Is Alcohol Bad for Spiritual Awakening? | Eckhart Tolle Explains

Please don't think, okay, I'm going to become an alcoholic, then I'll go into aa and then I'll experience spiritual awakening. The ancient Romans believed in vino veritas. What do you believe about the effects of drink? And why do different people react in different ways in vino veritas? They said, in wine there is truth. I think it means. I suppose it means when people get drunk, they start telling the truth. Well, I have partly answered this question already. The effects of alcohol, once you are disidentified from the mind, awakened, I won't say, but not even necessarily totally permanently awakened, but relatively awakened, you will be able to drink alcohol if you want to. It will not affect your state of mind. And the desire to overindulge will most probably not be there. From my own experience, I enjoy more recently than before, a glass of wine with dinner, and sometimes even two, but almost never more than two. And usually just one. That's all. And that is a pleasure. If it's more than that, it's no longer a pleasure. It feels wrong, the body doesn't want it, the body even rejects it. And there's not the slightest desire to have more than that. For those people who are awakening, alcohol can be a hindrance, especially overindulgence in alcohol. As presence arises and you drink, you quickly lose the presence again, and it can activate and reactivate a lot of the unconsciousness in you, even pain bodies in some people. In some people, more men than women getting drunk over indulging in alcohol activates their pain bodies. So some men become violent when they drink, and they become even more unconscious than they are in their normal state, much more unconscious. But even if that's not the case with you, if presence is arising in you and you get even, let's say you overindulge once a week in alcohol, that can represent a significant setback in the arising consciousness. So you have to be very careful there. And if you know yourself and you know that you cannot stop yourself once you had one or two drinks, then it would be better not to drink at all. Once presence becomes your normal state, you don't need to be concerned anymore about drink. You may or may not have drink occasionally, and even if you were drunk, awareness would then still be there. Once you are established in presence, the awareness would still be there. I know that if I drank a whole bottle of wine, some people do that. Some people drink a whole bottle of wine every day. Not that I could ever do that. If I drank a whole bottle of wine, I would probably collapse. But until I collapse, the awareness would be totally there. The Ram Dass famous story had a guru in India, and Ram Dass, of course, was into lsd, heavily into lsd. And he gave his guru, what do they call it, hits, pills, whatever. He gave his guru two or three. Normally you take one, he gave him three or something like that. And the guru says, oh, I'll have another. Gave him four and give me another, give him five. And the guru put them in his mouth. And then Ram Dass sat there waiting for something to happen, and nothing happened. The guru sat there for a few hours and Vermdass was disappointed and also very impressed. On the one hand, disappointed because nothing happened, but very impressed because nothing happened. Wow. He took all that. And I believe that the guru did see or experience strange things, but he didn't show it externally because it did not affect his awareness. So his awareness, his witnessing awareness was always there. So he didn't act on anything that he perhaps visions or whatever he saw. The awareness remained undiminished. And in the meantime, he experienced strange things. Sense, heightened sense perceptions, visions, whatever. It makes no difference when the awareness is there. It makes little difference whether you see an actual person or whether you have a vision. It's just things that appear in the space of awareness. So the guru knew that, and the guru dwelt. It was the awareness. And so it didn't matter what he saw. It was just another spectacle to him. Nobody said that, but I know that's what he experienced. I took it once. So that's all. Awareness was not touched by that? No. Probably if he had taken 10 or something, I don't know what, he might have collapsed. But even then, awareness was there. So that's the. Sometimes people are surprised when they see that I occasionally have a glass of wine. Say you drink alcohol. Well, if my state of consciousness is so fragile that I can't even have a glass of wine, then what's the use of awakening? But if you have an addictive pull towards alcohol and presence is arising in you and you're pulled towards awakening, then it is very important to. To refrain completely. If that is one of the main areas that makes you unconscious in life, the addiction to alcohol. And you can then not, you cannot continue to have occasional drinks because as you know, when you have that addiction, an occasional drink is always more than an occasional drink. Because the moment you have the first drink already awareness diminishes. You have the second drink diminishes even more. The third drink is gone completely. So if that is your problem, then it is of absolute importance never to touch it. Otherwise you'll be going up, you're going up the escalator, and then it takes you down again. It's like, no, I think this analogy doesn't work. But you would continuously fall back. This is what I mean. You continuously fall. You make a little bit of progress. You go to a retreat, you come to a talk, you practice in daily life. Wonderful. A few days later, you go to a bar. Okay, I'm just going to have one drink, just one, because it makes me feel I deserve a treat. I've had a rough day. Okay, just one more. Oh, this feels so good. Third one. Can't do any harm, can it? Okay, I'm losing it already, so I might as well. This is the last time, but I'll do it again and again and again. And the next day you wake up totally in your mind, Body feels sick, totally in your mind, and you have to start all over again. So don't do it. Quite a few people over the years have come to me and have come to talks and retreats who, if they had not been alcoholics, would not be undergoing spiritual awakening. Quite a few people have come through aa, Alcoholics Anonymous. They do a lot of good work. They've come for the first time. They got in touch with the spiritual dimension through. And so if they had not been alcoholics, and of course AA encourages you to admit to yourself and to others, I am an alcoholic. And as long as you don't believe that that is the reality of who you truly are, it is a useful recognition, temporary recognition, because it's always good to face the reality instead of deny the reality. So once you face the reality as they do in aa, and then several people have said to me, if I hadn't been an alcoholic, I wouldn't be here now. But I suggest a more direct way rather than the long way around. Don't, please don't think. Okay, I'm going to become an alcoholic, Then I'll go into aa and then I'll experience spiritual awakening. It.