I've found psychedelics to be the best way. What he's bumping up against in his trips is the root of all fear. With dozens more trips the psychedelics should help him see through the illusory nature of all fear and break through to the other side of fear, which is Infinite Self-Love and Self-Acceptance -- Paradise!

Great work. That's some quality tripping.
Eventually, as you trip more, you should conquer that sense of going mad and after that it won't be a big deal. You will be able to go even deeper into the mind of God.
You are not pure enough yet and your self-understanding is not deep enough yet. You have too much fear which needs to be faced, processed, and put to rest.
Facing madness and facing death are two of the biggest obstacles. But once you conquer those, that's when the tripping gets really profound and life-changing. You need to get as much of your personal crap out of the way as possible.

Excellent!
That is precisely correct.

@Wasem You are acting out and misunderstanding my teachings because your basic needs have not been satisfied.
Go watch my video: Using Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs To Self-Actualize
You have decades of development to do before you are ready to understand what God desires or what God is.
Forget about God, go handle your basic survival needs so you're not like a thirsty dog.

This is an attitude of selfishness.
The goal of this work is to surrender and accept ALL reality, not just the parts your ego thinks are "good".
Let go of needing life to be any particular way. Then happiness is posisble.

Human "mistakes" are the result of the freedom God gave you. You are free to make mistakes so that you could learn and grow. Otherwise life wouldn't have any stakes.
If your life was perfect, it would be imperfect.
Imagine a video game where you push the button once and the game excutes itself flawlessly to victory. That would be the worst video game ever. You are missing the whole point of the game.

From the relative standpoint you believe that others can harm you and you suffer deeply when you don't get your way.
The solution to fear is love, not more fear.
What do you tell a child who is deathly afraid of the dark?

Yes, you are stuck in fear. Notice that.
The solution to fear is love.
There's no rush. You can stay stuck in fear for as long as you want until you grow tired of it and decide to try love instead.

That's exactly right. I know exactly what you're talking about. That's the ego's natural reaction to going directly for enlightenment. It's terrified of the unknown infinitude. Only natural and totally expected.
The solution is to push through it, face the fear head-on, until you breakthrough to the other side. This can take many attempts.
This is why religions call it "taking the leap of faith". You place your faith in Truth as your highest aim and desire, and blindly leap for it not knowing what will happen. From your POV it feels like you will die. But your love for Truth must be so great that you desire it so much that you are willing to die to have it. And so you do. But in reality what will happen is the ego will collapse and you will land in an infinitely deep pool of the softest down feathers. That is paradise, heaven, nirvana, -- AKA, the Love of God.
But you cannot know this before you take the leap.
Fear of death & insanity is what keeps you from entering the Kingdom of Heaven.
But of course, you must realize, all fear is imaginary. You are like the groundhog terrified of its own shadow.
Psychedelics make ego-death a lot easier.

@leintdav000 It's a phase. In the end you should be much more functional by being conscious.
Of course shutting off the mind disrupts a lot of egoic survival schemes, goals, motivations, and manipulations.
You're not realizing yet that the goal of spirituality is surrender of all reality and practicality. You cannot be liberated so long as you're worried about being practical.
After awakening you can pick some of that practicality back up, but while you are working towards awakening the point is to surrender more and more of it.
Yes, this interferes with becoming successful. But the point is that success is a never-ending cycle of suffering.
But there's also nothing wrong with working on success if you feel you need to. Remember, plan out your life in chapters and phases. If you're young you might want to spend 5 or 10 years working on success before you go heavy into awakening work.
So get clear about what you want and then pursue that decisively.
Of course the devil would say that
That line of reasoning is precisely how the ego maintains itself. You must challenge that if you wish to awaken.
The selfish one is you. You are so selfish you cannot even see your own reasoning as devilry.

@Stenne When you are being most fully yourself, you are not being self-conscious. You are actually acting without egoic calculations in the moment. You are not thinking. In fact there isn't even a self in the moment. Which is why it feels so good. But these moment are rare because mostly you're thinking and calculating so much.
Think of a moment when you are laughing hard with friends. In that moment the ego is absent. In that moment your personality shines the most.

See my video: Balancing Theory vs Practice
It's an important one.
You need to get good at just taking an action when you find yourself paralyzed by indecision.
You can take an issue which confuses and compartmentalize it, setting it aside for another day. But in the meantime you can take some kind of action.
And also sometimes it okay to be lost & lazy. That's a normal phase of life. See my video about: Chapter & Phases Of Life

@Rigel Even your bad trip has value, not to mention the good ones.
Give it a week, you'll feel better. Let it pass.
It sounds like you were shown some deep truths which you were not ready to stomach so you resisted it. That's all material which must be worked through. That IS the real spiritual path.
Before you reach the rainbows and butterflies you must face your inner demons.
Mushrooms are a twisted and mischievous substance. Might want to try something more straightforward next time like AL-LAD. And lower your doses.

That's not entirely correct.
Goodness beats out badness. Badness only arises when one isn't conscious enough and resists.
So it's not just random. As you become more God-like and pure, the bad trips will become less and less frequent.
Of course it's important not to overdose or trip in the wrong settings. Taking 10 grams of mushrooms at a noisy music festival is a recipe for hell.
The best way to trip is with small and moderate doses. Until you're very comfortable there.
I have a feeling that 90% of all problematic trips could be eliminated simply by dosing lower and sitting in a quiet safe space free of people.
Simply do not take high doses of anything. It's stupid and it will not grow you as much. Only take what you can handle.
1-2g of mushrooms or 125ug of LSD is plenty for most people. Spend a couple of years working those doses and getting all the growth you can from them.
People who take 5g of mushrooms or 400ug of LSD are being foolish. So of course they end up getting wrecked.

Look, this is a highly personal matter.
Your trips will be very different from mine. So my experiences are not a good point of reference.
My first trip I had a panic attack.
In the end, no of that matters. Just minor obstacles.

@Yannik Good question! Coffee is not necessarily unhealthy, so no major health risks here. But your coffee habit is, most likely, a short-term solution that masks the long-term problem.
You might want to investigate: what are the deeper reasons that you don't have enough energy without coffee? Is your diet not giving you the energy and nutrition you need? Do you workout almost every day? Are you meditating and relaxing to restore your energy? Are you not getting enough sleep or is it low quality? Are you doing everything you can to promote your health? Are you developing your concentration abilities to focus without the need for stimulants?

@pfletcha You can't in the sense that it isn't aligned with Truth and Love, and you do it unconsciously.
See, if you were deeply conscious, those habits would break your integrity and connection with the Truth.
If you lie and steal while doing enlightenment work you will not get very far. Your lying and stealing will catch up with you. Karma 101.
That guilt you feel is your soul telling you that you are not living up to your highest potential as God.

@kieranperez Thinking empowering thoughts is far better than worrying.
Affirmations will of course not resolve the fundamental issue of duality or ego. But they can be a good intermediate technique. Not every technique has to be existential.
This work requires nuance.

@chudders Thoughts which are fear-based have a tendency to be self-fulfilling. What you worry about tends to become true simply because you obsess about it so much.
It's hard to improve your life when you're constantly in fear.
The solution is to change your thoughts to love-based thoughts and shift your state to a more positive, optimistic, empowered one.
Research Law Of Attraction.
You want to create a positive, exciting vision for your future. Stop focusing on what you don't want and start focusing on what you want to create.
Negative stuff can always happen, but constantly worrying about it is not a solution.

Although I realize that ultimately the answers must come from within, I would really appreciate some advice.
I'm currently in a good place, emotionally more stable than ever, seeking self-realization but enjoying life along the way. I feel very fortunate and have nothing to complain about. But, having said that, the mind does tend to wander...  here's what it thinks about these days:
I'm struggling to find a balance between 1. complete acceptance and living in the present moment; and 2. self-actualization. Somehow the idea comes that I should make the most out of this life and use the talents that I've been given. In Leo's post "What is Self-Actualization?", it's there: "self-actualizing people are actively nurturing their talents".
I've always had a talent for music. It showed from a very young age, but I wasn't pushed into it by anyone and I was unware of it until I turned 16 or so. I even resented my mother for having seen that talent early on and doing nothing to encourage it. Then I started to develop it by myself and, to make a long story short, I pursued a musical career that was not commercially successful. I made one album that didn't sell and by then I had spent all of my money and energy. At the time I was 100% identified with my ego so I took that failure very personally. I gave it all up and moved on to other things.
I have no regrets about what happened, it needed to happen just the way it did. But when I think about self-actualization, there is no question in my mind that this is my biggest gift. When I tap into it, I hear whole symphonies in my mind, or songs, or melodies, the potential there is incredible. I hadn't heard the concept of infinite intelligence then, but that's what it feels like, like the music just appears in my awareness effortlessly and there's nothing to do but transfer it to the "real world" (ok, it's actually difficult to do that, but you get the point). It also remains dormant when I'm uninterested in it.
And this brings me to the crux of the problem. I haven't been interested in it for five years now. I was very passionate about music before, but then I became passionate about travelling - did that - and now I'm passionate about spirituality and self-realization, so I'm focusing on that. When I think about making music again, it doesn't stir up any excitement. I'm not interested in success, and making music the way I hear it is especially time-consuming and difficult (I tend to hear a lot of different instruments, orchestral "big" music).
Am I squandering away this talent? Should I try to activate my interest in it? It feels like nothing material really interests me these days, and that's a little scary. I'm 37, it feels like I shouldn't be so disconnected from the world of form. On the one hand, like Ramana Maharshi said, "self-realization is the biggest gift you can give to the world"; on the other hand, God gave me this musical gift.
Any thoughts or advice will be much appreciated!

Contemplation 100%. 
Asking yourself the relevant powerful questions. 
It sounds like you could do with getting to the root issue of this. 
I can also relate as I still see traits of this in myself. I see it and love it now though, do not judge it, creating more fragmentation and resistance. Accept it then Love it to death when it arises but also work on it. 
♥️

It's smart to improve one's self-image first before trying to totally transcend it.
Most of you guys would benefit from some basic self-esteem and self-image work.
A weak self-image is too insecure to allow itself to be transcended.
Transcending the self-image is the highest stage of Maslow's pyramid.

I don't know. All I know is what the symptoms are if you leave "the window of tolerance", meaning the state in which you are able to "integrate" your experience. One symptom is "freezing" or becoming "paralyzed".

@Samantha If you really feel called to serve the world, by all means go for it. The point is simply a very practical one: the older you get the less time you have to build a foundation from scratch and the less energy you will have to work with. This is not meant to be a limiting belief, but a factual statement. If this statement wasn't factual the question of age wouldn't even arise at all.
It's not that you can't do it, it's just that maybe there's an even bigger game you could play! Which is spirituality.
One of the best benefits of being older and retired is that you can really focus on spiritual work in a way that people who are building careers cannot. Starting a new business or career takes a lot of time and energy which could be used for spiritual work.
But it all depends on your priorities. The best you can do is follow your heart.
You know in Hinduism they have a pretty nice model for how to structure one's life:
Phase 1 of life: Growing up to adulthood, education
Phase 2 of life: Getting a job, having a family, taking care of them
Phase 3 of life: After the kids are grown and out of the house, and your finances are stabilized, you retire and pursue enlightenment full time. This is really supposed to be the pinnacle of life. Not a downer.
Then you after your enlightenment you can become a guru and contribute wisdom back to the young.
It's a pretty good model. Of course you can break all the rules and do whatever you want.