Psychedelics provided me with an ‘ideal model’ for meditation, but then the ‘real work’ began.
This article was originally published in the Association for the Advancement of Psychosynthesis Quarterly March 2024 issue as a modified extract from my thesis.
Introduction
A couple of weeks before embarking on my training at the Institute of Psychosynthesis UK, I took part in a retreat where I consumed a large dose of psilocybin (also known as a ‘Hero’s Dose’). It turned out to be a challenging experience or what one would define as a ‘bad trip’. I was able to make some meaning out of what had happened, however, it wasn’t until I started my psychosynthesis training was I really able to gain a deeper understanding; my bad trip was helping to bring psychological models to life. Assagioli’s Egg diagram (1975) was the key to untangling incoherent memories as I realised that I had just had a simultaneous experience of all the parts of the human psyche. But beyond the memories, both horrifying (lower unconscious) and painfully beautiful (superconscious) was the crisp, clear experience of ‘I-Self’.
What does I-Self mean?
In normal states of consciousness, I experience my ‘I’ as the observer of all my inner and outer experience or ‘psychic-content’– through body sensations, thoughts, feelings, imagination, intuition and ‘objects’ in my external world. Sometimes this ‘I’ feels spacious and it can ‘let in’ a lot of psychic content – it’s like being a balloon in the sky looking at the landscape below it. However, when life gets tough, it seems to get ‘stuck’ to certain psychic content e.g. thoughts, feelings etc. It’s as if the balloon has now sunk into the ground. In these times, I often mistake my ‘I’ for the psychic content – the balloon and the ground get tangled up together – and this gives me a false sense of self that is often referred to as the ‘ego’. In Psychosynthesis, the ‘I’ is believed to flow from a deeper ‘Self’, an ‘ontological reality’. We’re always connected to Self through ‘I’; this I-Self connection is intuitive (Firman & Gila 1997).
As I fall to pieces, ‘I-Self’ gets stronger
During the trip, I felt that my ego was disintegrating into different parts – the earth-bound tangled up balloon was releasing itself high into the sky. The observer, the ‘I’, felt very distinct and separate from the psychic content, and it could now see the landscape with clarity. The balloon was so high up it had the ability to see different countries, different planes of consciousness, beyond the framework of the ego and body. This experience of ‘ego-dissolution’ is also backed by neuroscience, where experiments show a reduction in activity in an area of the brain called the Default-Mode-Network (DMN) on high doses of psilocybin (Carhart-Haris et al., 2012). The DMN is regarded as responsible for a sense of self likened to the ‘ego’ (Raichle 2015). I can’t say that I experienced this reduction in activity in the DMN (i.e. ‘egodissolution’) as that beautiful mystical oneness that is often cited in popular media. It was terrifying as my ego was trying to hold on to ‘reality’. Nonetheless, ‘staying with I-Self’, in the sky with the balloon, cultivated a background sense of calm amongst the storm.
The paradox of separateness and closeness
Staying with I-Self felt ‘do-able’ because it felt as if the distance between it and the psychic content had increased dramatically. There was no DMN to distract me. There was distance, and yet I could still experience it all – even more acutely than before. It felt as if the balloon had reached outer space and was looking down on Earth, but with even greater resolution than being close to the Earth, as if through a telescope and microscope at the same time. ‘The experience of the Transpersonal Self (and of the ‘I’) …relates to intensity’. I experienced this intensity as that increased separation from psychic content, but at the same time that increased sharpness in the experience of the psychic content. It was ‘transcendent-immanent’ (Firman & Gila 1997). It’s as if ‘the more we connect (to I-Self), the more our individuality is highlighted as we get a deep sense of our part in things’ (Evans 2023).
I-Self is beyond even the ‘good content’ of the superconscious
This I-Self intensity can often be confused with the superconscious. It is this superconscious content which the psychedelic traveller hopes to experience - mystical one-ness, love, paradise, beauty etc. We forget that classical psychedelics give us an experience of the ‘transpersonal’ (i.e. beyond personal self, ego). And that holds the dark as well as the light. Transpersonal does not equal superconscious. This was certainly the case for me: I felt the crushing existential suffering of humanity. It was only through holding compassion and staying with ‘I-Self’ was I able to endure this unbearable 8-hour journey. Whether the transpersonal is experienced as darkness or lightness – it is still not the ‘unchanging enduring reality of I-Self’ (Firman & Vargiu 1977). Buddhists refer to the I-Self as ‘no self’ or ‘emptiness’ for this very reason. Self is in all of it, it is everywhere. This shift in identity from content to I-Self can also be seen in Ram-Dass’s musings around his first ever psychedelic trip (2012): ‘I saw a sequence of all my social roles…the minute I said I don’t need that anymore the figure changed…until my body even disappeared…I was ceasing to exist…the panic was mounting…until a quiet voice inside of me said ‘but who’s minding the store?’ I became aware at that moment that there was something…clear, lucid and watching the whole thing happen…the minute I defined it, I experienced a tremendous feeling of liberation.’ He tried to ‘make-meaning’ of his experience through psychological models but found that ‘Freud’s unconscious had too much to do with the individual and personality qualities [lower unconscious/ biographical] …even Jung’s collective unconscious wasn’t quite the place…’ Perhaps Psychosynthesis, which clearly describes Self as an ontological reality, might have satisfied him as it seems that what he was describing was an intensification in the I-Self connection.
Integration
The experience of ‘Self is everywhere’ has had a profound impact on me and has been my biggest take away from my ‘bad tip’. It has made me less obsessed to want to chase superconscious experiences, enlightenment through my ‘spiritual bypassing’ tendencies. It has made me more motivated to live as much in alignment with Self, in each present moment, regardless of the psychic content, to the extent that I can. Part of this alignment involves daily meditation I feel that this intense experience of I-Self has provided me with an ‘ideal model’ for meditation, which now I recognise goes beyond just ‘being the observer’. I can cut through the noise created by the DMN and see what it truly is. Before the trip, my inner judge would disguise and slip in as the ‘observer’. However, the trip gave me a completely different experience of the observer, which was more in alignment with the compassionate ‘I Thou’ relationship between I-Self (Buber 1958, Firman & Gila 1997). It is very different to one part of the brain observing another part of the brain – which feels more like a horizontal as opposed to a vertical separation. This inner ‘ideal model’ has given me a map for my daily meditation and Vipassana retreats. Similarly, for Ram Dass, his psychedelic trips provided him with an ‘ideal model’ that motivated him to pursue the long and arduous path of Ashtanga yoga. And this reminds us of the importance of integration, i.e. a more sustainable movement of ‘I’ towards ‘Self’, that difficult climb up the mountain: ‘…one must distinguish between mountain climbing and airplane flights. You can fly to the top, but you cannot remain always on the airplane…’ (Assagioli 1975, p49)
References
1. Assagioli, R., (1975). Psychosynthesis: A Collection of Basic Writings. 2nd ed. Northamptonshire: Turnstone Books
2. Buber, M., (1958). I and Thou. Translated by R. G. Smith. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons
3. Carhart-Harris R., Erritzoe, D., Williams, T., Stone, J., Reed, L., Colasanti, A., Tyacke, R., Leech, R., Malizia, A., Murphy, K., Hobden, P., Evans, J., Feilding, A., Wise, R., Nutt. D., (2012). Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22308440/ [Accessed 14/12/2023]
4. Evans, R., (2023). The Triphasic Model, Seminar, PT8, The Institute of Psychosynthesis, delivered 2-3 December 2023
5. Firman, J. & Gila, A., (1997). The Primal Wound. New York: State University of New York Press
6. Firman, J. & Vargiu, J., (1977). ‘Two Dimensions of Growth’ in Evans, J., & Evans, R., Fundamentals of Psychosynthesis Volume 1. London: The Institute of Psychosynthesis, pp. 167-216
7. Raichle, M., (2015). The brain's default mode network. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25938726/ [Accessed 14/12/2023]
8. Ram Dass, (2012). Ep. 01 – First Meeting. [Podcast] Ram Dass Here and Now. Available at https://www.apple.com/uk/applepodcasts/ [Accessed 05/06/2022]
9. Ram Dass, (2023). Ep. 236 – Karma and Grace. [Podcast] Ram Dass Here and Now. Available at https://www.apple.com/uk/ apple-podcasts/ [Accessed 23/10/2023]