sadus

[Guest guest]

I recently watched a video titled "Kings with Straw Mats" a documentary on

the Kumbla Mela festival in India. I good percentage of this film shows many

sadus/holy men/yogis

smoking hash and then meditating. I am a bit confused as I have always felt

that one does not need any drugs to enhance a mediative experience and wonder

could this not be dangerous especially to some one with raised kundalini .

For people who are devoting such a large part of their lives to the pursuit

of higher consciousness why do they need to smoke to help them get there.

Does anyone know the significance of this?

 

Best regards;

 

Matthew

[Guest guest]

Blessed Matthew,

 

I don't know the answer to your question about drugs. But I do

suspect that those Indian holy men are no more holy than those of us

here in the West who partake of drugs. No more, no less. Why should it

be any different in India? The crime rate, the illusion, the

repression, the folly of youth, middle age and old age, these are

universal, are they not?

 

And is there not wisdom in folly? ("The path of folly leads to the

palace of wisdom," William Blake. Tantra, it is said by some, is the

method of indulgence. Till one goes beyond it.)

 

The Kundalini can be aroused through sex, through drugs, can't it?

Mine gets aroused (way too aroused) by caffeine! So, I too, see the

danger. Yet without danger, why be careful?

 

I'm not advocating anything. I myself prefer no drugs. But I also

know, boys will be boys.

 

heart

breath

~*~

sky

[Guest guest]

Matthew

Regarding the use of drugs in one's spiritual practice, it is a

timeless practice. Fasting, chanting, ascetic disciplines, and hatha

yoga are other means that are used to alter consciousness, and to the

spiritual aspirant, that change in consciousness is a window to other

planes of reality. Even alcohol and meat, considered some of the

lowest vibrations around were used by tantrics in certain setting.

 

Take the case of spiritual teachers like Rajneesh who insisted that

mantra is a drug, and thus did not advocate it. Stop chanting it, and

the high ceases.

 

A few years ago there was an entire issue of Tricycle magazine, the

journal of American Buddhism, that was devoted to the topic of Buddhism

and psychedelics. Of course, there was article after article decrying

the use of psychedelics and urging the most extreme caution, and yet

they did a statistical poll that was very telling. Something like

95% of westerners who became interested in eastern religion did so

originally thru a drug experience.

 

One might argue that drugs are bad for your body, but bad as compared to

what: to drinking only milk or eating only lemons for 30 years, to

holding your arm vertically above your head for a decade until it

atrophies, to staring into the full sun until you go blind, to a 40 day

sojourn in the desert being exposed to the elements and deprived of food

and water. These are just a few of the many odd things that sadhus

have been known to do. In this light, maybe a few hits of marijuana

are not so bad for the body after all.

Lilith