Cannabis and the Religious Orthodoxy

 

'Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his World. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, "I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think." But what a distortion did his doctrine and his memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The Understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, "This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man." The idioms of his language and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes.'  

- The Writings of America's Sage, Ralph Waldo Emerson


'If you are now wondering where to look for consolation, where to seek a new and better God, a new and better faith, you will surely realize, in your present loneliness and despair, that this time you must not look to external, official sources, to Bibles, pulpits, or thrones, for enlightenment. Nor to me. You can find it only in yourself. And there it is, there dwells the God who is higher and more selfless that the patriots' God of 1914. The sages of all time have proclaimed him, but he does not come to us from books, he lives within us, and all our knowledge of him is worthless unless he opens our inner eye. This God is in you too. He is particularly in you, the dejected and despairing. It is not the inferior man who sickens with the affliction of the times, or who becomes dissatisfied with the gods and idols of the past.'

 - If the War Goes on, Herman Hesse


'In general, hypocrisy having entered into the flesh and blood of all classes in our time has reached such proportions that nothing of that kind any longer arouses indignation. Not for nothing was "hypocrisy" derived from "acting". And anyone can act, that is, play a part. Such facts as that the representatives of Christ, at divine service, bless ranks of murderers holding loaded rifles in readiness to shoot their fellow men, that ministers of all the Christian sects take part in executions as inevitably as the executioners, by their presence acknowledging murder to be compatible with Christianity (a clergyman officiated in America at the first experiment of murder by electricity), no longer occasion surprise to anyone.'

 - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays, Leo Tolstoy


'The Church is precisely that against which Jesus preached and against which he taught his disciples to fight.'

 - The Will to Power, Friedrich Nietzsche

Who are the religious orthodoxy?

The appearance of maggots confirms the death of the flesh. The appearance of the religious orthodoxy confirms the death of the religion. The spirit has passed on. Only the flesh remains for the maggots to break down into its basic constituents, so that they can dissolve back into the void from which they emerged.

 The religious orthodoxy are a class of people that every religion eventually produces. It is usually an indication of the decay and degeneration of a religion, when the ideas of the person who showed the way have been appropriated, misinterpreted and distorted to suit a class of people who have figured out how to exploit the innocent and simple people who wish to walk the path created by the pioneer. The religious orthodoxy sets down the rules and rituals of the religion after staking claim to being the god-appointed interpreters and middlemen of the religion. The religious orthodoxy claims to have direct access to the god who is the basis of the religion, and thus establishes the rules stating that it is the bidding and command of the religious god whom they represent. The rules that they establish cover the processes of birth, life and death - processes that every human will go through irrespective of his or her religion. The religious orthodoxy makes one believe that none of this will happen correctly unless one follows the rules laid by them, and employs the orthodoxy to perform the rites for these stages of life. The gullible human believes it is so and makes the priest one of his masters, in addition to the king and businessman. The rules that the orthodoxy establish almost always consist of a series of forbidden practices, the violation of which requires the devotee to perform penances and other rituals as directed by the orthodoxy. All the forbidden practices are usually natural human behavior - such as the use of an intoxicant, the satisfaction of one's sexual urges, the eating of meat, or the worship of nature. The performance of a forbidden act is considered pagan and impure, with the punishment being cast out of paradise into the flames of hell. The religious orthodoxy takes a god or man who is complete in nature, and cleaves this being into two parts - good and evil - in such a way that neither of the two parts can exist in practical, natural reality. This ensures that no person who seeks affiliation with the religion can ever be found compliant with the rules of the religion. The penalties for violation of the rules laid down by the religious orthodoxy ensure that they have a constant supply of worldly wealth directed their way, even as their hold on the people increases through the exercise of moral superiority over the followers. Gradually, the gap between the religious orthodoxy and the followers of the religion increases to a great extent - both materially and morally - until the followers of the religion are nothing more than servile animals to be exploited for the benefit of the orthodoxy. The religious orthodoxy take something divine and turn it into a mindless routine for which one must engage and pay the orthodoxy.

The founder of the religion is usually a person who has come to the understanding that there is no difference between god and creation, that both are one and the same. This is a most basic understanding, and it is quite amazing how this eludes the vast majority of humans. The key aim of the religious founder is to dispel the misunderstanding that god and creation are separate, and to make humanity understand that all humans are god, in fact, all creation in nature is god, i.e. nature itself is god. This sort of understanding poses the greatest threat to those who would like to keep alive the delusion that god and creation are separate. Only when this inequality is created can one person exploit another on the basis of his claimed superiority over the other. The denial of divinity in each person externalizes god. It also creates the class of people called priests, who serve as middlemen between man and god, who vastly benefit from the externalization of god. In most societies, these middlemen enjoy the same, and often even greater, social status as the rulers and the highest classes of society. They work hand in glove with the rulers and the rich to ensure that the majority of the people stay enslaved and subject to them.

In establishing itself as the spokespersons and middlemen between god and human, the religious orthodox classes are not alone. It would be nearly impossible for these persons to attain their positional power over the people without the aid of others - especially when one claims to know what god wishes and that what one states is unquestionable. When all humans have the ability to understand their inherent and natural divinity, how is it that a certain class of people attain moral and material superiority over the rest, with the power to amass huge wealth and influence, and even the power to condemn another to death? For this to be possible, the charlatan who claims to be the spokesperson of god needs at least one other to back his claim. For the religious orthodoxy, there are two powerful allies who certify this position of moral superiority over the rest. These two allies are two classes of people who themselves aim to do exactly what the religious orthodoxy aims to do when it comes to the field of religion. These two classes are the king and the businessman. In today's world, the king has a different name. He is called a political leader elected by the people, even though nothing else has changed. The king aims to establish himself as the protector of the well being of the people on earth, and the businessman aims to establish his business as the most important human activity to be pursued on earth. All three classes of persons - king, priest and businessman - share a common aim, which is to attain material wealth and power over all the rest of the earth, i.e. establish themselves as the rulers of the earth with the complete right to enjoy the earth and all its creation at any cost, including the death of spirituality. So the king and businessman validate the priest as god's chosen spokesperson on earth, the king and priest validate the businessman's activity as the god-sanctioned activity that must be performed unquestioningly on earth, and the priest and businessman validate the king as god's representative on earth to rule over all creation. Together, these three classes of charlatans, using their power and influence, establish domination over all the rest of the earth and nature. The king has the armies, police and judiciary to ensure that his will is the law. The businessman has the money to enslave the people economically by paying them wages to ensure that their minds and bodies are his. The priest has the certification of moral superiority to ensure that people believe that he holds the keys to heaven. Between these three, they subjugate the rest, breaking down the will of the individual until he or she has become completely timid, fearful and servile with absolutely no inkling or even desire to recognize that all this is a delusion meant to chain him or her.

It is thus that the religious orthodoxy comes to eventually dominate all religions. There is nothing religious or spiritual about the religious orthodoxy. In fact, there is nothing even orthodox about the religious orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is ideally what is natural, essential and basic to life. The religious orthodoxy labels sex, intoxication, worship of nature, contentment, being one's own master, recognition of the unity of god and man, etc., as sin. It promotes the pursuit of wealth, servility, exploitation of nature, suppression of one's natural urges, and the conversion of all viewpoints to one's own viewpoint as good. It indulges in rape, killing, robbing and pedophilia. In this sense, religious orthodoxy is unnatural, evil and completely unorthodox.

Religious orthodoxy has in many places and at many times, in fact, been responsible for the murder of the man who believed he was god. It has killed him to serve as an example for anybody who ever nurtures this dangerous thought that threatens the power structure that the king-priest-businessman triad has established on earth. It has then elevated the victim to a level that, on the one hand makes it appear impossible for any other human to strive to reach, and on the other hand serves as a lesson to anybody who even dares to contemplate overturning this power structure to re-establish the natural reality of this world. Worldwide we see how religious orthodoxy, working with the king and businessman, have made great progress in turning the earth  into a sterile, bleak and painful hell, and the world's people into a mass of slaves working unquestioningly to further the interests of the king-priest-businessman criminal nexus. All this while consolidating this criminal triad's own position and enjoyment of all the pleasures that it has denied the rest of humanity. The rest of humanity have surrendered their will to live in freedom, truth and ecstasy to the triad and await their deliverance from suffering in the illusion of the next world in the future that has been promised as a reward.

Let us examine a few religions to see how this has come about. I choose Christianity since I was born into a family of devout Christians, and Hinduism since that is the dominant religion of the nation that I am a part of. What is evident from these religions is applicable to nearly every single established religion of the world.

Christianity

Jesus was a true yogi and adept, and a master communicator and teacher. He understood the essence of things - that man is the universal spirit, that the kingdom of god is within, that you are the temple, that love is god and that the only way for humans to evolve was to shed their differences and see the universal force that they were all a part of, which they were all made of, and which the entire universe is made of. His mastery of the scriptures by the age of twelve itself, and his questioning of the religious orthodoxy of the time, are documented in the Bible. Jesus lived in a time when the Jews and the people of the Hebrew land were ruled by the Roman Empire that demanded taxes and subjugation to their laws. Even though the Jewish religious orthodoxy worked with the Romans, the Jewish people were particularly rebellious and known to be very difficult to control. They also strongly believed in their culture, their god Jehovah, and their holy scriptures that spoke of a messiah who would come one day and deliver them from oppression. This is not much different from the Israel of today, where the ruling classes and religious orthodoxy work with the 'Romans' of today - the Americans - and subjugate the people of the land - the Palestinians. The book of Acts says that at least a couple of people came before Jesus and that they and their followers were dealt with by the authorities. Jesus was a different kind of animal - more on the lines of Jehovah/Dionysus/Siva - whose popularity far exceeded that of any other leaders before him, possibly through the power of his message, his intelligence, charisma and way of living.

By putting Jesus to death, and then creating a story that he had risen from death, the people could be convinced that he was the one true messiah, thus preventing any future claimants to the title from coming forward. The defeat of death was viewed as the ultimate miracle - it probably still is. It was sure to completely dominate all the other miracles which religious leaders were performing at that time - such as healing the blind, the lame, the sick and the dead - possibly through well orchestrated trickery or clever interpretation. Coming back from the dead would be the ultimate Houdini act, reinforcing the god nature of the person. Jesus was not the first man who believed he was god that was put to death, and then came back to life. Where the lines between history and mythology blur, we see similar incidents regarding Dionysus, Osiris and Attis, to name a few.

Following this death, Jesus' disciples spread the message that he was indeed the promised messiah, and that he had performed the ultimate miracle of defeating death in his human form. They are said to have convinced many believers to sell all their possessions and hand over whatever they had to the disciples. It is said that many came forward and gave all they had in exchange for being a part of the new spiritual revolution. What is most disturbing about all this are incidents like that a man and his wife selling all their possessions but giving only a part of it to the disciples. Upon being questioned the man is said to have died on the spot indicating coercion and use of force. His wife who comes to the same house subsequently is also treated in the same manner and she also dies. Both bodies are said to have been disposed off.

It is likely that, within a short time, the number of people - who came forward willingly discarding their rebellious nature, who submitted wholeheartedly to the will of the leaders, and who gave all they had without protest - grew to significant numbers. This willing submission to authority and parting with all possessions would have been the perfect scenario for the Roman authorities who would not have to chase and force people to part with their money. It is at this point that, I believe, the Roman empire decided to adopt Christianity as a tool for subjugation. The issue of subjects refusing to pay taxes and rebelling against authority was a common problem throughout the empire, and it was the religious orthodoxy's dream to have a submissive and unquestioning flock. To take what had been started in Jerusalem to the next level an appropriate spokesman was required. Saul, who had earned distinction and fame among the authorities for his ruthless persecution and crushing of persons who rebelled against the Empire and the High Priests, was identified. He was also a man of great communication skills and charisma, an intelligent man who could adapt to any situation with cunning and shrewdness. It is possible that it was at this point that the original Christian movement went out of the hands of the followers of Jesus and into the hands of the authorities, with or without their consent. If you notice, after this point the mention of the direct disciples of Jesus and their contributions to the new religion start to taper off and it is the works of Saul, renamed as Paul, that start to subsequently take prominence and completely dominate the New Testament. Whether Peter and the other disciples were aligned with Paul or if this marks a fork on the road of Christianity is worth pondering over.

The first step in this new phase of Christianity was to announce the arrival of Paul as its new spokesperson. Paul needed to be seen to have divine approval so that people would take notice and submit to him. Paul was already quite well known among the local people as one of their oppressors, so an image makeover was necessary. A perfect story was created where he would get the approval and blessing of the man whose followers he persecuted. So one day, when Saul - the future Paul - is riding down a lonely road with just his companions, he is thrown off his horse and sees a blinding light and a voice that asks, 'Why do you persecute me?' On asking whose voice it is, the voice replies that it is Jesus. Paul is blinded in the incident. His companions claim that they only saw the light but did not hear the voice. Paul goes further on his journey where he meets a man who places his hand on Paul's head and he is able to see again. Thus, through this incident, it is shown that Paul the oppressor is now absolved of all his past crimes against the followers of Jesus, and he is now certified by Jesus himself to carry forward the message of Christianity.

Paul's primary message appears to be that Jesus is the messiah since he rose from the dead. The listeners should believe in Jesus and hence contribute wholeheartedly to the community fund so that it can be used to reach more and more people and spread the new message of deliverance. Paul also adds other do's and don't's, the rules of the religious orthodoxy that Jesus actually rebelled against, pagan practices that the high priests are not happy about - such as fornication, drinking blood and creating and bowing down before images of nature and other cultural beliefs. The number of believers swells and recruitment hits huge numbers especially with the aid of a few catalysts. These are a good dose of the usual miracles such as healing of blind, sick, lame and the occasional dead person. To show the impressive nature of Paul's teachings and their own submission to the new way of life, a number of Roman authorities too come forward and bow down in respect to him. What better way to convince the people of a conquered nation than to have its rulers themselves show submission to the teachings of one of the people. One of the surefire giveaways of Paul's affiliations is the number of prisons that he walks in and out of He gets arrested in many places - usually when he is in a tight spot with the threat of a thrashing and lynching at the hands of the local people looming large. At night, great miracles happen very conveniently, where his chains fall down, the prison guards slumber, and the gates open miraculously for him to walk out free and make his escape. Often, when he is in a tight spot in places where the authorities do not recognize him and are ready to punish him, he reveals his identity as a Roman and promptly gets the royal treatment. In other places he succeeds in playing the "I am one of the people' card by telling people that he is one of them, a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia.

Paul endears himself to the Gentiles by saying that they can be a part of the new community even if they are not circumcised, thus greatly expanding the scope of membership and fund-raising potential to a truly global scale. The success of his organization-building and fund-raising skills see him gaining audience with King Agrippa and Bernice and eventually setting sail to Italy to possibly meet the Roman Emperor. Over time the Emperor and the Roman authorities are convinced that here is a way to get people from multiple lands and cultures within the conquered empire to willingly pay taxes and also surrender their possessions. It is also a way to quell the more aggressive and rebellious among the people by saying that to be gentle and to submit to the authority of the Empire and the High Priests is the way to the kingdom of god.

This strategy was so effective that over the following centuries it was adopted by the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, English and French after the Romans. A variation of this was adopted by the Arab world who used Mohammed as their central figure, instead of Jesus. In the process, the entire world was colonized either by force or in the name of religion. Armies were defeated by might but the people were won over by conversion - where they willingly submitted their wealth and lands to the rulers and their religious institutions and the new god in every corner of the world including Africa, Asia, North and South America and Oceania. Friedrich Nietzsche says, in The Will to Power, 'The submission of the master races to Christianity is essentially due to their recognition that Christianity is a gregarious religion, that it teaches obedience: in short, that Christians are more easily ruled than non-Christians. Even in this day and age the Pope, having some inkling of this, recommends Christian propaganda to the emperor of China.' The Vatican is now the richest and most powerful religious institution in the world. It has worked with the rulers, over centuries, giving them divine sanction, and aiding in the extermination of hundreds of millions of persons from the heathen races of the world. So today besides the empires of the world we have one of the wealthiest institutions in the world, the church, built on the blood and possessions of billions of humans and through untold damage to the environment and other life forms on the planet. The story is the same everywhere except with slight variations in the plot. A charismatic genius at the center who sees reality for what it is, and a set of hangers-on who see the genius as a way to extract material wealth out of, and gain power over, others. The geniuses are few but the hangers on are many times more. The genius is almost like the queen bee around home the hive is built. Emerson says 'The man enamored of this excellency becomes its priest or poet. The office is coeval with the world. But observe the condition, the spiritual limitation of the office. The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; he only can create who is. The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every man can open his door to these angels, and they shall bring him the gift of tongues. But the man who aims to speak as the books enable, as synods use, as the fashion guides, and as interest commands, babbles. Let him hush.'

The church, and the religion of Christianity as it has been practiced for 2000 years, are far removed from what its founder intended. What exists today is the very opposite of what was sought to be destroyed. The key maxim 'Money is the root of all evil' has been completely ignored, as have concepts such as truth, love, ecstasy, simplicity and peace. Instead, what has been established is the untruth of the divinity of the middlemen - the church - and the power of the priest as god's representative to absolve anyone of the sins they perpetrate. The politician is god's chosen one on earth, approved and sanctioned by the priest and the church, to enforce god's will on earth. The church works hand in hand with the State, ensuring that the rich get richer, that people submit to both state and church alike, as if it was the will of god. The appropriation of Christ's teachings by the church enabled it to work along with the state to consolidate the position of the rich in the West. The so-called Christian nations plundered the world, and killed hundreds of millions of people in the name of Jesus. The bible-thumping belts in the US still control which politician rules the nation, ensuring that the rich white man - or his equivalent in terms of ideals - continues to hold power so as to benefit the industries that lay the earth to waste - the petrochemicals, synthetic pharmaceuticals, arms, tobacco, alcohol, chemical fertilizer and pesticides, construction, etc.

Emerson says 'In this point of view we become sensible of the first defect of historical Christianity. Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It had dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus.' Regarding the doctoring of the image of Jesus to suit the religious orthodoxy, Emerson says that the church teaches - 'Accept the injurious impositions of our catechetical instruction, and even honesty and self-denial were but splendid sins, if they did not wear the Christian name. One would rather be "A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn," than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming into nature and finding not names and places, not land and professions but even virtue and truth foreclosed and monopolized. You shall not be a man even. You shall not own the world; you shall not date and live after the infinite Law that is in you, and in company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms, but you must subordinate your nature to Christ's nature; you must accept our interpretations, and take his portrait as the vulgar draw it.'

Let us see what Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book The Will to Power, had to say about Christianity. His observations on Christianity hold good for every religion in the world that has as its founder a person who espoused the universal human values of love, peace, justice, equality, unity, truth, etc., values that were then completely disregarded by the so-called followers - the religious orthodoxy - who claimed to represent the founder and establish a new religion.  Nietzsche says:

• 'Christianity should not be confounded with that one root from which it takes its name. The other roots from which it has sprung have been far more powerful, more important in forming its nucleus, than this one. It does an unparalleled injustice to his holy name to identify it with such horrible forms of deformity and decay as the 'Christian Church', 'Christian faith', 'Christian life'. What did Christ deny? Everything that goes by the name of Christian.' 

• 'Christians have never practised what Jesus preached; the chief and only significance of the shameless cant about 'faith' and the 'justification by faith' is that it is the result of the Church having neither the courage nor the will to espouse the works that Jesus commanded - this and nothing more'  

• 'Christianity's indifference as to whether a thing is true provided it is effective betrays an utter want of intellectual integrity. Everything is acceptable, including lying, slander or the most shameless hypocrisy, provided it serves to raise the temperature - until people 'believe'. 

• 'The exemplary life is one of love and humility, a life whose large-heartedness does not exclude even the lowliest; a life which formally renounces entitlement, self-defence and victory (in the sense of personal triumph); a life which has faith in a beatitude here on earth, in spite of hardship, opposition and a life which seeks no reward and is bound to no one; a life of the most spiritual and intellectual emancipation; a life in which pride is subordinated to voluntary poverty and service. Once the state had taken away the whole of Christian practice, and had expressly sanctioned life in the state, the kind of life which Jesus had opposed and condemned, it had to find the meaning of Christianity elsewhere: in the faith in incredible things, in ceremonial prayer, worship, feasts, etc. The notions 'sin', 'forgiveness', 'punishment', 'reward', which are all quite insignificant for, and almost precluded by, early Christianity, now comes to the fore. A dreadful mishmash of Greek philosophy and Judaism; asceticism; perpetual judgements and condemnations; hierarchy...' 

• 'Thanks to Paul, the attempt to do away with priests and theologians led to a new priesthood and theology - a ruling class and a church. The attempt to do away with self-importance, the importance attached to the 'person', led to belief in an eternally existing 'personal identity', to concern about 'eternal salvation'...and to the most paradoxical exaggeration of personal egoism.' 

• 'The humour of the thing, the tragic humour, is that Paul re-established on a grand scale precisely what Jesus had nullified by the example of his life. And when at last the Church was completed, even the existence of the state received its sanction...NB. Paul took the rudiments of a new peace movement not unlike Buddhism, a possible cure for 'ressentiment' which had arisen in the very focus of the epidemic...and transformed it into its opposite, a pagan mystery religion, which eventually learns how to get along with the entire organization of the state...which eventually wages war, condemns, tortures, swears and hates.' 

• 'You shall not resist him that does you evil, either in thought or deed. You shall recognize to cause for divorcing your wife, perhaps you should even 'prune' yourself. You shall make no distinction [between] strangers and neighbours, foreigners and fellow countrymen. You shall be angry with no one, you shall despise no one...Give alms in secret - you shall not want to get rich - you shall not swear - you shall not judge - you shall be reconciled, you shall forgive - do not pray in public - let your good works be seen, let your light shine! Who shall enter into heaven? He that does the will of my Father which is in heaven. 'Salvation' is not something promised: it is present, if you live and act in such and such a manner'

Herman Hesse writes in the book, If the War Goes On, 'Has anyone stopped to consider, and to wonder at the fact, that in those four years of war our theologians buried their own religion, their own Christianity? Committed to the service of mankind, they mistook for mankind the authorities who paid them. They prayed (not all of course, but the spokesmen) with guile and many words that war and Christianity were perfectly compatible, that a man could be the best of Christians and yet shoot and stab to perfection. But that is not true, and if our national Churches had not been national Churches in the service of Throne and Army, but Churches of God, they would have given us during the war what we so bitterly lacked: a haven of humanity, a sanctuary for the orphaned soul, a perpetual admonition to moderation, wisdom, and brotherly love; in short, they would have offered divine services.' Now Jesus was most likely crucified by his own people for the blasphemy of saying that he is Jehovah but he was only reiterating the universal truth - Shivoham, Shivoham. The name Jesus itself means 'I Am'. To soften the blasphemy effect that Jesus's words would have on those who refused to accept this ultimate truth, his words were tempered in the gospels to give the god of the earlier religion, Jehovah, the status of Father, and Jesus the status of Son. When the new religion, Christianity collided with the religion of the Romans, it presented a new conundrum for the Roman Empire. Significant numbers of its own people were converting to the new religion, with its gospel of living the ascetic life, love for all beings, peace, and spurning all desire for material wealth and power - the same desire for material wealth and power that fueled the existence of the Roman Empire. The strategy to diffuse this disruptive new religion was to elevate the mother of Jesus, as well as his disciples, to the status of gods, thus creating an array of gods in the form of Mother Mary and the Saints, who were all easy to digest for the Roman orthodoxy into their pantheon of gods, dilute and nullify the teachings of Jesus, and to still pursue their ambitions of vast wealth and material power at the cost of the poor pagans.

Shaivism

India witnessed a similar consolidation of the power of the state, working in tandem with the religious orthodoxy about 5000 years ago. The casteless, classless, egalitarian, ecstatic, natural, minimalist society espoused by the followers of Siva - the early inhabitants of India - was gradually converted into a society based on class and caste, where the triad of king-businessman-priest is supreme, and the acquiring of wealth is the supreme ideal as espoused by Vaishnavism and the Vedic religions that the new migrants brought.

In India, we see a similar clash, and subsequent rearrangement of gods in the human psyche as witnessed in the Greeks of antiquity, as the waves of migrants moved into India. Starting with the arrival of the first modern humans from Africa 120,000 years ago, the earliest Indian inhabitants from the paleolithic age may have evolved into the Indus Valley and Harappan civilization, or may have been replaced by the culture of Indus Valley and Harappa. Either way, the earliest gods and goddesses were animistic and gods of nature. The earliest indication of a humanoid god, I think, is the proto-Siva found in the Indus Valley civilization. With the subsequent arrival of the Vedic culture from central Asia, and the Aryan migration, India's existing gods and goddesses met new gods and goddesses. The god Vishnu and the other gods and goddesses came into contact with the god Siva, and his numerous forms - Pashupati, Rudra, Bhairava, Madeshwara, Nataraja, etc. What emerged over the next few thousand years was an attempt by the followers of Vishnu and the Vedas and the followers of Siva to come to terms with each other. The followers of Vishnu and the Vedas were, and I believe still are, lovers of material wealth and power. They are essentially the kings, businessmen, priests who brought in a class differentiated society, where earlier society had largely been egalitarian. Where Siva and the animistic deities were worshiped, there appears to have been a more classless and free society with direct communion between man and god. The thousands of Indian indigenous communities existed in villages where hierarchy was cooperative. The god Siva exemplified intoxication, sexuality, love of nature, asceticism, and the shunning of material wealth and power in the pursuit of spiritual perfection.

The Chinese discarded Buddhism for a more appealing Communism, that talks about equality while shoring up the wealth of the ruling classes. The Communist Party in China is king, priest and businessman all rolled into one. Islam became just an excuse to loot and plunder nations and to establish the control of the wealthy over the people, with ruler and priest working in tandem. Iran is ruled by the religious orthodoxy who does not even make the effort to separate religion from politics. Today, all gods are almost entirely dead, unless serving as props to channelize the money of the people to the middlemen and the rich. With the establishment of control over the people using religion as a tool, we decided that either god did not even exist or that if he did, he stood for classes, castes, the state and the accumulation of material wealth and power.

The religious orthodoxy as a key player in ganja prohibition.

Even though nearly all religions used ganja, it was essentially the ordinary working classes, lower classes, lower castes, and the poor among these religions - besides the ascetics, fakirs and sadhus who shunned material wealth and power - who were the most ardent users of the herb. The Report of Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-95 states that "It is chiefly in connection with the worship of Siva, the Mahadeo or great god of the Hindu trinity, that the hemp plant, and more especially perhaps ganja, is associated. The hemp plant is popularly believed to have been a great favourite of Siva, and there is a great deal of evidence before the Commission to show that the drug in some form or other is now extensively used in the exercise of the religious practices connected with this form of worship. Reference to the almost universal use of hemp drugs by fakirs, jogis, sanyasis, and ascetics of all classes, and more particularly of those devoted to the worship of Siva, will be found in the paragraphs of this report dealing with the classes of the people who consume the drugs. These religious ascetics, who are regarded with great veneration by the people at large, believe that the hemp plant is a special attribute of the god Siva, and this belief is largely shared by the people. Hence the origin of many fond epithets ascribing to ganja the significance of a divine property, and the common practice of invoking the deity in terms of adoration before placing the chillum or pipe of ganja to the lips." For the religious orthodoxy, rulers and businessmen of all these religions - the people who were the most ardent devotees of material wealth and power, the people who benefited most from the rigid caste and class systems, the people who wished to keep the knowledge of one's divinity away from the lower classes and castes so that the upper classes could continue to play out the charade of brokers between god and man - the use of ganja was a direct threat to all that they wished to establish and strengthen. Thus, the religious orthodoxy of all religions, along with the rulers and businessmen of these religions, got together to try and remove ganja from the equation. What started as subtle propaganda that the users of ganja were reviled persons, were criminals, or were members of the lowest classes and castes, slowly gained momentum in India, especially with the arrival of the British who shared the same views as these Indian upper class and caste orthodoxy. The British had the same goals as India's upper classes and religious orthodoxy, which was to establish their own religion and culture, while at the same time establishing themselves as the ruling and upper classes, with the vast majority of India's people working to further British material wealth and power. While the religion that the British professed to practice was Christianity, it was in truth the religion of material wealth and power, the division of society into ruling and upper classes lording over the working and lower classes, the religion where the priests played broker between god and man and accumulated wealth for the ruler and the church. True Christianity, the teachings of Jesus Christ, are identical to the teachings of Siva. It speaks of shunning the pursuit of material wealth and power, of love for all beings and nature, of peace and non-violence, and of the recognition of divinity in all beings.

This tailored version of religion, brought into India starting with the early migrants from Central Asia - who pushed the original inhabitants of India towards the south, north, east and the north east - speaks of abstinence from ganja, toddy and meat. The Vedas, the epics Ramayana and Mahabharatha, the Buddhist, Christian and Islamic teachings, are conveniently twisted to propagate this doctored version of religion. The proponents of the tailored version sought - and still seek, implicitly and explicitly - to convert the diverse Indian religions that exist - Buddhism, Jainism, atheism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, and the numerous animistic religions of the indigenous tribes - to this favored form of religion based on class systems and the glorification of material wealth and power, and to strengthen and retain the class and caste hierarchies that the perpetrators practiced within their own societies, ideal since it subjugated all the original inhabitants of India to lower castes and classes meant to serve the new arrivals, who assumed the roles of the upper classes and upper castes. When we consider: that even Rama and Krishna prayed to Siva before embarking on their journeys and battles; that ganja was loved by Rama as Ramarasa, and by the followers of Krishna and Vishnu, especially the Chaubes of Mathura and the priests of Jaganath; that hemp flour was a stable of Buddhist monks; that Sufi fakirs were ardent users of ganja or charas; that ganja was an inherent part of Muharram in many places; then the narrow definition that the upper classes and upper castes wish to enforce, cutting off ganja from the ascetics, lower classes and castes, reveals the tyranny of forced religious conversion being subtly practiced all the time.  For the British, it was ideal to side with these groups, since it meant that it slotted them directly into the ruling and upper classes, and strengthened the domination over the vast majority of India's diverse population. The British religious orthodoxy, just like Islamic and Hindu orthodoxy before them, may have even nurtured the hope that eventually they could convert all these groups into their own religion. Even though religion went by various names, for all the ones who assumed the roles of the ruling classes and upper castes in the last 3000 years or so, it was essentially the exploitation of all for money and power while establishing their own superiority.

The propaganda of this preferred form of religion of the ruling and upper class orthodoxy of all religions, and their targeting of the ganja communities is evident in the following witness statements given to the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1894. The Rev. Prem Chand, Missionary, B. M. S., Gaya, says in his evidence that - "A certain class are in favor of ganja, the Shaivs, not the Vaishnavs, who are against the drugs." Another witness, Radhanath Changkakoti, Brahmin, Proprietor, "Radha Nath" Printing Press; Municipal Commissioner; Member of Local Board; Secretary to the Upper Assam Association; and Secretary to the Government Girls' School, Dibrugarh, states that - "Spiritual guides, called Gosains in Assam — four of them are the principal guides or Popes of Assam — all forbid the use of intoxicating things. This prohibition is strictly enforced among their disciples; not among the people generally. I know the Gosain at Kamaikia takes bhang; but he is a follower of Durga. We in Upper Assam are followers of Vishnu; not all, but the most." A third witness, Mr. W. H. Grimley, Commissioner of Chota Nagpur says - "People who worship Siva and Rama are addicted to the use of ganja and bhang, asserting that they are enabled thereby to divert their mind from worldly affairs to the meditation on the gods whom they worship. The religious mendicants who use it do so not only as a devotional exercise, but also to render themselves fit to undergo the hardships of their ascetic life, and the inclemency of climate incidental to their prolonged pilgrimages to distant places. It may be here remarked that while the classes above noted are allowed by the Hindu religion to use ganja, the "Shaktahs," or followers of the goddess "Shakti," are only permitted to use liquor for devotional purposes, while the Voistabs, or worshippers of Vishnu, are not allowed liquor or ganja."  Mr. H. G. Batten, Deputy Commissioner, Mergui, states that - "All use of narcotics is forbidden by the Buddhist law, and persons addicted to use of same are held in disrepute. I believe the same holds good amongst the Siamese, who are bound by the same laws." Major G. S. Eyre, Deputy Commissioner, Sagaing, says - "Any Burman Buddhist consuming these drugs would be regarded as utterly abandoned. The Buddhist scriptures entirely forbid the use of these drugs."  

The preference was for opium, the drug more favourable to the Indo-Aryan religions, as well as to the Islamic invaders, and even to the subsequent British invaders. Mr. T. G. Foard, Superintendent of Police, Cambay, states before the Commission that - "It is a social custom in Guzerat to use bhang on festive occasions, such as caste dinners, weddings and certain religious festivals. It is not incumbent on the host to supply his guests with bhang, and in some communities the habit of drinking bhang publicly is in disrepute, although all classes use it in their houses. Kusumba, a decoction of opium, is substituted for bhang by well-to-do classes ; and the more lavishly this is supplied by the host, the better he is thought of by his caste-fellows and friends. Kusumba is much dearer than bhang, and there are many who do not care to use it, but will drink bhang with out hesitation." The fact that today, world wide, ganja is prohibited while opium has widespread sanction from the ruling classes shows the extent to which this thinking was successful and is prevalent in the world. In India, Gujarat and Mumbai are the hubs through which opium in all its forms flows into the country, as well as serving as transit points for the movement of opium across the world.

Even though the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission stated that - "The Commission have little doubt that interference with the use of hemp in connection with the customs and observances above referred to would be regarded by the consumers as an interference with long established usage and as an encroachment upon their religious liberty", the then British government went ahead with gradually bringing about near total prohibition of ganja across India. For this to happen, without the majority of the people rising up in revolt, the government had the full support of India's ruling and upper classes - its kings, priests, businessmen, zamindars, magistrates, government officials, police, etc - besides the religious orthodoxy of nearly every religion who viewed ganja as a threat to their position as mediators between god and man.  When we consider that India's freedom movement, which sought to remove government hold over such diverse things as salt and indigo, did not even mention in passing the removal of prohibition and regulation of ganja, the divine herb of the great god, Mahadeva, and the millions of his followers who worshiped him in his diverse indigenous forms, besides the followers of Hanuman, Durga, Kali, and the Muslim fakirs and the followers of the Sikh religion, it makes one wonder if there was more to the picture than meets the eye. Ultimately, it was the members of India's ruling and upper classes who confronted the British for the freedom of the nation. But the freedom that they sought appears to have been only their own freedom, the freedom to continue the oppression of the lower castes and classes through the prohibition of ganja that they had tried to establish but failed, the oppression that the British were successful in establishing before handing over the reins to India's ruling and upper classes. Ganja prohibition is more than anything else, the discrimination against a significant number of the Indian population and the deprivation of their fundamental Right to Freedom of Religion. According to the Right to Freedom of Religion as put down in the Constitution of India -"25. (1) Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion." When we consider how the numerous ganja using religious sects of India have been forced to give up the herb that they used to commune with, and meditate on, their gods and goddesses, the prohibition of ganja appears for what it really is - a blatant repression of one of the most fundamental rights of an Indian citizen to practice his or her religion. The arguments that are cited in favor of ganja prohibition are that ganja is used by criminals and anti-socials, ganja is addictive, ganja causes insanity, ganja is harmful to health. All these arguments were proven entirely wrong by the findings of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 150 years ago itself. Despite this, these very same arguments continue to be used by the ruling and upper classes to discriminate against the ganja users, a significant number of whom use it for spiritual purposes. When alcohol, tobacco, opioids and other dangerous drugs are freely available causing great damage to public health, when criminals thrive through the black market because of ganja prohibition, when significant numbers of people are highly addicted to alcohol, and synthetic legal and illegal pharmaceutical drugs, all the arguments against ganja legalization fall flat.  One of the real unstated intentions of the ruling classes in keeping ganja prohibited is to repress the religious practices of, and to convert, the other sections of society  - the indigenous tribes and communities, the fakirs, the sadhus, the free-minded people, the intellectuals, the artists, poets, writers, philosophers, etc.,  - to the rigid upper class orthodoxy of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism  and Jainism which works to further the material wealth and power of the upper classes of society, and tighten their hold over the people. Today, the NDPS Act, with regard to ganja and charas, is a direct attack on the religious liberty of the people.

The religious orthodoxy world wide does all it can to ensure that cannabis remains prohibited, thus protecting the interests of the political leaders and businessmen who benefit from cannabis prohibition. This is most evident in the countries that are the biggest opponents of cannabis legalization - especially the US and Russia. In the US, in Arizona, Fox 10 News reports regarding cannabis adult recreational use legalization that 'In a statement obtained by FOX 10, C. Dale Willis Jr. with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Mesa write that the religious organizations "strongly opposes" the proposition, saying that drug abuse in the U.S. is at epidemic levels, and that the use of recreational marijuana has been proven to negatively affect education and job stability, and health. "Money that is better spent on bills, groceries and household expenses might now be wasted on drugs," a portion of the statement read. "Rather than more legalized drugs we should find ways to increase our capacity to connect with our families and neighbors."' This is despite 24 US states having legalized cannabis for adult recreational purposes, 38 US states having legalized cannabis for medical purposes, the cannabis industry emerging as one of the biggest job creators in recent times, and hemp becoming the sixth most valuable crop in the recent past. Again, in Arizona, AZ Central reports that 'The church firmly believes that strong families build strong communities. Unfortunately, drug abuse in the United States is at epidemic proportions, and the dangers of recreational marijuana to public health and safety are well documented. The use of recreational marijuana has proven to negatively affect everything from education to job stability and is especially harmful to our most vulnerable populations. For the good of the community and the family, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints strongly opposes this dangerous proposal.' Crux Now reports the opposition of Catholic bishops in Montana to cannabis legalization, stating that '“While proponents of legalization see enhanced revenues for the state through a new taxable marijuana industry,” Vetter and Warfel said, “we are more concerned with consequences ranging from increased teenage use, harmful effects on developing brains, addiction, increased impairment-related transportation accidents and deaths, and other potential public health and safety issues.” One need only look two states away, to Colorado, the bishops said, “to see the devastating impact legalization will have on our state, particularly our youth.”' This is despite youth consumption rates falling since cannabis legalization in Washington and Colorado - the oldest legalized US markets. This is despite cannabis being used as treatment for autism, epilepsy, brain cancer, opioid addiction, PTSD and depression. Lifeway Research reports that 'Cultural stigmas around smoking a joint have diminished, but most pastors still say it crosses a moral line,” said McConnell. “While some may connect this prohibition to state laws that still forbid this use, it is clear from their views on legalization that pastors see moral problems with getting high beyond simply disobeying government authorities.” Evangelical pastors are almost twice as likely as mainline pastors to see smoking marijuana to get high as morally wrong (89% to 47%). Denominationally, Pentecostals (97%) and Baptists (92%) are more likely to see it as immoral than Restorationist movement (74%), Methodist (66%), Lutheran (63%) and Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (57%).' Getting high is a sin according to the religious orthodoxy, maybe because the higher you get, the better picture of reality you get.

In Russia, the religious orthodoxy gives divine sanction to the authority of Vladmir Putin and his misdeeds. Together, they ensure that cannabis legalization does not raise its head and rock the boat of petrochemicals, alcohol, tobacco and synthetic legal and illegal drugs that have been used to put the people in a stupor of unquestioning subjugation.

It is common for the authoritarian rulers of the world - the kings of today - to employ the religious orthodoxy to give further weight to the right of the authoritarian leader to rule over the imbecile and docile masses, especially when the position of the authoritarian leader appears to be threatened by the spotlight on his crimes and misdeeds. Hunter S Thompson writes in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail about how Nixon tried to use the religious orthodoxy to cement his weakening political position. He says ''Those were the salad days of early summer, before the fateful Supreme Court decision, when Nixon's Goebbels - ex-White House "communications director" Ken Clawson - was creating a false dawn over the White House by momentarily halting Nixon's yearlong slide in the public opinion polls with a daily drumbeat of heavy, headline-grabbing attacks on "professional Nixon haters" in the press, and "unprincipled, knee-jerk liberals in Congress." At that point in time, most of Nixon's traditional allies were beginning to hear the death shrieks of the banshee floating over the White House lawns at night, and even Billy Graham had deserted him. So Clawson, in a stroke of cheap genius, put a sybaritic Jesuit priest and a mentally retarded rabbi on the payroll and sent them forth to do battle with the forces of Evil. Father John McLaughlin, the Jesuit, reveled joyfully in his role as "Nixon's priest" for a month or so, but his star faded fast when it was learned he was pulling down more than $25,000 a year for his efforts and living in a luxury apartment at the Watergate. His superiors in the church were horrified, but Father John McLaughlin gave them the back of his hand and, instead, merely cranked up his speechmaking act. In the end, however, not even Clawson could live with the insistent rumor that the Good Jesuit Father was planning to marry his girlfriend. This was too much, they say, for the rigid sensibilities of General Haig, the White House Chief of Staff, whose brother was a legitimate priest in Baltimore. McLaughlin disappeared very suddenly, after six giddy weeks on the national stage, and nothing has been heard of him since. But Clawson was ready for that. No sooner had the priest been deep-sixed than he unveiled another holy man - the Rabbi Baruch Korff, a genuine dingbat with barely enough sense to tie his own shoes, but who eagerly lent his name and his flakey presence to anything Clawson aimes him at. Under the banner of something called the "National Citizens Committee for Fairness to the Presidency," he organized "rallies, dinner parties, and press conferences all over the country. One of his main backers was Hamilton Fish Sr., a notorious fascist and the father of New York Congressman Hamilton Fish Jr., one of the Republican swing votes on the House Judiciary Committee who quietly voted for impeachment.' As I write this, Donald Trump tries to use the Christian religious orthodoxy to garner the votes of the Bible-thumping white population of the US and make another comeback as president, even as he faces charges of sexual demeanour, corruption and attempts at overturning the results of the previous presidential election.

In India, the religious orthodoxy teamed up with the British colonists to ensure that cannabis was prohibited. Today, the religious orthodoxy backs the current prime minister Narendra Modi as the protector of the Hindu religion, even as Modi ensures that the petrochemical and synthetic pharmaceutical industry becomes richer than it has ever been before by granting them unprecedented favours in exchange for donations to the ruling party. The wealth gap between the rich and the poor is now greater than it was even during the time of widespread looting by the British colonists in their 400 years of rule, according to the recent working paper by the World Inequality Lab.

The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1894-95 summarized the findings regarding the alleged physical and moral harms of cannabis use, saying - 'Viewing the subject generally, it may be added that the moderate use of these drugs is the rule, and that the excessive use is comparatively exceptional. The moderate use practically produces no ill effects. In all but the most exceptional cases, the injury from habitual moderate use is not appreciable. The excessive use may certainly be accepted as very injurious, though it must be admitted that in many excessive consumers the injury is not clearly marked. The injury done by the excessive use is, however, confined almost exclusively to the consumer himself; the effect on society is rarely appreciable. It has been the most striking feature in this inquiry to find how little the effects of hemp drugs have obtruded themselves on observation. The large number of witnesses of all classes who professed never to have seen these effects, the vague statements made by many who professed to have observed them, the very few witnesses who could so recall a case as to give any definite account of it, and the manner in which a large proportion of these cases broke down on the first attempt to examine them, are facts which combine to show most clearly how little injury society has hitherto sustained from hemp drugs.' The Commission says 'The medical evidence which has thus been analysed very clearly indicates in the opinion of the Commission that when the basis of the opinions as to the alleged evil effects of the moderate use of the drugs is subjected to careful examination, the grounds on which the allegations are founded prove to be in the highest degree defective.'

Contrast the Commission's findings with the evidence given by members of the upper castes and religious orthodoxy of various religions to the question regarding harmful physical and moral effects of ganja use. Babu Navakumar Chakravarti, Brahmin, Deputy Magistrate and Deputy Collector, Jangipur, Murshidabad, says in his evidence - 'I believe that even the habitual moderate use of ganja produces noxious effects, physical, mental, and moral. It makes a man look emaciated, causes periodical purging of blood, which may or may not be dysentery, and produces symptoms of chronic bronchitis. It produces indifference. Habits of immorality and debauchery are often seen associated with ganja-smoking; but I am not sure whether such habits are the cause or effect of ganja-smoking'. Rev. D. Morison, M.B., C.M., M.D., Medical Missionary, Rampur Boalia, says in his evidence that 'It impairs the physical organism, saps the muscular energy by over-stimulation, and leads to loss of muscular vigour, producing emaciation. It produces severe constipation, which causes indigestion and impairment of the alimentary functions. The constipation leads to dysentery by retention of fæces in the bowel. In old smokers asthma and bronchitis are common, especially asthma. It utterly demoralises a young lad. The sexual desires are so stimulated that, if he can afford it, he will spend his days and nights with prostitutes. Laziness follows the over-stimulation of muscular and sexual functions.' Mohim Chunder Roy, Brahmin, Medical Practitioner, Nator, Rajshahi, says 'Bhang, as previously stated, is used for eating or drinking alone. But ganja and charas are never so used. Should any of these two be used for eating or drinking, the effect would be more lasting and therefore more injurious. Ganja and charas are both strong excitants of the brain; and their habitual use, keeping, as it would, that organ in a permanent state of irritation, not unfrequently leads to insanity. I have not seen any case of insanity resulting from the use of bhang.' Nocoor Chander Banerji, Brahmin, Medical Practitioner, Bhagalpur, says 'The excessive drinking of bhang or smoking of ganja produces insanity. Yes, the habitual moderate use of any of these drugs produces noxious effects. It impairs constitution, injures digestion, or causes loss of appetite. It causes bronchitis, dysentery and asthma. It impairs moral sense, induces laziness; and habits of debauchery are formed.' Rev. Prem Chand, Missionary, B. M. S., Gaya, says 'They are all most pernicious in their effect on the consumers...They make one lose flesh and look dull...Yes; they cause indigestion and create a false or short-lived appetite and general debility..They cause bronchitis and asthma. In regard to it there is a well-known saying which has been thus translated into English by Dr. Fallon"Who ganja smoke do knowledge lack; the heart burns constantly. The breath with coughing goes, the face as monkey's pale you see." Many ganja smokers die of dysentery...All habitual consumers, as a rule, take to the excessive use of these drugs, and are reduced to mere skeletons, and show a most pitiful figure of physical decay and moral degradation. They are helpless to support themselves, and with their intellect deadened, bordering on insanity, lungs contracted, bowels diseased, life is a burden to them, and death a release. Many excessive ganja smokers meet with instantaneous death at the time of smoking it.' Umagati Rat, Brahmin, Pleader, and Secretary to the Jalpaiguri Branch, Indian Association, says 'The moderate use of ganja produces mental and moral depravity...It impairs the moral sense in some. I have seen many persons who are deficient in self-control, through weakened intellects, fall victims to excessive use of ganja from moderate use and at last die of consumption and dysentery. It may be noted here that I know four or five persons of the middle rank who used to smoke ganja moderately, say once in the evening and once at bed time, died at last of consumption and dysentery...Excessive use of ganja produces physical infirmity, mental and moral depravity. It impairs the digestive functions, and often produces dysentery and consumption or asthma. It also impairs the moral sense and induces laziness, and sometimes habits of immorality. Bhang also affects the brain if taken excessively.' Chaganti Somayajulu, Brahmin, Acting Tahsildar, Palakonda, says 'Smoking gradually weakens the chest, stoops down the consumer, renders the countenance ghastly, and makes one timid and impotent...There used to be two peons in my father's service for about 12 years. They were both addicted to smoking ganja. They were at first smart and good looking, and by smoking ganja gradually acquired an emaciated countenance, timidity, and were gradually bent down, and became very weak and unfit for active work, and were ultimately discharged. When in school, two boys of my class who belonged to the native regiment stationed at Vizianagram, acquired the habit of smoking ganja and maddak from a bairagi, who used to frequent their house. These two boys were at first very smart and intelligent, and used to get up their lessons very well ; but within a year and-a-half after they learnt smoking ganja they became languid and drowsy, and gradually gave up their studies and left the school.'  E. Subramana Iyer, Brahmin, Chairman, Municipal Council, Conjevaram, Chingleput District, says 'Physically the man gets weaker when not properly nourished. Mentally he gets absent minded; morally he becomes useless.' Rev. H. J. Goffin, Missionary, Kadiri, Cuddapah District, says 'Most certainly the effects are injurious in every way, more especially, I think, mentally. The digestion becomes impaired and the body more or less emaciated, but its ill effects are chiefly seen in the peculiar imbecility which it produces—an unsteadiness of mind which is its chief characteristic.' The fact that many of these persons of the religious orthodoxy are also members of the judiciary, medical practitioners, and hold other significant positions in society further amplifies the effect of their words. The fact that the religious orthodoxy across religions speaks the same anti-ganja rhetoric shows the widespread fear that the orthodoxy has for ganja and its potential to render this class toothless.

In the past, when a youth completed his education under a guru in the traditional Indian educational system, the education was marked complete when the student uttered "Aham Brahmasmi" (I am the Brahman) with complete conviction. Today, the utterance of this will be termed as blasphemy by the religious orthodoxy across religions, because it is the biggest threat to their own existence. Jesus was crucified, and god on the cross became a warning to anyone who claims that he is god or the son of god. Dionysus (also known as Osiris or Yahweh or Siva depending on where you come from) was dismembered by the Titans, according to Greek mythology. One of the most brilliant thinkers of all time, Nietzsche, was labeled insane for his blistering attack on Christian religious orthodoxy. Wikipedia says 'Towards the end of his life, Nietzsche famously went mad. He was known to sign letters as both Dionysus and "The Crucified" in this period of his life.' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus. This is the price one pays for speaking about the ultimate reality and truth that god and human are one and the same - death or the label of insanity. This labeling of Nietzsche as insane may have something to do with the Freudian way of thought. In Carl Jung's psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, he says 'The religious phenomenon will elude him entirely, and his idea of religion will be distorted by personalism and subjectivism. His book, The Future of an Illusion (1927), illustrates how little Freud, despite his genius, understood the phenomenon of religion. So when someone tells him that a dream has conveyed a message to him, or brings him a vision, or when he reads of experiences of mystics and artists, he will inevitably say: "Well, that's nothing other than a complex!" He will accord it no reality...God is only a complex.' The labeling of a person as insane if he said that he was god was quite prevalent in British-ruled 19th century India. It helped create the myth that ganja caused insanity, thus attributing insanity to all the ganja-smoking religious mendicants who followed Siva. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission states that "Over and over again the statistics of Indian asylums have been referred to in official documents or scientific treatises not only in this country, but also in other countries where the use of these drugs has demanded attention. Other alleged effects of the drugs have attracted but little attention compared with their alleged connection with insanity." With this, both those who believed in god, and those who did not, were absolved of all accountability when it came to getting rich. Emerson says 'It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake. The true Christianity - a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man - is lost. None believeth in the soul of man, but only in the same man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. They think wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world. See how nations and races flit by on the sea of time and leave no ripple to tell where they floated or sunk, and one good soul shall make the name of Moses, or of Zeno, or of Zoroaster, revered forever. None assayeth the stern ambition to be the Self of the nation and of nature, but each would be an easy secondary to some Christian scheme, or sectarian connection, or some eminent man. Once leave your own knowledge of God, your own sentiment, and take secondary knowledge, as St. Paul's or George Fox's, or Swedenborg's, and you get wide from God each year this secondary form lasts, and if, as now, for centuries - the chasm yawns to that breadth, that man can scarcely be convinced that there is in them anything divine.' Herman Hesse says 'It makes no difference whether we go back to the teachings of Jesus and make them our own again, or whether we seek new forms. Where they will strike th eternal core of humanity, the teachings of Jesus and of Lao-tsu, or the Vedas and of Goethe are the same. There is only one doctrine. There is only one religion. There are a thousand forms, a thousand heralds, but only one voice, our voice. The voice of God does not come from Mount Sinai, it does not come from the Bible. The essence of love, beauty, and holiness does not reside in Christianity or in antiquity or in Goethe or Tolstoy - it resides in you, in you and me, in each one of us. This is the one eternal and forever identical doctrine, our one eternal truth. It is the doctrine of the 'Kingdom of Heaven' that we bear within ourselves.' Hesse further says 'All living knowledge as opposed to academic knowledge can have but one object. This knowledge may be seen and formulated in a thousand different ways, but it must always embody one truth. It is the knowledge of the living substance in us, in each of us, in you and me, of the secret magic, the secret godliness that each of us bears within him. It is the knowledge that, starting from this innermost point, we can at all times transcend all pairs of opposites, transforming white into black, evil into good, night into day. The Indians call it 'Atman', the Chinese 'Tao'; Christians call it 'grace'. Where that supreme knowledge is present (as in Jesus, Buddha, Plato, or Lao-tzu), a threshold is crossed beyond which miracles begin. There war and enimity cease. We can read of it in the New Testament and in the discourse of Gautama. Anyone who is so inclined can laugh at it and call it 'introverted rubbish', but in one who has experienced it his enemy becomes a brother, death becomes birth, disgrace honour, calamity good fortune. Each thing on earth discloses itself twofold, as 'of this world' and 'not of this world'. But 'this world' means what is 'outside us'. Everything that is outside us can become enemy, danger, fear and death. The light dawns with the experience that this entire 'outward' world is not only an object of our perception, but at the same time the creation of our soul, with the transformation of all outward into inward things, of the world into the self.'

What we see over many thousands of years is the rise and domination of the ruler-priest-businessman triad over the people of the world. In terms of Nietzsche, it is the rise and domination of the Apollonian over the Dionysian. The triad has completely subjugated and chained down all that is outside their power structure - the pagan communities of the world - enslaving them to work for the consolidation of power by the triad. To restore the balance, and end the destruction of the world, Dionysus must once again be brought to the level of the Apollo, which therefore means that Siva must be brought back to the level of Vishnu, and Yahweh/Christ must be brought back to the level of the church and the saints. Neitzsche says, in the Will to Power, 'It is only fair that the highest and most illustrious human joys, those in which existence celebrates its own transfiguration, should come only to the incomparable and the best constituted, although only after they and their ancestors have, unbeknownst to themselves, spent their lives in preparation for them. It is then that a superabundance of the most diverse forces and at the same time a swift power of 'free' decision and magisterial decree can amicably coexist in the same man, for then the intellect is just as much at home in the senses as the senses are at home in the intellect; and all that takes place in the one also awakens a refined and exceptionally felicitous play in the other. And conversely! Take a moment to consider this converse process in Hafez; even Goethe gives us an inkling of this process, albeit in an attenuated form. It is probable that in such perfectly well-constituted men, enjoyments of a wholly sensual nature are ultimately transformed into allegorical reveries of the highest intellectuality; they experience in themselves a kind of deification of the body and are at the greatest remove from that ascetic philosophy which is expressed in the proposition 'God is a spirit': which only goes to show that the ascetic is the 'ill-constituted man', the man who merely takes something intrinsic to him and especially that in him which judges and condemns and calls it good - calls it 'God'. By contrast, the Greeks knew of a whole vast spectrum of happiness, from that height of joy where man thoroughly feels himself to be a deified form and self-justification of nature, all the way down to the joy of robust peasants and robust half-human animals. In the face of this, they quivered with the gratitude of the initiate and gave it, with much circumspection and pious reticence, the divine name of Dionysus.' 

In order to get one human being to murder another whom he has no reason to, you must leverage his servility, greed, passion or fear, or any combination of these. For the king-priest-businessman triad to conquer new lands and subjugate and enslave new peoples, they need an army to achieve this. Some people can be recruited because of their admiration and awe for the king as the most powerful authority on earth. Others can be recruited because of their greed for the money that the businessman promises. A third set of persons - who are not moved enough by the authority of the king or the temptation of money - need to be convinced that they are under threat or that the persons they must murder are evil. It is to recruit this third set of people that the religious orthodoxy created the concept of the Devil, a concept that did not exist in more ancient times. God in the past was a single entity who possessed all the attributes of nature, and hence all the attributes of humans, irrespective of the culture one belonged to, with to concept of good and evil. God had no enemy. There was no antagonist to god with nearly the same powers who constantly worked against the wishes of god and threatened to usurp his position. To create a separation and plant discord among the people of the world so that one could be used against another, it was necessary to project some of god's aspects as evil, and to pin these aspects on the gods of the lands that the king-priest-businessman triad wished to conquer. The religious orthodoxy selected certain attributes and associated them with an evil personality that they created whom they called the Devil. All who worshiped this personality was pagan and the enemy. Thus, the god of the pagan lands - Siva/Dionysus/Yahweh - became the Devil of the Christian and the Muhammedan. The symbols of the Devil were the phallus and the snake, and the intoxicant of the Devil was ganja - the devil's weed - and wine. He was a horned creature and carried a trident. This imagery, with sufficient modifications, more or less covered all the pagan lands of Asia, Africa and the Americas that the king-priest-businessman triad wished to conquer. Stories created by the religious orthodoxy instilled terror and hatred in the people for all who worshiped the Devil. They were the pagans that must be ruthlessly eliminated as a part of one's holy duty to God. War was not murder and looting, it was a duty one had to one's king and god. War was holy. With this, huge numbers of persons came forward to fight for their god and king, to kill the enemy without remorse and guilt. In India, the Vaishnavite and Vedic cultures did not go so far as to call Siva the Devil outright as the other races did. This is because these cultures had entered into India well before the Christian and Muhammedan created the Devil. The Vaishnavite and Vedic cultures did not invade India, but gradually trickled into India over time. Siva was too well entrenched in Indian culture to be projected as the Devil, so the conquest happened through subtle conversion. Powerful epics were created that subtly supplanted Siva with the gods of the Vedas and Vaishnavism, and even as they called Siva 'Mahadeva' - greatest of gods - whom the gods of the epics worshiped, they took away the ganja that the people used to worship Siva and become one with him, labeling intoxication, meat and sex as the attributes of the despicable lower classes, and those outside the Vedic and Varna culture. They created the class hierarchy that placed the king-priest-businessman above all the earlier people of India, relegating India's indigenous cultures and communities to the status of slaves, outcasts and untouchables. The tragic-comic aspect about this whole Devil business is that, in the Christian world, it is Yahweh - the divine father of Christ - who became the Devil. The god of Abraham, Yahweh, is the god of Ibrahim, Yallah. Yahweh/Yallah is Siva. But for two thousand years Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus have slaughtered each other because in each of their cultures the same god goes by different names. The religious orthodoxy succeeded in turning one against the other using their deceit and cunning, while the triad of king-priest-businessman sits on ever growing piles of wealth and power. How's that for the religious noodle soup cooked up by the religious orthodoxy? As Nietzsche says in The Will to Power 'The synthesis of oppositions and opposing impulses in a people is a sign of their total strength: how much of this can they subdue? But now we see a new conception of holiness (which was ultimately attributable to Plato's naivete); the opposition of heretical impulses to each other is no longer in the foreground. This demonstrates the extent to which the Greek religion was superior to the Judeo-Christian. The latter triumphed because the Greek religion had itself degenerated (had regressed). The aim should be the sanctification of the most powerful, most terrible, most disreputable forces; to use an old figure of speech, the deification of the Devil.' 

One individual is sufficient to rattle the power structure of today's world. Jesus did it, forcing the rulers to kill him. John Lennon, Galileo, MK Gandhi, John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed by brainwashed products of the king-priest-businessman triad. But not before they shook the power structure and showed how it can be done. The power structure can be dismantled with ease if there are even a hundred persons who possess the energy levels of these individuals. All it takes is for a person to understand the ultimate truth that god and human are one and the same. Emerson says 'It is time that this ill-suppressed murmur of all thoughtful men against the famine of our churches - this moaning of the heart because it is bereaved of the consolation, the hope, the grandeur that comes alone out of the culture of the moral nature - should be heard through the sleep of indolence, and over the din of routine. This great and perpetual office of the preacher is not discharged. Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life. In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is the infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God?' Herman Hesse says 'You must not worship Zarathustra. You must not try to become Zarathustra. In each one of you there is a hidden being, still in the deep sleep of childhood. Bring it to life! In each one of you there is a call, a will, an impulse of nature, an impulse towards the future, the new, the higher. Let it mature, let is resound, nurture it! Your future is not this or that; it is not money or power, it is not wisdom or success in your trade - your future, your hard dangerous path is this: to mature and to find God in yourselves. Nothing, O young men of Germany, has been made harder for you. You have always looked for God, but never in yourselves. He is nowhere else. There is no other God than the God within you.'

For this to happen, the source of power of Dionysus/Siva/Yahweh - ganja - must be given back to the ones who find affiliation with these forms of existence. The global complete legalization of ganja will re-distribute the power so more humans can recognize their divinity and then act as required in these calamitous times, so that the shackles of the religious orthodoxy can be broken, so that the power structure created by the king-priest-businessman can be dismantled, and so that the suffering majority can once again live in freedom. Intoxication, sexuality, unity of god and man, and love of nature must be taken out of the prohibited lists of the religious orthodoxy, just as ganja must be taken out of the prohibited lists of global drug laws. As Carl Jung could say, the world is right now concentrated on ego-centricity, subjectivism and complexes in the guise of truth, and ecstasy is viewed as a sin. The means of achieving ecstasy, and hence the means of seeing the truth clearly, must be pursued so that the true balance between truth and ecstasy is achieved. Then we see god in totality, we free the true spiritualists, we restore nature and ganja back to their rightful places as the means of curing our insanity and healing the earth...Then we humans see ourselves for who we truly are across the entire spectrum of existence. We reach maturity and spread our wings so that the wingspan covers all aspects - especially the higher divine aspects of truth and ecstasy that now appear non-existent and out of reach...Aham brahmasmi, tat vam asi...I am, so are you...

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https://www.marijuanamoment.net/baker-who-denied-same-sex-couple-now-complaining-about-marijuana-themed-cake-requests/

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'He shrugged and dialed "O" while I hurried out to the balcony, clearing my throat for an opening run at James 2:19:

"Beware!" I shouted. "For the devils also believe, and tremble!"

I waited for a moment, but there was no reply from the lobby, twenty floors down - so I tried Ephesians 6:12 which seemed more appropriate.

"For we wrestle not," I screamed, "against flesh and blood - but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world - and, yes - against spiritual wickedness in high places!"

Still there was no response except the booming echoes of my own voice...but the thing on my spine was moving with new vigor now, and I sensed there was not much time. All the movement in the lobby had ceased. They were all standing still down there - maybe twenty or thirty people...but were they listening? Could they hear?

I couldn't be sure. The acoustics of these massive lobbies are not predictable. I knew, for instance, that person sitting in a room on the seventh floor, with the door open, could hear - with unnerving clarity - a cocktail glass shattering on the floor of the lobby. It was also true that every word of Gregg Allman's "Multi-Colored Lady" played at top volume on a dual-speaker Sony TC-126 in an open-door room on the twentieth floor could be heard in the NFL pressrooms on the hotel mezzanine...but it was hard to be sure of the timbre and carrying power of my own voice in this cavern; it sounded, to me, like the deep screaming of a bull elk in rut...but there was no way to know, for sure, if I was really getting through.'

- Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl, February 28, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


After the Old Testament came a New Testament; Christ was possible, the partial emancipation of the Jews was possible, mankind produced Goethe, Mozart, and Dostoevsky. At all times there has been a minority of men of good will, who believed in the future and obeyed laws that are inscribed in no secular legal code. And during the horrible war, thousands of men acted in accordance with unwritten laws; soldiers treated enemies with mercy and respect, while others suffered imprisonment and torture because they staunchly rejected the duty of murdering and hating.

In order to esteem such men and deeds at their full worth, in order to overcome our doubts in the progress of man from animal to human being, we must live in faith. We must learn to value ideas as highly as bullets or gold pieces, to love possibilities and cultivate them in ourselves; we must gain intimations of the future and of the future in our own hearts.

The 'practical' man, who is always right in committee meetings, is invariably wrong outside his committees. Ideals and faith in the future are always right. They are the one source from which the world draws strength. And anyone who disposes of humanitarian ideas as idle talk and fuzzy thinking or of strivings for the future as literature is still a gorilla and has a long way to go before becoming a man.

- Thou Shalt Not Kill, 1919, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse

"Discipline!" I bellowed. "Remember Vince Lombardi." I paused to let that one sink in - waiting for applause, but none came. "Remember George Metesky!" I shouted. "He had discipline!"

Nobody down in the lobby seemed to catch that one, although I sensed the first stirrings of action on the balconies just below me. It was almost time for the Free Breakfast in the Imperial Ballroom downstairs, and some of the early rising sportswriters seemed to be up and about. Somewhere behind me a phone was ringing, but I paid no attention. It was time, I felt, to bring it all together...my voice was giving out, but despite the occasional dead spots and bursts of high-pitched wavering, I grasped the railing of the balcony and got braced for some flat-out raving:

"Revelations, Twenty-fifteen!" I screamed. "Say Hallelujah! Yes! Say Hallelujah!"

People were definitely responding now. I could hear their voices, full of excitement - but the acoustics of the place made it impossible to get a good fix on the cries that were bounding back and forth across the lobby. Were they saying "Hallelujah"?

"Four more years!" I shouted. "My friend General Haig has told us that the Forces of Darkness are now in control of the Nation - and they will rule for four more years!" I paused to sip my drink, then I hit it again: "And Al Davis has told us that whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire!"

I reached around behind me with my free hand, slapping at a spot between my shoulder blades to slow the thing down.'

- Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl, February 28, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


And we believers in the future will never cease to concern ourselves with the old commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill.' Even if some day all the legal codes in the world forbid killing (inclusive of killing in war and killing by executioners), that imperative will never lose its cogency. It is the foundation of all progress, all human development. We kill so much! Not only in our stupid battles, the stupid street fighting of our revolution, our stupid executions - no, we kill at every step. We kill when circumstances force us to drive gifted young people into occupations for which they are not suited. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, affliction, or infamy. We kill when, because it is easier, we countenance or even pretend to approve of atrophied social, political, educational, and religious institutions, instead of resolutely combating them. Just as a consistent socialist looks on property as theft, so those who hold consistently to our kind of faith regard all contempt of human life, all cruelty and indifference, as tantamount to killing. And not only things present can be killed, but the things of the future as well. A great deal of future in a young man can be killed by a mordant sceptism. Everywhere life is waiting, everywhere the future holds promise, and we see so little, we trample so much. We kill at every step.

In respect to mankind we all of us have but one task. To help mankind as a whole make some small advance, to better a particular institution, to do away with one particular mode of killing - all these are commendable, but they are not my task or yours. Our task as men is this: in our own unique personal lives, to take a short step on the road from animal to man.

- Thou Shalt Not Kill, 1919, If The War Goes On, Herman Hesse


"How many of you will be cast into the lake of fire in the next four years? How many will survive? I have spoken with General Haig, and - "

At this point I was seized from behind by both arms and jerked backward, spilling my drink and interrupting the climax of my sermon. "You crazy bastard!" a voice screamed. "Look what you've done! The manager just called. Get back in the room and lock the fucking door! He's going to bust us!"

It was the TV man from Pittsburgh, trying to drag me back from my pulpit. I slipped out of his grasp and returned to the balcony. "This is Super Sunday!" I screamed. "I want every one of you worthless bastards down in the lobby in ten minutes so we can praise God and sing the national anthem!"

At this point I noticed the TV man sprinting down the hall toward the elevators, and the sight of him running caused something to snap in my brain. "There he goes!" I shouted. "He's heading for the lobby! Watch out! It's Al Davis. He has a knife!"'

- Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl, February 28, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson


'In a statement obtained by FOX 10, C. Dale Willis Jr. with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Mesa write that the religious organizations "strongly opposes" the proposition, saying that drug abuse in the U.S. is at epidemic levels, and that the use of recreational marijuana has been proven to negatively affect education and job stability, and health.

"Money that is better spent on bills, groceries and household expenses might now be wasted on drugs," a portion of the statement read. "Rather than more legalized drugs we should find ways to increase our capacity to connect with our families and neighbors."'

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints-opposes-marijuana-legalization-in-arizona


'“While proponents of legalization see enhanced revenues for the state through a new taxable marijuana industry,” Vetter and Warfel said, “we are more concerned with consequences ranging from increased teenage use, harmful effects on developing brains, addiction, increased impairment-related transportation accidents and deaths, and other potential public health and safety issues.”

One need only look two states away, to Colorado, the bishops said, “to see the devastating impact legalization will have on our state, particularly our youth.”'

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2020/10/montanas-catholic-bishops-urge-no-vote-on-legalizing-recreational-marijuana/


'The church firmly believes that strong families build strong communities. Unfortunately, drug abuse in the United States is at epidemic proportions, and the dangers of recreational marijuana to public health and safety are well documented.

The use of recreational marijuana has proven to negatively affect everything from education to job stability and is especially harmful to our most vulnerable populations. For the good of the community and the family, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints strongly opposes this dangerous proposal.'

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2020/10/21/lds-church-strongly-opposes-arizona-proposition-207-legalize-marijuana/5997888002/


'Cultural stigmas around smoking a joint have diminished, but most pastors still say it crosses a moral line,” said McConnell. “While some may connect this prohibition to state laws that still forbid this use, it is clear from their views on legalization that pastors see moral problems with getting high beyond simply disobeying government authorities.”

Evangelical pastors are almost twice as likely as mainline pastors to see smoking marijuana to get high as morally wrong (89% to 47%). Denominationally, Pentecostals (97%) and Baptists (92%) are more likely to see it as immoral than Restorationist movement (74%), Methodist (66%), Lutheran (63%) and Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (57%).'

https://lifewayresearch.com/2021/05/11/most-pastors-oppose-marijuana-use-legalization/

'Ford sprung his decision with no advance warning at 10:40 on a peaceful Sunday morning in Washington, after emerging from a church service with such a powerful desire to dispense mercy that he rushed back to the White House - a short hump across Lafayette Park - and summoned a weary Sunday-morning skeleton crew of correspondents and cameramen to inform them, speaking in curiously zombielike tones, that he could no longer tolerate the idea of ex-president Nixon suffering his grief-crazed solitude out there on the beach in San Clemente, and that his conscience now compelled him to end both the suffering of Nixon and the national angst it was causing by means of a presidential edict of such king-sized breadth and scope as to scourge the poison of "Watergate" from our national consciousness forever.'

 - Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson