Drugs can slowly slowly destroy your capacities to meditate
The drug experience is a forced, phony experience, but because we don't know the real, the phony seems to be right. If you have not seen the real, then even the phony is too much. If you compare your life with an ordinary man who has never taken anything like LSD, marijuana, then you feel very high -- if you compare it with an ordinary man. Because he has not known any moment, he has not even had a false glimpse; he lives such a mundane life.
You have lived the same mundane life -- then one day this drug creates a dream, gives you a euphoria, and you are tremendously happy. But once meditation can give you an experience, then you will see that this experience was just a dream experience. It is as if you have been thirsty and drinking in a dream from a pool of water, a pure pool of water... but in a dream. By the morning you are awake and thirsty again -- it has not helped. Of course it was so clear and so cool and it had looked, for that moment at least, as if you would never be thirsty again.
But if you go on meddling sometimes with meditation and sometimes with drugs -- the problem is that drugs can slowly slowly destroy your capacities to meditate. Otherwise there is nothing in it.... If it is to be an ordinary straight life, then drugs are perfectly okay. But if you are really interested in meditation, then drugs are dangerous. The drug is not dangerous for the people who think it is dangerous. The so-called common people think drugs are dangerous -- it is not dangerous for them at all because they have nothing to lose, they have nothing to be destroyed! But if you are really interested in search and you want to grow, then drugs are dangerous.
Drugs are not dangerous for politicians -- drugs are dangerous for the religious people because something delicate arises out of meditation. It is very delicate and it comes out of much effort. Just a small quantity of a drug and it is destroyed and you will have to start again from abc. The drug experience is so cheap and the meditation experience is so costly, because you have to go through such effort. Then by and by the mind starts choosing the cheaper one. Mm? It is the path of least resistance, so the mind says "Why bother?" The drug can give you something so easily, then why bother with Vipassana -- sitting and meditating and struggling hard? Why not the easier way?
The mind is always for the short-cut, and the short-cut is always false. As far as the spiritual growth is concerned there is no short-cut. You cannot cheat... there is no back door. Each has to follow the arduous way. In fact the real beauty of the peak depends on how hard your struggle has been. When you struggle hard and you lose the track many times -- many times even the peak disappears and you are again in the dark valley, again you struggle and again you fall and again you move -- this whole effort creates that situation where when the real experience happens, you are in a tremendous bliss.
-Osho
excerpted from This Is It! chapter 8
3 comments:
Very interesting point. I really respect how strongly you state your case, but I wonder how certain you are that this is a general observation, not just specific to yourself. Can progress really be undone as you say?
I ask because I believe the substances to be a window, or maybe just the blinds on a window, but regardless a doorway of sorts to the same end that meditation brings. Now even if the drugs project a different path and it only appears to be the traditional path (ie meditation), where is the harm? Where do you lose the 'real' path while staring at the 'fake' path? And why would it take long to find the 'real' path again?
Well drugs are not even a path. The spiritual centers of humans can only light from within, with inner effort and consciousness. No one can do it for us, and of course no material substance can do it for us. Drugs are part of the materialistic societal programming that makes people think they can have happiness with material substances. But the soul and spirit cannot be reached like that. The soul and spirit are made from light, so we need to light ourselves from within.
Drugs can only open the person to the astral level, which is a low level, full of desires and illusions - its better to overcome this level altogether because its so very polluted. No substance can elevate our spirit towards higher levels of existence. Thats why drugs are not even a path.
We cant really "buy" our path to heaven, NOTHING can substitute the inner spiritual effort. Drugs are only pure self-indulgence, and the problem for serious disciples is that they destroy the *will* of the person, since they produce a dissolution of energies and focus.
Also, the experiences drug produce, are result of 'burning' of subtle nerves (nadis). Whereas meditation produces bliss by creating new nadis and restructuring our brain. The first is experience through destruction, the second is experience through creation (healing).
So, let us find the Joy of inner effort!
GO SLOWLY, because mind is a very delicate mechanism. If you are in too much of a hurry and you take too great a dose of a Tilopa, you may not be able to absorb and digest it. GO SLOWLY; TAKE ONLY PROPORTIONS WHICH YOU CAN DIGEST AND ABSORB.
I will be saying many things because you are many, and I will be taking many dimensions because you are many. BUT ABSORB ONLY THAT WHICH IS A NOURISHMENT TO YOU, DIGEST IT.
Just the other day a sannyasin came, a sincere seeker, but puzzled because I talked about Yoga and Tantra, and told that Tantra is the higher teaching and Yoga is a lower teaching, and he has been practicing Hatha Yoga for two years and feeling good. He became puzzled as to what to do. Don't become so easily puzzled. If you are feeling good with Yoga, FOLLOW YOUR OWN INCLINATION; don't allow me to confuse you.
I can be confusing to you, but SIMPLY FOLLOW YOUR NATURAL INCLINATION -- loose, natural. IF IT IS GOOD, IT IS GOOD FOR YOU. Why bother whether it is higher or lower? Let it be lower. The ego comes in; the ego says, "If it is a lower thing, then why follow?" That will not help. Follow it; it is right for you. Even if it is lower what is wrong in it? A moment will come when through the lower you will reach the higher.
THE STAIRCASE HAS TWO ENDS: on one end it is the lowest, on the other end it is the highest. So Tantra and Yoga are not opposites, they are complementary. Yoga is the primary, the basic, from where you have to start. But then one should not cling. A moment comes when one has to transcend Yoga and move into Tantra; and finally you have to leave the whole staircase -- Yoga and Tantra both. Alone in yourself, deep in rest, one forgets everything....
You just think of your own inclination, FOLLOW YOUR OWN FEELING. I am here to help you to be yourself, not to distract you. But I have to say many things because I have to help many. So what will you do? You just go on listening to me. WHATSOEVER YOU FIND NOURISHING, YOU DIGEST IT; chew it well, digest it; let it become your blood and bones, the very marrow of your bones -- but FOLLOW YOUR OWN INCLINATION!
OSHO
Only One Sky
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