So this topic, altered states of consciousness (ASCs), has been one that I've been returning to periodically in this blog, primarily because I've got a fair amount of experience with it in my practice. In Meditative Attainments Part II: Altered States, I talked about a naturalistic explanation for the meditative attainments based on ASCs. In my review of Stephen Batchelor's new book, I talked about Batchelor's mistrust of ASCs. In this post, I want to talk about what role I believe ASCs play in practice. This post was partly inspired by a podcast from Mathew O'Connell and Stuart of the Imperfect Buddha series, in which ASCs are called "peak experiences", and where they talk about what comes after enlightenment.
While I feel ASCs are important for practice, I think calling them "peak" is a mischaracterization. "Peak" implies that they are somehow privileged above other experiences. This kind of thinking leads people to view them as preferred and somehow superior to other experiences, which, in turn, leads to their pursuit. But the pursuit of ASCs is, in its own way, not any different from the pursuit of any experience (buying new consumer goods, a gourmet meal, etc.) and will in the end just lead to disappointment, since they can't really be cultivated in any predictible way. OK, so psychedelic drugs can predictably generate ASCs, but ASCs that lead to wisdom (praja) resulting from psychedelic drugs are rare in my experience.
I think a better characterization would be "summarizing". The ASCs coming out of meditation practice summarize the experience of the practice over a particular time period. An example is the "flashing" of experience through high equanimity towards first path, when a path moment causes experience to disappear for a moment then reappear but with the world looking slightly different. The "flashing" is a kind of quick repetition of the "arising, passing", "arising, passing" experience of impermanence, which then leads to the "gone" of the path moment, an experience of not-self coupled with impermanence. The path moment is an ASC and summarizes and nails down the wisdom of not-self and impermanence gained through the previous stages of the path. Thus, ASCs can act as a powerful and very direct confirmation of the teachings, a confirmation that is difficult or impossible to forget or ignore. The important point is the practice leading toward prajna, and that is what should be pursued.
One issue is that not all practitioners experience ASCs. Stephen Batchelor, for example, obviously hasn't and there are many other excellent practitioners and teachers like Batchelor who haven't. This doesn't mean that they aren't practicing correctly or that their practice is somehow otherwise flawed or that what they have to say about practice (with the exception of their tendency to dismiss ASCs) is somehow wrong. The same insight into prajna that are gained through ASCs are also available through more gentle means. But on the other hand, practitioners who do experience ASCs - the experiences of the so-called "hard core" dharma practitioners - shouldn't be dismissed. ASCs are a powerful and difficult path that can result in personality disruption, sometimes leading to psychosis and, yes, even death. So they are not for everyone because they can be dangerous. The Sufis talk a lot about this topic in their literature of awakening, and some stories about their teachers, called "pirs", portray the pirs giving teachings from a psychiatric hospital. But because they are impossible to ignore and so powerful, ASCs tend to be more effective in driving home the message in a shorter period of time.
One other point about ASCs and practice that I think is important to stress is that they need to be kept in context. By this I mean that you need to be careful about interpreting them outside of their role in providing insight into prajna. This can lead to a kind of overemphasizing them and, in particular, constructing stories around them that can lead to harm to yourself and others. The pull toward constructing stories around them is really, really hard to resist. I think we can see that just by looking at the literature from Buddhist and other spiritual practice over the last two and a half millennia. Of course, to a certain extent, we would today not be aware of the experiences of the Buddha and other exceptional teachers if these stories didn't exist, but in today's world, the kind of stories that your mind wants to create about these experiences are somewhat detrimental to getting the laundry done and showing up at work on time.
And finally, ASCs and what comes after enlightenment, as the Imperfect Buddha podcast puts it. This statement makes a kind of category error in that there is an implicit assumption that enlightenment is a single event. Actually, its more like a process, with an occasional summarizing event, either an ASC if one is on the hard core dharma path or maybe a sudden insight if one isn't, that more or less cap a period of growth. This category error is one that is almost universal in the Dharma community, probably driven again by the stories reporting on the ASCs of prominent teachers like the Buddha from the past. But there's always more to explore and learn, and as Batchelor and many others have pointed out in recent years, even the Buddha's thinking evolved over his more than 40 years of teaching. The whole story didn't come to him all at once, suddenly, under the Bodhi Tree that night so long ago in Bodhgaya.
