Geoffrey Hodson:
"The disciple should be ever on the watch against falling into this error. Obviously, practices and indulgences must be totally excluded which of themselves may anesthetize the mind and brain and, as a result of excess, cause the organ to become occultly and spiritually unresponsive. All mind-bedulling food, drink, and drugs (medical prescriptions apart) must be avoided, and this avoidance must become an overwhelming, overriding, and decisive bodily rule.
The enjoyment of pleasure giving drugs-smoking and cannabis for example- must cease, because they dull those areas of the brain in which impulses and directions from the interior Self are received. These include the pituitary and pineal glands, with surrounding parts of the brain, and the thalamus. Any conduct whatever which reduces the spiritual responsiveness of the brain must cease, the sooner the better, once the inward call has been heard and answered affirmatively. In additional, the intake of stimulants must be reduced to a minimum and must eventually cease, especially alcohol and mind-expanding drugs."
C.W. Leadbeater:
"The malpractices which may more gradually injure this protective web are of two classes- the use of alcohol or narcotic drugs and the deliberate endeavour to throw open the doors which nature has kept closed, by means of such a process as is described in spiritualistic parlance as sitting for development. Certain drugs and drinks-notably alcohol and all the narcotics, including tobacco-contain matter which on breaking up volatilizes, and some of it passes from the physical plane to the astral. (Even tea and coffee contain this matter, but in quantities so infinitesimal that it is usually only after long-continued abuse of them that the effect manifests itself.)
When this takes place in the body of man these constituents rush out through the force-centres (chakras) in the opposite direction to that for which they are intended, and in doing this repeatedly they seriously injure and finally destroy the delicate web. This deterioration or destruction may be brought about in two different ways, according to the type of the person concerned and to the proportion of the constituents in his etheric and astral bodies. First, the rush of volatilizing matter actually burns away the web, and therefore leaves the door open to all sorts of irregular forces and evil influences.
The second result is that these volatile constituents, in flowing through, somehow harden the atom so that its pulsation is to a large extent checked and crippled, and it is no longer capable of being vitalized by the particular type of force which welds it into a web. The result of this is a kind of ossification of the web, so that instead of having too much coming through from one plane to the other, we have very little of any kind coming through.
We may see the effects of both these types of deterioration in the case of men who yield themselves to drunkenness. Some of those who are affected in the former way fall into delirium tremens, obsession or insanity; but those are after all comparatively rare. Far more common is the second type of deterioration-the case in which we have a kind of general deadening down of the man' s qualities, resulting in gross materialism, brutality and animalism, in the loss of all finer feelings and of the power to control himself. He no longer feels any sense of responsibility; he may love his wife and children when sober, but when the fit of drunkenness comes upon him he will use the money which should have bought bread for them to satisfy his own bestial cravings, the affection and the responsibility having apparently entirely disappeared.
The second type of effect is very commonly to be seen among those who are slaves of the tobacco habit; again and again we find that they persist in their self-indulgence even when they know perfectly well that it causes nausea and misery to their neighbors. We shall recognize the deterioration at once when we think that this is the only practice in which a gentleman will persist when he is aware that it causes acute annoyance to others. Clearly in this case the finer feelings have already been seriously blunted.
All impressions which pass from one plane to the other are intended to come only through the atomic sub-planes, as I have said;but when this deadening process sets in, it presently infects not only other atomic matter, but matter of even the second and third sub-planes, so that the only communication between the astral and the etheric is when some force acting on the lower sub-planes (upon which only unpleasant and evil influences are to be found) happens to be strong enough to compel a response by the violence of its vibration.
Nevertheless, though nature takes such precautions to guard these centres, she by no means intends that they shall always be kept rigidly closed. There is a proper way in which they may be opened. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the intention is not that the doors should be opened any wider than their present position, but that the man should so develop himself as that he can bring a great deal more through the recognized channel.
The consciousness of the ordinary man cannot yet use pure atomic matter either in the physical body or in the astral, and therefore there is normally no possibility for him of conscious communication at will between the two planes. The proper way to obtain that is to purify both the vehicles until the atomic matter in both is fully vivified, so that all communications between the two may be able to pass by that road. In that case the web retains to the fullest degree its position and activity, and yet is no longer a barrier to the perfect communication, while it still continues to fulfill its purpose of preventing the close contact between lower sub-planes which would permit all sorts of undesirable influences to pass through.
That is why we are always adjured to wait for the unfolding of psychic powers until they come in the natural course of events as a consequence of the development of character, as we see from the study of these force-centres that they surely will. That is the natural evolution; that is the only really safe way, for by it the student obtains all the benefits and avoids all the dangers. That is the Path which our Masters have trodden in the past; that therefore is the Path for us to-day."
