Why Psychedelic Awakenings are Insight 'Experiences' and not Permanent Awakenings

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

How could apples be compared with apples when the real work is done not during the trip or the meditation but in the space between? 

You answered your own question. If both require space between, the space in between cancels itself out.

It's not so hard to take 100 people, split them into 2 groups, and pay each one to do 5,000 of either psychedelics or meditation. And then see who is more conscious in the end.

[The Don]

16 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

People are too scared or too closedminded to run the test.

@Leo Gura, I find myself in a situation of fear to try Psychedelics.

I don't know what Psychedelics will offer. I just don't want to fall into a deep depression after I try Psychedelics.

If I try some Psychedelics and become more conscious, won't I get depressed?

Or if I'm going to try Psychedelics, won't I become a nihilist?

These are my sincere questions for you.

P.S: I've got a WARNING from @Natasha because I joked about "death" on a topic related to your booklist. Can I have that warning removed? Thank you.

Edited October 12, 2019 by The Don

[ardacigin]

36 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@ardacigin Here's a really interesting point which a lot of meditators are in denial about:

When you compare psychedelics vs meditation, you're making a biased comparison.

You are comparing 5,000-10,000 hours of mediation with 50-100 hours of psychedelics.

A true comparison would be to compare 5,000 hours of meditation with 5,000 hours tripping, or 50 hours of mediation with 50 hours of tripping.

It's very misleading to criticize the limited transformative power of psychedelics when you are comparing a few psychedelic trips with a master mediator who's done 10,000 hours of practice.

The true test is to compare apples to apples. Which of course no meditation teacher does. Because of how bad it would look for them.

@Leo Gura Yes. I totally understand the 'time' argument. At a glance, It doesn't seem fair at all. But there appears to be 2 main reasons why doing more psychedelics or meditation (purely time wise) is a terrible metric for embodiment.

1st reason: Amount of time is not the issue for permanent realization. Also the spiritual experience itself is also not the issue. (its depth or ease of access) The deliberate practice and most important the skill at which the insight process is done is what decides the embodiment level. A meditator who had practiced for 40 years who hasn't attained awakening had practiced for 10.000+ hours but the quality of those hours were very low (basically most of those monks in certain monasteries who are really not serious) compared to the amount of time practiced and potential momentum one could have with such a time. Basically a lot of time doesn't equate to skillful practice.

2nd reason: The embodiment is not related to time because some people like Eckhart Tolle can get to the first stages of permanent realization with zero practice. (without any meditation and psychedelics). Instead of pure time, the embodiment depends on how skillfully one can deconstruct the experience and have an insight deep enough to penetrate the entire nervous system. That experience can be banal or ordinary. More psychedelics will only allow for the depth of experience to go deeper. The insight process is dependent on the spiritual student's abilities. One can do it without any depth in spiritual experience as happens with non-spiritual stream enterers. 

That is why pure time-based metrics are problematic both in meditation and psychedelics for embodiment. It is not about the time or the depth of experience. The embodiment is about the successful insight deconstruction of ANY experience. 

Both meditation and psychedelics create the ideal environment for awakening to occur. And to go deeper than stream-entry, they must be practiced with diligence post-stream entry. And generally, people on that level of 'non-spiritual stream entry' are already living in the present moment so diligent practice is not a problem for people like Eckhart Tolle. They tend to go deeper naturally as time goes on because their baseline is stream entry.

So the real question is: How can I have my first deep and permanent insight embodiment?

After the first gateway insight (most likely no-self), it opens up the way to all the other related insights as well. It is much easier and joyful to practice and go deep when the baseline entails no self- lack of boundaries, a significant reduction in suffering, no mind and effortless meditative joy. 

Especially if you've mastered the samatha path, you'll have effortless meditative joy and no-mind prior to awakening with relative resilience and semi-permanent insight embodiment. That is the ideal environment to start insight practices like self enquiry.

Edited October 12, 2019 by ardacigin

[Leo Gura]

27 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

So the real question is: How can I have my first deep and permanent insight embodiment?

And this brings us right back to the issue of time and experience.

You can't get the results The Buddha got without the practice time he put in. Unless maybe you're a spiritually gifted freak.

Or maybe you can do it faster with psychedelics. Who knows?

[mandyjw]

I think it's much much messier than psychedelics vs meditation. If someone without a good foundation in personal development and in life in general takes psychedelics it's game of Russian roulette. If the same person meditates, there is a good chance that they are going to have positive, albeit slow positive growth. However if you take a highly developed person, the psychedelics have a high potential of being transformational. Especially since a highly developed responsible person probably has a lot of ideas about what life is about and how it should go. There are those who desperately need structure and those who need to let the fuck go of it. Not everyone is coming from the same direction or has the same pieces of the puzzle. 

I had an awakening without ever having a regular meditation practice or taking a psychedelic. Looking back I spent my entire life "meditating" and searching for truth and just generally searching for feeling good, without having any idea of an end point. Ignorance was very helpful and yet in the end, had to be let go of.The more I try to understand it or credit some circumstance or choice I made with it, the more confused I get. 

 

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Meta-Man said:

Or maybe you are just sick of the merry go round you’re ready to let go.

Getting sick of the merry go round is just another word for practice/time.

[ardacigin]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

And this brings us right back to the issue of time and experience.

It brings us to the successful insight practice. Due to those 2 reasons, It is not about the time or the depth of experience. The embodiment is about the successful insight deconstruction of ANY experience. 

By which I mean you can do 10.000 hours of psychedelics and still have little to no insight embodiment. Because you haven't successfully and sufficiently deconstructed the insight.

Or in meditation's case, you can do 10.000 hours of meditation and still have little to no insight embodiment. Because you haven't successfully and sufficiently deconstructed the insight.

Or in the case of awakening, you can have zero experience in meditation and psychedelics - 0 hours of meditation and psychedelics - and the insight into no-self can suddenly infuse your life. (Eckhart Tolle awakening) -In other words, no time is necessary and you can access it by ordinary consciousness (no psychedelic experience of depth is needed. This tells me that these 2 are not the key factors for embodiment. But they help the process greatly).

More time and experience helps to create the environment necessary to start the insight process. That is why we practice in the first place.

 But time and depth of experience are not what produces awakening. Insight does. The point must be to learn how to develop the introspective awareness necessary for the insight process.  Not merely more meditation time and psychedelics. Insight is what produces awakening and our focus should be insight-oriented rather than more time or experience.

 

Edited October 12, 2019 by ardacigin

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

But time and depth of experience are not what produces awakening. Insight does.

Your are splitting hairs now.

In practice you will not get insight without time and deep experience.

If this wasn't true, people would not do meditation retreats or become monks.

The core hypocrisy is this: meditation retreats are treated as necessary and important, yet psychedelics are demonized and dissmissed as ineffective.

This is a clear double standard born of self-bias.

[ardacigin]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

In practice you will not get insight without time and deep experience.

@Leo Gura Spontaneous awakenings prove that permanent insight embodiements (ex. Eckhart Tolle's awakening) can be realized without time and deep experience. This tells me that it has to do with some other core factor which appears to me as insight deconstruction. Otherwise, spontaneous awakenings are pure magic and can't be explained by any other way.

For some very few people who have a talent for this insight deconstruction, It just happens. 

Again, time and experience DOES create the ideal environment for insight embodiment. But it appears optional IF you do the insight process successfully. That focal point is the insight deconstruction.

Again for 99% of people, that means deliberate practice and time. But that doesn't mean deliberate practice and time produces awakening. Successful insight process produces awakening which may or may not be the result of 10.000 hours of meditation or psychedelics. If you look at many people who had spent hours on these practices actually failed to succesfully embody the insights. Because it is not purely time and experience based. 

Those are not the core factor, but supplementary ones. This is not just splitting hairs. I'm basically telling that for successful permanent realization, all of our efforts must go towards insight process and not more time with psychedelics or meditation. The importance of using these tools for insight process as quickly as one is able to. That will produce the insight so the 1000 trip psychedelic experiment would not (most likely) pan out just like how 10.000 meditation hours don't pan out for most people.

Edited October 12, 2019 by ardacigin

[Leo Gura]

Please don't cite me "spontaneous insight". You have no idea what hell Tolle went through to earn his so-called "spontaneous insight."

He spent 2 YEARS living on a park bench just to integrate it.

Your logic is like saying an Olympic champion got his gold medal in a 30 minute ceremony.

[lmfao]

Quote

Here's a really interesting point which a lot of meditators are in denial about:

When you compare psychedelics vs meditation, you're making a biased comparison.

You are comparing 5,000-10,000 hours of mediation with 50-100 hours of psychedelics.

A true comparison would be to compare 5,000 hours of meditation with 5,000 hours tripping, or 50 hours of mediation with 50 hours of tripping.

It's very misleading to criticize the limited transformative power of psychedelics when you are comparing a few psychedelic trips with a master mediator who's done 10,000 hours of practice.

The true test is to compare apples to apples. Which of course no meditation teacher does. Because of how bad it would look for them. Meditation is terribly inefficient. The only way to overcome its inefficiency is with a full-time professional commitment. And even then, you will not ever be as conscious as with 5-MeO-DMT.

The problem is that doing 5,000 hours of psychedelics is unheard of in our society. So no one really knows what it would result in. People are too scared or too closedminded to run the test. Because a visionary leader is needed to pioneer a new spiritual path as the Buddha did with Buddhism.

There is a huge difference between following an existing spiritual path like a sheep vs pioneering a brand new one for others to follow.

@Leo Gura In practice, does committing to meditative practices "full-time" amount to becoming a monk or living like an ascetic? Can one live like a monk in modern society? Is  full time commitment compatible with life purpose? 

Edited October 12, 2019 by lmfao

[Enlightenment]

@Leo Gura Have you tried TM style mantra meditation (not concentration)? You've had 2 awakening experiences sober if I remember correctly, what technique produced them? If you do the same techniques right now, nothing happens?

@ardacigin A few things I disagree with you about

Quote

Take Martin Ball. A respected 5 meo Dmt user. Probably he did hundreds of trips on this substance alone. Years of experimentation. Yet he is still suffering just as much as the next guy when the extreme waves of insomnia hits. All oneness disappears. The rigid self comes back. I'm giving him as an example because he is one of the psychedelic users who claimed permanent realization is possible with 5 meo dmt.

I honestly don't know for sure if Martin if in a persistent no-self, non-dual experience but I think you overestimate how immune to suffering one becomes after a permanent shift (even very deep). People are still humans and will suffer in physical pains or extreme waves of insomnia like in Martin's case, no permanent shift exist that can make you immune to it (parinibbana maybe). If we take extreme physical pain, it actually would be easier to endure for extremely advanced, non-awakend Samatha practitioner on a retreat, than to someone with a permanent shift but no concentration skills. I myself still have problems with anxiety even tho I'm deep into no-self experience for over 2,5 years at this point.

Quote

I've also talked to Martin Ball and also listened to his podcast about his opinions on this matter. Lİke I said, I really like him but he still believes that ego is a permanent companion. He basically says: Temporary transcendence (which can be as long as years) is possible, but the ego will always be there and he usually experiences all the negative effects of the ego like anxiety, fear, suffering etc. He doesn't seem to subscribe to the notion that there is such a thing as a permanent realization. His embodiment is weaker than most people think.

Again I don't know how realized Martin is but he is right about the ego, you have to have an ego to function, understand the symbolic meaning, I wouldn't be able to write this without ego. Awakening is not ego loss, it's a disidentification from it. The ego can only be truly lost in temporary states.

I'm a rare case of someone who:

1) Had a breakthrough on psychedelics

2) Have permanent non-dual awareness in daily life which I don't have to do anything to maintain

3) Have been in a highly concentrated state of effortless attention and awareness and also in Jhana, however, this is my weakest point and you are surely more experienced than me in this regard

I guess you @ardacigin haven't had a breakthrough on psychedelics yet. Even tho I have an extremely logical/skeptical mind, I have to give credit to Leo for how radical a breakthrough is. It's still the most insane, radical, powerful, crazy experience I've ever had. I don't rule out the possibility of the same state sober in extreme concentration. 

Leo is on the other hand very experienced with psychedelics but lacks experience with persistent versions of awakening and concentration.

[mandyjw]

Eckhart Tolle mentions various realizations that occurred before his awakening. There's a story of him following a crazy woman speaking to herself from the train onto his campus, being shocked that she was a professor and then looking in the mirror as he mumbled something to himself and realizing the insanity in himself.  

There are other stories like this about his life pre-awakening that he tells occasionally. 

The very inconvenient thing about a spontaneous awakening is that you will be left barely functioning and you will have no idea for how long. You will likely believe it will be always, you may not care of you may live a life where this has major consequences. 

The thing about psychedelics is that one always expects that they will eventually wear off. 

 

[Enlightenment]

35 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

Spontaneous awakenings prove that permanent insight embodiements (ex. Eckhart Tolle's awakening) can be realized without time and deep experience. This tells me that it has to do with some other core factor which appears to me as insight deconstruction. Otherwise, spontaneous awakenings are pure magic and can't be explained by any other way.

It's not insight deconstruction. It's a method/technique fit. If you would use precisely the right technique for your type of mind, you would awaken within hours/days.

 

IDK why Eckhart Tolle is known as such high authority here. Sure he is pretty deep in nondual awareness in daily life but lacks experience with high dose psychedelics and concentration. He just milks the same topic all the time be in the now yada yada yada. My intuition tells me a good dose of 5-MeO would totally mind blown him 

Edited October 12, 2019 by Enlightenment

[DrewNows]

34 minutes ago, Enlightenment said:

It's not insight deconstruction. It's a method/technique fit. If you would use precisely the right technique for your type of mind, you would awaken within hours/days.

 

IDK why Eckhart Tolle is known as such high authority here. Sure he is pretty deep in nondual awareness in daily life but lacks experience with high dose psychedelics and concentration. He just milks the same topic all the time be in the now yada yada yada. My intuition tells me a good dose of 5-MeO would totally mind blown him 

? 

it’s called connection

5-MeO May blow “his” mind but it doesn’t matter, he serves his purpose blissfully  

[Cuddy5269]

Didn't Eckhart Tolle have to go through decades of mental suffering before he awakened?

[Forestluv]

@Leo Gura You mentioned a meditator bias with time. Is there also a meditator bias with standard? People often see psychedelics as a “temporary altered” reality and assume sober is the regular standard reality. Perhaps due to a lifetime of conditioning and identification to a human sober mindset.

 

[DrewNows]

15 hours ago, pluto said:

Oh they can be, it all comes down to how much you resist the truth. If you are already awakened to your truth, psychedelics become far more permanent because you already know your true nature so there will be minimal resistance but if you do not, then you will resist because you still cannot handle that much truth/depth because you still have a lot of inner-work and purifying to do so. You have to suffer, to have to experience, you have to live, you have to die!

Welcome to life, there are no shortcuts

amen

[DrewNows]

4 hours ago, mandyjw said:

The thing about psychedelics is that one always expects that they will eventually wear off. 

@mandyjwDon't assume anything unless you've taken a Psychedelic. I had no awakening during my first trip but they sure as hell rocked my world,

if i had not awakened, they'd have been the THING i feared the most in the entire world 

Basically they lead the ignorant to questioning more about what reality entails 

[Austin Actualizing]

3 hours ago, Cuddy5269 said:

Didn't Eckhart Tolle have to go through decades of mental suffering before he awakened?

Yea he was around 30 when he had his first awakening. Before that, he was very depressed for a long time.