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Namah What is Real ?

meaning-making encounter, an experience enters a terrain beyond normal comprehension
often spoken of by mystics, that of a unity that one may have difficulty articulating its
with all that there is (5). essence, lacking descriptive language, applicable
references, analogies, etc. Yet these experiences
In his book, Sacred Knowledge, Psychedelics and produce transformative, enduring results.
Religious Experiences, William A. Richards, Repeatedly, various research centres report
clinical psychologist at Johns Hopkins Medical that the degree of therapeutic patient success
Centre, with formal training in theology and correlated with the occurrence and degree of
comparative religions, categorises mystical a mystical experience. In a controlled study
experiences into two major groups, based performed at NYU, patients were struggling
on the quality of the experience, that is, with depression, resulting from a terminal
Internal Unity or External Unity. In this cancer diagnosis. After a single full dose of
book he presents patient reports of mystical psilocybin, the research team reported that
experiences while undergoing trial research 80% of the participants experienced substantial
studies on psilocybin to treat severe depression sustained improvement, while 70% said it
(6). was one of their top five experiences. Some
reported it was the single most meaningful
In this same book, Richards speaks of his experience of their lifetimes (8).
own personal experience, while a participant
of a psilocybin research study in the early Ancient Buddhist metaphysical principle
1960’s. He describes the after-effect of his of Emptiness
fifth psilocybin session as follows:
Since the historical Buddha’s famous teaching
“Relatively soon after psilocybin administration, on Emptiness, defined as the ‘ultimate nature of
the mystical forms of consciousness recurred things’, Buddhist scholars have been studying,
in all their splendour, repeatedly drawing my debating and contemplating the question:
being through several cycles of psychological what is the ultimate nature of reality? Both
death and rebirth, the noetic intensity of spiritual the Diamond Cutter Sutra and the Heart Sutra,
knowledge feeling etched into my brain. In also known as ‘The Perfection of Wisdom’,
the research report I subsequently wrote, there contain profound teachings on this subject.
were terms such as, ‘cosmic tenderness’, ‘infinite
love’, ‘penetrating peace’, ‘eternal blessing’, The Madhyamaka Prasangika school of Tibetan
and ‘unconditional acceptance’, coupled with Buddhism, also referred to as the ‘Middle
‘unspeakable awe’, ‘overflowing joy’ ‘primeval Way School’, of which one of its pre-eminent
humility’, ‘inexpressible gratitude’, and ‘boundless lineage holders is His Holiness the fourteenth
devotion’, all followed by the sentence, ‘Yet all of Dalai Lama, has been considered authoritative
these words are hopelessly inadequate and on this topic. It posits that there is no self-
do little more than meekly point toward existing reality out there, rather, we are
the genuine, inexpressible feelings actually continuously formulating our reality based
experienced (7).” on our projections, beliefs, concepts and pre-
determined patterns. These pre-existing
With experiences of a mystical nature, one patterns shape our world and create our

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