An excerpt from 'Cannabis & Meditation - An Explorer's Guide'
Meditating in the right way makes the effects of a cannabis high much more apparent and, in terms of exploring consciousness, combining meditational methods with a cannabis high can lead to some interesting, even life-changing, experiences. The content of these experiences can range from feelings of deep pleasure, expansiveness or disembodiment, to periods of sudden vibrant clarity, a sense of connectedness with the universe, or even an understanding of the nature of reality itself. I'll be talking about them more later, as this could well be something that you've already experienced, with or without the help of weed.
Described as 'Cosmic Awareness' (also transcendental experiences, Peak Experiences, moksha, Satori, etc.), it's an event that people around the world have reported having had, in and out of meditation, for thousands of years. According to polls carried out in the UK and in America over the last two decades (by both GAP and Gallup), that's around 54% of us at some time in our lives.
Many people are constantly at the edges of the larger experience of Cosmic Awareness, regularly feeling smaller 'glimpses' of the full state in spontaneous bouts of deep bliss, or sensations of 'energy' at various points in their bodies. Here's a story by a writer describing a deep event that occurred to her whilst looking casually out of a window:
“…It was as simple as taking a step forwards. One second I was me, the next I was everything. But ‘everything’? In reality there was no ‘everything’, there was just a me that was beyond any words. Not that normal reality had somehow disappeared, my eyes were wide open, but I was whatever I saw, and everything I couldn't see too. But I must say that talking about ‘becoming’ anything is wrong though if I'm going to be precise, as I know now that I've always been what I found myself to be.”
“Near the beginning of the experience I had felt myself grow bigger and had seen the Earth, then our galaxy, then the universe itself, shrink within me until it was just a small yellow star. From this outer viewpoint I felt I could have re-entered our reality at any point in time or space, because neither were barriers to me and had no real meaning."
“I was everything, and as it all I simply had to turn my attention towards ideas, like death, reality, or time and I understood them completely. Not just intellectually in words and images, but I felt them in terms of underlying meanings and structures that were already present in my larger consciousness in ways that I can’t begin to describe.”
“It was what I imagine waking up from amnesia to be like; suddenly coming back to reality and realising that the life you've been living for so long is not your real life, that you are something and someone else. I was not ‘me’, I was infinite but without dimensions. I was awareness without a mind. There was no time that I could be subject to, although I could feel all time within myself, moving without moving. But, despite what was happening to me, it wasn’t like entering into an unreal, psychedelic world where everything seemed strange. I knew this place well and it all seemed perfectly normal to be there once again. I can’t begin to describe the feelings of relief, familiarity and nostalgia I felt to be back where I should be. I was home again...”
“...The strength of what I experienced changed the way I think and act to a major extent and thankfully all for the better. Of course it changed too what I believe about our reality, as I can't help but know this new perspective as being a more accurate understanding of what's around us. You might think that discovering something like this would make you want to go and live a monk's life, or become 'religious', or sit in a chair and just wonder at the strangeness of it all. But life still has to be lived. Although I now don’t see the world in the way I once did, there's still this illusion of ‘I’ that needs to eat and live. Nothing has changed except me…”
A simpler, but no less interesting experience was had by a scientist working in the Antarctic who, after a long trek, sat down to rest and found, “...I realized that I had expanded. I was no longer a small discrete consciousness located in my head - I encompassed the whole valley. I was HUGE. I was part of everything - or rather everything was part of me. I was ancient and unbelievably powerful. It was wonderful...”
It's important to point out that having experiences like those above does not necessarily make anyone enlightened. They may be moments of realisation of our true nature, but unless that realisation is total, fully understood and integrated into day-to-day life so that it replaces the subject's conventional view of reality, it stays pretty much just an experience (a Nyam) - albeit a very changing one.