Which is more pleasurable...psychedelics, the nondual state, or sex?

Q.  

How does the nondual state compare to sex?  How does the nondual state compare to  psychedelics?   Does sex affect the nondual state?  Does sex affect meditation?


G.  

These were surprising questions because they were asked in an open discussion at an academic meeting by a scientific researcher.  i had not closely done these comparisons, although it had been discussed w/folk, and there were my own experiences, so it was an useful point.

The comparisons between psychedelics, (or "entheogens"; "en" for "inside", "theo" for "the Divine" and "gen" for "generating", or "generating the Divine inside") and the states reached by experienced meditators have been the lore of the meditation and entheogenic communities for some time.  

Neem Karoli Baba

In the 1960s, a well-known encounter occurred between Neem Karoli Baba, a popular guru, and Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, the spiritual teacher and famous popularizer of  psychedelics).  Neem Karoli Baba was the guru of many well-known contemporary musicians and spiritual teachers in addition to Ram Dass, including Bhagavan Das, Krishna Das, and an old friend, Durga Das.  

The meeting w/Ram Dass was documented in Ram Dass' books' including "Be Here Now" and "Miracle of Love".  "Be Here Now" was a 70s cult classic; still have mine...

As Ram Dass described:

              I put one pill on his palm.  Each...was about three hundred micrograms of very pure LSD - a solid dose for an adult. He beckoned for more, so I put a second pill in his hand...Again he beckoned...making the total dosage 900 micrograms...Then he threw all the pills into his mouth. My reaction was one of shock mixed with fascination...He allowed me to stay for an hour--and nothing happened.  Nothing whatsover.  He just laughed...   

That powerful psychedelics had no discernible effect on, nor interest for, "awakened" folk was important and surprising in the West, which by the early 70s had seen many psychedelic experiences.  

Currently, Eckhart Tolle, talking w/Oprah Winfrey, compared what he experienced after awakening, which he describes as "to perceive the world without this continuous interference of mental noise", to being on LSD/acid:

ECKHART: Yes...I woke up and...everything looked so fresh...and alive..I caught a bird song outside as if I'd never heard it before. Because the mind had become still, and there was simply the beautiful perception of everything...Incredible. I've never seen that before.

Eckhart Tolle

OPRAH WINFREY: Sounds like a drug trip.

ECKHART TOLLE: Well, later...people...ask me, "Is that like acid?" Because some people...say, "Oh, we experienced that when we took acid,"...Until finally, I'll tell you in confidence, finally I tried acid just for once...just to see…

OPRAH WINFREY: If it was the same thing?

ECKHART TOLLE: Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY: Yeah?

ECKHART TOLLE: It's not quite the same thing because what I experienced was much more subtle and beautiful. The acid...has almost a violent thing where violently the perceptions, sense perceptions become so magnified that there was no room for thinking anymore. But I could see why...for some people it's a glimpse of what it means to perceive the world without this continuous interference of mental noise.

OPRAH WINFREY: Yeah, but your trip without acid was better.

ECKHART TOLLE: Much better.

BTW, Osho described his experience w/LSD similarly.  

These well-known spiritual teachers experienced entheogens as less pleasurable than their "perceiving the world without this continuous interference of mental noise".  What about compared to sex?

Well, i asked folk i worked with who had experience with psychedelics, sex, and nonduality to make their own unbiased, honest comparisons.  (Importantly, as w/Neem Karoli Baba and Eckhart Tolle, these are not "statistically significant" and are "anecdotal".)  

i asked folk to rate on a 1 to 10 (highest) scale, their "typical" level of pleasure experienced in five states; a) nondual, b) dual after nondual experiences, c) dual before having nondual experiences, d) psychedelic/entheogenic, and e) sexual orgasm.  (i am a psychedelic "virgin", so provided input on other states.)

The results are shown in the chart.

The avg scores (left to right) were entheogens (9.5), sexual orgasm (8.0), nondual state (10), dual state after having experienced nonduality (6), and dual state before experiencing nonduality (3).   

Different entheogens were similar w/ayahuasca slightly lower than LSD and psilocybin.  "Peak experience", an "ecstatic, non-functional state w/unity of subject and object w/o any plant or chemical assist", was highly variable, but was 10+ and qualitatively different from the nondual state.  (BTW, there were no women in the study - their results might be different.  Note that pleasures are not "additive", i.e. Tolle did not experience a 19.5 (entheogenetics + nondual), but more likely a 9.5 w/negative side effects.)

The similarity of the pleasure scores between nonduality and entheogenics should be no surprise to readers of this blog.  The posts "Seeing everything as "One"? What is mystical?", "Persistent meditative states - how?  pscychedelics how?", and "magic mushrooms work like meditation? the latest science", discussed the close parallels between how nondual meditation and the serotonergic entheogenics appear to function cognitive neuroscientifically, and in the mystical states they generate.  

Arguably, the sex and nondual scores "must" be this way.  If sex was more pleasurable than meditation, there would be no meditators (as the Buddha allegedly said).  Also, as the brain is a pleasure/pain ratio maximizer, i.e. for the same level of pleasure, if/as the pain/suffering/craving/side-effects in sex are greater, a pleasure w/less pain, nonduality, would ultimately "win".  This answers a frequent question i get as folk make serious progress - "why has my sexual desire gone down?"    

Also, as discussed by Kringelbach and Berrige in "Pleasures of the Brain", Oxford, 2010, pain is weighted more heavily than pleasure as an evolutionarily-developed protective measure.  Going to a watering hole a million years ago, if the pleasure of seeing the blue sky was greater than the pain arising from a patch of brown fur in the bushes, we would not have  survived.  Those who overweighted pain were more likely to survive.  

As to whether sex had any impact on pleasure subsequently experienced in the nondual state, the answer was "yes"; it was negatively impacted for a day or two.  The nondual state remained, but pleasure was lower, then returning gradually to the normal level.  With ecstatic, non-functional, peak experiences, a longer time period was required  before those states manifested. 

 Also, the more cumulative time that the nondual state is present in general in doing this work, the more pleasurable it gets, presumably as the brain gets the new functional pattern "optimized/stabilized"; it can initially appear "flat".