So this is not helping in any way, pleasure doesn't help. You
have to come back again and again – and
then it becomes a vicious circle. When you come back and you find the
anguish is waiting, the anxiety,
all the problems – rather, they have increased – you become afraid,
you become nervous. Your whole
being trembles and becomes fear; then you have to escape again and
again. The more you escape, the
more problems increase. The more problems you face, the more alcohol
is needed. And then the
quantity of the intoxicant has to be increased continuously because
you become attuned to it. You take
a certain quantity of a drug: the first day you feel unconscious. After
a few days you are not
unconscious; you are still conscious, worries are still there knocking
at the door, you can hear – you
need a greater quantity. The greater quantity will also become less.
You can move to a point.... In
India they have tried; there are a few sects which have been working
through alcohol, drugs, things like
marijuana, mescaline. In the West it is a new phenomenon; that's why
the West is so worried about it.
In the East it is one of the oldest things. Of course, falling back
is easier. Effort will not be needed, you
can simply slip back. It is downhill, no effort; and going up is difficult.
Hence millions of people choose
the downhill way. What is the downhill way as far as consciousness
is concerned? Drugs, alcohol, sex,
are the downhill way. No, that is not possible. If you are not going
up, you are already falling down –
you may or you may not know it. Only a meditative society can be free
of alcohol and drugs, and other
chemical ways to bridgethe gap. But this happens rarely, so your mind
will say: That seems to be
impossible. It seems more possible to fall back into unconsciousness;
hence the appeal of drugs,
alcohol. Always, governments have been against drugs. Always, religions
have been against drugs.
Always, moralities have been against drugs. But still, for man they
have a deep appeal. No law has
been able toprohibit them from man. What is the appeal? The appeal
is this: alcohol and other drugs –
now there are many in the market: marijuana, LSD, psilocybin... and
many more will be coming – the
appeal of drugs is that they give you the feeling of oneness without
the effort of becoming a buddha.
You fall back into nature. Through chemicals you force yourself back
into unity with nature, where
birds are singing and trees are flowering. You forceyourself back.
And I say to you that drugs cannot
be avoided unless a society is created which drops blinkers. Otherwise
they will persist. Names differ
– and this is really beautiful people who drink alcohol, they are against
LSD. Alcohol is a drug! It may
be old, ancient, traditional, but it is a drug. The magistrate will
be an alcoholic and he will send a
person to jail because he has taken LSD! Nothing is wrong with LSD
if something is not wrong with
alcohol. LSD is just a newcomer – better, more developed, more scientific.
I am not saying: Take
LSD. I am not saying: Move into drugs. I am saying: Drop blinkers.
If you drop blinkers there will be
no need for any drugs. Then you live each twenty-four hours in such
deep wonder that no drug can
add to it. On the contrary, if a person who is living a life, a real
life like Lao Tzu, is given LSD, or
alcohol, or anything, he will feel that he has been pulled down from
his high state. He willnot be ready
to accept it. These are the two alternatives. If you are not meditative
then sooner or later you will have
to find some drug. And there are subtle drugs. Alcohol is not very
subtle, it is very gross. There are
subtle drugs. Sex may become a drug for you. And through sex you may
be just losing your
consciousness. You can use anything as a drug. Only meditation can
help. Why? – because meditation
gives you centering on the center which Patanjali calls praman. That
is one of the ways of tantra, a
method: one has to go on increasing the amount of alcohol and getting
attuned to it, but remaining
conscious. Hmm?... first you take just one teaspoonful. you remain
conscious; then two; then three;
then you go on. Then you drink the whole bottle. But now you are so
attuned your consciousness is
not disturbed; then alcohol won't do. Then you move to more dangerous
drugs. Who are the real
criminals? Richard Nixon has not taken drugs. Do you know? Adolf Hitler
never touched alcohol,
never smoked, was a total vegetarian. Now can you find anybody more
criminal? He was a perfect
Jaina – vegetarian, nonsmoking, nonalcoholic, and lived a very disciplined
life, moved according to the
clock – and created hell on earth. Sometimes I think had he taken a
little alcohol, would it not have
been better? The man would not have been so violent then. Had he smoked
a little – a very stupid but
innocent game of smoking – he would not have been so cruel, becausesmoking
is a catharsis. Unless
you are enlightened you cannot live that way; otherwise you will feel
meaningless, and deep anxiety will
arise and anguish will enter into your being. You will start committing
suicide. You will start finding
some way or other – drugs, alcohol, sex, anything – to drown yourself
so you can forget yourself
because lifeseems to be meaningless. The man may have been drunk, but
sometimes drunkards utter
tremendously meaningful truths. Why? Because drunkards can never remain
in the Aristotelian logic.
That may be the appeal of alcohol, of drugs; it relaxes you. Your head
which is divided by Aristotle –
between here and there, between now and then, between today and tomorrow
– that division
disappears. You settle deeply in you. You regain your lost childhood
when everything was everything
else and everything was meeting and merging into everything else, and
therewere no boundaries. If you
repeat a mantra continuously you will feel intoxicated. It is creating
an inner alcohol through sound. Or
you can move into drugs; then you change your chemistry, and for a
few moments you attain to a
height which is false, which is not a real height because you have
not grown towards it. The
chemistryhas pushed you. But they keep you asleep. If you are interested
in sleep, drugs are good,
alcohol is good, any type of chemical that helps you feel that you
are happy is good. Happiness never
comes through it, it just gives you the illusion of being happy; it
keeps you asleep. But if you are
interested in becoming alert, awakened, then it is dangerous. Then
you are undoing your very longing
to become awakened, enlightened. You areundoing it by your drugs. I
have heard.... It happens
sometimes through drugs. Not a very good way to attain it – very dangerous,
very costly, and illusory
– but it happens. Hence the appeal of the drugs down the ages. Drugs
are not new in the world; even
in the Vedas they talk about soma. Soma seems to be one of the most
powerful drugs ever discovered
by man. It must be something like LSD. Aldous Huxley has said that
in the future, when the ultimate
drug will be known, we will call it soma. From the Vedas, the ancientmost
book in the world, to
Timothy Leary, man has always been attracted by drugs – alcohol, marijuana,
opium. Why this
attraction? And all the moralists have been against it, and all the
puritans have been against it, and all
the governments have tried to curb and control, but it seems beyond
any government to control it.
What has been the cause of it? It gives something... it gives a glimpse
into the innocent mind of the child
again. Fischer-Hoffman therapy can go only this far. Yes, it gives
a certain balance, it is a balance in
polarity – listen to both the minds, the other part is also yours,
and live your life in a more balanced
way. Good, nothing wrong about it. That's what happens in dreaming,
that's what happens when you
drink alcohol, that's what happens when you take drugs – a shift. Reason
is dropped, logic is dropped,
the argument is dropped – suddenly you are gliding into the world of
dreams. But this is not going to
help you growspiritually. This is what we call samadhi. And there are
only two ways in the world: one
is to go away from yourself, one is to come to yourself. To go away,
there are a thousand by-paths.
Somebody may go away through money, somebody may go through power,
somebody may go
through sex, somebody may go through alcohol, drugs – a thousand paths,
by-paths. But they basically
belong to one direction – going without, going withoutwards, going
outside. Going farther and farther
away from the center towards the periphery. And that peripheryexists
not. Watch a politician –
power-mad. He is drunk. He need not have any other alcoholic beverages,
he need not have any
drugs. He is already drugged by power. He may even be against alcohol
and against drugs, he may try
to bring prohibition to the country, but he himself is drunk. And certainly
the alcohol that is created out
of power is more dangerous than any alcohol that comes out of grapes.
These power maniacs are the
reallydangerous people in the world. The appeal of the drug is that
it immediately shifts gear – from the
left hemisphere your energy moves to the right hemisphere. That's all
the drug can do. Alcohol has
been doing it for centuries but now far better drugs are available
– LSD, marijuana, psilocybin. and
even better drugs will be available inthe future. That's why people
have invented alcohol, drugs. They
are ways to escape from boredom. But you cannot really escape; you
can only avoid for a while.
Again and again the boredom will be coming, and again and again it
will be more and more loud. You
can escape in sex, in eating too much, in music – in a thousand and
one kinds of things you can escape.
But again and again the boredom will arise. It is not something that
can be avoided; it is part of human
growth. It has to befaced. The first state is that of the materialist.
Don't think, don't contemplate, don't
meditate upon anything. Don't become conscious – consciousness is dangerous.
Remain unconscious.
And if sometimes in spite of you some consciousness happens – because
life has so much pain that
sometimes it can happen that just the pain can give you a little consciousness
– then go and take drugs,
tranquilize yourself. Or alcohol is there and other intoxicants are
there. Just dull yourself again, back
into your anesthetic life, into your unconsciousness. Fall again into
thatanesthesia. That's where people
start becoming interested in drugs That is falling back, that is a
regression. Man cannot be freed from
alcohol and such intoxicants unless man is but on the way towards Buddhahood.
No government can
prevent people from alcohol; they will find ways. Because life becomes
so unbearable, one has to
forget it. Either one has to become a buddha or one has to become a
pig. One cannot remain in the
middle – the middle is such a torture. If you are only attentive then
sooner or later you will be tired of
it. You cannot be attentive for twenty-four hours; you will need holidays.
You will need alcohol, drugs,
to drop out of thatattentiveness. Sometimes man decides, as Walt Whitman
says, just to become an
animal. That's why there is so much attraction in drugs: they help
you for a moment to lose your
consciousness. You are again one. It may be alcohol or it may be modern
drugs, but they give you a
release – a release from the tense life. You relax, you become calm.
Suddenly you are one again. And
life seems to be no more a continuous fight in whichfailure is absolutely
certain. Parents are so
suffocated by their own misery, helplessness, turmoil, that they have
to drown themselves in alcohol.
Children are getting drowned in drugs. And the strange thing is that
the people who drown themselves
in alcohol are very much against drugs. And they are doing the same
thing; it is not different. It is the
same thing: somehow to drown oneself, to forget all about oneself and
the world and the problems.
Even children have so many problems because we teach them competition,
ambition. We send them to
the school and the competition starts. “You have to be first. You have
to bring an A grade.” Now you
have made them anxious. They are continuously in turmoil, anxiety:
whether they will be able to make
itor not.
