Spirit and me.

The notion that our spiritual lives are separate from our biological lives is a bit strange. Even if you don’t believe there is a spiritual world, I’ve never met anyone who argued that they didn’t have a spirit. The means of experiencing anything, spiritual or otherwise, is based in biology. 

On the other hand, you may accept that there is a spiritual reality but think that we are separated somehow from that spiritual dimension. For the spirit to be experienced, our biology is the avenue of communication since that is our means of experience. 

I personally know there is no such separation. Instead, I am persuaded of what the Dharma (and Christianity) teaches that our wholeness is the undividable conjunction of spirit and matter: that I can only exist as that partnership. If this is not so, then what part of me is compelling movement? An object can’t move. A stone just sits there and doesn’t move. We however do move and without a spiritual consciousness, we would be no better than a stone.

The point of contact, regardless of how the spirit is understood, is biological. However, and whatever we have, any experience is through a biological pathway impacting our bodies (a fantastic organism involving a multitude of biochemicals, hormones, neurotransmitters, and electricity). When we experience fear, our biochemical makeup is altered in one direction. When we experience joy, it’s changed in another order. Anger, another, and so on. The altering of our biochemical makeup affects even enlightenment, and all of these biochemical changes affect our thinking and responses to life.

The ingestion of drugs likewise alters our biochemistry and our sense of reality. What seems real given one biochemical arrangement is wholly altered when drugs are introduced. What seems familiar in a non-drug induced state is completely changed when drugs are used. And this is also true when enlightenment is experienced. What looks divided and alienated in our usual every-day way, before enlightenment, is seen as unified and compassionate after enlightenment. Our world and our self-understanding are subsequently turned upside down.

I don’t advise doing drugs because they can be addictive and ruin your life. On the other hand, there are situations where drugs are beneficial. But I do recommend the worldview and the self-understanding that arises with both certain drugs and enlightenment. One can destroy your life. The other can save your life. Besides, the latter is free of charge, and the former can bankrupt you. One can set you free, and the other can send you to jail. People die all of the time from a drug overdose, and nobody has ever died due to enlightenment.