No-Ego or Oneness is NOT Awakening, but Spiritual Experience

You might hear people share their profound experiences in deep meditation: no-self, ego dissolution, duality, no-attachment, unity, union with the universe, oneness, no time and space, no future or past, ecstasy, bliss, holiness, etc. These are part of the spiritual or mystical experience. 

Those experiences are relatively rare and uniquely transformative, possibly the pinnacle of human experience that would topple and overturn everything you previously thought about reality. As a result, it had been mystified and sanctified. Many thought they had achieved Enlightenment because they had those spiritual experiences.

Yet, this is a huge misunderstanding that needs further clarification. Deep meditation could put the brain into an altered state of consciousness, a special state of consciousness that alters the operation of the brain, thus producing unique features of spiritual experience and bringing you incredible metaphysical insights. Consequently, this is why, throughout history, Dao, Vipassana, or Buddhism have great emphasis on meditation. Some religious rituals, such as the whirling dances of Turkey or the devout prayer of quiet contemplation, can also produce a similar effect, thus also referred to as "religious experiences." In modern days, Transpersonal psychology leverages breathing or other techniques to induce a similar effect. 

Spiritual experience, albeit extraordinary, is a temporary experience that has nothing to do with Enlightenment, liberation, or awakening. These are just natural phenomena, innate human capabilities. 

In fact, achieving spiritual experience is not as difficult as imagined. There are some relatively easy ways to induce such experiences, including the use of psychedelic substances such as LSD, MDMA, psilocybin mushrooms, or ayahuasca from the Peruvian Amazon, which, with proper guidance and dosage, can lead you to spiritual experiences. However, it's important to note that this method is not exactly viable in most places because psychedelic drugs are still classified as illegal substances in the United States, the European Union, and most other countries, often referred to as hallucinogens.

The brain can also be seen as a bio-computer. Perhaps we don't like our own hot temper, fear, trauma, impulsive behaviors, addiction, or anything that causes trouble in our lives. If you break down those issues, then you will realize they follow certain emotional and thinking patterns, like a software program; you create a function to process the input, and you will get an output as a result. However, if the function has a bug in it, it'll cause problems. Therefore, the process of healing and awakening is hacking a bio-computer to reprogram, deprogram, and fix the bugs. Yet, you need specific tools to hack it. 

So, here are the tools: deep meditation, hypnosis, or psychedelic substances temporarily change how the brain operates by increasing the brain's operational flexibility, helping the brain to break out of specific thought or behavior patterns, stopping the looping within certain neural networks, and thereby rewriting the cognitive programs. Break itself out of the loop, out of the conditioning, out of the depression or compulsive behaviors. Resulting in therapeutic effect.

In Michael Pollan's book, "How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics" and its Netflix series of the same name, he explains personal insights and those of many experimenters, stating, "Normal waking consciousness feels completely transparent, but rather than being a window to reality, it is a product of our imagination—a controlled hallucination."

Anyone who has experienced spiritual experiences would understand the meaning of "controlled hallucination." The reality we experience, which we take for granted, is shaken to its core in an altered state of consciousness, and we start questioning the authenticity of what we call reality.

Aldous Huxley, author of "Brave New World," shared his experiences with mescaline extracted from the South American cactus Anhalonium Lewinii in "The Doors of Perception," saying, "I could perceive the 'Nature of Things' in a new, direct way; and beyond that, there was a less obvious treasure—a special understanding in the realm of art."

Interestingly, stroke could lead to spiritual experiences. Neuroscientist Jill Taylor recorded her remarkable experiences in the book "My Stroke of Insight," sharing her "spiritual" journey while her left brain is submerged under the blood as the stroke impaired part of the brain's functionalities. She stated, "I have come to understand how it is that we are capable of having a "mystical" or "metaphysical" experience relative to our brain anatomy."

In the absence of the normal functioning of my left orientation association area, my perception of my physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air. I felt like a genie liberated from its bottle. The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria.

Without the traditional sense of my physical boundaries, I felt that I was at one with the vastness of the universe.

I was aware that I could no longer clearly discern the physical boundaries of where I began and where I ended. I sensed the composition of my being as that of a fluid rather than that of a solid. I no longer perceived myself as a whole object separate from everything. Instead, I now blended in with the space and flow around me.

If a stroke produces such experiences, perhaps near-death or the "out-of-body" experience may be having a similar effect due to the brain operating on the edge of shutting down or malfunctioning. 

While the brain is a unique state of consciousness, the perception of reality is temporarily altered. However, a person cannot permanently stay in this particular state of consciousness, floating in boundless space or oneness. Therefore, it's clear that the spiritual experience is not the state of Enlightenment. Spiritual experience and Enlightenment are two different things; one is temporary, and the other is a permanent paradigm shift, which implies a person can be enlightened without ever having had a spiritual experience.

This is a pill hard to swallow, especially for the ones who have invested years upon years in meditation practice to attain this particular experience, especially discovering that the experience could be achieved through shortcuts. Those meditators might argue that achieving it through meditation "naturally" is different from achieving it with substances. Yet, whether people experience through meditation or other methods, the experience is the same.

Rich spiritual experiences enrich the metaphysical concepts but do not translate to Enlightenment or awakening. A caterpillar has a glimpse of a butterfly, but it still dwells in the caterpillar's reality. Without dismantling the self-framework, the caterpillar remains a caterpillar, still living and thinking with the confinement of a caterpillar from the past.

A caterpillar can study a butterfly's attributes, speculating about its way of life and patterns, but nonetheless, unable to reveal the most important point, "How does a caterpillar transform into a butterfly?" Therefore, when many spiritual teachers are asked about awakening or moral dilemmas, they often provide seemingly grand but vague answers. They talk about compassion, love, equality, oneness, wisdom, letting go, emptiness, living in the present, ego, and higher self, or compile a list of metaphysical jargon for you to memorize without touching the thorny yet fundamental problems. 

Don't be fooled by spiritual experiences! Too many people stopped before the finish line. Let’s go further.