Psychedelic Yoga :: essays research papers

The following article to begin with appe ard as an uncopyrighted set of mimeographed sheets sometime during the late 1960s, which was freely distributed on a limited basis, probably in San Francisco.Psychedelic YogaThe Application of Yoga Meditation Techniques to the usance of Psychedelic SacramentsBy Sri Brahmarishi Narad The fact that psychedelic drugs induce a great sensitivity to subtle spiritual and psychic energies, and speed up the influx of impressions from deeper levels of consciousness, raises the immediate question of how these energies can be in good order understood and handled. Obviously, if these energies are not guided, they can do more harm than good. The coating of traditionalistic Yoga meditation techniques while under psychedelic baffles, can provide a constructive solution to this problem.According to Yoga philosophy, the most spiritual and powerful survey of mans nature is thefaculty of maintenance or consciousness. The most fundamental sentiment of ma ns free will is the choice as to what he bothows his attending to bulk large upon. The attention always has to be onsomething, but we can favour what we allow it to dwell upon.The goal of all Yoga practices is to discover and directly experience what the attention or faculty of consciousness in man is. The yogi seeks to pick out that principle by which all else is known. Observing the observer or placing the attention on the attention itself achieves this goal. This may at first seem rattling abstract and hard to grasp in terms of practical application but there are workable, time-proven methods for achieving this state of pure consciousness, which when consistently use and practiced are bound to yield results.It should be constantly remembered during a psychedelic session that whatever perceptions, thoughts and even hallucinations occur -- they are all the creations of ones own mind andconsciousness, and are filtered through ones own instrument of perception. These perception s are patterns of our own psychic goose egg. We give energy to whatever thoughts and feelings weallow the attention to dwell upon. Wherever the power of attention is focused, it generates mental and emotional energy in the form of its own lower overtones, thus feeding and activation the thoughts and emotions that the attention dwells upon. It becomes clear that the key to remaining in control of a psychedelic experience is in controlling the flow of attention. Distracting experiences can be avoided in the first place, and the flow of attention can be properly directed by the use of Raja Yoga techniques of meditation.