This is great! I’m a little weary of psychedelics proselytizing because I have seen people have bad, life changing experiences on them, but on the other hand they do seem to really help (certainly I like Tao Lin’s writing on them more than the other stuff he was taking) some people. I envy that synchronicity with Under the Net, although I hope your zoomer bf is ok!
I tend to be wary of proselytising in general, because I think it too often fulfils a psychological need of the proselytiser rather than the proselytised.
On the specific question of the harms of psychedelics, one of the most plausible arguments I’ve heard in defence of caution is that if we accept that psychedelics can be life-changing in a beneficial sense, it would be odd indeed if they couldn’t also prove to be profoundly damaging. Why would the line between good and evil not also run through these substances? Which is why, jokes aside, I do think it would be helpful to have some structures of accountability in place for people who offer themselves as spiritual guides.
So my position is somewhere between proselytising and prohibition: a mind-your-own-business bleeding-heart libertarianism, if you will.
Lol at the Tao Lin line. One of my speculative theories about the decline in psychedelic culture is the role played by the switch to ketamine which seems to offer a more radical break with consensus reality.
And my zoomer bf is finely feeling better thank you: Western medicine might not all be a scam!
Thanks for this excellent, syncretic essay. I'm relatively new to your Substack, so I wondered whether you've come across the writings of Bill Richards ("Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences"). He is part of the "research camp," but I find his perspective vis a vis psychedelic potential quite lucid and hopeful. Then again, he's a relic of the 60s, and the historical frame in which he made his early explorations was very different.
I’ve not read Bill Richard’s book. I’m more familiar with the Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof’s fascinating catalogue of psychedelic experiences which he presents as evidence of the existence of a collective unconscious in the Jungian sense in books like The Holotropic Mind. I think the “true” meaning of these experiences is very difficult to determine, especially because they seem to transcend the I/Thou divide of regular consciousness. However one wants to interpret these experiences, I find them intriguing, especially anecdotes of patients imaginatively inhabiting the consciousness of non-human, even non-animal life forms, eg this account of a patient turning into a giant Sequoia tree:
“I would have never considered seriously the possibility that there could be anything like plant consciousness. I have read some accounts of experiments pointing to the “secret life of plants” and claims that consciousness of the gardener can influence the harvest. I always considered such stuff to be unsubstantiated and flaky New Age lore. But here I was, completely transformed into a giant Sequoia tree and it was absolutely clear to me that what I was experiencing actually occurs in nature, that I was now discovering dimensions of the cosmos that are usually hidden to our senses and intellects. The most superficial level of my experience seemed to be very physical and involved things that Western scientists have described, only seen from an entirely new angle—as consciousness processes guided by cosmic intelligence, rather than mechanical happenings in organic or unconscious matter. My body actually had the shape of the Sequoia tree, it was the Sequoia. I could feel the circulation of sap through an intricate system of capillaries under my bark. My consciousness followed the flow to the finest branches and needles and witnessed the mystery of communion of life with the sun—the photosynthesis. My awareness reached all the way into the root system. Even the exchange of water and nourishment from the earth was not a mechanical but a conscious, intelligent process.”
Grof is fantastic. I also really enjoyed Alan Watts' essay,"This Is It," which is interested in ontological shifts like the one so eloquently described in the quote you shared.
Watts seems to be especially attuned to experiences of boundarylessness (sp), which he subsumes under "cosmic consciousness." I'm paraphrasing him here, but in one of his lectures, he wondered why self ends "at that last layer of epidermis." Once this illusion of a bounded self is challenged, he argues, then "I" is inseparable from "everything." It is in this mystical flux of conscious awareness and the attendant sense of primordial reintegration that scaffolds the transcendent experience.
Fascinating enough, many of these insights have been born out by neuroscientists such as Robin Carhart-Harris, whose work on the Default Mode Network shows that classical psychedelics, such as psilocybin, temporarily "shut off" certain brain regions implicated in maintaining "self separateness."
Yes, I do believe that psychedelic experiences should prompt us to reflect on questions of self/Self/no-self that are central to the disputes between different Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but are quite underdeveloped in Western thinking (which tends towards either Cartesian dualism or materialism). What I find lacking in Watts (and in other Western interpretations of Eastern philosophy), is practical guidance on living as a self between these moments of transcendence.
This is great! I’m a little weary of psychedelics proselytizing because I have seen people have bad, life changing experiences on them, but on the other hand they do seem to really help (certainly I like Tao Lin’s writing on them more than the other stuff he was taking) some people. I envy that synchronicity with Under the Net, although I hope your zoomer bf is ok!
Thank you!
I tend to be wary of proselytising in general, because I think it too often fulfils a psychological need of the proselytiser rather than the proselytised.
On the specific question of the harms of psychedelics, one of the most plausible arguments I’ve heard in defence of caution is that if we accept that psychedelics can be life-changing in a beneficial sense, it would be odd indeed if they couldn’t also prove to be profoundly damaging. Why would the line between good and evil not also run through these substances? Which is why, jokes aside, I do think it would be helpful to have some structures of accountability in place for people who offer themselves as spiritual guides.
So my position is somewhere between proselytising and prohibition: a mind-your-own-business bleeding-heart libertarianism, if you will.
Lol at the Tao Lin line. One of my speculative theories about the decline in psychedelic culture is the role played by the switch to ketamine which seems to offer a more radical break with consensus reality.
And my zoomer bf is finely feeling better thank you: Western medicine might not all be a scam!
Thanks for this excellent, syncretic essay. I'm relatively new to your Substack, so I wondered whether you've come across the writings of Bill Richards ("Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences"). He is part of the "research camp," but I find his perspective vis a vis psychedelic potential quite lucid and hopeful. Then again, he's a relic of the 60s, and the historical frame in which he made his early explorations was very different.
Thank you!
I’ve not read Bill Richard’s book. I’m more familiar with the Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof’s fascinating catalogue of psychedelic experiences which he presents as evidence of the existence of a collective unconscious in the Jungian sense in books like The Holotropic Mind. I think the “true” meaning of these experiences is very difficult to determine, especially because they seem to transcend the I/Thou divide of regular consciousness. However one wants to interpret these experiences, I find them intriguing, especially anecdotes of patients imaginatively inhabiting the consciousness of non-human, even non-animal life forms, eg this account of a patient turning into a giant Sequoia tree:
“I would have never considered seriously the possibility that there could be anything like plant consciousness. I have read some accounts of experiments pointing to the “secret life of plants” and claims that consciousness of the gardener can influence the harvest. I always considered such stuff to be unsubstantiated and flaky New Age lore. But here I was, completely transformed into a giant Sequoia tree and it was absolutely clear to me that what I was experiencing actually occurs in nature, that I was now discovering dimensions of the cosmos that are usually hidden to our senses and intellects. The most superficial level of my experience seemed to be very physical and involved things that Western scientists have described, only seen from an entirely new angle—as consciousness processes guided by cosmic intelligence, rather than mechanical happenings in organic or unconscious matter. My body actually had the shape of the Sequoia tree, it was the Sequoia. I could feel the circulation of sap through an intricate system of capillaries under my bark. My consciousness followed the flow to the finest branches and needles and witnessed the mystery of communion of life with the sun—the photosynthesis. My awareness reached all the way into the root system. Even the exchange of water and nourishment from the earth was not a mechanical but a conscious, intelligent process.”
Grof is fantastic. I also really enjoyed Alan Watts' essay,"This Is It," which is interested in ontological shifts like the one so eloquently described in the quote you shared.
Watts seems to be especially attuned to experiences of boundarylessness (sp), which he subsumes under "cosmic consciousness." I'm paraphrasing him here, but in one of his lectures, he wondered why self ends "at that last layer of epidermis." Once this illusion of a bounded self is challenged, he argues, then "I" is inseparable from "everything." It is in this mystical flux of conscious awareness and the attendant sense of primordial reintegration that scaffolds the transcendent experience.
Fascinating enough, many of these insights have been born out by neuroscientists such as Robin Carhart-Harris, whose work on the Default Mode Network shows that classical psychedelics, such as psilocybin, temporarily "shut off" certain brain regions implicated in maintaining "self separateness."
Yes, I do believe that psychedelic experiences should prompt us to reflect on questions of self/Self/no-self that are central to the disputes between different Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but are quite underdeveloped in Western thinking (which tends towards either Cartesian dualism or materialism). What I find lacking in Watts (and in other Western interpretations of Eastern philosophy), is practical guidance on living as a self between these moments of transcendence.
Yes, I agree 100%. And if guidance is provided, such as Watts' exhortations that we see life "as a sort of dance," it seems fanciful and disengaged.
I'll look forward to more of your writing! Cheers!