Are psychedelics the key to consciousness? As World Drug Report 2004 revealed, about 185 million people worldwide have used an illicit substance in the past 12 months. What drives people to take drugs? Can psychoactive substances tell us about who and what we are? Is there a way to get the good without the bad? "Some researchers believe that such enquiries will lead to a new understanding of the human mind, including the mysteries of consciousness, or new treatments for mental illness," write Helen Phillips and Graham Lawton (New Scientist, 13 November).

Many pioneering researchers have come to the conclusion that seeking intoxication was programmed into human nature. Ronald Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, believes that after hunger, thirst and sex, the fourth biological drive is to seek intoxication. Siegel says that at the root of our seeking pleasure, pain-relief or stimulation is the motivation to feel "different from normal." Some people reach this state through travel, books, art, roller coasters, sport, religion, exploration, love, social contact or power. Others use intoxicants. He believes that if we can alter these drugs so as to have shorter effects and no addictive potential, then we could design entirely new chemicals that allow us to experience all the pleasures, thrills, adventures of intoxication without the downsides. Richard Glen Boire, director of the Centre for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics in Davis, California, says that intoxication is a basic human right. He believes that as long as we do not harm anyone else, laws should be changed to allow people to experiment with psychoactive substances and enable them to explore the full range of human consciousness. Susan Blackmore believes that drugs provide the evidence that the mind is the brain and that our thoughts, beliefs and perceptions are created by chemistry.

Theosophy teaches that brain is only an instrument of the mind. By the use of drugs and narcotics, "the consciousness is put into an artificial state and is more entangled than ever, although showing knowledge of things not known in the normal state." Alcohol and drugs hinder the development of spiritual insight. The use of wine and spirits is a hindrance to the moral and spiritual growth of a person. H.P.B. writes:

Alcohol in all its forms has a direct, marked, and very deleterious influence on man's psychic condition. Wine and spirit drinking is only less destructive to the development of the inner powers, than the habitual use of hashish, opium and similar drugs. (The Key to Theosophy, pp. 259-60)

Moreover, could psychoactive substances provide "insight into the full range of human consciousness," as claimed? Drug-induced states could, at best, provide some information about lower, psychic states of consciousness, but tell us nothing about the higher, spiritual states. H.P.B. writes:

Occultism teaches that physical man is one, but the thinking man septenary, thinking, acting, feeling, and living on seven different states of being or planes of consciousness, and that for all these states and planes the permanent Ego has a distinct set of senses. (Transactions, p. 73)

H.P.B observes that biology, physiology or psychology know nothing about these states of consciousness. They seek to explain various phenomena of volition, sensation, intellect and instinct as manifestations through brain, and ignore mind and its functions.

When the tsunami struck south-east Asia the last week of December 2004, animals in Thailand, Sri Lanka and elsewhere mysteriously saved themselves. As was generally observed, while the scientists and people frolicking on the seashores remained blissfully unaware of the impending disaster, the animals got wind of it well in advance. Elephants and leopards were seen running away and bats and birds were seen to be frantically flying away inland, before the tsunami struck. Not a single animal carcass was found.

"Many scientists say animals have a sixth sense that alerts them to natural danger and helps them make a getaway" (Sunday Times of India, January 9). Alan Rabinowitz, director for science and exploration at the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, observes that animals can sense impending danger by detecting subtle or abrupt shifts in the environment. He says, "Earthquakes bring vibrational changes on land and in water while storms cause electromagnetic changes in the atmosphere. Some animals have an acute sense of hearing and smell that allows them to determine something coming towards them long before humans might know that something is there."

Animal instinct is a form of psychic clairvoyance. There is mysterious sympathy between all things in nature. Animals being psychically more sensitive than humans, it is only natural that they should sense the impending quake in advance and move to a safer place. The Astral Light is a reflector not only of past events but also of events to come, the causes for which are sufficiently well marked and made, and animals are able to perceive the same with their clairvoyant faculty. Paracelsus wrote:

Certain animals have inherited instincts that cause them to act in a certain manner, which will indicate other future events than a change in the weather. The peculiar cry of a peacock or the unusual howling of a dog indicates the approach of a death in the house to which they are attached, for every being is a product of the universal principle of life, and each contains the light of Nature.

Although in India today Sanskrit is considered a dead language, it is studied in twenty-two universities in the U.S.A., eighteen German universities, five British universities and four Italian universities. Other countries which take Sanskrit seriously are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland. "Westerners consider it as simply a fascinating language, a language in which the genius of the human civilization was perfected to its fullest. Top-notch Western universities have been busy churning out one esoteric dissertation after another on Panini's Ashtadhyayi and comparing Bhartihari's and Patanjali's grammatical logic," writes Hiren Kumar Bose (The Times of India, January 6). Sanskrit is co-original with the Vedas. It is used in Shastras as well as software. The language is particularly suited for encrypting without ambiguity. "This is particularly apparent in scientific treatises in Sanskrit, such as works of Aryabhatta, Varahamihir, Bhaskara and others of that era." It is ideal for coining new scientific and technological terms. Another useful feature of this language is its ability to be brief yet informative. Chamu Shastry, a Kannada Brahmin, feels, "Popularizing Sanskrit is far easier as it is the mother of all Indian languages and up to 60 per cent of the words in other languages are derived from Sanskrit."

Sanskrit, called Devabhasa or "the language of the gods," is considered to be a very old language. On the authority of Col. Van Kennedy, H.P.B. mentions that "Babylonia was once the seat of the Sanskrit language and of Brahmanical influence." She writes:

Akkadians instructed the Babylonians in the Mysteries, and taught them the sacerdotal or Mystery-language. These Akkadians were then simply a tribe of the Hindu-Brahmans, now called Aryans—their vernacular language, the Sanscrit of the Vedas; and the sacred or Mystery-language, that which, even in our own age, is used by the Hindu fakirs and initiated Brahmans in their magical evocations. (Isis Unveiled, II, 46)

Mr. Judge records a prophecy concerning the Sanskrit language as follows:

The Sanskrit language will one day be again the language used by man upon this earth, first in science and in metaphysics, and later on in common life. Even in the lifetime of the Sun's [New York Sun] witty writer, he will see the terms now preserved in that noblest of languages creeping into the literature and the press of the day, cropping up in reviews, appearing in various books and treatises....The new language cannot be English...but will be one which is scientific in all that makes a language, and has been enriched by ages of study of metaphysics and the true science. (The Heart Doctrine, p. 204)

H.P.B. describes the potency of the Sanskrit language, thus:

In the Sanskrit, as also in the Hebrew and all other alphabets, every letter has its occult meaning and its rationale; it is a cause and effect of a preceding cause and a combination of these very often produces the most magical effect. The vowels, especially, contain the most occult and formidable potencies. (S.D., I, 94)

Moral education is the real and effective answer to the increasing sexual perversion in modern society. "A free society requires more rather than less moral education precisely because there are more choices to be made, more occasions on which a sense of discrimination is warranted. Or we will be bartering our freedoms for an unfulfilling kind of thoughtlessness," writes Pratap Bhanu Mehta (The Indian Express, December 29). A sober warning from a social scientist and writer like Pratap Mehta is called for by what he describes as the risks and challenges of modern life which paradoxically stand for "the new age of freedom and access of knowledge and individuality." It is admitted that the traditional mode of education is ill-equipped to explain and deal with the main problem of moral choices we daily make, individually and as society. Nor are other traditional anchors, like religious institutions, efficient to influence the character of social relationships or to explain the essential basis for responsible living.

Granted that a great social transformation is an ongoing process, which is now influenced by rapid economic and technological growth, are we equipped to deal with them and their consequences such as rejection of once well-entrenched social mores and restraints? The symptoms of "open indiscretions, unabashed transmission of sensuality by over-stimulated array of images" on television and other media, "libidinous obsessions"—all these and more are complacently tolerated as normal and valid change that should accompany material progress.

Pratap Mehta rightly questions: "Will this new age of freedom and access, of knowledge and individuality, simply produce a culture of selfishness, crudeness and fatuity or a culture of integrity, sophistication and discrimination?...If the traditional moral anchors for relationships are not tenable, what will be the new foundations for those relationships?"

At present, the answer regarding the foundations—the psychological and philosophical basis for healthy behaviour and human relationships is not available with or clearly defined by the religious platforms, western psychologists or social scientists, each having their own ideologies on the nature of man. What is needed is greater dissemination of universal teachings based on the ancient wisdom as given in all world scriptures.

We look at things from a one-life basis, and finding ourselves in this life we imagine it is something we had nothing to do with. Seeing others, according to our view, more fortunate than ourselves, we want to know why, and no answer being possible on the basis we have assumed, we assume that we are receiving injustice. If Karma is the doctrine of responsibility, Reincarnation is the doctrine of hope. The two go together. The reason we are on earth, according to the Occult teaching: we are not here because of our virtues; we are here because of our defects. The "personality" is really the working off of defects. If we do not learn what the object of life is, and don't do the work, then we are only creating more defects to adjust, and more trouble for ourselves.

—Robert Crosbie