ccording to German mystic Meister Eckhart: "Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.1" They speak the language of universal oneness. They speak the language of the eternal now. They speak the language of love. They speak, in short, the religious language of the perennial philosophy, of a truth that transcends space and time23.
He might have added, however, that certain psychonauts speak that language as well, especially after returning from breakthrough trips on so-called "heroic doses" of psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin45. They too speak the language of universal oneness. They too speak the language of the eternal now. They too speak the language of love. Anyone who has read both the sermons of Meister Eckhart and the trip reports of such drug users knows this to be true. Both speak of the same things and in the same way.
Nor should this come as a surprise. In order to obtain grace and transcendence, Meister Eckhart tells us that we must "be willing to be a beginner every single morning." And psychedelics are well-known to empower the user to see the world in a new way, as a beginner, like a young child who has not yet learned that a tree is "nothing but a tree" and that a dog or cat is "nothing but a pet." This is why psychologist Alison Gopnik tells us that "Babies and children are basically tripping all the time.67" They are always seeing a vast array of things for the first time, like a beginner, like a psychedelic drug user on a breakthrough dose, and so the mundane world is full of miracles for them.
This is one of the many reasons why drug prohibition is a hateful evil. It is even worse than the outlawing of a religion - it is the outlawing of the religious impulse itself.
Drug prohibition requires us to live our lives in a psychological rut by denying us the capacity to see the world afresh. This is not to say that transcendent states cannot be achieved through means other than so-called "drug use," but the Meister Eckharts of the world are few and far between. Not everyone is lucky enough to have been born into a world in which nature and nurture are so aligned as to facilitate transcendental experiences on the fly. Most of us have to work for a lifetime to achieve such a spiritual state, and few achieve it even then. Nor can we be sure that Meister Eckhart said no to all substances that we call "drugs" today. He may not have mentioned such use because he did not deem it important, just as Marcus Aurelius saw no need to tell his readers that he was a fan of opium, just as most tippling authors today see no need to mention the fact that they were inebriated while writing.
It is the Drug War which turned psychoactive "drugs" into the whipping boy for social problems and so encouraged us to deny their power for doing good out of hand. We have been taught to fear drugs in a truly childish and superstitious way. Hence the latest raft of movies featuring crack-crazed coons and meth-powered bears. The film producers have correctly identified the new modern boogieman as "drugs" and have produced horror movies to profit from that twisted outlook. Such movies might actually be funny in a world in which drugs were legal and viewed with shamanic understanding, but those same movies are pure propaganda in the age of the Drug War, in the context of a society that strategically bars us from seeing, hearing or reading anything positive about drugs. In such a world, such movies serve an evil purpose: they flatter us that our Drug War hysteria makes sense, that drugs are truly evil, and that it is our duty to fight them, even in the movies, in the same way that our forebears in Hollywood once fought Godzilla and King Kong, in a battle to the death, in a clear-cut moral struggle between good and evil. Such films provide aid and comfort to the prohibitionists, those who outlaw drugs that could help everyday human mortals attain the kinds of advanced spiritual states that were achieved by the great mystics of yore.
Author's Follow-up: January 22, 2025
Those who write such articles today are expected to post a huge disclaimer stating that they are not promoting drug use, but this is just the way that Drug Warriors shut down free speech. If I had written above praising the joys of horse racing, I would not be required to post a disclaimer saying that horse riding can be dangerous -- this despite the fact that 100,000 Americans are injured every year in horse-related accidents. In fact, horseback riding is the leading cause of sports-related traumatic brain injuries.
But no one would expect me to write a disclaimer about horse dangers because we all take it for granted that the best way to ride a horse is to learn how to ride it, not just to hop on and then trust to luck. As with most risky activities, we all recognize that education matters, that it's good to be informed about what you are doing.
Somehow when it comes to drugs alone, we assume that our readers are babies and need careful warnings. If this is true today, it is only because the Drug War is all about enforcing ignorance when it comes to drugs. The Drug Warrior's job is to make us fear psychoactive substances, not to understand them.
Religion
The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. It is therefore a crime against religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate.
Prohibition is a crime against religious freedom.
William James found religious experience in substance use. See his discussion of what he calls "the anesthetic revelation" in his book entitled "The Varieties of Religious Experience."
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
The Drug War violates religious freedom by putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding if a religion is 'sincere' or not. That is so absurd that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. No one in government is capable of determining whether the inner states that I achieve with psychoactive medicine are religious or not. This is why Milton Friedman was so wrong when he said in 1972 that there are good people on both sides of the drug war debate. WRONG! There are those who are more than ready to take away my religious liberty and those who are not. If the former wish to be called 'good,' they will first need a refresher course in American democracy and religious freedom. They need to renounce their Christian Science theocracy and let folks like myself worship using the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past. Until they do that, do not expect me to praise the very people who have launched an inquisition against my form of experiencing the divine.
There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.
"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda
People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.
Outlawing opium wOutlawing opium was the ultimate government power grab. It put the government in charge of pain relief.
as the ultimate government power grab. It put the government in charge of pain relief.
Someone needs to create a group called Drug Warriors Anonymous, a place where Americans can go to discuss their right to mind and mood medicine and to discuss the many ways in which our society trashes godsend medicines.
Drug Warriors never take responsibility for incentivizing poor kids throughout the west to sell drugs. It's not just in NYC and LA, it's in modest-sized towns in France. Find public housing, you find drug dealing. It's the prohibition, damn it!
FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.
The Drug War is one big entrapment scheme for poor minorities. Prohibition creates an economy that hugely incentivizes drug dealing, and when the poor fall for the bait, the prohibitionists rush in to arrest them and remove them from the voting rolls.
William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.
Until we get rid of all these obstacles to safe and informed use, it's presumptuous to explain problematic drug use with theories about addiction. Drug warriors are rigging the deck in favor of problematic use. They refuse to even TEACH non-problematic use.
One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.
Drug prohibition is the biggest tyranny imaginable. It is the government control of pain relief. It is government telling us how and how much we are allowed to think and feel in this life.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Meister Eckhart and Drugs: how the drug war destroys religious liberty, published on January 22, 2025 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
ccording to German mystic Meister Eckhart: "Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.1" They speak the language of universal oneness. They speak the language of the eternal now. They speak the language of love. They speak, in short, the religious language of the perennial philosophy, of a truth that transcends space and time2 3. 
You have been reading an article entitled, Meister Eckhart and Drugs: how the drug war destroys religious liberty, published on January 22, 2025 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
