The Pupil 0101 said:
Which state do you find more helpful for everyday life and mind exploration: the meditative state or the chemical induced state? Are there doors that can be opened through meditation? Are they easy to close once they're opened? No sugar coating or downplaying please.
I personally cannot fathom living without daily & nightly meditation. The practice has become so ingrained... at a moments notice, by bringing my focus to a single point in concentration, I can shift my awareness inwards and so, beyond surface thoughts. It is an open avenue into the present moment,
the here & now.
Psychedelics are quite different in effect, from the gradual saturation of centering, which sitting or moving meditation gifts. Entheogens are like thunder & lightning, volcanoes and geysers... in that the transition is so sudden, explosive and intense.
If the voyager is not prepared for such immediate self-annihilation, it can be quite terrifying. But I do believe you are comparing apples & oranges here. For my own path, the two can harmonize and co-exist in tremendously enlightening ways. That being said, if I never took a Sacred Medicine again, I would continue to meditate as often as I am conscious of having free will and choices of direction in my cognition.
When walking the road towards psychedelia, it is wise to develop a proper concentration and single-pointedness of focus and a calm state of mind. Meditation facilitates one's capacity to achieve a balanced mental framework, by which moving into transcendental levels of awareness is more readily accessed.
From my experiences, lo these many decades of continued practice, there are no doors which abruptly swing open. One's intent slowly and gradually dissolves what might be considered, closed doors to higher levels of perception. It does so at a measured pace, though. Entheogens blow the doors off the hinges in an small space of time. All in all, their usage should be kept a Sacred ritual of sorts. What are your thoughts?
polytrip said:
Meditating for an hour or so will not get you there. But i don´t completely want to dismiss the posibility of meditating yourself into hyperspace. If you´re a full-time meditator, like a budhist monk, it may be possible after years of training.
I suspect we will never really be able to gauge how deep the meditative states can carry our awareness, beyond the realm of the known, into the Void. If advanced Yogis, Sufis, Gnostics and Buddhists arrive into a plane of consciousness like hyperspace, would it be the same as it is for us? I mean, is it as startling, dramatic and self-shattering? It must be... I think.
There is considerable debate about whether becoming immersed in "sober" states like
Samadhi/Satori/Divine Rapture, share the visualization of fractal patterns, spiraling tunnels and intense colors, so associated with psychedelics (especially DMT). I have seen the light, heard the morphing drone of the AUM vibration and projected out my physical bodily frame, all under the sober trance of deep meditation. I have touched the Void and melted into internal silence. Still, taking an entheogen is quite another degree of intensity...
KABOOM!!!
AlbertKLloyd said:
Meditation can lead to ecstatic states akin to but not totally identical to psychedelic states. Euphoria, a floating feeling, the dissolution of the sense of self and the dissolution of the sense of division from the universe can all occur with both. You don't get the same sensory signal pathway alterations that tend to be unique to each molecule anyway, but there can be a lot of common aspects.
I totally agree. It is uncertain if advanced meditation triggers the release of DMT in the brain of seasoned practitioners. I am most curious to find out if this is a feasible possibility. Honestly, it has not exactly been so in my experience, at least not as psychedelically. There are differences. The epiphanies are gentler and more graduated. Yet, there were many moments when it was very, very close. But we all know that, "close only counts in horseshoes".
Within my own life, after 16 years of devoted entheogenic use, I refrained from the use of psychedelics for nearly 18 years, the whole time continuing my routine meditation. I was not living in a cave or in a monastery, I was in the world, building a career and embracing the life of a married man, with responsibilities in the world.
I speculate it would require 6-8 hours a day of formal meditation, to access hyperspace or whatever we choose to call existence on "the other side". I freely confess, that I was drawn back into this dance because it is so ENLIGHTENING. The experience has the power to teach us so much about the infinite nature of our own consciousness and our existential paradigm.
universecannon said:
I think all sorts of psychedelic experiences might be possible through meditation..ive had aya like experiences with it, for example, but I think the most useful and beneficial route for me is a combination of approaches. It would be interesting to go meditate judiciously for a few decades in a cave to see how that goes.
I think you are correct in your assessment of how extreme the practice would need to be. Sensory deprivation can and does cause hallucinations and a mind-shattering shift in consciousness, as does prolonged fasting. I know that many high souls have whiteout experiences and loose all awareness of their physical bodies, while training themselves in their Sadhana. Whether this can be considered "tripping" is a subject worthy of much consideration and healthy debate.
۩ said:
In my opinion they are just two different things. Thus I think comparing them is pointless. Not that I don't think learning things like meditation, martial arts, and yoga isn't beneficial or psychedelic- I think they can be good foundations for people getting into DMT.
Right on, ۩. Each of these un-ordinary realms of experience, reveals unique insights, angles of perception and philosophical conclusions about the elusive nature of reality.
I like your idea of meditation, yoga, tai chi chuan (and other equally valid spiritual practices), as laying the foundation stones for embracing something as powerful and transformative as the Teachers of organic psychedelia: mescaline, psilocybin, LSD-25, NN-DMT or Salvia Divinorum (I haven't embraced Iboga or 5-MeO-DMT yet).
It may be fruitless to compare and contrast their specific qualities, for they are unique in and of themselves. They do seem to mix splendidly together, though. 8)