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Buyer Beware!
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
October 20, 2004
DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, the release
of Narcissus when You went through the experience of the
mescaline trip, You said it was the most fearful experience
in Your life where Your heart stopped…then the burning
manuscripts, that whole period whereYou said it was like a
form of renunciation.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: These are a
lot of different moments in the lifetime you just referred
to, as if they were all at the same time. I mean, the event
you’re talking about is not at the V.A. hospital, but when I
went out to Long Island for the weekend. I didn’t indulge in
those kind of psychedelics very much. There were a few
occasions, and I’ve told you more or less all of them I
guess. I never saw that kind of thing as being fun.
Mescaline or LSD and such. Even where there wasn’t any
particular dreadful visions and so forth, it wasn’t merely
that or only that that could make it not fun, you see. The
thing itself wasn’t fun or just blissful, and so on. It’s a
chemical transformation of the body-mind. It’s a mortal
phenomenon. And it’s not escaped because of some drug
experience. So if anything, I was simply super sensitized by
the few occasions I had an experience of those drugs. It
wasn’t just that they were so-called “bad trips”. It was
just the thing itself.
Walking down the street and
breathing was coincidence with fear for me, you see, with
the reality of the world, of egoity and so on. There was no
just whistling zippity-do-da going down the street, you see.
That doesn’t mean there was no pleasure and so forth in
life. I’m not suggesting that at all. I never been a
depressive type in that sense. But, naked, unarmored always.
So there’s drugs of that kind, including traditional,
natural ones, such as psilocybin, or whatever, a few things
were given in that V.A. hospital. Or peyote, which I had on
a couple of occasions otherwise. These weren’t merely
pleasurable highs, you know, to make a whole decade of
culture out of it. That was not at all the case for me. So,
to become that kind of enamored of all of that stuff was not
my disposition. It wasn’t that I avoided them completely. I
did them as I’ve done all kinds of things, either in the
Teaching consideration with everyone, or otherwise in the
sadhana years, just for the sake of unlimited experience,
which was My commitment. But it wasn’t necessarily
repetitive experiencing, and it wasn’t done merely
casually.
You see, it really was a sadhana.
So, whatever was embraced experientially by Me was always
done very seriously, and intentionally, and examined very
fully. So psychedelic drugs, so-called, I have no moralistic
views about it. It’s simply part of the dreadful ritual of
egoity, and there’s nothing enlightening about it
whatsoever. It’s deluding, plain old, that’s it. But so is
breathing and walking down the street if you’re ego bound,
you see.
So in that sense, everything’s the
same, but this is a kind of exaggeration of psycho-physical
potential, this matter of psychedelic drugs, and so on. And
without being moralistic or puritanical about it, it was
simply something examined, experienced, and I’ve said what I
have to say about it. Without any so-called ax to grind
about it. With respect to the matter of Realization it is
useless and potentially obviously deluding altogether. So
it’s not it. All kinds of things are not it. Conventional
religion and spirituality aren’t it either. Or getting
messages from groups of Indian chiefs from the other side,
or floating grandmas, you see. It’s not only that it is
deluding, you have to be deluded to do it. To experience it
to begin with. It is illusion.
Are there such things as dead Indian
chiefs that can be somehow or other experienced? Yes! I’ve
experienced a few chiefs in My time. I have to tell you!
(LAUGHTER). Chieftains as they might be called from all
kinds of traditions who were passed on, and they were not
telling Me about how to take care of the environment.
(LAUGHTER) And dead grandmas don’t say, “Franklin, it’s
Grandma.” (LAUGHTER)
Always, “buyer beware”, always buy
your religion from a reputable seller, and not one whose
reputation merely depends on the local
authorities.
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