Random Patented Thoughts II III. Religiously simple! To imagine something, you have to see a precursor. Do you agree? Good. (if you don’t, stop wasting your time). Before the movie E.T came out in the 80’s, people hardly talked about the Roswell incident. Today, half the Americans believe that they have been abducted by aliens at some point in their lives. Amazingly, they all describe their kidnappers to look like the character from the movie. What a bloody coincidence eh? So what’s this have to do with Hindu Religion? Well, for a while step back and think about all the 330 million (tettis koti) gods and goddesses we claim to have: A god with an elephant’s trunk and a mouse as his ride, goddess with ten different hands blessed with the ride of a tiger, supreme god with his third eye right in the forehead and a king cobra wrapped around his blue neck. Fascinating! I can’t help thinking how brilliant the mind of the monk is who was able to imagine all this and give it such a vivid adornment. On the contrary, what kind of trip was our writer under when he/she sketched and wrote enthralling stories about them that has no dead end per se to speak of. So what were the daily nutrients of our monks who loved to disappear for years in the middle of the forest (often claiming they hadn’t/haven’t eaten anything)? Lets take a step back again. Often inscribed in our religious texts, our supreme god, Shiva is often referred to as “….bhang, DHATURA khane, nil khanta bhayeka and so so.” Dhatura is derived from a plant whose scientific name is Datura metel that has a highly psychoactive content. This plant has been extensively investigated by Wade Davis in his book “The Serpent and the Rainbow” on his trip to Haiti where he found how the priests made REAL ZOMBIES before the dead zombies transformed in Hollywood theaters. Ok enough digressing! Is it too far fetched to think that monks who wrote about our supreme gods were also on these psychoactive drugs when they sketched and wrote these fantastic stories? Given that they lived in a forest endowed with millions of different herbs? So how are the stories connected? Of course the stories were loosely based on the truth and once in while, when they got high with psychoactive herbs like datura (knowingly or unknowingly), they added their extraordinary weapon of imagination. For instance, there’s evidence of mahabharat war, but the special arrow that brought poisonous rain from the sky when hurled to the clouds is probably unlikely. When they saw a lady in the horse, they mistook it slightly with a lady with eight different hands riding a roaring tiger :P Get the drift? Of course, this does not explain all the spiritual and philosophical insights. But hey! Just because things haven’t been explained doesn’t mean they are supernatural unless you are an educated fool. Ok, just to push it a little further, was our Buddha too chewing on one of those wild mushrooms on the night of baisakh purnima? Why? Ask all the rockstars what Nirvana means!