Ben is a South African Buddhist who uses entheogens to help him achieve a meditative state. He wanted to share this discovery with his cousin Jon and friend Mike.
"My intention was to show them how to use drugs as spiritual catalysts. I brought a strong dose of mushrooms, some well baked hash cookies and some really nice joints. We went out into the bush and found a beatiful island on a river. My intention had been to get them to meditate when it came on, but they were having a great time, just puttering around and laughing. It wasn't going to happen so I just went off and centred myself.
I had been standing there quite still, I don't know for how long, in complete centredness when they came up to me. These were my best friends but I remained silent, I was right there with them but they weren't quite sure which space I was in. As I just wanted carry on experiencing that space, I didn't turn around to greet them or even talk to them. It was clear that they were quite uncomfortable. Then Mike said to Jon "Wow, look at the colours coming off him" and they agreed that the colours were being completely sucked into me.
I was still standing completely centred and still sometime later when Jon came close to me and I thought I heard him say "No, it can't be, it can't be" to himself. I turned around to him and said "What can't be?". He started and said "what did you say?" and I replied "what can't be?". He just said "I don't know, I don't believe this" and walked off. About 20 minutes later he was pottering around again, a couple of metres from me and I thought I heard him say "well, that must be the answer" so I turned around and said "what must be the answer?" and again he replied "what did you just say?". I repeated "you said that must be the answer, so what is it?" and he said "I don't believe it, what are you saying?" He told me that he was certain that he had said nothing out loud, but I had picked up on his thoughts. I found that really interesting because I was in a state of stillness and not attempting to read his mind or anything.
Later, we were at his girlfriends' place out on the coast when he had radical mood swings. He'd shown quite an interest in the energies that had been coming off me when I was centred and made some comments about how pleasant it was to be with me without having to speak, as he felt he could do his own thing.
Because I felt that he was interested I suggested that he read something and I gave him a book, some really weird sixties book just lying around the house that just happened, as these things tend to occur, to have exactly a description of that space of emptiness you can find. So I said "read this" and he started shouting and saying "I'm not interested in your religion" and threw the book down and stormed off. I couldn't understand it. Then I heard him screaming and shouting about me to his girlfriend saying that he was not interested in what I was trying to push on him.
It really hurt me as I have a lot of respect for him and I suddenly realised that I'd done more damage than anything because now I'd pushed him further from my beliefs than if he found them of his own accord. I felt that my motivations were pure, but in actual fact things get in the way, egos get in the way at subtler levels.
When I told my sister Laura about this she said that you have to wait for someone to approach you, or ask you about this type of stuff because it's such a subtle, sublime knowledge, someone would have to ask you and then you'd have to know what you were talking about".
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