Mahashiva Ratri: Night of the Great Shiva - I

ASTROLOGY AND PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCES

The night of 20th February was Mahashivaratri - the Hindu festival, night of the Great Shiva. On this day bhang (dried female shoots and flowers of Cannabis) are taken as prasaad. From the overwhelming spiritual nature of the trip I had on this day, I now suspect that astrology and especially the position of the moon also influence the nature of the trip that one gets on Bhang/Cannabis. The Hindu calendar is based on a lunar month and Mahashivaratri invariably falls on the night previous to a Amaavasya or New Moon.

I still have to look up whether shamans and spiritual practitioners in other parts of the world consulted astrology to time their psychedelic rituals.

CONSPIRACY TO KEEP PEOPLE ASLEEP

One of the overwhelming feelings throughout this trip was there was some kind of conspiracy to keep humans asleep/under illusion/under the grasp of Maya. However, it was unclear as to who was behind this conspiracy - was it our own ignorance and/or hostile forces that Shri Aurobindo talked about in his 'Letters on Yoga' (you may read these at http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/22-24/index_e.htm).

 Could this feeling be the source of all kinds of conspiracy theories by people who perceived the original truth in a distorted way and came up with all kinds of beliefs of government cover ups, alien abductions, alien invasion etc. Are there people among us who are 'awake' yet are silent witness to the  play - lila of the world ? Are there others silently doing their work, making subtle attempts at 'waking' people up, leaving signs for people who are partially awake to tell them  that they are not alone and that they are not under some sort of delusion ?!!

I very strongly had the 'feeling' that the esoteric and mystical texts and poems left by sages and seers in the past are a kind of symbol/code language for those of us who are partly awake, to guideus and to show us the Way. There could be three reasons why this message is given in a code/symbolic language:

1.  Those who are yet asleep do not get alarmed and confused.

2. To prevent the message from going into the hands of ignorant/hostile people who could misuse  this knowledge.

3. Most importantly, to a person in an altered state of consciousness, metaphors and symbols make more sense than ordinary language because  the experiences during a 'high' can be best described in symbols and metaphors.

It was very clear, however that most of humanity is asleep or  under some kind of a spell and all the sages and mystics of the past have been trying to break this spell and awaken the slumber of humanity.

LOSS OF SENSE OF TIME

The passage of time,  on this trip was remarkably erratic. At some point it appeared to speed up, on another occasion slow down and at times, come to a standstill.

ACCESS TO UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE

I felt as if I could access universal knowledge simply with the effort of will and focus. Comprehension of ideas/concepts and phenomena was almost effortless.  Was this the reason why some governments had banned Cannabis for their 'subjects/citizens' ?!!