The Effect of Drugs and Alcohol on Consciousness

By James L. Young III












We tend, in day to day conversation, periodically to mention our soul in the sense that we have or possess this soul, which is attached to or from or behind us somewhere and floats along above or behind or beside us like some insubstantial balloon. As in so many of our daily conversational modes, we need to remember that exactly the inverse is true, that man is a soul and has a body.

We are souls and, in fact, have several bodies through which we manifest specific physiological, emotional and mental (thinking) functions, transferring from less substantial, finer-structured mental and desire body structures through the denser physical body structure that we have assumed for the purposes of learning, growth and the ascension of consciousness.

This multiple body structure presents a major challenge to the evolving physical and spiritual race: Learning control and understanding of our multiple bodies and their integration to promote our spiritual growth. The mechanism of communication and of understanding is known in the classic literature as the chakra structure.

The chakras themselves are vital whirlpools of energy that allow communication between the Source of our consciousness, which is nonphysical and the responsibility for and projection of our consciousness on the physical level. The mechanism by which this occurs and the control and understanding which we possess of that mechanism either enhances or limits the possibilities of our growth.

The chakras exist within and slightly beyond our dense physical body, interpenetrate it and make a final connection within the physical structure we know as the spine and the spinal cord. These structures classically, in inter-plane communication, are seven in number.

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The Etheric Double

Between the lower emotional center, the desire body in which we may leave our physical body to do work on the "inner," and the dense physical body with which we work on the "outer," there is a medium of exchange, sealing us in all but specified directions from contact directly with the Desire Plane. This secondary structure, known in the classic literature as the etheric double, is a physical structure of neither Desire nor Mental Plane material, finer in its density than the visible physical body but made, nonetheless, of physical atoms.

Our physical body requires oxygen and glucose for its metabolism, proteins for its building and maintenance and vitality for its life and consciousness. The intake points for oxygen, glucose and protein are obvious to us all. The intake point of vitality, whose origin is the sun and its action upon physical atoms, and the input points for thoughts and emotions that make up our nonphysical being, occur within the structure of the vital body, the etheric double.

Vitality, known in the literature as prana, is taken into the body through a mechanism that I will describe momentarily. This vitality distributes itself through duplicate channels overlying our basic physiologic nervous system through all cells of the body, releasing vitality, mobilizing and structuring cells and exiting the body through the extremities, through the pores and bodily orifices in a fine, nearly invisible spray extending a few inches from the body.

This "cupping" effect, this vital duplicate of our physical body duplicates each organ structure, bone, nerve and vein. It exists within, around and interpenetrates the actual visible physical structure and forms the vital body made of prana, born of prana, cupping and holding our physical body, providing it with life and vitality.

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Location and Appearance of Chakras

The chakras exist within the vital body. When seen in frontal view, as has been traditional in esoteric works, the chakras seem to overlie particular physiological structures. In fact, the chakras exist slightly beyond the visible surface of the body. The seven chakras, which lie along the spinal midline, form the communication network. The eighth chakra, the splenic chakra, lying just to the heart side of the spinal line, forms the intake port for the physical vitality necessary to maintain the physical body, to distribute, carry, form and hold the physical body. Within the physical body structure then, the chakras appear.

In the undeveloped individual, they appear as small, one and a half to two inch circles, hence the term chakra, meaning "wheel." They have the appearance of a lightly-spoked, round and rotating object, giving the impression of a wheel.

In the more developed soul, the individual who has begun to understand, control and focus his or her emotional and mental energies, the chakras begin to grow in size, depth and color. They begin to rotate more rapidly until changing from the appearance of a wheel, they begin to resemble nothing so much as a huge and iridescent flower, hence their classical name, the lotus structures.

All communication between the planes of consciousness occurs via the chakras, which are located in the necessary positions to provide the power of ascension.

[Note: Under sacrifice of self-will and soul conquering of emotions and idle thoughts in soul ascension, the chakras and lotus structures lose color until they become pale golden to white in appearance. The development of self-will deeply colors both sets of structures.]

Sacral, Lumbar and Solar Chakras: The primal chakra, the muladhara chakra, called the root or sacral chakra, is located at the base of the spine. It acts as the intake, control and distribution point of earthly fire [magnetic currents of earth], the reascending fire of creation that has descended into the physical, reached its lowest point of structure and now reascends to God. Trapped in the middle of that reascending fire, we find ourselves with the fire of creation reascending through our spinal channels, waiting only to be directed and controlled. So, through the root center chakra, the creative fire of earth, the kundalini, enters our bodies to be used, subject only to our will.

One level of kundalini is active in all living beings; this is the energy that brings the chakras into rotation. The outer layer of the kundalini forms the rotating vortex of chakra energy that reaches through the planes to our bodies. Pouring down through the centers of the chakras come the emotional, sensory and mental impressions that give us consciousness.

The lower two chakras (sacral and lumbar) are concerned primarily with the ascending creative fire and its structuring to control the two gross-level vehicles beyond the physical, the desire and mental bodies, which we must create to possess consciousness. The next set of chakras concerns itself with direct communication to those planes.

The solar chakra, visible in most reasonably developed humans, lies just above the navel, connects itself directly with the desire body and allows us contact with the emotional structure of the Desire Plane. [Note: This is the chakra governing self-will, the center through which the individual may be "possessed" by an entity from the lower Astral or the Desire Plane.]

Heart Chakra: The next chakra on the ascending line, located slightly above the heart in the physical, is the heart chakra. It penetrates the heart and drives its contact into the mid-thoracic spine. The heart chakra brings us into contact with the Mental Plane and the concrete and illumined thought processes existing respectively on the lower and upper mental levels.

Throat, Brow and Crown Chakras: We see the next chakra, known in Sanskrit as the vishuddha, the speaking or throat chakra, physically hovering above the throat and this brings us to the level of communication, of hearing and speech, physical, desire and mental. The empowering and boosting of this chakra gives us direct understanding of what is happening on the planes and in realms that we have contacted through the lower chakras.

The last two chakras exist for our particular evolutionary level within the brain, interpenetrating the brain tissue and powering the pituitary gland and pineal body respectively, the master controlling glands of our endocrine system.

The brow chakra, the ajna, is the two-petaled lotus seen in the vast majority of Oriental sculptures and paintings as a visible bulge between the eyes of those who are enlightened and awakened. This chakra confers the power of sight, again on those planes that we have conquered in the lower physical, those to which we have access, and gives us an intimate and direct understanding of the processes necessary for our further growth.

The final chakra is the only one that does not connect through one of our own created bodies but acts as a final tap beyond the needs of emotion, thought or physical survival, directly to our own Oversoul and beyond our Oversoul to God. The crown chakra, the sahasarara padme, the thousand-petaled lotus, gives us direct and intimate knowledge of our necessary paths and acts, not only in a downward manner but also in an upward fashion.

This is the only chakra or lotus through which we can direct Light to others. The golden crowns of the twenty-four elders, the crowns that they continually cast down at the feet of God, represent the up welling of the crown chakra that can be "cast down" or given out repeatedly because its Source is above, because the crown grows again as rapidly as it can be cast at the feet of God.

So, the thousand-petaled lotus serves as the final tap beyond the physical, vital, desire and mental bodies directly to our own spiritual being and beyond to the Source of our life and Light. These are our communications channels to use, misuse, abuse, not to use at all, as we will and desire. The tools are there for our use, if we choose to pick them up.

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How to Open the Chakras

The prana, the vital energy that structures and controls our physical body, is the tool by which we activate the chakras, one at a time. The prana is our key; it exists everywhere and can be drawn upon for our use. The prana gives us the key to kundalini, the sacred creative fire.

By focusing our pranic awareness on the sacral chakra, by opening our channels and by lifting ourselves, we bring up the kundalini, one level at a time, through each of our chakras. This opens communication, increases Light, the rotational velocity and the capacity, the size of each chakra in turn. [Note: There should be no force of self-will used in this. The ideal method is to invoke and "let" the Light melt, dissolve and absorb all blockages or crystallization.]

The structure of the chakras, lying at the surface of the vital body just beyond the physical, requires that a web be maintained between the very rarified, not quite visible in most people, etheric vital body and the entirely different desire body. The difference between the physical and the vital is merely one of degree of tenuousness, the difference between the vital and desire level is a difference of kind.

To prevent interpenetration of those planes prior to the ability of the individual involved to control and focus the information flowing from the Desire Plane, a web of mon-atomic, virtually impenetrable structure forms the "skin" of the vital body, penetrated only by the seven lotuses, the Temple of Seven Gates, sealed behind the Veil. This web is impenetrable save by terrible accident or deliberate abuse. The web itself is strong but only in the sense of being a semipermeable membrane that allows passage of specifically attuned vibrations and no other.

No energy not capable of using the atomic structure of both the physical plane and the Desire Plane may freely penetrate the vital web. The only penetration of the web that can occur is from the physical across to the Desire Plane. Nothing coming down can penetrate except through the lotus and chakra structures, the channel that has been deliberately left open for communication with those planes and realms.

Many are the individuals who through soul debts, through previous misuse, through loss of soul substance have created for themselves physical and vital body structures incapable of reaching what they know in their consciousness to be available to them. They are generally of an emotional nature incapable of the work, concentration, devotion and prayer necessary to reascend. Thus, the temptation is great and always present, for the forcible opening of that to which they no longer possess the key, to batter at the doors of the planes and realms begging for admittance. They know something is there that they cannot see, something they should have but do not.

They do not possess the mental qualities and emotional calm to take the time and work necessary to reacquire that key. Instead, such an individual takes a hammer and chisel and cuts his way through to the Desire and Mental Planes.

These practices – the left-hand path of magic, the dark path, the use of so-called psychoactive chemicals – force a temporary gate into the lower Astral Plane [the area immediately surrounding earth], releasing tremendous emotional energies.

Depending upon the depth of the penetration into the lower astral, these energies affect the physical senses of perception, creating those phenomena known on the outer as visual and auditory hallucination, "seeing" and "hearing" things which simply have no physical being. But this still leaves the individual, when dropped back into the physical by termination of the action of his particular forcible hammer and chisel, without the key. Now, having been, if only in a gross sense at a low vibratory level, to the place he had previously known to exist, the desire to reactivate that opening becomes one of the predominating motivating factors in his life – to reaccess this place from which he seems to be sealed away.

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The psychoactive drugs include a wide range of chemicals causing temporary alteration of mood, of perception and of affect, temporary alterations of personality via access to channels not normally available to him at his stage of development. The psychoactive drugs act directly through the lotus and chakra structures. The reason these drugs can be classified into a subcategory in general – that is, those chemicals capable of effecting alteration within the physical body –is that they act directly upon the underlying physiologic nervous system, which is supported and driven by the input of the chakras.

What we're establishing here is a sort of inverse feedback. There are two ways of opening chakra function. One may activate the chakras by in-drawing greater Light, power, clarity and volume of information down from, for example our desire body – that body which exists upon the Desire Plane and which gives us the necessary information concerning our own emotional nature, emotional needs and the requirements of others, which process stimulates development of the faculty of empathy.

Or, one may chemically stimulate the denser physical structure [nerve plexus], which is wrapped around the stalk of the chakra between its bell-like opening and its spinal contact. This brings the chakra to a higher level of rotation, forcing vital material out through the bell, across the web into the Desire Plane. This forces a gate and one may push his way into a plane of material structure not normally available. That contact is held open for such time as the chemical involved can maintain the abnormal action of the nerve plexus surrounding the chakra.

As the drug itself is extracted from the bloodstream, broken down, detoxified and eliminated from the physical system, the physiologic nervous system returns to its normal level of function. The rotational velocity of the chakra slows to its normal pace, again sealing the barrier. Dependent upon the type of chemical structure and its vital components, the specific chakra which is boosted into rotation varies.

The psychoactive drugs can be subdivided for purposes of study into functional groupings rather than pharmacologic or toxicologic groups which share chemical structures. What we're looking for here are functional groups, not what the chemicals are, but which chakras they affect.

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Stimulants: Amphetamines and Cocaine

Despite a wide variance in their atomic and molecular structure, the group of central nervous system stimulants includes amphetamines, commonly called "speed," the wide range of substances, related functionally though not structurally, known as amphetamine cogenors and the non-amphetamine stimulant cocaine. [Other central nervous system stimulants include crystal meth, methylphenidate, phenmetrazine and strychnine.]

These drugs are sympathomimetic boosters, drugs which activate and bring the physical body's sympathetic nervous system to a higher level of operation. The primary plexus and external input point of the sympathetic nervous system lies within the solar chakra, the gate to the desire body and the Desire Plane.

So with the chronic consumption of stimulant substances, we find an individual who does seemingly – and "seem" is the most important part of all of this – to gain an incredible sensitivity to emotion, who becomes sensitized to the unspoken feelings of others, who begins to draw information from sources that don't appear to exist on the physical. Because this information is channeled through the lower astral, the structuring of this emotional input tends to be negative. The primary source and nature of input from the lower Astral Plane is that of threat, and the response is self-protection.

This is an early chakra, only the third up. We are talking about an early mammalian structure, one we share with all animals on the earth. It is a sympathetic structure, mammalian in characteristic, owing its pattern to the second part of the triune brain structure, the limbic system, the seat of emotion. This operational system of protection is the one which alerts us to danger.

Information forced backward through this system, including all the emotions which we tend to gather from those around us and funneled through this particular mechanism, is interpreted in the sense of threat. The maximum negative connotation is placed on each thought, emotion and contact made on the lower Astral and Desire Planes.

As a result, after a short period of time, we begin to watch the stimulant abuser alter in his affectual performance, in the way in which he relates to those people from whom he draws these emotional messages. We begin to see the development of the classic paranoid psychotic personality, beginning with suspicion and hostility – over a period of time, growing more and more defensive in his reaction to any sort of emotional stimulus.

But the emotional stimulus remains invariable. The stimulant user cannot cut off the emotional stimulus without discontinuing use of the drug and as long as emotional stimulus continues, it must be interpreted in the sense of a physiologic threat. There is no other interpretational mechanism available to this person, who has not opened the chakra to receive information but has torn the veil to grasp information.

During the early portion of this developing personality change, the gate can be closed; at the cost of emotional stress, yes, but closed nonetheless. Discontinuance of the stimulant substance will seal the chakra because the individual's developmental level is insufficient to enable him to open that chakra of his own self-will. As the process continues, as the dosage increases due to the effect of physiologic tolerance, more and more of the substance is required to boost the sympathetic nervous system to that level of activity that will open and rotate the solar chakra.

As more of the drug is taken, more volatized material is forced through the vital web and a point is reached where the process is no longer reversible. Remember, the vital web is a semipermeable membrane, and like all such membranes, it is incredibly effective in its task, very powerful in the one function for which it was designed and very weak everywhere else. All of its structure and its physical interconnection is designed for one purpose, the passage of specifically attuned energies in one direction. To all other stresses it is a very delicate, tissue-like membrane.

With sufficient dosage over a sufficient period of time, the vital web itself will be breached; a hole will be torn in the vital web directly above the solar chakra in the barrier between the physical and the lower Astral and Desire Planes. At this point, we have an individual of relatively low development, poor discipline, inadequate emotional and mental structuring, who is exposed to an unceasing and unstoppable flow of emotional and apparently very threatening, threatening, threatening data, one who is incapable of shutting off the flow of information from the lower astral through the solar chakra and the flow is pouring into an undefended nervous system.

The individual has ceased to be sane in the outer sense of the term. He is no longer in control of or even protected by his own vehicles. This is the condition which we refer to on the outer as chronic stimulant psychosis. The effect of constantly maintained and increased quantities of stimulant drugs being poured into the physical results in a tear, a breach in the vital web, leaving this particular individual undefended against imagery.

There is no mentation; the input is never clearly understood because the individual is still two chakras below the possibility of understanding. But there is impression, feeling, emotion in the rawest sense without capability of understanding, fear, the "fight or flight" reflex toward that which cannot be understood. An individual who has become, for all intents and purposes, insane.

There is frequently an irreparable breach in this individual's personality. The possibility of reestablishing a secure web over the solar chakra is minuscule. So, this individual has taken this incarnation and dropped it somewhere. Previous development is lost in an overwhelming flood of emotional impressions beyond the control of this drug-abusing individual. The personality, the mind is swamped in a flood of emotional impressions over which he no longer has control.

We see an individual who is literally leaking vitality, whose vitality being taken in through the splenic chakra and distributed to the body in normal fashion, is now venting through a rent in the vital web. We watch his physical health and vitality decline for no apparent reason, since his body may still seem to be in fine shape.

He is breathing, eating and doing all the things one is supposed to do but he's missing the other component; his vitality is pouring out through the rent in the web. We watch his physical health begin to slide downhill as his perceptual distortion increases. The greater the degree of distortion, the more leakage through the web, the more extreme becomes the loss of health. Physical structures begin to fail for no apparent reason.

The most common problem for this individual in terms of his long-term health is, of course, seated in the next chakra up; this is where the drain occurs. What we see is a very rapid degradation of the physiologic circulatory system, which is innervated and structured by the heart chakra. As energy is drained, the cardiovascular system begins to collapse. So this very rapid degradation of physical health, centered in the cardiovascular system, drains the vitality as the rent in the web itself drains the vital structures.

We now have an individual who is, to all intents and purposes, capable of no further development within this incarnation. The web which constructs and holds the vital body has been damaged beyond repair.

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Depressants: Alcohol, Tranquilizers and Sedatives

The central nervous system depressant drugs are the next primary grouping of psychoactive substances. They include alcohol, the rather wide range of miscellaneous chemical lumped together by the media under the generic concept of "glue-sniffing" (amyl nitrate, butyl nitrate and spray paint), the inhalation of various solvent products (glue, toluene, etc.), tranquilizers, calmatives, sedative hypnotics (alcohol, barbiturates, chloral hydrate, meprobamate and methaqualone) and narcotics (codeine, heroin, methadone and morphine). This particular series of drugs holds its fascination for the human race because of the fact that they are cerebral drugs affecting primarily the cerebrospinal system.

Primary effects here are within the throat and brow chakras, sealing off the lower chakras from the upper, leaving the desire body and the mental body isolated from the physiologic brain. Because of this shut-off, we find the user of central nervous system depressants to demonstrate a widely variable affect during early periods of intoxication. The mental and emotional natures slide out of sync with one another, no longer driven from above, still being powered from below but without the direction and control necessary for their equal and coordinate function.

As the solar and heart chakras slide out of synchronization with the initial dosages of these drugs, we see the pattern known as successive central nervous system intoxication. The pattern of intoxication with these drugs descends from the cerebrum to the vital functions provided by the lower central nervous system, the medulla, the pons and the spinal cord itself.

Physiologically, this brings about the very real possibility of death as the actual physiologic functions are suppressed. On the outer level though, what we're looking at is a lack of coordination and a loss of synchronization between and among the physical, desire and mental bodies as their inputs begin to enter the central nervous system out of phase and out of coordination. This process very frequently results in a partial dislocation of the vital body. As the energy structure, the pranic structure that forms the vital body and the chakras themselves are forced out of synchronization, the vital body is shifted and begins to lose synchronization with its denser physical substrate.

With both throat and brow chakras affected, hallucinosis is a common and very easily repeatable phenomenon with this type of intoxication. The functions of "seeing" and "hearing" at all levels begin to lose their coordination and the individual slides in and out of sync at both the desire and mental levels. He is able to see and hear upon occasion at both or one or the other levels and moments later is unable to see or hear at either, losing track of his physiologic position as the vital body periodically dis-coordinates with his physical, losing track not only of what room he's in but of what plane he is occupying at any given moment.

So the individual becomes acutely uncoordinated, begins to lose track of mentational processes and then is abruptly in a state of crystalline clarity, is at one moment laughing and at the next moment weeping, at one moment elated and the next moment depressed as he slides in and out of synchronization with himself and his own other vehicles.

The messages through the solar and heart chakras are losing coordination, losing synchronicity and, most importantly, losing the drive and control represented by the throat and brow chakras. This presents the individual with a constantly changing spectrum of physical input, none of which can be either coordinated or reconciled with the physical knowledge of who he is, where he is or what he's doing.

This slippage in and out of the lower planes of consciousness is similar to what we saw with the stimulant abuser. It is for this reason that many people consider alcohol to be a stimulant. It's been written up in much literature as being a stimulating drug when, in fact, it is a physiological depressant and a depressant only. It has no stimulating physical effect; the stimulating effect is on the desire body.

The use of alcohol, of course, predates the use and, in fact, the availability of the vast majority of psychoactive drugs. Alcohol has been used as a tool of consciousness manipulation since long before we established any written records. If we look back along the akasha (the etheric record of all events occurring within the time-space continuum), it's very difficult to find a time when alcohol was not a predominant technique for opening the channels to the planes. Alcohol in itself being a rapidly vocalized chemical, presents us with access to the lower astral with relative ease.

Because of the dual function of depressant drugs – affecting two chakras and cutting off two, throwing them out of sync – the possible set of physiologic and vital interactive chakra reactions is much wider than that which we see with the stimulant drugs, which is a limited process affecting primarily one chakra and affecting it basically in only one direction.

Here we have an interplay of four chakras being affected, two isolated and two intoxicated, with a "playing" reaction moving back and forth across the lower planes. This opens a much wider range of possible damage to the structures involved. And so we see an unpredictable but clearly toxic response in the chronic abuser of these substances.

It is literally impossible to know which of these four affected chakras is going to give out first. All we know is that if the abuse isn't stopped, one of them is going to give out sooner or later. Again, this places an abnormal strain on the vital web, not boosting the action of any of the nerve plexuses and, therefore, not placing the individual in the same danger of tearing the web but placing an abnormal strain upon it, forcing the chakras to attempt rotational velocity in the absence of any control.

There is a possibility of a tear in the web similar to what we saw in the stimulant abuser. It's not the invariable kind of process where if you don't stop it's going to happen but there is a distinct possibility of this occurrence. The condition of delirium tremens (ITS), with its associated visual and auditory hallucinations is one possible outcome of this process.

Far more likely and the more usual result of chronic overindulgence in depressant drugs, is a stiffening, a deadening, a thickening of the vital web. This apparently results from a kind of defense mechanism against the possibility of rupture. The vital web barrier begins to thicken, to become denser, to attempt to shut down this flow of uncoordinated, unstructured impulses.

So, in the majority of cases, we see the chronic depressant abuser slowly becoming less and less sensitive to the normal message flow from his alternate vehicles, a slow deadening of the emotional processes, a loss of empathy, sympathy and desire to aid or help other beings as the web over the solar chakra begins to cut off the individual, over a period of months or years, from his own emotional nature. It becomes more and more difficult for him to feel anything.

As the depressant drug is withdrawn and coordination reestablishes itself, suddenly a burst of pent-up emotionality, all of the clouds of emotional structure that have built up within his desire body unfelt and unacted upon, pour through the chakra into the physical. The withdrawing depressant abuser is flooded with feelings of remorse, terror and anger as he is overwhelmed by these massive clouds of emotion that have built up within the desire body, incapable of venting, with nowhere to go. This may itself trigger periods of physiologic collapse, loss of actual structuring abilities within the physical.

At this point, we frequently see episodes of convulsions of near epileptic nature along with the flooding of emotion, the flooding of both sight and hearing from the Mental and lower planes. The individual is swamped in a sea of hallucinosis, guilt, fear and the loss of physiologic function we see in convulsion, This overall breakdown of structure is what we refer to as DTs, the classic symptom of alcohol and barbiturate withdrawal as the physical body is flooded with previously uncoordinated and unutilized information.

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Depressants: Narcotics

With the narcotics (codeine, heroin, methadone and morphine) [opium, Oxycontin, Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Hydromorphone, Fentanyl, Buprenorphine, Levorphanol, Lorcet, Lortab, Norco, Oncet, Procet, Vicodin, Xodol, and Zydon], more so than with the other depressants, we tend to see a far more specific kind of picture. Having much more clearly specified areas of involvement within the central nervous system and having nowhere near the broad, general intoxicating properties of other depressant drugs, we see an individual who seals himself off at the level of the solar chakra.

There is very little effect within the mentational area except during the intoxication itself and then generally a slowing rather than a boosting of activity. So, during the period of intoxication, there is little or no mental capability because there is little or no communication with the mental body, very little cerebration at all. There are limited flows of emotion, which do not tend to reawaken themselves upon withdrawal, a very slow but steady accretion of material at the opening of the solar chakra resulting in a slow, steady diminution of emotional input.

The individual becomes isolated emotionally, though not mentally, loses contact with one of his vehicles and finds himself completely sealed off from any possibility of emotional empathetic interaction with others. He is still in full possession of a physical, vital and mental body but lacks all contact with his desire body.

This process leaves the individual, as we mentioned in the beginning, intensely frustrated because the knowledge of what "should be there" cannot be eradicated but the contact is lost and he has no way of reacquiring that contact. Here, it is not because of a sealed chakra, which he does not have the ability to open, but because of a sealed off chakra which cannot be opened, one that no longer has the possibility of communicating informational flow back and forth between the Desire Plane and the physical.

This individual is now, to all intents and purposes, permanently sealed off from his own emotional nature and finds himself incapable of that one thing which most clearly separates us from all other life, which is empathy. This literally leaves a shell of a human being.

The interaction of the forebrain with the cerebrum results in judgments such as "that's not nice, that is nice, that's wrong." For the narcotics abuser, "that's wrong" is gone. For this individual there is only "that's right." There is no longer proper, loving or caring – simply right. So the individual becomes, in the truest sense of the word, egocentric, locked within his own mind, incapable of extending his feelings toward other people, not unwilling but, in fact, incapable of reaching through to understand what another human being needs.

Beyond the possibility of complete divorcement of the vital body from the physical, the intense likelihood of damage that we see with stimulants abuse does not frequently occur with depressants abuse. What we do see is the slow sinking into unfeeling and loss of emotion.

Death occurs from depressant abuse due to the depression of the vital physical centers and the dislocation of the vital body from the physical. When the vital body breaks down completely, when the chakras lose their integration from the nervous centers they empower, you have a lump of clay. It has all the cells, chemicals, oxygen and glucose and none of the life. And this shell just falls to the floor, lacking now the driving principle of life.

The abrupt overdose sort of death is the eventual end result of overindulgence in this particular group of drugs, rather than the intensely aware, in fact, too aware result of the chronic abuse of stimulants. The dislocation of the vital body from the physical results in death. With the chronic abuser of depressants, there is a slow loss of function resulting in an individual no longer fully in contact with the rest of reality, no longer fully in contact with the remainder of his race.

Dependent again upon dosage, frequency and duration of abuse, mental function may be slowly lost. It's a much slower process than sealing off the solar chakra but the heart chakra will eventually be affected in much the same fashion. Then we see the slow, steady loss of mental function that we find in the "wino" or "drunk," the individual who has now most the mental contact, who now exists in a body that has neither mind nor emotion but simply exists.

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Hallucinogens and Psychedelics

The psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs of great publicity and popularity, although of ages old availability, form the next group of psychoactives. [This group includes antihistamines, belladonna, cannabis [marijuana, hashish and THC], datura, DET, DMT (bufotenine), DOET, DOM, DOP, DPT, ditran and analogs, harmines, ibogaine, MDA, MDMA [Ecstasy, 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, psilocybin and psilocin, nonbarbiturate sedatives and STP.]

The hallucinogenic drugs currently available on the street are of two basic types: the tropine hallucinogens (related to atropine) and the dissociative anesthetics. The atropine hallucinogens are probably the oldest of the mind manipulators, the ancient shamanistic drugs: deadly nightshade (belladonna), mandrake, jimpson weed and henbane. The majority of hallucinogenic drugs available now on the streets are from such plant sources, although there are 80 to 90 synthetic substitutes that are also hallucinogenic.

At the other end of the spectrum are the most advanced of the synthetics, the dissociative anesthetics. Science has named them better than it knows, for they are truly dissociative drugs capable of detaching the consciousness. They include PCP (phencyclidine), moon dust, angel dust, CK or KJ, etc. PCP was originally developed as an anesthetic then banned form human use because it caused hallucinations. When you put someone under with PCP, he loses all trace of physical consciousness because he has been shoved straight off this physical plane.

These drugs differ primarily in plane of exit. Those drugs we call hallucinogenic are drugs which exit basically on the lower astral. Hallucinogens can bring the vibratory level to that point and no higher; they may, in fact, reduce perceptual input from the physical to the point of nonexistence by activating the solar chakra, boosting the activity of the throat chakra to give "sight" and "hearing" but again, without understanding. If you don't have the key, you break down the door.

Exiting into the lower astral is a terrifying experience. It's frightening when done deliberately for the purpose of practice. Being catapulted into the lower astral is an experience that few conscious individuals are capable of tolerating. Almost invariably, a period of severe sensory distortion follows from such an exit. And even if recovery from the episode is without any major sequelae (recurrences called "flashbacks"), there is generally a period of perceptual distortion ten days to two weeks, even if there is no permanent, on-going problem.

This may include an inability to decipher incoming messages, to differentiate material leaking into the body from the lower astral from those primary perceptions through the physical organs of sense being routed via normal brain channels. We find sight/vision overlays of lower astral beings and physical beings without the capability of differentiating them.

The acute sequelae of this kind of experimentation can be permanent and drastic, very similar to the results of chronic cocaine or amphetamine abuse. A permanent breach is opened onto the lower astral with, in this sense, the very real possibility of ejection of the higher consciousness from the body, a complete shut-off of upper mentational channels, leaving a body that breathes but doesn't think, an individual who has become in Western terminology, catatonic, a person no longer present on the mental level and flooded with the emotional input, with material from the lower astral.

Basically then, a person who has by his own action become a permanent resident of the lower astral, no longer capable of expression on the physical, still possessing a physical body but without the necessary controls to activate or utilize that body. His entire consciousness, his whole personality is now trapped on the lower astral. All his sensory input is from that plane rather than this.

These people are permanently locked out of their own physical vehicles. This is a real possibility with any drug that opens this particular set of channels, that simultaneously opens the lower astral and the faculties of sight and hearing.

Without training and discipline in these areas, this distance between the physical and the lower astral is zero; you exist simultaneously in both places. Without the training of crossing in and out of the physical while conscious, while knowingly manipulating the chakras, it is not possible for this person to find his way back to his own physical.

This same possibility of "getting lost" does exist with the use of the so-called psychedelic drugs, which differ from the hallucinogens on the basis of opening several more chakras. The true psychedelic drugs are basically related to the brain chemical serotonin, a neurotransmitter.

The neurotransmitters, serotonin and dopamine, form the physical structure for these drugs, which is why they maintain mentation-al faculties while exiting the individual onto the planes.

The psychedelics duplicate the brain's own internal neurotransmitters. LSD, the most potent of the group and one of the most potent drugs known, is capable of affecting the body in microgram dosages because, again, it is so close to the brain's own neurotransmitters that the body responds to it as being an internally-generated biochemical.

LSD, LSM, the whole series of three-letter compounds containing "L" are named to indicate that lysergic acid is part of their compound. Lysergic acid is the central ring-structure of both serotonin and dopamine.

Mescaline forms, by itself, the pure barrier between the stimulants and the psychedelics. Half of its structure barely mimics brain chemical structure, while the other half looks like amphetamine, so it has qualities of both. It is a very old shamanistic drug, a vegetable-source mind manipulator.

Another very old drug of much the same qualities as LSD is peyote, the sacred mushroom and the drugs that contain psilocybin and psilocin – again, very close imitators of brain chemical structure and primarily of the psychedelic category.

Marijuana is a low-potency psychedelic by functional structure. It's the lowest known potency of any of these drugs but clearly falls into the category of pure psychedelic substances.

The borderline psychedelic-stimulants are drugs which have undergone tremendous development over the last few years. These borderline psychedelics – which I generally refer to as psycho-dysleptics, from the Greek, "to seize the mind roughly" – are drugs that have been developed by private industry and the Department of Defense for use in military applications.

These are drugs of extremely potent combined stimulant-psychedelic side effects. As fast as Dow Chemical turned them out in the 60s, they wound up on the streets – these were the drugs that caused the majority of "bad trips" during the late 60s, drugs like STP and TMA. They are basically very sophisticated modifications of mescaline. This series of drugs has much greater potential for adverse reaction than do the classical psychedelics but they do fall into that structural category.

All these drugs access the lower Astral, the Desire and Psychic Planes as well as the Mental, so the range of perceptual change is greater. Often described in the literature are "tasting colors" and "seeing sounds" which are physical descriptions of mental body activities. Its complex mental process is being visualized as the experiences would occur within the mental body. Because the mental process is still available, it is less likely although distinctly possible, that the consciousness will be ejected from the body and will no longer be able to reaccess the physical.

Again, the key here is the solar chakra gate to the lower Astral and the Desire and Psychic Planes. This is the source of fear and terror. If the terror is controllable, then mental process will enable the individual to reaccess his body as the drug wears off. As the overall activity of the nerve plexus drops, as the chakra gates begin to close, the body will be drawn back to its original position, once again safely ensconced within its physical.

If fear overcomes the mental ability, if the individual gives way to the terrifying images found on the lower astral, then much the same process that is frequently seen with true hallucinogenic drugs may well occur. The person will become catatonic, will have had a "bad trip" from which he did not recover, will appear physically as a vegetable, a catatonic patient in a psychiatric facility.

In fact, he has been ejected from his own physical, is no longer capable of controlling his physical. He has become a permanent resident of the lower astral, locked out of the physical permanently.

The odds of permanent ejection are less, the possibility is lower due to the presence of mental channels. Therefore the individual may be able to control, direct, avoid, get off the lower astral and up to a higher plane and stay there until the drug wears off, and then slowly be drawn back into the physical as we are drawn back each morning by the rebounding silver cord.

As long as the individual can maintain that mental process, we see the possibility of restoring normal communication channels. But the possibility is still there, access to the lower astral is still there and of course the primitive fear-threat response of the lower energy centers is still there to place him in the same kind of trouble. Although we are dealing with a significantly lower risk, we are still dealing with a risk of exactly the same type.

With these drugs there is the distinct possibility of engendering a more positive outcome. This is the process known as "talk-down," or to be more precise, "talk-in." Because the mental channels are open and the individual still has physical sight and hearing, this particular type of intoxication can be focused and directed from the outside. The individual can be guided back into the physical.

In the case of an adverse experience, the individual beginning to lose contact with who and where he is and what he's doing, this talk-down process can be instituted. This is the place where we see the greatest difference between the hallucinogenic and the psychedelic drugs, in the possibility of drawing the individual back by the action of someone who is willing to take that kind of responsibility on himself.

The psychoactive drugs have as their primary principle the ability to volatize into matter which is partially vital in nature and, therefore, to boost or to suppress the activity of a specific chakra via their interconnected physiologic structures. The possibilities then are the deadening of chakras, thickening of the web between the physical, emotional and mental and rending of the web through excessive force being used to push outward through the chakra instead of accepting the natural flow, an inward spiral of energy from the higher vehicles.

All the possibilities inherent in drug amplification of chakras are inherent in the chakras themselves. This attempt to grow, to learn, to expand the consciousness via the use of psychoactive chemicals is a process which can be operated more slowly but far more safely through other mechanisms. What we see here is not a willful act so much as an act of frustration and hostility. The individual finds himself lacking in something that he feels should be there, the dread and nameless fear, the feeling that something is not right, that something beyond "what is" should be.

This is the driver for the black magic, the left-hand path. This is the driver for chronic psychoactive chemical use, this frustration, a feeling of loss, a feeling of missing qualities. These are issues which we are going to have to deal with on a more and more frequent basis in this age of ascension. We are dealing with more and more egos being born into earth life at this time who have previously placed themselves in a position of loss of contact, who are being brought through on the physical with incomplete or inadequately structured desire and mental bodies.

The fact that they cannot make those contacts does not change the fact that they know those contacts should be there. And what they feel is not "nothing," but a sense of loss. How they go about rectifying that loss is dependent upon the people, the schools, the lessons that are available to them.

Without support, without guidance, without lifting, these people are inevitably pushed into the use of force, into attempts to break into that to which they no longer have the keys. Our purpose during this age of ascension must be to give keys to those individuals to open what they have lost, to what they know they have lost, whether or not they can verbalize that loss. Without those keys, without our empathy, without our willingness to give, then we stand by and allow our brother to walk off a cliff.

The search will go on. They will attempt to find their way back through whatever tools they seem to have available by whatever mechanism they can. If no other mechanism is made available to them, then these destructive but at least temporarily effective processes will be the route they take. They're easier to find and implement, they require no study, direction or control and so they are the easiest paths to be found. Guidance, direction, lifting for all those who are lost, for all those who have lost contact with their higher vehicles and consciousness – this is what we have to give.

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Questions and Answers

Q: Can you mix drugs and ascension of consciousness?

A: It's obvious that if you're going to ascend, you cannot use crutches like that, or you block the very path you're climbing.

Q: You said that once the vital web is torn, it's almost impossible to repair but what you said at the end – guidance, direction, lifting – is the way, yes?

A: Yes. Healing, what we call lifting, healing or restructuring. This kind of thing is an even greater drain on those who would do it than the lifting of emotion and thought. To bring someone back, they must patch a hole that has been torn but it is a tremendous drain. That's why I said "almost impossible." Nothing is fully impossible, but it is very difficult, a very draining process to achieve.

You must literally "knit" a patch of very dense, very highly structured material made of very, very fine substance. It takes not only an energy flow as one would do in healing a physical disease, to clear a congested chakra or untangle a chakratic structure but to actually create a new patch, not only of the vital body itself, which is relatively tenuous but of that outer skin, which although of the same material, is knitted to an incredible density to shield between the two planes – this requires a tremendous amount of Power.

Q: If you could lift these people to that point where the life sparks from the Oversoul are available, could that substance be descended to fill the breach?

A: Yes. It takes a tremendous amount of holding on a situation like this, but if we could stand and hold long enough, it could be done, even here. It would be hard, but nothing is fully impossible.

Q: What about when they cross over? What happens to them? How do they work it from that side? If they come back, will they still come back with a deficiency?

A: They do come back with a deficiency. What we see again is the same kind of pattern. So, it's a repetitive thing until someone takes the time, the strength and the effort to hold, to patch what's been done so they may come back at least "even," with a set of intact vehicles in the next incarnation.

Q: What role do nutrients play in reducing the problem?

A: At this level, none. Nutrients do provide a little more rapid repair on the physical side of the damage done to physical nervature – particularly sodium, potassium and calcium, the vital nerve nutrients – but the damage that's done to the vital web itself, as it becomes strained and thickened, is relatively unresponsive to physical nutrition. This must and can be cleared only by a "Power transfusion," a lift. The Light must be supplied to repair the vital structure.

Physical nutrition will slow the loss of function and damage to the dense physical body, but it has relatively little effect on the vital body. The vital body is composed almost entirely of vitality globules, the prana that has previously been drawn into the body, utilized, and then expelled to create the vital body hovering over the physical. This pranic structure is what's in need of repair.

Q: Is it worthwhile to repair the physical to buy time until Light does the work?

A: Certainly. Maintaining the physical is required if you're going to hold the person on earth. You must keep them physically alive while working on the other damage. The loss of vitality, particularly if the web is rent, is like watching the person drain, like punching a hole in a can of water.

Q: Is this web physical matter?

A: Yes, physical, but very tenuous. It's physical matter drawn into a very tight, multiply-bonded structure.

Q: Will the same process that originally built the web then repair it?

A: Yes.

Q: And that process is always available?

A: Yes. But again, the individual is losing vitality through the rent and this makes it very difficult for him to change once the damage has been done, because he's losing prana as fast as he can inhale it. The healing process must be started for him, from the outside, because it is very difficult for one who is losing vitality from every orifice to do any restructuring. He just doesn't have the reserve to build anything. Everything he brings in is going to maintain the current physical status, and he's slowly losing ground even at that.

Q: Why are some people very sensitive to these drugs?

A: Drug sensitivity goes with physical evolvement. As you ascend, you become sensitized to many kinds of chemicals. The greater the input from your other body vehicles and the more consciously you draw on them for information and ascension, the more sensitive you become to potential toxins within your own physical body.

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James L. Young III, Director of Drug Education, Free Medical Clinic of Cleveland, Ohio, presented this lecture June 12, 1982.

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