I have given this thread some considerable thought, before uttering a word on the subject. I must admit, that while I have been practicing the art of meditation for over 37 years, with consistency... there is nothing like a psychedelic experience. Since the late 1960's there has been a debate about comparisons between what the "spiritual masters" experience in deep meditation and what the psychonaut goes through, in flights of psychedelia.
From everything I have directly experienced, with both sober meditation and psycho-activated, entheogenic voyages with most of the classic psychedelics (including Spice), points toward a symbiosis betwixt these high energy aspects of the human experience. A succinct parallel and a yet... dramatic differentiation in perception.
In other words, it is just as reasonable to question if one can access hyperspace by breathing slowly and deeply or chanting a specific mantra (for 10 years in a cave). It's not that simple and I sincerely believe that it is more rare than most religiously oriented folks would like to admit. Not without triggering the right
chemical reaction in the brain and host's organic neuro system. That being said, meditation does activate areas of the brain largely left dormant and there are significant changes in our brain's chemistry, while in alpha wave states.
What I am getting at is this, meditation is a process by which we come to practice awareness of the present moment. Living in the now. The potentiality of igniting within our mind, a shift in cognition, is IMO our single greatest gift from The Creator. Frankly, most of the time traditional meditation practice is not at all like a psychedelic trip. It is a slow and saturating rise in conscious awareness... not a rocket into the eternal, as with entheogens. How could it be? And yet, the higher levels of human perception, link the individuated witness to the unified whole of universal being. Add the Sacred Medicine to this centering equation and there is most likely to be ignited, a voyage into a transcendental experience.
I am of the opinion that meditation is a form of training and a way of life. Psychedelics offer as many potential experiences as there are individual minds participating in the high. When a receptive soul encounters
the white light, during the peak of an entheogenic eclipsing, the desire to reconnect with this radiance of being, is forevermore an aim of direct intention and a vital purpose for one's journey through this lifetime.
But why must it be either or... if used in balanced harmony? Meditation is optimum for the natural evolution within our consciousness. Psychedelics are mind-blowing for a sudden explosion of perceptually enhanced, mind expansion. I have found in my own small universe, that by regular attunement of concentration and internal focus, I am better able to access subtler and far subtler levels of awareness... while enhanced by or not enhanced by entheogens. United, these methodologies are self-shattering. Make no mistake, the power and the raw force of LSD, Magic Mushrooms, Mescaline, Salvia Divinorum and especially
DMT, will take the awareness of the witness beyond any realm of the known.
It is meditation which allows the soul to center on the
here and now. Practicing being in the present only facilitates what happens next. I cannot say if peaking on a psychedelic is the same as Samadhi, Satori, Divine Rapture or "Enlightenment"... I only know that the Sacred Medicine has gifted me with the direct experience of The Clear Light of the Void, and so too, an awakening within the freedom and expanse of The Godhead. It has literally destroyed my ego-self, reassembled my priorities and birthed me anew, filled with a bursting glow of inspiration and a profound loving identification with all of you and the whole freaking parameter of this wonderfully complex and enigmatic multiverse.
