Drugs

9 January 2023

Drugs

I have wanted to do a post about a dialogue on the topic of transcendence that I listened to on Youtube.  The dialogue was between very well-known speakers who have large social media followings.  The thing that held me back is that because the two speakers have large social-media followings their followers, and detractors, are passionate about the two speakers.  Pro and con opinions and ideological analyses abound.  I didn’t want to get drawn into these and wanted to retain a focus on the issue of transcendence that the dialogue was about.  I didn’t want to see my comments as being pro or con either of the participants, or inferring any kind of alignment with them in general. 

However, the discussion was interesting enough that I kept returning to doing a blogpost about it; so here goes.  Early in the dialogue the two participants put forth how they understand transcendence.  The second speaker offered as an example of transcendence the experience of drugs, specifically psychedelics.

I was startled.  There are many ways our contemporary culture blocks access to the transcendent.  The primary one is to deny that there is such a thing as the transcendent.  But another is to misrepresent the transcendent.  The result of misrepresentation is to sow confusion; it’s like telling people that a plain is a mountain, that an oak tree is a pine, or that a dog is a whale. 

A few comments:

1.  The second speaker was a Jungian and is deeply embedded in a Jungian perspective.  This made sense to me because, as I have noted in previous posts, Jungians think of image and archetype as the meaning of spirituality and tend to look with suspicion on the idea of the imageless.  For the second speaker the drug experience is transcendent because it differs from the normal world of sensory experience; in other words the second speaker defines transcendence as an unusual sensory experience.

2.  I think I am in a knowledgeable position on this topic.  I say this because I have experience with psychedelics going all the way back to my high school days.  I also have experience with contemplative transcendence.  The two are not the same.  At all. 

The psychedelic experience is what happens when the chemistry of the body is altered in such a way as to alter how sense-data are received and related to each other. 

The contemplative experience of transcendence is what happens when a practitioner withdraws from sensory input as such. 

3.  In a way it is incorrect, or misleading, to refer to the ‘experience’ of transcendence because most people will understand the word ‘experience’ to mean sensory experience.  I think it might be more accurate to speak of the ‘occasion’ of transcendence. 

4.  Often the occasion of transcendence is an occasion of grace.  Drug experiences are never due to grace, nor are they an occasion for grace.

5.  The fifth precept of the Buddha’s ethical discipline, sila, is to refrain from intoxicants that cloud the mind and lead to heedlessness.  In a traditional context ‘intoxicants’ refers to alcohol, but in a modern context the precept has been extended to other intoxicants such as tobacco, and recreational drugs. 

In the west this precept is, for the most part, ignored.  There have been notable exceptions such as Robert Aitken and a few others.  But for the most part the precept is ignored by both lay people and Buddhist teachers in the West.

In the commentarial literature on the precepts that I have read, it is sometimes stressed that maintaining a commitment to refrain from intoxicants is the most important precept to keep.  The reason is that violating this precept often leads to abandoning commitments to other precepts such as sexual restraint and non-harming.

Western teachers who do keep the precept to refrain from alcohol and intoxicants often stress that even a tiny amount of alcohol interferes with a contemplative practice and that a seasoned practitioner of meditation or contemplation can observe this. 

This is the same reasoning used by Porphyry as to why those who follow the way of philosophy should refrain from killing animals, eating animals, and sacrificing animals.  Porphyry’s view is that such activity directly, causally, effects one’s contemplation practice in a negative way.

6.  It occurred to me while listening to the second speaker that he was saying you can take a pill and experience transcendence.  This removes any need for asceticism, virtues, study, or contemplation. 

7.  As an aside, recent experiments with psychedelics have produced evidence that they can effectively used to counter various psychological disorders.  That makes sense to me; as a medication psychedelics might prove useful.

8.  It seems that in modernity people, even very intelligent people, are unable to conceive of a kind of transcendence that is not reducible to yet another sensory experience.  This is due to the pervasive materialism of modernity.  As a Platonist, I think it is helpful to know that the tendency in modernity is to understand everything in materialist terms, and that includes transcendence.  I think it is helpful because once you are aware of this it is easier to understand what someone is doing when they misunderstand what you, as a Platonist, means by transcendence.  I’m not saying this obligates a Platonist to correct such misunderstanding; it may be best to simply disengage from the conversation.  What I am saying is that a Platonist at this time and in this culture is assisted by having clarity about the transcendental, the Good, the One, and the Beautiful to which we strive, life after life, to return to.