Book Discussion "Zen, Drugs, and Mysticism" by R.C. Zaehner

[Khoren_]

I thought about putting this into general discussion, but decided otherwise.

Anyways, years ago I came across an out of print book going by the name of

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, which is an expansion upon his lecture about the same topic, and he proposed a very interesting theory:
Drugs, such as LSD, Weed, et other various psychedelics are a gateway that can bypass traditional meditation that are (and I paraphrase) "inaccessible to modern" practitioners. This isn't to say that they are acting in parallel to traditional methods, but rather exist as a means for those incapable of "traditional" meditation techniques to achieve the same level of altered consciousness.

I DO NOT CONDONE THE USE OF ILLICIT DRUGS

There have also been another branch which suggests that any drug use when coupled with occult practice is probably a huge red flag, probably smacking of purism in altered consciousness, or meditation practices, etc.

The book is very much an example of its times - written in the 1970s, with the original lecture being made in the late sixties - however, it also shows a very real thread to modern "psychonauts", which very much can be sourced to the traditional psych-edelic practices. When compared to various "indigenous" (I dislike the term, because it seems to smack of faux superiority) religious practices, there are many cultures which very much use psychedelic substances (illicit in modern day or not) to achieve states of consciousness which otherwise would be impossible (read very extremely hard) to reach. ZDM doesn't necessarily reference this, probably due to lack of evidence available to the author, but it is an interesting point to be made...

Again, I don't condone the use of illicit drugs.

 

[Xenophon]

I thought about putting this into general discussion, but decided otherwise.

Anyways, years ago I came across an out of print book going by the name of

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, which is an expansion upon his lecture about the same topic, and he proposed a very interesting theory:
Drugs, such as LSD, Weed, et other various psychedelics are a gateway that can bypass traditional meditation that are (and I paraphrase) "inaccessible to modern" practitioners. This isn't to say that they are acting in parallel to traditional methods, but rather exist as a means for those incapable of "traditional" meditation techniques to achieve the same level of altered consciousness.

I DO NOT CONDONE THE USE OF ILLICIT DRUGS

There have also been another branch which suggests that any drug use when coupled with occult practice is probably a huge red flag, probably smacking of purism in altered consciousness, or meditation practices, etc.

The book is very much an example of its times - written in the 1970s, with the original lecture being made in the late sixties - however, it also shows a very real thread to modern "psychonauts", which very much can be sourced to the traditional psych-edelic practices. When compared to various "indigenous" (I dislike the term, because it seems to smack of faux superiority) religious practices, there are many cultures which very much use psychedelic substances (illicit in modern day or not) to achieve states of consciousness which otherwise would be impossible (read very extremely hard) to reach. ZDM doesn't necessarily reference this, probably due to lack of evidence available to the author, but it is an interesting point to be made...

Again, I don't condone the use of illicit drugs.

The line between illicit and licit drugs is pretty porous and ever-shifting. So it might be simpler just to say, with the Buddhists, "don't cloud the mind." The fact that some mental states are extremely difficult to reach introduces a salutary elitism into spiritual practices. The joker who brings a motor-scooter to a marathon may get to the finish line quicker. He reaps little respect, however, either from others or himself. And if he can still respect himself after the stunt, well it just goes to show the lows he has sunk to. The man or woman who actually runs the race finishes the course a finer thing than he or she started. I doubt the same can be said for drugging along like "the little engine that toked."

 

[Khoren_]

The line between illicit and licit drugs is pretty porous and ever-shifting. So it might be simpler just to say, with the Buddhists, "don't cloud the mind." The fact that some mental states are extremely difficult to reach introduces a salutary elitism into spiritual practices. The joker who brings a motor-scooter to a marathon may get to the finish line quicker. He reaps little respect, however, either from others or himself. And if he can still respect himself after the stunt, well it just goes to show the lows he has sunk to. The man or woman who actually runs the race finishes the course a finer thing than he or she started. I doubt the same can be said for drugging along like "the little engine that toked."

Much could be said of those who... supplement any practice (occult or non) with "help" outside the traditional methods, (a weight lifter abusing steroids comes to mind) but there are many "traditional substances" (hashish, ayahuasca, peyote, to name a few) that are pivotal in many cultures for their paths. Heck, even the oracles of delphi have been surmised to achieve their "clairvoyance" (assuming that their predictions were """"""real"""""") through inhalation of chemicals from volcanic emissions. Many "shamans" (using the term more as a colloquialism than any real name of a path) in cultures across the world use various substances to achieve their skill of prediction or "communion with the gods". We even see many connections to aroma therapy being something that can literally trigger altered states without the substance itself being associated with such. I'm by no means claiming that "doing drugs is equivalent to doing the hard work of actual meditation", nor am I claiming that one should solely do drugs to achieve different levels of altered states, but that there very much exists a history of cultures, even highly respected ones among a vast array of occult practitioners, that have used external stimuli or the ingesting of various substances to achieve certain states, or even as a "backdoor" to various states.

If we wholesale denounce any tradition that does so, or even claim that anyone who supplements their craft with various triggers or ingestions, we are committing a vast array of historical practice to the void.

If we take a page from various veins of modern practice, a lot of the set up towards more complex spells can be seen as something similar. Honestly, at some point, we must also agree that many practices take for granted the level of stimuli that their personal trinkets and fetishes (not the sex kind, get out of the gutter) grant their psyche when performing such acts.

Yes, I know that waving around a stick isn't the same as taking copious amounts of mind-altering substances, but we also cannot for one second claim that they are not performing the same task. I for one meditate quite frequently utilizing music as a grounding point for my visualizations/zen-ness, does that make me less capable of meditation than one who sits in the quiet?

Or are we comparing apples to oranges here.

I'm not bringing up the book as a means to be like "Look here, validation for drug-addled minds attempting to claim enlightenment", but maybe more as a jumping off point into the historical usages of such substances in very """"Real"""" traditions and practices. Yes, someone who is constantly in an altered state due to ingestion will have a vastly different experience, or even a lower level of credibility, than one who has done it the "hard way", but is it any less """"real"""" (without going into the discussion of what that even is, which I might post a thread about in the philosophy topic, or even bring up another book "Religion and Reality" in another book discussion thread).


P.S. If I come across as antagonistic or off-put, I apologize, that is just my method of speaking, please don't think I'm trying to attack or come across as offended.

 

[HoldAll]

Once again I've added the name of your book's author to the title of this thread.

If I remember my Castaneda correctly, his guru Don Juan said that he fed him so many drugs in the first book because he was so thick and that more sensitive students didn't require entheogens at all to get them started on the path.

The real question for me is whether drug experiences can actually change you. People talk about 'recreational drugs' because that's what all they are for most people - it's just form of entertainment (unless you're heavily addicted) and having fun, like sex or movies, nothing spiritual about it. Drugs can never replace or even enhance meditation, least of all Zen zazen where your aim is mental clarity. If you're after visions, however, shamanic or otherwise, I'd say it's the setting that matters: you need a guide or a group of like-minded people that are on the same quest; if you're flying solo you'll likely end up just watching the pretty pictures or emptying the fridge as a result of your weed-induced munchies.

The most mind-altering drugs I've ever taken were not the hash and the few LSD trips during my youth but anti-depressants. In a way, they're both amazing and terrifying - two or three weeks of a small pill in the morning, and the world suddenly looks normal, boring and banal again instead of seeming a threatening slough of despond. You'd have to experience it to believe it, it's uncanny.

Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 9:11 AM

Again, I think that a good case could be made for shunting this thread into the Astral Projection, Lucid Dreaming, Psychedelia subsection (which may still happen if other more senior Staff Members intervene).

 

[Xenophon]

Much could be said of those who... supplement any practice (occult or non) with "help" outside the traditional methods, (a weight lifter abusing steroids comes to mind) but there are many "traditional substances" (hashish, ayahuasca, peyote, to name a few) that are pivotal in many cultures for their paths. Heck, even the oracles of delphi have been surmised to achieve their "clairvoyance" (assuming that their predictions were """"""real"""""") through inhalation of chemicals from volcanic emissions. Many "shamans" (using the term more as a colloquialism than any real name of a path) in cultures across the world use various substances to achieve their skill of prediction or "communion with the gods". We even see many connections to aroma therapy being something that can literally trigger altered states without the substance itself being associated with such. I'm by no means claiming that "doing drugs is equivalent to doing the hard work of actual meditation", nor am I claiming that one should solely do drugs to achieve different levels of altered states, but that there very much exists a history of cultures, even highly respected ones among a vast array of occult practitioners, that have used external stimuli or the ingesting of various substances to achieve certain states, or even as a "backdoor" to various states.

If we wholesale denounce any tradition that does so, or even claim that anyone who supplements their craft with various triggers or ingestions, we are committing a vast array of historical practice to the void.

If we take a page from various veins of modern practice, a lot of the set up towards more complex spells can be seen as something similar. Honestly, at some point, we must also agree that many practices take for granted the level of stimuli that their personal trinkets and fetishes (not the sex kind, get out of the gutter) grant their psyche when performing such acts.

Yes, I know that waving around a stick isn't the same as taking copious amounts of mind-altering substances, but we also cannot for one second claim that they are not performing the same task. I for one meditate quite frequently utilizing music as a grounding point for my visualizations/zen-ness, does that make me less capable of meditation than one who sits in the quiet?

Or are we comparing apples to oranges here.

I'm not bringing up the book as a means to be like "Look here, validation for drug-addled minds attempting to claim enlightenment", but maybe more as a jumping off point into the historical usages of such substances in very """"Real"""" traditions and practices. Yes, someone who is constantly in an altered state due to ingestion will have a vastly different experience, or even a lower level of credibility, than one who has done it the "hard way", but is it any less """"real"""" (without going into the discussion of what that even is, which I might post a thread about in the philosophy topic, or even bring up another book "Religion and Reality" in another book discussion thread).


P.S. If I come across as antagonistic or off-put, I apologize, that is just my method of speaking, please don't think I'm trying to attack or come across as offended.

Don't apologize. To disagree is to disagree. Own it and man your guns. Failed pacifists turn poisoners.

There are traditions that use various drugs, yes. Arguably they get results. But the so-called world religions tend to eschew such. (The Rg Veda did have its soma, yes. But just what that was seems to have been lost.) Likewise, aside from Crowley, I can't think of first-rate magi who depended greatly on chemical aids.

HOWEVER, I am perhaps relying too much on my own limited experience. You know the guy who runs around in a "George Washington Grew Hemp" tee? The one who will your talk your leg off on the benefits of hemp because he's too lily-livered to just argue straight up for pot legalization? An awful lot of Westerners who stump for chemical roads to Shambala remind me of that guy: "If I follow the Way of the Wackazoner shaman, I can get high and be spiritual, too? Cool!" Parallel cases with the guy who develops a burning interest in Tantra because he can't get laid by mundane means. In all the above cases, one is trying to crash a culture like one crashes a party. And one is doing so with divergent agendas. Like I said, though, it is possible that I am drawing on too small a sample. That there are are serious students out there who profit from this path. Like the man (son of man?) said, "By their works shall you know them."

 

[HoldAll]

Now that I've downloaded and shared the book, I'm really itching to read that "LSD and Zen" chapter. Empty-mind meditation and drugs? Get out of here! On the other hand, LSD is really something mysterious, almost as if some medication commonly used and manufactured 200 years in the future had miraculously landed in the present where us primitive saps are clueless as to how to use it correctly. However, I doubt that the author has found out. Will report back once I've read it.

Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 3:15 PM

R.C. Zaehner is quite right when he refutes the more mystical claims of the late Dr. Leary (which took some balls because Timothy Leary was still considered hot shit at that time), it's just a pity he had to go on such wild perennialist romp through all Asian religions to prove his point when the chapter is supposed to be about Zen only. Here's my personal take:

The mistake the LSD advocates - as described in Zaehner's book - seemed to make in the Seventies was that only enlightenment counts, however you attain it, so why not take a shortcut? After all, it's that far-out experience that matters, right? Wrong. You may have achieved satori (or a corresponding mirage) while on LSD but once the effects of the drug wear off, you're still the same person with the same illusions, vanities, attachments, etc., unlike a Zen practitioner who has been profoundly changed by the long path he or she has walked for years, regardless of whether he or she achieves satori; the experience of overcoming obstacles is completely missing. You don't become a more mature person after a handful of trips.

Based on my own experiences with a couple of LSD trips long ago and the Zen-style empty-mind meditation I've been doing for roughly half a year, I now feel justified in saying that the two experiences are diametrically opposed. My own meditation practice involves clearing the mind of every single thought while LSD will typically raise up a tempest in your head where every minute detail you perceive is excruciatingly meaningful - I'll concede that this can be educational but only when you remember the lesson which quite likely won't make sense anyway once you're sober again.

However, I disagree with Zaehner when he criticizes the "mystical pretensions of LSD". Mysticism is such a broad term that it can quite comfortably accommodate LSD experiences as well. It must be borne in mind, however, that the drug is highly unpredictable and there is no guarantee you'll experience your favorite religious, spiritual or philosophical paradigm in full living (and much too glaring) colour. Castaneda may have communed with the indigenous peyote god Mescalito when he chewed his little cactus buttons in the Mexican desert but there is no LSD deity you can ask clever questions. Zaehner speaks about "solipsistic trances" which hits the nail right on the head but then the same could be attested the lonely kabbalist lost in his books.

Zen and mysticism, however, don't go together so well. I'm every time surprised whenever I read about all kinds of mystic visions people are having when meditating. Either you're practising empty mind or you're intentionally visualizing something, so why those uncalled-for images? Can't the beings you're so desparately yearning to contact wait until they're summoned? And after all, you know what to do if you meet the buddha on the way…

 

[Khoren_]

The real question for me is whether drug experiences can actually change you.

There have been some serious "double-blind" studies that have argued, or shown evidence for, that psychelica does actually change you, albeit minutely or transiently. One which comes to mind is

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, have shown that they have very much a positive impact on both depressive symptoms and migraine symptoms (though that may be treading too far into the medicinal side and less the spiritual side), which may impact how one views their life/spiritual journey.

If you're after visions, however, shamanic or otherwise, I'd say it's the setting that matters: you need a guide or a group of like-minded people that are on the same quest; if you're flying solo you'll likely end up just watching the pretty pictures or emptying the fridge as a result of your weed-induced munchies.

I'll continue this thought at a later quote, but the same can be said for many meditation types. If you don't have a goal for your experience, a through line so to speak, there is very much a nothing that will come of the meditation/psychedelic experience. I have experienced this myself at the beginning of both my ingestions and my meditations. Sometimes - unless I expected particular experiences or nothingness - nothing (ironically) would happen outside of "oo pretty colors" for the ingestions and "well that was a bust" for the meditations.

The most mind-altering drugs I've ever taken were not the hash and the few LSD trips during my youth but anti-depressants. In a way, they're both amazing and terrifying - two or three weeks of a small pill in the morning, and the world suddenly looks normal, boring and banal again instead of seeming a threatening slough of despond. You'd have to experience it to believe it, it's uncanny.

I mean, you're still ingestion mind-altering substances, but one has less "fun" side effects than the others. Having been on and off various mood-stabilizers, stimulants, and anti-depressants myself, I very much found that having experienced the "end result" (so to speak) of those pills, my mind found an easier bridge to reach that moment. If cultures/individuals are using said substances for a particular purpose to "break down the walls" (as mentioned before) to allow the individual to be like "okay, cool, that's what it's supposed to feel like", then that would be different than "hey, I just took M**A to feel funny at the festival". If you are relying upon this substance to specifically reach this altered state (saying nothing for those with MDD/Bipolar/etc taking pharmaceuticals) every time, yes you're going to reach a point where you won't be taken seriously by more seasoned practitioners.

Based on my own experiences with a couple of LSD trips long ago and the Zen-style empty-mind meditation I've been doing for roughly half a year, I now feel justified in saying that the two experiences are diametrically opposed.

But if we're going to simply assume that these substances "have no place" in modern spiritual experiences, we have to also set expectations for the "real" experiences. Is it only "real" if you've fasted for twelve days and meditated for six hours each day? Or is the bar lower? Can you have a spiritual experience to the same lines as the ancestors have had simply by taking a walk? Sure, a stimulant (which ultimately what psychedelics are most chemically similar to) will leave you unable to reach zazen due to their nature, but does it mean that your meditations that aren't "zen" are thereby null and void?

Zen and mysticism, however, don't go together so well. I'm every time surprised whenever I read about all kinds of mystic visions people are having when meditating. Either you're practising empty mind or you're intentionally visualizing something, so why those uncalled-for images? Can't the beings you're so desparately yearning to contact wait until they're summoned? And after all, you know what to do if you meet the buddha on the way…

Because, sure. I may be inclined to agree that you don't simply "stumble" across specific experiences while meditating/ingesting, you have to be primed for it, but that doesn't mean once you are primed you won't experience things that you didn't expect. I have had visions of things that I never would have thought to include in my experience, but only after priming those experiences. A good example would be a trip to a "library" ending with me finding various things that I wouldn't have thought to include prior to the experience.

(As a side note of zazen, meditation, and "spirit journeys": I want to make the stipulation about meditation that I find a lot of people fall into the trap of, namely the idea that all meditation must be "zen". It plagued me my first few years of my meditation practices that I had to force my mind to be "calm" and "quiet", but found out that there are MANY types of meditations that also include astral projection, specific visualizations, or simply sitting and observing your thoughts drift by.)

That there are are serious students out there who profit from this path.

Even as someone who has experienced a wide array of those who are very much "do not pollute your body" to "I can't do a spell without marijuana", I have a very specific memory of an injectable user claiming that they had "experienced the life and death of an opiate" to which I remember going "what".

 

[Xenophon]

Here's a query. One imagines there is a great difference between the mind set of an individual who grew up where most everyone held peyote, say, to be a path to the spirits and one who grew up where peyote was something that made you a hit at college parties. It would seem that the person coming from the latter milieu would have a hard time coming to appreciate the spiritual side to peyote use.

It's like coming from a sexually inhibited culture into an uninhibited one. The guy from Blue Pencil, Massachusetts will have guilt issues about his times in the Island of Innanout in the South Seas. Worse, he's liable to become a nuisance on the island, "Will you please put that away for five minutes and go gather a few bananas for a change?" Worstest, he's liable to misinterpret what he goes through. (Witness the egregious nonsense that Margret Mead's "scholarship" on Samoa turned out to be.)

So the question is whether the outsider can truly penetrate the spirit world through drugs and to what benefit.

 

[HoldAll]

I prefer empty-mind meditation mostly due to my former involvement in martial arts and because Peter J. Carroll, my earliest hero in magic, required it for IOT membership in his Liber MMM, also because I was unable to rally enough energy and make time for it until now. Moreover, it makes sense to me that first you have to have a blank screen in your head before you can project any pictures onto it. I don't want to belittle any (classical) forms of meditation, it's just that my pet peeve are the guys who would light a candle and a stick of incense, loll around on their couches, put on some mystical-sounding ambient music on their headphones and call it 'meditating' (I even started a thread about this pointless practice).

Perhaps I don't trust drug-induced mystical experiences because of my two months-long manic episodes during which several people asked me if I was on coke… those manic episodes were just cheap highs (I likened it to the effects of nitrous oxide - which I never took, btw) without any substance, a very shallow kind of ecstasy, only superficial euphoria that led exactly nowhere.

I realize now that I have a problem with mysticism in general and that I'm very puritanical in this respect (although I'm more of a hedonist IRL). It may be because of Castaneda's Don Juan's constant admonition not to indulge himself… I've never had one myself so far but I'd prefer any mystic visions or whatnot that may come to me to teach me useful practical lessons instead of featuring totally random apparitions. Anyone can get stoned out of their gourd and have surreal adventures in their headspace. Then again, I probably needed those experiences to reach those conclusions (and I was dead set on having them anyway); "breaking down the walls" may justify the occasional use of hallunicogenic drugs but to reiterate, not when it comes to Zen. Any distorted semblances of enlightenment produced by drugs is useless, in my opinion, and are not even 'previews' of the real thing.

At this stage, the greatest marvel I encounter on an almost daily basis is when I manage not-thinking while taking a walk. It's simply astounding. It's not a carryover from my meditation practice, I just thought it would be cool to have that ability IRL. For me, the real litmus test for genuine spiritual experiences is whether they're surprising and unexpected instead of following a popular narrative, so e.g. the observation that everything I saw was so boringly normal all of a sudden hints at the validity of my insight in this respect.

Meditation neither makes me calm or more focussed or whatever benefit people usually claim as a benefit of their practice, or at least not yet. On the other hand, it has gotten so far that I become slightly annoyed whenever I catch myself brooding or wallowing in memories of the past outside of meditation; I would then immediately cut off any trains of thought running through my head (it's almost instant and automatic now) because I now yearn for a blank slate instead - not because I'm 'spiritually advancing' but because of personal preferences regarding mental hygiene, so to speak. I can already see how this habit is useful for magical practice but I'm not quite there yet.

 

[Khoren_]

Peter J. Carroll, my earliest hero in magic, required it for IOT membership in his Liber MMM

I have a question that shouldn't be asked on this thread, and I can't send a DM, would you mind?

 

[HoldAll]

I have a question that shouldn't be asked on this thread, and I can't send a DM, would you mind?

If it's that important, go right ahead.

 

[Aeternus]

I have read the contents of the book and from what I can say, well, I don't think using drugs would be beneficial for my meditation sessions.

The only experience I had with "drugs" was with so-called meditations with a lot of drug-like state inducing frequencies. That is when I decided it was enough for me to use "drugs" or psychedelic effects and I still stick to psychedelia-free practice.

And, to be honest, I kinda increased my capacity of spiritually healing.

 

[Xenophon]

I prefer empty-mind meditation mostly due to my former involvement in martial arts and because Peter J. Carroll, my earliest hero in magic, required it for IOT membership in his Liber MMM, also because I was unable to rally enough energy and make time for it until now. Moreover, it makes sense to me that first you have to have a blank screen in your head before you can project any pictures onto it. I don't want to belittle any (classical) forms of meditation, it's just that my pet peeve are the guys who would light a candle and a stick of incense, loll around on their couches, put on some mystical-sounding ambient music on their headphones and call it 'meditating' (I even started a thread about this pointless practice).

Perhaps I don't trust drug-induced mystical experiences because of my two months-long manic episodes during which several people asked me if I was on coke… those manic episodes were just cheap highs (I likened it to the effects of nitrous oxide - which I never took, btw) without any substance, a very shallow kind of ecstasy, only superficial euphoria that led exactly nowhere.

I realize now that I have a problem with mysticism in general and that I'm very puritanical in this respect (although I'm more of a hedonist IRL). It may be because of Castaneda's Don Juan's constant admonition not to indulge himself… I've never had one myself so far but I'd prefer any mystic visions or whatnot that may come to me to teach me useful practical lessons instead of featuring totally random apparitions. Anyone can get stoned out of their gourd and have surreal adventures in their headspace. Then again, I probably needed those experiences to reach those conclusions (and I was dead set on having them anyway); "breaking down the walls" may justify the occasional use of hallunicogenic drugs but to reiterate, not when it comes to Zen. Any distorted semblances of enlightenment produced by drugs is useless, in my opinion, and are not even 'previews' of the real thing.

At this stage, the greatest marvel I encounter on an almost daily basis is when I manage not-thinking while taking a walk. It's simply astounding. It's not a carryover from my meditation practice, I just thought it would be cool to have that ability IRL. For me, the real litmus test for genuine spiritual experiences is whether they're surprising and unexpected instead of following a popular narrative, so e.g. the observation that everything I saw was so boringly normal all of a sudden hints at the validity of my insight in this respect.

Meditation neither makes me calm or more focussed or whatever benefit people usually claim as a benefit of their practice, or at least not yet. On the other hand, it has gotten so far that I become slightly annoyed whenever I catch myself brooding or wallowing in memories of the past outside of meditation; I would then immediately cut off any trains of thought running through my head (it's almost instant and automatic now) because I now yearn for a blank slate instead - not because I'm 'spiritually advancing' but because of personal preferences regarding mental hygiene, so to speak. I can already see how this habit is useful for magical practice but I'm not quite there yet.

Love the walking bit---I am somewhat the same. Interestingly, both Osman Spare and Arthur Machen drop hints of something similar, walking as a portal into a certain state conducive to what some folks call magick.