Just completed the Foundationsl Shaivism course, Q&A’s included. There’s a lot to unpack there. I’m going to have to watch that series several more times; much more slowly and throughly next time. But I did get a lot out of it.

I’ve tried to read through Swami Lakshmanjoo’s “Kashmir Shaivism Secrets Supreme”. And there’s a lot of things he discusses so matter of factly. That I’m just lost, not as to what he said but the implications of the concepts. As applied as a prism with which to reflect upon reality.

So even if Acaryaji eluded towards the end that maybe he didn’t elaborate on all aspects as much as he would have liked. Or has to gloss over certain things, or perhaps assumed certain assumptions from having grown up in the culture himself. He still did a lot better job than anyone else I’ve seen. And the info is in there, the threads can be followed out to flesh out what was meant. It’s just on me to do that work myself now…

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That having all been said: At one point or another someone asked in one of the Q&A’s about mind altering substances. DMT, LSD, or whatever it was.

I, unsurprisingly, have some experience on both sides of this fence. And while my conceptualization of them is going to be limited to my own understanding. And therefore my ability to discern the important bits, and in turn share them with you all. In the spirit of something of Dave Chappelle said in a comedy skit, and something I’m fond of repeating at work: “I’m like Evel Knievel, I get paid for the attempt. I never promised this **** would be good!”

I’m trying to be fairly eloquent about all this. But please don’t mistake that for me taking myself to seriously… Because that’s REALLY not what’s going on here. 😅

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So! In my mind, experiences from substances do not compare with experiences achieved in spiritual practice. Spiritual practices, expand our concept of what “I” is. They don’t drastically look different from everyday life; but it turns life from a trite, going through the motion sort of thing. Into a more ensouled version of itself.

Sort of how if you aren’t a cook, or overly fond of food you may miss the hints and notes of certain spices. Where if you focus on these things in isolation and develop a sense of awareness of them, you can pick them out and detect their influence in dishes you have later on.

Substances can only make you experience, in my mind, what you already know. At best it blends the dreaming state into the waking state and allows your subconscious mind some real estate to dance around in the waking state. More or than or would normally be able to, short of a mental break of some sort. But if you are fairly in tune with yourself and that part is well integrated already. It won’t really unlock anything that you aren’t aware of.

Having done these things accidentally and on purpose, our experience of them comes in part from the context in which we do them and the ideas we project upon it. If you do it and don’t realize you are doing it, it was in my experience different…

The first time I ever did anything like this I was maybe 12-13 years old. It was a family cookout; so my grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins, etc were all there… My cousin and her boyfriend at the time were sitting outside at the patio table with me at the time. And her boyfriend gave me a tab of LSD. I did not know what this was, and I didn’t realize what was going on until days later. I didn’t know that’s how this worked. I remember the DARE program, but I can’t say no to drugs if I don’t realize this strange piece of paper is a drug.

Anyway my cousin freaks out a bit, and gets my grandma who was a rather worldly woman. So she strolls outside… Slaps the boyfriend in the back of the head and just sits down and hangs out for a while. Just talking; asking about school and so on. I guess after a while she is happy that I’m not “tripping”, and goes in inside again. I don’t feel that anything is amiss about the world. It’s the same as I’ve ever known it. I feel the exact same I did as when I showed up to this event!

Well I go inside a little while later and she’s sitting in her chair, just her an I in the room and I asked her “Grandma where did you get these neat wall decorations from?”. She said, “What are you talking about those have always been there?”.

“No, not those. These blinking eyes all over the brick wall!” She sort of shuffles in her chair more perplexed, “What are you talking about?!”.

“These eyes!” And I go to turn around point at one… And they are gone! So I just say to her “Oh… That’s strange. They’re gone now?”.

She calmly looked at me and said “Sit right here next to me, and don’t talk to anyone if they come in this room”. After about an hour she let me go on…

My point of this tale is… I didn’t get anything new out of this experience. It just changed the lens, the filter… With which I viewed everything. The “I” doing the viewing was the same. It was not expanded. The “I” was not modified in anyway, all the LSD did was distort the incoming inputs from my sense and the workings of my mind processing them. And feed the “I” bad information. It made a whole bunch of new snakes out of a whole bunch of old ropes, so to speak.

Where by contrast these sorts of spiritual practices change something at a deeper level. Sure you can change the filter still… But I feel like this sort of thing changes the light source itself. The light source behind the filter, which illumines through the filter/lens. It makes a dim lamp turn into an ultra bright LED headlight.

And that’s not a statement as to brighter being better, as much as it is a statement about the level in this dynamic that’s being changed/altered.

So I say all that to say substances can be interesting. But its little more than a choice of how to approach your day, like what color shirt you wear. And ultimately being in some kind of psychotic state is not helpful to go live in the world, I can’t be but so productive when I’m staring at eyes on the wall.

If you want to interact with the subconscious mind, I can’t help but feel you are better off doing some sort of dream practice. Maybe keeping a dream journal and monitoring them. Or just meditation; or perhaps even less intentionally… Just spending time with yourself and allowing yourself to be alone with your thoughts and getting to know yourself.

We all stay so busy these days. I can’t help but feel like we become caricatures of ourselves after a while, when we spend every waking moment engaged in things external to our bodies.

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So again, I say all that to say. That has been my experience so far! Not to say you can’t experience profound spiritual change with the aid of substances, or tap into something other thing the absolute via spiritual practice and conflate it with the “goal”. But on the whole I feel they skew more to one side or the other… And I feel like these teachings especially in conjunction with tried and true practice, developed by people far smarter than I am over a period far longer than I’ll ever be alive. Is probably your better bet.

Plus it just anchors you better. I’ve never had an issue with the concept of I am a drop, in this oceanic totality we call Shiva. I’ve felt that even before I knew these terms from this school of thought to define them as such.

But at the same time… My attention span is this long. 🤏🏼 So if I don’t touch base with that truth on a daily basis, I start to drift off course. Not far. But if it went on long enough I’m sure I could get real good and lost. And find myself in all sorts of nonsense… Again.

Anyway, that was my TEDTalk! Please pardon typos and grammar errors. I don’t have time to sit and correct them all right this minute… And thank you for allowing me to waste unrecoverable time from your busy lives. Have a wonderful rest of your day!

If this makes you think of anything or consider/reflect upon it. I’d be fascinated to hear it.