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 where you 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.
Always, “buyer beware”, always buy your religion from a reputable seller, and not one whose reputation merely depends on the local authorities.