^ i'd say your buddhist friend is both right and wrong. (the best answers in life always start like that
) He is right in saying it isn't a shortcut. because there ain't no shortcuts to living your live the way you want to live it. So, in terms of seeking to broaden ones spiritual horizons, there aren't really any right or wrongs. Buddhist practise seeks to abolish desire, but not the will to live so to speak, but the desire as means to an end. because when you pragmatise that in regard to an entire life, the ultimate end of it is nothing really, or, more aptly named, death. thus, it is pointless to go seek 'ends'/'final destinations' etc. because there ain't really one. In this perspective, the 'end' is the here and now, cause just like you were born, you also gonna be dead one day too. Thus, one says, the path is what is important, not its destination. the secret of life (and death) and nirvana etc. are all to be found in the here and now, in
this life you are living now. So the buddhist sits and clears his mind from anything else. But to what end? well, none, directly speaking, because the correct meditation wards against using meditation as means to an end. one doesn't meditate to become enlightened, one just meditates. and through it, a very unique and unspeakable knowledge is revealed, namely a better take on how
you should be living
your life to a fuller degree. in other words, should he judge anothers use of psychedelics as 'inferior', this judgement, and the time he spends on it, is just as pointless as that which he is judging, and thus, by extension, psychedelic use is just as useless as meditation in terms of being a means to an end.
which doesn't mean that, just like for meditation, there are a few things to be said for psychedelics as a spiritual path. the experience, just like a deep meditation, is enclosed within itself. just like medation, a deeper contact is sought with the subconscious self, though while the meditation does so in silence, and anything that does come up is immediate/useful as it appears, the psychedelic experience is full of noise and bells and whistles, the subconscious in all its de- and reforming glory. which is a bit of a mess. thus, the spiritual seeker, when confronted by this, just like the meditator confronted with the silence, seeks, or perhaps rather waits, in order to figure something for himself to take 'home' from it. a piece of intimate 'knowledge' regarding oneself, which can, possibly, in a later state, be transformed into a more abstract and general statement or coherent discourse to be shared with others.
so all in all, there is little difference between meditation and say psychedelic use in the terms of a spiritual seeker. Even worse: a true spiritual seeker will find spirituality in anything and everything he does. And this fact can easily be derived from the buddhist frame of mind, as we did above. Thus, the buddhist judging 'a lesser way' is in fact, only judging his own shortcoming in seeing 'the way' all around him, happening constantly in the here and now for everybody. Should he find suffering around him, he is not to seek a moral high ground in himself and his ways, but he is to lend his heart to the other in need, and this heart is, or should be attempted to be, devoid of judgement, which comes only from attachment to the self; and what such a heart really does, is nothing but suffer with him, to the best of its abilities, without it seeking to affirm itself
against the other because it is afraid to lose its self. and in this state of being at one with (one)others heart (which it always already is) it will be taught, that its suffering is merely another transformation into a higher state of being. the reward of its compassion will be more extensive knowledge of 'how', so next time it meets with suffering akin, it will have become better/more efficient at transforming it, and it will be able to do more with even less.
