Secret Seeking – Eugene Jhong

A few years ago, my friends Mike and Shin recommended that I read a book called How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollen. The book documents the current resurgence in the use of psychedelics for treating psychological disorders. There is mounting evidence that psychedelic therapy has incredible benefits for treating disorders like PTSD and depression. Johns Hopkins just recently received a large grant and opened up a center to focus on exploring the benefits of these profound medicines.

I had grown up sheeplike drinking the kool-aid and lumping most drugs as being equally bad and destructive. LSD and psilocybin were right down there with Heroin and Meth. But now I realize there is something special about psychedelics. These drugs have been used for spiritual purposes throughout history and across many cultures. There is something profound and I believe potentially very beneficial when they are used in the right manner. MDMA and psilocybin will likely be approved as prescription drugs within a few years.

After reading the Pollen book, I wanted to explore these personally. I was lucky enough to find an amazing guide and have experienced a few journeys. While some of them have been very difficult, they have helped me rewire my mind in a positive direction. I’m also possibly going to visit Rhythmia in Costa Rica next year.

However, I caution anybody interested, to do their own research. These drugs are not to be treated lightly and can be abused.

Nonduality

This one is going to sound somewhat out there.

I recently attended a conference called Science and Nonduality 2019 in San Jose where I learned about Nonduality. After a deep dive the last few months, I’m now of the opinion that there is a profound truth here.

Nonduality is basically another term for nirvana, enlightenment, liberation, moksha, realization. It’s a concept that seems to be common among segments of many different spiritual traditions (Advaita Vedanta and Dzogchen for example). Aldous Huxley describes this in his book The Perennial Philosophy. These terms carry a lot of baggage though and probably will turn off a large number of people. Sam Harris has recently been trying to bring this concept into the secular mainstream with his book Spirituality Without Religion and his podcast and app Waking Up.

I believe you can view nonduality from a secular and psychological standpoint. One way to look at it is as the opposite of depression. In depression, your awareness is intricately tied up with your negative thought patterns. With nonduality, you try to pull your awareness as far away from these thought patterns as possible.

One thing I have noticed is that many of the proponents of nonduality are extremely intelligent and eloquent. I have been a very left brained person my entire life and have applied my logical mind and intense focus and effort to very scientific and logical endeavors such as computer programming. If you are interested in studying consciousness, you can take this same logic and effort and try to apply yourself with a scientific approach by studying the brain. However, you have direct access to one consciousness only and that is your own consciousness. So I feel that the practice of nonduality is to take that same logic and effort and turn it inwards into your own mind.

Nonduality is not just a philosophy but an actual meditative practice. In the last decade or so, mindfulness meditation has moved into the secular mainstream. Usually you perform mindfulness meditation at a particular time as a sitting meditation. You will either monitor your breath and perhaps your thoughts as well. The meditation for nonduality is something that you perform with effort throughout the entire day. Loch Kelly recently wrote a book called Effortless Mindfulness in which he is trying to promote the practice of this new kind of meditation. Akilesh Ayyar describes two practices — self inquiry and surrender.

I personally have already experienced some benefits from practicing the nondual type of meditation. This has given me an intuition that there is something special and true here. If you would like to learn more I would recommend siftingtothetruth.com. Another interesting site is headless.org.