00:00In recent times, psychedelics coming back, not just in popular culture, but in some serious
00:07medicine. But as far as psychedelics opening up the real reality that we have never seen without
00:14it, I'm a deep skeptic of that. What's your view? Psychedelics as chemical compounds are
00:23for medical science to investigate. From where I look at them, they are just objects.
00:30Self-enquiry is about the subject being honest with itself. It is not about subject dealing
00:38with fancy objects. Even the mind is simply an object to the ego. So you can alter the
00:46state of the mind and that does nothing to the quality of the ego, the subject. Just
00:54that the subject can now entertain itself or console itself because the subject's quality
01:01of experience has changed. But change of experience, let's understand, in no way indicates a change
01:11of experiencer. This is the thing in my hand right now. And I could keep this here and
01:20pick this up. And the object has changed. The temperature that I feel would change. The weight
01:27that I experience would have changed. The color that I see would have changed. The experience
01:32would change. But have I changed? The experiencer hasn't changed. Be it an ordinary medicine,
01:38a drug or a psychedelic one that does not have a bearing on who I am. My inner ignorance remains
01:47at the same level. For a while, I will feel different just as one feels different in a dream. You
01:56can have a dream and you can feel elated, uplifted,
02:01alternately depressed. That does not change who you are.
