The Moderate Dose Experience
With a moderate dose, the recliner or the couch will probably be calling at least part of the time. The moderate dose is good for meditation, relaxation, and creativity. Also, the moderate dose can be used to get more deeply involved in any intellectual, manual, or artistic activity. In the vernacular, it is possible to get “hung up” on something. Of course, one is free to move between activities as he wishes. Sometimes the spontaneous thought generator will choose an activity that the rational mind can accept or reject and vice versa.
For the sake of comparison, the moderate dose is defined here in about the same way that it is by medical marijuana distributors. A few puffs on a marijuana cigarette might provide a low dose experience, but a single dose provided by a medical marijuana distributor as an edible, a capsule, a candy, or a tincture might be enough qualify as a moderate dose, at least during the time surrounding the peak intensity of the experience. Of course, there are individual differences. The different cannabis edibles have differing strengths and provide slightly different experiences, and the time since the last meal makes a difference. The cigarette takes effect almost immediately, but some would consider it somewhat messy and offensive. Edibles take somewhere near an hour to take full effect, but they are not messy at all and they don’t bother anyone else.
A convenient demarcation for the moderate dose experience would be where the “aperture” to the inner world opens. Some have called this the opening of the “third eye”. It is at this point where the intuitive mental material clearly flows on its own volition from the spontaneous thought generator to consciousness. New ideas, insights, and creative material flow up all by themselves.
Although motor control is little affected if at all at this or even higher dosages, the mind is constantly being distracted by the continual emergence of vivid and interesting inner experience. For this reason it would be unwise to try to do anything important or risky that required sustained attention to the outside world such as driving a car.
The material that emerges to mind could be called intuitive, creative, and artistic which is why these drugs are sometimes used by musicians, artists, authors, and other types of creative people. Some call it a stimulation of “right brain” activity. This type of experience could be called deep meditation, the difference being that when one relaxes in the psychedelic experience the mental material can flow entirely on its own rather than being directed or coerced by the rational mind. If so desired, it is possible to indulge entirely in the intuitive side of the experience without making any effort to think, evaluate, or to direct its flow. The experience can become a combination of a magic carpet and a recliner.
Perfect relaxation is one of the ecstatic experiences that can sometimes occur with the help of a psychedelic drug. Sometimes it occurs spontaneously and sometimes it can be encouraged by an act of will. Perfect relaxation is even more luxurious than a massage or a soak in a hot tub. A beach on Tahiti or being stroked with an angora mitten are not by themselves sufficient in order to reach this depth of relaxation. My mentor, Dr. Stanislav Grof, refers to this experience as the “melted ecstasy”. Dr. Grof’s extensive contributions to psychiatry, transpersonal psychology, and expanded consciousness are presented on his web page (stanislavgrof.com). Once a person has discovered the melted ecstasy or any deep level of relaxation even once, he will tend to practice relaxation in his daily life. A mind at peace in a relaxed body is a very pleasant and healthy state of being. Physical relaxation of the body dissolves stress, and extremely deep relaxation is one form of ecstasy that can be cultivated in daily life even without drugs. Deep enough relaxation promotes the release of the bliss hormones. Practicing to remain relaxed and serene in intense daily-life situations can become a healthy quest in one’s lifestyle. If a person uses other drugs to relax, the need for them would certainly diminish to the extent that he could learn to relax at will. One can develop “grace under fire”. The body itself can become a mobile luxury spot.
An interesting quest with psychedelics and otherwise is to explore and resolve the various inner emotional, psychological, and philosophical tensions that block the path to deep relaxation. Once the goal of deep relaxation and peace of mind has been experienced at least once, the tension issues that act as blocks to it become more obvious and thus easier to identify, work on, and resolve. Mild psychedelic experience is an excellent stimulant for this process. Tension issues are a combination of rational and intuitive thought, and having a strong flow of intuitive thought available makes it quicker, easier, and more interesting to resolve them. A time can come where the tension issues regarding the inner world, the outer world, and the relationship between the two blend into a calm interesting drama that takes place within a mental background of tranquility. Tranquility and rationality blend together very nicely because the thoughts are free of emotional loading. Rationality promotes an efficient and effective relationship with the world while emotions can distort it. Of course, all distortions are not unpleasant.
Dr. Grof refers to these “tension blocks” as COEX (condensed experience) systems and describes them as clusters of similar feelings and memories gathered from different levels of abstraction extending from the everyday to the cosmic. As described later, the levels of abstraction are important because some tension issues exist at levels broader than everyday thought. As Jung suggested, mental tensions can have their roots in the very abstract religious areas of consciousness. These COEX systems can become much more obvious and concrete with psychedelic stimulation, providing a good opportunity to explore them, experience them, and hopefully to resolve any that contribute to problems. As will be discussed, their philosophical component can be resolved by discovering broader points of view to encompass them and their emotional component can be resolved by working through and becoming familiar with and accustomed to the associated feelings.
The tensions issues are not all negative. There can be topics that are made up of clusters of positive memories, creative endeavors, feelings, and points of view reaching far back into time. These are not usually considered to be problems. Cosmic and religious concepts, described later, can also cluster into positive experiences, some of which could be called “exalted” in nature. Creativity is a tension, but it is certainly not unpleasant except when you have to get up in the middle of the night to write down an insight. Each of these COEX systems has a specific theme. The “glue” that holds their items together is a combination of a particular feeling, an attitude, and a meaningful topic. For the sake of a model, I suggest that it is the intuitive aspect of the spontaneous thought generator that condenses these clusters together since it seems to follow a similar process when it silently condenses together the clusters of life experience that result in the insights that it sometimes presents to consciousness in daily life. Without this clustering process, our memory banks would be more like a random mosaic of items, so the spontaneous thought generator is an essential mental machine in this regard. Without it, we might have a great deal of trouble structuring our world. An interesting question would be whether hyperactive children, who are “all over the map” in their thoughts and behavior, might be able to learn to be more focused and structured with psychedelic therapy.
Exploring a COEX system can be a very interesting process of experiencing a sequence of similar memories, insights, feelings, and points of view as they automatically emerge into consciousness. Not only does it have a dramatic component, much as do movies and books, it all is also strictly personal material. To each of us, there is nothing more interesting than ourselves.
A significant advantage to the psychedelic experience is that “self therapy” or “self improvement” or “personal growth” is possible. One needs only to stretch out on a recliner, focus on the theme of an emerging COEX system, and then to become immersed in that system to the extent desired and to analyze it to the extent desired. Not only will the spontaneous thought generator tend to produce the data making up a COEX system, it will make clear the ways to resolve any tensions found within it. This process can sometimes take place very quickly, such as a “flash understanding”, or a “revelation” or it can be worked on over a longer period of time both during and between psychedelic sessions if so desired.
There is a large range of creative and emotional experiences and viewpoints to be discovered that are entirely pleasant. These are the ones that can bring meaning to life. Exploring them can even provide suggestions regarding possible new lifestyles and attitudes to practice. Just one of these could be the discovery and the practice of the skill set that helps to make a person an amiable companion and a skillful diplomat, thus smoothing the pathway through the maze of the social life. Picturing such a person in his wholeness and in detail is possible in psychedelic experience; it seems to be a preprogrammed COEX system within itself with many appropriate attributes. Another could be a basic childlike curiosity toward the world that reveals opportunities to explore new and meaningful activities such as in the social, educational, recreational, vocational, or athletic areas of life. The bottom line is that a psychedelic session can elevate a person out of a lifestyle that has become stagnant.
If marijuana or some other mild psychedelic drugs do indeed become more common in our culture, I predict that “holistic” relaxation will gradually attain more emphasis as a method of healing. Aspirin might bring about almost immediate relief to a headache, while holistic relaxation would bring about a gradual and very gratifying strengthening of the entire mind-body system. With too much stress for too long a period of time, the immune system can be sucked dry of its energy and all kinds of symptoms can start to appear. With less stress, the immune system can move toward maximum effectiveness.
Even with a moderate dose of a psychedelic drug it is sometimes possible to relax so deeply that the body can be partially forgotten and there can be a total immersion into the inner world. Different forms of visual imagery can come and go. Sometimes it is realistic imagery, such as floating down a gentle river in a gondola filled with luxurious pillows while inside a new body, or to float as a disembodied mind through beautiful scenery such as the Grand Canyon. The visual imagery is usually appropriate to the general feelings in the body, which in turn are generally quite positive. Sometimes the visual imagery is a light show of complex moving colors and patterns. This light show will move and “dance” precisely with any music that is playing (synesthesia). The emotions will follow the music also, and with heightened perception and stimulated intuition it can seem as though the entire nervous system can resonate with the vibrations of the music.
At this level of stimulation, the rational mind can still focus on such interesting areas such as inner exploration, problem solving, and creativity if so desired. In my humble experience, this particular level of stimulation with the moderate-dose experience is one of the great pleasures and benefits that psychedelics has to offer. It is the best of both the rational and the intuitive worlds joined together.
A variety of “bad trips”, although somewhat rare and usually of low intensity, are always a possibility. There is plenty of negativity in both the human drama and one’s personal life drama, so they can’t always be avoided altogether. No doubt each of us has the potential to feel the entire range of human emotions, our imagination is limitless, and we have essentially the same basic brain structures. Putting these facts together, if follows that just about any human situation could be experienced during a psychedelic session.
The “Psychedelic Death”
I once had a very vivid trip that started out as very bad but ended up extremely positive and that resulted in an extremely positive influence in my life. I found myself strongly identifying with a woman wandering lost in a snowstorm while carrying her baby who had already died of the cold. I knew that I was also close to death, but I felt that at least I still had my faith in God and heaven. I closed my eyes to surrender to death, but all I saw inside my mind was a meaningless and preposterous cartoonland. My life had been a wasted farce. The dark, still, painless emptiness of approaching death was the only relief in sight. When the “psychedelic death” washed over me, my body let go and became profoundly relaxed. Death is the ultimate act of “letting go” or “surrender”. Of course, if a person lets go anywhere near that deeply while still being alive there will be a cascade of bliss hormones, thereby equating death with an extremely positive experience. It felt like a disembodied mind in a spiritual body suspended in perfect luxury. It was a supreme relief to shuck the wretched mortal coil and the world it was connected to. Any and all nagging feelings resulting from the survival instinct were no longer experienced. There were no earthly needs or cares at all; just bliss in a new domain.
Having a concept of death of this nature, even if it is nothing more than a drug-induced fantasy or another cosmic assumption, makes a big difference. It takes a lot of the sting out of the survival instinct. Since existence is a mystery, and since even a devout materialist will admit that we already live entirely in our minds while here on Earth, death could simply be our same mind filled with a different set of contents. Positive cosmic assumptions such as this certainly cannot be proved, but they can be totally comforting nevertheless.
In the days to follow, I noticed that my “life of quiet desperation” that Thoreau spoke about brightened considerably. The positive cosmic assumption regarding the nature of death reduced the niggling anxieties and fears relating to the survival instinct even though I knew it was only an assumption. Since so many earthly activities involve survival struggles in one form or another, the new outlook was quite pervasive and positive. This process could be considered as another example of placing a vivid abstract concept-image into neuroplastic space where it can influence a broad range of attitudes and self-images.
My previous concept of death was one of dead bodies moldering underground in scary cemeteries at night and was very morbid and gruesome. The new one of a disembodied mind with a spiritual body suspended in a domain of luxurious bliss and purity is considerably better. This is another example of how a cosmic concept can reduce tension in everyday life. Since death is such a significant and pervasive reality in our existence, a more positive concept toward it should streamline the flow of energy through much of our mental domain of cosmic concepts.
Even now, when some bossy person tries to tell me that I should not eat (such-and-such) because it has (long chemical name) in it, my automatic response is: “I don’t care if I die”. As a matter of fact, I keep myself in top health because I am a pleasure-seeking animal and I like to feel as good as I can as much of the time as I can. I also like to cut bossy know-it-all people off at the pockets, so it is a win-win situation.
I am quite sure that if a person with a terminal illness could experience the “psychedelic death”, his anxiety level associated with his survival instinct would be reduced considerably. Perhaps someday drugs will be discovered or synthesized that would reliably provide the same specific sort of experience or one like it. Not only would such an experience reduce the anxiety of a dying person, it would also be of benefit to the feelings of his friends and family. The concept of “going to a better place” would become more vivid and believable.
The moment that my doctor sprung on me the fact that I had a malignant tumor, I expected that the old hammer of high of anxiety would hit me hard in my solar plexus, but nothing happened. The message flowed through my mind like a laser image through mist. The only emotional reaction was a feeling that the conclusion of a very good and fascinating book might be in sight. Death seemed like the one thing you could absolutely count on in this world of uncertainty. I felt like I had made and was still making a very good run given my particular biological makeup, my particular set of life circumstances, and even including the hard knocks. My complete lack of fear and trepidation was reflected in the reactions of my wife and daughter, a fact for which I am eternally grateful. Had I been weeping and wailing and wringing my hands, they would have suffered right along with me.
This experience confirmed for me that solid concept-images (meditation images) in neuroplastic space can have a great deal of influence on attitudes and emotional states. As such, a solid image of calmly offering oneself to the silent darkness of the unknown might come in handy someday. As mentioned elsewhere, an “outflowing” of mental energy, such as the offering of one’s resources or compassion toward others, is less stressful than needy anxiety or resistance.
I would hope that eventually everyone could bypass the fear of death, as I seem to have, even if it is the result of a fraudulent brainwashing accomplished by a chemical. Of course, it might not be fraudulent at all; it might be real.
I understand that Steve Jobs’ last words were: “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow”. I am wondering if he saw the same thing that I did or something similar.
Our here-and-now immediate existence is entirely subjective. Maybe there are no different dimensions of reality or different levels of being or parallel universes but only different domains of consciousness. We live in our minds, the source of mental material could be spirit, and it would seem that spiritual realities could be more varied and flexible compared to the restrictions of natural laws that we experience here on this “gross” material level. Perhaps the level that we live in now is the only one with all of the pesky restrictions of natural laws including the competing forces of creation and destruction. Maybe there are levels of existence where intelligent energy processes, such as our own, can endlessly transform and blend in luxurious and harmonious configurations.
Why it was that I should have had an experience of this nature that was so out of keeping with my actual comparatively fortunate life and as a male is a mystery. To give it some structure I assumed that perhaps reincarnation was a possibility or that perhaps my inner teacher wanted to teach me specific lessons about certain aspects of life and death. In any case, I certainly learned and benefited from it even though the first part of it was a “bad trip”.
A well-practiced person can remember and re-experience the contented state in normal daily consciousness to varying degrees of depth while sitting in a chair or even while standing in line. Contentment can be cultivated into a “home base” experience and a temporary redefinition of the turbulence and tedium of daily life while still perceiving it with “direct consciousness”. One can become the stationary axle to the turning wheel of destiny. The mind can become a domain of near-perfect peace and clear thought while the body is suspended in relaxed luxurious bliss. Besides the profound pleasure associated with this experience, it is probably the healthiest of all because there is no stress anywhere generating toxins into the bloodstream.
Since all of the cosmic concepts are assumptions, we might as well choose the positive ones and hope and have faith that they are true to the extent that choice is possible. Choosing the negative ones and being afraid that they are true would unnecessarily decrease the quality of daily life. Choosing the positive concepts could also be called “getting right with God”.
String theory states that atomic particles are made up of much smaller energy packets. These strings can vibrate at different frequencies thereby generating different physical realities. This theory is based strictly on mathematics and proving it in the material world is not going to be exactly easy. It is a materialistic interpretation of the same underlying concept of the existence of different levels of being. Different levels of being could be different sources for the contents of consciousness. Esoteric cosmic concepts are not the exclusive domain of the psychedelics.
Another esoteric concept along these lines could be that since the mind, the body, and the outside world are so obviously different and distinct levels of reality, perhaps they are really energy processes taking place in parallel universes while at the same time interacting with each other in such a way as to produce our moment-by-moment experience in this universe. This concept would also be a little hard to prove.
Digressing for a moment, an interesting point of view that is sometimes possible to avoid making any cosmic assumptions whatsoever and to absolutely “just be”. This point of view is like watching the human drama and the rest of existence flow by without making any assumptions or having any attitudes toward it whatsoever, positive or negative. This point of view is exemplified in Hermann Hesses’ Siddhartha where the enlightened Siddhartha sits by a river motionless, peaceful, and detached while watching images of history flowing by in the water; the good, the bad, the ugly, and the trivial. Watching the river of life flow by without comment is a conceptual ideal on a similar level to that of facing the worse that could possibly happen in this world with perfect tranquility. They are both very broad abstractions and high ideals considering the nature of our existence. As a Winston Churchill impersonator calmly said to someone about to shoot him in an old movie: “Well, get it over with”.
The stillness of the person watching destiny flow by is a welcome break from the “rat race” aspect of the human drama. It is interesting to conceptualize the relaxed and detached point of view and then to shift that concept onto one’s current circumstances.
True detachment would mean that there would be absolutely no rational or emotional reaction to anything that happened. One would watch history being generated without any comment whatsoever. He would be experiencing a neutrality that could not be disturbed. This can be a useful neuroplastic concept-image when Providence is being less than kind.
The only science I know of dealing with neuroplastic space has to do with the MRI testing of monks who meditated on compassion for the suffering in the human condition, but I know that a lot more has been done lately. Specific areas of their brains became gradually activated. I am convinced by my own experience that various positive abstractions can be purposefully cultivated in neuroplastic space, perhaps in different areas of the brain. A more simplified point of view would be to say that it is simply the cultivation of good mental habits. Perhaps the process is similar to that of stroke victims who find new neural pathways in their brains in order to recover their functioning. In either case, it is repetition that strengthens the process. I believe that a person can choose new concept-attitude-images and make them increasingly vivid in this broad definition of neuroplastic space. Attention can be moved from less productive areas of neuroplastic space and increasingly placed into new, more productive, and more positive areas. The shift of attention could be conceptualized as part of the meditation process. We would all like to improve ourselves, and one method is to conceptualize goals in more and more detail and more vividly over time.
Another interesting existential point of view is that the apparent flow of history is really only the continuous rearrangement of the same atoms that make up the current immediate moment. Everything is atoms: us, our environment, and even the air that we breathe. We are part of and at one with an extremely complex and frictionless huge atomic machine. The future does not have to be conceptualized as flowing toward us, becoming the here and now, and then fading into the past. Existence could also be considered as the mysterious invisible hand of causation continually rearranging the atoms that make up the immediate moment, which is the only true reality.
Why it is that the Potter sculpts the clay of creation the way that He does reflects the cosmic mystery of causation. There are many assumptions regarding why things happen the way that they do, all improvable except for the reliability of natural laws and clear-cut cause-effect relationships. Even our apparent free will is assumedly a flow of atoms in our brains, and if we have any control over the flow of atoms in our brains it is at a very abstract level. The changing configurations of the atoms in the immediate moment are apparently limited by the constraints of natural law, a fact that brings considerable structure to existence. Without natural law, the universe would be a chaotic cluster of neutral atoms. Natural laws give the Potter something solid to work with. Without them, organizing chaotic neutral atoms would be like stacking marbles. Maybe free will also gets into the mix somehow.
Even if the Higgs boson particle is discovered at the Large Hadron Collider, or if dark energy is ever understood, or if it could be understood how a faster-than-light particle could hit a target before it had even been shot, there will still be the mystery of what it is that continually organizes the atoms of the existence that we know. Part of this mystery is how the atoms keep getting reorganized in such a way as to provide the ongoing human drama.
The bartender said: ”We don’t allow no faster-than-light particles in this bar”.
A faster-than-light particle walked into a bar.
It is not too hard to accept the assumption that the stars and the planets are evolving strictly according to natural laws, but the extreme complexity of the ongoing human drama or even of a single human cell, when viewed as a continuing reorganization of atoms, would seem to require a little something more.
The fact that existence is a mystery can also be interpreted as us having been “abandoned” here by something unknown, and that “here” is a mysterious limbo suspended in what looks like space. Feelings of abandonment would not be unexpected in this situation, and the archetypal image of the abandoned child is appropriate to our situation. Accepting and being detached toward the concept that existence is a mystery is the transcendental point of view that dissolves any emotion associated with abandonment. We have been stuck here for the time being and we are living it. Perhaps the part of the story of Jesus where He asks God why He has been forsaken is meant to symbolize that being forsaken is a universal element of the human drama. We got stuck here from somewhere, wherever here is. Detachment and acceptance take the emotional “sting” out of this fact and free us up from that source of emotional tension if we happen to find it in ourselves. We can “just be” and continue to play our role in the mysterious human drama from a calm perspective and ignore the abandonment issue altogether. From this impersonal viewpoint, everything is a mystery and everything “simply is”.
One of our main missions here on Earth seems to be to learn and use cause-effect relationships that really work both to our own advantage and to everyone else’s. We have discovered the cause-effect relationship that calmness leads to tranquility and that tranquility leads to bliss hormones. All of the interfering mental tensions pertain to problems of survival and well-being in one way or another, so quieting this instinct is a significant event. No matter how we manipulate the outside world, it will still be sometimes hostile and it will always be uncertain. The paradoxical technique that works is to look within for well-being rather than to the outside world.
The pursuit of pleasure is one of our basic instincts; so doing so does not violate our basic nature. There is no crime in sitting quietly, doing nothing, and feeling good. The survival instinct and all of its associated mental and physical tensions can enjoy a rest, and in doing so they can learn that periods of rest do not necessarily threaten survival. As such, rest and contentment can become more familiar. The here-and-now moment can become sufficient.
There are certainly mysteries at the cosmic level of abstraction. Perhaps the resolution to the overall mystery of existence as far as we are concerned is to accept that it is a mystery but that there are known aspects within it such as natural laws and reliable cause-effect relationships that can be learned and harnessed. There should be no religious conflicts between people with this particular orientation.
The human drama is the most complex energy process in the known universe, and the atomic process in the human brain that produce thought is part of it. Since we live in our minds, a physical brain might not even exist in the way a materialist thinks of it, and the human mind itself could be assumed to be the highest known process in existence.
We are trapped in the immediate moment no matter what we are doing or what we are thinking, so we don’t necessarily need to continually focus on it as Aldous Huxley and the “mindfulness” philosophy suggest. We are already completely here anyway no matter what we are thinking or doing. Nevertheless, focusing attention on the immediate moment can be an interesting and useful undertaking with or without psychedelics. Some call it “mindfulness” while fighter pilots refer to it as “situational awareness”. One use of mindfulness is to remain aware of and sensitive to the relaxation level of his body and to the focus of the mind.
Digressing slightly yet once again, it helps to be content with the current level of relaxation rather than to be upset that it is not deeper. One can accept his current level while periodically focusing on deepening it. Being upset or critical or depressed is not compatible with relaxation practice. Being anywhere on the path is enough.
Siddhartha had to endure many difficult lessons to reach his enlightened point of view, but I think that with psychedelics it is possible to glimpse and at least temporarily experience these points of view while comfortably stretched out in a recliner. It is like reading the last page in a mystery novel first and then catching up to it later.
Bad trips are best handled by letting them flow through the mind and the emotions without resistance. Often they automatically provide useful insights and sometimes end in significant resolutions of tensions. Willfully relaxing the body deeply as possible during these times can help to subdue the stress hormones. Subduing stress hormones with willful relaxation is always a good exercise at all psychedelic levels and also in daily life. Stress hormones are no doubt very useful in true fight-of-flight situations, but these situations are fairly rare in our somewhat civilized society. As such, stress hormones actually interfere with the rational and logical responses that would be more effective in all of the less threatening situations.
The moderate dose experience could be called semi-directed and semi-spontaneous. As material emerges from the spontaneous thought generator it is sometimes possible to steer it into chosen areas and to choose the degree of emersion within them. However, the rational choice itself and the emergence of the associated intuitive experience are sometimes separated by a little bit of time. The rational mind can move much faster than the intuitive mind, possibly because hormone generation takes time. If a person were impatient because the intuitive experience was not keeping up with his rational wishes, it might be more to his benefit to wait a little longer rather than to go off into some other direction. Oftentimes it is possible to relax the rational analytical mind completely and to simply observe, admire, and enjoy the intuitive material as it flows through on its own volition whether is structured or relatively formless.
Many people have used drugs to stimulate creativity, many of which are unfortunately dangerous or addicting. How Freud and his colleagues becoming addicted to cocaine would be an excellent example. It would seem that psychedelics would be a much safer choice for creative and dedicated people such as these. They do not negatively affect health, they are not addicting, and yet they still very definitely stimulate creativity. Musicians can hear music in their minds, artists can see pictures, authors can hear words, etc. One of my high-dose clients was a doctor who felt that he was able to examine and witness the workings of the heart in extreme detail. The rest of us can enjoy our own satisfying levels and forms of creativity.
In his book The anatomy of Addiction, Howard Markel describes how some very intelligent and dedicated medical doctors experimented with addicting drugs in the late 1800’s. They were interested in their pain-killing properties and their stimulation of creativity, but they got trapped by addiction without even realizing it. They unknowingly sacrificed their health and longevity, but the payoff was their ecstatic and creative moments and the blessings of the pain-killers that we currently benefit from. Cannabis was available and legal at the time, but apparently it did not have sufficient pain-killing or ecstasy-producing properties of cocaine or morphine. However, non-addicting cannabis stimulates creativity, self-transcendence, and a mild euphoria, so it is should be adequate for those purposes. Apparently different strains have some pain-killing properties, but I am quite sure that they will never be used for surgery.
There is never even a hint of any kind of a hangover with psychedelics. I am convinced that hangovers reinforce a negative attitude toward existence and towards oneself and that this negative attitude increases the desire for an escape with even more drugs and around and around it goes. Since we are pleasure-seeking and pain-avoiding creatures, this process can become a vicious circle that increases in intensity with increasing drug dosage and increasingly unpleasant hangovers. The tsunami of discomfort and guilt for having overdone something that is bad for health, livelihood, and social standing tend to swamp any useful insights. Since there is no hangover whatsoever with psychedelic drugs, any useful insights or points of view can be very easily carried right back into daily life. With a higher dosage, some of the insights will not be rationalized and as such will be less likely to be remembered immediately, but the mental work has really been done and will remain so. Any future visits to the same areas will reveal that this is the case.
I am quite sure that the current high demand for marijuana is due at least in part to the fact that so many people realize that it is a satisfactory “high” with no negative aftereffects whatsoever.
Another factor that I believe is in effect regarding hangovers is that a heavy drinker will come to consider that hangovers are a form of punishment for being so weak as to need self-transcendence (escape). This further deteriorates his self-image and makes him even more of a helpless self-loathing slave to alcohol. If he could gradually switch to using psychedelics for self-transcendence instead, this factor would completely fall by the wayside because psychedelics provide a very satisfactory self-transcendence with no physical or mental repercussions whatsoever. With psychedelics it might be easier for him to heal his addiction, and he could hopefully become a self-confident, fully functioning, and tuned-in member of his surrounding community while still enjoying occasional but safe experiences of self-transcendence.
Self-transcendence does not need to be conceptualized as nothing more than an escape from reality for weak people. In fact, it is clearly a “higher” state of being. Expanded consciousness, enhanced perception, enhanced creativity, and inner peace are certainly desirable and healthy states of being, and at least with psychedelics they can be remembered and practiced in daily life.
Oftentimes it is possible to translate some of the intuitive material to rational thought as it flows through the mind. This is a very interesting experience. This is a good time to have a voice recorder handy because more new experience continually continues to fill the mind, and it can very quickly swamp new insights. It is difficult to backtrack a psychedelic experience because new material keeps coming to mind. Some people regard this as a loss of short-term memory, but I think it is more like water flowing under a bridge. An insight lost downstream will certainly reveal itself again in the future with or without psychedelic stimulation, so it is not necessary to despair over losing something useful even though it cannot be remembered even moments after it was experienced. In fact, more than once I have found myself acting on the basis of one of these lost insights automatically and then realizing afterwards that the insight had gone into effect without my knowledge. Once a solution has been found, it has been found. If the same topic is revisited later, the work will be seen as having been completed and maybe even already installed in the biological machinery.
As a person accumulates new useful insights, he will find himself automatically taking more little shortcuts through the maze of life. When these little shortcuts take place, two things are apparent. One is that they take place automatically, and the other is that it is possible to remember and review the insights that made them possible. For instance, during a psychedelic experience it might pop to mind that a particular person continually makes snide or mocking personal attacks under certain circumstances. It might also provide a perfect comeback that could be used to squelch him. The insight might fly by so fast that it is not remembered, but when the same situation or one like it occurs again in daily life, the comeback jumps right off the tongue and skewers the assailant.
Seeing solutions from broader perspectives makes them applicable to more situations.
If the incredibly complex and beautiful moving geometric patterns that sometimes emerge as visual imagery during moderate and high dose psychedelic experiences are any indication, the spontaneous thought generator can process, condense, and organize huge amounts of intricate data. If this is true, the insights it produces should be quite valid because they would be distillations of large amounts of detailed life experience. In my own experience, these insights are always both valid and useful. It is possible that the spontaneous thought generator processes large quantities of life experience on the intuitive non-rational level, distills it, and occasionally presents flash understandings to consciousness. If they have been captured with a pencil or on a voice recorder, or if they are remembered, they can later be backtracked and checked logically, but usually they seem good and valid and unnecessary to bother with. Backtracking can be quite interesting, however, because all kinds of subtle things can be found in the mix such as a person’s demeanor, etc.
Sometimes it can seem as though there is a “flow” of intuitive or “emotional feeling” material coming into the mind that is significant but not rational. Sometimes these flows are represented by seemingly appropriate visual imagery. Sometimes two of these “flows” can join and form a new third flow. The new flow can feel like a significant resolution of different themes, mixed emotions, or philosophic points of view. If the dosage is not too high, it is sometimes possible to verbalize at least part of what is happening during these experiences. In any case, these resolutions feel like true permanent reductions of various tensions and perhaps they really are. It seems to me that resolutions on such high levels of abstraction that they cannot be well verbalized would be quite significant somehow. If they are really real resolutions of mind-brain energy, then they are resolutions that cannot be accomplished in normal daily consciousness. A rather grandiose assumption might be that psychedelics are one key to accomplishing important work at extremely high levels. The process that assumedly takes place there might be a step in evolution. Sometimes the resolutions seem very dynamic in nature and at other times they seem lower key. If these experiences are in fact resolutions on deep intuitive levels, they should have overall therapeutic affects that should result in an average deeper level of peace of mind. The process could be called something like automatic intuitive “self therapy” where tensions are discovered within oneself, resolved, and “liquefied” into the background tranquility. As more and more of these and other tensions are discovered and liquefied, the mental domain of the luxurious background tranquility will fill a greater proportion of inner space.
Conflicts on broad abstract intuitive levels can be difficult to deal with during normal daily consciousness. For instance, if a person’s life made him feel overwhelmed and helpless in the world, finding and deeply experiencing a self image of himself as a strong and perfectly capable person during a psychedelic session could sweep aside the need to grapple with the memories of countless individual overwhelming events in order to reach the same goal. All of the work could be done at once, it would really be done, and it could be remembered and put into practice in daily life. The “power trip” or the “Godzilla” trip can nicely activate the maximum feelings of strength in a person. They can be thoroughly enjoyed without even getting up from the couch. Having an experience of this nature can do wonders for a person’s self confidence.
Oftentimes various emotional pressures emerge which provide the opportunity for very satisfying experiences. If an emotion is positive, such as when embracing a loved one, so much the better. If it is unpleasant, there will be a tendency to want to work it through and dissolve it for three reasons: (1) it can reduce tension, (2) it can be interesting, and (3) the psychedelic experience can condense it into a single workable unit (a COEX system) that is easier to work with than fragments of feelings and thoughts. It can be like using a bulldozer instead of a teaspoon to level a pile of dirt.
An analogy to this process is the scene in Moby Dick where two sailors are seated on the deck of a whaling vessel facing each other over a container of whale oil. They reach into the extremely smooth and creamy oil (which was used in making perfume) to crush any lumps that were found there with their hands. The process of crushing the soft lumps into the background extreme smoothness of the oil became a hypnotic and luxurious experience. As work proceeded, the remaining lumps become smaller and softer until finally the entire barrel became absolutely smooth and pure. It seems that a similar process can take place during psychedelic experience but in this case the lumps are various forms of mental/muscular tension combinations. If one of these “mental lumps” is examined rationally, it will be found to be made up of a combination of a particular overall emotion-attitude combined with appropriate tangible thoughts and memories.
Examining the “mental lumps” rationally does not always seem necessary; they can sometimes be liquidated simply by focusing attention onto them and letting the spontaneous thought generator do the work on the intuitive level.
The interplay between rational analysis and intuitive processing can become a give-and-take process. If the rational mind gets a little greedy and wants too much control when the intuitive mind wants to go off in some other direction, there can be an undesirable tension. On the other hand, sometimes the intuitive mind is perfectly willing and happy to let the rational mind refine the abstractions that it produces into crystal clear mental structures while at the same time contributing the energy of expanded consciousness to the process.
Carl Jung referred to another analogy regarding the mental refinement process in which ancient alchemists strove to purify crude and ugly lead into gold. The physical process supposedly reflected an internal mental process in which the gold represented a highly refined and pure mind, body, and spirit free of the “dross” represented by the contaminations in lead. Distilling out or dissolving the dross represents the growth process.
The refinement process has sometimes been compared to our personal life experience and destiny. Our personal world can be conceptualized as a proving ground where we learn to relate to it more and more efficiently and with more satisfaction as we gain experience. This point of view gives some positive structure to the difficulties and ambiguities that we face in life in that we can learn from them and become smarter, stronger, and better people. Assuming that difficulties have the purpose of teaching us something makes us think about what these things might be, and thought causes an increase in understanding. Another positive assumption regarding the trials of our lives is that ultimately everything is for the best even thought we cannot see the “big picture”.
I have not encountered much material regarding what can be done to work on the personal refinement process except for psychotherapy and groups interested in self improvement. I think that the “new age” philosophy reflects this process.
Psychotherapy will help a person to resolve mental tension issues and also the conflicts that he experiences in relationship to his daily life. This can be very helpful in that it at least focuses the mind on the task of resolving tension areas rather than just allowing oneself to be randomly around buffeted by them. I believe that psychedelics offer further advantages. They sometimes reveal the goal of deep relaxation, peace of mind, and clear rational thought. This is a pleasant experience to have and to work toward deepening and extending. They also amplify and consolidate the areas of tension and make them more tangible and easier to work with. They also help to suggest new points of view and attitudes that can serve to resolve conflicts and reduce tension. Used with intent and restraint, I believe that they can focus and stimulate the refinement process. Using them for self-transcendence and enhanced awareness is not necessarily a waste of time because they show a positive range of experience that is possible. A person who was depressed because of the tedium in his life might find a whole new outlet for enthusiasm and enjoyment.
I see the refinement process as one of “commutation” with or without psychedelic stimulation. Various tension issues can be dealt with and then there can be a return to the relaxed, peaceful, clear, pleasant, and centered state to enjoy and practice. To the extent that this state has been experienced or approached, it can be remembered, meditated upon, and practiced as a goal. All other experiences can be compared to this central one and can be examined for possible ways to reduce or avoid the negative tensions that block it. The positive tensions connecting us to the outside world such as interest, creativity, satisfaction, love, and enthusiasm can still be welcomed to stay in place.
Deepak Chopra notes that the “inner watcher” in the mind-brain is the “real you” or the “soul”. I like to call this conceptual entity the “silent witness” so that its existence is not restricted to the strictly spiritual definition. It makes room for the interpretation that it it could be the production of a material brain in a material world. The silent witness observes the total contents of the ego’s experience with perfect serenity and detachment. It even watches the mind as it conceptualizes all-pervading God, all-pervading space, or the domain of perfect tranquility.
Within our personal existence, there is a watcher of experience as well as an experiencer of experience. With this basic concept, the flow of mental energy through the personal domain of cosmic concepts becomes smoother because it covers one’s entire existence. The inner watcher is always present in the immediate moment calmly watching our personal portion of destiny as it flows by regardless of what it might contain. It cannot think but it can watch thoughts go by. It cannot evaluate, question, feel emotions, or draw conclusions but it can watch these processes as they take place in the mind. It is not disturbed by any thought or activity that the ego is involved in no matter how confusing or intense. A movie screen is not disturbed in the slightest no matter what movies are shown on it. The mental continuum in this case ranges from the detached observer at one end to the ego being completely immersed in its experience at the other. As always with a continuum, there are many conceptual gradations in between the ends. The degree of involvement in experience can vary. Dead center on this continuum would be where a person is half watching and half experiencing his experience at the same time; a very detached person. To the extent that one conceptualizes and identifies with his inner silent witness he will become relaxed and detached, a state that permits the release of bliss hormones. The fact that relaxation and detachment can bring about a positive state of being can be a very satisfying alternative in a life that is currently stressed, unhappy, or tedious. The body can feel content and good even when circumstances are less than pleasant.
The inner silent witness of existence is a concept at a level of abstraction close to that of an all-pervading God or of infinite space because it observes the ego’s entire world of experience on a moment-by-moment basis. It is as detached as a movie camera with film that continually regenerates itself. Much unnecessary daily-life drama can be avoided with emotional detachment. It its purest form, it would be like Siddhartha sitting contentedly in silence and stillness watching destiny flow by like images in a river.
Just to show that it is possible to split hairs even on the cosmic levels of abstraction, one could consider the eastern concept that the soul is the background darkness out of which all mental experience emerges including the image of an assumed outside world. The “detached watcher” can be conceptualized as a separate part of the mind that watches these mental contents flow up into consciousness. In other words, the soul and the watcher can be conceptualized as two separate mental entities. Since this is all taking place inside of our head, we can conceptualize anything that we want. The watcher watches the flow of consciousness go by with absolute detachment. He also watches the ego and the body as they interact with an assumed outside material world. From the materialistic standpoint, mental material is assumed to emerge from the physical brain, but the concept of the watcher remains the same from both the spiritual and the materialistic points of view. To the extent that the concept of the detached watcher is being identified with at any given moment, the ego and the body are calm and relaxed because the watcher is absolutely tension-free. This would be the advantage to conceptualizing the “watcher” as a distinct mental construct. The watcher can watch the rational mind at work, and when the mind-body system is at relative peace the rational mind is very clear. Thinking clearly is a pleasure compared to the “mad monkey” mode of thought.
Yet another entity can be conceptualized in this mix: the rational thinker. Serenity and clear thought go together. It becomes possible to contemplate one’s life from a very calm and objective viewpoint. Resolutions to conflicts and new opportunities can sometimes be found there.
I had somewhat trivial but pleasant resolution that had to do with the fact that I very much enjoy dancing rock-and-roll style either with others or even while alone. I had a friend who liked to do the same thing while using her hair brush as a microphone. If I had been there at the same time, I would have played the air guitar to accompany her. While alone, the minor problem sometimes persisted that I would keep imagining various audiences judging me either as a great and natural creative performer or an idiot acting like a fool. This was a “taint” in an otherwise happy experience. Finally the insight popped to mind that I could imagine my audience as being a roomful of happy people interpreting the music just as freely and joyfully as I was. We all agreed that dancing is a form of musical Tai Chi enjoyed for the benefit of developing and maintaining physical fluidity, strength, refined control, and spontaneity. In addition, the body can be seen as a fantastic work of art and that there is no such thing as an unattractive posture or movement that it can take.
There is a boundary in there where the body changes from being directed by the rational mind and where it directs itself. It can become a totally compliant vehicle for the expression of something happy, natural, and intuitive from the inside world to the outside world. It helps to perfect the flow of ki (absolutely pure life energy) both inside the body and out into the outside world. Being a reality in the inner conceptual world, ki can cross the boundary from the inner world of thought through the mental concept of the body out to the mental concept of the apparent outer world because they all share the same mind. The relationship between the inner and the outer world can become as smooth as whale oil. If the mind is filled with ki there is perfect inner silence and peace of mind. If this particular concept is cultivated in neuroplastic space, it becomes possible to quickly find some level of peace of mind during the day. If outflowing ki is combined with at least initial offerings of goodwill, relationships with others can become the same.
Dancing is a form of both physical and mental therapy. One can become increasingly unselfconscious and more selfless. The music itself can come to drive the entire process completely while the ego disappears into it. Surrendering by choice to something positive is always a pleasure. Speaking poetically, it is like shaking off tensions and opening the floodgates for ki to fill the body and express itself without resistance. A roomful of people smoothly expressing ki in this manner is a group sharing of an extremely positive experience. It is like an ecstatic form of Tai Chi or a group prayer of thanksgiving. It refines body language and comportment in the outside world and it enhances mood. When relating to the world with respect to ki it is more of a fluid flow of movement, thought, and deed than while relating to it with even a hint of contentiousness.
Yet another benefit is that one comes to know the muscles of his body at a greater level of refinement. This makes it easier to relax them by an act of will.
The body is the instrument through which we are aware of and relate to the outside world. To the extent to which it is relaxed and feeling good, the immediate moment is maximized. Relaxation practice can be conceptualized as the cultivation and the flow of ki.
I guess that this insight was not so trivial after all.
This demonstrates how seeking and finding better attitudes can make life more pleasant. It also demonstrates how a new attitude can reconcile opposites, such as the foolishness versus the pleasure of dancing. Psychedelics seem to generously provide such new attitudes quite automatically. As is quite common with psychedelics, the resolution of the conflict involved a shift in abstraction, in this case from the everyday level of self consciousness to the “cosmic” level of ki.
The source of the flow of ki, the hypothetical purest form of life energy, could be conceptualized as emanating from the background tranquility of the mind, filling consciousness, and then flowing out to the world through the behavior of the body. Deepak Chopra conceptualizes the same process as spirit emanating from the inner soul and doing the same thing.
A more psychological example of a resolution that I experienced was where the insight that popped to mind was that past actions that are normally regretted are also in one way or another a form of education. Regrets are similar in nature, so they can cluster into a single COEX system. I call it the “I was young and inexperienced” COEX system. Once this has been done, two things seem to happen. One is that each regret becomes less significant and another is when they pop to mind they disappear immediately rather than starting an emotional reaction. We definitely learn and grow by our mistakes, but first we need to recognize them as mistakes. Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right. Seeing oneself as being a little more wise, experienced, and mature is productive while simply lamenting past regrets is not. When a regret does pop up to consciousness, its emotional impact is often felt in the body. This has the advantage of drawing attention to the body so that it can be willfully relaxed. Another repetition in relaxation practice can take place. The lemon can be turned into lemonade. It can go even farther than that. Once one has relaxed, he can reconsider the unpleasant memory but this time from a relaxed and rational perspective. He can glue the new perspective and the memory together in neuroplastic space and experience the two of them together the next time the memory pops up. The previous cringing emotion can in this way be bypassed, thus leaving open the pathway to tranquility. One more tension issue has been neutralized. A little more tension has been drained from a negative COEX system making it less of an obstacle to tranquility. The fact that it can still be thought about peacefully proves that it was not repressed into any kind of a high-tension subconscious area of the mind-brain that could build up and explode later on. The energy in the emotion of regret can relax and can be assumed to be available to be channeled into more positive emotions or to blend in with the background tranquility.
Making mistakes is part of the school of hard knocks. Life knocks us into shape like a statue being carved by a hammer and a chisel. Much of our learning comes from making mistakes out of simple ignorance and not due to evil intent. The only place where none of this drama would be taking place would be in a utopia, another interesting COEX system. The continuum where the school of hard knocks (the statue) is at one end and a utopia (perhaps an idealized Camelot) is at the other end has many levels of gradation in between, all of which can be explored. Regrettably, much of our wicked world is not all that close to the Camelot end.
Another point to consider regarding resolutions is that after one has taken place it can be contemplated rationally without its emotional component being present. This is useful because objectivity is closer to reality than are prejudicial emotions.
Country-western music often laments broken relationships, for instance, but when such events are reviewed from a larger perspective they do not seem quite so much like the end of the world. Couples are joining and breaking up all the time; it is the law of nature. The rush of ecstatic hormones that takes place at the beginning of a new romance is certain to subside over time thus leaving both parties somewhat disappointed and maybe blaming each other. The bloom comes off the rose. It helps to be prepared for this transition. It is the time to evaluate what might be left over in the relationship. There are many more components to a relationship than just the rush of a new romance. Resolution to this particular tension issue would be the broader abstraction that the original rush of ecstatic hormones is to be expected, and that in effect it is Mother Nature’s not-so-subtle trick to propagate the species. Broken relationships afterwards are not necessarily anyone’s fault. The hormones were a lot of fun while they lasted. Sometimes the chemistry dies a little too much and there is not enough left to keep the relationship going. Once Mother Nature has maximized the likelihood of pregnancy, she backs off with her manipulation of the ecstatic hormones. She had her chance. In any case, viewing this scenario from the more abstract level of Mother Nature being at work might help to avoid a certain amount of heartbreak, recriminations, and self-recriminations. The psychedelic experience tends to vividly reveal such abstract points of view that in turn help to resolve even serious issues on the daily life level. “Looking down” on an emotional problem is done from a higher and more detached level. Cultivating the skill of looking at things from larger perspectives can also reduce tension in daily life.
Regarding country-western music, one benefit that some of it provides is that it can convert the despairing feelings of a romantic breakup into a beautiful sadness, an exquisite yearning, or even into a don’t-give-a-damn attitude. There was a song called “I am lying on my back with tears in my ears from crying over you” and another called “I don’t love you no more than you don’t love me”. The conversion of these sorts of feelings has become a fine art in country-western music. The words can portray the tragic situation while the emotion in the voice and the music can portray a positive emotion-attitude that can be taken toward it. The manipulation of attitudes is not the exclusive province of psychedelic drugs.
Another productive assumption is that the energy in the emotional and physical tensions that are resolved is rechanneled into a mental domain of clear rational thought, serenity, and contentment. Hopefully it strengthens the brain in these areas through the process of neuroplasticity. It is a benign circle. The less residual and unnecessary mental and physical tension there is in the mind-body system, the greater the mental clarity, and the greater the mental clarity the greater the ability to focus on understanding, relaxing, and working through any remaining tensions.
With even higher doses, much of the intuitive material that emerges is on such a broad level of abstraction that it is convenient to consider it as “cosmic” or even religious in nature and that it needs to be translated into cosmic or religious verbal terms and visual imagery in order to give it structure. It becomes like looking at existence from an extremely abstract and exalted philosophical perspective.
As will be discussed later, the central cosmic concepts include spirit, creation, awareness, the mind-brain boundary, the source of all experience, the nature of being, evolution, causation, synchronicity, the value of life, the afterlife, morality, commitment, redemption, personal responsibility, meaning, purpose, free will, karma, retribution, the supernatural, etc. The critical point to be made is that each of these cosmic concepts has a string of assumed answers, some of which are taken very seriously and become convictions or even beliefs, but none of which can be proved or disproved to even the slightest degree. We tease these concepts out of our extremely complex life experience and then use them to provide structure for it. They become our philosophy of life.
For instance, it is absolutely impossible to prove that God does or does not exist, but since existence and experience are so complex it is possible to find plenty of justification for either point of view and for all kinds of different definitions of His nature. It is possible to have faith, of course, but faith means believing in something that cannot be proved. Therefore, anything that is said about the nature of His being (or not being) can never be anything more than speculation. At the same time, since existence is so variable in terms of experience, any one of the cosmic assumptions could appear to be irrevocably true to a single person with a specific set of life experiences.
Faith could be considered as having a positive point of view without necessarily needing it to have it proven. Sometimes our faith is all we have to get us through the rough times and sometimes faith gives us considerable structure for our lives.
Believing in and becoming totally involved in myths and gods is certainly nothing new; people have been mentally generating them and living by them since the dawn of civilization in order to structure both the current moment and the flow of events. Psychedelic experience sometimes makes it possible to temporarily “live” one or another of these different points of view and to explore its implications. It can also allow a transcendental point of view where all of the different myths and gods are seen as sub-mysteries within the great mystery of existence.
A myth can either be seen from the outside as a story or from the inside as a reality, and there are all gradations in between. Exploring them with psychedelics makes it ever more clear that they are all stories, not necessarily facts, but that they nevertheless influence our lives.
The word “conviction” could be used to represent an assumption that a person has become quite convinced is true. The word “belief” could be used to represent an assumption that a person is willing to kill and die for to defend.
One example of the improvable nature of cosmic assumptions include the fact that a great variety of creation myths have evolved to explain the beginning of time but that it is still impossible to prove how existence ever came into being. Neither can anyone explain causation. God, if He exists, could be influencing destiny to some unknown extent or not at all. Natural laws would have to interact in an almost infinite number of ways to create even the most trivial of daily life events and it would be impossible to sort them out or to discover other influences that might be acting within their network. It is impossible to know the nature of the afterlife, if there is one, but there are many assumptions and each of us holds our own. We don’t know the extent to which we are punished for our bad deeds and rewarded for our good deeds if at all. No one knows the purpose of our existence, if there is one, but there are plenty of assumptions, convictions, and beliefs regarding all of these issues. We each have our own combination.
The great number of speculative answers to cosmic concepts can lead to considerable controversy, some very extreme, both within a single individual and within a society. Carl Jung suggested that all mental problems have their roots in this basic area of abstraction, so finding resolution and coherence there is important. In my own humble opinion, the overall cosmic concept that existence is a complete mystery releases a person from the controversy over which of the cosmic assumptions to consider as personal convictions or beliefs. It could be assumed that the spontaneous thought generator silently selects which “assumptive cosmic answers” for us to consider as convictions in order to provide us with our structure and philosophy of life, and that this selection is based exclusively on real life experiences. It is not easy to argue with real life experiences. With respect to the model that I am using, it is the spontaneous thought generator that composes clusters of real-life memories in order to produce overall points of view such as cosmic assumptions, convictions, and beliefs as well as the ordinary everyday insights and understandings. Without this clustering process taking place, however it works, our outlook on the world would be nothing but a chaotic and meaningless jumble of memories and sense impressions.
Other peoples’ assumptions can certainly influence one’s own to some extent, but no doubt actual personal experience is most convincing regarding one’s definition of reality.
Recognizing cosmic assumptions as the assumptions that they really are does not mean that we abandon them. They remain as our basic philosophy of life and are slow to change even with great scrutiny and influence. The extremely high recidivism rate in prisons (above 70%, according to Wikipedia) attests to this. This may have to do with the fact that our philosophy of life is a single comprehensive picture and that it is not easy to change a single part of it into something that does not fit. For instance, an honorable and law-abiding citizen might be hard to convince that it is perfectly permissible to do something illegal so long as no one is watching while a criminal might think that it is ridiculous not to do so.
In his book The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson recounts some experiments with LSD done by the military and by psychologists with prisoners. In these cases environments and influences were contrived in an attempt to influence people’s self-image and world-view during psychedelic experiences. The results were not as intended, so I am assuming that efforts to “brainwash” a person into an entirely new personality with psychedelics will prove ineffective. I am guessing that if such changes are to take place, authentic personal motivation to make them do so is necessary and that it would have to be a step-by-step process in relationship with the outside world. New points of view and attitudes need to be validated through testing in the outside world before they will be accepted as permanent new cosmic convictions. In addition, I suspect that a person is likely to pay a great deal more attention to insights generated by his own spontaneous thought generator than to other people’s points of view that he sees as being used to influence him. When being influenced by others during a psychedelic experience, I suspect that resistance in the form of one kind of paranoia or another will result. The recidivism rate of psychopaths was found to actually be higher after LSD “therapy”, so it could be assumed that their psychopathy was actually strengthened in the process. They pretended to be influenced by the therapy in order to please their therapists and to avoid confrontations with conceptualized malevolent cosmic forces. In addition, the concept that malevolent forces are really at work in the world would be reinforced.
I have had two episodes where my “sitter” seemed to be trying to influence my point of view during high-dose sessions even though on the “surface” he appeared to be just trying to be helpful. In a high dose experience it is possible to conceptualize existence from the broad spiritual point of view. Both times I felt my defenses go up and actually a movement toward paranoia. I thought it might be possible that subtle evil controlling forces were expressing themselves through my sitter. At the time I was almost willing to pretend to agree with him in order to avoid serious confrontation with possibly real supernatural forces at a time when I knew I was totally vulnerable. Instead, I was able to talk myself out of the vicious circle into deeper paranoia by considering the high likelihood that my sitter was simply trying to offer his own helpful points of view and that what he was suggesting shouldn’t lead to problems. I think I was able to do this because I knew intellectually what the paranoid experience involved and that I had no curiosity or obligation to explore it again. After reading the daily newspaper, it is not too much of a leap of the imagination to imagine that malevolent forces behind the scenes are responsible for the tragic events in the world. When viewing the unfortunate aspects of the human condition from a higher or a global perspective, a supernatural malevolent force can be conceptualized as having a real influence on oneself and the rest of existence and one can feel inextricably trapped in the situation. It is another legitimate way to structure and explain this most unfortunate aspect of the great mystery of existence. As Woody Allen put it: “The one negative thing that you can say about God is that He is an underachiever”.
The belief that God is good and creative and that the devil is evil and destructive can be conceptualized as a mental continuum of points of view that extends from one end to the other. Events that take place can be seen as a combination of these two forces. The dead center of this continuum is the point of view that is expressed in a variety of ways such as “what will be will be”. The mental resolution to the conflict between good and evil is a detachment toward the drama that they apparently create. The “detached observer” level of abstraction is tension-free.
Even the question of the proportion to which each force might be in effect is transcended. The yin-yang symbol suggests that the forces of darkness and the forces of light are ultimately equal, and this may be true in the big picture.
Remembering this concept makes it unlikely that one would ever be tempted to become too identified with the extremes of either point of view. He would be unlikely to set off a suicide vest in crowd of innocent people to earn heaven or to perform human sacrifice to ensure good fortune.
Perhaps the only influences that should be present during a high-dose psychedelic session should be assurances of safety, encouragement to look within, and perhaps the willingness to chat about and to encourage the structuring of any new insights that might emerge from the experience naturally. Both a brainwasher and a pushy psychotherapist might otherwise lose authentic communication with the user and totally waste the experience.
I believe that one way to make lasting changes in functioning is to first set out a self-chosen goal, conceptualize it as clearly and completely as possible, and then to spend some time conceptualizing and experiencing its implications more deeply during and in between occasional low-dose psychedelic sessions. Not only will the goal become more fleshed out, vivid, and real, the tension issues that block access to it can be discovered, consolidated, and resolved. For instance, if a shy person wanted to become more outgoing, he could work on conceptualizing his new self as such but in a variety of different situations that were previously experienced as uncomfortable. He could let himself experience any particular emotional feelings that might be associated with them, such as fear of rejection or failure, and recognize them as troublesome but harmless. He could discover any related inappropriate attitudes or points of view and to replace them with attitudes and points of view that facilitate harmonious interpersonal relationships. He could “get inside the skin” of people he knew that were more outgoing for the sake of practice. A new authentic, friendly outgoing self-image will eventually emerge and will be the reward for this effort. In my model, the path to deep peace of mind and tranquility involves the resolution of bothersome tensions in areas such as this.
An interesting aspect of the pathway of personal growth is that more than one desired area and improvement can be practiced and worked on at a time. In addition, the hierarchy of goals can be changed over time. As old ones are more completely satisfied, more time can be taken with the more needful ones.
It is worth pointing out that during a high-dose session there is a very strong tendency to conceptualize the world from the supernatural, cosmic, or religious points of view. In the model that I use, this is because the mind is stimulated into working with much broader concepts and sweeping generalities than is true during normal daily consciousness. A myth that influences an entire culture, for instance, is a broader concept than a point of view that influences a single person involved in a single event. As discussed later, none of the cosmic concepts can be proved or disproved, so it is one is free to conceptualize any one of them quite vividly. With a high dose session, there may not be much choice of which ones are considered since a high dose session pretty much runs itself. If a person becomes used to the concept that all of the cosmic concepts are really “sub-mysteries” within the overall mystery of existence, this becomes no longer a problem. During a high-dose session, one is able to say: “Now I am experiencing the (such-and-such) point of view and I know that it is not the only one because I have experienced others”. On a very broad level, it is even possible to shift back and forth between a deep emersion into the spiritualistic and then into the materialistic points of view during a single session. An experienced explorer of the philosophic cosmic territory of psychedelic experience, or even of daily life experience, can move between the various points of view more easily. Ambiguity tolerance is strengthened. One can become “loose as a goose” while moving from one point of view to another. At the same time, he still knows where he currently stands in his own system of convictions and beliefs.
Continue to the next chapter: The High Dose Experience