It seems like we're talking past each other to an extent. I'll try a couple other approaches.

If a bird falls out of its nest before it has its feathers, it may die. If a hibernating animal wakes up before the snow is receding, it may starve. There is a way that things work, and as a conscious individual with will, things go better if you are attune to that and work with it. Put your pants on, then your shoes. Open the door, then try to walk through it. It is worthwhile to ask whether taking a drug is like trying to fly before you are fledged. But before we can whether something is out of place, we have to have to recognize that it is possible for something to be out of place, without becoming lost in semantics. Yes, if someone causes you to fall off of a third floor balcony, you are likely to be in a lot of pain for a long time. This works is exactly as it should, everything is in some sense in its place. Yet usually it is still better not to cause people to fall off of balconies.

Yes it does matter how you arrive at a transcendent experience, as much as it matters how old you are when you leap out of the nest, or whether you are intimate with someone's consent or you force yourself on them. The transcendent reality is always there whether we're aware of it or not. But there are right ways and wrong ways to approach it, just like with everything else, and what way you choose helps determine the impact it has on you. If you say the important thing is heart, OK. But heart needs help from the head, and will can be confused about what heart is. My hypothetical prostitute has a small heart. Presumably there are prostitutes with big hearts and clear heads, forced into their line of work by circumstances. But if they choose it willingly, given better alternatives, their way of life tends to be in conflict with a big and open heart, and wears down on it.

Imagine a guillotine controlled by the roll of a die, 5 outcomes the subject lives and one they die. When there's a chance they die, there's a kind of opening where they fall through death into worlds beyond, even if they don't. And we can empathetically feel and see into that opening, if we are there with them. And so, we can capture someone, play with their life this way, and have a transcendent experience. (Intuitively I'm pretty sure of this, call it a past life memory if you want.) Does it not matter how we arrived there? Wouldn't it be better than to use DMT than play with human sacrifice? Of course it would. It does matter how you get there.

Suppose I had a yoga class, and 15 percent of the people who enroll in my class become permanently crippled. It would be ridiculous if I said, "well, the other 85 percent seem to be fine, so for the other 15 percent that must have been their karma, or perhaps they chose not to follow instructions". This, in my observation, tends to be the attitude of drug users and occult teachers when acquaintances get into trouble with what they're pushing. I have a problem with this.

So you have a transcendent experience. Why? How does it change you? The reality is there regardless, why do you need to be aware of it now? Becoming aware of it can strengthen you, or heal you, or it can damage you. As with everything else, you can push on anyway, oblivious all warning signs, and you will get something. Nature rarely thwarts your will entirely. But it is better to heed the warning signs. Everyone knows this. And yet, people are philosophically conflicted, and also believe in attainment by force of will, that the spirit trumps mere logical and temporal and considerations. Raja yoga is every bit as confused in this regard as the culture of psychedelic experimentation, in my opinion.

What method do I suggest? Simple honesty, the Golden Rule, asking questions. And if its truth you want, the first requirement is willingness to give up one's self image as a courageous seeker of truth. If you shrink away from recognizing yourself as a knave or buffoon, to the extent that's the reality, then you're not really asking.

Again, this isn't a criticism of how you came to be wherever you are. We are all forced to choose between greater and lesser evils, its part of our condition. I'm just trying to paint something of how it all looks from where I am.

I have to go now.