Soto Zen teacher Brad Warner writes about his recent encounters with people advocating use of mind-altering drugs to reach enlightenment. (See "The Psychedelic Experience" and "Mountain of Drugs.")
Full disclosure -- I have no personal experience with hallucinogenic drugs. In the 1960s, I was the World's Squarest Flower Child. What I know of LSD trips I learned from watching special effects in movies.
However, I have met a lot of people who claim to have had some mind-blowing chemically induced experiences, and none struck me as being any more (or less) enlightened than anyone else. You can't always tell, of course. But if LSD or muscaria mushrooms could produce Buddhas, I think we would be bumping into some of them by now.
I think the claims for the enlightening qualities of drugs comes from confusion about what enlightenment is. I am told one is not really lifted up into the cotton-candy heavens on a giant pink lotus (although I saw that in a movie, too). Nor is enlightenment an escape from the mundane world. As the old Zen saying goes, "Before enlightenment -- chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment -- chop wood, carry water."
I think I've mentioned this before, but even in my first few Zen retreats, I found it remarkably easy to give myself hallucinations. Sometimes even now, a few hours into a retreat, the floor will roll in waves like an ocean and pictures will seem to be swimming on the walls. This is nothing I take seriously, however. Hallucinations are not insight. This I know from experience.
Drug enthusiasts argue that the use of drugs is like taking a helicopter to the top of the mountain instead of bothering to climb it. The view at the top is the same, they say. I can't say whether the view at the top is the same, or not. But the person who climbs is going to have a very different experience of the mountain than the person who takes a helicopter.
The person who climbs will become very intimate with that mountain, from top to bottom, and will "know" the mountain in a way the helicopter passenger will not. He or she also will gain in strength, skill and discipline, and meeting the challenge of the climb might change how he perceives himself. So, the climb has its own value apart of the view. Someone into mountain climbing as a sport might argue that the climb is what it's really about, not the view.
Even assuming -- and I am skeptical -- that a drug could give one exactly the same experience as kensho, or even satori, would the experience leave one with insight? When the brain's ordinary chemistry is restored, will he perceive himself and other material phenomena in the same way he did before? Will the eyes of wisdom and compassion be opened, just as if he had spent ten years in meditation?
Again, I am skeptical. To go back to the mountain analogy -- at this point in my practice, I feel the mountain is me. That's not necessarily a good thing, as I seem to be a steep and challenging mountain. I'd like to be climbing an easier one, but there it is. But becoming intimate with this mountain feels like a critical part of the process. I don't think it's a step that can be skipped. A lot of learning goes on in the journey.
So, if I do reach some peak and find a helicopter passenger there, I don't think we'll be taking in the view with the same eyes.
That said, I realize there are ancient shamanic and mystical traditions that incorporate psychoactive substances as part of their practices. These traditions usually also incorporate many rituals and initiations and are guided by an experienced elder, so merely experiencing drug-induced states is not the whole program. There is some discipline, some structure of tradition, that guides the practitioner. Whether the effects are anywhere close to realization in the Buddhist sense I do not know.
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