Namaste friends!
As you may know from my first post on this blog, psychedelics and especially ayahuasca were the thing that broke my mind wide open and eventually led me to find Buddhism (dependent origination) in my search for answers.
And yet, from what I have found in talking to hundreds of people online who have tried ayahuasca and other psychedelics, it seems that most often the result of this is what happened to me for a few years: vastly inflated ego and delusional thinking.
This is also possible with many spiritual paths, of course. Any path which does not teach NO SELF via dependent origination, is liable to get people into "I AM" or "One [Universal] Mind" stages as listed here and clarified here. From there, most people seem to get stuck, because such a state is incredibly sublime and it is hard to imagine that there is any imperfection in it, even tho to outsiders it sounds ridiculous as people like Sai Baba claim to be God, claim to grow their infinite power each day and so forth. Would God listen to a human being (like Buddha) who tells him that he is actually delusional and in reality he is nobody?
Thus, if you are thinking of breaking open your mind with psychedelics, I ask you to please save yourself a great deal of suffering and delusional thinking and not do so unless a) you already have developed right view of No Self/automatic perfection, and b) you do not have manic/bipolar tendencies in your family.
I do think that psychedelics can be useful catalysts to removing all doubt about the Buddha Dharma, but only once Right View is firmly established (please do the dialog at LiberationUnleashed.com for an introduction to this No Self understanding). And even then, I don't think they are necessary, because with intense effort and desire, one can achieve the state of No Self/No Mind and even cosmic consciousness (which is separate and almost unrelated), just from following the meditation instructions I've posted.
Perhaps the main problem with psychedelics, and even cosmic consciousness states, is that the mind states are so far away from our everyday experience that it makes liberation seem something very difficult to achieve permanently. That is why Buddha tried to show people how to stop suffering right here, right now, in the midst of ordinary everyday life and perception. His advice to Bahiya is exemplary of that.
In fact, it makes sense that psychedelic states would not be conducive to understanding the dependently originated nature of reality, because to do so requires logically examining direct, ordinary experience and the causes & conditions associated with it.
P.S. Some folks have asked me about whether it is worthwhile to go to the Amazon to do aya with a shaman. My response is that most shamans don't seem to understand much about the nature of reality, and their brew is not likely to be any more effective than your own if you follow the right recipe (hint: pure harmalas make things much more reliable). However, there is one place down there I would recommend: http://ayahuascaprajna.com/about-us/about-us/
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