LSD, Tibetan Buddhism, and the Cosmic Joke of Being
10 years ago, I took my first psychedelic trip — an initiation into the great cosmic joke. It jarred me so thoroughly that I translated the whole (ok, a tiny bit of) experience into my Philosophy Master’s thesis. All dressed up in academic formality, complete with footnotes and a respectable bibliography. I plunged headfirst into the abyss of consciousness, altered states, and the slippery, paradoxical relationship between the ‘I’ and whatever lurks beyond it. But it wasn’t until recently, when I stumbled upon the ancient Bön Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, that the puzzle pieces clicked into place. Suddenly, what had once been a neon-lit freefall made an eerie, elegant sense.
In this cutesy but serious essay, I want to put it all together and share my take on how psychedelic experiences unapologetically upend one’s worldview, reality, identity, and inner landscape. They pull down the curtain without warning, revealing something so vast and raw that trying to make sense of it feels like nothing. If you’re lucky (I was), you might witness bare reality — stripped to its bones, indifferent to interpretation.
Psychology + Philosophy Helped me Make Sense of it ALL
To set the stage, let me first lay out the components that I need to make my point clear and visual.
My first stepping stone was transpersonal psychology, a branch of knowledge that became my intellectual bridge to mystical states and my diploma paper. Known as a spiritual extension, it emerged in the late 1960s as the “fourth force” in psychology, adding to:
- Psychoanalysis → unconscious motivations
- Behaviorism → observable behavior
- Humanistic psychology → personal growth
This hip type of psyche-logy has expanded the range of human experiences beyond the personal or ego-based level — into mystical inner journeys, altered states of consciousness, and a sense of interconnectedness with others and the universe.
First, I got acquainted with Stanislav Grof, one of the icebreakers of transpersonal psychology. He developed this field through psychedelic-assisted research, especially in relation to the “perinatal” and “transpersonal” areas, including visions of birth, death, and other life milestones. Grof devised holotropic breathwork, a technique to expand into non-ordinary states of being through deep, accelerated breathing, without the use of substances. We tried it with my philosophy mates back in the day, but backed away when the trance started to feel a bit too real.
Then, I met Abraham Maslow, who is best known for the hierarchy of human needs. However, his later work stirred transpersonal psychology, particularly with the concept of peak experiences–profound moments of love, creativity, understanding, or unity. They represented the evolution of self-actualization, a top of his pyramid. Beyond it lies self-transcendence, a stage where individuals move beyond ego-centered goals. It’s not just dry theory; we all touch on these otherworldly moments, be it through creative flow, nature awe, compassion, philanthropy, or crisis-induced transformation. All these states exist out of time and space, where we go beyond personal desires to contribute to something larger than ourselves.
The final figure I’ll mention here is Ken Wilber, a catchy thinker both in psychology and philosophy. His approach is unique and almost too rigorous for the delicate subject of non-ordinary planes of consciousness. But it’s a good match for my academic entanglements with the topic. Wilber integrates diverse traditions and findings from psychology, philosophy, sociology, spirituality, and even biology into a unified theory known as Integral Theory.
The AQAL (All Quadrants, All Levels) framework is a map for understanding human experience from four perspectives of reality (see the graph below for details). His theory argues that consciousness itself evolves through stages, not just on an individual level but across the collective history, meaning that humans, as a species, are continually evolving toward higher levels of self-awareness and spiritual consciousness, which he refers to as the “Great Nest of Being.”
While traditional psychology focuses primarily on the individual’s psyche and its disorders, its transpersonal cousin looks at the possibility of self-expansion beyond the ordinary ego state (one’s usual sense of self that structures daily life), considering spiritual experiences as valid and necessary aspects of the human condition.
4. Transpersonal psychology → beyond the self
This discussion raises a wilder question– how have humans across time cracked open the doors of perception? Long before theory, there was practice. I know you know where I am going with this ;) For many ancient cultures, the answer was direct: psychoactive substances.
Beyond Academia
Long before modern curiosity, psychedelics like peyote, ayahuasca, and psilocybin mushrooms were central to the spiritual and healing traditions of ancient cultures. Indigenous tribes across North and South America these substances guided sacred rituals, as a way to heal, commune with ancestors, and bridge the seen and unseen worlds. Today, ayahuasca brews from the Amazon rainforest have become trendy among the Westerners, so-called progressive seekers of awakening.
I first came across this idea in Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Though anthropological in nature, I read it as semi-fiction when I was seventeen. The book follows Castaneda as he becomes an apprentice to a Mexican shaman, documenting his psychedelic initiations in detail.
When it comes to the academic West, the link between psychedelics and “cosmic doorways” was made in early 20th-century explorations. Thinkers like W.E. Harding and gatherings such as the Sages’ Conferences brought together minds like Aldous Huxley and A.R. Orage, who were discussing the spiritual dimensions of the psyche long before the official psychedelic era. In The Doors of Perception (1954), Huxley argues that mescaline temporarily alters the brain’s filtering system, allowing us to perceive the world in a more vivid and direct way, bypassing the usual mental filters that limit our awareness. He suggests that this expanded perception offers eyewinks into a more profound reality.
Then of course there is the work of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), two respected psychology professors who turned their cosmic bond with psychedelics into clinical research through the Harvard Psychedelic Research Program in the 1960s. Unsurprisingly, their experiments on identity and altered states drew media attention, and Harvard quickly distanced itself from the controversy. By 1963, the program was shut down, and both professors were fired.
But it didn’t stop them from demystifying psychedelics through research and spreading knowledge. They did a good job at shortening the gap between academia and spirituality, and influencing the emerging acid culture.
Yet, session after session, they kept hitting the same roadblock — their experiences wouldn’t integrate into everyday life. As Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass, a name given to him in India) put it, psychedelics weren’t leading to lasting change. The sessions no longer offered new insights. They needed structure and practical guidance.
“I went from psychology to psychedelics. The mushrooms showed me my inner-self. During that first mushroom trip I said, ‘I’m home…I’m home.’ It was something that psychology had never acknowledged. Well, maybe Jung…he was on this plane. Then I saw my friends going off to India. At that time Aldous Huxley gave me a book. He gave me the Tibetan Book of the Dead. That book explained these planes of consciousness. I said, if the Easterners know this much I’ve got to go, because we didn’t know that much. So I went to India.”
Ram Dass in his reflections.
And I went to Tibet. Symbolically, accidentally, through a book.
So, what actually happened 10 years ago to me?
This is the part where I make the entrance with my personal experience. I felt the same bitter-blissful aftertaste after my first acid trip. The whole journey–suspended outside of time– showed me countless perspectives on reality, all paradoxically folding back into oneness. When inside that outstretched state of consciousness, connections between the dots formed I hadn’t even known existed. The Big Questions? All answered.
But when I returned to reality, those answers didn’t make the trip back with me. It was as if they only existed within the frequency of the mystical experience — one that didn’t match the ordinary world.
Did it change me? Absolutely. But more on a subconscious level than a conscious one. And only recently, a decade later, did it hit me– I’ve neared a clearer understanding of what LSD did to my mind, my identity, my awareness. By chance, I stumbled upon a lens that helped me conceptualize the mysterious — Bön, Dzogchen, or Tibetan Buddhism. Back then, I wasn’t familiar with this Eastern tradition, yet somehow, I was catapulted — without warning — into a non-ordinary reality where my identity completely dissolved. Thankfully, not for good.
Beyond the expected sensory expansion — hearing colors, feeling music as though acid had temporarily grown a new organ in me, watching space stretch and bounce, looping through time — I underwent ego death. As if conjured by a trickster god, what had been light and pleasantly elusive — where my five senses were freed from their conditioned cages — suddenly turned to darkness. No vision, no sound, no sensation of my body.
I found myself in a vast, empty outer space, with only a few dark, dirty-brown planets in the background. Everything was completely still. I have no idea how long I remained frozen there, but I remember the panic setting in when an arrowy thought that I couldn’t remember my name hit me. I kept asking, Who am I? What is my name? Silence. No answer. Then, without warning, I was plugged back into the material world.
What followed was a generous wash of sensual gifts — fractals, the illusion of time unraveling, a feast for the body. And toward the end, when my senses had indulged in their otherworldly play, a different kind of experience broke through: soft-spoken, coherent insights began pouring into my mind.
I will never forget that moment — one that felt like a short lifetime — when I stood outside on a warm summer night, under a clear, starry sky. I looked up, and suddenly, the Universe spoke to me. It was my voice, yet softer, wiser. And for the first time, I didn’t just understand but felt, with every fiber of my being, the age-old truth:
everything is one, and one is everything
Everything Is Everything
It was profound. Because in that pocket of expanded, barrier-free consciousness, I wasn’t just thinking about this universal principle — I was experiencing it by blending with every element around me.
Fast forward to now, I’ve come to understand that my plunge into darkness mirrors Dzogchen’s practice of cutting through the conceptual mind to recognize the primordial state of being. Tibetan Buddhism describes the nature of mind as an open, infinite, sky-like emptiness — but this void is not mere absence or nihilism. It is pregnant with potential, luminous in its essence. The goal is to recognize Rigpa, the pure, non-dual awareness underlying every single thing. However, this state of existence is often obscured by sneaky thought patterns, sensory distractions, and clinging to the “I”.
Ego death, described as the complete dissolution of self-concept, identity, and personal narrative, is one way to spring directly into Rigpa. In my experience, the absence of sensory input — no sound, no vision — along with the void-like imagery (darkness with planets) seemed to show me the way to a pristine mode of emptiness. It was a space where the conditioned mind ceased to function, external distractions faded, and I encountered an unfiltered state of awareness.
As if having my identity wiped clean wasn’t enough, I was in for yet another psychedelic delight, unknowingly stepping into another layer of Bön teachings. Looking back, I’d rank this as the most terrifying episode. While everyone else was slowly grounding themselves in mundane reality, I was spiraling into what I can only describe as “the meaningless, illogical world.” The hallucinations had faded, but the part of my brain responsible for assigning meaning — to objects, events, interactions — hadn’t come back online yet.
I remember watching a movie, fully aware of the plot, characters, and actions, yet unable to grasp any sense behind it. Everything appeared exactly as it was, but stripped of interpretation and definition — as if the entire framework of meaning had been erased. A deep fear gripped me: What if the acid had permanently erased my ability to make sense of things? What if I could never function in society again?
Eventually, the paranoia lifted with the sunrise. There was something undeniably powerful and illuminating in the sun that snapped my mind back into place. It took me years to process that experience, but in the end, it boiled down to this:
Everything is neutral — until we assign it meaning and perspective.
Final Verdict
A decade later, I realize the trip never really ended. Psychedelics cracked open a doorway I didn’t know existed, but it was the slow, subtle unfolding of time that revealed what lay beyond it. What I once dismissed as a fleeting anomaly — a brief ego-death, a glimpse into the void — was, in truth, a rehearsal for something far greater.
Bön and Dzogchen provided the language for what I had only felt in my bones: that the self is a mask, reality is a mirage, and the mind, in its grasping, distorts the luminous emptiness beneath it all. Psychedelics yanked the rug out from under me. Tibetan wisdom, on the other hand, showed me how to stand without one.
The joke, it turns out, wasn’t just cosmic — it was personal. Because the deeper I search, the clearer it becomes: there is nothing to find, nothing to hold onto, and yet… everything remains. A paradox, perfectly intact.
