Drugless Paths to the Mystical Experience

[Joseph Tracy]

DMT is the most powerful hallucinatory chemical known and is endogenously produced. It is part of our own chemistry and the chemistry of life/reality. I think there are probably advantages to non drug approaches to visionary states, the Buddhists certainly think so, and I doubt they came to that view by completely rejecting the value of hallucinatory visions. The Tibetan and Southeast Asian branches of Buddhist art seems to value such visions, including the sexual and terrifying. As an artist and seeker who has always had access to  internal and occasionally external visionary experiences but is generally at home in day to day life and never struggled with psychotic states,  I feel no particular prejudice against plant medicines etc.  The idea that they are cheap or easy way to spiritual insight feels false. Hallucinatory substances are not easy, but neither do I see them as heroic. To me, spiritual heroism has to do with abiding in love and generosity, finding a way to serve in the human community with grace. But humans get stuck and it seems that holotropic medicines can address that problem when a person lacks the discipline or understading that brings them to a practice like meditation or Jigong.  The efficacy of MDMA in treating PTSD is a good example, or the studies on psylocibin in helping free cancer patients from the fear of death.

I think of hallucinatory visions as a means by which lots of information is compressed into a visual form and often into something rather like a persona. The meaning does not immeditely reveal itself but requires a kind of dialog to unpack. In my experience fear inhibits that dialog and love/fearlessness opens it and makes it valuable.The degree to which we are in dialog with other spirit beings of intelligences is open to debate but I personally think there really are many voices and there may be both collective and individual intelligences , mediated by the same kind of process that occurs in meditation, a cellular level dialog perhaps having to do with photon emissions from DNA as is suggested in Jeremy Narby’s work trying to connect ayahuasca shamanism to western scientific research( The Cosmic Serpent).  


> On May 31, 2018, at 7:17 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ain't nowhere you can go with drugs that you can't get more genuinely and
> enduringly to with mind training.
> Well, except for the hallucinations, and those are hallucinations, not
> mystical experience.
> 
> On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 12:32 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Smoke,
>> 
>> I think most teachers would disapprove of your seeking after "mystical
>> experiences."  But maybe you just are using the wrong terms.  If what you
>> want is an "experience,"  why not just use drugs?  The "without drugs" part
>> implies you want something more authentic, and thus more "true?"  This
>> brings on the subject of "mystical."   Here's Webster:
>> 
>> Definition of mystical
>> 1a *: *having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent to
>> the senses nor obvious to the intelligence
>> 
>>   - the mysticalfood of the sacrament
>> 
>> b *: *involving or having the nature of an individual's direct subjective
>> communion with God or ultimate reality
>> 
>>   - the mysticalexperience of the Inner Light
>> 
>> So the "mystical" implies a hidden realm/reality, and even more so Ultimate
>> Reality.  This subject can and does go on forever, so I'll just point you
>> to a website that provides interviews with people from MANY different
>> paths, many of whom have reached deep levels of spiritual
>> realization/experience.  Most of these paths agree that what most people
>> experience is an illusion or veil that can be seen through into a
>> multi-faceted deeper reality.
>> 
>> Buddha at the Gas Pump:
>> https://batgap.com/
>> 
>> I experienced a Kundalini awakening over six years ago, but I didn't seek
>> it, nor did I know what it was at first (thank God for the internet).  I
>> was just trying to get myself stable via meditation, having been thrown
>> into emotional turmoil by the end of a 28 year marriage.  Then it
>> happened.  I didn't choose Kundalini.  It chose me.  I think that is a
>> common aspect of many mystical experiences.
>> 
>> David Morris
>> 
>> On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 1:38 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> The value of mushrooms has not depreciated in my mind (though many of my
>>> psychedelic experiences before doing an ayahuasca ceremony do seem
>> somewhat
>>> like a child tinkering with an elementary spiritual chemistry set,
>> without
>>> having even read the instructions).
>>> 
>>> But I’m interested in getting there mostly with the body technology I was
>>> given—want to cultivate a path I can replicate in most/any environs
>>> 
>>> Fasting and sleep deprivation have been useful in the past seem like they
>>> involve unnecessary suffering, especially for a regular practice that
>> will
>>> integrate with the rest of my life at this moment—and they associate too
>>> closely to me with other familiar ways of being
>>> 
>>> Art gets me a decent part of the way sometimes
>>> 
>>> I know at least Morris will have some kundalini to tell me about. I’m
>>> thinking of things more along those lines.
>>> 
>>> Breathing, movement, meditation
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On May 31, 2018, at 12:31 PM, Glenn fuller <glennfuller at sbcglobal.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Fasting and Sleep Deprivation.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Thursday, May 31, 2018 10:20 AM, Allan Balliett <
>>> allan.balliett at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Convince yourself that ‘shrooms aren’t a drug!
>>>> 
>>>> Are you reading the new Pollan?
>>>> 
>>>> ALLAN in WV, where the patties are in bloom
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 12:59 PM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Soliciting recommendations and favorites
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>>>> 
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