Are you just trying to be high all the time? Honest question.

I find when high on pot all those things happen automatically.

(Come to think of it, that's my perception of actualism in general)

Many people report heavily vibratory experiences while high (which are the opposite of what the actualist attempts to cultivate)...curious whether this matches your experience while high or not.

When *really* high - yeah, very heavy strobing of pretty much everything, although as I understand individual experiences may differ here, and possibly parallel the progress of insight.

But when only a little high, then just a very natural way of experiencing reality to which Tommy's points 1-4 definitely apply and happen automatically. This is why people get high, not for the scary strobing.

If you have a theory about how the progress of insight might relate to these vibratory experiences, I would really like to hear it (even if it's speculative).

IDK about anyone else, but weed very rarely leads to anything like PCE for me. More vibratory weirdness than anything, but definitely not that sort of clarity.

No. What ever gave you that idea?


As someone who's smoked a considerable amount of hash and weed over the last decade or so, I can quite honestly say that getting high has never brought me anything like a PCE. It does make felicity far easier to come by, and can also increase the sense of wonder but other than that I see no evidence of it being able to cause such changes on a permanent basis. If anything, I'd say that the lead-up on LSD and perhaps a certain point of a night on MDMA is about the closest I've even come, chemically, to anything remotely similar. Perhaps I need to find a better dealer.

Since you find that all of these things happen automatically when you've been smoking pot, why not let us know how you get on eliminating suffering via that method. It hasn't worked for me so far...

I'm assuming that you're not a regular smoker, or that you smoke heroic doses of weed in a sitting as only extended periods of not smoking, or doing things like hammering a 1/4 oz of weed over a very short time period have ever led to that the sort of results you mention. Even then, I don't recall it as being similar to the strobing common in Equanimity as there was nothing of the sense that the entire perceptual field was flickering in and out. Based on this, and obviously I'm only speaking from my own experience here, I cannot find anything other than a very, very tenuous parallel between this and the progress of insight.


It may be more accurate to say that being stoned has the potential to make it easier to experience reality in the way I aim toward in this exercise, in my experience it doesn't cause reality to be experienced in that way. Either way, you're missing the point entirely. This is an exercise aimed at developing the affective mindstates conducive to practice, not a clarion call to stoners. That said, if you find smoking weed gets you where you want to be then do whatever works for you.


Perhaps this is why you get high, I can't say that it's entirely true for me.

Fair enough - I suppose I underestimated the extent to which the effects of pot are unique to an individual.

I think you underestimate the variety and intensity of experiences that meditators (or people who are inclined to be interested in meditation) can have when taking drugs.

N A, I am still interested in hearing how you relate strobing experiences while high to the progress of insight.

I would not dare to comment. My understanding of the progress of insight is extremely limited and confused. But what happened with weed, over the years, is a gradual widening of the focus of attention. At first, I would smoke some and listen to music and be able to concentrate on the music to the exclusion of everything else, perceiving it with amazing detail and clarity (not made up - I would notice stuff and later on confirm its presence while not high). Eventually this effect pretty much disappeared; instead, attention forcibly becomes panoramic and shifts to existence itself, as opposed to some specific activity I might be doing. With a high dose this is accompanied by everything strobing in and out, which freaked me out so much when it first started that it triggered panic attacks and I had to call the ambulance a couple times. Eventually I learned just to be chill and let it happen even when it feels like reality is falling apart and I am dissolving. When trying to meditate with closed eyes while high, I'm easily mindful of pretty much everything, or so it seems, and reality becomes a fairly unified 3d field of qualia with most of what's normally "me" becoming part of it.

Any obvious parallels to the progress of insight in the above might be purely imaginary. When not on weed, I just had an obvious A&P on a Goenka retreat, and am probably in the dark night right now, considering how much I hate my life and everything else all of a sudden.

Edit: sorry to continue hijacking the thread! Maybe this should be split off, as it's not even about actualism.

I didn't intend to give that impression, I can only speak from my own experience and trying to map drug-induced states to these conceptual maps is a waste of time in practical terms. I agree with what you're saying about variety and intensity, my point was that trying to line up getting high with the progress of insight doesn't seem likely based on what I've experienced so far.

If someone who knows their way around the ñanas and jhanas gets high then they're likely to be able to say "Hey, that feels a lot like..." and map it subjectively, while in the same way someone may cross the A&P while high, find the insight maps at a later point and say "Hey, that sounds like what happened to me". On the other hand, doing the same thing while working with different meditative traditions can be really interesting and insightful so I suppose there's no reason why someone more well versed in the insight maps wouldn't be able to do the same with getting high.

Never say never, even though you need to say "never" twice to say it.

I didn't mean to imply a closed-mindedness with regards to this, I just didn't find it to have a lot of practical value in my own practice.