Strangeness Spirituality

Several posts back I’d started to look at altered states of consciousness but I guess my train of thought got derailed. Returning to the theme…

Here’s one particular type of ASC that was meaningful to me as well as interesting. It occurred maybe ten times when I was in college. At the time I hadn’t studied religion or spirituality. When I look back at it now, it seems to me that it may relate to the Zen concept of “beginner’s mind.”

Ain’t That Odd…

It would usually happen between classes. I’d be walking along a walkway just blankly looking in front of me (I majored in English), when there would be an abrupt shift in perception. Suddenly whatever happened to be in my field of vision – the walkway, a few fallen leaves, an adjacent lawn seen from the corner of my eye – looked completely unfamiliar. I was genuinely astounded to see lawn grass, pavement, and the tips of my shoes. What on earth could THOSE be doing THERE?!

Of Course – NOT…

Sure I majored in English, and, perhaps worse, double majored in English and psych. This might partly account for certain impractical and even other-worldly predispositions that could have helped produce these experiences. I had, after all, no idea what I wanted to do for work after college; wasn’t giving the matter any real thought; was paying close attention to “Ode to a Grecian Urn;” and falling in love with the kind of extended sentence structures you can make with semicolons, which were popular back in the nineteenth century where I was spending much of my time.

So at the time the experiences occurred, I had no idea what to make of them. They just struck me as puzzling and oddly uplifting. Eventually I would realize that they’d been trying to tell me that I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did.

Normally we look at the sidewalk, a leaf, a house, another person – anything familiar to us – and our minds go, “Of course…” Because we’ve seen these things a million times, it’s as if we suppose that we have special insight into why they're the way they are. “Of course things have to be that way…” As if we knew! As if the sheer presence of anything weren’t incomprehensibly amazing!

Learning from Altered States of Consciousness: Organic v. Drug-Induced

Sometimes we learn a lot from altered states of consciousness, and sometimes not so much. I think, for example, of my one and only experience that involved accidental experimentation with a recreational drug. Even though it was spectacular – really, much too spectacular – all I leaned from it was, “Don’t ever do THAT again…”

I wonder if one problem with drug-induced experiences is that they don’t occur organically as an integral feature of our lives. I would think too that context would tend to work against meaningful drug-induced ASCs in our culture: it's usually recreational, not spiritual.

Have you ever had anything similar to my “strangeness” experience? What sense did you make of it?

What do you think about spirituality and drug-induced ASCs – setting aside, for purposes of discussion, the obvious legal and medical risks?