Legarto Rey wrote:Chronic, not to besmirch spontaneous or non entheogen engendered means of achieving the intense mystic/ego death state. The deeply held conviction is, that for the vast majority of average humanoids extant during any particular era(most people that have ever lived), entheogens offer the only practical, realistic, ergonomic, reproducible and EFFECTIVE means for entering the life changing, paradigm shifting, ego shattering, consensus reality melting, mind blowing, never forgotten, UNITIVE mind state.
This observation of fact(for most people), in no way relegates prayer, meditation, contemplation, etc to an inferior status. These tools are essential for integration of the "hyperspace" realms revealed to most average folks ONLY through the "mixed wine" pathway.
An open question to forum members: Are you able to(regularly, reproducibly, and with extreme level of intensity), enter consensus reality obliterating states of mind using non entheogenic modalities??? If so please share those techniques.
Peace
I tend to view it other way around. That psychedelics are great at giving you a temporary glimpse of higher consciousness but meditation is the the real lasting path to maintaining a higher level of awareness long-term. Of course these states are highly intertwined and there is a huge overlap in application of the skills learned and benefits experienced via these disciplines. It still blows my mind that the brains of people on breakthrough doses of psilocybin appear almost identical to those of experienced mediators in non-dual, unitive states when viewed with fMRI.
I can't say I've ever meditated my way into hyperspace, but I've had pretty profound visionary experiences from meditation and especially pranayama and yoga. I've also found that the various skills I've learned from meditation (breath and body awareness, detaching from mental chatter and looping thought streams, finding stillness in discomfort, etc...) have been immensely helpful in my psychedelic work. Anyway moral of the story, these discliplines catalyze one another and are probably more effective when practiced together.