Yoga and recreational drugs do not go together
Numerous people came to me in the past couple of years who asked about recreational drugs. I do not support practicing when one is high. I have tried many forms of drugs in my twenties and I have worked very hard to mend the damage in the past fifteen years. I do not drink, smoke or use drugs, my happiness and peace lies in my sadhana(spiritual practice). I much rather quote my Master and teachers when it comes to giving advice to others whether to mix yoga and drugs. So if you are interested why I would not suggest you take any of those momentarily “happy or calm pills or puffs” here it is:
Yogi Bhajan Lecture: Self-Reverence
Lecture Excerpts by Yogi Bhajan, July 26, 1996
You are born, and you are divine, and you are you. You don’t have to become a human. You are human. Being a human is better than being an angel, and better than a sage, and better than any power of God that there is. You are human, therefore, you are in the image of God. But you want to look like your own image, therefore, you are stupid. You are not being like the one who made you.
You have „x” amount of prana, and „x” amount of energy called „youth,” and in „x” amount of time you can make the best of it, and that’s all it is. It’s as if there is a bank, and you have ten thousand dollars or one million dollars, whatever your expense account is, and you have a sixty-five year visit in which to spend it. How you’ll live, which motel you’ll live in, which hotel you’ll live in, what you do with life, that’s your problem, not God’s.
Happiness is your birthright. You can’t get your birthright, so you start fantasizing and you start romancing. Romance and fantasy take you away from reality. That’s why you have no endurance, you have no courage to have endurance, and you fall apart. One opposition, two oppositions, ten oppositions, twenty oppositions. You go down as if you don’t exist. Jack and Jill went down the hill. Woosh. Not right, folks. What is not right is left.
With the Guru’s blessing you earned this life, and you have earned this human body which is worshipped by angels, not only by you. And through this body you can understand Infinity, and with reverence, worship, and understanding, you can understand the totality of God. You know how blissful it is?
Have you seen these kids when they take all that (Yogi Bhajan demonstrates a person taking drugs by sniffing some substance through his nose)? „Oh, I’m in ecstasy.” Well, you have three hundred dollars less and you are stupid forever. Yes, you are in ecstasy.
And under the influence of these drugs you do things. You have wet dreams. You have cold sweats. Sometimes you get the shakes. What is this? It’s not you. It is good to get sick and fall apart once in a while. A car does it, why not you? But the problem is, your parts are not replaceable. They don’t have a Jiffy lube to lube you up.
Once you lose a part of you, folks, you are gone. One part that you are losing these days with drugs is called lmpactuous Sensitivity. This generation, the Sixties generation, has lost it. Drugs may do good to you for a while, it’s your money. I’m not asking you not to use them, but you shall never be you again.
That’s why I started Kundalini Yoga here. I wasn’t interested in gaining my leadership or membership. I saw the tragedy of mankind. I saw how damaged they were. We picked up young bodies left on trails, eaten by animals, unrecognizable, and sometimes their identification led us to their homes. You can’t believe it.
But what is a drug? When you take any drug which makes you hallucinate, it means your brain cells are stretched to the area and extent beyond what they should be. So the chances of developing sensitivity and experiencing Infinity are lost.
I remember somebody ate a brownie. For six days he was saying, „I am Yogiji, and I am with Guru Ram Das, and I am having all there is. And I know what it is.” (Yogi Bhajan says all this in a sing-song voice.) “They are all my friends, I am in Heavens. I’m seeing angels. Lord Shiva came yesterday to massage me.” For seven days I had to sit by his bed. And this is what I was hearing: „Oh, oh, Yogiji. I am Yogi Bhajan, I’m here. He has gone into my whole body. And my legs are his legs. My hands are….” And I was sitting on the chair, by his side. Seven long days! Finally I got tired of sitting, my buttocks started hurting; I just took care of his temples and he woke up.
I said, „Hi, Yogiji. He said, „No, you are Yogiji.”
I said, „Oh yes? I just wanted you to come back to yourself.” There was no self. The self, whether it was great or it was bad, right or wrong, it got stretched. And sometimes when you stretch something, it doesn’t come back.
So people have acid and cocaine and all these drugs, but the worst of all is marijuana. That’s the worst. Every drug has a limited feature and flushes out through the urine. Marijuana does not get out through the urine. Actually marijuana is an herb which is used for stomach ailments. It numbs the internal wound of the digestive system. That’s what it was used for. But the moment you smoke it, it hits your pituitary and that’s it, you’re gone. It freezes the serum in the spine, and you will never have gray matter of the quality that you had, doesn’t matter how you think you may be.
You don’t want to project you. You want to project somebody else. You are the power. You don’t need the power. You are the beauty. You don’t need the beauty. You are the success. You don’t need the success. You are the sex. You don’t need to sex yourself.
Infinity cannot be measured. Reverence cannot be explained, because reverence is Infinity. Reverence has such a power that it becomes
Infinity, and for you to become Infinity, you have to have self-reverence, not reference.
You need fifteen breaths a minute; that’s what you normally take. And when you are excited, emotional, drugged, sexual, sensual, excited, whatever, you go up to twenty-four. Sometimes you go to thirty-one, something like that. It’s very simple mathematics. Suppose you have enough breath of life at the rate of one breath for one year, so you take one breath a minute, you can live fifteen years. Suppose you have breath of life for one hundred years. At fifteen breaths a minute, at that rate, you can live 1500 years. That’s how yogis extend their life—by practicing one breath a minute. When you practice one breath a minute, then you become Pavan Guru—you become the light and knowledge of the prana, and then you know the Universe, the Universe knows you.
© 1997 The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan
