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“Psychedelics trigger a unitive state, and meditation trains it.”
So says Naina Eira Gupta, who researches the therapeutic potential of psychedelics and meditation.
Psychedelics work because they disrupt the monkey mind, she asserts. They stop the constant chattering in your head, which is the mind’s MO to perpetuate the story of ‘you’.
Everything we think we have is just that, a story.
“Psychedelics are assisted mind training, I would call it. They provide mental immunity”, says Naina.
Then, meditation trains you to keep that base perception, to see the story for what it is.
“You realize you don’t have to be reactive to a particular thought or feeling, because it’s just a story.“
When the ego dissolves, you become so much more of an effective human being.
“You can fall in love with the world. Everything becomes lighter. You don’t feel so much distance between what you perceive as ‘you’ and the rest of it.”
What Naina hopes for is that more people have access to mind training, “because it’s deeply, deeply transformative”.
Different psychedelic drugs work in different ways. Some can trigger negative experiences if taken irresponsibly. According to Naina, MDMA is one of the best for pro-sociality and connectedness, because it produces very little bad experiences.
Psychedelic experiences can be so transformative that it can be difficult to know what to do with them. Some kind of scaffolding around their use is needed, says Naina.
“Even so, many studies now show that psychedelics are beneficial therapeutically, even just in themselves, even if you don’t have a particular practice around them.”
As a practicing Buddhist, Naina Gupta doesn’t hold a certain metaphysics. The middle way means that you accept that reality cannot be framed or pinned down. Something is, isn’t, is both and is neither, at the same time.
“It’s just unbelievable potential.”
The cause of our suffering is the subject-object duality.
Naina has several meditation practices, and she has trained herself to dream lucidly.
Is this – learning how to liberate oneself from duality with the help of psychedelics, meditation and other spiritual practices – conducive to achieving a more peaceful world?
“If there is any hope, it lies in this.”
“I wouldn't be talking to you today if this wasn't needed.”
Naina's personal page at the University of ExeterNaina on Linkedin
