Exactly. If it works for you, then DO IT.

My original argument is that while yes it may work for you I do not think it could be called actual meditating. Just like if you meditate with breathing exercises which are exaggerated to the point of hyperventilating, it is not longer meditating, it's hyperventilating. But some people may draw some satisfaction from a hyperventilation exercise, but that does not mean it's meditation.

Similarly, I would not necessarily call something like sensory deprivation meditating. Often its used to dive into thoughts etc., not calm them.

I suppose I am being a stickler but I feel it is important to distinguish between the subtle differences between meditating and inducing visions or sensations.

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I just feel like using drugs in a meditation is too much of a crutch. The drug is doing the meditating for you which defeats the purpose.

uuuh, but you have driven me to a point where I am disgusted with my own formalism.

Do what you want, I feel like to much of a douche arguing this point, and is it really that imporant?

That is what YOU think about meditation, however, the established historical reality is that meditation, starts with the cult of Shiva,as witnessed by the Pashupati seal which shows the ancient god cross legged and sitting in a meditative trance, thousands of years before Buddha tried to take the method straight, and Shiva is perpetually intoxicated on draughts of his holy hemp drink, bhang. This is why yogis and Saddhus have been consuming ganja for millennia, before they sit down to meditation. Cannabis, increases one's concentration, and aids one to focus on singularity, and this is why it is the ideal substance to aid in meditation.

Re"Wrong wrong wrong. According to Kabbalah, the right side symbolizes greater spiritual revelation, as opposed to the left side, which symbolizes a weaker manifestation of spirituality."

Where does that quote even say anything relating to that? and where did I ever right anything that disagrees with that? and for the record, I am sure the author, (who's mistake you attributed to me, even though the link to the quote is right there, lol) is well aware that Hebrew is written from right to left, and simply made a mistake in writing it out, and this has given a troll like you something to whine endlessly about. So, like I said, ride that poor fellow's mistake all you want, cause that is all you have....


But try to stay on topic...

Here let me help, as I think the Kabbalists used cannabis for meditation.... from 'Cannabis and the Soma Solution' http://www.amazon.com/Cannabis-Soma-Solution-Chris-Bennett/dp/0984185801

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan has noted of early Kabalistic magical schools who used magic and other means of communion for mystic exploration, that “some practices include the use of ‘grasses,’ which were possibly psychedelic drugs” (Kaplan, 1982). As mentioned earlier, Kaplan’s THE LIVING TORAH includes cannabis as a possible candidate for the Hebrew keneh bosem, “due to cognate pronunciation” (Kaplan, 1981). The Kabalistic text the Zohar records:

“There is no grass or herb that grows in which G-d’s wisdom is not greatly manifested and which cannot exert great influence in heaven” and “If men but knew the wisdom of all the Holy One, blessed be He, has planted in the earth, and the power of all that is to be found in the world, they would proclaim the power of their L-rd in His great wisdom.” (Zohar.2,80B)

Like the Zoroastrian royalty and priesthood, there are indications that early Kabbalists enjoyed the use of the herb, but prevented its consumption by the common people. In the P'sachim, “Rav Yehudah says it is good to eat... the essence of hemp seed in Babylonian broth; but it is not lawful to mention this in the presence of an illiterate man, because he might derive a benefit from the knowledge not meant for him.- Nedarim, fol. 49, col. 1” (Harris, et al., 2004). Other sources have noted a Kabbalistic comparison to the effects of cannabis with divine perception, noting an “intriguing reference to cannabis in the context of a fleeting knowledge of God: Zohar Hadash, Bereshit, 16a (Midrash ha-Ne’elam)” (Gross, et al., 1983).

If you feel that drugs are cheating then you shouldn't do them. I could see how feelings of guilt could interfere with your meditating. However, no need to push your own morals on others ... that's when you start becoming a douche ... but then you seem to already get it.



I would say that meditating has more to do with "focusing" while visions or sensations are more about "opening". I might be willing to talk about this more if people are interested. However, I'm more interested in the subtle differences between meditating and thinking ... is there any?

Meditation goes beyond thought to the pure attention energy HUM.
As noted in Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible
http://www.forbiddenfruitpublishing.com/SexDrugs/Book

In relation to our hypothesis that the earlier Christians, like certain yogis in the East, used cannabis to attain this enlightened state, it is interesting to note a reference that appears in Hooper and Teresi’s stellar book on the human brain, THE THREE POUND UNIVERSE;

“One can look at some religious aphorisms as a form of psychological noise reduction,” says Charles (“Chuck”) Honorton who directs the Princeton Psychophysical Research Laboratories in New Jersey. Purity, poverty, contemplation, and so on aren’t just for the sake of piety. These are methods of removing sensory distraction and increasing mental concentration. A good example is Patanjalis Yogasutras, composed in the second century B.C. in India. All the practices can be seen as systematic noise reduction, which eventually culminates in samahdi, a transcendental state in which normal boundaries between the self and others disappears. It may not be dissimilar to what people experience on marijuana when they find themselves staring at the wallpaper for twenty minutes.” (Hooper & Teresi 1986).

It is interesting to note that the Yogasutras of Patanjali itself records that the powers acquired through yogic practices could also be gained through the ingestion of certain plants.

Again like older branches of Yoga, where a variety of drug plants are used to attain this goal , the different sacraments described in the Gnostic texts, such as the "five trees", may well have been different entheogens that enhanced certain areas of consciousness, and suppressed others, making the distinction between these mental coverings, related to the seals of the seven archons, more obvious and therefore easier to bypass.

Likewise in Indian Tantrism the chakras can be awakened through “rituals [and]... plant extracts.... The flow of energy that they produce can help a person attain enlightenment. In Tantrism, many aphrodisiacs [cannabis, mandrake, etc.] are viewed as foods for the kundalini serpent and are thought to affect both the serpent, which reposes in the body, and the chakras."(Ratsch 1997)

Aaah, meditation and thinking! They are almost like complementary reciprocals (or wouldn't all reciprocal be complimentary?)....that's all I got

On that thought...From Cannabis and the Soma Solution, in the chapter on Hashish and Islam http://www.amazon.com/Cannabis-Soma-Solution-Chris-Bennett/dp/0984185801

"....The effects of the drug are produced much more rapidly when it is smoked than when it is eaten. Subjectively it produces an extraordinary dislocation of the ideas of times, space and personality...it seems that all those present in the assembly are in reality animated by one spirit and that the barricades of personality and individuality are, in some inexplicable way, broken down. It is this sensation or illusion which is specially craved after by the dervishes, who find therein a foretaste of Nirvana, or Absorption into the Universal Spirit, which is the aim of their pantheistic mysticism to attain; and this is the “unity” alluded to in the name of the bug-i-wahadat of which I have spoken." (Browne, 1897)

The sense of ego-obliteration, or what one medieval hashish using poet saw as the “removal from existence in existence,” possible with cannabis preperations, as in the case of the bug-i-wahadatin in the description above, was likened to a mortal death in medieval literature. This was also true of the use of hashish itself, which had to be sacrificed, i.e. eaten, to have an effect, “puns on the term ‘to kill’ [were] used in connection with the preparation and use of hashish… {A] play upon the ‘killing’ of hashish… is apparently the case in a verse stating that ‘the green one’ is ‘a hashishah that makes every man a hashishi (assassin) unbeknown to himself’ ” (Rosenthal, 1971).

I was thinking that meditation is thought or thinking ... however, not all thinking or thoughts would qualify as meditation. In other more technical terms: Meditation is a subset of thoughts but does not include all thoughts.

So what qualifies a thought to be classified as meditation? A heighten "focus" or "attention energy" placed on the thought seems reasonable to me. How high does the "focus" have to become or how pure does the "attention energy" have to be before a thought can be classified as meditation? I suppose everyone probably has a slightly different idea on that one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsfvSA_-gjk

Meditation!