Experience:Meditation with cannabis - terminated ego loss

Experience reports - Cannabis and Meditation

• Date: October 2014
• Gender: Male
• Weight: 85 kg / 187 lbs
• Age: 26

Report

1½ decent dose of ingested cannabis few hours before the experience

I spent a sunday being slightly hangover and not doing much anything spesific, only short shamatha meditation for a while. In the evening a friend came by and we ate cannabis brownies, one and a half each. We spent a few hours talking and playing backgammon, I noticed how unusually focused I got in the game. Usually I might ponder my possible move perhaps one or two moves ahead, but then I would go on paths covering branching possibilities which felt endless, although I still couldn't figure out the best move and thought that there actually isn't an absolute one considering the nature of the game.

Later when my friend had left, I decided to meditate again as I felt generally focused and the idea was really comfortable. I started my usual routine with some buddhist prayers and a visualisation of my buddha statue and a visualized buddha on top of my head glowing golden light. This produced a very pleasent warm sensation all over my body and my focus got more intense. The statue I was looking at started to seem as actually glowing, although it was different from what I was trying to visualize. The light wasn't golden, but blue instead, and it seemed that the statue itself was turning into this glowing light, starting from the uppermost edge. I was exhilarated as this phenomenom was something I had almost invariably experinenced only after taking substances of the actual psychedelic category.

I felt unity with the statue and the idea of buddha, first as a subjective cognition of 'me being almost the same as buddha'. I tried to consciously close this gap, which I felt was an unnecessary dualistic delusion. Trying didn't seem to do any good though and an idea popped in my head, that I could try to first become the same as a buddha's image. I stood up and faced a wall cloth which has an image of buddha as a roughly real-sized human. I closed my eyes and pressed against the cloth and the wall behind it, and I could feel myself moving slowly trough the wall, which I cognized as a metaphor for becoming the same with buddha image. At the same time I started to see/hallucinate a completely different view, one of an animal of some sort moving in a forest, in a first person viewpoint. This rushed a train of thoughts:

I thought I was on the verge of enlightenment. This would mean, that it would be unnecessary for my mind to continue inhabit this body I was leaving behind, as the person I used to be would from then onwards act in a perfect harmony, bringing as much happiness as possible to everybody around it. But the catch was that 'I' would cut the tie with my current being and move into another being, that of an undefined animal form, and I would start the process of reaching for enlightenment again, from the beginning. I imagined this was the mechanism of how to 'liberate all sentient beings'. I was frightened of the unknown future and felt great attachment to my current self, which I didn't want to lose, and I backed out. Soon after I felt that the whole idea was rather ridiculous, as it didn't really match with my concept of enlightenment.

I tried to focus on becoming same with the buddha again, but now it led me to another delusion. I felt that everything in my life, all the people in it and all my experiences had been only in order to bring me to this point. And thus everything was about me, all of the outer reality was only an illusion in my mind. Somehow this led me to a thought: I had already died before, and this life I was now living was only some kind of an afterlife limbo. I was terrified and backed out from following this thought further, and wanted just to feel alive again and started to pace around my room. I tried to think it trough rationally; how could there be some condition of life, from which I would have already been dead, if this life I'm now experiencing is the only life I know? The rationale seemed reasonable, but didn't help with my feeling of fear and the general sense of illusionary nature of external reality. I wanted my surroundings to feel solid again, and I went to see if my housemate would still exist, I woke him up and had a comforting conversation with him. Soon afterwards I felt exhausted and went to bed soon.

Submitted by - Fdskjalf

Effects analysis

• Focus enhancement - "I felt generally focused ... and my focus got more intense"
• Transformations - "the statue itself was turning into this glowing light"
• Tactile hallucination - "I could feel myself moving slowly trough the wall"
• Scenarios and plots - "'I' would cut the tie with my current being and move into another being, that of an undefined animal form"
• Delusion - "I had already died before, and this life I was now living was only some kind of an afterlife limbo"
• Spontaneous physical sensations - "This produced a very pleasent warm sensation all over my body"
• External hallucination - "The statue I was looking at started to seem as actually glowing, although it was different from what I was trying to visualize. The light wasn't golden, but blue instead, and it seemed that the statue itself was turning into this glowing light, starting from the uppermost edge."
• Unity and interconnectedness (level 2) - "I felt unity with the statue and the idea of buddha, first as a subjective cognition of 'me being almost the same as buddha'."
• Delusion - "an idea popped in my head, that I could try to first become the same as a buddha's image. I stood up and faced a wall cloth which has an image of buddha as a roughly real-sized human. I closed my eyes and pressed against the cloth and the wall behind it"
• Internal hallucination - "I started to see/hallucinate a completely different view, one of an animal of some sort moving in a forest, in a first person viewpoint."
• Delusion - "I thought I was on the verge of enlightenment. This would mean, that it would be unnecessary for my mind to continue inhabit this body I was leaving behind, as the person I used to be would from then onwards act in a perfect harmony, bringing as much happiness as possible to everybody around it. But the catch was that 'I' would cut the tie with my current being and move into another being, that of an undefined animal form, and I would start the process of reaching for enlightenment again, from the beginning. I imagined this was the mechanism of how to 'liberate all sentient beings'. Soon after I felt that the whole idea was rather ridiculous, as it didn't really match with my concept of enlightenment."
• Delusion - "I tried to focus on becoming same with the buddha again, but now it led me to another delusion. I felt that everything in my life, all the people in it and all my experiences had been only in order to bring me to this point. And thus everything was about me, all of the outer reality was only an illusion in my mind. Somehow this led me to a thought: I had already died before, and this life I was now living was only some kind of an afterlife limbo."
• Anxiety - "didn't help with my feeling of fear"