An ill-fitting garment
One of the most enduring and useful critiques against psychedelic drugs as agents of personal change regards the fact that human patterns of behavior and perception tend to be so stable and enduring. How is one experience, or a handful of experiences, likely to evoke durable changes to relatively stable systems so quickly?
This is a really excellent question, and one worth “ruminating” on.
We’ve seen in the clinical research participants being quoted as saying such things as calling the psychedelic experience “one of the most meaningful experiences in my life.” This is a remarkable statement, but it is one that people who have spent time around psychedelics and psychedelic users will not find surprising. Psychedelic drug use, in any setting, may at times evoke experiences that are indescribable, awe-inspiring, and dripping with what seems like deep meaning. These experiences are often important to people- but do they really help them change?
Change is often a very slow process- usefully analogized by the image of a giant, loaded ocean liner attempting a u-turn. Behavior carries a lot of inertia, and we see things, experience things, and think things in repetitive ways that carve deep, habitual grooves into daily patterns of functioning. These grooves are very durable and don’t seem to be too vulnerable to simply being “wiped away” by a single potent experience, no matter how powerful.
This is a question that has been explored interestingly in the context of Buddhist practice. The history of Buddhism in the west is quite intertwined with the introduction of the powerful psychedelics psilocybin (mushrooms), mescaline (peyote) and LSD. Both were introduced widely into western culture in the middle of the 20th century, and there was a large degree of overlap between the groups of people interested in both.
Buddhism came to be a popular spiritual curiosity (and often more than a curiosity) for countercultural westerners. It’s interesting to consider why. Perhaps it offers a uniquely useful conceptual fit for psychedelic drug use, providing an easy language to adopt for psychedelic users to begin to describe their often ineffable experiences. Then again, perhaps the often meaningful nature of the psychedelic experience brought forth religious feelings in the user, and Buddhism simply happened to be there, offering an exotic alternative to the Christian religion as was practiced at the time. While Christianity can be argued to have been an extraordinarily radical and countercultural force throughout its very long history, mainline Christian practice in post-war America offered very little to the spiritually restless.
Either way, a great many Buddhist-curious folks came into being during the ‘50’s, ‘60’s and ‘70’s. Popularizers such as Alan Watts and of course, the Beatles, fed the demand. A great many Buddhist teachers from the east, a very colorful (and often very shady) cast of characters, came to the US to help teach the fledgling religious seekers the ways of Buddhism.
This question, essentially one of how people change- through epiphany or through practice- became central to the Buddhist enterprise in America. Because such a large number of interested Buddhists were brought to the religion, either directly or indirectly, as a result of psychedelic drug use, the practice and philosophy of Buddhism in America had to accommodate this rather unique religious on-ramp.
Buddhism in its western form is built around practice and around direct experience. Daily, intentional practices of meditation are prescribed to help the practitioner directly perceive the teachings of the Buddha. This experiential understanding is prized much more greatly than the conceptual descriptions of reality offered in texts and scriptures.
Meditation is not the only practice in Buddhism, there are others, such as ethical precepts such as Ahimsa (non-harming) or refraining from intoxicants (complicated, this one). It is, however, seen as the primary practice and is completely associated with all western practice of Buddhism.
SIDEBAR
Many westerners were defectors from rule-bound forms of Christianity, Judaism or other faiths, and likely appreciate the non-dogmatic ethos of direct experience. Unfortunately, while in theory western Buddhism seems non-dogmatic, in practice it has often had a very, very bad “Guru problem”, in which eastern teachers are highly idolized, given spiritual power within a community, and abuse that power. You can see the result of the problem clearly in the shambles of the Shambala community, the extremely high profile and successful chain of meditation centers founded by a sexually abusive man and later run by his sexually abusive son.
We can see that in many systems that promise special insight into change, growth and perhaps even “enlightenment”; extremely charismatic individuals often seize opportunities to associate the given technology with themselves in order to elevate their status and give them access to the spoils that they perceive that status entitles them to. Other narcissists have used psychedelics in a similar manner, which is something that must be constantly guarded against.
This isn’t inevitable. In fact, most religious leaders and teachers are not likely to behave abusively. But for some reason, representing some sort of a system, institution or practice that purports to mediate one’s relationship to the divine offers talented abusers an irresistible target, and they may often infiltrate these communities.
There is a saying attributed to a Chinese monk named Linji Yixuan. It is “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”. I have always been drawn to this. Like any apocryphal spiritual saying, it can be interpreted many ways, but I prefer to think of it as an anti-guru warning. Any flesh and blood person claiming spiritual authority is not to be trusted.
/SIDEBAR
Meditation is perhaps the quintessential “bit by bit” practice. It is the slow path, changing your mind breath by breath by breath, patiently and carefully building a habitual pattern of relating to your own moment-by-moment experience. The purpose of this is rather inscrutable. It ISN’T, in the Buddhist context, to increase well-being, to relax, or any of the other goals we’ve come to associate with the modern practice of meditation. It is a spiritual practice with a spiritual purpose, though the word “spiritual” may not be universally agreeable.
OK, so what is to follow is a horrible oversimplification, but I’m going to do it anyway. More or less, the purpose of meditation is to directly apprehend the nature of Samsara (suffering and the cycle of birth, old age, sickness and death), to free one’s self from it (for self and or for others, depending on the type of Buddhism). It is to recognize the fundamental non-dual nature of reality (no I/you, all are one) and to facilitate the cessation of striving, either striving for desire or away from pain. This “blowing out” is sometimes referred to as Nirvana, an oceanic state of being free from the vicissitudes of earth bound existence.
It takes a LOT of practice to even catch the scent of what this might be like.
Or you can just drop a few tabs of LSD, sit cross-legged in front of a bonfire under the stars and wait.
I’m kidding. Mostly. I mean yes. I don’t think it is safe to say that you can just take a psychedelic and then POW here’s a full-fledged Buddhist-themed Nirvana trip. But, like, maybe. It’s been known to happen. Probably not the FIRST time. Who knows? I couldn’t say.
So, if this can be experienced in a few hours with a drug (sometimes, maybe), why mess with the tedium of hours and hours and hours and hours of sore knees, a screaming back, mind-shattering boredom and hunger pains? That’s a good question. But lots of people do transition from one to another, in fact. As mentioned before, the pipeline from tripper→ contemplative practitioner is pretty wide.
So what’s going on here? Is it an invaluable shortcut? Is it a counterfeit, a form of spiritual delusion? An intrusion into a realm of forbidden and unearned knowledge? An entrance or portal into a different way of seeing?
The book Zig Zag Zen, first published in 2002 and reissued in 2015, provides an excellent discussion of these themes. Edited by Allen Badiner with art by Alex Grey, it features contributions from Huston Smith, Robert Jesse, Peter Matthiessen, Ram Dass, Joan Halifax Roshi, and a multitude of others, shedding light on this question from a kaleidoscope of perspectives.
My own perspective is this: our biographical histories of learning from experience are deeply, deeply woven into our experience of existing as a human. We are cloaked in a tapestry of our own creation. When we trip, we may experience the world as if we were not wrapped in our normal fabric- perhaps a different fabric, or maybe no fabric at all. The screen that we regularly peer through is removed. As soon as the very next day, however, it is back and as real as ever, if perhaps a bit more translucent than usual.
The experience fades, and our fabric of learned being reasserts itself- the loom is still warped with patterns of perception, behavior and thought that ARE remarkably durable.
However, the experience of temporarily de-cloaking, while not rearranging the pattern in the cloth, allows us to see the cloth as what it is- something we wear, not something that we are. Simply dis-identifying for the story that we tell ourselves about who we are offers us the opportunity to imagine ourselves differently. When we can imagine ourselves differently, we can behave in a way that no longer feels compelled to align to an older, ill-fitting garment, but to one that may, someday, fit much better.
In other words, we BELIEVE change is possible.
Change is achingly slow- re-warping the loom, thread by thread. Carefully passing the shuttle back and forth, carefully, tenderly. Falling into auto-pilot and making a mess of the pattern we are working on- yet still returning with time and commitment, a new pattern may emerge. But it IS slow, and it WILL take time. Without the belief that it is possible, without the sense that it is a meaningful, important, and practical investment of time- it can be difficult to make the effort. After all, the effort is often very challenging and painful. It requires, always, disentangling from the tendency to behave in a manner congruent with our old costume, and to step into the uncertain direction of a new one- one that portrays a fonder imagining of ourselves.
We can see that we can BE different, and then we must then DO change. And repeat when neccesary.
If you made it to the end of the column, I want to share a bit of pride I have in myself at not devoting a single bit of this particular column to Joe Rogan. I have thoughts about Joe Rogan, and the Joe Rogan-driven traffic is real, and even relevant to psychedelics….. but…..no. No, Nate, No. Good job, me. Tune in next week, in which I also will not talk about Joe Rogan.