Drugs

It is being said that you encourage drugs; can you please clarify this?

That is absolutely nonsense. I am against drugs. I have to be against drugs for the simple reason that meditation cannot grow if you are taking drugs. Drugs make you unconscious, and meditation makes you conscious. They are opposite to each other. Drugs are needed by people who are miserable so that they can drown their misery in unconsciousness. People who are meditating do not need drugs, because if they use drugs they will drown their blissfulness into unconsciousness and that will be absolutely irrational, unnatural. Who wants to forget blissfulness? Everybody wants to forget misery, suffering, anguish. My whole teaching is meditation, and drugs are against it. How can I support drugs? It is a contradiction. Lies go on being spread against me by people who do not have any argument against what I am saying, against my way of life, against meditation. They have nothing to say. All…

The pupils of the tendai school used to study meditation before zen entered japan. Four of them, who were intimate friends, promised one another to observe seven days of silence. On the first day all were silent, but when the night came and the oil lamps were growing dim, one of the pupils could not help exclaiming to a servant: "fix those lamps. " the second pupil was surprised to hear the first one talk. "we are not supposed to say a word, " he remarked. "you two are stupid. Why did you talk?" asked the third. "I am the only one who has not talked -- thank god!" concluded the fourth.

And there is a different kind of knowing. It cannot be called "knowledge". It is more like love, less like knowledge. It is so intimate that the word "knowledge" is not sufficient to express it. The word "love" is more adequate, more expressive. In the history of human consciousness, the first thing that evolved was magic. Magic was a combination of science and religion. Magic had something of the mind and something of the no-mind. Then out of magic grew philosophy. Then out of philosophy grew science. Magic was both no-mind and mind; philosophy was only mind; and then mind plus experimentation became science. Religion is a state of no-mind. Religion and science are the two approaches to reality. Science approaches through the secondary; religion goes direct. Science is an indirect approach; religion is an immediate approach. Science goes round and round; religion simply penetrates to the heart of reality.…

[The new sannyasin says he has done TM, Kriya yoga and Vipassana in the past. He liked Vipassana most but found it hard to maintain a continuity. Osho says that these eastern methods presuppose that one has no repressions -- and modern man is the most repressive of any age. While meditating, on the surface you may feel peaceful, but underneath is continual turmoil which gathers more and more energy as it has no outlet.... ] Before you pour nectar into your being, it has to be completely cleansed of poison, otherwise the poison will even destroy the nectar. And this is one of the tragedies of life: the higher can always be destroyed by the lower and the lower cannot be so easily destroyed by the higher. This is a tragic fact, but it is so.

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…