X-Ftn-To: Gwailoh-9 

Gwailoh-9  wrote:
>Danijiel, i think maybe your 'pranic-observations' aren't
>all-encompassing.  

This is a very strange thing for you to say. Of course they're not
all-encompassing. I didn't meet all the people in the world who used
all conceivable substances. But I didn't meet anyone who used any
drug, and had an experience that I would call spiritual. Never.
However, some of them talked about spiritual experience, while I
observed their experience, and it took place within their astral body,
not in the reality. It's like vivid dreaming, a distorted perception,
sometimes pleasantly distorted however.

>I have come across this legalisation webpage
>http://www.tlmp.org/persecution.html that has many examples of ancient
>traditions that revere psychedelic plants as aids and pathways to
>spiritual experience.  

I didn't say that people never used drugs for spiritual purposes, but
I would seriously question any claim of drug-induced experience that
surpasses lower sublayers of the mental plane. For details see
http://www.danijel.org/eng/levels.pdf
I find it theoretically impossible, because drugs alter the lower
levels, the physical matter of the body and cerebral prana. This
causes alterations that can alleviate experiences of the astral, and
sometimes, with drugs such as marijuana or XTC, some reminiscences of
the mental plane. LSD can actually cause your astral to break and you
would possibly, in some cases, experience open matter, open prana or
open astral (often interpreted as cosmic consciousness), with
side-effects that can seriously disturb your mental health.
Furthermore, the thing is stored in the brain and after a while you're
stoned without even needing to take the stuff. This caused some guys
to blow their brains out.

>(which is contrary to your statements that they
>are spiritually deadening).  

 It depends on what you call spiritual. Some people experience
aliens talking to them, and call this spiritual experience. Some talk
to their grandmother's ghost, and call that spiritual. Some get high
on MJ and say that they experience God's love. Some take LSD and say
that they are everything. 
But, if you know how to look, you can see _where_ their experiences
take place, you can see how their higher bodies behave, and after
you've seen some cases, well, you decide that drugs are simply a
nuisance.
Before I had the opportunity to give a good look to the actual drug
users, and I mean _good_ look, I was actually thinking that canabis,
in its pure form, could be useful, and that some drugs might actually
produce genuine spiritual effects, if you know what you're doing.
Today, I think that _all_ drugs except marijuana are extremely harmful
and cause heavy damage to the brain, and that MJ can in _some_ cases,
if you know _exactly_ what you're doing, increase the conductivity of
the cerebral tissues, and reverse the numbing effects from ingesting
the lower forms of energy (conventional food) during extremely
demanding parts of yogic practice, which seems to be the reason why
some yogis smoke ganja. However, I still think that it's a desperate
move and I would use other methods in their place; for instance, a
bath in the pure sea water, combined with samyama on the water element
as the lowest; I would go from there. I would also drink lots of pure
mineral water with high pranic content, and avoid almost any kind of
food, providing the needed energy with breathing. That, of course,
makes sense only during short periods of intense practice. I tried it
all, BTW.

>>however, it creates a severe disturbance in the pranic body, which can
>>"supercharge" the astral body and lead to a distorted perception.
>>Heroin is the worst thing I've seen, ever. It destroys the brain, and
>>the cerebral prana looks like it's been processed with a blender;
>>those people have a dull look in their eyes and I fear that their
>>brains are fully destroyed.
>
>But what about William S. Burroughs?  The guy was a full-on opiate
>addict and junkie for most of his life.  Yet by his reputation he was
>also an extremely intellectual thinker & writer ... not at 'brain
>destroyed'.    

I never met him nor read his writings, so I can't tell. You can
maintain intellectual abilities, while having the potential for
feeling subtle aspects of consciousness destroyed. Nietzche, for
instance, was a good philosopher, but he was also a spiritual midget.

>This one is our 'scarey-evil-Devil-Drug'.  Again, is this substance
>inherrently bad, 

Well, it isn't inherently bad, you can probably use it for cleaning up
the toilet and then it might even be useful, but if you inject it in
your body then it becomes extremely harmful.

>or are problems to do with the lack of wisdom &
>knowledge of heroin, how to respect this powerful stuff?  

It's simply harmful and has no good sides. It drains the dopamine from
the brain and permanently destroys the capacity for experiencing
bliss. That's why the first experience with heroin is the most
powerful; gradually, the effect decreases, and after a while you have
to take it just to be normal, not to get "high". At this stage, you're
an empty shell that was once a human being.

>AFAIK, the
>effects of opiates in the body are actually fairly benign.  

This is utterly wrong, for any drug that plays with dopamine
chemistry. Unfortunately, my knowledge of neurology isn't much, but I
could search for articles on the net.

>>... LSD causes very strange and harmful effects, and also seems to destroy
>>the human ability to perceive and manifest higher consciousness.
>
>Ram Dass is who springs to my mind here.  I don't suppose you ever met
>him, and did your brain-prana-scan on him?  

Nope.

>I'd be really surprised if
>you found he was another spiritually-dead zombie.   

Actually, I saw some "renowned spiritual teachers", like Sai Baba or
Maheswarananda, and none of them looked impressive at all. Most of my
friends are more enlightened than they.

>it would seem your opinions on the effects of these drugs are just
>based on your personal experiences with those you know or have seen
>who were high, or had a history of use.  You're only one man,
>evaluating a huge subject .. maybe your experiences encompass too
>narrow a scope for proper judgement.

You sound like you really need that to be true. But, let me tell you a
story.
My wife was formerly a prominent member of the "techno community" in
Croatia. She smoked pot and took XTC; she even took it the night
before the day I first met her; I could see the effect in her brain
better than you can see the monitor in front of you, while you read
this. I countered that effect, and in spite of that I raised her
consciousness so much, that she spontaneously performed kecari mudra
and kevala kumbhaka in combination, at the table in the bar where we
had coffee - just because I extended my consciousness within her.
Gradually, in last two years, we've been working on reversing the
brain damage caused by the chemicals that she used; her concentration
and memory have been seriously damaged; after more than a year of
yogic practice, her concentration and memory are better than ever;
also, she is able to compare drug induced experiences with _real_
spiritual experiences. 
So, it's not that my experience is as limited as you think.

-- 
Homepage: http://www.danijel.org