Osho Quotes on Drugs

 

 

 

Drugs, alcohol, or other sorts of intoxicants, they have always been used by religious people. But through them you never move into the reality. Through them you fall into a torpor, into a coma. And in that coma you can have dreams.

 

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In Bali there is an old saying: If you are happy you can always learn to dance. But basically man is not happy. He is so unhappy that just to forget his unhappiness he goes on drinking alcoholic beverages, uses drugs -- marijuana, hashish and opium -- just to forget, at least for a few hours, his miserable state. And there is no reason at all to be miserable. In fact, misery should be very exceptional; happiness should be simply natural.

 

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It is pure awareness which does the same work that is expected by people through intoxicating drugs. Intoxicating drugs remove symptoms; awareness removes the very cause. Drugs simply give you a few hours of forgetfulness, and again the misery is there -- and with a vengeance, because it has to wait for six hours; it becomes more intense. Awareness cuts the very root of being miserable, in anxiety, in anguish. And because it cuts the very roots, after you have come down from the heights of awareness you don't find misery -- you find a peace, a silence, a very mild sweetness and a very subtle fragrance, left behind the tide, the tidal wave that had come and overtaken you.

 

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All religions have been against drugs. The reason is this: if you become an addict then the whole possibility of your higher dimension, of your higher unity, of achieving buddhahood, of becoming a christ, is lost. They are not against drugs, in fact. They are not concerned with drugs, they are concerned with your higher unity. If you start falling backwards in your mind, and if you become attuned with the lower unity of nature, then who will evolve? Then you have frustrated the very effort of nature through you. It was going to achieve God -- and you are satisfied with a drug.

 

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Take the question of drugs. I am not in support of drugs, but I am not against them either. I am not in support of Timothy Leary, I don't think that you can attain samadhi by drugs -- about that I am absolutely certain. No one has ever attained samadhi by- drugs, notwithstanding what Aldous Huxley and others say. It is too cheap, and through chemicals there is no possibility to attain the ultimate. But I am aware that drugs can help in a certain way. They can give you a glimpse; they cannot give you the reality, but they can give you a glimpse of the reality, and that glimpse can become a breakthrough. That glimpse can uproot you from your past and can send you on a search for the real. If you have seen God, even in your dream, your whole life will be transformed. Of course, the God in a dream is a dream, but the next morning you will start looking into the world -- where can you find this phenomenon that has happened in your dream?

 

Many people start their journey towards God, truth, samadhi, because they have had a certain glimpse somewhere. Maybe through drugs, maybe through sexual orgasm, maybe through music, or sometimes accidentally. Sometimes a person falls from a train, is hit on the head and he has a glimpse. I'm not saying make a method of that! But I know this has happened. A certain centre in the head is hit by accident and the person has a glimpse, an explosion of light. Never again will he be the same; now he will start searching for it. This is possible. The probable is no longer probable, it has become possible. Now he has some inkling, some contact. He cannot rest now.

 

I am not for drugs, I am not against drugs. But still, in this community, in my commune, drugs cannot be allowed. Politicians have never been very intelligent and one should not expect too much from them. In fact, only stupid people become interested in politics. If they were intelligent they would not be in politics at all.

 

So just for some ordinary, small thing the whole movement cannot be destroyed. That would be foolish. After a hundred years my attitude that drugs cannot be allowed in the Ashram will be thought anti-revolutionary. Naturally, I know it is anti-revolutionary. So let it be here on the record.

 

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The modern mind is in much hurry. It wants instant methods for stopping the mind. Hence, drugs have appeal. Mm? -- you can force the mind to stop by using chemicals, drugs, but again you are being violent with the mechanism. It is not good. It is destructive. In this way you are not going to become a master. You may be able to stop the mind through the drugs, but then drugs will become your master -- you are not going to become the master. You have simply changed your bosses, and you have changed for the worse. Now the drugs will hold power over you, they will possess you; without them you will be nowhere.

 

Meditation is not an effort against the mind. It is a way of understanding the mind. It is a very loving way of witnessing the mind -- but, of course, one has to be very patient. This mind that you are carrying in your head has arisen over centuries, millennia. Your small mind carries the whole experience of humanity -- and not only of humanity: of animals, of birds, of plants, of rocks. You have passed through all those experiences. All that has happened up to now has happened in you also. In a very small nutshell, you carry the whole experience of existence. That's what your mind is. In fact, to say it is yours is not right: it is collective; it belongs to us all.

 

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Yoga has been used to kill the mind; breathing can be used to kill the mind. There are rhythms of breath, subtle vibrations of breath, which can be very, very drastic to the delicate mind. The mind can be destroyed through them. These are old tricks. Now the latest tricks are supplied by science: LSD, marijuana, and others. More and more sophisticated drugs will be available sooner or later.

 

I am not in favour of stopping the mind. I am in favour of watching it. It stops of its own accord -- and then it is beautiful When something happens without any violence it has a beauty of its own, it has a natural growth. You can force a flower and open it by force; you can pull the petals of a bud and open it by force -- but you have destroyed the beauty of the flower. Now it is almost dead. It cannot stand your violence. The petals will be hanging loose, limp, dying. When the bud opens by its own energy, when it opens of its own accord, then those petals are alive.

 

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The really religious person is one who has become aware of the futility of desiring, of the impossibility of having anything here in this world or thereafter in the other world. You can only possess yourself. You can only be the master of your own being. If you are not trying for that.... It is hard work, there is no shortcut to it; notwithstanding what Timothy Leary says, there is no shortcut to it. Acid, drugs, are not going to help you there. That is very cheap, it is very cunning. It is a chemical deception. You want to get into the world of your innermost being without any effort. It is a dishonesty. Without earning it you want to possess it.

 

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Acid and drugs have always lured man. It is nothing new. It is as old as man himself -- in the Vedas they used to have SOMA. In India they have continued to use drugs down the centuries -- charas and ganga and opium -- they have tried everything. Now the madness is spreading all over the world. Now people are trying to find a shortcut -- a very easy and cheap thing -- that you can possess, that you can just swallow. Samadhi cannot be swallowed. And God is not a chemical phenomenon; you have to earn it, only then can you have it.

 

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intoxicating drugs proves only one thing: man, in his ordinary personality, is living in despair. He wants for a few hours at least to forget all about the worries and the problems and the anxieties, and there seems to be no other way. What do you want to protect your person for? Your person is your problem. And if you are intelligent enough, and you can find some presence where your person starts melting and disappearing -- without any intoxication, without any drugs -- then can you conceive of a greater blessing? Let the person disappear; it is simply a burden, a torture, a pain in the neck for which there is no medicine.

 

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Unless you give them a higher consciousness which can solve these problems -- then there is no need to forget anything -- unless you give them such a deep alertness and awareness that they can see the root cause of their misery, and they don't want just to cover it with alcohol but want to cut it from the roots... Except meditation there is no way that intoxicant drugs can be prohibited.

 

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I am against all intoxicants, against all drugs. They don't help; they only help you to postpone problems. I would like to really solve your problems. I have solved mine, and the problems are the same, more or less. I can bring you closer to me so you can feel my heart and you can see through my eyes and you can feel what has happened. And that feeling, that taste, will become a magnetic pull on you.

 

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Drugs are a deception. They give you a feeling which is imaginary, hallucinatory, they give you a feeling that you are back, part of nature. People come to me; they say, "I have been on a drug trip, and it was beautiful, and so many things happened." Nothing happened! -- because after it you are again the same, even worse. It only releases dreams in you, but you become so unconscious that you take the dreams to be real. You are not aware, so you cannot see whether this is a dream or a reality.

 

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Our meditations are nothing but drugs -- perfect drugs, without any chemicals in them. A man who can meditate will not be able to enjoy the drug, any drug. Because, his meditation gives him so much peace and the drug will disturb it.