Instant Enlightenment

In these days of instant coffee, time-saving devices, and quick service restaurants, some people are impatient. They want fast results - instant Enlightenment. So they turn to psychedelic (mind expanding) drugs to chemically precipitate an instantaneous shift to higher consciousness. But more and more people are realizing that drugs are not the way to self-realization; they are only a faint reflection, a shadowy glimmer, of that blissful, all expanded state of consciousness. Many of the "Gurus" of the psychedelic movement in the West have widely spoken of their own realization of the limitations of drugs: Drugs opened the door for us into the mansion of the mind, and we saw there are so many rooms inside. But then we found that drugs could only give us a glimpse of the interior - they could not lead us inside to explore. For that, we have to meditate - there is no short-cut .Richard Al pert (Ram Dass), one of the pioneers of LSD use who later turned to Yoga, described his psychedelic career: "It was a terribly frustrating experience, as if you came into the kingdom of heaven and you saw how it all was and you felt new states of awareness, and then you got cast out again.

 Many experimental studies have shown that meditation is a superior replacement for the grug "high", as 85% of drug users in some studies - even drug abusers - who start practicing meditation completely stop taking drugs (psychedelics, amphetamines, opiates, and alcohol). One scientist commented, "One sees many long-time drug users give up drugs for meditation. But one does not see any long-term meditations give up meditation to become acid-heads. This observation supports the contention that the highs obtainable by meditation are better than the highs obtainable through drugs.

Indeed, sometimes sudden drug-induced glimpses of higher consciousness may even be dangerous. When one abruptly penetrates into the powerful super-conscious realm and the tremendous energies of that state are suddenly released, if the mind and body have not been carefully prepared to receive them, the result may be a "bad trip" - or even psychosis. Many mediums whose minds are very sensitive to super-conscious influences are constantly fearful of "evil spirits"; but what they call "possession" is actually their loss of control over their own overwhelming supra-mental forces.

Artistic geniuses like Blake, Verlaine, Coleridge, Baudelaire and Ban Gogh, who worked in a state of super-conscious awareness, often suffered greatly trying to integrate this break-through to higher realms with the "reality" of their everyday lives. Van Gogh constantly felt himself going mad; he painted his last painting of a road ending abruptly in the middle of a cornfield and after he finished it, killed himself in the cornfield.

Thus, Yogis have always emphasized the importance of the gradual and careful preparation of the mind and body to receive and control the unlimited powers of the super-conscious state. One master told his disciple, who had begged him to give him the experience of higher consciousness, "as a small lamp bulb would be shattered by excessive voltage, so your nerves are unready for the cosmic current. If I gave you the infinite ecstasy right now, you would burn as through every cell where on fire". Through centuries of experimentation, a scientific physical and mental system was developed to safely and easily attain the bliss of higher consciousness and then integrate these expanded states with normal, waking consciousness, to live life with fuller awareness.

Like hypnosis, drug-induced altered states of consciousness lead us not out of bondage but further into it - for the goal of every human being is liberation through consummate self-control.