From Psychedelics and LSD at Esalen
The first thing that stands out for me after reading Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind is I never had a properly guided psychedelic trip, but in spite of that I resonated deeply with almost everything he says about the experience. It’s just that I could have gotten so much more from the guided therapy high dose format as he describes it.
An underlying premise of the book is that the psychedelic therapy format maximizes the possibility of a profound spiritual experience. The first 2 trips at Esalen had a facade hinting at that format. The last 2 trips, the days of peyote tea in the buses after we landed on the Farm, had some ritualized elements, but were to a great extent social and recreational. None of the other trips had elements of the well guided journey. That was a consistent element of the “setting” for all my trips.
But my “set”, my expectation, was mostly colored by the high mystical-philosophical lyricism of Huxley’s Doors of Perception and Watts’ Joyous Cosmology. The very first trip fulfilled my expectation in that regard. Pollan emphasizes the “dissolution of the ego” as the magical experience that opens all the doors. It came to me effortlessly on the first trip. Reading his book I felt I reaped all the benefits he talks about except the deepest most sustained mystical states, which the guided therapy setting evokes and supports.
The second thing that struck me after finishing the book was how often while I was reading that I saw clearly that my experience with psychedelics was the hidden driver behind, and the obvious answer to my ongoing question “What is the shift of consciousness needed to reverse the multiple eco-catastrophes?” Duh!
I long ago suppressed as wildly impractical and unrealistic my visceral belief that high dose guided psychedelic sessions are the only antidote to the dysfunction of our culture. Now I can say they aren’t the only antidote, but used wisely they can be a powerful ally.
Bringing that out of the closet opens the conversation about why I felt it necessary to shift my main practice from psychedelics to zen meditation. If the psychedelics were so good why did I feel it necessary to shift?
Reflecting on reading the book drifts toward connecting my psychedelic experiences with my lifelong “social action” goal of changing the culture, which drifts toward the current iteration of envisioning a healthy sustainable planetary culture. The last part of my original note, below, identifies the main stances I have taken in respect to the culture, up to leaving the zen community. Now 18 years after leaving, I should be able to characterize what comes after zen.
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On the road – bypassing responsibility
Psychedelics- fantasy of visionary culture or seeing through the constructs of the dominant culture
Zen – transcendent but grounded in ordinary reality
Tremendous benefits (list them) but I got hooked by institutional spiritual materialism
Take the stability and insight gained from decades of zen training and apply them to the living earth system. Not knowing and bearing