Coffeehouse Culture; Plain Text; Page Seventeen; Article One

“BHOLENATH! JAI JAI Gurudev! Jai Shiva Shambo! Hara Hara Mahadev! Bom Shankar!.” The sonorous sounds boom across the wide valley and fade into the mountain stillness. “Praise to the simple truth! Praise to the guru who is the manifestation of the Divine! Praise to God, the provider, the transformer, the source of all good!” It is a mantra dedicated to Lord Shiva, the Eternal Cosmic Dancer at the Heart of the Wheel of Change, the Protector and Destroyer, Master of birth, death and everything between.
As the cry vibrates across the rocky terrain, a chillum is raised to the Heavens, then to the Baba’s third eye before -- bowing and focusing his mind on the eternal, omnipresent Divine -- he inhales deep into his diaphragm, pauses for a moment and then exhales. Hidden by the cloud of grey-blue smoke, he passes the chillum to the next sadhu in the circle and returns to his meditation.
The ancient ritual celebrating the appearance of cannabis on earth through the hand of Lord Shiva, still practised in India today by wandering and penniless sannyasins, acknowledges a timeless link between the increased consciousness experienced in meditation and increased consciousness experienced through smoking cannabis.
Although a well-established and generally accepted activity in Mother India, the smoking of cannabis is still regarded with some suspicion. That is hardly surprising for, among the sects for whom smoking ganja or charas is a central aspect of their religious practices, are some of the most bizarre. Naked, smeared with ash, matted hair uncut, smeared with cow dung. frequenters of burial grounds, ranting, raving, extreme and austere, smokers of charas --- these are the Shivites.
Overwhelmed by the passage of time, consumed by the rapacious fires of misunderstanding and prejudice, lost in the conflicts and confusions of life in a constantly changing world, the truth about the place of ganja and its derivatives in spirituality has been lost. If the true nature of the position that cannabis occupies in the repertoire of spiritual practices has been lost in India it is not so surprising that it is having such a hard time finding itself in the West.
But in the West we are rediscovering the ancient knowledge from ‘the other end.’ Cannabis is a sacrament, a tool in man’s constant search for a higher reality. And its use as a sacrament is not restricted to India. In Africa, South and North America, in the Middle East and in other parts of Asia, amongst Islamic Sufi mystics, Sikhs, Taoists, as well as numerous indigenous religions and, of course, amongst not-so-ancient Rastafarians, the drinking, eating or smoking of the cannabis plant was or is part of regular devotional practices.
In India, cannabis use was first recorded in the Atharva Veda, dating from 1000 or more BC. In this, under the name of ‘shana’, it is entreated, in prayers to the Gods, to ‘preserve us from disease.’ For thousands of years it has been employed, mainly in Shiva worship, as charas, a hand-rubbed hashish, which is the preferred choice of the chillum-smoking sadhus; as ganja, the flowering tops of the plant, which is smoked by the sadhus when they have no charas; and as bhang, made with the leaves of the plant, mixed with herbs, which is eaten or mixed with thinned yoghurt to make a sinister green and suitably potent drink; for those who had the ‘bhang lassi experience’, it is often a never-to be-forgotten event.
The importance of these sacraments in daily devotion was recognised by the native peoples in many parts of the world but nowhere better than in India. There is an old Pahari song from the Kumaon foothills in the Himalayas that pleads: ‘Atara ki gati baba’ -- ‘Just a little piece of charas, baba’. No doubt there that the spiritual guide was also the source of the sacrament. Indeed, when charas is given by a sadhu it is regarded as prasad, holy food. It is obvious, too, that for many foreigners who were able to witness the sacramental use of cannabis its spiritual potency was clear. In the Indian Hemp Drugs Report of 1893 - 1894, J. M. Campbell poetically reports (perhaps too poetically for one who has not had the experience): ‘To the Hindu, the hemp plant is holy . . . . He who drinks bhang, drinks Shiva. The soul in whom the spirit of bhang finds a home, glides into an ocean of being, freed from the weary round of self-blinded matter.’
Such spirituality, so close at hand.
The breakdown of modern society has been blamed on many things. One often repeated theme is a turning away from God, an argument usually accompanied by disturbing news of falling church attendance numbers. This argument ignores the fact that in the latter half of this century many people have turned away from christianity in a search of a spiritual understanding of the world. For some of those people, smoking cannabis has led them naturally towards a genuineand new appreciation of the Shivite philosophy.
from the pen of G. van Mukthi

	COFFEEHOUSE CULTURE -- Issue 1
	You can print this article on A4 (letter) sized paper directly from your browser. Please be sure to select black only in your printer software.
	PAGE SEVENTEEN; ARTICLE ONE; FEATURE SITTING WITH SADHUS For many cannabis smokers spirituality has found real expression in devotion to Lord Shiva, the Vedic deity who is said to have given us the plant we all love so much. As our House Shivite, G. van Mukthi, leads us through the mysteries and histories of cannabis use as a sacrament, we will be bringing old and new, east and west, together in a new spiritual symbiosis. LORD OF THE DANCE In a time of spiritual desolation, when man had lost his way, his connection with the Divine, when life seemed empty of purpose and meaning, the wisest Seers sent out a desperate plea. And the All-Powerful Shiva heard and took pity upon humanity. Thus it was that the Seers received the ganja plant and the secret of bhang. Through use of this gift and meditating, the Seers became the ancient Rishis who first cognised the Vedic Verses
	“BHOLENATH! JAI JAI Gurudev! Jai Shiva Shambo! Hara Hara Mahadev! Bom Shankar!.” The sonorous sounds boom across the wide valley and fade into the mountain stillness. “Praise to the simple truth! Praise to the guru who is the manifestation of the Divine! Praise to God, the provider, the transformer, the source of all good!” It is a mantra dedicated to Lord Shiva, the Eternal Cosmic Dancer at the Heart of the Wheel of Change, the Protector and Destroyer, Master of birth, death and everything between. As the cry vibrates across the rocky terrain, a chillum is raised to the Heavens, then to the Baba’s third eye before -- bowing and focusing his mind on the eternal, omnipresent Divine -- he inhales deep into his diaphragm, pauses for a moment and then exhales. Hidden by the cloud of grey-blue smoke, he passes the chillum to the next sadhu in the circle and returns to his meditation. The ancient ritual celebrating the appearance of cannabis on earth through the hand of Lord Shiva, still practised in India today by wandering and penniless sannyasins, acknowledges a timeless link between the increased consciousness experienced in meditation and increased consciousness experienced through smoking cannabis. Although a well-established and generally accepted activity in Mother India, the smoking of cannabis is still regarded with some suspicion. That is hardly surprising for, among the sects for whom smoking ganja or charas is a central aspect of their religious practices, are some of the most bizarre. Naked, smeared with ash, matted hair uncut, smeared with cow dung. frequenters of burial grounds, ranting, raving, extreme and austere, smokers of charas --- these are the Shivites. Overwhelmed by the passage of time, consumed by the rapacious fires of misunderstanding and prejudice, lost in the conflicts and confusions of life in a constantly changing world, the truth about the place of ganja and its derivatives in spirituality has been lost. If the true nature of the position that cannabis occupies in the repertoire of spiritual practices has been lost in India it is not so surprising that it is having such a hard time finding itself in the West. But in the West we are rediscovering the ancient knowledge from ‘the other end.’ Cannabis is a sacrament, a tool in man’s constant search for a higher reality. And its use as a sacrament is not restricted to India. In Africa, South and North America, in the Middle East and in other parts of Asia, amongst Islamic Sufi mystics, Sikhs, Taoists, as well as numerous indigenous religions and, of course, amongst not-so-ancient Rastafarians, the drinking, eating or smoking of the cannabis plant was or is part of regular devotional practices. In India, cannabis use was first recorded in the Atharva Veda, dating from 1000 or more BC. In this, under the name of ‘shana’, it is entreated, in prayers to the Gods, to ‘preserve us from disease.’ For thousands of years it has been employed, mainly in Shiva worship, as charas, a hand-rubbed hashish, which is the preferred choice of the chillum-smoking sadhus; as ganja, the flowering tops of the plant, which is smoked by the sadhus when they have no charas; and as bhang, made with the leaves of the plant, mixed with herbs, which is eaten or mixed with thinned yoghurt to make a sinister green and suitably potent drink; for those who had the ‘bhang lassi experience’, it is often a never-to be-forgotten event. The importance of these sacraments in daily devotion was recognised by the native peoples in many parts of the world but nowhere better than in India. There is an old Pahari song from the Kumaon foothills in the Himalayas that pleads: ‘Atara ki gati baba’ -- ‘Just a little piece of charas, baba’. No doubt there that the spiritual guide was also the source of the sacrament. Indeed, when charas is given by a sadhu it is regarded as prasad, holy food. It is obvious, too, that for many foreigners who were able to witness the sacramental use of cannabis its spiritual potency was clear. In the Indian Hemp Drugs Report of 1893 - 1894, J. M. Campbell poetically reports (perhaps too poetically for one who has not had the experience): ‘To the Hindu, the hemp plant is holy . . . . He who drinks bhang, drinks Shiva. The soul in whom the spirit of bhang finds a home, glides into an ocean of being, freed from the weary round of self-blinded matter.’ Such spirituality, so close at hand. The breakdown of modern society has been blamed on many things. One often repeated theme is a turning away from God, an argument usually accompanied by disturbing news of falling church attendance numbers. This argument ignores the fact that in the latter half of this century many people have turned away from christianity in a search of a spiritual understanding of the world. For some of those people, smoking cannabis has led them naturally towards a genuineand new appreciation of the Shivite philosophy. from the pen of G. van Mukthi

	BACK TO PAGE SEVENTEEN
	Or read these Page Seventeen articles in Plain Text: Prophecy and Profit
	Copyright © 1999/2000 The Enlightenment Company