Drugs are chemical substances, which are material. How can something material help one realize God, who is all-spiritual?

Beyond Sensual Perception

Consciousness-expanding or consciousness-numbing?

MR. FAILL: How about drugs? Can they help in the process of God realization?

PRABHUPADA: If drugs could help God realization, then drugs would be more powerful than God. How can we accept that? Drugs are chemical substances, which are material. How can something material help one realize God, who is all-spiritual? It is impossible. What one experiences from taking drugs is simply a kind of intoxication or hallucination; it is not God realization.

MR. FAILL: Do you think the great mystics down through the ages have actually seen the spiritual spark you mentioned earlier?

PRABHUPADA: What do you mean by "mystic"?

MR. FAILL: It's just a name given to people who have had an experience of another level of reality.

PRABHUPADA: We don't use the word mystic. Our reality is God realization, which occurs when we come to the spiritual platform. As long as we have a bodily concept of life, our understanding is sense gratification, because the body is made of senses. When we progress from the bodily platform and we see the mind as the center of sense activity, we take the mind as the final stage of realization. That is the mental platform. From the mental platform we may come to the intellectual platform, and from the intellectual platform we can rise to the transcendental platform. Finally we can rise above even the transcendental platform and come to the mature, spiritual platform. These are the stages of God realization. However, in this age, because people are so fallen, the shastras [scriptures] give the special recommendation that people come directly to the spiritual platform by chanting the holy names of God: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. If we cultivate this practice on the spiritual platform, then immediately we can realize our spiritual identity. Then the process of God realization becomes successful very quickly.

MR. FAILL: Today a lot of people are saying that we must look inward for the truth rather than outward into the world of the senses.

PRABHUPADA: Looking inward means knowing that you are a spirit soul. Unless you understand that you are not the body but a soul, there is no question of looking inward.

First we have to study, "Am I this body, or am I something within this body?" Unfortunately, this subject is not taught in any school, college, or university. Everyone is thinking, "I am this body." For example, in this country people everywhere are thinking, "I am South African, they are Indian, they are Greek," and so on. Actually, everyone in the whole world is in the bodily conception of life. Krishna consciousness starts when one is above this bodily conception.

MR. FAILL: So the recognition of the spiritual spark comes first?

PRABHUPADA: Yes. Recognizing the existence of the spirit soul within the body is the first step. Unless one understands this simple fact, there is no question of spiritual advancement.

MR. FAILL: Is it a question of just understanding it intellectually?

PRABHUPADA: in the beginning, yes. There are two departments of knowledge: theoretical and practical. First one must learn spiritual science theoretically; then, by working on that spiritual platform, one comes to the point of practical realization.

Unfortunately, today almost everyone is in the darkness of the bodily conception of life. Therefore this movement is very important, because it can lift civilized men out of that darkness. As long as they are in the bodily conception of life, they are no better than animals.