Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘I started off with an interest in looking for the biological bases of spiritual experience, and at that time, my points of reference for spiritual experiences were largely based on Buddhist and other Eastern forms of meditation and psychedelics. I was struck by the correspondences between some of the effects of Mahayana meditation and the psychedelic state. So that led me ultimately to doing the DMT study—determining whether or not DMT was inherently spiritual. That is, did DMT, an endogenous psychedelic, possess inherent pharmacological spirituality—or were other factors involved? And if it did produce spiritual experiences, what kind?

The platform I was basing my spiritual perspective on was Zen Buddhism, which is fairly bare bones both in practice and in the experience itself. Satori is an empty state. It’s a fulsome kind of emptiness. Everything emerges from it, but the state itself is what I call mystical-unitive, empty of any discernible content, what Zen calls sunyata. There’s no time, space, there are no words. Usually it’s ecstatic. There’s no personality remaining in that state. However, in contrast to that empty state, I found the DMT experience was full of content, so I had to look elsewhere for a spiritual model.

In the DMT experience, the personality was maintained, there was interaction, there was a relationship between the experiencer and the contents of that state. It required me to go back to the drawing board. And by that time, my Zen community and I had parted ways over the issue of studying psychedelics for spiritual questions. So that freed me up to return to my roots. And I started to look at the Torah, and at the Tanakh. And I was really struck by the correspondence between the phenomenology of the prophetic experience in the Tanakh and the phenomenology of the DMT state. And by prophetic experience, I mean any altered state of consciousness reported in the text: it could be a dream that comes true; it could be inspiration; it could be superhuman strength; it could be a full-blown encounter—speaking with God or with God’s angels; flying through space; overwhelming emotions, etc. That more inclusive definition keeps the experience from being limited to the major prophetic figures like Abraham, or even to the longer list of canonical prophets.

The information content is quite different between the two sets of experiences—the DMT state and the prophetic one—but the phenomenology is strikingly concordant. If you read chapter one of Ezekiel, it’s a DMT trip—visions and voices, out of body travel, and extraordinarily powerful emotions, the angel speaking with him, spinning wheels, lightning, wings, eyes on the wings, and the figure of the chayot. It’s incredibly psychedelic.’ (from Ayin Press)

I recently followed a link to arrive at this interview, which was very thought-provoking, even if I didn’t agree with it a hundred percent. Tomorrow’s post will be from Suzuki Roshi dealing with the psychedelic takers in his community.