How do you feel directing your own & your loved ones' lives, in what many perceive to be a challenging, at times hostile, and seemingly deteriorating world? Many today feel anxious, nervous, afraid, worried for themselves, their children & grandchildren.
What ifHOW we usually perceive & think is ALMOST ENTIRELY focused on DARKNESS: trying to grab, accumulate & survive at any cost AS IFwe were alone, struggling in a hostile, meaningless, mechanical universe? WELL, THIS IS our culture's, and thus our own personal defaultway of understanding, thinking & behaving, called "left-hemisphere dominant" by noted scholar / researcher / author / psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist MD (http://www.johnlovas.com/2025/10/hope-courage-patience-perseverance.html). This mindset is certain that we are alone in a meaningless, mechanical universe, struggling against all odds to survive. Being trapped in this narrow, robotic mindsetIS the nightmare! Sadly, those of us who have experienced major trauma, especially in early childhood, have tremendous difficulty trusting anyone, anything, including life itself. As a result, trauma survivors tend to rely exclusively on their intellect ie left hemisphere! This leaves their hearts armored, somewhat protected against re-injury, buteffectively blocked from feeling, receiving & giving love.
Balanced, well-adjusted, thriving societies & individuals are "right-hemisphere dominant" by default. This right-hemisphere perspective is RADICALLY DIFFERENT because it ISaware of & ISin harmony with ALL of life's INFINITELY WIDER contexts, like Beauty, Love, Meaning, Values, Relationships, the Arts, Spirituality, etc.
Mysticspast and present, are exemplars of right-hemisphere dominance,experiencing life radically differently than left-hemisphere dominant people.Mysticsfeel peacefully held in love; "at one" - Unitive Mystical Experience - with everyone, everything & the Divine;no separation from others & life;feelnohostility; no desperation to control anyone or anything; no fear of anyone, any "vengeful God" nor death; noneurotic compulsion to do anything, be anyone, go anywhere. They feel liberated, free to be appropriate toward everyone & everything in the present moment ie to embody Divine nurturing unconditional love. ALL of us can gradually open our minds & hearts to our own Divine nature. Watch:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmOpCCJkuY
Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like:
and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by.
It's OUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves inwisdom - OR - darkness (https://www.jonathanashford.com/post/the-darkness). Are we "too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; Is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, are we "just too busy" to get into it and learn? We can procrastinate and aim at bestfor feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life isreallyabout.
I'm sure I'm not alone wanting a wise, big-picture overview of life, so I canlive my best life. Mystics of all wisdom traditions, passed & living, are connected to & sharethis wisdom.
One of the wisest quotes I've come across: "The most important question to ask ourselves, according to Einstein: 'Is the universea friendly placeor not?' ... If we believe that the universe is unfriendly ... peace will be elusive at best." Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” Warner Books, 1993.
Even intelligent, educated people seem overwhelmed bymysticism for many reasons. First and foremost, our culture is by and large ignorant about mystics&mysticism. Our "consumer society" trains us to buy as much as possible as fast as possible, "greed is good," even after 9/11 George W. told Americans to show the world what they're made of, "Go shopping!" We're starving on a restricted diet of junk food (shallow materialistic concerns), and don't even know the vocabulary of nutrition (metaphysics, spirituality). We fear what we don't know, and procrastinate & otherwise avoid learning about it.
"Nothing in life is to be feared,
it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that
we may fearless." Marie Curie, Nobel Prizes in Physics, & Chemistry
"... relax, allow life to be as it is, &open yourheart to yourself. It’s
easier than you might think, and it could change your life.” KristinNeff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011.
"I was born when all I once feared I could love.”Rabia Basri
"Once we are willing
to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of
the simplest of life experiences."Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara
During meditation “you are not escaping the world; you are getting ready to fully embrace it.” Christine Skarda
"To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things."Zen Master Dogen
SO, what CAN we do?Not should, not must - although our time as individual mortal beings, as well as a species is running out - but absolutely CAN do, because wisdom that is IN ALL of US, the wisdom that is in fact who/what we actually are, is amazingly what we mostly, and in some almost entirely, have forgotten. Here's some of what I've understood from the many imho wise elders I've been reading about, listening to on the web, occasionally meeting, and more recently, blogging about:
Don't Judge. Every day we see outrageous, disgusting behavior on the news. It's disorienting to see how almost half of the US population fervently supports behavior, that in a few years (as Germans did after WWII) they will categorically deny having even known anything about it. So it's hard not tojudge terrible behavior. Butfrom a much higher, non-dual perspective,what if we're each born to play a certain role, with a certain set of talents, a certain set of limitations & no matter how wonderful or horrible it appeared, we all did our best. And what if most of our ridiculous behavior was because most (but mercifully not all) of us completely forgot that we took on our role freely, including the fact that we are actually producers & executive directors of the entire play - almost identical to the Jesus being fully human andfully Divine story, except the he had almost complete recall of who he actually was, where he came from, and where he would return to. Bewildered? This blog & its video might help: http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/01/the-nearly-unforgivables.html
Be Discerning. Many of us spend a great deal of time watching / listening to the news & comments about the news. While it's important to perhaps watch / listen to the CBC or BBC news for 30 minutes a day, much more than that is probably masochistic or even an addiction. Doing more & more of what makes you feel sick is not a recipe for optimal healthy. Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like:
and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by.
It'sOUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves inwisdom - OR - indarkness. "Too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, "just too busy" to get into it and learn? You can procrastinate and aim at bestfor feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life isreallyabout.
Learn & Do Spiritual Practices. Theory is important BUT not enough. We need to intentionally PRACTICE shiftingfrom beingfearful consumer robotstobecoming wise elder human beings. Our culture is not big on "practices." Some of us might admire the dedication it takes to become world class athletes, dancers, surgeons etc, but most of us just don't have the dedication to put in the time & effort. The ONE area where ALL of us would massively benefit is putting in dedicated time & effort into spiritual practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=spiritual+practice
Be a Nurturing Presence. Only by waking up to who/what we truly are, can we help instead of hinder others to wake up and help others. “… we have to allow our higher nature to show before we can do anything real, before we can be truly responsible people.” Jiyu-Kennett. “The Wild, White Goose. The Diary of a Female Zen Priest.” ed 2. Shasta Abbey Press. 2002.
Be Humble. The ego is a tricky, sticky, persistent trickster. We must regularly check our own BS-meter. A common problem is assuming a massive group ego - thinking one can do even horrible things because "I'm doing God's work." But such "crazy wisdom" is just crazy. To paraphrase Forest Gump, "Crazy is as crazy does." Humility, gentleness, empathy, wisdom & kindness are rarely promoted or even recognized in our consumer culture & partisan religions.
Learn Self-compassion. The tough, aggressively self-reliant, workaholic individual is venerated these days, while a decent, nurturing, humble person would be branded "a loser" by today's dictators & billionaire CEOs. So decent human beings need to intentionally practice self-compassion, in order to survive & be effective in today's crass, superficial, heartless environment.
Practice Self-awareness. With self-awareness practice, your talk & your walk are kept aligned. Again, humility is crucial. "Self-inquiry" is a specialized, key, self-awareness practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Self-inquiry
Become More Discerning, More Self-compassionate. The more neuroses & "story of me" burdens we shed, the more clearly we see ourselves & what's going on around us. The more clearly we see, the more magnified our remaining (though diminishing) neuroses & other burdens appear to us, so it can seem like we're regressing instead of "getting ahead." So we need more self-compassion & patience with ourself. “Felt reality is invariably wept reality, and wept reality is soon compassion and kindness. Decisive and harsh judgmentsslip away in the tracks of tears. And when we cry, we are revealing our truest, most loving self.” Richard Rohr. “The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage” Convergent Books, 2025.
Live in Joy. Gradually, you will be progressively more peaceful & joyful, regardless of the many challenges & sorrows in your own & loved ones' life, as well as that of the human race. The major, even crippling burdenthat you will shed is your identification with & constant rehashing of your own 'story of me' AS WELL AS its twin, the constant anxiety of 'what will happen to me?' and of course, vividly imagining the worst possibilities. As this HEAVY PSYCHOLOGIC BURDENstarts to lift, you start to experience 'the peace that surpasses all understanding' ie it must be experienced to be understood. Even this has, if you will, a 'dark side': while you'll see as your own past, no matter how miserable, as just a story, your empathy towards others (even actors playing a sad role in a movie) becomes progressively more powerful. Your job now is embodyingpeace & joymodelingequanimityeven in the midst of chaos, when it's the most essential.
"This is actually instruction from the Buddha, where he says, ‘Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate. Live in joy, in health,even among the afflicted. Live in joy and peace, even among the troubled. Look within. Be still, freefrom fears and attachments. Know the sweet joy of living in the way things are in the Way, the Dharma.' And so this is also a challenge. He doesn’t say, let’s get rid of disease and all these problems, butto find a joyfulway to be aliveamidst it all.” Jack Kornfield - Finding Your Self on the Spiritual Path - Point of Relation with Thomas Hüblhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fjz7WaTyX4WONDERFUL MATURE WISDOM - Jack Kornfield at his best
And some 500 years later, in another incarnation of the Divine, Jesus said, "the poor will always be with us." Fixating on quickly eliminating age-old problems is in itselfproblematic, akin to "seeing a splinter in another's eye," again from Jesus, advising that we should first address our own significant flaws (‘the beam’ in our own eye) before attempting tocorrect / "save"others.
“The teachings on Buddha Nature do not mean that there is some nucleus of Buddhhood enclosed in sentient beings behind the temporary obscuring stains. Rather, our whole existence as sentient beings is in itself the sum of temporary stains that float like cloudsin the infinite, bright sky of Buddha Nature, the luminous, open expanse of our mind that has no limits or boundaries. Once theseclouds dissolve from the warm rays of the sun of wisdom shining in this space, nothing within sentient beings has been freed or developed, but there is just thisradiant expanse without any reference points of cloud-like sentient beings or cloud-free Buddhas." Sthiramati, 6th century Indian Buddhist scholar-monk
Watching David Ditchfield's 40-minute BBC interview about his Near-Death Experience (NDE) is imho wise use of your precious time: https://www.shineonthestory.com/
"Toni Packer ... had a passionate intensity about what she called 'the work of this moment,' which she described as 'a profound kind of listening and openness that revealed the intense power and momentum of our human conditioning,' along with the discovery of 'an inner / outer silence - stillness - spaciousness in which there is no sense of separation or limitation, outside or inside.' Toni's insight and expression cut through all forms of self-deception with remarkable clarity and simplicity. She was interested in listening and looking without answers or formulas, without relying on the authority of the past. Everything she said was fresh because she always spoke and wrote out of a listening presence that was vibrantly alive." Tollifson J. A Questioning Life. Buddhadharma: A Practitioner's Quarterly. Winter 2013. http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/
“I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.” Christopher Hitchens "It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open." Toni Packer
I feel better when I sense that my life is improving in meaningful ways. This usually involves intentionally venturing out beyond my comfort zone. But the ego's only purpose is survival & reproduction, & resists everything else. And remaining in one's self-centered comfort zone is easy, familiar, cruise-control, highway-hypnosis. This is the land of the walking deadwhich most of us inhabitas our default mode. When - and only when - we intentionally, consciously, bravely step beyond this 'comfort zone' into the learning zone - 'the river of change,' a slightly scary 'liminal space' of infinite possibilities - are we truly actively living, creative, growing & maturing in exciting, meaningful ways!
We drastically underestimate how profoundly meaningful & wonderful life can be and the fact that we CAN experience profound joy, peace, contentment, silence, timelessness, stillness, etc. Perhaps we first have to realize that there is onlyone real power - LOVE. The more completely we are filled with unconditional love, the more alive, energized, authentic, whole, real we are. Mostly, we anxiously anticipate one nightmarish future after another. We FULLY experience such worst-case scenarios as if they were really happening because our bodies cannot differentiate between events in our imagination vs reality. We endure the fires of hellmostlybecause of our fear (catastrophizing).
“My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes – most of which havenever happened.”Mark Twain
“… it takes a bit of meditative presence to be with what is – just as it is – without being distracted by all the evaluations & comments that habitually arise about our situation. We suffer more from our storiesthan from the actual situation as it is.” Toni Packer
So our negativity bias, deficit-framing & probable history of various traumas keeps our survival emotions going as if we were victims of an endless horrible emergency. Drowning in survival emotions: lust, competition, guilt, shame, fear, doubt, anger, hate, judgment - is grossly inappropriate in civilized society, where usually only our ego tends to get bruised (too easily). The long-term effect of being chronically flooded with survival emotions is not only social isolation, but also physical & mental illness.
BUT IF we can repeatedly remind ourselves of our true nature, our outlook will be FAR MORE wise & optimistic with elevated emotions, using asset-framing, letting go of 'the story of me,' and focusing on our aspirations. Our elevated emotion of love, and closely-related empathy, nurturing, collaboration, peace, equanimity, joy, etc brings about an entirely different state of being and associated improved social relationships, physical & mental health. Joe Dispenza. "Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon." Hay House, 2019.POWERFUL
"Resilience also requires love made manifest, love incarnated in all of its forms. In its call to the spirit, many of us have seen these images – a young child who walks alone across the border to tell the story of what happened to his family; a young 12 year old girl, singing at night in the subway to a crowded subway, which is a bomb shelter, and lifting their spirits with that connection. It is so inspiring, at these moments, to feel that palpable love in the world. We are releasing something that is extraordinary in this moment. A hundred and forty-one countries at the United Nations said to Russia, “No, that is not right. That is not the way to go.“ So have you also tapped into that love? I will leave you with an image a number of us saw live on the news. It was a moment when a Russian soldier in his twenties was captured by the Ukrainians and brought to the town square. The people surrounded him. And then one of the women in the crowd pushed forward and offered him soup. And then another woman stepped forward and offered a cell phone, and said, “Here, why don't you call home?” And the soldier started to cry. There are those tears again. The soldier started to weep." James O'Deahttps://pod.servicespace.org/118/doc?did=481.
"Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate through violence. I have decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind's problems." Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I immediately relinquish any need or inclination toward conflict in my life or anywhere in the world. I align my heart and mind to the Divine Pattern of Cooperation and tolerance both in my personal life and in the world as a whole. I affirm and intend cooperation and tolerance between all peoples within each country, between nations, within each region of the world, and as one global human family. We pray that the leaders of all nations are drawn to feel the Divine Source of all and to take practical action to effect real and lasting peace." Adi Da
Neil Young - Imagine (from "America: A Tribute to Heroes")
“… it takes a bit of meditative presence to be with what is – just as it is – without being distracted by all the evaluations and comments that habitually arise about our situation. We suffer more from our stories than from the actual situation as it is.” Toni Packer
“My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes – most of which have
never happened.”Mark Twain
Perseverative Cognition: Brosschot JF, Verkuil B, Thayer JF. Conscious and unconscious perseverative cognition: is a large part of prolonged physiological activity due to unconscious stress? J Psychosom Res. 2010; 69(4): 407-16. Psychology of Stress:http://www.guidetopsychology.com/stress.htm
"When the ego-sense is relaxed, when a sense of the infinite & eternal replaces our usual narrow self-centeredness with all its passing, unsatisfying fantasies, there is no longer a mental basis for fear, hatred, anxiety, anger, attachment, desire. Instead, the perfectly harmonious functioning of the cosmos operates through us – and the cosmos is always in balance, always at peace with itself. The Christian message is essentially a call to be universal – a call to become cosmically conscious. It is a call to place God at the center of ourselves, not through blind faith but through insightful awareness, not through rigid adherence to ritual and dogma but through graceful expression of cosmic principles. It is a call to ‘be as gods.’” John White Grof S ed. Human Survival and Consciousness Evolution. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1988.
"It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open." Toni Packer
"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination & understanding are filled with doubt & indecision." Bertrand Russell
Asimplistic, superficial, literal 'understanding' of even the most complex of mysteries is common. We dread uncertainty, rush to conclusions & hide in group-think for (false) security. Respected monk Thomas Merton said that even in monasteries, people of spiritual depth are very rare: “Once in a while you will find someone with whom you can talk
about (spiritual experiences). But they are hard to find. And when you are
fortunate enough to find such a person it will be a temporary arrangement. For
you will spend most of your life without such a person, which will be your
solitude in which you will learn from God how to depend on God to guide you
into ever deeper communion with God.” James Finley. “The Healing Path. A Memoir and an Invitation.” Orbis, 2023.
‘Most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by being obstaclesto the very purposes which their founders had in view.’ William James
“Don’t carry away a conclusionunless it has been arrived at through your own experience. Rather, if therehasn’t been direct experience, carry away the question.” Toni Packer. “The Silent Question. Meditating in the Stillness of Not-Knowing.” Shambhala, 2007.
“Throughout much of Western history, until the fourth century AD when early, ‘primitive’ Christianity began to be systematically stamped out beneath the jackboots of the Roman Catholic Church, ‘beatific visions’ were the primary recruitment tool of the enormously ancient and influential ‘religion with no name’ that is the subject of The Immortality Key. This religion could shift and morph into multiple forms – The Eleusinian and Dionysian Mysteries are among the examples … and to these I would add the much older religion of the painted caves explored in Supernatural – but the common factor in every case was a psychedelic sacrament (sometimes food, sometimes drink, sometimes both) consumed by all participants. ‘Primitive’ Christianity started out around two thousand years ago as merely the latest form or incarnation of this archaic religion, and – at least in some cases – seems to have made use of bread & wine infused with psychedelic plants & fungi as its sacrament. At that time, because Christianity was persecuted under the Roman Empire until the reign of Constantine (AD 306-337) it was normal practice for its adherents to meet secretly in small groups to eat the bread and drink the wine of Holy Communion, and afterward experience powerful & deeply meaningful beatific visions. And more often than not, these secret ceremonies of direct experiential communion with the divine were led by women with men playing a secondary role.
Then, from the second half of the fourth century AD onward, came the rise of Roman Catholicism, dominated by men who took decisive steps to marginalize the role of women in the Church and to remove the psychedelic elements from the sacrament, reducing Holy Communion to the empty symbolic act, devoid of powerful experiential content, that hundreds of millions of Christians continue to perform. My friend, the visionary artist Alex Grey, whose work has been much influenced by Ayahuasca, describes the Old Testament story of the serpent, the forbidden fruit, and God’s expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden as ‘the first psychedelic slapdown.’ Pursuing that thought, Roman Catholicism’s persecution of ‘primitive’ Christians and the extirpation of their visionary Communion wine might be described as the second psychedelic slapdown. And then, in the twentieth century, just as we seemed to be freeing ourselves from the loveless iron grip of the Church and opening up to new spiritual possibilities, governments around the world waded in with the so-called ‘war on drugs’ – the third psychedelic slapdown. Over the centuries, therefore, enormous often deadly forces (with the power, for example, to burn people at the stake or imprison them for decades) have repeatedly been unleashed to prevent people from experiencing direct contact with realms & realities other than the mundane. At the same time, however, even when it must have seemed that the ‘religion with no name’ had been deleted completely from the human record, there were always – if I may extend the metaphor – multiple ‘backup disks’ in the form of psychedelic plants & fungi growing all over the planet. There might be long gaps, lacunae of centuries even, but the moment would always come when certain curious individuals, either by accident or by design, would sample the plants and mushrooms that serve as the permanent Hall of Records of the religion with no name, thus setting in motion the experiences & subsequent processes of social organization that would ultimately allow it to be rescued in full force. It is not an accident that the Mazatec shamans of southern Mexico refer to the psilocybe mushrooms used in their ceremonies as ‘little teachers,’ and, in a sense, that is what all psychedelic plants & fungiare – literally the ancient teachers of mankind. Whether we engage with Ayahuasca, or with Psilocybe Mexicana, or with peyote, or with LSD (which is itself derived from the fungus ergot) we are dealing with the biological agents of the religion with no name and with their numinous capacity to reawaken our spiritual appetites and potential.” Graham Hancock's Foreword to: Brian C. Muraresku “The Immortality Key. The Secret History of the Religion with No Name.” St. Martin’s Press, 2020.
“… in 2006, the (Johns) Hopkins team completed the first psilocybin (research) project since the 1970s, when research into the forbidden substance became largely impossible during the War on Drugs. Under tightly controlled conditions the psilocybin unleashed a profound, mystical experience that seemed to anchor the lasting emotional & psychological benefits recorded by the thirty-six volunteers. They had no life-threatening illness, and were otherwise free of the debilitating angst (morbid fear of death) that consumed (some previous research subjects with advanced cancer). But these early results were shockingly similar to the 2016 collaboration with NYU: one-third of the participants rated their experience ‘as the most spiritually significant of their lives,’ comparing it to the birth of a child or the death of a parent. Two-thirds placed it among the top five. When friends, family, & coworkers were interviewed, they confirmed the remarkable transformations in the volunteers’ mood & behavior for months, even years, following their single dose. From that moment on, Dr. Roland Griffiths upended his career to focus almost exclusively on psilocybin, creating what is now called the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit. More than 360 volunteers and fifty peer-reviewed publications later, he’s ready to call a spade a spade. In his 2016 TED Talk, Griffiths said the drug-induced ecstasy he routinely witnesses in the laboratory is ‘virtually identical’ to that reported by natural-born prophets & visionaries throughout human history. The underlying experience itself, whether activated by psilocybin or some spontaneous internal flood of neurotransmitters**, must be ‘biologically normal.’ If we are essentially wired for mystical experience, it raises the intriguing prospect that, under the right mind-set & environment, any curious soul can be instantly converted into a religious savant. Griffith’s colleague, Dr. William Richards, has been testing that hypothesis since the 1960s, when he codeveloped the very scale to measure these peak states of consciousness, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire. … In his 2015 book, Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, Richards maps out the essential features of the perfect psilocybin journey: transcending time & space, accessing knowledge that is normally not available. Oftentimes there is a merging of the everyday personality with a larger, more fundamental whole. Words fail to capture the unsinkable conviction that the experiencer has somehow glimpsed the ultimate nature of reality, an insight that seems ‘blatantly obvious’ at the time, and is usually accompanied by intense feelings of joy, tranquility, exaltation, & awe.” BrianC. Muraresku “The Immortality Key. The Secret History of the Religion with No Name.” St. Martin’s Press, 2020.
**NOTE: Neurotransmittersmediate but are NOT the "ultimate cause" of mystical experiences any more than a TV set actually causes the Olympic Games, or anything else we watch on it. ALSO, shamans who for thousands of years have, & continue to facilitate such numinous experiences, actually do so far more often & widelywith drumming & other non-pharmaceutical rituals than with plant medicines. AND, with the appropriate "set & setting" people for millennia have also achieved profound mystical experiences & insights by themselves through meditation & other spiritual practicesand less often, evenspontaneously. This strongly suggeststhatwe are not only "wired for mystical experiences," but that "we are spiritual beings, having a physical experience."
“When we are in contact with the ineffable, divine reality that is our source, we also know what state we shall return to. Without this knowledge we are indeed dead, even though we may show signs of physical life.” Stephan A. Hoeller. “Gnosticism. New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing.” Quest, 2002.
In summary, direct mystical experiences may be essential prerequisites for us to open to deeper realities, which our 'usual' way of perceiving & thinking these days, can rarely access or comprehend. A wide variety of spiritual practices - from yogic breathing techniques, various meditation techniques, chanting, drumming, dancing, tai chi / qi gong, yoga, sweat lodge ceremonies, and plant medicines in appropriate set & settings, with appropriately-trained traditional shamans or health-care professionals - pave the way to profoundly life-altering, life-affirmingdirect mystical experiences and insights.
