Introduction

 

Everyone is born helpless and unable to care for themselves. There is a feeling of separateness, a self separate from the world and others. This separation between the self and the world is the dualistic perception.

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The dualistic perception leads to self-centeredness and a hollow feeling of never being satisfied. Attempts to fill the hollow with possessions, achievements, and entertainment do not lead to feeling settled or complete. This ongoing feeling of dissatisfaction is the experience of suffering. On a large scale, the dualistic perception leads to racism, xenophobia, nationalism, and war. Consumerism does not fill our collective hollow but damages the planet's ecology, leading to inequality, social unrest, and collective suffering.

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Psychedelics are famous for granting profound experiences of nonduality. Under the right circumstances, it is easy to experience awareness as a blissful, lucid, and limitless expanse of nondual wisdom and universal love. Nondual, skylike awareness is beyond birth, death, confusion, and suffering. Even a single experience of nonduality can be life-changing because it reveals an entirely different way of being, characterized by openness, love, and universal compassion. Once experienced, this is impossible to forget and can rearrange our life priorities away from entertainment and consumerism toward loving-kindness and compassion.

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Our awareness is inherently nondual and always has been. The perception of duality is a delusion based on not recognizing the nondual nature of awareness. In this state of ignorance, awareness faces outward toward outer appearances and is unaware of itself. When awareness looks inward at itself, it does not see any identifiable “thing” because awareness is empty of any perceivable characteristic. Awareness is emptiness, but not nothing. There is a knowingness, a luminous clarity that can know anything, including its empty nature. When the luminous clarity recognizes its empty nature as empty luminosity, duality collapses into the experience of nonduality. Duality requires two things, and empty luminosity is not a thing, so there is no longer any basis for the dualistic perception.

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This book is a meditation manual for recognizing the nondual nature of mind, empty luminosity, using psychedelics. This recognition is called rigpa, often translated as insight or awareness. The goal is to stabilize rigpa so it lasts all day and transforms life into a flow of wisdom. Psychedelic meditation can bring us to the direct realization of empty luminosity many times. It is deep neuroplastic training in nonduality. Psychedelic meditation is the pinnacle of realization training.

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Psychedelic meditation sessions alone are only temporary experiences of nonduality, not the stable realization of nonduality that lasts all day. Sustaining a daily practice of nature of mind meditation brings neuroplastic training in nonduality from the psychedelic meditation sessions into our daily experience, as the stable realization of empty luminosity.

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Most meditation techniques work with form, meaning they are dualistic and object-oriented. Object-oriented meditation would include mindfulness of physical sensations and visual objects, visualization of deities, mantras, chanting, or praying. It also includes contemplative or analytical meditations, where the objects are words and concepts appearing in the mental consciousness.

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Object-oriented meditations help tame our wild and distracted minds. Still, these methods are all included within the conceptual structure of duality and do not lead to liberation from the dualistic state. Object-oriented meditation is difficult to sustain within a psychedelic session because the conceptual mind begins to dissolve. When duality starts to dissolve, object-oriented meditation also dissolves.

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Subject-oriented meditation looks at awareness and is inherently more profound. When awareness sees itself, the dualistic confusion of a subject fixating on one object after another collapses. When awareness sees itself, it knows its nature: empty luminosity. Subject-oriented meditation is easy to sustain within a psychedelic meditation session because as duality begins to dissolve, the brightness of clarity and insight increases. The practice is awareness gently looking at awareness and relaxing into nonconceptual openness. Recognizing the nature of mind as empty luminosity is a nonconceptual direct insight.

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The nature of our mind is empty luminosity. Awareness is transparent empty knowingness. Luminosity is the expressive radiance of awareness. Psychedelic meditation is recognizing our true nature, an infinite, lucid, and blissful expanse of natural freedom. It is essence love, universal, boundless, and objectless. Since there is no object to meditate on, it is nonmeditation. Since there is no conceptual effort, it is resting meditation. Resting meditation is resting in the view. The view refers to seeing things exactly as they are: completely open, spontaneously present, and primordially pure. Resting in the view is the goal, nonduality.

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The Nature of Mind Practice With 5MeO chapter explains psychedelic meditation sessions with 5-MeO-DMT in detail. Learn how to gain confidence with the medicine, recognize empty luminosity, and progress step by step until you can relax into the entire expanse of nonduality. Psychedelic meditation sessions are hours of immersion in relaxed, brilliant nonduality.

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The Thögal Practice With LSD chapter explains psychedelic meditation sessions with LSD. Learn how to gaze at the vajra chains revealed by LSD and how to let them guide you into relaxing the grip of duality so that you can drop into unobscured primordial wisdom, the mother luminosity. There are instructions for stabilizing the experience of primordial wisdom so that you can spend hours relaxing in the ultimate unconditioned while in complete contact with relative appearances. Most people will begin psychedelic meditation with 5MeO, so it is okay to skip the LSD chapters.

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The Essential Training chapter describes mindfulness, love and compassion, analytical meditation, and Internal Family Systems therapy. The Navigating Psychedelics chapter talks about how to work with the difficulties and confusion that can arise in psychedelic sessions. The process of surrendering to nondual awareness involves letting go of clinging to identities and letting go into the vivid experience of naked nonduality.

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Practitioners of the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions will have received a thorough explanation of the nature of mind and the pointing out instructions in person from a qualified teacher. Even so, many Vajrayana practitioners find that nature of mind practice is difficult to connect with and lack confidence in their ability to recognize their nature. Psychedelic meditation with 5MeO is a vivid and immersive experience of the naked openness of rigpa. It makes nature of mind practice sharp, clear, and effective, leading to complete confidence in recognizing our nature. This manual will introduce Vajrayana practitioners to psychedelic meditation to compress decades of training into years.

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Some readers will use this manual to understand and realize the nature of mind for the first time. Other readers will have a good understanding of nonduality from their psychedelic experiences. This manual will show how to practice nature of mind training within psychedelic meditation sessions and how to bring the experience of nonduality into daily life with a daily nature of mind meditation practice. This manual is for everyone who wants to realize their true nature and transform their lives into a flow of wisdom.

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Psychedelic meditation places nature-of-mind practice with psychedelics within the context of a daily nature-of-mind practice. This combination can land the profound but temporary psychedelic experiences of nonduality into our lives as the stable all-day realization of nonduality. The vital connection is that the practice of recognizing our nature as empty luminosity is identical with and without psychedelics. Since the practice is identical, progress in recognizing our nature with psychedelics translates directly into progress in recognizing our nature without psychedelics and vice versa.

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Here is the chapter outline.

 

1. Understanding Empty Luminosity – Understanding the nature of mind transforms a psychedelic experience into a psychedelic meditation session.

2. Nature of Mind Practice – How to recognize awareness as empty luminosity in psychedelic meditation sessions and daily life.

3. Nature of Mind Practice With 5MeO – Brilliant, profound, blissful immersion in nonduality is the heart of psychedelic meditation practice.

4. Navigating 5MeO – Following the bliss and how to make vape cartridges.

5. Thögal Practice With LSD – Advanced nature of mind practice with the Wisdom Lamp, the ultimate unconditioned. Skip this chapter for the first reading.

6. Navigating LSD – LSD sessions are long and can be challenging. Skip this chapter for the first reading.

7. Essential Training – Psychedelic meditation requires some familiarity with mindfulness, loving-kindness, emptiness, and IFS.

8. Navigating Psychedelics – How to work with confusion and fear as duality dissolves.