What happens when we stop chasing spiritual highs and start training the mind for the benefit of all beings?
In this episode, Amisha speaks with Naina Eira Gupta, PhD(c), whose work explores the relationship between contemplative practice, unitive states and psychedelics.
Naina brings together philosophy, Buddhism, Vajrayana Tantra, psychedelic science, the Nālandā tradition and her own lived experience of mind training. She shares how early experiences with psychedelics opened profound states of dissolution, and how Tibetan Buddhist practice helped her understand that the point is not to chase spiritual highs, but to cultivate lasting traits of awareness, compassion, humility and discernment.
Together, Amisha and Naina explore suffering, grief, nondual awareness, the self, spiritual protection, lineage, community and the distortions of the New Age. They speak about the difference between feeling suffering fully and ruminating on it, and how ancient wisdom can help us meet pain without bypassing it or becoming lost inside our stories.
Naina invites us into a deeper understanding of psychedelics as a tool, not a destination. She speaks about why powerful experiences need strong ethical, contemplative and communal containers, and why practice is ultimately not for personal peace alone, but for the benefit of all beings.
This is a fierce, funny and deeply alive conversation about the nature of mind, the end of separation, and how to become more spacious in a world shaped by division, urgency and collapse.
Listen to explore:
. psychedelics as a tool, not a destination
. the difference between states and traits
. mind training and stabilised awareness
. nondual awareness and the nature of mind
. suffering, rumination and spiritual bypassing
. Vipassana, Advaita and Buddhist philosophy
. lineage, protection and discernment
. moving beyond the self-referential story
. Sangha, community and practising for all beings
. politics, culture and the end of othering
Links from this episode and more at www.allthatweare.org
