Psychedelics and Non Self
Shoshin
No one in particularNowhere Special Veteran
http://www.newsweek.com/psychedelic-brain-lsd-images-fmri-technology-446513
"When psychological research into LSD ground to a halt in the mid-1970s, after the Nixon administration placed the drug in the most tightly controlled substance category, the ability to take pictures of brain activity in real time was still decades off. Now, with LSD research back on the rise and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans a standard tool of brain research, a group of neuroscientists decided to pick up where their predecessors left off. What they found explains why, for centuries, people who have taken psychedelics have reported feeling they’re “one with nature” and that the self “dissolved” while on a trip."
"It’s important to remember, said Tagliazucchi, that when you’ve taken LSD and experience your “self” or your ego disappearing, it’s an illusion; it’s what happens when the brain temporarily reorganizes itself to change our perception. In fact, the brain is doing this all the time—mostly to help make our world comprehensible. For example, the brain filters out the veins that cross in front of the retina of our eyes so we see a clear picture not distorted by the veins. “So when we take psychedelics, we are, it could be said, replacing one illusion [with] another illusion. This might be difficult to grasp, but our study shows that the sense of self or ‘ego’ could also be part of this illusion,” he said."
Mmm interesting... flashback trippy 
I'm not advocating drug use, in many cases drugs can cause more harm than good...
I'm just interested in the scientific research being conducted
Comments
Reminds me of one of my favourite Bill Hicks quotes:
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.”
Anyone familiar with the teachings of Don Juan might remember the conversation when Don Juan explains to Carlos about the sorcerers worldview.
He explained that the sorcerers ways that Carlos was learning, in the end was simply a way to show him that his conventional view was not complete or final. Sorcerers in his tradition had incredible powers based on an alternative worldview.
Beyond that, a Man of Knowledge has realized that the sorcerers world view is also only a view that is empty. He becomes totally unattached to the world in a conventional sense and achieves a kind of selfless state of being similar to buddhahood IMO.
In the early stages of his apprenticeship Carlos was given various psychedelic plants in an effort to help him to "stop the world". To permanently end his belief that the conventional world was "out there", and solid.
Psychedelics have been used that way forever. Few claim that they will cause awakening to happen. But as a tool for treating attachment to the world as it appears, or maybe even other more troublesome conditions, I've been a believer in their effectiveness all my life.
Bloody hippy
To the bone!
"This" clip from the 1950s is also quite interesting...
Watching that actually makes me feel anxious.
Takes me back to my old drug taking days.
Not a part of my life I wish to re-visit........
@Bunks it's interesting how certain things can make one feel anxious, "trigger anxiety" it's as if whatever it was back then is still with one now and has never gone away, ie, an experience accumulated so to speak, part of the karmic pattern which makes up who we are now... at present...
I find by facing my demons, weakens them, they become just passing memories, like clouds in the sky that dissolve when touched, but it has taken quite a number of cushion times for this to happen...
Tanha = Desire for & Aversion to
Thank you @Shoshin
You're welcome @Bunks ...How's the weather in Melbourne ?
Nice thanks @Shoshin - sunny and 20C here. The island?
18/19C overcast, the suns trying to break through the long white cloud
LSD is the poor mans enlightenment.
From experience (yes I inhaled/ingested), I feel its value is much like using alcohol or marijuana to 'loosen up'.
Unskilful.
The paths that use psychedelics/drugs/euphoriants skilfully: Shamanism, Rastafarianism, left hand yoga etc are very different to Buddhist Dharma.
The aro Buddhist meditation course which I recommend
... what would the neighbours think 
http://opcoa.st/0qCf5
finishes off (the last meditation) with meditating whilst drunk on a bottle of wine
Ay carumba! That is a practice that I find (for me) not required. So I did and found the course great, apart from that. Discernment is key. Also I am not going to dress like a sheet wearing gown clown.
Now back to the research and groovy people.
LSD is no kind of enlightenment at all. In my experience, 99.9% of people who use psychedelics recreationally will never have an awakening experience of the life changing kind.
Those who do have such an experience will very soon figure out that they have not found enlightenment, but may well continue seeking a more effective long term path.
Native americans, particularly in the South Americas, possibly Native Australians?, Shaman everywhere, wizarding folk etc all use intoxicants. IMO very wisely and skilfully.
However recreational users invariably are self medicating hedonists or escapists often running from internal trauma. This is understandable but not skilful.
Medical investigation, potential usage for healing, creativity, entertainment, relaxation etc is to be welcomed.
Information rather than opinions about potentially useful materials ...
I recall a quote from a Tricycle issue many years back about drugs and Buddhism that described the state achieved while on drugs as equivalent to "samsara within samsara." Samsara is already hard enough to navigate! Also, I forget the book's title, but its thesis was that the human notion of us having a soul came from the early interaction between humans and psychotropic plants, which had the effect of separating out our consciousness from our bodies, generating the 'insight' we had souls separate from our bodies. And then there are monks like Bhante Yogavacara Rahula ("One Night's Shelter") who traversed the path from psychedelics to the monastery and never looked back.
Euphoria is not self, hyped and overrated. Usually.
“Jerry [Garcia] held his guitar and picked some random licks. I spoke from an LSD haze.
'LSD changes perception. Music transcends the musician. You are the vehicle for communication.'
Garcia stopped and stared at me.
'I practice,' Garcia declared. 'Anyone can do that.'
That shut me up and he returned to the guitar”
― Rhoney Gissen Stanley, Owsley and Me: My LSD Family
So does the intention, rather than the substance, make the use skillfull or not?
Certainly there have been recent experiments with microcoses of LSD to overcome severe depression, which reputedly works for some people. Also there have been cases where a dose of psychedelics has triggered a kind of reset of the brain, helping people with mental illness.
But yes, evidence-based medicine is a good thing in many cases.
Whether it ultimately helps one along a spiritual path is a different matter. It seems rather a cheap way to experience a 'peak sensation', without doing all the hard work of practice and development that usually leads up to such things.
I once met someone who put his 'spiritual growth' down to LSD. Another to his vegan diet. Another down to zombie resurrection myths/Jesus. Not sure what 'spiritual growth' meant to them.
LSD is a hallucinogen. It may be used skilfully by doctors for treatment, if researched as you say.
Similar hallucinogenic substances are used in religious traditions. Skilfully? Depends what you are trying to do. Quite often it is to enter interior landscapes, requiring skilful guidance and supervision.
A lot of people dabble and frankly often seem to damage their psyches, whatever the intention. They have little understanding, direction or wise guidance.
So I would suggest it is the capacity and wholistic traditions that may partly use such substances for healing, altered consciousness induction and other uses. Some results seem to produce wise shaman who benefit their communities.
Most of what I would consider more skilful tactics, do not use intoxicants. The mind is sufficiently 'intoxicated' and delusional ... and dharma does not generate delusions (well apart from tantra, pureland etc BUT again that is within a skilfull potential). Use of imaginary visualisations has to be tempered and for most people guided.
Personally I feel no affinity to drug induced 'wisdom' but then I have had little contact with cultures whose spirituality is based on such an approach. I have no need to seek such contact.
The Buddha has barred the use of mind altering drugs clearly. That should be enough for us. So yall shut up and go sit.
I think these insights are a little clearer without the acid but find the nay sayers a bit amusing as it's obviously a foreign subject.
Psychedelic drug experimentation is a bit different than tripping at a party and there is a good possibility of real insight but it takes lucid investigation after the fact in my honest opinion.
I wouldn't go ahead and advise it and the early twenties is the best time. It's not something that can be dismissed out of hand so easily except for the close minded.
If you haven't tried it how would you know what it's like. There is too much fear around lsd . Thanks to Nixon and the fear that every one will turn into useless bums. How would you know the taste of honey if you have never tasted it. It is irrational to fear something that already exist in nature. the war on drugs have failed, haven't you heard? After billion s of dollars and millions in prison, the rate of drugs use continue to rise.
That's because we're allowing morons to breed.
And run for-profit prisons.
True...When it comes to drug use, I've been there and done that, ( back in the early 1970s...from the Acid night clubs of Sydney to the Hash cafes of Amsterdam) but no longer participate... I don't advocate their use, (in other words I'm not promoting them) however this doesn't mean I'm against others who choose to experiment with them in safe surroundings, example scientific research in order to help those suffering with mental disorders...or someone who is curious, and would like to see for themselves but also in a safe surrounding ...
True...
Damn...Nixon was right, now I've turned into a useless Dharma bum
True....
Um....cornered by a grizzly fbear...I beg to differ....
The US could have and should have taken a leaf out of the Dutch approach to drug use manual instead they tried to discredit the Dutch system and to no avail...However from what I gather some US states have seen the light and have started to open/light up
...
What one resist, persists....It's a no brainer...and it would seem the Dutch realised this a long time ago and in doing so , have managed to keep the amount of hard drug users at a more manageable level ... (It's not a perfect system, but a much better/safer approach than in most other Western countries)
So as you can see @hermitwin I agree with what you are saying...(well for the most part, but I think my fear would not be irrational if I was cornered by something that already exists in nature such as a grizzly bear
)
@Shoshin. I never used it. It can open up a can of worms here in the US. Prior to 1960 various illegal experimentation was practiced on serving soldiers by exposing them to contact without their assent. The 1956 Army experiments. Part of the cold war madness. The DoD seemed fixated upon finding ways to induce psychosis and if some troops were damaged beyond repair well--------.
Yes and sadly I've seen some of the old film clips on these experiments @grackle. many of the service men (human guinea pigs) had no idea of what was happening, and no doubt at the time, thought they were going mad..Sadly some did....
I guess it can be liken to all the other so-called experiments carried on the unsuspecting service men and women, example, witnessing nuclear explosions from close range, or the nerve gas experiments during the first world war...And from what I gather even closer to modern times, during the Irag war, and the so-called vaccine injections given to some US service men....
I'm comfortable with consenting, well informed adults who wish to participate in such experiments, ie knowing the risks involved... I'm under the impression that this is the case with the LSD experiments nowadays...