The Deepest Blue
Meditation and Psychedelics are not the only Mindfulness Tools
After about half an hour in utter blackness it appeared right in front of me. A shapeless entity, constantly morphing and twisting its form.
But it wasn’t its shape, or lack thereof, that was so intriguing. It was its color.
It was the bluest blue I had ever experienced.
In Plato’s theory of forms it would have been the idea of blue. The sheer notion of blueness itself.
It was exhilarating. Like for the first time I truly experienced what blue was.
I deliberately say experienced instead of seen, because I know it only existed in my mind. But then again, one could argue (and many have) that everything we believe to see is only a construct of our minds, an unfaithful reconstruction of the sensory inputs we actually receive.
Knowing it was in my mind I tried to control it, tried to make the shape bigger, more concrete. But the more I attempted to will it, the more it faded out of view.
So I tried the opposite strategy. Pretend to ignore it. Completely surrender. Just let it do its thing.
And there it was again, more potent than before, this deepest blue.
Both meditation and psychedelics have recently seen a huge revival in popular interest. From new agey fringe subjects, they have moved right to the center of attention and become some of the favorite tools of many of the world’s top performers.
Personally I also see them as invaluable tools. I have a (more or less) daily meditation habit, and I strongly believe in the positive power of psychedelics, if used correctly.
However, both methods come with clear downsides.
Meditation takes lots of practice, and the results are anything but guaranteed. Even after years of semi-regular meditation, I still often struggle to calm my mind. And while I do notice the cumulative effects on my focus, mood, and stress levels, I’ve never had a particularly memorable or intense experience during any one meditation session.
Psychedelics on the other hand, while always effective and certainly intense, should clearly not be used by everyone. And many who do use them are using them in extremely careless and non-therapeutic ways. Plus, there are the legal issues surrounding most psychedelics. Although I’m fairly hopeful that given the huge potential and renewed research interest, with MDMA being close to FDA approval and psilocybin being not too far behind, the legal status of many of these compounds will soon change in many places.
In his wonderful essay Drugs and the Meaning of Life neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris compared the two experiences.
“Many people wonder about the difference between meditation (and other contemplative practices) and psychedelics. Are these drugs a form of cheating, or are they the only means of authentic awakening? They are neither. All psychoactive drugs modulate the existing neurochemistry of the brain. […] Everything that one can experience on a drug is, at some level, an expression of the brain’s potential. Hence, whatever one has seen or felt after ingesting LSD is likely to have been seen or felt by someone, somewhere, without it. However, it cannot be denied that psychedelics are a uniquely potent means of altering consciousness. Teach a person to meditate, pray, chant, or do yoga, and there is no guarantee that anything will happen. Depending upon his aptitude or interest, the only reward for his efforts may be boredom and a sore back. If, however, a person ingests 100 micrograms of LSD, what happens next will depend on a variety of factors, but there is no question that something will happen. And boredom is simply not in the cards. Within the hour, the significance of his existence will bear down upon him like an avalanche.”
Harris continues his comparison with the succinct analogy
“If LSD is like being strapped to a rocket, learning to meditate is like gently raising a sail.”
That’s a huge gap! Gently raising a sail, hoping that a breeze will come and slowly take you along, versus being strapped to a rocket without being able to fully control its course or abort it half-way through the experience.
The good news is, there is another tool that lies somewhere in between. Picking up the analogy, it’s like upgrading meditation’s little sailing boat to a luxury yacht.
This tool is Flotation Therapy.
Flotation Therapy, and the flotation tanks required for it, are known under various names. Particularly, the tanks are often called isolation tanks or sensory deprivation tanks.
Initially invented by physician and neuroscientist John C. Lilly, then employed by the US National Institute of Mental Health, the tanks were meant as a tool to study human consciousness in isolation from any external stimuli.
Most people probably first came across flotation tanks in the Simpson’s episode “Make Room for Lisa”, where both Homer and Lisa enter a tank and have their very own spiritual (or not so spiritual) journey.
One of the earliest notable users was famous physicist Richard Feynman, and more recently flotation tanks have again been popularized by people like Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss who both extensively discussed the topic on their respective podcasts.
The floating effect is achieved by dissolving large amounts of salt in the water. In addition, the water is constantly kept at human body temperature so that one doesn’t feel the water at all, eliminating the sense of touch. The tanks are also completely sound-proof and dark on the inside, further eliminating any audio or visual stimuli.
For most people, being in a flotation tank is probably the first time in their life when they are completely free from sensory inputs.
Even when we lie in bed, seemingly relaxed, we still feel the touch of the bed, hear the sounds around us, see in the usually incomplete darkness. And we always tense and use some of our muscles, despite feeling completely relaxed.
Floating on the salt water on the other hand one can truly relax every muscle in the body, and turn one’s entire attention inwards.
This is an incredible experience, and allows to take meditation to a whole new level. But it can also be a scary experience.
Given our addiction to constant stimuli and our craving for incessant interaction with technology, sitting quietly by ourselves for a while has become a true challenge.
And that’s without even closing our eyes or shutting off sounds.
Now imagine being completely isolated from any sensory input, truly alone with your mind, for an extended period of time (most session last at least 60 or 90 minutes).
Sounds boring at best, more likely frightening, right?
“All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”
— Blaise Pascal
But it might just be what we need.
When I went to my first session several years ago I wasn’t really sure what to expect.
After taking a shower I entered the tank and closed the door behind me. Immediately it was dark and quiet.
But I was far from calm. I was moving around in the water, creating my own sounds and waves that disturbed me. I also tried to relax my muscles but was so focused on it that they felt even more tense.
It probably took me about twenty minutes to really settle down. But time is a strange concept while in the tank, you completely loose track of it. It could have also just been 5 minutes.
But eventually I did quiet down. I was floating on the water free of any motion or tension in my body. I had become so accustomed to the water’s touch that I didn’t feel it anymore.
I actually completely lost any sense of up and down, left or right. It did feel like I was floating in outer space.
The first weird sensation I noticed was that I felt like I was gently but steadily rotating around an axis through my hip. I knew that I was just lying flat, suspended in the water, but I could not suppress this feeling of rotation. It wasn’t an uncomfortable sensation. It just felt odd. And it definitely added to the impression of being in outer space.
I spent some time scanning my body, focusing on each part individually. This might be familiar to people practicing certain types of meditation. But I’ve certainly never had such a deep awareness of my body as I had in the tank, whith any external distraction shut off.
And then suddenly, there was this beautiful deep blue in front of my eyes (or rather inside my brain). I know many seasoned meditators talk about visual sensations, but in the many hours I have spent meditating I never noticed anything even close to it. Yet there it was, during my first flotation session.
I recall more the way it made me feel than its actual appearance. And my account of it can only imperfectly capture what I saw.
Like with dreams or psychedelic experiences, the images are extremely vivid and real in the moment, but fleeting afterwards, and need to be experienced personally to really get a sense for what it is like.
At some point gentle chime sounds took me out of my meditative state and signaled that it was time to get out of the tank.
After a quick shower to rinse off the salt I was on my way home. But the effects lasted much beyond the session. I don’t think I have ever felt more relaxed. Even walking home, I still felt in a way like I was floating.
And I slept wonderfully that night.
Since that first time I have done maybe five or six more sessions.
Like with meditation, the more regular the better. But unfortunately flotation is not quite as practical and easily accessible (and cheap) as meditation.
My first session was definitely the most memorable, but I enjoyed each session I had. The blue unfortunately never came back (not for lack of trying, but maybe trying too hard was exactly the problem) but I had other enjoyable visual sensations.
The least useful session I had was after a pretty stressful day and with way too much caffeine in my blood. While I did certainly feel more relaxed afterwards, it took me very long to settle down in the tank, and even then I didn’t have any noteworthy sensations or experiences.
If possible, I’d recommend to completely abstain from caffeine for a day before a session. Going into the experience already relaxed and with a calm mind helps to make the most of it.
Many proponents of alternative medicine like to claim that flotation therapy has all sorts of health benefits, but much of it is most likely exaggerated. The research is still very sparse and inconclusive.
However, the positive effects of meditation are very well established, and flotation is certainly a tool to take meditation to the next level.
If you live in a major city, there is a good chance that there are some places offering flotation therapy near you.
I highly recommend everyone who is curious about mindfulness practice or exploring their own consciousness to give it a try at least once.
And if you do (or already have done), I’d be curious to hear about your experiences, visual or otherwise.