The nature of nonduality: The epistemic implications of meditative and psychedelic experiences

Summary

The author argues that psychedelic experiences can reveal an epistemic gap between experiential knowledge and relational knowledge through nondual experiences of subject-object dissolution. While connecting these experiences to Buddhist practices, the article suggests that more rigorous analysis is needed to understand nondual experiences and their relationship to Buddhism. It also addresses the risks of decontextualizing these experiences from their cultural roots and highlights the potential of psychedelics in reducing introspective bias in personal inquiry.

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Abstract

Abstract In Jylkkä's ( Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience , Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2022) Mary on Acid: Experiences of unity and the epistemic gap, the author contends that psychedelic experience, by inducing unitary—nondual—experiences of subject–object dissolution, brings to light the epistemic gap between unitary knowledge, constituted by experience, and relational knowledge, distinct from experience. Jylkkä draws a connection between the nondual experience as occasioned through psychedelic usage, and Buddhist contemplative practices. While Jylkkä's attempt to establish a dialogue between analytic philosophy, Buddhism and the science of psychedelics is laudable, we contend that more rigorous attention is required to characterizing nondual experience, the forms of experience occasioned by psychedelic use, and whether they truly constitute parallel to states cultivated through Buddhist practice traditions. While such parallelism may speak to a deeper unification, such a claim requires substantiation to avoid the perennialist eliding of the varied and rich engagement with nonduality across completive traditions. This article highlights the internal tensions that exist surrounding the nature of the nondual as elucidated across Indo‐Tibetan traditions, dangers of decontextualizing states induced through culturally embedded contemplative practices including the underrecognized epistemic function of ceremonial ethnomedicine usage in generating Indigenous metaphysics; and the under acknowledged potential of psychedelic substances for attenuating introspective bias in first‐person phenomenological inquiry.

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