Metachamanism: entheogens from the prism of Tibetan Buddhism

Psychedelics have been in vogue in the West since at least the 1960s. Initially, however, their use
was not truly liberating. Hippies sought transient transcendent experiences that failed to integrate
into the ordinary experience of individuals. Others sought to learn how to use them in the
misnamed "shamanism" of various regions of the Americas, but there one starts from the axiom
that the reality accessed in shamanic sessions is the true reality, while ordinary reality is an
illusory reality. There is therefore a risk of placing oneself in the hands of beings whose whims can
be unpredictable.
Currently, a third approach is being developed which claims to use psychedelics as an aid in
psychotherapy. This approach has proven to give very good results on the relative level, but it is
not focused on achieving transcendence, and, with it, freedom from all determining influences: both
ordinary and shamanic reality.
The approach I call «meta-shamanic» can be illustrated by the Tibetan practice of chö (gcod): the
practitioner induces in his experience visions of the beings that inhabit the afterworld in order to
offer them one’s own body as food and thus trigger an experience of absolute terror. Then, at the
zenith of this experience, a way of looking at the mind is applied that allows, if the practitioner has
the proper capacity and receives the blessings of our true nature, the visions to dissolve instantly,
making it evident that neither "shamanic" nor ordinary reality is objective or absolute. Each time
they dissolve, the practitioner is temporarily freed from conditioning by both realities – the shamanic and the ordinary – and, in the long run, the constant repetition of this dissolution
neutralizes the propensity to take either of these realities as absolutely true and substantial.