Saturday, August 15, 2009

Psychedelic experiences and yoga

Chemical Consciousness

In the early '60s I became conscious that more and more of the people who came to me for counseling wanted to talk over aspects of their experience in higher states of the mind, states of the mind that had been opened through psychedelic experience. Their interest was in relating these experiences to yoga and the consciousness attained through meditation. These people were highly enthusiastic about their new world, for it seemed like sort of a canned meditation, something they could get very quickly without entering into the sometimes tedious yoga training that may take years to open the individual to the within of himself. People all over the nation now are becoming awakened to the world within.

Around the same time, we had a seminar in San Diego attended by many seekers and LSD users. It seemed to us that the LSD people are almost like a new race, a race of people that have been reborn in bodies that already existed. Those who use psychedelics are different in many respects from those who have had no psychedelic experience. Their feelings are different. Their relationships are different. They are closer to some people, but at the same time they have created a gap between themselves and society. It is a gap of loneliness, because the breach between the inner consciousness and the external world has become so great that they have only themselves to depend upon. The degree of success of this dependence is another story, which brings us into the subject of yoga. We cannot say that the psychedelic experience in itself is either good or bad. It is enough to say that it is an experience that has occurred to thousands of people.

These ideas I am sharing with you are not so much for the psychedelic people as for those who have not had the psychedelic experience. I do not encourage you to go through it. Rather, I would encourage you to continue with the slower process of yoga. But I want to awaken you to the fact that there is this new group of people living with us. Their approach to life is entirely different from the one which you may have. Their perception generally is entirely different. Some of these people can look into your mind and even read your thoughts. Those who have not had psychedelic experiences will have to learn to adjust to the psychedelic consciousness. Likewise, those who use these drugs, if they ever stop, will have to learn to adjust their thinking again to the normal conscious-plane way of doing things.

I believe that the gap which has been created between "turned on people" and "turned off people" can best be bridged through meditation, gaining control of the mind so that the individual can become master of himself. When you become master of yourself, you truly stand alone in completeness, not in loneliness. In doing so, you are able to bring forth knowledge and wisdom from yourself through the process of meditation, through being able to sit down and think through a problem, ultimately seeing it in full, superconscious perspective and bring forth an answer, a workable answer filled with life. Meditation is a dynamic process. It is much more than just sitting around and waiting. It creates a highly individualistic type of mind.

-Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

http://www.himalayanacademy.com/study/mc/daily_lesson_html/lesson_78.shtml


2 comments:

Η ΠΕΤΑΛΟΥΔΑ said...

"Tell those that are (taking drugs) that if drugs could make one realise God, then God is not worthy of being God. No drugs. Many people in India smoke hashish and ganja. They see colors and forms and lights, and it makes them elated. But this elation is only temporary. It is a false experience. It gives only experience of illusion, and serves to take one farther away from reality...

Tell those who indulge in these drugs (LSD etc.) that it is harmful physically, mentally and spiritually, and that they should stop taking these drugs. Your duty is to tell them, regardless of whether they accept what you say, or if they ridicule or humiliate you, to boldly and bravely face these things. Leave the results to me. I will help you in my work...

You are to bring my message to those ensnared in the drug-net of illusion, that they should abstain, that the drugs will bring more harm than good. I send my love to them.
Spread my love among others, particularly among the young, and persuade them to desist from taking drugs, for they are harmful physically, mentally, spiritually."

MEHER BABA
17 November 1965,
to Robert Dreyfus
The Glass Pearl, ed.
Naosherwan Anzar

http://www.meherbabadnyana.net/life_eternal/Book_One/Drugs.htm

Avanika said...

This one is a good read. I am in a transition myself and I can never be the same again. I am in this new world of magic in which the entire world looks different. My perceptions and the way I look at the world and the Universe has changed in 360 degrees. I feel there's a lot of gap between psychedelic and the non-psychedelic people. The point is not that. The point is bridging the gap between the two. But the biggest fact is the non psychedelic people would never ever understand the higher dimensions and higher levels of consciousness. I have many friends and relatives in the transition. They don't WANT to understand anything beyond their factory-made zombie-land, it seems! No matter how much i try to explain, i am always misunderstood for not being a normal society robot like them.

Love & Light,
Peace & Joy,