Its easy to see how I could be a part of a retelling of information to the point of inaccuracy. Then again, maybe that's how myths are born, and certainly they can be of use. Everything boils down to a symbol, right? At least in a context.
Anyhow, as I understand, this man was using LSD to facilitate spiritual experiences, and a spiritual teacher of his asked about the LSD, saying that he, himself, wanted to try it. The man was taken aback when this teacher took a huge amount. He then noticed that this had virtually no effect on the teacher at all.
If I'm not mistaken, at this point, the realization was made that higher states of being (for lack of better words) were available to the teacher, and therefore to himself, through practices, such as meditation, and I would assume, without pushing his personal experience beyond a point which his body/mind was ready for.
Of course, various tribal peoples have powerful, ceremonial plant-based drug ceremonies, and these are typically led in a mature way, with clear intent, or at least in my storybook version of the world this is true.
With that said, Its certainly easy to find people in society who have taken a recreational drug which broke a barrier, unleashed an experience, enacted something which the body/mind was not ample container for... and essentially rushed an ocean through an hourglass. That doesn't even take into account the possible toxicity of the substance in question.
I'm imagining that this person realized an aspect of self that could be immune to the surrounding environment if the deeper connection were cultivated enough to become relatively permanent. And since environment includes other people, this reminds me of something people say all the time...
"No one can make you feel bad about yourself unless you let them". And that sounds great, as we as teachers might pass this out to students, all the time while wondering how our hair is, because what people also know is the power of belonging.
Even a single person is, on some level, a collection of organisms operating together as one collective unit. A person's body is alive with bacteria and electrical signals and intelligence, and the heart keeps beating.
And just like we can't just go removing body parts and expect the body or those body parts to function, there are stories of people being exiled from their tribe and dying, largely in part from their reaction to that severed connection.
This is also why we don't see spider plants walking down the street being like... look at me... don't need no ground... don't need no water... hello sky... don't need you either brother.... i'm a spida plant, beotch.
It's nice to think we operate independently from the greater environment, but the environment is intertwined with the individual. In fact the environment is cycling through what appears to be the individual all the time... food and air and water and electrical impulses coming in and going out.
Likewise, other things are cycling through us, primarily in the form of information... that is, what we watch, listen to, interact with, and cultivate within ourselves. Sometimes these things feed limiting ideas and patterns within us, such as excesses of fear, guilt and shame.
Even if we've built a network of information in our heads that is new and liberating and beneficial overall, if we feed those other more limiting ideas in our subconscious enough, or in overabundance, we can actually slip from the new experience back into old patterns, which are brought to life in the form of automated reactions... programming.
We may not even notice this happening, because somewhere inside, we think we are animating the same new character as we were before. We identify with a set of (higher) principles but no longer embody them.
Just like an overabundance of sugar can change the taste buds so they don't care much for broccoli, an overload of certain experiences can make us lose a taste for the subtle but high quality and powerful aspects of existence and those nurturing aspects of life that feed us.
So, in this way, the environment we choose can be very powerful... even in the form of a sanctuary of sorts that one can return to if all else is chaos.
I may witness this in the self... if I begin to slowly replace reading with wanting to watch things or if I replace certain practices with impulsive living... If I replace the ability to linger with tiny examples of avoidance & self medication... in order to shut out the noise... to numb myself to cope with overstimulating circumstances. Luckily I am aware of this and put up the appropriate stops.
This is one reason why I personally do not entertain recreational drug use, though with that said I do believe that indigenous medicines, appropriately used, can help people work though blockages. We are selling ourselves short by making definitive divides. We are entangled with an intelligent system.
On another note, the environment can be like a substance in a way... as it is something we expose ourselves to and something that can trigger chemistry within self.
Of course, people say the internal state is paramount and all of that, but choice in environment can help nurture the internal state to a certain place.
This reminds me of a study where people were asked to choose 5 movies, and at least one movie would be some kind of documentary or educational film.
When asked to choose a film to watch 'right now', everyone would choose to watch a regular movie, putting off the more educational material until later. Does later ever come?
Likewise, if a kid is put in a room with candy and vegetables, something similar may happen. Peanut butter cup or asparagus stalk?... hmmmm.
The point is that if the environment is full of impulses, left and right, it asks a lot of a person, interested in personal growth, to have enough awareness, not only to choose something that elevates, for lack of a far better word, but enough awareness to operate within a cluttered environment or an environment that essentially feeds a lesser game, so much so that it waters down some inherent quality of life within the individual.
People say everything in moderation, but one thousand little bits of poop power up to make one ginormous rainbow conglomerate of poop.... (with or without the peanuts). That's where a sanctuary, in the form of a clear, high quality, naturally angled space or a wild place in nature may come in.
The mind/body can tell a person s/he is drifting from life with an intuitive pull, maybe in the form of a subtle feeling of dissatisfaction. A person can listen to that subtle voice (and, of course, endure the passing emotions it invokes) or a person can frost the voice over by satisfying whatever addictive impulses are in place.
It may be easier to defy an authority figure in the external world than an authority figure in the internal world, which is kept alive and well fed by a carrier that is giving it what it asks for over and over again, perpetuating powerful cycles of addiction.
The challenge is in the subtlety of it. Because in a moment, the addictive impulse, in the form of sugar or a certain emotional way of interacting with others on the highway, gives a temporary feeling of elevation. It takes a bit of courage or will or patience or whatever you want to call it, to grab the deeper impulse and sacrifice the temporary lift for something more enduring and sustaining and fulfilling.
In a moment, the impulse for what an aspect of body/mind craves makes light of the situation, and the action seems harmless. Later at night, when lying down to sleep, those temporary solutions sometimes fall away, leaving the person naked and knowing what is best, but s/he is in immediate danger of falling asleep again, along with the body.
The next day it is all to easy to get up, wake into a body with all of its associations and walk into the same old partnership with the greater environment.
How thick is that environment with well established relationships and well tread pathways which frost over those deeper aspects of self?... aspects which crave clarity of thought... or a sense of wonder, regarding life and existence... more than the objects of those lesser but often powerful impulses.
What environments will we choose to intertwine most closely with? We are each a part of everyone else's environment also, so there's that too. We, in part, make the environment that supports everyone else's experience. And individual clarity has the potential to form collective clarity.
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