What happens when one takes drugs to achieve enlightenment?

Can one take the sudden jump with the help of drugs?

No. That will be the jump of the drug, not yours; and the point is for you to take the jump, not the drug. Drugs are not in search of enlightenment; they are quite well as they are. If you take a drug, and something happens to you, it is happening to the drug really, not to you. It is happening just to the chemistry of the body, not to your consciousness. It is a dream phenomenon, a hallucination. It can be beautiful sometimes -- sometimes, remember. Sometimes it can be the very hell. It depends. That s why I say a drug can only create a situation in the chemistry of your body, but if your mind was going through hell, the mind will continue going through hell. Now the hell will be stronger, that's all; because now the chemistry is different. You will move towards hell, but you…

Beloved Osho, many people are experimenting with the drug ecstasy. I heard you say once that a lie is sweet in the beginning and bitter in the end. And truth is bitter in the beginning and sweet in the end. I have been meditating, but I don't have the experiences people report from the drug ecstasy. Is the drug like the lie and meditation, the truth? -- or am I missing something that could really help me?

Ecstasy can create a chemical change for the time being. It can make you feel a great well-being, more intensity in life, more color in the world. But this is only going to last for few hours and then you will again be back with a thump on the ground, and now life will look even more miserable, because now you have something to compare it with. Drugs like Ecstasy cannot reach your consciousness. They can only reach your mind. They have nothing parallel to meditation. Meditation reaches your consciousness. It is a state of no-mind. And drugs like Ecstasy reach only to the mind, and give you a euphoria, beautiful dreams, fantasies which appear to be real. So when people tell you that they have experienced so many beautiful things, you feel sad. You have been meditating and you have not felt anything and these people are feeling things…

Even though I did not understand what was happening, I have had enlightening experiences through the use of hallucinogenic drugs. I know that lsd is false, but what is, if any, the truth about mushrooms?

Lao Tzu says, "The journey of ten thousand miles starts in the first step." The first step is a great moment. Just thing: the larva becomes the caterpillar... a great moment, because the larva was static, and the caterpillar moves, crawls. The caterpillar is not yet a butterfly. It knows nothing of flying, it knows nothing of flowers, it is not yet a winged thing, but the journey has started. The journey of ten thousand miles -- the first step has been taken. it has started crawling. If crawling is possible, then one day flying will also be possible. The larva cannot become the butterfly, only the caterpillar can become the butterfly. The worldly man cannot arrive in his being, only a sannyasin can arrive. The sannyasin is between the larva and the butterfly, the link. So a sannyasin is both the beginning of a journey and a process; it…

You once said that drugs create chemical dreams -- imaginary experiences. And krishnamurti says that all yoga practices, all meditation techniques, are just like drugs -- they produce chemical change and, hence, the experiences. Please comment.

If you move through yoga, through the inner changes in the chemistry of the body, you will never be dependent, and you will be able to go beyond. Because the whole point of religion is to go beyond experiences. Whether you experience beautiful colors -- rainbow all around through LSD -- or you experience heaven through yoga exercises, basically there is no difference. In fact until you go beyond all experiences, all objective experiences, until you come to the point where only the witness remains and no experience to be experienced, only the experiencer remains, you have not touched the boundary of religion. Krishnamurti is right. But the people who are listening to him are misunderstanding him. Thinking that all experiences are futile, they have remained ordinary; they have not made any effort. I know all experiences are futile, finally one has to Leave them, but before you can leave…

I often take drugs. Once when I was attending the discourse, I closed my eyes and suddenly felt the same as I feel on a drug trip. Osho, is there any relation or similarity between samadhi and drugs?

There is and there is not. There is because drugs create a false SAMADHI, a pseudo SAMADHI almost like the SAMADHI. SO there is a relationship because even if drugs create false SAMADHI, they create something similar to SAMADHI; and there is no relationship also because the false is not the real, and the false can never be the real. It is like this: if you are hungry in the night you dream that you are eating -- yes, in the dream -- everything looks like eating; you feel satisfied, you turn over and go to sleep. In the morning you feel it was just a dream. It has not nourished you, it simply deceived you. Drugs deceive you and create a false SAMADHI -- they don't nourish you. Some day, when you will awaken, then you will see that you were simply dreaming that you were eating. It helped,…