over again? Or do you actively maintain your position?
If it helps you find ways to meditate, or simply discover that you can meditate, or that the benefits of meditating matter to you, that could help your practice immensely.
I'm not saying it's for everyone (it's definitely not), but if you can find ways to leverage it I really believe it can be a helpful tool for growth, healing, and what the hell, just having fun.
I don't share this experience. Some experiences stick but for me overall after a week or so a lot of the "revelations" seem pretty crackpotty.
However the older I get, the more useful the 'revelations' (I rather call them insights) become. As in: I can actually use them to do things better in daily life.
What it offers, though — in the only way I know how to describe — is an alternative perspective. It’s like stepping outside of your usual self and evaluating things from an almost objective and completely different point of view. It’s this perspective that allows for revelations that otherwise wouldn’t happen in a sober state. This is a result of physiology and the chemical interactions in the brain due to ingestion of the substance.
It’s quite an amazing experience. Sometimes it can be scary, or odd or just funny. But in my experience, it has led to some very profound experiences and insights.
It made me pay attention to different things than I would normally pay attention to - things I arguably should have paid more attention to. Specifically social cues. I would repeat peoples words in my head over and over. I would go over written words and try to imagine the tone of voice very carefully.
It also made me change my behavior (temporarily), partly as a result of the different way I was paying attention. I got to see how people responded to that changed behavior (they responded very positively).
It's absolutely possible while sober, but it can be quite effortless and accidental on a trip. I'm also not so sure all people have these experiences while sober, even if they could - it takes work. Psychedelics can be good at breaking down mental patterns and guards, exposing the things you typically miss or avoid.
Undoubtedly true, but there are several therapeutic approaches to trauma which are much better understood. We should do more research into psilocybin but it seems to me like the better understood therapies should be tried first.
That parallels the story of Ram Dass, Robert Anton Wilson, and many other figureheads from the 60s.
Many of them would trip over and over again to try to figure out how to stay in that place. Then many of them realized meditation can bring them to that place, and once they realized that they stopped tripping.
Tripping is an advertisement to meditate, not the other way around.
This really distills the message down to its essence. Though worth pointing out that this advertisement doesn't have to be seen as spam. Rather it can be just the right channel at the right moment for some people.
Exploring the risks and benefits of practices is the very point of subjecting them to scientific studies. 'Religious' Buddhists may quite understandably take their traditions and texts to have settled the issue. But that's not the case for others interested in the possibilities of psychotechnologies (old and new alike) for human development.
Sounds like something you _want_ to believe is true, but I'm not sure that it is.
Is there even anecdotal evidence that this is a risk?
Sorry brother, I had you all wrong.
Meditation is often too broad and connotatively laden a term to have immediately productive cross discipline discussions about techniques and outcomes.
We'd all benefit from an accessible but revised vocabulary for these matters.
I think they key word here is "relate" (that which is "related" may often be other than what was intended to be related).
> Combining psychedelics with meditation opens the very real risk of conditioning one's meditation practice to require psychedelics to have any efficacy.
I can only speak for myself, but to me this implies (regardless of intent) substantial risk (it is at the least very ambiguous), as well as implies it has been ~proven that psychedelics can, at least in some cases, require subsequent usage to realize meditation benefits at all. It lacks epistemic humility.
> When not taking psychedelics and meditating one will attempt to re-create or grasp after the pleasant sensations and thoughts previously experienced, which severs one from looking into the present moment as it is.
This makes specific predictions of what people will do, with no qualifying words indicating uncertainty.
> Take a look at shroomery.org for a large group of people's attitude towards psychedelics and meditation, larger than n=39.
This seems suggestive of ~proof of the above speculative claims.
Of course, this may all seem like excessive pedantry, but I happen to think pedantry is just one of many underappreciated and underused tools in humanity's toolbox.
I accept your idea that I could have been more rigorous in my initial post. I'm also not against pedantry. I just didn't see it as a fruitful line of inquiry in this context, seeing as how my original post became uneditable. Otherwise I would have edited it to make it clear that YMMV and I'm in no position to make absolute statements about subjective realities, although I do think that this is obvious (since I was offering a possible risk, and not a guaranteed outcome) and not something that needed to be dissected.
Opinions presented as facts should always qualify for dissection in my opinion, if we had less of this, particularly in politics, perhaps people would be more comfortable with uncertainty and the unknown, and therefore less likely to fall on different sides of contentious arguments.
As for the following disingenuity: "the complete lack of any information existing within the current comprehensive knowledge of mankind itself," I pointed you to shroomery.org where you can find people's attitudes towards meditation and psychedelics and a cross section thereof that would corroborate my initial statements. It would be your own shortsightedness to not include these first hand reports within the "current comprehensive knowledge of mankind."
And as someone who acknowledged that they derive signal from upvotes and downvotes, surely you would appreciate the notion that perhaps my premise is the top comment in this thread because people agree with it out of their own experience and rationality.
Tone, as I suspect both of us know very well, is used in internet parlance in the spirit of implicit uncertainty. Note also I said "The ~tone of your statement", the "~" was intended to explicitly communicate uncertainty.
> as is the assertion that I presented an opinion as fact. I don't see evidence for those two things. Now, you're presenting your own opinion as fact.
Am I? I don't think I am.
Your words:
"Combining psychedelics with meditation opens the very real risk of conditioning one's meditation practice to require psychedelics to have any efficacy."
I find this somewhat problematic, but the explicit usage of the word risk denotes uncertainty of outcome.
"When not taking psychedelics and meditating one will attempt to re-create or grasp after the pleasant sensations and thoughts previously experienced, which severs one from looking into the present moment as it is."
Here I see no uncertainty, and it sure doesn't sound like "just an anecdote". What bothers me in general about these types of comments is that they are (at least) suggestive of a certain course of action, with poor supporting evidence.
> As for the following disingenuity: "the complete lack of any information existing within the current comprehensive knowledge of mankind itself," I pointed you to shroomery.org where you can find people's attitudes towards meditation and psychedelics and a cross section thereof that would corroborate my initial statements.
"Take a look at shroomery.org for a large group of people's attitude towards psychedelics and meditation, larger than n=39" isn't much better proof than "google it". Shroomery.org certainly contains some information on people's attitudes towards psychedelics and meditation, but this is not the same thing as information that proves your thesis. Does shroomery.org even contain a substantial number of reports that corroborate your statements? If so, is this the majority sentiment, or more of an outlier? Are these and other questions relevant when passing out advice? Should I and all other readers of your advice take it as true, unless we are willing to go out and locate refutations? Is this how epistemology works?
> It would be your own shortsightedness to not include these first hand reports within the "current comprehensive knowledge of mankind."
Of course, all available information should be considered.
My comment was:
> The ~tone of your statement combined with the complete lack of any information (in the message, or indeed existing within the current comprehensive knowledge of mankind itself) regarding the magnitude or likelihood of the negative event manifesting seems like an appropriate situation for dissection.
Can you tell me in some sort of quantitative detail, based on current comprehensive knowledge:
a) the likelihood of the negative event you describe manifesting
b) the magnitude of manifestation that can be expected
This would be useful for those considering psychedelic use in judging the amount of risk they are taking on.
Look, here's my point: I would like conversations to be fact and evidenced based. If one is passing out advice one way or the other, it seems fair that they should be both able and willing to demonstrate that the advice is sound, as well as be non-resistant to the idea that supporting evidence is a reasonable expectation. If you'd like to suggest a reasonable idea for consideration, or advise caution for specific reasons, I think my expectations would be far less stringent. And I care more about this particular topic than others because of the utility I see in these substances for moving towards a solution for many problems plaguing humanity right now, so I tend to be a tad disagreeable at times, no offense intended.
Full disclosure: this is my personal opinion on how issues such as this "should" be discussed. I expect it is at least somewhat imperfect, and you are not obligated in any way to agree or follow this advice. However, I expect myself or others will often disagree when comments run afoul of these principles.
I take that to mean that the risk of conditioning yourself to expect something is always present, though maybe it becomes insurmountable with psychedelics.
Antidepressants are too new to get a good answer out of religion.
In my case, I had been trying meds for years (pretty much all brands). Suddenly, I had an intuition that there must be other ways. I researched the web during days and days.
Result: I reduced the meds over around 10-14 day period down to zero, after I had gotten into daily mindfulness meditation for a couple of weeks (started with 30min, then 1 hour as an advanced practitioner). As soon as got to 0mg, I had the best couple of hours of my life thanks to my 1st trip with LSD (well researched, well prepared, did it outside in nature, playlist carefully selected). It completely ripped me out of my depression, felt 100% connected to the entire universe, felt immense beauty, love, light, peace. Even during 2-3 days after the experience, I was still deeply in love with simple trees, plants, flowers, where everything had been grey and without any interest during years, before. The anti-anxiety effect lasted a couple of months. This was a life-changing event. The best moment of my life. As always, your mileage may vary.
Looks like you really hit a nerve with that one.
Downvotes are ridiculous sometimes.
Once you become aware of the cause-effect relationships within your mind, it becomes easy to change what causes your mental stressors and improve yourself.
Once you start changing your habits and behaviors and improving yourself into being the person you want to be (Which is what is called: finding your middle ground.) you'll have less of a reason to be on as antidepressants. Usually what happens is you begin to slightly lower the dose and over time and you eventually find yourself not needing antidepressants at all.
In short, the goal, in a way, is to get off of antidepressants, but not to banish it. Antidepressants have a side effect of reducing awareness, so while it's not impossible to end all stress (aka enlightenment) while being on an antidepressant, the antidepressant becomes pointless if not eventually problematic.
There are tons of books and meditation courses. It depends what suits your style. eg, The Mind Illuminated https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrati... is the most popular meditation book right now. There is even a subreddit dedicated to it. However, it is quite the read, guiding as one progresses, mirroring how a teacher would do it.
Culadasa, who made The Mind Illuminated, is working on another book that goes over the second topic I was diving into (like Noting Meditation). It is incomplete with no eta. It would be a 102 book for after one finishes The Mind Illuminated.
There are other resources on the second topic, but right now both topics are ideally taught with a teacher, especially the second topic, so progress can be aided and verified.
What goal do you have? I can possibly write a skinny as to what to look at and where to go to achieve that goal, including providing more resources.
Also, just in case you do not know CBT, with a good therapist, is, I believe, the only kind of therapy that works well on depression. CBT takes from the techniques in the topics above, and then boils them down into a light version that can be worked through at an accelerated rate.
or is this just your assumption?
It seems there was a measurable positive outcome after 4 months. It gets the desired result of enhancing human experience, so does it really matter whether there was chemical assistance? At this point it is just a drug that enhances mediation.
What if your mind's not ordinary? (I don't mean 'oh so special and better', I just mean atypical).
Also, if ever someone had a bad trip, meditation would help to bring it back under control
Cool study though
I would suggest psilocybin and LSD mainly for punctual experiences. They can make you understand what lies "behind the veil".
Once you know that, once you have lived that, your life can take a huge turn.
One of the best case outcomes is that you no longer have to believe or hope that life is way more profound than society wants us to believe, but you know it (intuitively, that is, not intellectually speaking, of course).
I'm sure they had reasons. We do studies like this to determine whether or not those reasons are any good. I've seen a lot of evidence that suggests that mediation can have lots of benefits, and I've seen evidence that suggests that psychedellics can have benefits in certain use cases as well.
It's easy on a personal level to dismiss results of a study because of dogma, but it doesn't translate into an effective argument.
That's taking a very narrow point of view on the subject. While modern, mainstream, orthodox eastern religions forbid drugs and alcohol the traditions that inform them used a wide array of tools to reveal and tune the instruments of perception.
A man with a broken leg benefits from a crutch until the bone heals.
It becomes opinionated as to what causes heedlessness, so there is a divide between groups when it comes to what one is and isn't allowed, so I get you could argue magic mushrooms should not be allowed.
As food for thought, brain scans show mushrooms lights up the brain in a near identical way to jhanic meditation, so it's common to use mushrooms as an advertisement. "One day you can do this with meditation."
Technically the fifth precept is about alcohol: Surāmerayamajjapamādaṭṭhānā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi -> I undertake the precept to refrain from fermented drink which lead to heedlessness. However, the hermeneutical understanding of that precept is it applies to any mind-altering substance. Why? Because losing control of yourself can trigger violating other precepts. For example intoxicants could lead to sexual misconduct which can lead to lying, and so on.
I wouldn't call it a short cut. I hope I didn't accidentally imply it is. Wisdom is built up through experience, be it meditative experience, social experiences (like dispelling ill-will), or written experiences (like suttas). When there is enough wisdom from awareness the fetter of ignorance breaks. There is no short cut when it comes to dispelling ignorance and misunderstanding.
>However, the hermeneutical understanding of that precept is it applies to any mind-altering substance. Why? Because losing control of yourself can trigger violating other precepts. For example intoxicants could lead to sexual misconduct which can lead to lying, and so on.
I would say losing control of yourself is heedlessness. There isn't a loss of control when it comes to magic mushrooms. However, you could argue magic mushrooms causes heedlessness because you can't control how long the meditative-like state is, which could be a reason to ban it. What magic mushrooms do is increase awareness.
Buddhist tradition does it's best to not offend. Because Buddhism tries not to offend, the general rule of thumb is: if it's illegal in that part of the world, Buddhism does not encourage law breaking behavior. Where I live, for example, magic mushrooms are legal. There are many places in the world where they are unregulated. Likewise, in many circles in the west, over 50% of new practitioners came from psychedelics often having seen a glimpse of nirvana and are looking for that. Some come from yoga too. The idea is to let those people know there is more out there, so they don't get stuck.
I'm not trying to take sides here or say it's right or wrong. I'm just trying to help.
With drugs you can experience states that may be good but not true, true but not good.
During meditation you experience states that are good and true.
I've experienced closed eyes visuals during sober meditation, and I wouldn't call any phenomenal experiences strictly "true."
My real issue is that your perceptions of reality are a construct shaped by evolution and culture, and while they probabalistically correspond to aspects of reality that is also true in a drugged up state; the difference is mostly quantitative, albeit with such difference in quantity as to appear qualitative. We're patching together fragments of sensory input with processes that fill in the blanks and delay event streams so that things appear to happen in orders that are useful for us to react to.
We delay our perception of light to better match our perception of sound, so that people talking have lip movements that correspond to the sounds they're speaking in the moment. This applies to other events as well, and researchers have hacked the percieved casaulity of the event stream through conditioning; first the subject repeatedly presses a button and hears a sound a moment later that is offset by an artificial delay. After the subject is accustomed to this, the artificial delay is removed and the subject experiences the sound before they press the button.
As a side note it obviously isn't clever to have all visual input delayed, which is why your brainstem gets a separate stream of visual data it can respond to quickly. When the neural pathway that feeds data into your percieved consciousness is damaged, your brainstem can keep responding to data and catching objects that "you" can't see or speak about -- this condition is known as blindsight.
Your eyes are much less sensitive to color in your peripheral vision than they are to colors in your central field of view, yet you don't experience that color differently. By the time you experience color, the values in your periphery have been "corrected" to match more reliable data. There is noise in that process, and guesstimation.
If I experience the sky as a different color than you do, is one of us experiencing the "true" color of the sky? Does consensus reality have anything to do with truth, other than by usually massaging out some errors by looking at averages?
Moreover, can a color even be true? A color corresponds to some frequency of a light particle, or whatever the fuck a light particle really is in the fundamentally unknowable base reality that our conscious processes are implemented on top of, but a color is not that vibration or that particle, a color is an experience. [Edit: i.e. a representation; do not mistake the pointing finger for the moon, nor the pointer for the register.]
I'm not claiming that sober experiences don't generally correspond more to base reality than do experiences under the influence of entheogens (I only feel the need to make this explicit because some folks in the same drug fan clubs I'm in do make such claims), but they still aren't one-to-one. You aren't experiencing reality, only a useful model of reality. After a standard disclaimer that all statements about reality are implicitly probabalistic and unprovable (including that one) we might venture that some experiences are more or less "true" than others depending on how much we think they correspond to reality, but none of our experiences are strictly true in this sense. The only way I can see arguing for a strictly true human experience is to judge the experience entirely apart from reality; if the phenomenon was experienced it was true in this sense, but obviously we're talking about subjective rather than objective truth at that point and drugged-truth is just as valid as sober-truth. Words are mushy.
If Alice is on drugs and doesn't see a ghost, and Bob is sober but hallucinating a ghost while his brain is in a "natural" state, is Bob seeing what is true while Alice is not? If you think this example is utterly ridiculous and nobody has ever hallucinated something on that scale while sober, I would check the pop-sci book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. Sober perceptions can be super trippy, even if they aren't for most people most of the time.
To what degree and under which scenarios this reasoning is correct &/or optimal is currently unknown.
> While you can have drug induced trances similar to meditation, in Zen they call it "losing your self", the entire point is to be able to develop that skill and point of view without a chemical aid.
Whether (non-psychedelic) meditative states are "optimal" (regardless of what the specific "point" of various practices are) is currently unknown.
But to be clear, this in no way implies that developing an ability to reach these states without drugs isn't beneficial, or that the ability to reach such a state doesn't have unrecognized advantages over and above a psychedelic approach, or that psychedelics do not come with a much higher (yet unknown) risk profile.
I've read very little that suggests a meditation practice is likely to be harmful, and plenty that suggests it is extremely beneficial. But I've read nothing that suggests it utterly supplants psychedelic experiences, and that includes Ram Dass' experience as well, to my understanding anyways. If he personally stopped using psychedelics, and recommends that to others, in no way proves that this is the optimal path.
The correct answers to questions such as these are currently unknown. We need more research and ideas.
That sounds a bit alarmist and is not really a risk if one applies reasonable, responsible ratios to the respective practices.
Seems extremely unlikely, but I'm curious, so I would appreciate a link.
Then there is the reflection/insight practice, in which your mind pays deliberate attention to its own internal machinations. With the right touch--neither too tight, nor too loose--you can maintain an appropriate distance so that you can see what's going on, but not get pulled under. I find it difficult to believe that any activity other than mental reflection, no matter how focused, would be an effective substitute.
I wanted to believe in all this Eastern stuff, I really did. Spent a lot of time on it too, find it hard to.
I know mindfulness is a huge trend right now, but it's not even defined "pay attention without judgement."
1. It discusses video games that were created with a specific purpose of improving ability to focus.
2. It mentions that researchers have a hypothesis that these games will improve ability to focus.
3. It mentions that there is an ongoing research into what's happening in the brain when people play these games.
I don't see how you can take this and draw a conclusion that video games have the same effect on the prefrontal cortex as meditation.
And your initial claim was broader than that, you said that "prefrontal cortex activity touted by Kelly McGonigal is achieved through any other focused activity", which appears to be completely baseless.
See below.
"Lots of activities can boost the size of various parts of the pre-frontal cortex – video games, for example – but it’s the disconnection of our mind from its “stress center” that seems to give rise to a range of physical as well as mental health benefits, says Taren."
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-does-mi...
The funny thing is that, as mentioned before, I almost bought into the meditation hype too.
This doesn't mean that:
1. Any activity that requires focus has the same effect on the prefrontal cortex of meditation.
2. Video games have the same effect on the prefrontal cortex as meditation.
Also, using this article to support your position is an interesting choice, given that you have previously said that "There are no proven benefits to meditation" and this article discusses proven benefits of meditation.
Actually, the very quote you provided mentions "range of physical as well as mental health benefits", presumably referring to meditation (or "mindfulness practice").
There are so many studies with proven benefits the topic has its own Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation
Meditation is much more than focusing practice. Playing video games is not in any way equivalent.
I think it's pretty likely meditation is placebo and conditioning. People like mysticism that comes from the East. Acupuncture is the same deal.
Amusing to note the "Weaknesses in historic meditation and mindfulness research" section on the link you posted.
[0] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mindfulness-no... [1] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/transcendental...
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2016/06/conflicts-of-intere...
It gives an interesting experience which may be enjoyable or horrible, or anything in between, depending on who and when takes it. Reports of bad trips are widespread. Most native tribes who used psychedelics had rituals of "mental cleansing" of sorts to lower the chance of a bad trip.
Of course if you only learned "meditation" under a drug, you may just not know how to meditate normally. But this is not the case in this study, afaict.
and
> It gives an ... experience which may be enjoyable or horrible
Doesn't the second claim answer the first? You just said a trip can be enjoyable, at least some of the time.
To get into specifics, I've done LSD a few times, but never a big dose. Sometimes I've had manageable anxiety on the come-up, and often I've experienced an amazing appreciation of music that made the come-up anxiety a small price to pay. And by "amazing" I mean the difference between looking at an ice cream cone and eating the ice cream cone.