Question – 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?
Osho – 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, because if you are hungry the dream that you are eating helps you to continue sleep, otherwise your sleep will be broken. If the hunger is too much, how can you sleep? So the mind creates a dream: the mind says ‘Okay, you are hungry — eat!’ In the dream you go to the fridge, you open the fridge, you are eating many things that you have always been denying yourself. You eat well, you feel perfectly good, you turn over and you go to sleep. In the morning you know that it was a false food. Dream food cannot help — but you will only know in the morning, not before it. And the morning I am talking about may not come if you don’t work for it.
So drugs can deceive you, they can deceive you for your whole life. They create a similarity through chemical change: through chemical coercion of the body and the mind cells a certain state is created which feels as if one has arrived. In the morning, when the drug influence is over, you are in exactly the same place as you were before — maybe even lower, because every high experience through drugs is bound to be followed by a very low and depressed experience. Then again more drugs are needed, and the quantity has to be increased — you become an addict. This is not a way towards truth because it is not nourishing.
SAMADHI is a nourishment. You are not drugged by SAMADHI, you are awakened. But there is a similarity, so sometimes it can happen if you have been taking drugs. There can come a moment listening to me when you become silent, you are EN RAPPORT with me. And suddenly there is a moment, a moment of tremendous joy and beauty, and because you have been taking the drug, you will start thinking in terms of the drug. But if it is happening just by listening to me….
Think of it. If you meditate, if you go into the same world where I exist, into the same dimension where I exist — and if it can happen just by listening to me — then what to say about when you yourself will move into that world? Then you will know that all those experiences through drugs were just foolish, silly; you were wasting your energy and wasting your time.
But they keep you asleep. If you are interested in sleep, drugs are good, alcohol is good, any type of chemical that helps you feel that you are happy is good. Happiness never comes through it, it just gives you the illusion of being happy; it keeps you asleep. But if you are interested in becoming alert, awakened, then it is dangerous. Then you are undoing your very longing to become awakened, enlightened. You are undoing it by your drugs.
I have heard…. A travelling salesman in the deep South hit one hotel where the rooms were infested with giant, economy-size mosquitoes. Furthermore, he was told that no mosquito netting was available. ‘All you got to do is follow the example of the man who owns this hotel, Colonel Rip Clatterborn’ the desk clerk told him.
‘And how’ enquired the salesman sarcastically ‘does your blasted Colonel Clatterborn manage to go to sleep without a net?’
‘He doesn’t’ admitted the clerk. ‘But the Colonel is what you might call a dedicated drinker. He goes to bed so well oiled he doesn’t notice the mosquitoes for the first half of the night. And for the second half, the mosquitoes are so drunk they don’t notice the Colonel.’
You can go on playing this way, but you are wasting a tremendous opportunity. Avoid drugs. If you are really interested, then why not take the real drug? SAMADHI IS the real drug, but you cannot purchase it at the druggist’s. you cannot purchase it through a dope pusher. SAMADHI you have to attain through great intensity. thirst, passion, enquiry. SAMADHI you have to attain. Drugs are available from the outside, SAMADHI happens in your innermost core; it is the ultimate drug — SOMA.
Source – Osho Book “Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 1”