The Nature Of Narcotic Drugs

In order to see this subject more clearly, we should consider anything which is more than the basic requirement for maintaining a healthy body to be a narcotic drug. Of course, this would include baseball, television, chewing gum, and quite a good deal more that we tend to think of as harmless if not actually beneficial. But our radical definition of narcotics must be evaluated from the spiritual rather than the material point of view.

Generally speaking, Americans have been trained to think of "narcotic" as meaning "addictive." The dictionary definition, however, classifies as narcotic anything which, in small doses, causes relief or stimulation, but which in excess results in stupefaction, indolence, lethargy, coma or convulsions. Narcotic drugs are therefore necessarily associated with the abnormal and unhealthy condition of the body. They are used either to relieve pain, which is itself abnormal, or to create an abnormal state of consciousness in an otherwise healthy organism.

But the very meanings of such terms as "normal" and "healthy" must now come into question. For, according to the scriptural sources which offer the science of spiritual self realization to us, our true and original identity is that of pure spirit soul. It is the spiritual platform of awareness that is, therefore, the "normal" and "healthy" state for the living being. By the terms of such a transcendental definition of self, we who exist in the material world, under the material conception of life, are conditioned spirit souls, drugged by the body itself, and thus made to forget who we are. At some point we start identifying with the body and its desires, and thus we become more and more intoxicated by material Nature as we try satisfying the demands of the senses. So, quite factually; we are all drugged.

People of advanced intelligence ordinarily try regaining their original unconditioned consciousness, and, according to those who have succeeded, this is a state of unalloyed ecstasy, in which there is no need for any kind of intoxication. The great mystics, incarnations, sages and religious leaders throughout the ages have never used drugs in their spiritual undertakings, nor advocated their adherents taking them.

However, today's young have turned to such chemicals for spiritual awakening. They have grown up in a materially prosperous and secure society, which has been unable all the same to satisfy them. The young have looked upon the pleasures of their parents' generation and its whole social structure as dry and empty, and have searched elsewhere for fulfillment. And they have discovered psychedelic drugs. Psychedelics (literally, "mind-manifesting") are not new. They have been known for centuries. Peyote and "magic" mushrooms were used by the American Indians since before the time of Columbus, and there is even mention of a beverage called soma in the ancient Vedic civilization of India, whose antiquity can hardly be calculated. Both young and old are now, as they have been always, looking for pleasure. They are going about it in different ways, with varying means, varying outlooks, and varying results-but the basic principle of pleasure beyond the ordinary or "normal" confines of bodily material existence remains constant. What's more, this constant pleasure principle holds true not only for humanity. In Robert S. de Ropp's famous book, "Drugs and the Mind," he describes some experiments which have been conducted using rats with electrodes embedded in the pleasure and pain areas of the brain. This involves the use of an arrangement called a Skinner box, and Dr. James Olds has described the results of these experiments as follows: Electrical stimulation in some of the regions of the hypothalamus actually appeared to be far more rewarding to the animals than an ordinary satisfier such as food. For example, hungry rats ran faster to reach an electric stimulator than they did to reach the food. Indeed, a hungry animal often ignored available food in favor of the pleasure of stimulating itself electrically. Some rats with electrodes in these places stimulated their brains more than 2,000 times per hour for 24 consecutive hours!