How Do Drugs Affect Our Spiritual Development?

​Our interest in Gnosis is in reaching the full knowledge of the inner Being, which necessitates a radical psychological revolution, meaning that we must become fit vessels through which the Innermost can express. The path to achieve this is internal, psychological, and guided by the inner Being.
 
The method to achieve this has been taught by the greatest human beings: Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, etc. When studied integrally, one can easily see they all taught the same methodology for the same path. Thus, since we seek to become like them, we follow in their footsteps. We aim to be like those masters, who are beautiful, pure beings, kings and queens over nature. A king or queen of nature commands nature, and is not dominated by nature, whether inside or outside. That is, such a master does not need plants or comestibles in order to awaken or acquire knowledge. They simply acquire it inside, through their own faculties.
 
We study the teachings of these great masters, not only the written scriptures that are made up of thousands of pages of deep and multilayered meanings, but also the secret knowledge that until very recently was not written down. In all of that knowledge, both written and secret, there is no mention anywhere of ingesting hallucinogens. The only places you will find such things are in teachings of black magic, which are very abundant, but only result in the formation of slaves of desire.
 
Those who sincerely practice according to the instructions given by the masters we study awaken consciousness, develop the powers of their inner Being to acquire knowledge directly, and thus they experience the steps of the path. This is known by all of our instructors and by the many thousands of students all over the world who are studying this path. All of us are experiencing what the greatest masters have taught. None of those masters taught the use of hallucinogens, thus none of us use such substances, need them, or want them.

​Meditation, Psychedelics, and Awakening

Meditation is the science of awakening and liberating consciousness.
 
Contrary to popular belief, recreational drugs and psychedelics are completely antithetical to meditation.
 
Meditation is not a technique: relaxation, breathing or concentration exercises. While these are preliminary and facilitate the experience of meditation, the latter is a state of consciousness: luminous, clear, and unconditioned.
 
The purpose of meditation is to liberate the consciousness from all conditioning, specifically the limitations of self, ego, desire―the “me, myself, and I.”
 
Within all the ancient mystery schools and spiritual teachings of the prophets, desire is strictly equated with ego, defects, or conditions that produce suffering. They taught that such desires, and the behaviors that perpetuate them, must be renounced, comprehended, and systematically eliminated to produce happiness, serenity, and genuine enlightenment.

Desire never rests by enjoyment of lusts, as fire surely increases the more butter is offered to it. ―Laws of Manu 2.94

Meditation, as a state of pristine awareness and clarified perception, is utilized to remove desire: the afflictive psychological states, egos, and conditions of mind.
 
Ingesting drugs does the opposite: they condition the psyche within its egotistical cage.
 
Introducing substances into the consciousness does not liberate it from its conditions.
 
Marijuana is not used by white magicians. It is only used by black magicians.
 
LSD is a poisonous chemical used only by black magicians.
 
Psilocybin, as a substance that occurs naturally in certain plants, has a very limited medicinal function when used by a doctor whose consciousness is awakened. However, this use is strictly limited.
 
In synthesis, there is no acceptable, casual use of these substances because of their inherent dangers. In addition, there is no need for them: the awakened experiences you want to have are much more safely and easily acquired by learning how to meditate.
 
Meditation poses no risk, yet bestows all of the greatest gifts one can acquire. Yet, people are too lazy to learn, and always seek justifications to feed their desires, such as for drugs.
 
Feeding the desire for drugs, especially with the sophistry of experimentation and having “spiritual” experiences, only fortifies the ego with its subsequent hallucinations, which is not the purpose of meditation. ​

What Is the Difference between a Hallucination and a Mystical Vision?

In some native American cultures, initiates were sent on a vision quest, which required several days without food and sometimes without sleep. Modern scholars say that the visions seen on such a quest are hallucinations. So how can we be sure?
 
What happens when one stops eating, especially heavy foods like meat, is that the physical conditioning of the consciousness is lessened, and one can directly perceive the more subtle levels of nature. However, changing our physical conditioning doesn’t alter our psychological conditioning, and what we perceive in those subtle levels of nature can be heavenly or hellish, depending upon the quality of our psyche.
 
Dreams reflect the quality and conditioning of an individual’s internal psychological states, in that the body with its five senses, which originally filtered, obscured, or veiled one’s perceptions, is absent. What remains within the world of dreams is the consciousness, which, even without the five physical senses, processes in accordance with its own egotistical conditioning, i.e. the animal ego, attachments, cravings, or desires. A dream, therefore, is a projection of our conditioned selves within the astral dimension, much in the same manner that a film projects its images, qualities, and scenes upon the screen of a theater. One does not see what is actually there in its objective reality, but merely what one wants to see, precisely because in daily life, we constantly seek to feed our desires. Therefore, the consciousness is diffused, dispersed, or inattentive due to a lack of training.
 
We are typically not aware of our most submerged internal states because we lack strength, depth, and utility with our unconditioned consciousness: the natural capacity for innate wisdom, cognizance, and understanding of spiritual reality. So if the majority of our dreams and visions are actually subjective, how can one distinguish an objective vision?
 
Plato stated: “A man is known by his dreams” because our dream life reflects our daily psychological state. The type of mental projection we mentioned occurs not only during the hours of sleep, but even physically. Whenever we identify with a defect of anger, pride, lust, fear, avarice, hatred, or any egotistical desire, we interpret, view, and experience the impressions of life in accordance with those psychological conditions. Naturally, as stipulated in every religion, ignorance of this dynamic is the cause of suffering. Due to the heavily degenerated condition of our modern psyche, mushrooms and psychedelics exacerbate these demonic psychological perceptions, which can rightly be denominated hallucinations, dreams, or illusions.

The extra-sensory perceptions of mushrooms, psychedelics, and drugs intensify the egotistical conditioning of what already subsists within our subconscious, unconscious, and infraconscious desires. The consciousness is contrary to the desires, habits, tendencies, and cages of our defects, for the soul belongs to divinity and can see the truth, i.e. perceive mystical visions, whereas our defects perceive life without objectivity. Since our free consciousness is not trained, but weak, we lack the bandwidth to directly investigate the full spectrum of conscious experience with competence, efficacy, and skill. Unfortunately, this often becomes the excuse for people to experiment with psychedelia, so as to perceive that which is beyond the senses.
 
Psychedelia, the easy door to internal sensory perceptions, is a false one, for while offering experiences that are beyond our normal range of being, most individuals do not discriminate how their own states are a reflection of their submerged subjectivities. They are merely dreaming, not perceiving the reality of life free in its movement. Mushrooms and other plant substances are an extension of one’s dream life, the projected simulation of a conditioned mind that cannot see but through a glass darkly. This is the opposite of an objective spiritual experience: visions, whereby the consciousness witnesses higher realities without any self, attachment, craving, ego, or desire. This is the soul, the ability to observe a phenomenon and intuit its objective reality without relying on external stimuli. This is the natural functioning of the psyche we seek to activate with our Gnostic studies, but which is currently in a virginal or embryonic state. Enlightened beings, prophets, masters, buddhas, angels, or gods, never relied on chemicals or intoxicants, because that is contrary to the goal of objectively perceiving reality. The latter can only be witnessed when desire is absent, including that for psychedelia. This state does not require any external factors, but is spontaneously produced and sustained through meditation.
 
Just because one has experiences from such substances does not validate them, because awakening is a spectrum, either in more selfless states (without desire) or within greater densities (attachments and grasping at a false identity). Psychedelics activate the consciousness that is already trapped within one’s conditioning, thereby producing experiences, perceptions or sensations that were originally submerged, dormant, or hidden. One does not become free of such states through mushrooms, but is merely becoming awakened within the cage. Therefore, there is no correct way to experience psychedelia, because their sole function is to intensify conditioned states, which are inherently faulty, flawed, and mistaken, processed in accordance with the egotistical lens, dispensation, or flaws of the individual.

​Experiences through Drugs

Experiences through cannabis, marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ayahuasca, DMT, mushrooms, ketamine, etc., are one hundred percent subjective and egotistical, within the inferior dimensions, the hell realms or Klipoth of the Hebraic Kabbalah.
 
Despite popular myths, there is no correct way to use drugs, because they all produce the conditioning of the consciousness.
 
Psychedelia comes from psyche (soul) and delia (drug). Some proponents of drug use state that such an etymology is not factual, since delia originates from delouse, signifying “to reveal.”
 
However, these “revelations,” perceptions, and visions are within conditioned states, egos, the hell realms.

The extra-perceptions of a drug addict have their own roots in the abominable Kundabuffer organ (the tempting serpent of Eden).
 
The consciousness imprisoned within the multiple elements that constitute the ego is limited in its processes by virtue of its own imprisonment.
 
Egoistic consciousness comes in a comatose state with hypnotic hallucinations very similar to those of someone under the influence of any drug.
 
We can present this matter in the following way: Hallucinations from the egoistic consciousness are the same as hallucinations brought about by drugs.
 
It is obvious that these two types of hallucinations have their original causes in the abominable Kundabuffer organ (Read chapter 17 of The Great Rebellion). ―Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion

Mind-altering drugs or chemicals do not produce spiritual enlightenment, since these awaken perceptions or hallucinations within desire.
 
The problem is that people have extrasensory experiences as a result of these substances, but what they lack is discrimination of what is genuinely positive or negative. They do not know the difference between the consciousness and the ego.
 
There is a clear difference between awakened states of free consciousness and the subjective states of the ego.
 
Many people smoke marijuana to have astral projections, as addressed in one question to Samael Aun Weor during a lecture:

Student: There are many stimulant plants like marijuana, which, for example, serve in order to achieve astral projection in a quick manner…
 
Samael Aun Weor: The chemical elements of drugs are harmful. 

​Note that marijuana, like many other drugs, is one hundred percent subjective. It is true that by means of hallucinogenic mushrooms, LSD (Lysergic acid), etc., astral projections are achieved, indeed, but they are subjective and inhuman kinds of projections. They are processed in the infra-dimensions of nature and the cosmos, and are not conducive to authentic, transcendental, objective enlightenment. They fail. They are a detriment. ―Samael Aun Weor, “Questions About the Path”

There is nothing spiritual about desire, nor its hallucinations induced through plants and chemicals. The state of craving or aversion constitutes the ego, the self, which originates suffering.
 
The Being (divinity) and the ego (our inner satan) cannot mix, like oil and water. Drugs and meditation are incompatible. We naturally feel bliss in the consciousness free of the ego, yet drugs condition the soul and trap it in desire. Drugs cannot liberate the soul, but trap it. This is why divinity is very strict in every meditative tradition: do not take intoxicants. They will pollute your consciousness.
 
Genuine spirituality is about annihilating desire, so that the consciousness can be free, experiencing its own innate, blissful and divine nature.
 
Enlightened spiritual experiences are free of conditions, since they are the natural function of the awakened, liberated consciousness.
 
It is not necessary to ingest chemicals to awaken our natural state of being, since this is achievable through serious meditative training and psychological work.

Are Drugs and Psychedelia Natural?

Advocates of drugs, psilocybin, ayahuasca, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and psychedelia argue that these elements belong to nature, and that their ingestion is therefore natural. While hallucinogens belong to nature, psychonauts ignore its chief characteristic and fundamental law: eat and be eaten.

Nature functions in accordance with two principle laws: evolution and devolution. There is evolution in the birth, genesis, growth, life, nutrition, and blossoming of a plant. There is devolution in its degeneration, decay, withering, and death. These laws operate in all levels of mechanical nature: whether the mineral, plant, animal, and humanoid kingdoms. Everything that lives must die, including our psychological states.

Many other kingdoms exist beyond the mere humanoid level and possess an infinitude of variation, hierarchy, and orders: angels, archangels, cherubim, principalities, thrones, etc. These distinct levels of divine beings are mapped throughout the mystical Kabbalah and designate human beings who have conquered, within themselves, all conditioning elements that belong to nature itself. They are no longer subjected to external elements, pressures, and forces, since they have eliminated internal psychological conditions belonging to the kingdoms of nature that were acquired through the evolutionary process of cosmic transmigration. They now vibrate with superior laws beyond nature and mechanicity, subsisting as gods with mastery over the elements. Having conquered birth (evolution) and death (devolution), they are now immortal.

Humanoids like us have the potential to become spiritual, free from our animal desires, egotism, defects, vices, and evolutionary past, to enter the truly human and divine kingdom of enlightened masters, buddhas, angels, or prophets. If we do not remove our animal instincts, desires, and tendencies willingly so as to enter the kingdoms of divinity, nature will recapitulate the evolutionary process in its inverted form: devolution, which are retrogressive incorporations into inferior states of being via animal, plant, and mineral bodies, until nature has disintegrated the conditions of mind that belong to it. Religions call this purification process hell.

Nature is a recycling plant. Whenever there is disequilibrium, nature balances in proportion and intensity to humanity's disharmony. Also, nature balances constructive and catastrophic states with equal fervor. It does not discriminate in relation to our ideologies, assumptions, preferences, and beliefs. It does not care for our religious ideals, devotion, nationality, or political affiliations. It merely sustains and claims that which belongs to it. Nature abundantly provides the gifts of material and psychological vehicles, via mineral, plant, animal, and humanoid bodies, so that our consciousness can gain necessary experience throughout progressive lifetimes. However, nature progresses to a limit. When we choose not to remove the qualities of the inferior kingdoms from our psyche and enter those spiritual regions beyond mechanicity, nature claims what belongs to her: our psychological, animal, instinctual, and bestial tendencies, known as ego. The ego, self,  desires, or identity we so ardently cling to belong to nature and must return to nature, willingly or not.

Humanoid existence is the height of evolution. It cannot progress further in accordance with nature. To transcend the humanoid state, one must revolutionize the consciousness against nature. We must be in control of it, and not its slave. What is natural or normal for humanoids, mistakenly called human beings, is to be swallowed by nature and recycled within the inferior dimensions, known as the hell realms, so that the consciousness can be liberated and reduced to its primeval state of innocence. In this manner, the soul reinitiates a new journey into the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms throughout millions of years, until finally regaining the long-lost opportunity of a humanoid existence.

Therefore the Conqueror (Buddha) said that just like
A turtle putting its neck through the hole
Of a yoke floating on a vast ocean,
A human life is extremely hard to find.
―Shantideva

The psychic perceptions produced by hallucinogens belong to mechanical nature, not the superior kingdoms of the divine. To ingest psychedelia in any form is to be a slave to its conditions and influence. One can philosophize, argue, debate, and articulate delicate sophistries for their “balanced” use, yet nature does not consider our philosophies, religiosity, conceptions, or beliefs. When you consume from nature, you belong to nature, and will therefore be recycled by it when your desires for psychedelia and drugs subsist. Nature will balance out your imbalances through disintegrating you within hell, since the infernal worlds are the return to a primeval state with the purpose of equilibrating your consciousness. While a necessary step for those who refuse to change and follow superior laws, it is an extremely painful one, and not recommended. Drugs and psychedelia exacerbate, intensify, and prolong psychological conditioning, keeping the consciousness imprisoned within one's animal past. It is impossible to transcend nature while ingesting substances that condition oneself in its mechanicity and devolutionary laws.

​The Dangers of Drug Use

One must comprehend based on conscious experience why drugs are harmful―yet this doesn't justify experimentation with drugs. Instructors can repeatedly warn and provide an intellectual basis for such an abstention, but that will not give comprehension from the heart.
 
Hearing how fire burns the hand is one thing, but being burned by it is another thing. To live, it is necessary to comprehend the dangers of fire. Yet by saying this, we are not instructing you to put your hand on a burning stove. It is not necessary to put your hand in the fire to know that it is dangerous, since one can learn its properties through observation.
 
In the same manner, we are not telling you that to know drugs are harmful, one must experiment with them. We only have to look at the life of drug addicts to perceive their affliction and low level of being. For “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:16).
 
Comprehension of the ego and its illusory states lead the practical meditator to the conclusion that ingesting chemicals, plant substances, and intoxicants will deepen one’s identification with the animal “I,” because the hallucinations induced by drugs originate from the same Kundabuffer organ.
 
It is well known that drug use, recreationally or “spiritually,” degenerates the brain, heart, nervous and endocrine systems, sexual virility, etc. This affects the psychic connection between the mind or mental body to the physical brain.

Obviously, drugs annihilate alpha waves. Then, unquestionably, the intrinsic connection between mind and brain is lost. This, in fact, results in total failure. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion

When the brain is no longer connected with the mental body, it devolves, degenerates, and ceases to operate.
 
The behavior of drug addicts is well documented. They experience a systematic decay of ethics, moral judgment, discriminative faculties, and the ability to ascertain proper conduct in various social situations, all of which run contrary to the purpose of Gnosis and genuine spirituality.

​Drugs: A Gateway to Spirituality?

People are free to believe whatever they want about drugs. If students wish to continue using drugs for recreation, medical, or “mystical” purposes, that is a personal choice.
 
Despite the constant inquiries seeking the validation of drugs, our response will always be the same: psychedelics and recreational drugs condition the consciousness in hell, so that it remains awakened and trapped there. Ingesting psychedelics will keep one identified and trapped in the lower realms. There is no way to investigate and comprehend the lower realms of Kabbalah through drugs.
 
Even if some people find Gnosis while they are experimenting with drugs, that does not justify their use. What happens is that divinity is offering a means of escaping addiction, vice, and degeneration, i.e. through the teachings, not because DMT, LSD, ecstasy, marijuana, cannabis, ayahuasca, mandragora or mandrake root, peyote, or drugs led the way to spiritual realization. We teach how to liberate consciousness from these lower levels, not how to increase one's attachment to subjective and infernal states of being―so we will never advocate the use of intoxicants.
 
Our inner Being is trying to speak to us, to wake us up, in every moment of life. Some people nearly die before they awaken to the seriousness of their spiritual life. A personal tragedy, like the death of a loved one, can lead some into moral decay and others to God. Each experience matters due to what we make of it, how we respond. Even a shocking drug-induced episode can wake a person up when the Being fights to help the soul return to divinity, even though such an episode is traumatic, harmful, and unnecessary. But for some, this episode leads to addiction and confusion, while others set it aside and seek the truth within.
 
Why do psychedelics exist? In most cases, people continue to derive or ingest these substances to experience certain subjective sensations. They were then sold or given to others who may be open to such experiences, who would likewise become hypnotized by these sensations. Nowadays, they are produced mostly for drug users to make money and continue in their habits.
 
If some have the ability to experience war, illness, poverty, etc., as a chance to transform one’s life for the better, this is a good sign. But many misguided individuals consider themselves to be enlightened by whatever means and go off into even more confusion, because they cannot let go of desire.

​Objective Consciousness and Reality

The experience of reality beautifully unfolds when we let go of desires and when the proper causes are met: the mind is silent, serenity and concentration are established, and the consciousness free of ego is activated.
 
As for using free, objective consciousness to explore the hell realms, this can be very useful. In an objective state, we can see the immense suffering of these realms and cultivate compassion for those who are hypnotized by these subjective states. However, many of us on this planet have the majority of consciousness in the hell realms, and we see them through the filters of our attachments and desires, not as they truly are.
 
If we wish to escape hell, you need to awaken the free consciousness, not the consciousness trapped in the ego. Psychedelics fortify the egotistical consciousness and keep it enslaved and imprisoned to desire. Unconditioned consciousness, free from desire, is the only way to free the rest of the consciousness that is caged.
 
A prisoner cannot free anyone else if he or she is trapped in their own cell. You have to escape the cell first to free others. The same with the consciousness. 

​The Philosophy and Religion of Drugs

The philosophy and mysticism of psychedelics hypnotizes many people. This type of mentality is evident in drug addicts who, while deteriorating and filled with incredible suffering, continue to defend their addiction despite the evidence around them, the sorrows of their loved ones, socio-economic, sexual, marital problems, etc.
 
Do not let a vice become your religion:

A drug addict turns vice into religion. Being misled, he thinks he experiences what is real under the influence of drugs. Unaware that the extra-perceptions produced by marijuana, L.S.D., morphine, hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, heroin, hashish, tranquilizers in excess, amphetamine, barbiturates, etc., etc., are merely hallucinations produced by the abominable Kundabuffer organ.
 
Drug addicts devolve and degenerate in time. In the end they are submerged permanently within the infernal worlds. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Great Rebellion

​Peyote, Astral Projection, and Shamanism

​There exists a very profound mysticism surrounding the conscious souls of nature for the development and betterment not only of our own spirituality, but of others.
 
Every plant in nature has soul, known as an elemental. The conscious, spiritual work with the souls of plants is referred to elementotherapy.
 
In the past, shamanic traditions and indigenous religions have utilized the souls of plants to awaken consciousness.
 
Certain Masters of the White Lodge would work with certain elementals of plants, as explained by Samael Aun Weor in Igneous Rose and Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic, to help disciples. However, you will not find these masters in the physical plane, but in the internal dimensions.
 
We have personally received help in the internal worlds from masters who administered help through the elemental magic of specific plants. Yet we make this explicitly clear: you will not find these masters in the physical world, but inside.
 
Humanity is now so degenerated that authentic shamans and spiritual doctors are not easily found. Due to the dangers, it is best to avoid them in the physical world, and seek them within.
 
What you will find in this world, however, are confused individuals who use plants and substances to awaken conditioned consciousness: ego. They sincerely believe that perceptions induced by ingesting these plants are positive and objective. We call such persons, with awakened perception through conditioning, demons. Many people submit to such "wolves in sheep's clothing" due to naivety, inexperience, imprudence, and indiscretion.
 
There are countless people in this physical world who perform ceremonies to certain psychedelic plants and substances. However, "drug addicts turn their vice into a religion" and are filled with innumerable excuses to justify their desires.
 
Even positive practices with elementals have been abused due to the degeneration of these shamanic traditions. One such example is peyote.
 
The elemental of peyote has been traditionally used to provoke astral projections. Yet the original purity of such practices have been adulterated, corrupted, and lost through innovations and abuse.
 
To truly benefit from the elementals of plants such as peyote, it is necessary to enact the cosmic laws, ethical conduct, and divine principles necessary to command nature, not to be a slave of it.
 
As related in a lecture by Samael Aun Weor:

Student: You as well as the Master Huiracocha once spoke about peyote, precisely as help for these cases of astral projection.
 
Samael Aun Weor: Peyote is quite different. The elemental of peyote cooperates, yes, with meditation, it does not create any kind of tendencies. Yet, the elemental is very demanding: it demands chastity. In no way will peyote help, for instance, the indecent, lustful ones. It has rules.
 
Master Huiracocha talked about peyote. He narrated how the Master Rassinchi, inside the Temple of Chapultepec, used peyote in order to cause an astral projection. This is the only recommended plant with the condition of not abusing of it, since this is only for the K. H. [Kosmic Humans]. A student who wanted to use it for the third time, after receiving several instructions, was called to order by the lords of karma, and was prohibited from continuing with it; to be more precise, he was abusing it. Therefore, peyote’s elemental is useful, but one needs to know the proper procedures, and do not ever abuse it.
 
As for other drugs, I will not say anything.
 
We cannot consider peyote as a drug. It is a harmless plant that doest not create any kind of habit and that only cooperates with meditation, when one knows how to meditate. Someone could ingest much peyote and will not have any results. Another could chew a little bit of it, a few grams, and get an extraordinary result. The secret is to know how to meditate. The elemental cooperates with the one who knows how to meditate. The elemental really helps, but since it is illegal in some countries, of course we cannot in anyway recommend it. ―Samael Aun Weor, “Questions About the Path”
 
We do not recommend the use of this marvelous cactus... Indeed, what we recommend is practice, much practice, and soon you will act and travel within the Astral body. ―Samael Aun Weor, Aztec Christic Magic

One can achieve full and complete development without peyote, therefore it is not necessary. Considering how vulnerable humanity is to temptation, and how easy it is to be distracted from the real work, it is advisable to avoid potential dangers. Moreover, in many places it is illegal. Why court danger, when the path is dangerous enough on its own? Therefore, we advise avoiding reliance on external substances.

​Did God Create Drugs?

Despite these explanations, some have asked: If peyote, marijuana, and other plants are harmful to consume, why did God create drugs?
 
The question is: Who said God made everything? God did not make concentration camps, atomic bombs, tequila, pornography, worldwide pollution, poisonous chemicals, etc. We took elements from nature and made our world the way it is now. "Drugs" are our invention.

​The Demon of Alcohol

Firstly, regarding alcohol, no one here will tell you what to do. That is up to you to decide based on recommendations and advice.
 
Regarding alcohol, Samael Aun Weor was very clear in his writings:

Never drink the accursed liquor, I tell you, because if you drink it you will quickly stray from the path. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Mystery of the Golden Flower

Alcohol is not necessary for self-realization. However, with one drop of liquor, one can stray from the path.

With the sinister demon Algol, it is impossible to make compromises, arrangements, or any kind of crooked deal. Alcohol is very treacherous and sooner or later will stab us in the back. Many people with Thelema (will) only drink one or two glasses a day; a terrific ruse, isn’t it? ―Samael Aun Weor, The Mystery of the Golden Flower

As stated in the teachings and known by science, alcohol is a poison. We have to remember that the physical body is the temple of the Lord. Therefore, to be successful in alchemical practice, it is necessary to keep our temple pure. Alcohol destroys the body, mind and soul, and highly toxifies the blood. We know that the blood is the vehicle of the spirit, and when our blood is weak, toxic and impure, the quality of our seminal energy is also effected.

There is no question that being a product of disintegration... alcohol has a vibratory disintegrating, dissolving and destructive tendency, drying our tissues and destroying the nerve cells, which are then gradually substituted by cartilage.
 
It is clearly evident that alcohol tends to eliminate the capacity for independent thought and calm judgment since it fatally stimulates fantasy. It also shockingly debilitates ethical sense and individual liberty. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Mystery of the Golden Flower

In other words, alcohol promotes the exact opposite of the path.

Dionysus, the god of revelry and wine, is a symbol of two distinct, contrasting forms of psychology.

The positive polarity of the Dionysian influence is spiritual intoxication through objective consciousness, unconditioned mystical experiences, chastity, positive astral projections, lucid awakening in dreams, purity in ethics, body, speech, and mind, etc.

The negative polarity of the Dionysian influence is intoxication of the ego through lust, fornication, drugs, and alcoholism.

Regarding both polarities of Dionysus, you can learn more in: The Aquarian New Year.
 
A student once said, "This path is not a path of deprivation." Actually, this path is 100% about depriving the ego of what strengthens it, such as fornication, drugs, alcohol, etc. The consciousness, the Being, does not need or want alcohol.
 
Alcohol degenerates the mind, heart, and body. This is why it was forbidden by Prophet Muhammad amongst his disciples.

O you who have faith! Indeed intoxicants [alcohol, drugs], gambling, idols and the divining arrows are abominations of Satan’s doing, so avoid them, so that you may be felicitous. ―Qur’an 5:90

Samael Aun Weor also specified that the Gnostic must not drink, smoke, or fornicate.

Flee from lust and alcohol. Kill the most inner roots of desire. ―Samael Aun Weor, Tarot and Kabbalah

Knowing alcohol is destructive is one thing. But comprehending its destructive attributes is another.
 
The alcoholic knows alcohol is harmful, yet continues to drink anyway. Therefore, knowing alcohol is harmful does nothing.
 
The person who comprehends how alcohol is destructive to the spiritual work no longer drinks it, because one understands the need to keep one's temple (physical body) clean and suitable for the Being. This is comprehension.
 
Some people believe that to comprehend alcohol, it should be tolerated and consumed. However, as Samael Aun Weor states:

Liquor and fornication must be banished from the bosom of Gnostic homes. However, we must not be fanatics. Whoever is incapable of handling one drink at a social gathering is as weak as someone who cannot control his liquor and gets drunk. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony

This line about handling a drink does not mean that one should willingly drink alcohol, especially just to "prove" something. Rather, it means that one should know how to handle social situations with grace: holding a drink does not mean one gets drunk. In this case, the graceful one avoids offending his hosts, yet also avoids intoxication. This is how we fool the foolish.

Regarding social gatherings: those initiates who have strong will, sometimes politely allow themselves to sip or to taste up to three small quantities of liquor or up to three small quantities of beer. They never go beyond three; if they do, they violate the law. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Divine Science: "Logos, Mantra, Theurgy"

Most of us do not have strong will. Therefore students should be cautious.

There are people who claim that avoiding alcohol is fanatical, thus they drink to "prove" they are not "fanatics." Perhaps they prove they are not fanatics, but they also prove they are stupid, for by that reasoning, they should also fornicate, take drugs, murder, rob, and in general perform all the other actions that lead to suffering. This is how their ego fools them easily. Wanting to prove themselves strong, they instead prove they are weak.

And who are these idiots who seek to negotiate with Satan? Listen, my friends! With the sinister demon Algol, it is impossible to make compromises, arrangements, or any kind of crooked deal. Alcohol is very treacherous and sooner or later will stab us in the back.  ―Samael Aun Weor, The Mystery of the Golden Flower

Nevertheless, there is evil in good and good in evil. This is how we sometimes find medicine in poison. There are medicinal treatments that utilize small amounts of alcohol. These treatments are not sufficient to create intoxication. If someone becomes intoxicated, they have consumed too much.
 
As you can see in the medicine book, there are medicinal uses for alcohol, but in very small doses. Yet once again, many people drink it for "medicinal purposes," when in reality they are drinking it because of desire for it.

​Drugs and Gnostic Medicine

If you study Esoteric Medicine and Practical Magic, you will find that many presumed impure or even poisonous sources can provide medicine. This is evidence that the genuine Gnostic approach is not fundamentalist, shallow-minded, or judgmental, but rather seeks to use what is useful while discarding what is not. Any element in nature can be used for benefit or for harm. However, humanity has no idea how to discriminate between them, since humanity is dominated by desires, hypnotized by whatever appears to produce blissful sensations, and oblivious to the harm that results from their mistaken actions.
 
Elementals are simply the intelligence in living things. When you look into the eyes of an animal, the elemental is gazing back at you. If you study the mentioned book, it will explain.

​Smoking

Cigarettes destroy the pulmonary and circulatory systems, which are essential to sexual magic. The oxygen or Prana should infiltrate our blood, purifying our internal glands and systems. Yet when we smoke tobacco, the lungs become incapacitated in their intake of oxygen.
 
Prana, signified by the Hebrew letter א Aleph, becomes obstructed in its process of purifying the blood, or דם Dam. א Prana / oxygen and דם blood together spell אדם Adam, the man made into the image of God. Therefore, if we pollute our דם blood, we make it more difficult for א Aleph to purify it, thereby obstructing us on our path to becoming אדם Adam.

​Medical Marijuana

​While marijuana is medically used to treat symptoms of chronic pain and fatigue, it comes with a cost to the consciousness.
 
There are many ways to heal the body, soul, and mind without resorting to marijuana or the elemental of marijuana. Therefore, since most people only want to get high, we do not recommend using this plant.
 
There also exist many plants that intoxicate the soul once smoked, inhaled or ingested. This is due to the fact that fire, Fohat, releases chemicals by transforming matter.
 
Smoking plants introduces many harmful chemicals into the body due to the destructive and transformative capacities of Fohat, and in the case of marijuana, ingesting its chemicals is absolutely detrimental to the soul, since it fortifies our animal nature in a terrible manner, heightened even more through crystallizing its properties through fire.
 
This is why we do not recommend smoking or ingesting intoxicating plants, i.e. marijuana, nicotine, yage, at all. Smoking is a filthy habit that Samael Aun Weor expressly forbade his students from engaging in.
 
There was once a cult in the middle east called the hashishans, who would ritually smoke hashish, marijuana, in order to awaken themselves in the ego and to murder for their religious leader. This is where we get the term "assassin."
 
Therefore, those who smokes hashish or marijuana assassinate their inner Buddha.

​The Astral Atmosphere of Drug Addicts

Consuming alcohol, intoxicants, and drugs not only has adverse effects upon ones psychology, but also one’s home environment, aura, energy, and psychic atmosphere.
 
Spiritual literature speaks often of incubi and succubi, negative, self-created astral entities that, due to fornication, adhere themselves to the astral atmosphere of their progenitors. Through masturbation and lust, fornicators engender such diabolic entities that have a singular purpose: to drain the sexual life force from their creators.
 
Drugs, alcohol, and excessive stimulants feed such entities and give them tremendous strength:

By permitting his senses to become deadened through indulgence in habit-forming drugs or alcoholic stimulants, the individual becomes temporarily en rapport with these denizens [succubi and incubi] of the astral plane. ― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Such entities can be eradicated by changing one’s behaviors and cleansing our homes with high quality incense, invocations, and prayers. Learn how to defend and beautify your Home and Altar. 

​Mixing Gnosis with Drugs 

There are people all over the world who mix drugs with Gnosis. These people define themselves as demons.
 
This is why Samael Aun Weor announced, sadly, towards the end of his lifetime, that the entire country of Colombia has produced a rich harvest of hasnamussen: beings with a split personality: one heavenly, one diabolic―an abortion of the Divine Mother.
 
Why? Because the Gnostic rituals are extremely powerful. When you mix the energies of Christ with hallucinogenic mushrooms, ayahuasca, marijuana, LSD, acid, or drugs, you take those powers and awaken them in the ego.

All rituals have to do with blood and semen. Ritual is a double-edged sword that defends and gives life to the pure and virtuous, but hurts and destroys the impure and tenebrous. Ritual is more powerful than dynamite and the knife.
 
One deals with nuclear forces in a ritual. Atomic energy is a gift of God that can heal just as it can kill. Therefore, every temple within which the Holy Gnostic Unction is celebrated, is in fact and for this reason an atomic energy plant. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony

It is only in rituals of black magic, black masses, where chemicals, intoxicants, and drugs are utilized. Black masses incorporate drugs to provoke delirium, hallucinations, and convulsions, accompanied with rape, orgies, and sexual violence. Such acts produce a synergy of devolving forces, which precipitate the consciousness of their practitioners into diabolic awakenings and the fortification of desire. 

​Intelligence Resolves Problems, Not Drugs

You may have a tremendous and explosive experience through one of these drugs, but will the deep-rooted aggression, bestiality and sorrow of man disappear? If these drugs can solve the intricate and complex problems of relationship, then there is nothing more to be said, for then relationship, the demand for truth, the ending of sorrow, are all a very superficial affair to be resolved by taking a pinch of the new golden drug. Surely this is a false approach, isn't it? It is said that these drugs give an experience approximating to reality, therefore they give hope and encouragement. But the shadow is not the real; the symbol is never the fact. As is observed throughout the world, the symbol is worshipped and not the truth. So isn't it a phoney assertion to say that the result of these drugs is near the truth? No dynamic golden pill is ever going to solve our human problems. They can be solved only by bringing about a radical revolution in the mind and the heart of man. This demands hard, constant work, seeing and listening, and thus being highly sensitive. The highest form of sensitivity is the highest intelligence, and no drug ever invented by man will give this intelligence. ―Krishnamurti, The Only Revolution, Europe, Collected Works (Volume 13)