The Gita, as it is affectionately called, presents a detailed scientific psychology lightly clothed in the type of religious-sounding narrative in favor at the time. Being a textbook on what is required to produce a truly liberated adult human being, it does not impose any rigid structure or set of rules to follow. Its goal is to teach people how to make their own decisions based on their deepest nature, because, while that nature is constant, circumstances are forever in flux. What is appropriate in one instance may be a deadly mistake in another. A truly awake human being will know how to act well without having to seek direction from any scripture or law library.

         Like the Gita’s time, the preceding Vedic Age was a period of intense religious ferment and exploration. The writings that have been preserved from it, the Vedas, record the poetic fancies and psychological insights garnered by seekers of truth over a long period of time. The Bhagavad Gita and other contemporary writings were written to highlight the best ideas of the Vedas while discarding their excess baggage. They also added new insights, the most important being monotheism in the sense of recognizing the overarching unity of life.

         The Vedas are replete with references to the ritual use of a substance called soma for religious inspiration. The formula for soma is unknown, but it is thought to be a potion that included psychedelic mushrooms. As we will see from the record presented here, soma’s effects are quite similar, if not identical, to the psychedelics we know of today, particularly psilocybin and LSD.

         Chapter XI of the Bhagavad Gita is one of the most eloquent descriptions of a complex psychedelic experience ever recorded. The present book is intended to decode its archaic language and symbolism to clarify the helpful intentions of its anonymous author, known only as Vyasa (Writer).

         Over the passage of many years the formula for soma was lost. We don’t know why, but changing attitudes may have redirected the exploration of the mind to other, more ascetic practices. With the sacred soma ceremonies forgotten, what they had once accomplished began to be viewed solely as a mystical transmission from guru to disciple, brought about by a certain touch or ritual, or simply some secret knowledge. Today this is the firmly established orthodox position, but when the Gita was written there was no doubt that what brought realization home was the ingestion of soma. Mental preparation was important, even crucial, but only in rare cases was it enough to ignite realization. With the assistance of the soma medicine, however, any properly prepared disciple could have a mind-expanding experience.

Preparation

         As far as we know, the Bhagavad Gita has become highly revered as a scripture only in recent times. In keeping with the worldwide historical trend toward puritanism in religion, the drug element implied in it, which is limited to a single chapter, has been replaced with a belief in a purely spiritual experience such as can be achieved through yoga or meditation. While this is a healthy development in some respects, psychedelic medicines have the capacity to confer the equivalent of many years of strenuous practice or therapy in a much shorter period of time and without pushing the body to the edge of death, as occurs with fasting, dehydration, solitary confinement, and similar techniques. In the modern era, the use of psychedelics has been aggressively suppressed, but they are beginning to find their rightful place in a sane but cautious pharmacopeia once again.

         Psychedelics contribute to a long list of positive mental attitudes, aiding in internal adjustments that foster happiness and expanded intelligence, while promoting outwardly-directed values such as tolerance, humility, loving kindness, compassion, and so on. In the Gita, the pupil Arjuna, guided by his guru Krishna, uses soma to help him make his theoretical training real. The first ten chapters detail his lengthy course of mental preparation. Chapter XI deals with his psychedelic sojourn in which he converts the theories he has been taught into direct experience, and the remaining seven chapters show him how to integrate his experience into a viable way of life.

         Very few people who have taken psychedelic medicines in the last fifty years have undergone the extensive preparation that was once considered a prerequisite, as evidenced by Arjuna’s regimen. Even fewer have had the opportunity to be guided back into a dynamic life by a compassionate helpmate. It is to fill this important vacuum that the present interpretation is offered. For those interested in the complete psychology, the entire Gita is interpreted from a modern standpoint in my commentary at http://scottteitsworth.tripod.com.

A Few Essentials

         A small number of facts will be helpful for those who are not already familiar with the Bhagavad Gita.

         There are just two main characters, the seeker Arjuna and his guru Krishna, plus a narrator, Sanjaya. Krishna is a human being, but in the reverential attitude of India a guru is also a living incarnation of the Absolute, the supreme principle, that which leaves nothing out. In Vedanta, the philosophical system of the Gita, everyone and all things are the Absolute in essence, and the seeker’s path, such as it is, is to come to know this truth. It is a path that begins and ends right where you are.

         Most commentaries refer to Krishna as Lord or God, but those of my lineage prefer the more philosophical term Absolute. The Absolute is all-inclusive: there is nothing that is not it. If you think something isn’t the Absolute, then your idea of absoluteness is flawed. Obviously Lord and God are more specific and limited terms, calling to mind a gap between them or it and us.

          The Absolute is more a principle than a fact, and therefore it is not accessible directly through any accumulation of knowledge. As they are refined, ideas can approach the Absolute ever more closely from the outside, but there is always a gap, most beautifully depicted in Michelangelo’s painting The Creation of Adam, where an anthropomorphized Absolute and a primordial human reach toward each other in a cosmic gesture, fingers nearly but not quite touching.

         Many techniques can be successful at causing a spark to jump the gap, and the smaller the gap the easier it becomes. Intelligent understanding brings the sides closer together. When a seeker and the object of his or her speculative approach are finally sparked into direct contact, it is known as union with the Absolute.

         Scientists are constrained to limit themselves to a search based on facts, strictly from the outside looking in, but philosophers, and particularly yogis, are free to employ an inside out approach also. The ideal is for both orientations to mutually reinforce and correct each other. Obviously, psychedelics instruct from the inside out. Afterwards, balancing their inner influence requires tempering with some careful analysis.

         Despite the postulation of an Absolute, which keeps consciousness properly oriented and is common to all systems, whether philosophical, religious or scientific, there is no such thing as absolute realization. Anything realized has to be relative, less than the whole, which means there is no absolute right or wrong, or any last word. Whenever the mind goes beyond its accustomed boundaries, it undergoes an expansion that feels like liberation or realization, but no one has yet ascertained any end to human potential. Greater expansion is always possible.

         Because of this, there is always more to be discovered. Once we realize that our knowledge is inevitably partial, we will know we can always learn more and there is no ultimate answer. Anyone claiming finalized answers is in fact seriously deluded, and is very likely intending to manipulate others for their own benefit. In any case the idea of finality brings growth to a halt. Psychedelics convincingly bring this truth home by flinging the doors of perception wide open.

         Arjuna and Krishna are talking on the battlefield in the middle of a great war. Some people are bothered that the Gita unfolds in such a discordant environment, imagining that a scripture should be set in a garden of paradise. But life is filled with conflicts, great and small. The Gita’s message is that we are sure to face difficulties throughout our life, but we can learn to manage them well. It is not about how to avoid them by making an escape, or by holding onto a single viewpoint.

         The setting of the battlefield also tells us that the way to peace is not through rearranging the outside world. The world almost certainly will not be fixed by us no matter how hard we try, but we are eminently capable of major improvements to ourselves, especially given some expert guidance. Life is a struggle and a fight much of the time, and no one has ever succeeded in taming it. We need to find solid ground within ourselves, so that whether the winds blow fair or foul we will not be knocked over. Paradoxically, once we heal ourselves we can begin to have a beneficial impact on our surroundings, but if we confront the world’s ills from an unbalanced perspective our efforts will be plagued with unintended and often tragic consequences.

Resistance to Realization

         The hostility of mainstream society toward psychedelic medicines is well known. Scriptures like the Gita have shared in that acrimoniousness to some degree by having their message diluted and even inverted. Where the original idea is to promote human unity with the cosmos, scriptures are often interpreted to exalt certain individuals and reinforce the widespread conviction that liberation is only for one single rare and exceptional person who lived in the distant past. That means there is no possibility of freedom for the rest of us without divine intervention on our behalf, or the miraculous return of that special person. The Gita is frequently cited to promulgate Krishna in such a role, and doing so totally undermines its most important tenet: that the Absolute is inherent in everyone and accessible to all who look for it.

         The central claim of Vedanta, the philosophical system that includes the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, is that each person is the Absolute in essence, and our challenge is to come to remember that truth in a world where objects and events constantly distract us from it, often even intentionally. This not only gives us unlimited hope, it empowers us to do our best. We are accorded the highest respect possible in advance. If everyone and everything is sacred, then there is no possibility of sacrilege. We have no need for divine intervention, because we are already miraculous. Life is a continuous “divine intervention,” so what more could be needed?

         The marginalizing of psychedelic drugs by a paranoiac power elite is no accident, however. Like the Gita, psychedelics impart revolutionary insight in its truest sense. The realization that all humans, indeed all entities comprised of atoms, are essentially one, and our nature is therefore equally “divine” instantly puts the lie to the attitudes of the vested interests that benefit from our world being structured on the basis of masters and slaves, chosen and cursed. The falsity of beliefs that elevate one small group and denigrate the rest is immediately obvious to a mind expanded by psychedelic medicine.

         Along the same lines, author Barbara Kingsolver asks rhetorically, in her recent book The Lacuna, “Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he’s entitled to joy rather than submission?” Nothing could be more central to our happiness than this type of conversion.

         An important part of the revolutionary nature of psychedelic substances is that they encourage nonviolence. Their action resembles a rising tide gently melting sand castles on the beach, dissolving temporary structures that loom large while the tide is out. By contrast, the sand castles of an elite can only be defended with overt and covert violence, and so their position depends on inducing violent opposition and then smashing it. If one side can discover how not to be drawn into it, the game will come to an end. Thus there is no greater threat to the status quo than realization.

         The special wisdom of the Gita is to unify all polarizations, inwardly and outwardly. If we stop feeding the differences, they will melt away. The way to achieve this is to become fully realized human beings. No external goal, and certainly no violent action, can bring it about. The temptation to engage in partisan battle can only be resisted with an inner calm founded on wisdom.

         Timothy Leary’s exhortation to “Turn on, Tune in, and Drop out” should be understood in this light. “Turn on,” of course, means take LSD. “Tune in”: rediscover your true nature as an enlightened and joyous spirit being. “Drop out” doesn’t mean drop out of life. Quite the contrary, it invites us to abandon the death trip of submission to authority and remain tuned in to our full potential. We should drop out of all the things that prevent us from tuning in. The revolutionary nature of Leary’s phrase echoes the call of the Gita from the ancient past. We must not make the common mistake of treating dropping out as the most important part. “Turn on” and “Drop out” are the thesis and antithesis; “Tune in” is the synthesis, the main course. Tuning in to what we really are is the key to a life worth living, one that substitutes joy for submission.

         In the aftermath of an intense psychedelic experience like Arjuna’s, there is a period of profound openness and vulnerability to suggestions. Arjuna is fortunate to be under the guidance of a wide awake and compassionate guru who will carefully ease him back into the flow of everyday life. In the aftermath of the brief period of legal psychedelics in the mid-twentieth century, many who used them were unsupervised and unprepared. They encountered all sorts of bizarre and negative influences during the critical recovery period, eventually including intentional sabotage by governmental agents provocateurs, and some serious damage occurred. Even a seemingly simple act like watching television can lodge twisted attitudes deep in the psyche which continue to cause confusion for a very long time afterwards. The aftermath of a trip is a time for great care in nurturing only the best aspects of life, because what is encountered goes much deeper than usual and is very hard to dislodge. The Gita’s attitude is clear: only take these medicines in the right circumstances, with proper preparation, and under the guidance of a loving person who you trust and who knows you well.

         In a way, this part of the Gita makes more sense as an instruction manual for the guides, rather than for the ones taking the soma. The presentation is rather frightening for a prospective tripper, but it prepares the guide for some touchy situations that may well occur. And of course it has a great deal to offer those with no interest at all in psychedelic excursions.

The Present Commentator

         I had the good fortune to study the Gita with an exceptionally intelligent and broad-minded guru, Nitya Chaitanya Yati, who taught it almost continuously to enthusiastic audiences in Portland, Oregon from 1970 to 1976. After that I worked with him to prepare the typescript of his own Gita commentary, and since then I have had numerous occasions to teach the work myself.

         Due to my dissatisfaction with aspects of a number of the better-known commentaries, which among other things universally downplay soma, I began compiling a detailed version of my own thoughts, working through the Gita verse by verse. As I contemplated Chapter XI, a nagging suspicion that it really was about a soma experience grew into a certainty with verse 6, where the demigods mentioned symbolize important stages of a trip. Because of strikingly similar experiences I had had many years before, that part of my commentary blossomed into the small book you hold in your hands.

         My guru’s teacher, Nataraja Guru, electrified the world of Gita commentary with his own scientifically-minded interpretation in 1961, and his book has been continuously in print in India ever since. His translation, which is the one used here, replaces the typical religious attitude with a more scientific and philosophical one. Neither of us employs what Nataraja Guru called “Lord Lordism,” the displacement of the meaning of life to a remote and superior god, which is nearly universal in Gita commentaries while being foreign to the spirit of the Gita itself.

         Nataraja Guru visualized the eighteen chapters of the Gita as forming an arch shape, with the first and last chapters resting on the solid ground of everyday life, and the two middle chapters, IX and X, forming the keystone and dealing only with the most sublime aspects of the Absolute. In between are graded series linking the two poles of the horizontal and vertical. Chapter XI is the first reentry of the seeker Arjuna after the transcendental portion, where his mind is lifted as high as it can go. This chapter is somewhat anomalous with the rest of the Gita, and can more easily stand on its own than any of the others.

         The Gita is one of the most commented upon books of all time, and it would seem its subject should be exhausted. But that is by no means the case, and my version is unique in many ways. In particular, Chapter XI has not to my knowledge been interpreted in terms of a soma experience. Because of humanity’s pressing need to find non-coercive methods to ameliorate its violent and destructive tendencies, this aspect of the ancient knowledge has a special value. How to use powerful mind-altering agents wisely being more attractive to many people than wading through an entire discipline of understanding the universe, that is the main focus here. I am not dismayed, because the one undoubtedly leads to the other. Psychedelics are indeed “gateway drugs” in that they are very likely to lead to an indulgence in stronger stuff: open exploration of the mind and the meaning of life.