How to Change Your Mind
How to Change Your Mind is the title of Michael Pollan's newest book. I first heard about this fascinating exploration of the new science of psychedelics—and its role in psychological healing and understanding consciousness and transcendence—from a student at UVY. She—like I—hadn't strong feelings one way or another, or much direct knowledge, but she told me it was a fascinating read and, intrigued, I ordered it and am about three quarters done. The book is half overview of the history of psychedelics here and worldwide, and half details of Pollan's own experiences as a "reluctant psychonaut".
Psychedelics (mostly psilocybin and LSD) have proven to be astonishingly effective tools for easing depression, anxiety, obsessive thinking and behavior and other conditions that affect mental and emotional health, when paired with an experienced guide and in a carefully designed setting. This alone is worth the read.
As a student of yoga and other contemplative traditions, a meditator, and just generally curious, I am even more compelled by Pollan's descriptions of the moment in a psychedelic trip when a subject's ego dissolves, and he/she experiences quite dramatically and profoundly the dissolution of not just ego, but all of the boundaries that separate. As a daily but always aspiring and ever beginning meditator, "I want to go to there!" as they say.
In moments of deep meditation I have peeked behind the curtain of conditioned mind to catch a glimpse now and again, but have never stayed there more than a few moments. Pollan talks about how in some instances, the experience of psychedelic exploration can potentially make us more facile meditators, better able to re-find that quality of entropic mind that unchains us from what contemplative traditions call "conditioned mind" and what neuroscientists call the "default mode network". I'm not advocating entheogenic enhancement as THE key to Samadhi, and it may be a kind of spiritual laziness on my part, but I do wonder about ways to learn how to more easily enter into that timeless, boundless realm we hope to find in deep meditation, and strategies for sidestepping a brain hardwired to overthinking and conditioning. A back door, a short cut—it's worth at least a think.
Though I cannot claim a lot of time in that alluring world of unboundedness that meditation sometimes reveals, I was thinking recently about an experience that I have had randomly since my early twenties, around the time I began to practice yoga. I tried recently to explain in words my experience, and I'll briefly do the same here. I think it is useful because it feels precisely like a "peek" into that realm of unbounded consciousness. When my eyes are closed, sometimes during meditation, sometimes when I am lying down, I feel/see myself "zoom" way out, as if looking through vast space at Earth from the perspective of being entirely unbound by form—vast, expanding, and infinite. It's both a felt experience and in a way I find hard to put into words, a "visual" one. It is compelling and clear when it happens, never lasts more than maybe 30 seconds, and instead of ending suddenly, gradually "zooms" in reverse until I notice that I am "back".
I expect that most people have had a comparable kind of experience. Out of body experiences, lucid dreaming, ego dissolution, deep states of serenity and connection even.....whether through the meditative experience, psychedelics, near-death trauma, or random firings like my own.
What do these glimpses and micro moments teach us? The experience for me is brief and random and infrequent (and entirely elusive), but I remember the feeling with crystal clarity: awe meets understanding, and I am wide open.
There is value in any process that brings us toward a more open mind, isn't there? Some interesting mental phenomena arise when the voice of the ego is muted or by-passed, when we really see that there is more to consciousness than the ego and that in those moments we transcend ego, we should be open to what we learn.
Though fully fascinated by what I am reading, I am not (yet anyway) a psychonaut...
but I am fully onboard as a yoganaut!
I would love to hear your experiences through meditation and/or other means, that have given you a glimpse of bigger consciousness, the dissolution of ego, a feeling of profound connectedness. Would you share? I know in the end, words can only go so far to describe these kinds of experiences. Nonetheless, I'd love to hear a bit about yours if you are willing to share. I'm working on how to turn on comment-posting on our blog where this will be posted. If I figure it out, I hope you will chime in.
Love, your sometime-guide and fellow yoganaut,
Leslie