Marijuana and Spirituality

How has marijuana affected your spirituality? For me, it has opened my mind to so many things I've never even thought of before; it allows me to see the bigger picture in the world and feel and notice things others don't.

 

diddo.....makes me feel connected to a "higher power" -pardon the pun.

 

it got me into it but im quitting weed now wellnot quiting but limiting it to special occasions

 

Read this interview:

http://www.eoni.com/~visionquest/library/miscresurrection.html

 

So what happens when you can't score? Do you lose the connection?

 

no, you patiently wait and continue to grow and learn. Weed is just an enhanced version of reality

 

If it can be enhanced, or modified, perhaps it isn't all that real.

And how about when your lungs can't take it anymore?

 

Namaste Bhaskar,

How do you explain the following passages from the Rig Veda?



Like wild winds, the draughts I've drunk
have lifted me: have I not drunk Soma?

The sky and earth are not equal even
to one half of me: have I not drunk Soma?

In my glory I eclipse all of heaven
and of earth: have I not drunk Soma?

Aha! this wide earth I'll lift and put there,
or maybe here: have I not drunk Soma?

- Rg Veda X.119

 

Ever heard of a vaporizer?

Marijuana can be incredibly spiritually powerful when used with the right intent. I encourage you to read that interview I posted a few threads up, as that can explain it much better than I can.

 

weed is soma!!!

 

Soma is believed to be mushroom also...

 

From Apte's Sanskrit Dictionary

soma1 m. (fr. 3. %{su}) juice , extract , (esp.) the juice of the Soma plant , (also) the Soma plant itself (said to be the climbing plant Sarcostema Viminalis or Asclepias Acida

 

when i smoke it alot it makes me lazy as fuck though well i was already lazy but still im cutting down to like 1nce a month sort of thing

 

i smoked weed everyday and meditated by myself for months
it was greatly beneficial. I still regularly recommend to people wishing to start meditating that they catalyze it with marijuana.

Although I've personally cut back. Mainly because, I actually don't need marijuana to get to the level of meditation it was getting me to anymore. It was honestly a highly effective training wheel in a sense.

The other reason Ive cut back is, I'm lacking some income currently... so I might start smoking regularly again if I get money to. I really want to just get the medical card and grow my own.

 

Hari Om!
I have quoted Bhaskar (I hope my dear friend doesnt mind?) from another thread in which he is making the preperations to teaech from the very Veda's, as regarding my own comments on Soma (Mushrooms, in my case) and I agree wholeheartedly with him.

Everything is a tool, some more powerful than others. Over the years, I've come to appreciate and understand God's presence more pleasantly and directly during a thunderstorm than under the aided assistance of marijuana (which I no longer smoke) or stronger psychedelics.
All of the realities one experiences are most definitley 'real', thus names realities, whether alternate or immediately universal. But collectivley, these realities are just temporary mental classifications, dualistic fragmentations, part's of the whole as seen by us as isolated ego controlled individuals. The truth is what you already are, it comes from within, and marijuana may help some people calm the mind, unplug the sense telephones from the minds operating answer system and still opinions or desires, but for many people it causes mental miscreation, misdirection of thought and energy, and confusion. A diversion from the point of meditation, if you will. But again we all react differently and have varying degrees of sensitivity to chemicals, so who is to say really?
My wife said to me last night : All path's are necessary.
Which reminds me of a Krishna quote in the early part of the Gita :
sri-bhagavan uvaca
asocyan anvasocas tvam
prajna-vadams ca bhasase
gatasun agatasums ca
nanusocanti panditah
The Blessed Lord said: While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor the dead.
No matter what tools we use, we all get it sooner or later!
Namaste -

 

Originally Posted by stev90
Namaste Bhaskar,

How do you explain the following passages from the Rig Veda?



Like wild winds, the draughts I've drunk
have lifted me: have I not drunk Soma?

The sky and earth are not equal even
to one half of me: have I not drunk Soma?

In my glory I eclipse all of heaven
and of earth: have I not drunk Soma?

Aha! this wide earth I'll lift and put there,
or maybe here: have I not drunk Soma?

First of all, thanks relayer for answering the question sufficiently.

I just want to add an academic point.
I have a serious problem with scriptural translations for the very reason that they give birth to misunderstandings as above, particularly when removed from the cultural context. And for that reason I refuse to work from translations and study the original language for myself. I strongly encourage people who want to delive into a scripture to learn the language and do so, and in the absence of such learning refrain from putting words in the mouths of the masters. Such misinterpretations do a great disservice to the spiritual community.
In interpreting the vedas the use of culturally specific metaphor is a major roadblock and this sukta quoted is a wonderful example.

In Hindu ritual one of the last concluding rites is to drink a teaspoon of tirtha (holy water which in those days included soma extract soma). Therefore to drink soma meant to have completed a major vedic ritual or spiritual initiation or practice. In this case it is one of the later suktas in the last mandala of the veda and is symbolic of the completion and culmination of all spiritual practice.

The deep satisfaction, spiritual upliftment and euphoria experienced at the end of the spiritual effort is described in this sukta. To confirm, I just looked up the sukta right before this one and it describes a fire sacrifice of the kind that is common to this day. I can testify to the sense of great joy and accomplishment that goes with the correct completion of such a ritual.

In examining the sanskrit of the refrain, I can come up with several different translations, equally valid:

Have I not seen the moon? (moon symbolizes the mind in vedic lore)
Have I not sipped the soma?
Have I not become absorbed in God? (Soma is used as a personification of the divine the very same veda in the entire 9th mandala)
Have I not taken away the mountains?

Soma can mean a lot of different things including Brahma, Vishnu Shiva, nectar, the moon god, a deity of law, camphor, air, wind, water, sky, ricewater, a river, an apsara, the god of death, and the god of wealth.

Similarly the word aapaam can also be translated in many ways: To drink, to sip, to see or to hear with concentration, to suck in, to hang on, to take away, to absorb, to concentrate upon

 

If you must use drugs, fine. It is your path. But don't look to the scriptures for excuses. If you feel the need to justify your practice thus, then perhaps it is time for some serious introspection.

 

ya nisa sarva-bhutanam
tasyam jagarti samyami
yasyam jagrati bhutani
sa nisa pasyato muneh

What is night for all beings is the time of awakening for the self-controlled; and the time of awakening for all beings is night for the introspective sage.

Ok, so here is my very simple explanation as regards my stance on psychedelic drugs and God.
When you look at psychedelic drugs, including marijuana (if used in a spiritual sense, of course), what is the purpose, what is the actual 'spiritual function' that these drugs produce? What is the actual reason for these altered state's of consciousnes?
The spiritual function is the production of mental images which relay either symbolic or solid messages (depending on circumstance, chemical, and environment). This is no different than talking to a human being, the human being you speak with uses the tool of language in order to paint a mental picture in your head so that the two of you may share together in whatever emotion. Magic mushrooms, mescaline, DMT, marijuana, etc. are the natural tools which Mother Nature, spirits, whatever it/they are, use to teach us about the mechanics of organic activity, also by painting pictures in our heads.
You have to look for what is really going on and ask yourself, are you the sort of person who is concerned with the immediate or short termed benefits of spirituality, or the end of it? Shamans may have figured out from tripping thousands of years ago that our DNA is a complex intertwined structure and used the images of 2 snakes hugging each other as a representation. Shamans may have figured out by communing with the spirits of Nature which plants cure which disease, how to heal people, and so on. All path's are necessary and it's just a matter of which one you are on. Have you work to do for God directly, bringing change to the world by changing yourself? Or do you have work to do for humanity, bringing change by healing and guiding? Both are spiritual paths that rely on each other in order to exist but they are not eternal. What is eternal is the Soul and I am of the belief as Bhaskar is, that any external guidance is placing a limitation on your own potential energy. Using marijuana as a guide for meditation, in the long run, will only put your progress on hold, in my opinion. Nothing wrong with that at all. We all need each other, we are all a family and we learn from one another every moment if we open up to what's really going on here.
Namaste

 

In my glory I eclipse all of heaven
and of earth: have I not drunk Soma?

Had this experience been the result of a drug, then that greatness belongs to the drug not me. The experience is no longer mine, it belongs to the external agency.
There are any number of situations that can separate us from an external object in which we invest our spirityual strength. In this case arrest, poverty, isolation, disability, death are only some. To place your entire spiritual strength in something outside you is as good as throwing it in the trash.

Don't put the keys to your happiness in someone else's pocket.
- Swami Chinmayananda

 

No one can get all the keys to their happiness out of the pocket of the earth.
Even the entities of pure energy still have a portion of their cycle flowing through what constitutes the earth.