ECSTASY GONE AWRY

The Restless Search for Bliss That Now Fuels the Drug Industry Is Part
of Human Nature

Britain is losing the drugs war and there is still no sign of a
reduction in the demand for drugs.

This is hardly surprising, because the restless search for bliss that
fuels the drug industry is an inescapable part of our human condition
- - as deeply rooted as the instincts for sex and self-preservation.
Previous societies that were more attuned to traditional spirituality
understood this: they devised highly sophisticated means of satisfying
this yearning for an enhanced state of consciousness, and ensuring
that it did not become destructive. Until we understand the
disciplines of ecstasy at a deeper level, and legislate accordingly,
we will fight a losing battle against drugs.

Ever since they fell out of the trees and became recognisably human,
men and women have had intimations of what the Greeks called ekstasis,
in which they seemed to "stand outside" themselves. The ability to
have ideas and sensations that transcend our mundane experience is one
of the peculiar characteristics of the human mind. During the
Palaeolithic Age, around 20,000 to 8,000BC, people developed
mythologies of flight and ascent, which symbolised a psychic journey
to an enhanced state of consciousness and an absolute freedom from the
constraints of time and space.

To this day, shamans fall into a trance and embark on a spiritual
flight, bringing back news of a fuller, more potent existence.

From the very start, therefore, human beings sought ecstasy.

In traditional societies, religious ritual catered for these
yearnings, orchestrating them, giving them shape and helping people to
integrate transcendent experience into their daily lives.

To this end, they employed the techniques of what we now call art:
dance, music, painting, drama and song. Before the advent of the
printed book, the CD or the public museum, most people could
experience art only under the auspices of religion.

Today in Britain, only about 6% of the population attend a religious
service regularly.

Most of us no longer find ekstasis in conventional faith, but we go
out of our way to experience rapture in other contexts.

In listening to music or poetry, we feel deeply touched and lifted
beyond ourselves. At such moments we feel fully alive, so we seek out
such peak experiences in art, music, theatre, sex, rock, sport and,
increasingly, in drugs.

Shamans probably used drugs to achieve their trance, but they were
expert in the spiritual technology of transcendence. The most extreme
states of ecstasy were not for the rank and file, and, indeed, in the
course of their training shamans often experienced psychotic breakdown.

Most people could cope only with the moderate rapture induced by
ritual.

An early Talmudic text tells the story of four distinguished rabbis
who attempted the mystical flight to paradise: one went mad, one died,
one became a heretic and only Rabbi Akiva emerged in peace and unscathed.

Not everybody is psychologically capable of the more exotic
states.

In all the world religions, anybody who aspired to the mystical life
had to work with a guru, who closely monitored his progress and
prevented him from getting out of his depth.

You had to be exceptionally balanced and mature to succeed.

Zen masters said that if you were mentally ill, meditation would only
cause you to deteriorate. Masters of Kaballah insisted that their
disciples were at least 40 and married: there must be no unresolved
sexual tension.

In ancient India, yoga enabled skilled practitioners to achieve
extraordinary states of liberation and bliss that were regarded as
entirely natural to human beings.

When Buddhists and Jains refined these yogic techniques in the sixth
century BC, they gave them an ethical foundation. Aspirants could not
even begin their training until they had achieved habitual serenity,
benevolence, abstinence from drugs and stimulants, and absolute
truthfulness. This, as it were, earthed ecstasy, prevented it from
becoming selfish and self-indulgent, and gave it moral direction.

All the major traditions have taught that peak experiences are
unhealthy unless they can be integrated kindly, peacefully and
truthfully into our ordinary lives.

In our secular society we tend to dismiss these mystical systems as
outmoded and irrational. But they contained wisdom that we need today,
because our desire for transcendence and unfettered bliss has got out
of control. We have now developed technology that yields instant
rapture. Today young people can simply swallow a pill and enjoy states
of mind that were formerly the preserve of a very few highly trained
and talented mystics, but without any of the traditional safeguards.
In the old days, mystical teachers such as Teresa of Avila (1515-82)
deplored the harm that was done by unskilled spiritual directors,
whose inept understanding of the psyche made their disciples mentally
ill. Today the situation is much worse. The purveyors of ecstasy are
no longer uneducated, but well-meaning, priests. They are often
unscrupulous dealers who have no concern for their victims, many of
whom become addicted and even die in their search for joy, liberation
and transcendence.

Even religious people, who do not use drugs, have fallen prey to
unbalanced ekstasis . Protestant reformers decried mysticism as
unbiblical and elitist, and so people lost the mystical expertise that
would have enabled them to manage religious intensity.

Puritans underwent wrenching conversion experiences that sometimes
left them chronically depressed and even suicidal. During the Great
Awakening in 18th-century New England, whole towns succumbed to a
pious hysteria, which they believed to be the work of the holy spirit.

When this frenzied joy subsided, many fell into despair, and a few
killed themselves.

It is interesting to compare this with the ecstasy drug culture that
developed in Britain towards the end of the Thatcher years.

The typical ecstasy cycle begins with a honeymoon period.

Once the initial excitement fades, some people accelerate into excess
or abuse, taking stronger drugs and becoming psychologically or
physically ill, as they try to regain the lost paradise.

It was precisely this kind of instability that worried the mystics.

Today we see plenty of examples of ecstasy gone awry. Without the
ethical grounding prescribed by the Buddhists, rapture can become
self-destructive or even violent: ravers fight police and dealers
shoot one another.

Even if not drug induced, the ekstasis of sport can lead to football
hooliganism or racial hatred.

People will always seek to experience these heightened states but, if
deprived of proper guidance, there will always be some who cannot
sustain such mental extremity without suffering or inflicting damage.

The government is right to point to poverty as a source of drug
abuse.

But providing people with jobs, which are often tedious, will not
quench the yearning for ecstasy that is built into the human condition.

At a time when traditional religion seems dead and art caters only for
an elite, an increasing number will turn to the chemical technologies
of bliss.

We have to acknowledge the need for ekstasis, find more creative ways
of satisfying it and acquaint ourselves anew with ways of managing the
peak experiences that we seem to need to give our lives meaning and
value.