Joseph Campbell said, “The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” I didn’t realize the full import of those words until my first psychotic break.
It was in the back of a Greyhound bus, heading to Denver. I’d smoked a joint and taken a mini-dose of psilocybin (2 grams) before slumping in my seat and proceeding to meditate. As I sunk deeper into observing the breath and then entering jhana, something unusual happened.
My mind was fixed on a quote I’d read from the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger: “The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings.”