Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts - Discussion
Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Niels Lyngsø, modified 1 Year ago at 11/24/22 12:54 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/22/22 4:23 PM
Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
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For the most of my life I have been strongly against the use of psychedelics for any purpose. These substances just seemed to dangerous. A couple of years ago, however, I happened to become the Danish translator of Michael Pollan’s excellent How To Change Your Mind. And it did in fact change my mind entirely with regards to psychedelics. I have several good friends who are experienced psychonauts, and I began talking with them about their trips, comparing them to my own experiences on intensive meditation retreats. There seemed to be some overlap, but also some significant differences. Over time, I got more and more curious, did more and more research on specifically psilocybin, and even more specifically on the relationship between meditation and psilocybin. Not much science has been done in this narrow field, and I believe I have read most of it, at least the most important parts of it. And a couple of months ago, I decided to do a little experiment myself to see how psilocybin would affect my meditation practice.
In the following, I will first share some of the research resources in case anyone wants to check out this field for them selves, and explain very briefly what psilocybin, according to science, does to the brain. Then I will describe the set-up for my experiment, give a trip report and a report about how it felt in the first week after the trip, and finally share some reflections.
Research and resources
For anyone not familiar with the renaissance of psychedelic research, Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your Mind is an excellent introduction. There is also a four part documentary series on Netflix, based on the book, but the tv series narrows in on the cases, skips a lot of the science and almost all the historical background, so I would definitely recommend the book.
Roland Griffiths is the leading scientific authority in the field, and also, by the way, a long term meditator. Griffiths and his team has done a lot of research on how psilocybin can be used to alleviate different kinds suffering ranging from depression, PTSD, over substance abuse to end of life distress. They have also done this one study on psilocybin and meditation, and the title gives away the conclusion: ”Psilocybin-occasioned mystical-type experience in combination with meditation and other spiritual practices produces enduring positive changes in psychological functioning and in trait measures of prosocial attitudes and behaviors”. If you are not into hardcore scientific papers, this video gives a thorough explanation of the study. Griffiths has talked about his research on several podcasts, and I especially recommend the conversation with Sam Harris on his Making Sense podcast, and with DhO’s own Vincent Horne on his Buddhist Geeks podcast, in a little series consisting of part one and part two.
Also worth mentioning is the swiss psychiatrist Franz Vollenweider who together with Zen master Vanja Palmers conducted a study on experienced meditators taking psilocybin on a meditation retreat. The study also formed the basis of a visually very nicely done documentary called Descending the Mountain. Description of the film (trailers etc.) can be found here. The film can be seen (for money) on vimeo here. The study behind the film is here.
In most if not all of Griffiths’ studies, it is crucial that a participant has a ”Mystical Experience” if there is to be positive effects of the treatment. (Thus – and I find this very noteworthy as a meditator – it is not the substance, but the ”mystical experience” that alleviates the suffering). In a scientific experiment you need to have a quantifiable definition of what a ”Mystical Experience” might be, and this leads us to the lovely ”Mystical Experience Questionnaire” (”MEQ” among friends). It is of course both hilarious and wonderfully nerdy to want to actually give a precise definition of that which, by definition, cannot be defined. You can find MEQ here, and in this article, you will find information on how to evaluate your score, once you have filled out the questionnaire. In brief there are questions pertaining to four ”factors”: 1. Mystical; 2. Positive Mood; 3. Transcendence of time and space; and 4. Ineffability. If your score in each of these four factors ≥ 60 % of the maximum score, you have, by scientific definition, had a ”complete mystical experience”.
What psilocybin does to the brain
Summarizing all the research very briefly, psilocybin seems to do mainly two things to the brain: 1) It strongly decreases the activity of the Default Mode Network, which is believed to be the main structure responsible for the experience of self (self talk, self evaluation, etc.). 2) It creates a much more widespread connectivity in the brain, bringing a lot of regions and networks that usually have very little communication into contact with each other. To simplify, it creates ”unity” in the brain. Michael Pollan, referring to the researcher R.L. Carhart-Harris, uses a nice metaphor:
”A high-dose psychedelic experience has the power to ‘shake the snow globe’, he [Carhart-Harris] says, disrupting unhealthy patterns of thought and creating a space of flexibility — entropy — in which more salubrious patterns and narratives have an opportunity to coalesce as the snow slowly resettles.”
To me this sounds a bit like what a long term vipassana practice – and/or maybe specifically the cessations or path moments – might do to the brain (some sort of "rewiring"), but that is of course just speculation.
Set-up of the experiment
Since Griffiths’ and Vollenweider’s studies both clearly showed that ”no meditator was harmed during the experiment”, and that in fact a large majority of the meditators reported positive effects, I (who do not consider myself especially courageous) found it safe to do the experiment. For information, the subject (me) has spent around 5.000 hours on the meditation cushion over the last five years (two daily hours of practice, and approximately one accumulated month of retreat time per year), more or less equivalent to the subjects in Vollenweider’s study.
I decided to do a high dose of psilocybin, but there is no general definition of what a high dose is. Futhermore, psilocybin can be found in both mushrooms and truffles, and experienced psychonauts say it acts a bit differently in the truffles than in the mushrooms, “softer”, apparently because of some other alkaloid than psilocybin also present there (I am far from an expert in this). In the scientific studies, they use synthetic psilocybin to get the dosage precise, but when you use mushrooms or truffles, there can be quite big variation in the psilocybin concentration. So, in short, using non-synthetic psilocybin, it can be difficult to find out what a high dosis is. I decided to use a so-called “trip calculator” found on a commercial website of a dutch company selling magic mushrooms and truffles (it is legal in Holland). You enter your body weight, and either truffle or mushroom, and then you pick either micro dose, low dose, middle dose, or high dose. Calculating thus, for a man my size, 17,5 grams of truffles was defined as a “high dosis”, so this was what I decided to take. I asked my psychonaut friends, and they agreed it was a high dose, although they added, that it was probably in the low end of a high dose.
From my research I knew that the effect would kick in after around 30 minutes, and that the entire trip usually would last 4-6 hours. I also knew that set & setting was crucial to a beneficial experience, “set” being mindset (expectations, attitude, intentions etc.), “setting” being the outer circumstances (physical place, other people present etc.). I decided, inspired by the experiment in Descending the Mountain, to ingest the psilocybin on a meditation retreat, with my girlfriend coming by on my otherwise solitary home retreat, acting as trip sitter.
So in the middle of November this year, I did an eight day solo retreat (the report of which can be found in this post from my practice log). On Day 5, after four days of approximately 10-12 hours of samatha meditation, I would ingest the psilocybin at noon, take the rest of the day of from meditation to concentrate on the trip and the immediate after effects, and then resume my normal retreat schedule on days 6, 7 and 8.
(Mind)set: My intention, declared out loud as I ingested the substance, was “to experience what ever is most needed right now in my spiritual development”. I tried to be conscious of my expectations: Since I was working on the jhanas on the retreat, I might have a jhana experience. But precisely because I was trying to cultivate joy, I might on the contrary have a “purification” experience, a so-called “bad” trip with lots of unprocessed emotions coming up. Part of my expectational horizon was also the many trip reports I had read and heard, especially this trip report from the above-mentioned Sam Harris, who is also an experienced meditator, and who also did a high dosis of psilocybin (although his definition of high dosis might be different than mine, cf. above). He talks about totally forgetting not just who he was, but what he was (a human being), and where he was, and that he had taken psilocybin. He was transported to some other realm of such awe and beauty that he has difficulty in describing it.
Setting: Following the example of Roland Griffiths’ many study participants, I decided to lie down on my bed with eye shades and ear phones with suitable music (for me it was Hildegard von Bingen). My trip sitter was to sit a few feet away and check in on me now and then, especially if I seemed to be in distress. The plan was to hopefully have my “mystical experience”, then get up and try to report it to my dictaphone app, and then return and finish the meditation retreat.
Trip report
I ingested the truffles at noon, talked a little with my trip sitter, and then got into bed and put on my eye shades and ear phones.
After what felt like certainly much more than half an hour, absolutely nothing had happened. I began feeling impatient but stayed in bed.
After another long period of time, I felt like going out to pee, so I asked how long time had gone by. “Almost two hours,” was the answer. I got up, went and peed, returned. Still everything seemed totally normal, except that I got more and more bored.
About half an hour later, nearly two and a half hour into the trip, I got up and talked with my trip sitter. I told her it wasn’t working. She too couldn’t feel anything changed in me. We discussed if the truffles might be too old, or if I might be somehow immune. I felt quite disappointed. Then I thought, well, I am still on retreat, so I might as well meditate.
And approximately two and a half hours after ingesting the high dose of psilocybin, I sat down on my meditation cushion, took a deep in breath, closed my eyes and did a looong out breath. And before the out breath had finished, I knew something had radically shifted: The body felt more soft, pleasant, malleable, pliable etc. than ever before. Not strongly pleasant, like tingling, electric, orgasmic etc., but the most calm and awake and clearly perceived body you can imagine. Chi was totally homogenously distributed from head to toe, the sushumna barely perceptible, every kubik millimeter of the body was just there, with equal presence. This experience of the body continued for the next two hours, whether I was meditating or not. After the first out breath on the cushion, there was a very long pause, at least 30 seconds, perhaps much more. The other sense doors were just as clear as the body: visual field (lots of swiftly changing fractal patterns), hearing, verbal thoughts etc. Everything was totally clear and present. I realized I hadn’t breathed for quite a while, checked if I felt any lack of oxygen, dizziness or the like. I didn’t. So I kept sitting, just looking around, so to speak, in this exquisitely clear and richly detailed, but otherwise surprisingly normal consciousness (apart from the hectic visual field). At some point the thought about breathing returned, and I decided, just as a precaution, to breathe. Then I began laughing very heartily because I had forgotten whether the next breath was an in breath or an out breath and then immediately realized that that of course didn’t matter, since breathing would take care of it self. I also laughed because it was just so ridiculously easy to meditate: Literally after one breath, I had reached some kind of deep and unwavering concentration (?) state, completely unlike any state I have been in before.
I quickly found out that it was just as ridiculously easy to exist in general, because my trip sitter asked me why I was laughing, and so in the next two hours or so, I rambled on about what I was experiencing, doing a live report from the peak of my trip (most of it was caught on my dictaphone app, and I have listened to it several times):
Again and again I returned to the fact that everything was just so incredibly easy, simple, obvious. However, it was and is extremely difficult to communicate precisely how it felt to be in that state. One way of explaining it would be to say that there was zero aversion and zero craving, a radical acceptance unlike anything I have ever experienced before: Everything is per-fect-ly okay just as it is. ”There is just this,” I kept saying. ”It’s so simple, it’s so obvious!” But when I was asked what ”it” referred to, I couldn’t find a satisfactory answer: ”Life, everything … just this …” I was asked why everything was so simple and obvious. ”Well, because it can’t be any different. If it was any different, it wouldn’t be this, it would be something else,” I said, and again felt that my answer was not at all to the point. I kept trying to explain. The mere thought of worrying (putting any emotional energy into a future scenario) or regret/shame (putting any emotional energy into a past scenario) struck me as immensely comical – and tragic, of course, for those who were stuck in the loops of worrying or regret/shame.
I said things like: ”Don’t worry, be happy – that’s the gospel! Believe me, it is really that simple!” But I kept feeling that I couldn’t communicate just how true, how deep and how important my insight was. Language seemed utterly useless in conveying it, and when I listen to the recording, my laughter and my tone of voice carry much more of the ineffable information than the words. When I tried to communicate my insight, the words either sounded extremely trivial, almost nonsensical, or got lost in a labyrinth of abstractions. I heard myself saying the usual stuff that all kinds of spiritual teachers have said: What you’re looking for is already here, the path is the goal, nowhere to go, etc. The mere thought of a goal, and of striving towards a goal, had me laughing so hard that tears were flowing. My trip sitter then asked how I felt about my meditation practice. I remember feeling that I wanted to defend it, and I tried to say the sentence ”I have made a lot of progress in meditation”, but I almost couldn’t because of laughter. It felt unspeakably hilarious that ”I” should be able to make any ”progress”. ”How can you find anything if it is not already here?” I said. ”I can’t explain it,” I repeated. ”And the reason is that there is nothing to explain! That’s what people fail to understand with all their questions. There is nothing to explain, just relax, it’s all fine!” Etc. etc. I realized that I was giving the same type of answers as the ”you are already awakened” people, and I even remembered how incredibly annoying I used to think these answers were before I ingested the psilocybin.
Now and then I meditated, but half of the times I tried to, I had to stop after less than half a minute because I began laughing. I managed to do a few minutes now and then, though, and everything was just so incredibly clear and stable and calm – and otherwise quite normal: I would say that I have been in much more altered states of consciousness on a regular meditation retreat with deep absorption, sense of body disappearing etc. In fact, this psilocybin induced state didn’t feel altered at all, more like … finally 100 % normal! I even tried sitting in a very awkward and uncomfortable posture that would normally put the body into cramps within a minute or two. I sat like that for maybe 5-7 minutes with absolutely no tension, aversion, cramp or anything like that, it was exactly the same as sitting erect. There was this feeling of utter unworriedness, complete ease, total lack of any aversion to anything, any craving for anything, and the feeling was the same, whether I was meditating or not, whether I was talking or listening, whether I was again and again failing in communicating my experience: No frustration whatsoever about that, just laughter.
Six to seven hours after ingestion, I slowly came down from the peak effect, and the rest of the day and evening, I just felt a deep sense of relief, ease, wellbeing, and a good amount of excitement and joy that came with some restlessness (that there was no aversion to). I played the piano for a couple of hours and had a feeling that I was much much better at it than usual.
I sat in meditation around half an hour from 8 PM, eight hours after ingestion, so the psilocybin should be out of the system by then. Incredible ease and effortlessness, deep concentration, sat like a mountain. Energy body: a little soreness, intense (ie. pleasantly unpleasant or vice versa) chi, especially in the heart area. Energy body felt bigger than the anatomical body. Complete calm, zero aversion, extreme wellbeing.
The rest of the evening and into the night, there was so much joy and excitement in the system that I had difficulties falling asleep. I thought a lot about what had happened, and about my meditation retreat: I had if not lost interest in the jhanas, then at least suddenly felt that they were not that important.
After the trip
The next morning I filled in the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, and I can report that what I experienced qualifies as a ”complete mystical experience”. My lowest score was in ”Factor 3. Transcendence of time and space”, where I only just made it above the required 60 %, probably because my experience didn’t involve any sense of being transported to somewhere else: At no point during the entire experience did I forget who I was or that I had ingested psilocybin, I was so to speak aware or awake during the entire trip, which for that reason might be termed a ”lucid trip” in analogy with a ”lucid dream”. My highest score on the MEQ was in the ”4. Ineffability Factor” where my score was 100 %.
Even though I had a certified ”Mystical Experience” as I had hoped for, the experience was completely different than expected (cf. about my expectations above). In fact, I couldn’t have imagined anything like it. And yet, I feel that I totally got what I wished for in my intention (cf. above).
In the remaining days of the retreat, and also after the retreat, there has been like a wave of joy and relief and lightness and unworriedness. As of writing this, some ten days after the trip, the wave is slowly subsiding. When I think back on the trip, and especially when I listen to the recording from the peak effect of it, I not only remember, but somehow partly relive or re-feel the experience, although not at all with the same clarity and vividness. I have absolutely no desire to trip again, though. Alan Watts said:
“Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. When you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope; he goes away and works on what he has seen.”
I completely agree with this. And I feel no need to dial up again, I’ve got plenty to work on. Message understood! – Even though I feel that I can’t really transmit it. But the psilocybine experience has become a very valuable reference point for me, and I feel that I will carry it with me for the rest of my life.
The participants in Griffiths’ studies are asked to rank their psilocybin experience on a list of ”most significant spiritual experiences in your life”, counting things like one’s first child or the death of a parent. A large majority put the experience on top three, and for many it is the number one most significant spiritual experience. It might change in the future, but right now, I will rank this experience as the number one most significant experience in my life, and thus also on my spiritual path. On a shared second place, I put the Stream Entry that I hypothesize I had in late March this year, and a hard to define spiritual opening (probably an A&P experience) that I had on my first meditation retreat back in 2017, and which put me on the path.
Reflections
If I could go back and do something differently, I would only change one thing: It was clearly a mistake to use eye shades and ear phones. What I hadn’t thought through, was the fact that Griffiths’ study participants were not meditators (except in the meditation study, of course). They probably had very little training in turning the attention inwards and stabilizing it and staying nonreactive. So the eye shades and ear phones were a necessary support for them. For a meditator with some basic training, I don’t think that this kind of support is necessary, in fact it felt like a disturbance. I should of course just have meditated all the way through. I think the goal for a meditator should be a ”lucid trip”.
This gives rise to the thought that perhaps the already very promising psilocybin treatment for different kinds of mental suffering might be considerably improved if the people in treatment got some basic meditative training before ingesting the substance. Also for integration afterwards, for staying in contact with that healing state of mind, meditation might be very helpful (I realize that in some studies the participants do get a little training, but I am talking about something more solid and systematic).
Which gives rise to another thought: Having a recording of myself talking while on the trip has proven to be very beneficial for integration and staying in contact with that healing state of mind. I don’t know if Griffiths or others use recordings, but now I have thrown out the idea on an obscure message board on the internet, so hopefully someone will pick it up!
I don’t think there’s any doubt that meditation can be beneficial in several ways for the psilocybin (and in general: psychedelic) experience. Another question is if psilocybin (and other psychedelics) can be helpful on the meditational path. I think it is in the pragmatist spirit to ask this. To me the answer is obviously yes, but I am just one yogi. The two studies I mention (Griffiths’ and Vollenweider’s) do not go very much into exactly how and how much the psilocybin helped the meditators. They do provide some quantitative answers, but these are far from exhaustive and frankly not very interesting. I think there is basis for more and better qualified studies in this field (psychedelically enhanced meditation).
To mention just one idea: Imagine taking a cohort of equally experienced vipassana meditators, say a group of people who had had Stream Entry, but not Second Path, according to a qualified panel of dharma diagnosticians. Then put them on retreat, give half of them psilocybin (double blinded etc.) some days into the retreat, and then diagnose them after the retreat, one month later, three months later etc. and see if there is any difference between the two groups. That kind of thing.
All this might be of interest for The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium. Psychedelics and especially psilocybin is getting a lot of positive attention and recognition these years. Maybe the EPRC could somehow benefit from working together with the psychedelic researchers, for instance by providing meditational expertise to improve the protocols for the psychedelic studies and treatments. Maybe that type of collaboration could help the EPRC get more recognition and thus funding.
I hope this long post can (re)start a general discussion about the use of psychedelics in meditation, and meditation in psychedelics. (In other words, I hope we can have a discussion here that is not about my personal experience, or my personal spiritual development. Should you have remarks and questions pertaining to that, please place them as an answer to this post of my practice log, where I describe my entire eight day psilocybin enhanced retreat in much more detail).
[EDITED FOR TYPOS]
In the following, I will first share some of the research resources in case anyone wants to check out this field for them selves, and explain very briefly what psilocybin, according to science, does to the brain. Then I will describe the set-up for my experiment, give a trip report and a report about how it felt in the first week after the trip, and finally share some reflections.
Research and resources
For anyone not familiar with the renaissance of psychedelic research, Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your Mind is an excellent introduction. There is also a four part documentary series on Netflix, based on the book, but the tv series narrows in on the cases, skips a lot of the science and almost all the historical background, so I would definitely recommend the book.
Roland Griffiths is the leading scientific authority in the field, and also, by the way, a long term meditator. Griffiths and his team has done a lot of research on how psilocybin can be used to alleviate different kinds suffering ranging from depression, PTSD, over substance abuse to end of life distress. They have also done this one study on psilocybin and meditation, and the title gives away the conclusion: ”Psilocybin-occasioned mystical-type experience in combination with meditation and other spiritual practices produces enduring positive changes in psychological functioning and in trait measures of prosocial attitudes and behaviors”. If you are not into hardcore scientific papers, this video gives a thorough explanation of the study. Griffiths has talked about his research on several podcasts, and I especially recommend the conversation with Sam Harris on his Making Sense podcast, and with DhO’s own Vincent Horne on his Buddhist Geeks podcast, in a little series consisting of part one and part two.
Also worth mentioning is the swiss psychiatrist Franz Vollenweider who together with Zen master Vanja Palmers conducted a study on experienced meditators taking psilocybin on a meditation retreat. The study also formed the basis of a visually very nicely done documentary called Descending the Mountain. Description of the film (trailers etc.) can be found here. The film can be seen (for money) on vimeo here. The study behind the film is here.
In most if not all of Griffiths’ studies, it is crucial that a participant has a ”Mystical Experience” if there is to be positive effects of the treatment. (Thus – and I find this very noteworthy as a meditator – it is not the substance, but the ”mystical experience” that alleviates the suffering). In a scientific experiment you need to have a quantifiable definition of what a ”Mystical Experience” might be, and this leads us to the lovely ”Mystical Experience Questionnaire” (”MEQ” among friends). It is of course both hilarious and wonderfully nerdy to want to actually give a precise definition of that which, by definition, cannot be defined. You can find MEQ here, and in this article, you will find information on how to evaluate your score, once you have filled out the questionnaire. In brief there are questions pertaining to four ”factors”: 1. Mystical; 2. Positive Mood; 3. Transcendence of time and space; and 4. Ineffability. If your score in each of these four factors ≥ 60 % of the maximum score, you have, by scientific definition, had a ”complete mystical experience”.
What psilocybin does to the brain
Summarizing all the research very briefly, psilocybin seems to do mainly two things to the brain: 1) It strongly decreases the activity of the Default Mode Network, which is believed to be the main structure responsible for the experience of self (self talk, self evaluation, etc.). 2) It creates a much more widespread connectivity in the brain, bringing a lot of regions and networks that usually have very little communication into contact with each other. To simplify, it creates ”unity” in the brain. Michael Pollan, referring to the researcher R.L. Carhart-Harris, uses a nice metaphor:
”A high-dose psychedelic experience has the power to ‘shake the snow globe’, he [Carhart-Harris] says, disrupting unhealthy patterns of thought and creating a space of flexibility — entropy — in which more salubrious patterns and narratives have an opportunity to coalesce as the snow slowly resettles.”
To me this sounds a bit like what a long term vipassana practice – and/or maybe specifically the cessations or path moments – might do to the brain (some sort of "rewiring"), but that is of course just speculation.
Set-up of the experiment
Since Griffiths’ and Vollenweider’s studies both clearly showed that ”no meditator was harmed during the experiment”, and that in fact a large majority of the meditators reported positive effects, I (who do not consider myself especially courageous) found it safe to do the experiment. For information, the subject (me) has spent around 5.000 hours on the meditation cushion over the last five years (two daily hours of practice, and approximately one accumulated month of retreat time per year), more or less equivalent to the subjects in Vollenweider’s study.
I decided to do a high dose of psilocybin, but there is no general definition of what a high dose is. Futhermore, psilocybin can be found in both mushrooms and truffles, and experienced psychonauts say it acts a bit differently in the truffles than in the mushrooms, “softer”, apparently because of some other alkaloid than psilocybin also present there (I am far from an expert in this). In the scientific studies, they use synthetic psilocybin to get the dosage precise, but when you use mushrooms or truffles, there can be quite big variation in the psilocybin concentration. So, in short, using non-synthetic psilocybin, it can be difficult to find out what a high dosis is. I decided to use a so-called “trip calculator” found on a commercial website of a dutch company selling magic mushrooms and truffles (it is legal in Holland). You enter your body weight, and either truffle or mushroom, and then you pick either micro dose, low dose, middle dose, or high dose. Calculating thus, for a man my size, 17,5 grams of truffles was defined as a “high dosis”, so this was what I decided to take. I asked my psychonaut friends, and they agreed it was a high dose, although they added, that it was probably in the low end of a high dose.
From my research I knew that the effect would kick in after around 30 minutes, and that the entire trip usually would last 4-6 hours. I also knew that set & setting was crucial to a beneficial experience, “set” being mindset (expectations, attitude, intentions etc.), “setting” being the outer circumstances (physical place, other people present etc.). I decided, inspired by the experiment in Descending the Mountain, to ingest the psilocybin on a meditation retreat, with my girlfriend coming by on my otherwise solitary home retreat, acting as trip sitter.
So in the middle of November this year, I did an eight day solo retreat (the report of which can be found in this post from my practice log). On Day 5, after four days of approximately 10-12 hours of samatha meditation, I would ingest the psilocybin at noon, take the rest of the day of from meditation to concentrate on the trip and the immediate after effects, and then resume my normal retreat schedule on days 6, 7 and 8.
(Mind)set: My intention, declared out loud as I ingested the substance, was “to experience what ever is most needed right now in my spiritual development”. I tried to be conscious of my expectations: Since I was working on the jhanas on the retreat, I might have a jhana experience. But precisely because I was trying to cultivate joy, I might on the contrary have a “purification” experience, a so-called “bad” trip with lots of unprocessed emotions coming up. Part of my expectational horizon was also the many trip reports I had read and heard, especially this trip report from the above-mentioned Sam Harris, who is also an experienced meditator, and who also did a high dosis of psilocybin (although his definition of high dosis might be different than mine, cf. above). He talks about totally forgetting not just who he was, but what he was (a human being), and where he was, and that he had taken psilocybin. He was transported to some other realm of such awe and beauty that he has difficulty in describing it.
Setting: Following the example of Roland Griffiths’ many study participants, I decided to lie down on my bed with eye shades and ear phones with suitable music (for me it was Hildegard von Bingen). My trip sitter was to sit a few feet away and check in on me now and then, especially if I seemed to be in distress. The plan was to hopefully have my “mystical experience”, then get up and try to report it to my dictaphone app, and then return and finish the meditation retreat.
Trip report
I ingested the truffles at noon, talked a little with my trip sitter, and then got into bed and put on my eye shades and ear phones.
After what felt like certainly much more than half an hour, absolutely nothing had happened. I began feeling impatient but stayed in bed.
After another long period of time, I felt like going out to pee, so I asked how long time had gone by. “Almost two hours,” was the answer. I got up, went and peed, returned. Still everything seemed totally normal, except that I got more and more bored.
About half an hour later, nearly two and a half hour into the trip, I got up and talked with my trip sitter. I told her it wasn’t working. She too couldn’t feel anything changed in me. We discussed if the truffles might be too old, or if I might be somehow immune. I felt quite disappointed. Then I thought, well, I am still on retreat, so I might as well meditate.
And approximately two and a half hours after ingesting the high dose of psilocybin, I sat down on my meditation cushion, took a deep in breath, closed my eyes and did a looong out breath. And before the out breath had finished, I knew something had radically shifted: The body felt more soft, pleasant, malleable, pliable etc. than ever before. Not strongly pleasant, like tingling, electric, orgasmic etc., but the most calm and awake and clearly perceived body you can imagine. Chi was totally homogenously distributed from head to toe, the sushumna barely perceptible, every kubik millimeter of the body was just there, with equal presence. This experience of the body continued for the next two hours, whether I was meditating or not. After the first out breath on the cushion, there was a very long pause, at least 30 seconds, perhaps much more. The other sense doors were just as clear as the body: visual field (lots of swiftly changing fractal patterns), hearing, verbal thoughts etc. Everything was totally clear and present. I realized I hadn’t breathed for quite a while, checked if I felt any lack of oxygen, dizziness or the like. I didn’t. So I kept sitting, just looking around, so to speak, in this exquisitely clear and richly detailed, but otherwise surprisingly normal consciousness (apart from the hectic visual field). At some point the thought about breathing returned, and I decided, just as a precaution, to breathe. Then I began laughing very heartily because I had forgotten whether the next breath was an in breath or an out breath and then immediately realized that that of course didn’t matter, since breathing would take care of it self. I also laughed because it was just so ridiculously easy to meditate: Literally after one breath, I had reached some kind of deep and unwavering concentration (?) state, completely unlike any state I have been in before.
I quickly found out that it was just as ridiculously easy to exist in general, because my trip sitter asked me why I was laughing, and so in the next two hours or so, I rambled on about what I was experiencing, doing a live report from the peak of my trip (most of it was caught on my dictaphone app, and I have listened to it several times):
Again and again I returned to the fact that everything was just so incredibly easy, simple, obvious. However, it was and is extremely difficult to communicate precisely how it felt to be in that state. One way of explaining it would be to say that there was zero aversion and zero craving, a radical acceptance unlike anything I have ever experienced before: Everything is per-fect-ly okay just as it is. ”There is just this,” I kept saying. ”It’s so simple, it’s so obvious!” But when I was asked what ”it” referred to, I couldn’t find a satisfactory answer: ”Life, everything … just this …” I was asked why everything was so simple and obvious. ”Well, because it can’t be any different. If it was any different, it wouldn’t be this, it would be something else,” I said, and again felt that my answer was not at all to the point. I kept trying to explain. The mere thought of worrying (putting any emotional energy into a future scenario) or regret/shame (putting any emotional energy into a past scenario) struck me as immensely comical – and tragic, of course, for those who were stuck in the loops of worrying or regret/shame.
I said things like: ”Don’t worry, be happy – that’s the gospel! Believe me, it is really that simple!” But I kept feeling that I couldn’t communicate just how true, how deep and how important my insight was. Language seemed utterly useless in conveying it, and when I listen to the recording, my laughter and my tone of voice carry much more of the ineffable information than the words. When I tried to communicate my insight, the words either sounded extremely trivial, almost nonsensical, or got lost in a labyrinth of abstractions. I heard myself saying the usual stuff that all kinds of spiritual teachers have said: What you’re looking for is already here, the path is the goal, nowhere to go, etc. The mere thought of a goal, and of striving towards a goal, had me laughing so hard that tears were flowing. My trip sitter then asked how I felt about my meditation practice. I remember feeling that I wanted to defend it, and I tried to say the sentence ”I have made a lot of progress in meditation”, but I almost couldn’t because of laughter. It felt unspeakably hilarious that ”I” should be able to make any ”progress”. ”How can you find anything if it is not already here?” I said. ”I can’t explain it,” I repeated. ”And the reason is that there is nothing to explain! That’s what people fail to understand with all their questions. There is nothing to explain, just relax, it’s all fine!” Etc. etc. I realized that I was giving the same type of answers as the ”you are already awakened” people, and I even remembered how incredibly annoying I used to think these answers were before I ingested the psilocybin.
Now and then I meditated, but half of the times I tried to, I had to stop after less than half a minute because I began laughing. I managed to do a few minutes now and then, though, and everything was just so incredibly clear and stable and calm – and otherwise quite normal: I would say that I have been in much more altered states of consciousness on a regular meditation retreat with deep absorption, sense of body disappearing etc. In fact, this psilocybin induced state didn’t feel altered at all, more like … finally 100 % normal! I even tried sitting in a very awkward and uncomfortable posture that would normally put the body into cramps within a minute or two. I sat like that for maybe 5-7 minutes with absolutely no tension, aversion, cramp or anything like that, it was exactly the same as sitting erect. There was this feeling of utter unworriedness, complete ease, total lack of any aversion to anything, any craving for anything, and the feeling was the same, whether I was meditating or not, whether I was talking or listening, whether I was again and again failing in communicating my experience: No frustration whatsoever about that, just laughter.
Six to seven hours after ingestion, I slowly came down from the peak effect, and the rest of the day and evening, I just felt a deep sense of relief, ease, wellbeing, and a good amount of excitement and joy that came with some restlessness (that there was no aversion to). I played the piano for a couple of hours and had a feeling that I was much much better at it than usual.
I sat in meditation around half an hour from 8 PM, eight hours after ingestion, so the psilocybin should be out of the system by then. Incredible ease and effortlessness, deep concentration, sat like a mountain. Energy body: a little soreness, intense (ie. pleasantly unpleasant or vice versa) chi, especially in the heart area. Energy body felt bigger than the anatomical body. Complete calm, zero aversion, extreme wellbeing.
The rest of the evening and into the night, there was so much joy and excitement in the system that I had difficulties falling asleep. I thought a lot about what had happened, and about my meditation retreat: I had if not lost interest in the jhanas, then at least suddenly felt that they were not that important.
After the trip
The next morning I filled in the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, and I can report that what I experienced qualifies as a ”complete mystical experience”. My lowest score was in ”Factor 3. Transcendence of time and space”, where I only just made it above the required 60 %, probably because my experience didn’t involve any sense of being transported to somewhere else: At no point during the entire experience did I forget who I was or that I had ingested psilocybin, I was so to speak aware or awake during the entire trip, which for that reason might be termed a ”lucid trip” in analogy with a ”lucid dream”. My highest score on the MEQ was in the ”4. Ineffability Factor” where my score was 100 %.
Even though I had a certified ”Mystical Experience” as I had hoped for, the experience was completely different than expected (cf. about my expectations above). In fact, I couldn’t have imagined anything like it. And yet, I feel that I totally got what I wished for in my intention (cf. above).
In the remaining days of the retreat, and also after the retreat, there has been like a wave of joy and relief and lightness and unworriedness. As of writing this, some ten days after the trip, the wave is slowly subsiding. When I think back on the trip, and especially when I listen to the recording from the peak effect of it, I not only remember, but somehow partly relive or re-feel the experience, although not at all with the same clarity and vividness. I have absolutely no desire to trip again, though. Alan Watts said:
“Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. When you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope; he goes away and works on what he has seen.”
I completely agree with this. And I feel no need to dial up again, I’ve got plenty to work on. Message understood! – Even though I feel that I can’t really transmit it. But the psilocybine experience has become a very valuable reference point for me, and I feel that I will carry it with me for the rest of my life.
The participants in Griffiths’ studies are asked to rank their psilocybin experience on a list of ”most significant spiritual experiences in your life”, counting things like one’s first child or the death of a parent. A large majority put the experience on top three, and for many it is the number one most significant spiritual experience. It might change in the future, but right now, I will rank this experience as the number one most significant experience in my life, and thus also on my spiritual path. On a shared second place, I put the Stream Entry that I hypothesize I had in late March this year, and a hard to define spiritual opening (probably an A&P experience) that I had on my first meditation retreat back in 2017, and which put me on the path.
Reflections
If I could go back and do something differently, I would only change one thing: It was clearly a mistake to use eye shades and ear phones. What I hadn’t thought through, was the fact that Griffiths’ study participants were not meditators (except in the meditation study, of course). They probably had very little training in turning the attention inwards and stabilizing it and staying nonreactive. So the eye shades and ear phones were a necessary support for them. For a meditator with some basic training, I don’t think that this kind of support is necessary, in fact it felt like a disturbance. I should of course just have meditated all the way through. I think the goal for a meditator should be a ”lucid trip”.
This gives rise to the thought that perhaps the already very promising psilocybin treatment for different kinds of mental suffering might be considerably improved if the people in treatment got some basic meditative training before ingesting the substance. Also for integration afterwards, for staying in contact with that healing state of mind, meditation might be very helpful (I realize that in some studies the participants do get a little training, but I am talking about something more solid and systematic).
Which gives rise to another thought: Having a recording of myself talking while on the trip has proven to be very beneficial for integration and staying in contact with that healing state of mind. I don’t know if Griffiths or others use recordings, but now I have thrown out the idea on an obscure message board on the internet, so hopefully someone will pick it up!
I don’t think there’s any doubt that meditation can be beneficial in several ways for the psilocybin (and in general: psychedelic) experience. Another question is if psilocybin (and other psychedelics) can be helpful on the meditational path. I think it is in the pragmatist spirit to ask this. To me the answer is obviously yes, but I am just one yogi. The two studies I mention (Griffiths’ and Vollenweider’s) do not go very much into exactly how and how much the psilocybin helped the meditators. They do provide some quantitative answers, but these are far from exhaustive and frankly not very interesting. I think there is basis for more and better qualified studies in this field (psychedelically enhanced meditation).
To mention just one idea: Imagine taking a cohort of equally experienced vipassana meditators, say a group of people who had had Stream Entry, but not Second Path, according to a qualified panel of dharma diagnosticians. Then put them on retreat, give half of them psilocybin (double blinded etc.) some days into the retreat, and then diagnose them after the retreat, one month later, three months later etc. and see if there is any difference between the two groups. That kind of thing.
All this might be of interest for The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium. Psychedelics and especially psilocybin is getting a lot of positive attention and recognition these years. Maybe the EPRC could somehow benefit from working together with the psychedelic researchers, for instance by providing meditational expertise to improve the protocols for the psychedelic studies and treatments. Maybe that type of collaboration could help the EPRC get more recognition and thus funding.
I hope this long post can (re)start a general discussion about the use of psychedelics in meditation, and meditation in psychedelics. (In other words, I hope we can have a discussion here that is not about my personal experience, or my personal spiritual development. Should you have remarks and questions pertaining to that, please place them as an answer to this post of my practice log, where I describe my entire eight day psilocybin enhanced retreat in much more detail).
[EDITED FOR TYPOS]
Pepe ·, modified 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 6:24 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 6:24 AM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 740 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent Posts
Great post Niels, very interesting indeed!
I've found a couple of interesting videos by Josie Kins: The 7 Levels of the Psychedelic Experience and Unity and Interconnectedness - broken down and described. Regarding the first video, it's striking how close are those levels to ñanas, in particular M&B, A&P and those of DN.
Regarding the double blind test, that perhaps would be troublesome, as it's not easy to find say 100 stream enterers or above (the minimum recommended), that they all would be willing to try psilocybin, plus defining specific conditions to be classified as stream enterer.
I like that "lucid trip" phrase you coined
I've found a couple of interesting videos by Josie Kins: The 7 Levels of the Psychedelic Experience and Unity and Interconnectedness - broken down and described. Regarding the first video, it's striking how close are those levels to ñanas, in particular M&B, A&P and those of DN.
Regarding the double blind test, that perhaps would be troublesome, as it's not easy to find say 100 stream enterers or above (the minimum recommended), that they all would be willing to try psilocybin, plus defining specific conditions to be classified as stream enterer.
I like that "lucid trip" phrase you coined
Olivier S, modified 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 7:23 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 7:15 AM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 983 Join Date: 4/27/19 Recent Posts
Dear Niels,
Thanks for the thoughtful report and your ideas. The EPRC already has quite a few people working with psychedelics already, with EB having recently administered a grant that goes to fund the "Difficult psychedelic experience integration study" led by Jules Evans and a few other EPRC people. There's also Chris Timmermann working with DMT at imperial college. Also I think Daniel might be meeting with Griffiths in his upcoming NY EPRC fundraising trip. Or perhaps it is David Yaden, who also works at Johns Hopkins and recently published a book you might like: Varieties of Spiritual Experiences. Fun fact : the co-author is Josie Kinz' scientific mentor. In relation with that, there is a website where people can share their spiritual/mystical (emergent) experiences : the Varieties Corpus. In any case, some of your reflections may be of interest for people working in this field, so perhaps you should join an EPRC meeting some time and see if things resonate with anyone ? That would be a really interesting discussion I think. The next meeting should be pretty soon. In any case, your report is an interesting new data point, which I will add to the EPRC database, if that's cool, so thanks !
@Pepe: Funny you should mention Josie, as she recently got a 30k grant from EB to upgrade the SEI website, and there has been some discussion on expanding the SEI to include experiences induced by meditation and other modalities, as well as contextualizing that expansile taxonomy of mind states within developmental frameworks, which is something that is lacking from all approaches to mystical or psychedelic and even meditative experience research, as far as I'm aware - probably not the POI but something of that order. There are also limitations with the scales used in a lot of psychedelic research, too, such as the MEQ which relies on a somewhat outdated definition of mystical experience - W. T. Stace's, which is the basis also for the IMERE website. Anyways, I agree that it is quite fascinating to study in what ways psychedelic experiences and meditative development overlap and differ.
Best,
Olivier
Thanks for the thoughtful report and your ideas. The EPRC already has quite a few people working with psychedelics already, with EB having recently administered a grant that goes to fund the "Difficult psychedelic experience integration study" led by Jules Evans and a few other EPRC people. There's also Chris Timmermann working with DMT at imperial college. Also I think Daniel might be meeting with Griffiths in his upcoming NY EPRC fundraising trip. Or perhaps it is David Yaden, who also works at Johns Hopkins and recently published a book you might like: Varieties of Spiritual Experiences. Fun fact : the co-author is Josie Kinz' scientific mentor. In relation with that, there is a website where people can share their spiritual/mystical (emergent) experiences : the Varieties Corpus. In any case, some of your reflections may be of interest for people working in this field, so perhaps you should join an EPRC meeting some time and see if things resonate with anyone ? That would be a really interesting discussion I think. The next meeting should be pretty soon. In any case, your report is an interesting new data point, which I will add to the EPRC database, if that's cool, so thanks !
@Pepe: Funny you should mention Josie, as she recently got a 30k grant from EB to upgrade the SEI website, and there has been some discussion on expanding the SEI to include experiences induced by meditation and other modalities, as well as contextualizing that expansile taxonomy of mind states within developmental frameworks, which is something that is lacking from all approaches to mystical or psychedelic and even meditative experience research, as far as I'm aware - probably not the POI but something of that order. There are also limitations with the scales used in a lot of psychedelic research, too, such as the MEQ which relies on a somewhat outdated definition of mystical experience - W. T. Stace's, which is the basis also for the IMERE website. Anyways, I agree that it is quite fascinating to study in what ways psychedelic experiences and meditative development overlap and differ.
Best,
Olivier
George S, modified 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 9:36 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 9:36 AM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
I sometimes meditate on psilocybin and find it pretty useful for bringing deep subconscious material to the surface, early memories, archetypes etc. I also use THC (either in combination with psilocybin or stand alone) and find it a useful complement. I think they both dampen the DMN, but I find that psilocybin has a more “guided” feel (like being taken on a tour of your subconscious by your own internal healing function), whereas THC dampens more core selfing functions like agency, personal identity, memory & time. For me psilocybin tends to open up more emotional & psychological material whereas THC brings energetic & physical stuff into focus, which is why I find they work well together.
My general sense is that most of what I experience meditating with psychoactive substances could be experienced in somewhat similar fashion meditating without them if I had more time to meditate, although the intensity and flavor might be different and there is probably also more noise with substances. Certainly integration is important so that the new insights or deeper levels of awareness remain baseline accessible. Overall I would say they have significantly enhanced my meditation practice (which remains mostly without substances).
Re. dose, I assume you meant 17.5mg of psilocybin which is ~1.75g of truffles?!!
My general sense is that most of what I experience meditating with psychoactive substances could be experienced in somewhat similar fashion meditating without them if I had more time to meditate, although the intensity and flavor might be different and there is probably also more noise with substances. Certainly integration is important so that the new insights or deeper levels of awareness remain baseline accessible. Overall I would say they have significantly enhanced my meditation practice (which remains mostly without substances).
Re. dose, I assume you meant 17.5mg of psilocybin which is ~1.75g of truffles?!!
Niels Lyngsø, modified 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 10:46 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 10:46 AM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 414 Join Date: 11/15/19 Recent Posts
Dear Olivier,
Thanks for your kind remarks and for the book recommendation – looks interesting! You are more than welcome to add my report to the EPRC data base, and I would be happy to join an EPRC meeting to see if there is anything I could contribute with. I will write you a message with my email address.
All the best,
Niels
Thanks for your kind remarks and for the book recommendation – looks interesting! You are more than welcome to add my report to the EPRC data base, and I would be happy to join an EPRC meeting to see if there is anything I could contribute with. I will write you a message with my email address.
All the best,
Niels
Niels Lyngsø, modified 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 3:39 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 3:39 PM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 414 Join Date: 11/15/19 Recent Posts
Thanks, George. Interesting to hear how you use the psychedelics.
Re. dose, I mean 17,5 grams of fresh truffles. How much psilocybin they might have contained I can't know for sure. I'm told it's about the same amount as in 5-6 grams of dried mushroom, but I am a total newbie in the psychonaut world, so I don't know for sure.
Re. dose, I mean 17,5 grams of fresh truffles. How much psilocybin they might have contained I can't know for sure. I'm told it's about the same amount as in 5-6 grams of dried mushroom, but I am a total newbie in the psychonaut world, so I don't know for sure.
Isak Tougaard, modified 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 3:44 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/23/22 3:44 PM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 17 Join Date: 11/9/22 Recent PostsNiels Lyngsø:
nearly two and a half hour into the trip, I got up and talked with my trip sitter. I told her it wasn’t working.
Matheus Ribeiro de Assis, modified 1 Year ago at 11/24/22 1:10 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/24/22 1:08 PM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 22 Join Date: 1/23/22 Recent Posts
It's incredible how such karma "coincidences" happen. I bought 5g of dried mushrooms and I intend to meditate using them tomorrow with a friend (2,5g for each). And I couldn't find any satisfactory thread on the internet about it. And now I just stumbled on yours by accident when looking the new posts here on DhO.
But I'm a little bit reluctant because I'm at the end of a recovery period. I fractured my femur and I'm using an external fixator that is quite uncomfortable. I'm afraid the psilocybin might zoom in and transform it into a terrible pain or that I might do something like trying to pull out the metal from my bone. But I guess 2,5g is a farily safe dose to keep some good sense.
But I'm a little bit reluctant because I'm at the end of a recovery period. I fractured my femur and I'm using an external fixator that is quite uncomfortable. I'm afraid the psilocybin might zoom in and transform it into a terrible pain or that I might do something like trying to pull out the metal from my bone. But I guess 2,5g is a farily safe dose to keep some good sense.
Niels Lyngsø, modified 1 Year ago at 11/24/22 1:17 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/24/22 1:17 PM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 414 Join Date: 11/15/19 Recent Posts
Dear Matheus,
I will strongly advise you to be very cautious with these substances, and with the crucial element called "set & setting": When in doubt, don't trip! And if you do, always make sure to have a (sober!) trip sitter who can stop you if you are about to do something stupid.
All the best,
Niels
I will strongly advise you to be very cautious with these substances, and with the crucial element called "set & setting": When in doubt, don't trip! And if you do, always make sure to have a (sober!) trip sitter who can stop you if you are about to do something stupid.
All the best,
Niels
Matt Jon Rousseau, modified 1 Year ago at 1/8/23 4:54 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/25/22 5:57 PM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 245 Join Date: 5/1/22 Recent Posts
I can't sit and meditate in the normal sense on psilosyben. Although it can cause a temporary paradigm shift in my thinking. Later I can contemplate on that shift through reflection
thor jackson, modified 1 Year ago at 12/7/22 12:38 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 12/7/22 12:38 PM
RE: Meditation and psilocybin. An experiment and some thoughts
Posts: 42 Join Date: 11/17/22 Recent Posts
Drug induced states are NOTHING like genuine realisations. All they give are temporary highs that disappear after inducement.
A genuine realisation changes your entire outlook on life. A single instance of true self awareness can transform everything you know about life.
A genuine realisation changes your entire outlook on life. A single instance of true self awareness can transform everything you know about life.