Bad trips, and Buddhism re-visited

So, last weekend this video, called We Finally Know Why Causes Bad Trips, was recommended to me by the All Knowing Google (YouTube arm):  

 

I have thoughts: 

a.   Even allowing for the algorithmic need for an eye-catching thumbnail, I really don't like this one, as (despite the content in the video itself), it really seems to encouraging people to not take "bad trips" very seriously.   

b.   It does mention ecstasy amongst the list of hallucinogens, which was news to me.   

c.   The video talks about how one of the features of a bad trip can be ego dissolution (or ego death), and that this sensation alone can have lasting negative effects after the drug has worn off.

d.   As usual with any internet content in which someone presents a cautionary note on the use of any recreational drug, it immediately attracts defenders of their habit in comments.   But the range of views in this thread are pretty interesting, mainly because of the two camps - those who say they went through the ego dissolution but found it peaceful or calming (or insightful), and those who said it was a very negative sensation for them which, for some, took months or years to get over.   (You also get the odd person who says they know someone who never was the same again from use of LSD or whatever, and not in a good way.)

Lots of people in comments go on about the basic idea that you should never use a hallucinogen if not in the "right" mood for it, and without being in a safe place with supportive people, etc.   But I still get the feeling that this is no guarantee of a positive trip.

The video explains that some MRI scanning indicates that people undergoing a bad trip (well, it actually mentions ego dissolution) were more likely to have glutamate active in the medial prefrontal cortex.   How useful this knowledge is seemingly anyone's guess - it certainly doesn't indicate any possibility of prediction of a bad trip 

e.   Anyway, the general discussion of ego dissolution got me thinking about Buddhism and its core idea of Anatta, or no self.   It's difficult not to draw a connection there, and while I have mentioned before the possible inspirational role of hallucinogens to Buddhist and Hindu imagery, I'm not sure that it had occurred to me before as inspiring Anatta.   

Anyway, in a broader sense, it is a little hard to understand why the sensation of experiencing loss of self or ego under drugs (or intense meditation, I suppose) should be unpleasant for some, but give a sense of peace to others.

Mind you, as I noted before, Mahayana Buddhism pushes back on the idea of extinction of self in favour of the core of a person being a process that, once enlightened enough, can decide how to manifest in various forms - which I suppose is consistent with reincarnation, it just disagrees about nirvana being an form of extinction.  This was all explained better in this post.   

Once again, though, it brings me back to my old dissatisfaction with the apparent contradiction in Buddhism as a philosophy - how compassion is meant to work in any motivational sense if you're walking around firmly of the view that not only your own life is a barely held together group of sensations, but that's all that is at the core of every one around you as well.  

Google can point me to the response:

By exposing the transparency of self, one opens up to the relational nature of identity, and thereby creates the ground for empathy and engagement.

From the same link (by Stephen Batchelor):

The Mahayana takes the concept of anatta and extends that to the development of compassion for all things, since there really is no separation between self and other. An image that conveys this most beautifully is Shantideva’s concept of the entire world being comparable to a single organism, a body. He says that just as when the foot is in pain, the hand will spontaneously reach out to assuage the pain of the foot, in the same way—if you are no longer inhibited by self-centeredness—you will spontaneously reach out to assuage the pain of others. That metaphor beautifully conveys the central insight of Mahayana Buddhism: Once the self is seen through, it does not just mean liberation, but also that your spontaneous response to others becomes that of a profound empathy. You recognize that who you are is not because of some kind of metaphysical substance or essence that is tucked away inside you somewhere, but rather is determined by the unrepeatable matrix of relationships that constitute your own history.

I kind of get that on one level - and the whole "we are all one" has an appeal in the way it aligns (metaphorically, at least) with quantum entanglement.   But it doesn't seem to me that it makes sense to say that the compassion is a "spontaneous response" in the way alleged.

One day I'll get it - or not!

Oh, and I suppose I should end in the somewhat rambling entry on ego death, and its connection with religions and hallucinogens, at Wikipedia.  It does end on this note:

Scholars have also criticized Leary and Alpert's attempt to tie ego-death and psychedelics with Tibetan Buddhism. John Myrdhin Reynolds, has disputed Leary and Jung's use of the Evans-Wentz's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, arguing that it introduces a number of misunderstandings about Dzogchen.^[89] Reynolds argues that Evans-Wentz's was not familiar with Tibetan Buddhism,^[89] and that his view of Tibetan Buddhism was "fundamentally neither Tibetan nor Buddhist, but Theosophical and Vedantist".^[90] Nonetheless, Reynolds confirms that the nonsubstantiality of the ego is the ultimate goal of the Hinayana system.^[91]