Remember this phrase: expansion of consciousness. With that expansion, you expand. One day, when your consciousness is absolute and there is not a lingering shadow of darkness inside, when there is no unconscious in you, all has become conscious, when the light is burning bright, when you are luminous from the inner awareness, then suddenly you see that even the sky is not your limit. There is no limitation to you.

This is the whole experience of the mystics of all the ages. When Jesus says, “I and my father in heaven are one,” this is what he means. He is saying: I have no limitations. It is a way of saying the same thing, a metaphorical way, a symbolic way: I and my father in heaven are not two but one – I, staying in this small body and he, spread all over existence, are not two but one. My source and I are one. I am as big as existence itself. That is the meaning when the mystic of the Upanishad declares: “Aham Brahmasmi: I am the absolute, I am God.” This is uttered in a state of awareness where no unconsciousness exists. This is the meaning when the Sufi Mansoor declares, “Ana’l Haq: I am the truth.”

These great utterances are very significant. They simply say that you are as big as your consciousness, never more, never less. That’s why there is so much appeal in drugs, because they chemically force your consciousness to become a little wider than it is. LSD or marijuana or mescalin, they give you a sudden expansion of consciousness. Of course it is forced and violent and should not be done. And it is chemical, it has nothing to do with your spirituality. You don’t grow through it! Growth comes through voluntary effort. Growth is not cheap, not so cheap that just a small quantity of LSD, a very small quantity of LSD, can give you spiritual growth.

Aldous Huxley was very wrong when he started thinking that he had attained through LSD the same experience as Kabir, or as Eckhart, or as Basho. No, it is not the same experience. Yes, something is similar; that similarity is in the expansion of consciousness. But it is very dissimilar too; it is a forced thing, it is a violence on your biology and on your chemistry. And you remain the same! You don’t grow through it. Once the influence of the drug wears off, you are the same man again, the same small man.

Kabir will never be the same again because that expansion of consciousness was not just a forced thing, he has grown to it. Now there is no going back. It has become part of him, it has become his being; he has absorbed it.

But the appeal can be understood. The appeal has always been there, it has nothing to do with the modern generation. It has always been there…since the Vedas. Man has always felt tremendously attracted towards drugs. It is a false coin, it gives you a little glimpse of the real in a very unnatural way. But man is always seeking expansion; man wants to become great.