Miracle of Ordinary Reality
In my previous posts I have written how mystical experiences and altered states of consciousness have accompanied humanity throughout history. They have inspired religions, philosophical traditions, artistic movements, and personal transformations. Such experiences may emerge through meditation, physical exhaustion, ritual practices, trauma, or psychedelic substances. They often challenge ordinary perceptions of ordinary reality and may momentarily dissolve familiar distinctions between the self and world outside, life and death, or good and evil.
Figure 1. Frau vor der untergehenden Sonne by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818, 22 × 30 cm, oil on canvas, Essen, Museum Folkwang (source: Wikimedia Commons)
Within the context of Zen practice, however, extraordinary experiences are not regarded as goals in themselves. Rather, they are viewed as passing phenomena among countless other experiences. What ultimately matters is the ability to encounter reality directly and appreciate ordinary existence exactly as it is. This post explores mystical experience, altered states of consciousness, psychedelics, and Zen philosophy through examples drawn from anthropology, psychology, religion, and personal reflection.
A mystical experience may indeed provide an opportunity to perceive the unknown, emptiness, and infinity within time and space without ourselves at the centre of them. In such moments, we may perceive all contradictions and paradoxes without any contradiction at all. Binary oppositions such as life and death, or good and evil, lose the limited meanings usually assigned to them. In my previous post I described how the mystic sees the entire universe within a blade of grass and knows what his ”face looked like before his parents met”.
The Indian Nobel Prize-winning writer, philosopher, poet, songwriter, and musician Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) writes:
“I’ve travelled all around the world to see the rivers and the mountains, and I’ve spent a lot of money. I have gone to great lengths, I have seen everything, but I forgot to see just outside my house a dewdrop on a little blade of grass, a dewdrop which reflects in its convexity the whole universe around you.”
I too have had several unusual experiences over the years, the most powerful of which occurred during long meditation retreats. Such experiences are not the purpose or goal of Zen practice. They are merely experiences among all other experiences, which may or may not have long-lasting effects upon one’s understanding of oneness of life.
These experiences are often highly unusual while they are occurring because they sometimes differ so radically from our ordinary everyday experience. At times they may even feel more real than ordinary daily life itself. Our senses become heightened and everything appears more vivid, which may lead us to appreciate ordinary things in an entirely new manner. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. Fundamentally, however, Zen practice concerns appreciating this reality and this life exactly as they are. This is contentment. One may learn this simply by sitting silently and remaining still, yet doing so requires patience and trust in the possibility that such a seemingly dull practice might contain profound wisdom.
Altered States of Consciousness and Human Culture
Altered states of consciousness have played an important role in the emergence of human cultures. Sometimes such states have occurred entirely by accident, for example during persistence hunting, among the indigenous hunter-gatherers. During the long and arduous process of the persistence hunt, the running hunter becomes exhausted while tracking an antelope beneath the blazing sun. These experiences were described by South African anthropologists Louis Liebenberg (2013). While conducting interviews for my own doctoral dissertation (Ijäs 2017), I also spoke with American ultramarathon runners who had experienced imaginative and bizarre visions during long races. One runner had seen a solitary telephone booth upon a mountain trail at night, while another had seen flying carpets. Altered states of consciousness have likewise occurred among prisoners of war who, due to pain, thirst, and hunger, experienced sensations of leaving their own bodies.
The South African archaeologist David Lewis-Williams, in his work Conceiving God (2011), has suggested that prophets and mystics of earlier eras may have suffered from migraines, epilepsy, or schizophrenia. Such medical conditions may have produced visions and perceptual distortions departing from ordinary reality, including angels and burning bushes. One possible explanation for the psychedelic experiences and revelations of ancient times may also involve the accidental ingestion of psychedelic substances such as ergoline, from which LSD was synthesised in the 20th century. Ergoline occurs in ergot fungi, which may be found in rye, wheat, and barley.
Psychedelic substances — plants, moulds, and fungi — or ceremonial activities intended to induce altered states of consciousness may very well have contributed to the foundations of present-day religious traditions. Such ceremonial practices may at times have been extremely intense. These included activities designed to exhaust the mind, such as dancing, music, meditation, intensive prayer, bloodletting, intentionally induced pain, suffocation, swarming of ants, or near-drowning.
A mystical experience may place an individual upon a path that differs radically from their former life. An example of such transformation may be found in Francis of Assisi, who one day experienced a spiritual awakening in the San Damiano chapel, where the icon of the crucified Christ told him “Repair my house, as you see, it is falling into ruin.”
Francis had spent his youth living a luxurious and pleasure-seeking life, yet after this experience he devoted everything he possessed to caring for society’s abandoned poor.
Psychedelics, Existential Anxiety, and Zen Criticism
Contemporary psychedelic research described in my previous posts (such as this one)has attempted to facilitate mystical experiences believed to alleviate existential anxiety associated with, for example, fear of death, chronic depression, and substance addiction. These conditions are familiar to all of us, and they are often referred in religious contexts as suffering, or as dissatisfaction, as I have tried in these posts. These are similar concerns to those for which Indigenous peoples have sought answers through ceremonies involving psychedelics or other consciousness-altering sacraments and rituals. The San people of the Kalahari Desert perform trance dances, while Indigenous peoples of North America engage in long-distance running and ceremonial dancing. Altered states of consciousness function as elements that bind communities together. Such experiences may help dissolve inner dissatisfaction and existential anxiety, and suffering.
Altered states of consciousness or mystical experiences may awaken a person to perceive the world without the filter of self-centredness, to appreciate life, and to recognise the interconnected nature of all things. Yet rather than seeking a shortcut away from dissatisfaction by travelling to the Amazon rainforest to participate in an ayahuasca ceremony, I would recommend pausing for a moment and asking: is it truly necessary? Is this merely another method of satisfying our inner small self, which manifests through various desires, cravings, and needs? In some cases it might be true, but is it really true in your case?
The American non-fiction writer and Zen teacher Brad Warner has written critically about psychedelic use in his books such as Hardcore Zen (2003). Warner asks whether religious experiences induced by psychedelics are real. Of course they are, yet precisely for that reason they are useless. According to Warner, both religious visions and psychedelic experiences are fantasies, illusions, and projections of one’s hidden desires. They have nothing whatsoever to do with truth or reality. In his work Letters to a Dead Friend About Zen (2019), he expands upon his critique of psychedelics:
“To me this is like saying reality is not enough. The infinite universe, extending forever both outward to the endless depths of space and inward to the boundless depths of the soul, the real world, a mystery of mysteries, this profoundly weird place we live in, this profoundly unfathomable thing we are, this is not enough? I just can’t get behind that idea.”
Warner continues by explaining how Dogen, in his 1241 text Jinzu (“Mystical Powers”), describes his own understanding of great miracles and small miracles. Dogen writes about stories concerning the alleged miracles of Buddhist masters from the past. According to Dogen, such supposed miraculous acts are merely small miracles, possible only within the context of the great miracle, which is existence itself within this reality. Warner argues that insights obtained through intoxicating substances are at best merely small insights, and ultimately superficial ones.
I agree with both Dogen and Warner that the so-called ordinary world is the true great miracle. The fact that we exist as entirely ordinary human beings is not ordinary at all. Sitting silently and remaining still is therefore an exploration of this everyday, dull, ordinary, and constantly moving and changing reality. Once we cease searching for extreme experiences elsewhere, we may accept our fundamental dissatisfaction and, paradoxically, become one with it, and content with what we already possess.
Conclusion
Mystical experiences and altered states of consciousness have accompanied humanity across cultures and throughout history. They may emerge through meditation, physical exhaustion, ritual practices, trauma, or psychedelic substances, and they often possess the power to transform how individuals perceive themselves and reality. Yet from the perspective of Zen, such extraordinary states are not ends in themselves. They are transient experiences rather than ultimate truths. However, these transient experiences can also teach us something, but this kind of learning requires deep humility and willingness. It takes faith, which is one of the most important ingredients of Zen practise.
The deeper insight suggested by Zen practice is that reality, precisely as it already exists, is sufficient. The ordinary world — with all its simplicity, imperfection, and constant movement — is itself the great miracle. Rather than pursuing increasingly extreme experiences in search of meaning, fulfilment may instead arise from learning to sit quietly, observe directly, and appreciate life exactly as it is.
References
Ijäs, M. (2017). Fragments of the Hunt. Persistence Hunting, Tracking and Prehistoric Art. Aalto University.
Lewis-Williams, D. (2011). Conceiving God: The cognitive origin and evolution of religion. Thames & Hudson.
Liebenberg, L. (2013). The Origin of Science – The Evolutionary Roots of Scientific Reasoning and its Implications for Tracking Science. CyberTracker.
Nishijima, G., & Cross, C. (Trans.). (1996). Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo. Windbell Publications.
Warner, B. (2017). It Came from Beyond Zen!: More practical advice from Dogen, Japan’s greatest Zen master. New World Library.
Warner, B. (2019). Letters to a Dead Friend About Zen. New World Library.
Warner, B. (2003). Hardcore Zen: Punk rock, monster movies and the truth about reality. Wisdom Publications.