Meditation, Transcendence, and Psychedelics
Until you bite into a Mango, you cannot know its actual taste, regardless of the number of ways it’s been explained to you. It’s like that with the transcendent state of consciousness. Try as one can, it can only be known through direct personal experience. Explanations just won’t do.
However, let’s try as best we can to point towards it with words. The transcendent state of consciousness is a non-sensory experience. It is a non-ordinary experience. It can neither be experienced or known through our senses, nor through our usual intellectual capacities. It is an inner, personal, “invisible” experience. Words that point towards it include: transpersonal, timeless, infinite, wholeness, natural, all-embracing, essential being, pure perception, final truth, sacred, and divine. Although these words point towards a transcendent consciousness, they are not themselves the experience. So how do we move towards this pinnacle of human consciousness? Let’s consider three ancient, timeless, and reliable doorways – religion, meditation, and psychedelic botanicals.
When I speak about religion, I do so in the manner of two great contemporaries who lived in the late 19th century – the physician and psychiatrist William James and the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. I refer my reader to James’ Varieties of Religious Experiences and to Tolstoy’s Confessions. James and Tolstoy sought to discover the common and unchanging essence of diverse religions. James called this essence the “religious mind.” Religious frameworks may differ, he noted, but the essential experience is the same. This transcendent, sacred, and “religious mind” replaces ego-centered identity as the natural foundation of moral guidance, universal love, and profound wisdom. It is the timeless and illusive “more to life.” It is the essence of our being. It is the truth of who we are.
Meditation is a series of methods that similarly points our attention inward towards that same “religious mind.” The first aim of meditation is to calm the overactive and mind and assist in cultivating a healthy human life. That is a progressive process that “cleans up” our usual egoic behavior, allowing for a more peaceful, happy, and fulfilling life, while simultaneously establishing a basis for its final aim. The second and final aim of meditation, which we are addressing here, takes us further. It points us towards and facilitates a personal and direct experience of the ultimate truth of self and reality. That special knowledge becomes the foundation and touchstone of a fully lived human life. It shows up in daily life as the attainment of the qualities of human flourishing – wisdom, serenity, happiness, love, and freedom. It is precisely what we have also called the transcendent “religious mind.”
The use of plant-based psychedelics, ingested with the right mindset and in the right setting, allows individuals to touch into this same transcendent state. Like meditation and religious practices, this is an age-old practice. Grounded in cultural values and communal support, the use of these botanicals has long served to connect day-to-day life to a deeper knowledge and related spiritual insights. These unique plant substances can facilitate a rapid dissolution of ego boundaries and the emergence of an unconditioned state of pure awareness and perception. That state of being, that deeper knowing, touches into the depths and profundities of the human experience and is accompanied by an undeniable sense of clarity and certainty. Once again, it’s a taste of the transcendent “religious mind.”
Although psychedelic-facilitated experiences rapidly open the door to transcendent states and spiritual knowledge, it is the ongoing attention to inner development that stabilizes and integrates these realizations. We recognize in our “quick taste” the limitations of an ego-based life, but, unless we engage in an ongoing process of self-growth and self-realization we will find great difficulty in avoiding the ego’s tenacious and gravitational pull. We may realize profound spiritual insights, such as the direct experience of oneness, wholeness, and universal love, but we will be unable to “spiritualize” our daily life without a continued effort towards self-growth. That continued effort is the role and place of meditation and is at the core of all great religious traditions. Without such ongoing support we may find great difficulty in sustaining the fullness of our precious transcendent realizations.
As mentioned, the transcendent spiritual experience can only be known through personal experience. It is right there for you to experience! That is called first-person direct “knowing.” The knowledge thus gained is a result of spontaneous revelation, direct seeing – an “aha” experience of sorts. The most a teacher or learned writings can do is “point out” what is not truth. In this way, your curiosity and awareness can simultaneously be pointed towards ultimate truth.
As an example, consider the following pointing, “Close your eyes and “look” at the ego self, the ordinary self. Does it have a color, shape, form, size, mass, or sound? Look again, search again. Is it inside or outside? Does it have a location? Do you have one identity, or multiple identities? Is there one you or multiple selves? If after looking and looking you cannot find a specific personal “I,” rest in that non-finding and experience the nature of that experience.” That is one brief example of how the individual is pointed towards direct experience by dissembling the delusion of a permanent and findable “ego-I,” over and over again.
Aside from accessing the core of the “religious mind,” through the means we have discussed, there are many other ways to momentarily touch the grace of this state of being. These include: beauty, nature, music, dance, ritual, breathing exercises, sacred architecture, writings, prayer, touch, devotion, and so on. In each instance, when the thinking mind ceases, stillness ensues, and the openness and flow of a transcendent consciousness reveals itself. However, unless one realizes that what has been touched is our precious and ever-present natural human state – a state-of-being that is independent of the immediate stimulus – we will become attached to the stimulus and miss what it points towards. We will have had the experience, but missed its meaning.
Meditation as a “therapeutic” relaxation technique misses the mark. Psychedelics as recreational experiences miss the mark. Religion as a ritualized practice misses the mark. And, fleeting glimpses fail to recognize the significance of what has been experienced. When one touches a transcendent state of being, irrespective of the stimulus, we must pause, bring our awareness to the experience itself, rest in it, taste it, and directly “know it.” To integrate and sustain these experiences, we must create the life conditions that support this foundational state-of-being and undertake practices that assist us to access, stabilize, and integrate long term what has been momentarily revealed to us by Grace. Otherwise, it will fade into memory as just “one of those pleasant ephemeral moments.”
Why is it so important for us to aspire towards the state of simple being and presence which we have called the transcendent state, the “religious mind?” Why has this been essential for humanity across time and diverse cultures? Try as we may, we will discover, as have our ancestors, that reason alone cannot provide – through its science, philosophy, and organized traditions – an understanding of life that sustains and elevates itself through the challenges and sufferings of human life. Nor can reason provide direct and accurate guidance as to the character of a well lived life. And finally, reason alone is not a reliable basis for a joyful, serene, wise, and selfless life. Reason and rationality, we discover, are very valuable, but limited tools. They enable us to understand material life, organize it, and exert some level of control in an ever-changing world.
But to live with sustained meaning and joy that sustains itself through life’s challenges, we must know more. We most know something invisible to our senses. We must know something other. We must move beyond the limited consciousness and perceptual capacities that constitute our ordinary life. Only then can we learn from the full extent of our consciousness and deliberately use that extended awareness and knowledge to create a life and world deserving of our deepest humanity.
For this, we look with faith toward an inner knowing – non-cognitive, non-linear, and invisible to the senses – which alone can reveal what reason cannot know. We turn inwards towards the invisible knowledge of heart and soul. We turn toward James’ “religious mind,” towards a transcendent aspect of consciousness. That deeper knowing and expansive consciousness can connect our finite life to the infinite, our separateness to the whole, and an unanswered existential uneasiness to a profound and stable serenity.
And if we are so connected, the worldly manifestation of this interconnected wholeness will show up as a deep concern for others, a simple kindness and care for other, as if other is oneself. With that wisdom, heart, and love we may finally find, as did our ancestors, that a direct knowledge of the simple truth of our being can transform our personal and collective lives. And, this alone can bring a certain end to individual distress, global strife, famine, and planetary destruction.