I was sent this by Tim Ferriss recently, and I loved the quote from Island below. While I don’t think it was the intention, I thought it was a neat way to think about microdosing (dinner) as compared to a full dose (banquet):

“Over 50 years after Aldous Huxley published Island, science has finally begun to catch up to his understanding of the benefits of combining psychedelics with meditation or other spiritual practices: A 2018 Johns Hopkins study found that the combination of guided psilocybin sessions and a long-term meditation program resulted in significant improvements in emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being compared to meditation alone.

Here is a thought-provoking dialogue from Island about the fictional psychedelic “moksha-medicine” on this relationship between psychedelics and meditation:”

“The moksha-medicine takes you to the same place as you get to in meditation.”

“So why bother to meditate?”

“You might as well ask, Why bother to eat your dinner?”

“But, according to you, the moksha-medicine is dinner.”

“It’s a banquet,” she said emphatically. “And that’s precisely why there has to be meditation. You can’t have banquets every day. They’re too rich and they last too long. Besides, banquets are provided by a caterer; you don’t have any part in the preparation of them. For your everyday diet you have to do your own cooking. The moksha-medicine comes as an occasional treat.”

“In theological terms, the moksha-medicine prepares one for the reception of gratuitous graces—pre-mystical visions or the full-blown mystical experiences. Meditation is one of the ways in which one co-operates with those gratuitous graces.”

“How?”

“By cultivating the state of mind that makes it possible for the dazzling ecstatic insights to become permanent and habitual illuminations. By getting to know oneself to the point where one won’t be compelled by one’s unconscious to do all the ugly, absurd, self-stultifying things that one so often finds oneself doing.”