Questioner: I have a friend who said that he got some special experiences while meditating in a meditation chamber at some meditation camp. I think he might have been under the influence of some psychedelics or something. There are a lot of gurus who advocate these kinds of practices, meditation chambers and psychedelics and such things, and we see these things in movies also. So, is there any truth in these things?
Acharya Prashant: See, all my life I never went to a meditation camp. It sounds a bit like a concentration camp, so I thought better to avoid! I do not know what is going on in these camps, but what you suspect might be the reality; it is quite possible that intoxicants or psychedelics might be finding their way to these places. In fact, it has been pretty prevalent; it has been, in fact, a bit of a norm, and several very popular teachers have openly advocated the use of psychedelics to achieve so-called higher states of consciousness.
I need not clarify that all this is a sham. It is an absolutely disgusting thing to say that you can achieve higher consciousness by actually lowering your consciousness. Spirituality is all about being able to see life clearly, being able to understand your own mind better. It is not about bringing in intoxication even where there is none.
We anyway already lead very intoxicated lives. Don’t we live like drunkards? Look at the way we function; look at the way we desire something; look at the way we move about, stumble, fall, and then blame others. All that is anyway symptomatic of drunkenness, right? Now, we are already drunken, and then somebody says that you drink a little more liquor and you will regain your sobriety. That is obviously not going to happen, irrespective of what logic somebody tries to push into it.
