I'm a bit unusual here. I have never taken any drugs. I don't drink alcohol. I am also not judgmental.
There is the concept of the waking dream. That we are always in a dream which keeps being guided by our senses. Where the mind corrects the dream based on what we feel, see, and hear.
Psychedelics seem to break this process. When people say they have "Profound" experiences, do they mean they finally understand this? This sense of wholeness.
Reading the experiences people have had, I feel I have had similar ones through meditation.
Its a substance that can quickly and reliably show you just how much your reality and perceptions are shaped by chemical processes. It gives you the ability to play around with your perceptions and compare things that you thought were "objectively" real with a different perspective which you can have some control over. Put another way, it can give you a new way to look at the world, at abstract systems, at life, and purpose.
The quickness that it achieves such shifts was mind-blowing for me - I feel that with meditation it is a long slow process of developing a sense of these things, such that you might put a much more spiritual meaning behind it rather than biological.
That's exactly what they are. Few people reach through meditation what these drugs can show anyone, but meditation will get you there as well, perhaps with more control.
I'm still skeptical. I suspect meditation can give something similar, but not the same, as something like heroin, just like running can get you a "runner's high". But the brain just can't produce arbitrary chemical formulas.
"The serious heroin aficionado, if still functional, lives his junkie life surrounded by poor dumb muggles who believe they're getting "high on life." Bullshit! High is spelled heroin. Your muggle can't even imagine high. It's like trying to explain electricity to a blind man."
I think, in the context he's saying meditation and drugs are similar, they're referring to psychedelics and their ability to blur reality and perceptions.
Heroin is a whole other animal, I'm not sure you're going to find many people comparing it to meditation.
I believe that you can definitely wonder into the same territory through meditation. Some people even get there through athletics by pushing themselves really intestly. The experiences that people describe as "bad trip" can be found in the literature around buddhism, or even in the christian tradition if you examine "the dark night of the soul". There are also parallels to the more positive experiences.
I always understood this as an emptiness rather than as a "bad trip."
"The dark night of the soul" usually occurs after you feel like you have made spiritual progress, in whatever tradition you practice, and then to have it suddenly disappear.
The dark night of the soul is a period of disconnection, of feeling as if you have been abandoned by God, of not knowing how to get back on track.
I believe that psychedelics and meditation all point to the same source, and in fact some of my most profound trips seem to point directly at meditation. I've since taken up the practice and use psychedelics much less, but IMO they're still invaluable depending upon the context.
There is the concept of the waking dream. That we are always in a dream which keeps being guided by our senses. Where the mind corrects the dream based on what we feel, see, and hear.
Psychedelics seem to break this process. When people say they have "Profound" experiences, do they mean they finally understand this? This sense of wholeness.
Reading the experiences people have had, I feel I have had similar ones through meditation.
Maybe these drugs are just a shortcut.