Some people who read this essay will undoubtedly insist that what I have described can be learned through the usage of psychedelics such as LSD, Mushrooms or even more intense drugs like DMT. This is not really the case. If you look at when psychedelics were most prevalent, the 1960s and the "summer of love", you will not see any real awareness that resulted from it. The majority of people who engaged in widespread psychedelics either ended up as mentally stunted hippies or disgustingly self-entitled boomers who essentially ruined whatever country they were in and fomented generational animosity that is the unhealthy result of solipsistic pride and the lack of understanding of generational responsibilities. Some of the most pretentious and idiotic people are those who take psychedelics, as they push psychedelics on people in a tone-deaf and functionally retarded manner that indicates they have not been made smarter for their experience, but rather turned into mystical idiots who have no idea what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.
While it’s self-evidently true that psychedelics provide a unique perspective, this unique perspective does not teach reality in the way a psychotic break can. The sense of self and ego seems to be reinforced rather than broken down, and people go from fairly normal unaccomplished individuals to egotistical unaccomplished individuals who now think they have access to some “spiritual truth” that the world is all about love or empathy or some fundamentally human delusion that stems from the misunderstanding that humans have genuine free will and thus a special mission from God, a delusion that is forcefully ripped away in the process of a psychotic break and then revealed after the psychotic break has concluded if the individual who suffered the lapse in sanity is able to examine the whole experience in enough depth.
Psychedelics are a red herring towards enlightenment, and this makes sense once you realize that most people who take psychedelics enjoy what they experience. The process of self-improvement and self-awareness is not a euphoric one that makes you feel good and happy, it is a constant struggle filled with pain that you learn to enjoy for its results rather than the phenomena in the process. Physical exercise is an unpleasant process, and even though some learn to enjoy the unpleasant process (because they correctly link the unpleasant process to the pleasant results), there is no reason to assume that mental or spiritual improvement is any different.
As stated before, the fruits of the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s have been a bunch of entitled and moronic old people who ruined their societies in a constant game of shallow pleasure-seeking. Psychedelics did not expand consciousness then, and it is idiotic to assume that they will expand consciousness now. Sure, they may help with people who are experiencing depression or anxiety, but most likely that is because they fundamentally break parts of the brain that are causing the depression or anxiety for logical reasons. If your car has a bunch of warning lights on, the solution isn’t to break the dashboard and pretend the problems are fixed, but rather to fix the problems that are causing the warning lights to warn you. If you’re depressed or anxious, you should start changing your life habits (what you’re eating, how much you’re sleeping, what media you consume, what people you are around, where you live, your job) rather than modifying your brain to stop warning you that what you’re doing is harming you and making you miserable.