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Dear Soul Arcanum:
I use marijuana quite often when meditating but I have heard that drugs can harm my astral body. “Drugs” is a very broad term and I am not sure if marijuana falls under this category in terms of its effects on the astral body. What is your opinion?
Jacob
Dear Jacob:
Cannabis can be found all over the world. According to some historians and archeologists, marijuana has been used for various purposes for some 10,000 years. In addition to the many practical uses for hemp, marijuana was also used to enhance spiritual pursuits and awareness and for many medicinal purposes. I mention this because even when we are conscious of our social conditioning, it’s difficult for most people raised in the United States to think about marijuana without being influenced by our culture’s extreme bias against it.
There are spiritual schools of thought that carry strong warnings about the use of intoxicants. Buddhism has five main precepts, and not taking intoxicants is one of them. However, I believe these warnings were based on alcohol and intoxicants that tend to cause people to be careless and break their spiritual vows. Marijuana has a very different effect than alcohol; since marijuana tends to make people very peaceful and meditative, it may be a great spiritual tool. While no one knows for sure what the Buddha really did, many historians claim that for years, he ate hemp seeds every day when he was searching for enlightenment, so I doubt any Buddhist warnings about marijuana in particular came from the big guy himself.
Some Hindus also believe that drugs can damage one’s astral body and this can lead to future lives in which the body is physically or mentally malformed. In this school of thought, the worst thing you can for your astral body is to indulge in negative feelings like fear, anger and envy, for these also damage the astral body and lead to miserable future lives. It seems to me that we can drive ourselves crazy worrying about the damage we may be doing to our astral bodies simply by living, and that worrying in itself may also damage our astral bodies. Further, if experiencing negative emotions is the worst thing for our astral bodies, and getting <q>high</q> encourages positive feelings, then even those people who smoke marijuana to avoid dealing with negative feelings should benefit. (The problem, of course, is if you need drugs to feel better, then when you aren’t getting high, your vibration will plummet again.)
There are also Hindu teachers and mystics of a different opinion altogether. There is a rich tradition of using marijuana as a sacrament in the worship of Shiva, the god of power and ecstasy. In fact, in ancient Vedic texts, marijuana is referred to as “the Sacred Grass” and was one of the five sacred plants of India. There are many interesting books written on the subject of sacred plants. If you’re interested, here’s a link to one to get you started: Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers.
Clearly, if we look to religious traditions for the answer, we get a huge range of ideas from smoking marijuana being one of the worst things we could do to it being one of the most powerful ways to achieve a spiritual breakthrough. Though we’ve been conditioned to view illegal drug use as harmful and irresponsible, there are some who believe that “the gods” gifted humankind with plants like marijuana to help us spiritually, and if we work with spirits of such plants in a conscious way, they can bless us with great wisdom regarding the nature of reality.
As for more modern views, many clairvoyants say that drug use leads to a mucky, yucky energy field. In my experience, this is because most people use mind-altering substances to avoid dealing with difficult feelings. This causes those nasty feelings to get stuck in the aura, which is what causes the muckiness. While it’s true that drugs affect our auras, this is true of Tylenol, cough remedies, and allergy medications as much as alcohol, marijuana and other drugs.
Our auras are in a constant state of change. Just as we are constantly experiencing new things, changing, and healing, so are our auras. When people leave this life, they also leave behind the physical problems that troubled them when they were alive. For example, the blind can see, the deaf can hear, and cripples have no problem with mobility. Given all of that, I find it hard to believe that smoking marijuana would permanently harm your astral body.
Of course, if you smoke marijuana and feel fearful or guilty about it, it will affect your aura. Further, these days, most marijuana is grown in a state of fear and distributed by individuals who are far from being full of love and light. You might ask yourself if you would eat food prepared by all of the people who have handled the marijuana you may be smoking; do you want to align with their energy? I imagine the energy of cultivated marijuana is very different from what grows in the wild.
Regarding why there is such a broad range of views, I believe it’s because the way marijuana affects one individual may be very different from how it affects another. If you are smoking marijuana to suppress your feelings or avoid dealing with something, it will create sludge in your aura, disconnect you from your personal power, and make you vulnerable to negative entities. The negative feelings you are avoiding will linger in your aura; then when you smoke, your psychic defenses will drop and any negative entities that are attracted to those negative feelings can move in. This sort of use is spiritually harmful and psychically damaging.
If you smoke marijuana in a conscious, respectful way in order to open your awareness to other realities or achieve some sort of spiritual breakthrough, its effects will probably prove positive. I say probably because it is also important that you are prepared for such shifts. The risk lies in going too high, too fast. If your lower bodies (physical, etheric and astral) are not ready for the sudden influx of light and energy that getting “high” (aligning with a higher body experience) entails, you can damage those lower bodies. This is why your reason for using a drug is so important. Also, while taking a mind-altering substance will open your aura to outside psychic influence, if you are in a high vibration and radiating peace and love, you will attract wise, loving entities who match your vibration.
In my view, there is no one correct answer. If you use fire carelessly, you may get burned; if you use it carefully and consciously, it can keep you warm and cook your food. The same is true of all that nature has given us. In such matters, we have to allow our own inner guidance to direct us. To determine if something is good for you, you must approach it in a conscious way and be very honest with yourself. Ask yourself why you are considering doing something, what you hope to gain from it, and how doing so tends to affect you. If something brings you peace and bliss and makes you feel closer to God, I would trust those feelings more than I would trust what other people have to say about the matter.
Soul Arcanum
Soul Arcanum