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Shamanism is Intense
The difference between the recreational and ceremonial use of psychedelics is not just about set and setting. It’s primarily about intensity. If you take magic mushrooms and go for a walk with friends, you will probably have quite a magical time. There will be wonder, surprise, surreal encounters, expansive feelings, profound conversations, fun and giggles.
These are valuable experiences in their own right, creative, exploratory and bonding, shared psychedelic adventures that make for good memories and good stories. They can go wrong of course. Too high a dosage and not enough attention to set and setting can turn a multi-coloured dreamscape into a multi-coloured nightmare.
The clinical setting is safer, though not as fun. Fun is not the point, of course, except indirectly. The point is treatment for conditions which take the fun out of life, such as depression and anxiety. The therapeutic psychedelic journey is taken solo with minimal guidance and support from a psychiatrist or trained sitter. There may be some interaction, but the talking is mainly done afterwards. Depending on several factors, primarily the dosage, a clinical psychedelic experience will vary in intensity, although, in the interests of safety, this will be kept within certain bounds.
The clinical setting has obvious parallels with the ceremonial setting, but there are also striking differences, the most basic being the level of intensity. Where the clinician is careful not to let the experience get too intense and overwhelming, the shaman turns up the heat. Where the clinician is worried that you may get too high, the shaman is worried that you may not get high enough.
Ceremonies are meant to be intense. A sesshin (meditation retreat) is intense. A sweat lodge is intense. Even a regular church service should be intense. Otherwise it’s little more than empty ritual or social convention. When it comes to psychedelics, this distinction is intuitively obvious. If a psychedelic ceremony isn’t intense, it should really be classed as recreational rather than ceremonial. The same applies to more conventional religious ceremonies like baptisms, weddings and funerals. They can also feel merely “recreational”.
It’s all about the experience. Intuitively, we know that there is something valuable about intense experiences. And it’s not just about the thrill factor, which might explain the allure of sky-diving and other extreme sports. So what is it? Specifically, what’s the spiritual value of intense experiences?
If you think about it, experience is always relational. Whether you are talking to someone or hugging someone, or talking to a tree or hugging a tree, even talking to yourself or hugging yourself, you are in a dynamic, dialogical relationship with someone or something else (even if that something else is a part of you). The more intense the relation, the closer and more entangled you become. Think of an intense conversation, for example. If you’re on the same wavelength, if you’re “vibing”, there comes a point where the boundary between you begins to dissolve, just as with intense dancing or intense love-making.
Relational intensity is therefore associated with intimacy. And intimacy, in its most intense manifestations, resolves itself into unity (or “nonduality”) where self and other, inside and outside, experiencer and experienced become one (or “not-two”). This is the essence of spiritual breakthrough: the leap from duality to nonduality. It requires a leap of faith, but it also requires a certain amount of intensity.
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Why Meditate?
Gary Weber has described in detail how the “default mode network” in the brain can be deactivated through meditation. He calls it the “blah blah blah”, because it is characterized by incessant chatter, sometimes pointless and inconsequential, but sometimes of seemingly huge import. In Buddhist circles, it is known as the “monkey mind”, not because we share it with our primate cousins, but because we jump from thought to thought like a monkey jumping from tree to tree. This is what the mind does when it is “at rest” or “at ease”, in other words when it has nothing better to do. Hence the term “default mode”. We daydream, we ruminate, we worry and fret. It is characterized by self-concern, and as such has some clear evolutionary survival value. We do need to evaluate the past and project and plan the future. We need to think about our self-image and reputation and those of significant others in our personal and professional lives. That’s all normal and necessary. But, unfortunately, it can get out of hand.
If the default mode network is over-active, it begins to interfere with the activity-focused networks. We find it hard to concentrate and to perform tasks efficiently and creatively. Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders (ADHD) are neurologically characterized by the inability to inhibit the default mode network. Conversely, highly focused and creative people can silence the “blah blah blah” for extended periods of time. They can engage fully in a task to the point of being completely lost in it – they can enter “the flow”. Think of Mozart composing a symphony. Think of the last time you were lost in music. Where was your “default mode” then?
So the ability to systematically inhibit and even completely deactivate the default mode network is clearly an extremely useful thing to be able to do. Even if it comes back (and it always comes back), taking a break from it has well documented mental and physical health benefits. Meditation is one of the best ways to effect this deactivation or inhibition of the “default mode network”. Prayer, fasting, ecstatic dance and psychedelic drugs are some others.
If you’ve ever tried to teach a class of rowdy children anything, you will know how difficult it is to get through to them. This is why discipline is so important. Only once you have a quiet, attentive classroom environment can any real learning take place. The same is true of our unruly minds. We can still process information with the default mode network rumbling away in the background, but nothing sinks in at a deeper level.
On the other hand, when the mind is perfectly still and quiet, new insights strike us with the force of revelation. We “get it” at a deeper level than the surface “blah blah blah”. Imagine you’re reading a poem, say T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. When the mind is quiet, the words touch you with a deep sense of meaning and beauty. When the mind is agitated and distracted, it’s all just a jumble of words.
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The Serious Play of the Imaginal
Psychedelic ceremonies and rituals are (among other things) places for “the serious play of the imaginal”, which the cognitive scientist John Vervaeke has said is necessary “to enhance people’s sense of connectedness, especially to their future self.”
Connectedness is only possible through connection and connection only happens where there is sympathetic resonance and harmony, which itself is only possible where there is some underlying correspondence. And to see the correspondences requires that we play around in the imaginal, seriously.
On the neurological side, it is now well established that psychedelics massively increase interactions and overall connectedness between different parts of the brain. This fits with the typical subjective reports of enhanced lateral thinking, creativity and insight.
When it comes to our connectedness to our future self, psychedelics help us explore and envision our potential future selves more powerfully than ordinary imagination can. If we do decide to continue on the psychedelic path, one thing we can be sure of is that our future self, while hopefully happier and wiser, will also be more poetic, that is, more skilled in “the serious play of the imaginal”.
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Mushroom Meditation
The holy mushroom ceremony opens with a mantra meditation. This helps establish a conducive set and setting. However, it is a mistake to imagine that the meditation is just an “intro” to the psychedelic experience. The meditation doesn’t end when the mantra ends and the mushroom begins, it deepens.
In a ceremonial context, in contrast to a recreational or even therapeutic context, the whole trip from beginning to end is a meditation. The mantra meditation is followed by a silent meditation and a music meditation. Under the influence, silence is not silence and music is not music, but they are both deep meditations.
The music meditation is at the heart of the experience, when the effect of the mushroom is at its peak. We traverse many dimensions of space, time, mood, texture, harmony, dissonance, colour, form, meaning, meaninglessness, movement, stillness, intensity and intimacy. It is a deep, inner, multi-dimensional transcendental meditation.
Trying to meditate through the music, or in spite of the music, can be frustrating and even disastrous. This is not background music for your usual meditation practice, be it zazen, vipassana, TM, or whatever else. It’s not silent meditation and it’s not mellow mood music meditation.
Fight the music with meditation and you will lose. Flow with the music and you will find that the music and the meditation are not-two and you will enter into true mushroom meditation. There is nothing you have to do. Just follow the music and the meditation will take care of itself. If the music is not to your taste, your inner critic starts complaining and you can feel your hackles rising, take a deep breath and remember these words: Judge not, that ye be not judged.
The mushroom meditation is followed by a period of silence and then a dub reggae meditation, once the peak intensity has abated sufficiently to permit coordinated physical movement, balance and rhythm. After the inner flight, we ground ourselves, come back down to earth and back down into the body, and take the opportunity to express ourselves in movement and dance, hopefully with thanks and praise and joy.
The ceremony concludes with a walking meditation in a local nature reserve and a shared meal of soup and bread, where we share our experiences in a relaxed, convivial atmosphere. Maintaining a mindful state of meditative awareness even in this post trip “after party” invariably makes for more creative, constructive and enjoyable conversations and is an excellent training in applying meditation to everyday social life.
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Follow the Music
In a holy mushroom ceremony the peak of the experience takes place lying down with eyes closed (and optional eye shades) listening to music. It is a kind of musical meditation. Except that on a medium to high dose, this is no ordinary listening, no ordinary music and no ordinary meditation.
Synaesthesia (the experience of sounds in the form of visual shapes and colours for example) is very common. Also fairly common is an intense synaesthesia where you are fully immersed in a multi-sensory sound world. It’s as though you are actually inside the music, experienced as an aural incarnation of the mushroom, sometimes like an immense cathedral of colour, sometimes like a magical deep sea palace or deep space alien craft.
The peak experience is an inner journey into another dimension. If you sit up and open your eyes, the spell is broken and the magic evaporates. The amazing thing about magic mushrooms is that (with practice!) you can pass easily between the inner psychedelic world and the outer physical world. If you need the toilet or a drink of water, you can come out of the other world, get up and do what you need to do, and then go straight back into it. There are still trace psychedelic effects with eyes open, but on medium to high doses, they aren’t too distracting.
If there is anxiety, fear and confusion, discomfort, paranoia and mental chaos, you will quite understandably be tempted to come back to the “real world”, to sit up and open your eyes, and look for security and support in your surroundings and the people around you. If there is a guide or a shaman, you might turn to him or her for help. The best help a guide can give is simple presence and encouragement, until you feel settled and grounded enough to dive back in. After all, there is no way out but through.
Use the mantra. Watch and pray. Neither think nor try not to think. Neither fight nor try to surrender. Just follow the music…
music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts.
T.S. Eliot
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Why so Weird?
The first section of the musical playlist is typically quite weird. This is not accidental. In therapeutic settings, the music is comforting and relaxing, allowing you to voyage gently through your psyche. You are tripping but your ego can still navigate the journey fairly well because the music is familiar enough. There are “no alarms and no surprises”.
In an intense shamanic ceremonial setting, however, the music is designed to interrupt your habitual thought processes by breaking your expectations, by “breaking frame”. The point is not to create a nice softplay area for your ego. It is to break down the ego and then build it up again. It is to die and be reborn.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
John 3:3
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A Kind of Exposure Therapy
Trips that are all sweetness and light fail to deal with your shadow. What is the shadow? Well, to have likes you must have dislikes; to appreciate beauty you must depreciate ugliness; to seek pleasant feelings you must avoid unpleasant feelings. The light we experience as “good” casts a shadow on everything else which we experience as “bad”.
Our personal preferences, our likes and dislikes, if pandered to, create aesthetic bubbles which imprison us in gilded cages. Aesthetic sensibility is not a decorative spandrel with no bearing on the actual structure of our lives. It is how we parse reality. And before we know it, if we’re not careful, we can find ourselves, like Hansel and Gretel, locked in a house made of sweets in the woods.
Be wary of the four D’s: dislike, distaste, discomfort and disgust. A key feature of modern urban life in the West is the profound sense of entitlement to things one likes and intolerance of things one doesn’t. If progress means guaranteeing everyone gets what they want when they want it, it means creating progressively pampered, precious, prejudiced, pusillanimous people.
The ability to confront us with things we really don’t like is actually one of the most unremarked therapeutic virtues of psychedelics. They press our buttons and trigger us like nothing else. This is an opportunity. If we can tolerate dislike, distaste, discomfort and disgust on psychedelics, we find that we are more able to tolerate them when we’re sober. It’s a kind of exposure therapy that smooths the sharp edges of those unconscious ingrained phobias we unwittingly allow to dominate our lives.
As a consequence, we become less defended, less frightened, less judgy, less fragile. As Nietzsche said, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
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“Mal Viaje” and “Nada”
When embarking on a psychedelic journey, the two things you will inevitably worry about are “mal viaje” (a bad trip) and “nada” (nothing). Especially if this is a once-in-a-lifetime or a once-in-a-longtime experience, you really don’t want to be left frightened and confused on the one hand or disappointed and deflated on the other.
Why do we have bad trips and no trips? Sometimes the fault is with us, sometimes with the mushroom and sometimes with the environment we take it in. If we are highly-strung, have a controlling personality, and find it difficult to relax and go with the flow, we are much more likely to have a bad trip. If we are in a bad mood or feeling anxious or suspicious, the likelihood is even higher.
This is the “set” part of “set and setting”. You should come to the experience with a good mindset, that is, with a positive attitude of openness, curiosity, trust and respect. You should also have a stable enough personality, without any of the obvious contra-indications, such as a history of psychosis, schizophrenia or suicidality, and the less obvious ones, like OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), C-PTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder), DID (dissociative identity disorder) or NPD (narcissistic personality disorder).
The “setting” part is also important. You should be taking it in a safe and supportive environment with people you trust, ideally with an experienced guide. You should feel comfortable and confident in the knowledge that if you completely let go of the reins, you will be held, and that whatever crazy happens, it will be contained, and things won’t spin out of control.
Apart from “set and setting”, the main contributing factor to the resulting experience is the psychedelic compound itself. It depends on the quality and quantity: you want the good stuff at the right dosage. Too little and you might have little more than a threshold experience or absolutely “nada”; too much and you might have an overwhelmingly intense experience that careers off into a “mal viaje”.
However, it is often our own psychological resistance which blocks the proper working of the mushroom, and keeps a potentially beautiful mild-to-medium experience at the threshold level or a potentially profound medium-to-strong one in the waiting room. We are in continuous intimate dialogue and communion with the mushroom, whether it be barely perceptible or all over the place. The sacred dance is on, no matter what. And the trip isn’t over until it’s over.
In fact, with experience, we find that there really is no such thing as “nada” or “mal viaje”. Gnosis can be found in any and all conditions. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we don’t always get what we want and that we must make the best of what we are given.
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Please Don’t Worry
Please don’t worry if you can’t think straight when you’re high on magic mushrooms. Don’t worry if you can’t recall certain details about your life, or if you can’t remember why you are there or what you’re meant to be doing. Don’t worry if your mind is scrambled and you can’t follow a line of reasoning further than a couple of steps before you forget what it was you were thinking about. Don’t worry if you can’t work it out, or if you can’t work anything out. Don’t worry if nothing seems to make sense.
You’re tripping. The normal functioning of your mind is impaired. Certain parts of your brain have been temporarily knocked out, are under a kind of neuronal anaesthetic. Your left hemisphere in particular, as well as your default mode network, are in suspended animation.
Please don’t worry about it! It’s completely normal. You are in a temporary altered state of consciousness. It will pass. Your logical, rational faculties will return. You’re not going mad. You’re on drugs, remember?
There’s nothing you need to do, nothing you need to solve, nothing you need to worry about. You are in a safe place with people you can trust for the sole purpose of journeying deep into the heart of your very being, consciousness and bliss, deeper than you ever thought was possible.
But first you need to stop worrying, otherwise you won’t go anywhere but round and round the windmills of your mind. Mind loops can be entertaining as well as infuriating, exhausting and nightmarish. But this is not what sacred psychoactive plant medicines are for. This is not what shamanic journeying is about. This is “tripping” in the popular media sense, but only because people in the West don’t know how magic carpets work. Don’t worry about the patterns on the carpet. Learn to fly.
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A Momentary Lapse of Reason
On a high dose of psilocybin (3 grams and above), the peak of the experience will typically last for 3 – 4 hours. During this time, an inward journey through the psychedelic dimension, carried on the wave of a specially crafted musical playlist, will afford extraordinary opportunities for spiritual transformation, regeneration and renewal.
However, if an anxious thought about the outside “real world” impels you to abandon the psychedelic dimension in order to deal with the supposed source of your anxiety, you will suffer a period of temporary madness, something like a waking dream (or waking nightmare) tinged (or saturated) with paranoia and confusion.
Please resist the pull of anxiety and refrain from acting out the incipient madness. This is one reason why it is so important to trip with a sitter, guide or shaman. They are there to deal with any problems and to make sure that you are perfectly safe, so that you don’t feel the need to “fix” anything and thereby inadvertently sabotage your journey.
There is, however, method in the mushroom madness. Even if you do “lose it”, and suffer a momentary lapse of reason, don’t worry about it. The subsequent return to normality will grant you deeper insight and understanding, whatever form the “madness” takes. You will find that with careful reflection, processing and integration over the following days and weeks, both body and mind are clarified and refreshed, and you end up feeling more securely sane than ever.
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
Aristotle
No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
Henry Ward Beecher
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
Carl Jung
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The Hardest Lesson
The hardest lesson and the greatest gift of the psychedelic experience is to “lose your mind and come to your senses”. This doesn’t mean that you literally have no mind (except in the Zen Buddhist sense of mu-shin) but that your centre of awareness shifts from the left brain hemisphere to the right hemisphere. If you don’t know what the significance of this is, please read Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.
Left hemisphere activity is basically linguistic and rational. This is where we are when we try to make sense of the world and control it by fitting it into a system of mental concepts and categories. In many contexts, in society at large, this works fine. On psychedelics, this is a sure recipe for a bad trip.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is within”: whether you are in a blissful heavenly realm or a tormented hellish realm, you are in the spiritual dimension, the “Kingdom of Heaven”. The psychedelic vision quest is an inner spiritual journey and the battle is an inner spiritual battle. The more centred in the right hemisphere, and the more suspended the left, the better things will go for you.
As soon as your rational mind, through fear, decides to put a stop to the trip and to come out of the Kingdom, to take control, to get things back to normal, to “go home”, the cogs of left hemisphere madness begin to spin. And the more you try to control the experience, the more out of control it gets.
The classic psychedelics, ayahuasca, peyote, magic mushrooms, LSD, DMT, are powerful sacred medicines. They are spiritual, not mental, agents of self-discovery. If you allow your rational ego to take the reins and break the sacred circle of the ceremonial space, you will find yourself swimming against the stream. And it’s a powerful stream.
What you are actually doing is pulling yourself out of the inner “kingdom of heaven” and wrenching your consciousness back into the “real world”, which feels safer, because more familiar. The “real world” is the familiar, habitual mental world system of the left hemisphere, which feels like “home”. And you want to go home. But you’re not in Kansas anymore, and there’s no going back for the duration of the trip.
The hardest lesson is to let go, to let go of your desire to control everything and have your way, to let go of your ego, to let go of your own little kingdom. And the greatest gift is the boundless freedom, joy and peace that this endless letting go makes possible.
Give over thine own willing, give over thine own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything.
Isaac Pennington
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Trust and Respect
Deep transformative psychological change is possible in therapy only where there is a solid therapeutic alliance between therapist and client. And a solid therapeutic alliance is only possible where there is trust and respect.
The same is true of psychedelics. However high the dose, you won’t get very far unless you trust and respect the mushroom.
But please remember: no matter how difficult or challenging your experience, you are developing, at the very least, strength and stamina, patience and courage.
There is no such thing as a bad trip where there is genuine trust and respect.
Trust the mushroom.
Trust yourself.
Trust the process.
Trust the setting.
Trust the music.
Trust the guide.
Trust God.
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Be Kind to the Ego
What is the point of ceremonial tripping? As you learn to think psychedelically, you will appreciate that there is never a “point” or a single point. Reality is much too complex and multi-faceted for such brutal reductionism. However, it does help to focus and clarify sometimes. It helps to formulate an intention before journeying, and it helps to crystallize the lessons we receive.
So what’s the fundamental point of tripping? I would say it is to strengthen the soul and weaken the ego. What does that mean in practice? Well, here’s one way to think about it.
In my book The Confessions of a Psychedelic Christian, I defined the soul and the ego with reference to the Tibetan Wheel of Life as two sets of six opposing archetypes: Mystic, Shaman, Warrior, Monk/Nun, Philosopher, King/Queen vs. Diva, Demon, Victim, Addict, Muppet, Muggle. So the point is to strengthen the former, the “soul archetypes”, and weaken the latter, the “ego archetypes”.
When everything flows smoothly, it feel like the soul is in charge and our positive qualities are being strengthened. However, when something goes wrong, the ego can take the reins and pull things in a decidedly dark direction. This can happen in several ways, depending on which part of the ego is triggered.
Dissociation, depersonalisation and derealisation are associated with the Muggle archetype. When the ordinary, everyday ego identity dissolves, the Muggle Self is left all at sea. You have no idea who you are and you don’t know what’s real any more. If this happens, your homework is to practice Self-Inquiry. Develop your King or Queen archetype.
Narcissistic collapse is associated with the Diva archetype. When the self-important ego identity, whether grandiose or covert, is threatened with collapse, the Diva Self will protect itself by dismissing the experience, rejecting the situation and running away, sometimes literally. Alternatively, narcissistic inflation can lead to delusions of grandeur and a messiah complex. The homework in both cases is to cultivate Humility and Gratitude. Develop your Mystic.
Conspirituality and superstition are related to the Muppet archetype. When conventional, consensual reality dissolves, the Muppet Self constructs a paranoid delusional worldview in its place. The homework here is Critical Thinking. Develop your Philosopher.
Re-traumatization is related to the Victim archetype. Abusive acting out is related to the Demon archetype. Clinging obsessiveness is related to the Addict archetype. What is called for in these cases is Self-Soothing and Self-Compassion and Courage. Develop your Warrior, Monk/Nun and Shaman archetypes.
Whatever happens, welcome your beautiful soul but be kind to your poor ego!
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Cosmic Vertigo
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The key to the art of cosmic travel
is abhaya, fearlessness.
Be not afraid!
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But what if you suffer an attack of cosmic vertigo?
What if you discover that you’re afraid of heights?
The fact is, you are afraid.
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You are afraid of losing control.
You are afraid of losing your mind.
You are afraid of dying.
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These are the three great fears.
They are deep and powerful.
You can’t just ignore them.
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So what to do?
What to do?
It helps to remember why you came here.
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Remember:
You came here to “let go and let God”,
to surrender your controlling ego.
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You came here to lose your mind and come to your senses,
to silence your monkey mind,
to find the peace that passes all understanding.
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You came here to “die before ye die”,
to experience ego death,
to let yourself die and be born again.
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Remember:
“He that loses his life for my sake shall find it.”
Be not afraid!
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Your fear will tell you to make it stop.
It will tell you to get off the train,
to smash the glass and pull the emergency cord.
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If you slam on the breaks,
you might derail the train,
but it won’t stop.
o
You are on a magical mystery tour,
you’ve got a ticket to ride,
but you’re not in the driver’s seat.
o
The train will stop
when it runs out of steam
and not a moment before.
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So relax and enjoy the ride.
It’s okay.
Everything is fine.
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Relax.
Breathe.
Sigh.
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Comfort ye.
Self-soothe.
Smile.
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If you fear anything, fear God.
Fear God, and you will fear nothing else.
The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
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Draw near with faith.
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Have ye courage, O my brethren? … Not the courage before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage, which not even a God any longer beholdeth? … He hath heart who knoweth fear but vanquisheth it; who seeth the abyss, but with pride. He who seeth the abyss but with eagle’s eyes, – he who with eagle’s talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage.
Thus Spake Zarathustra (IV, 73, sec. 4)
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For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
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If you are unfortunate enough to experience post-psychedelic difficulties, please feel free to get in touch at sebgsynthesis@gmail.com to arrange an integration session or make use of the following excellent resource from Jules Evans:
bread of life 