The transcendental shag

Although most dictionaries haven't caught up with it yet, the distinction between religion and spirituality is commonplace nowadays. What's the difference exactly? Most of us would agree that obeying the commandments of the Church (attend Mass on Sundays, go to confession once a year, keep the days of fasting and abstinence, etc.) and the Ten Commandments (the fundamental one being "Sex: don't even think about it"), especially for fear of damnation, is religion according to this popular dichotomy. But what is spirituality then? Hmm ... uh ... Meditation retreats? Yoga? Mantras in Sanskrit? Rumi's poetry? The Dalai Lama?

Why are these things spiritual? Perhaps because they help people achieve inner peace? Not everything works for everyone, of course. Some people absolutely hate meditation, or find the whole Eastern spirituality thing kind of cultish and creepy. Perhaps what works for some such person is writing poems, or gazing at the stars through their telescope. Is that spirituality? If they regard it as such, I would say it is. Apart from inner peace there are other things one might hope to achieve through a spiritual "practice", for example the feeling of "being alive", which can be experienced as a profound existential need. But perhaps observing one's mind or looking at the sky are not the most effective means to bring about that much sought-after state of mind. Perhaps what would really make you feel alive would be something as ostensibly worldly as having a fling or taking LSD or ecstasy in the appropriate set and setting.

Let's be honest. Conventional spirituality is all very well, but what can make you feel more fulfilled, expansive, grateful, and at peace with yourself and the world than spending the night with that person you've been fancying for some time, and then flirted with for some more time? On your way home the next morning, if you still fancy him or her (let's be honest about that too), you bask in a feeling of inner warmth and utter contentment, the world smiles at you and you smile at it, everything is perfect as it is, you radiate peace and kindness. And that is only what you get after the actual experience! Admittedly, it wears off. So what? The effects of meditation also wear off, to the extent that you are encouraged to practice it every day! Meditation has the advantage of always being available, and of not requiring that you go through the hassle of dealing with people, but it won't ever, not in your wildest dreams, give you a state of mind comparable to what I'm describing. If you disagree, perhaps what you need is to get laid please consider why so many well-known spiritual teachers haven't missed the chance to get in their students' knickers when the opportunity presented itself. Of course, the trouble is that, whilst sharing intimacy, affection and sex with someone you fancy is a life-enhancing experience, sexual abuse makes you a psychopath.

Hallucinogens are another way of generating powerful spiritual experiences. That's why they are also known as entheogens: "that which generates God (or godly inspiration) within a person" (Wikipedia, naturally). By contrast to sexual experiences, hallucinogens are readily available at very low prices. If you are seeking spiritual inspiration through meditation retreats or other such means but you haven't tried LSD, you are wasting your time you really are missing out on something big, as big as your mind can hold. Descriptions of mystical experiences achieved through a lifetime of asceticism are indistinguishable from the description of experiences commonly, cheaply, and easily induced by entheogens. With drugs you also get to see dragons, which is always a bonus.

Even if you don't have a full-blown mystical experience, drugs can be great fun, and maybe that's just what you need, existentially if you like -- which is like saying spiritually, isn't it? If you feel the need to calm your mind, to dwell in empty consciousness, or something of the sort, go and meditate. But perhaps you're becoming anxious about that steadily encroaching sense of ennui, and the last thing you need is to calm your mind. Perhaps what you need is to shake up your life before you become a vegetable, to saturate your mind with new experiences. In that case, well, go for it! It would be very spiritually unwise to sit and meditate when what you really need is to go out and get drunk, or whatever it might be.

A combination of, on the one hand, conventional spirituality, and, on the other hand, drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll, works well for many people. A stereotypical backpacker in India, for instance, might chill out smoking charas for a few weeks, then go on an intensive meditation retreat, then go to some full-moon party where she meets some Aussie guy, then travel with the Aussie guy for a couple of weeks until she gets bored of him, then go somewhere else and take some yoga lessons, and so forth. It seems a bit weird to label both the meditation retreat and the full-moon party as spirituality. It might make more sense if, instead of saying that something is or is not spirituality, we talk about a spiritually-informed or spiritually-aware life. What I mean by that is a life in which one listens to their deepest longings and asks the unanswerable questions. If your going to bed with someone is, for example, imbued with a desire for true communion (don't laugh! I'm serious!) and your whole being is shaken by the experience, I would call that a spiritually-informed, er, shag. And If you take an ecstasy tablet with respect (if you see what I mean) and looking forward to a celebration of live, I would call that a spiritually-informed high.

(Am I being outrageous?)