MOHAMMED (Who has been reciting parts of the Koran regarding cattle, smells the food and come over to the fire to look into the pot.) What is this? Is there no meat?

JESUS Meat?

MOHAMMED Yes, meat. Something to get your teeth into, at least a bone for flavor.

BUDDHA You mean a dead animal?

MAMA COCA It is such a beautiful soup, why would you want to do that?

MOHAMMED For nourishment and strength and to make it tasty.

MAMA COCA It is not necessary, Senor, everything is here to sustain life without killing our little brothers and sisters.

MOHAMMED But Allah has given us cattle, birds on wing and fish from the seas for our sustenance.

PROFESSOR (Waking up) Yes, for the sustenance of some. But we are not all the same. Some have transcended the lower order of flesh eaters and take their nourishment from vegetables and flowers.

SHIVA (Returning from trance) Others subsist only on prana, the vital energy of the universe.

MAMA COCA When the fruit drops from the tree it is ready, it gives itself freely. No need to use force or cause pain.

BUDDHA Everyone wants to live, everything alive wants to stay alive. The enlightened person knows this and has respect for all living things.

JESUS Especially the ones that bleed and cry.

SHIVA He alone knows the truth who knows all living creatures as himself.

MAMA COCA There are many ways to make food tasty without taking life.

FATHER INNOCENT Animals have no souls, besides it was good enough for our Lord.

PROFESSOR Ah, yes, your Lord ate a few fishes it says somewhere in your book.

MAMA COCA (To Fr. Innocent) Come, good Padre, let me show you how to eat flesh without killing. No blood or pain, only pleasure for all concerned.

FATHER INNOCENT (Blushing) I am a man of God and have vowed celibacy for life.

PROFESSOR Deliverance through renunciation, salvation through torture. Chant and sing and count your beads. Your god is before you and not in some dark corner of the church. Open your eyes, Padre, under the skirts of life pulsates the most exquisite pleasure. Why do you deny yourself heaven now for some future dream?

MAMA COCA No fantasy? No pleasure of the hand?

FATHER INNOCENT (Silence)

MAMA COCA Then your celibacy is a sham, Senor. You torture yourself and thus feel you have a right to torture others? Your principles, Padre, are cloaks to hide your passions. And the dogma whose robes you wear fortifies the soullessness of the animal you eat. Is that why you wear them? A license to kill without sin? How convenient.

PROFESSOR They are all connected—vegetarianism, pacifism, new age cults, the fall of the Wall, the new Russian revolution, sex, drugs and rock and roll. The unifying thread of awakening runs through them all as the good fathers slumber in their cups and musty robes. They mutilate their brain cells with alcohol and scripture, their lungs with tobacco, their hearts with animal flesh and their genitals with ropes of shame.

FATHER INNOCENT God gives his faithful the upright path to follow.

PROFESSOR Has your god given you two kinds of morality as well, one you preach but never practice and another you practice but never preach? There (Pointing to Jesus) is the world’s only Christian and he’s dead. I think your god is dead too--or maybe he is out taking a smoke.

MOSES (Returns to the mundane plane. Rummaging around in his bundle he takes from it a branch of a plant and with the help of his staff hobbles over to the fire and throws it into the flames. Putting one end of his staff into the fire and the other into his mouth he takes several deep hits.) Thou shalt not do this, thou shalt not do that, no, no, no, not that. Come on, give me a good one.

MAMA COCA Thou shalt not impose an arbitrary system of morals on others, how about that one, Grandfather?

PROFESSOR Burning the bush again, eh?

MOSES (Passes Mama Coca the pipe.) Yes, Yes, oh my God, yes, that’s a good one. Thank you, young lady. The people need new commandments, they aren’t following the old ones at all, they don’t seem to get it.

PROFESSOR Transgression of rules is incumbent on a new world order.

FATHER INNOCENT How can we live together if we don’t follow the rules?

MOSES When the world of law is transgressed for the world of love, yes, but that is not what is happening.

PROFESSOR Rosy rhapsodies old man, your rules have a bit of nuisance value but that’s about it.

MOSES It has all been twisted by the wily politicians and high priests to gain and keep control.

PROFESSOR The paid clergy of the State.

RASTAMAN (Shouts from water’s edge.)

MOSES Your laws in America are based on my laws, what I brought down from the mountain after the burning bush spoke to me. Your laws are based on those laws, abuse one you abuse the other. The great treasure house of our wisdom, the Talmud, tells you to imagine yourself as the other person and to treat him accordingly. The help that you give him must be the help that you would want if you were in the same situation. But that has not been observed. Image has overcome reality and they twist and subvert in order to continue the illusion. Look what they do to their Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

JESUS If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times, forgive them for they know not what they do.

MOSES Yes, we can forgive them but there is a limit. One proceeds from the assumption that men and women are reasonable and intelligent beings. Certainly the men that wrote that document were. Why can’t this new age follow it? Have their standards dropped? Their ideals? To possess diverse political, religious and social views, to own and use property and produce and distribute goods freely is everyone’s right. It says, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty. But that is not the case. Millions they hound, thousands they incarcerate.

FATHER INNOCENT But the people that wrote the Constitution didn’t have knowledge of this drug plague that has infested the world, that is corrupting our youth with impiety and dangerous ideas.

SOCRATES That is what they said about me. They killed me for it.

PROFESSOR These Christian-Jewish ethics have been notable for their adaptability to violence and cruelty. The moral codes of the Old Testament are not applicable to strangers. You have to be one of the club for them to apply.

MOSES But that is not the way it was meant to be. These people are innocent, prisoners of conscience, political prisoners, religious prisoners, hounded by the thought-control police who use systematic surveillance, entrapment and other anti-democratic actions to enforce the state religion and it’s sacrament of alcohol. It is a war of religious repression. (He puts his staff into the fire and takes another hit.) First Amendment, religious users are deprived of their rights. Those who follow the good faith are denied the right to follow God’s biblical command to grow and use all the seed bearing plants. Fourth Amendment, unreasonable searches and seizures and secret witnesses. Fifth Amendment, enforced drug testing violates self incrimination protection and is based on assumed guilt. Seventh Amendment, seizure and forfeiture of property without due process and jury trial. Eighth Amendment, cruel and unusual punishment. For shame for shame, for shame. These people want to practice their faith, that’s why I led my people out of bondage and these jackals are putting them back in. All that suffering for nothing, all those forty years of wandering, for what? Tch, tch, tch. (Sadly shaking his head he takes another hit from his staff and sits back down next to his stone tablet.) All for a little bush. If they only knew…

FATHER INNOCENT But these drug people are the modern day Canaanites whom God commanded Moses to destroy.

PROFESSOR And you destroy and exterminate as easily now as you did two thousand years ago, though a little more subtle and refined, we must admit.

RASTAMAN

CHIEF ROADMAN (Puffing on his feathered, ceremonial pipe.) When my people roamed the land many years ago they knew the healing qualities of all the plants and herbs that surrounded them. They would gather in the desert to eat the medicine and under the stars and moon would sing and pray all night long and weep with the joy of the Great Spirit. Thus their eyes and hearts were washed clean, their souls were purified and they were more prepared to face the trials and tribulations of a difficult life. One must fly high to pass over the winds of turbulence and enter into the gateway of the clouds where our Mother and Father live, where we are greeted with visions of great beauty, where we hear the voices of our divine ancestors who give us guidance. This is where we would go to complete ourselves, to regain balance, to see and understand, to burn away transgressions and become new, a symbolic return to our original state. By means of the medicine plants and singing and chanting and drumming one can jump out of oneself, out of one’s skin and one’s little spirit can merge with Great Spirit. Now we are criminals in our own land. Our women were raped, our young men killed or driven into slavery, our land and religion taken from us and our sacraments replaced by the white man’s devil water which now their scientists tell us is a disease we have.

PROFESSOR Ha? The disease myth. The determination of what is a disease is not done in the laboratory but by the political process. The disease myth may help some who have little or no personal power but it is nevertheless a myth. Metaphor is quite different from literal, the symbolic is different from the actual and it is reprehensible for scientists to say otherwise.

FATHER INNOCENT Drugs are a disease of the soul.

PROFESSOR The soul is an abstraction, my friend, and has no physical reality. Disease is only of the body. Drug use is a behavior, a mode of conduct that we control by choice.

FATHER INNOCENT But once the physical factor takes hold more than will power is needed to reverse the addiction. (He touches the breast of his cassock where the silver flask with the embossed cross and obscure Latin inscription snugly rests.)

PROFESSOR (Taking a pinch from a small container and dusting his nose.) You are looking for excuses for your desires, Padre. People become addicted who believe in addiction but it is all a behavior of choice, a function of free will. Addiction, as you know, from the Latin "dicere", infinitive form along with the preposition "ad", means to give consent, accept willingly, to say yes. Abdication, on the other hand, also originating from "dicere" but with the preposition "ab", means to go away from. Both imply a behavioral choice, do they not? We can say yes, we can say no and whether our choice produces a destructive or healthy outcome the choice is ours. Those who are strong, with will, we can say yes because we know that tomorrow we can say no.

FATHER INNOCENT And the others?

PROFESSOR The others? (Shrugs) They will try again in another life.

FATHER INNOCENT How cold and unfeeling you are.

PROFESSOR It has nothing to do with feeling but with reality. It is all karma, is it not? Action, reaction, strength begets strength, weakness begets weakness. A man’s character is dependent only upon himself. What you sow you will reap, I think it says somewhere in your book.

FATHER INNOCENT And what do we do with the poor devils now? Shoot them out into space?

PROFESSOR Not a bad idea, I’m sure the governments are working on it. They are only poor devils because of the laws. The people that make the laws are the real devils. Tomorrow if they pass a law against gin or brandy you will be a wanted man.

FATHER INNOCENT But there must be an ideal, a model for purity and righteousness.

PROFESSOR That is a fiction, Padre, an ideal is an escape from what you are, from what is, a construct of the ego.

FATHER INNOCENT Then how is one to act? Blindly? With no ideals or principles?

PROFESSOR Is the man who cultivates virtue, virtuous? A conscious cultivation of virtue is a perpetuation of self interest in respectable garb. Ideals are a way of postponing real change and thus an impediment. To discover anything one must look and in order to look one must be silent. True knowledge only finds room in a silent mind. You must reject all ideas, opinions, constructs, habits, preferences, in a silent mind, only in a silent mind. Excuse me now. (He nods off.)

FATHER INNOCENT Adam had free will before the fall, until another depraved female corrupted him as she is trying to do. (He looks at Mama Coca.) Only by God’s grace do we escape eternal damnation for we are all sinners, wicked to the core of our being and only the Elect will be saved and go to heaven.

PROFESSOR (Mumbling, half awake.) The Elect? And who might they be?

FATHER INNOCENT Those with pure and austere morals and who obey the law. Virtue is rewarded in heaven and sin is punished in hell.

SHIVA Only a man who is a true man of God, an emancipated being who lives continually in that spirit, only he can be of the Elect.

PROFESSOR Not those who put on costumes and tell us they are spiritual teachers. You can’t drink the wine and bugger the choir boys and expect us to bow down in supplication.

BUDDHA No virtue that has its roots in fear can have much value.

PROFESSOR But you have two kinds of saints, do you not? The one produced by nature and the one produced by fear. The first has a true love for mankind and does good because it gives others happiness. The saint produced by fear abstains from evil or wrong doing because he is afraid to get caught by the police or by hell fire and damnation. The society of your so-called Elect is a most fatal and seductive lie, another chain around the necks of the people, the bungled and botched who live in illusion, they are easy to intimidate and lulled to sleep with fairytales. But fear not for the noble man is on the horizon with more strength, more will, more courage. They are coming, the Supermen, biologically superior, smarter, more capable of acquiring wealth and power and the ability to rule.

BUDDHA And the outcastes, the miserable and the poor, the botched and bungled as you call them? The wretched of the earth, the hungry and sick, what about them?

PROFESSOR Good god, man, who needs them? (Pointing to the Sufi.) Would the world be worse off without him? Or the good Father here, for that matter? Set them to work what is fit for them and not treat them too kindly. If they are not obedient then the hand of authority is necessary. Give them alcohol and television and plenty of tobacco, they must not think too clearly or they will rise up with the brutish demands.

FATHER INNOCENT But the innocent casualties, the crack babies that are born without a chance, the heroin overdoses, the madness that results from being pushed over the edge, the thousands and thousands of people caught in the web of the Great Deceiver’s plan to conquer the world.

PROFESSOR Not nearly so dramatic, my good sir. Have you not heard of the impotence principle? Only if some things are impossible can other things be. Waste is inevitable. Waste produces progress and conserves advances. We are all here because of waste for there is no heredity without mutation and since most mutations are bad their production and elimination serve no useful purpose other than being waste which we might call necessary uselessness. Natural selection preserves each tiny element of progress and all the rest is evolutionary trash to be used in another form, at another time.

BUDDHA Anicca, all is change, all is impermanent, the nature of all compounded things.

PROFESSOR Adaptability insures survival. Only those that can change with their environment will survive. When the population becomes genetically uniform the species loses this adaptability. AIDS, alcoholism, drug abuse, cancer, pollution and continuing warfare are all part of a gestalt that tells us we have reached a high degree of rigidity and finality in our biological, social and spiritual evolution.

MADAM BLAVATSKY We must reset our receivers for wavelengths other than those of normal, everyday reality. We must tap into those experiences of subjective reality that are infinite, for inside is where the answers lie.

LAO TZU Manifest Tao has no objective value. Hence, silence is better than argument.

FATHER INNOCENT And that is done with drugs?

MADAM BLAVATSKY That is done by biochemical modification of the brain field. The external world sends us information and the ego translates it from its limited perspective. The less ego the more open become the channels of understanding and the more options are available to us. The ancients had the time for the gradual unfolding of insight. We don’t.

FATHER INNOCENT And the difference between everyday reality and the reality encountered with these satanic substances?

SOCRATES (Taking a swig of peyote/mushroom tea.) Noetic lightening strikes and one is never the same. Your ordinary world is instantly replaced by another more spacious, deeper and more meaningful than the one left behind. Here you call it nirvana or samadhi, the experience of realities which are illuminated by that transcendental reality in which all creation is understood as ONE and all ego boundaries dissolve into the ether as everything comes to life and you see and know that it is all a part of you and you are a part of IT and that it is the same breath that gives life to all of us. In ancient Greece it was called the Mysteries of Eleusis.

MADAM BLAVATSKY Liberation is a return to inward being, to subjectivity. Bondage is enslavement to the objective world, to necessity, to dependence.

SHIVA (Taking a hit from his chillum.) The breath of life is one. When we breathe, God breathes. He is the breath of life, we are the consciousness of life and it is the consciousness of life that becomes the breath of life becomes the consciousness of life. (He takes another big hit and as he exhales…) This is my breath, OOOOOMMMMM

SOCRATES For the man who knows, the light of truth will shine. For the man that does not know, there is only darkness.

FATHER INNOCENT But Adam ate this fruit of madness, fell prey to this evil ecstasy, and look what happened to him, to all of us, because of it. Artificial paradise brings only sin and suffering in its wake.

PROFESSOR Adam? If indeed there was an Adam who ate the fruit, he woke up. But few believe that fairytale anymore. Paradise is paradise however it is gained, Padre, and I am more inclined to think that your Adam was a baboon in the jungle who found a certain kind of plant that he incorporated into his diet which eventually conferred on him the gift of consciousness. Or let us say that Mrs. Baboon, shall we call her Eve? found maybe a mushroom or the fruit of the cannabis plant which she gave to Mr. Baboon and he shot straight up to heaven thus establishing the first religious experience and the foundation on which all future religions will be built.

FATHER INNOCENT That’s blasphemy! Heresy! A lie!

PROFESSOR And of course when the other baboons saw that Adam and Eve Baboon were having a joyful, ecstatic experience they wanted to have some too and thus the first religious war started. Everybody wants to go to heaven. We have been fighting ever since over the best way to get there.

FATHER INNOCENT It is madness as well as blasphemy!

PROFESSOR Does science have a better answer on how we evolved? How did language suddenly evolve? Symbolization? Civilization? Culture? What was the key factor in all this conscious activity? Three to five million years ago our species went through a dramatic change. Perhaps, my good Father, just perhaps, the mushrooms, ergot fungus, cannabis and other visionary vegetables stimulated the activity of the brain to such a degree that speech and symbol forming capacities resulted. What other explanation do we have? A telos sent down from above? A missing link whose bones have yet to be discovered? It seems that sooner or later our monkey ancestors would have encountered psychoactive plants in their forages for food and journeys into inner space would have commenced, the first step in the exploration of a rudimentary consciousness and its eventual ascent into the god realms.

FATHER INNOCENT God made the world, just like it is, in six days and rested on the seventh.

PROFESSOR And these plants, all against the law now, mind you, may have been the catalyst that separates or distinguishes us from our monkey brothers and sisters. Dance, music, art, language, speech, imagination, all of the functions both mental and physical that we associate with humanness could have emerged as a result of interactions with these plants.

FATHER INNOCENT This is taboo, taboo, not fit for the ears of the people.

PROFESSOR Are you a law unto yourself? Like sex, you hide the secrets from the people so you alone can profit from them. The mysteries of where we came from, who and what we are and where we are going, information only the highest were privy to is now open to all. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the agony and ecstasy of life…(Dusting his nose), a nickel bag to heaven. It is the evolutionary urge we are fulfilling, our duty to humanity…

MADAM BLAVATSKY … To investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man. And the biggest power latent in man is the power to grow, to expand, become more, to evolve, and that is really what the plants do, assist people in the evolutionary process by guiding them on their inner voyage. It is man’s highest dharma, to fulfil the eternal law, his highest duty to himself and the world.

FATHER INNOCENT All of this is against the law and it’s destroying our society, our families, innocent lives, (Shouting) Can’t you see that!

PROFESSOR Yes, I see that. Your time is near and you fight like wild monkeys trapped in a corner. Your world is crumbling and you bare your teeth as you desperately produce fanatics who want to chop off heads and build more prisons under the guise of rehabilitation.

FATHER INNOCENT We need more doctors and experts, more priests and religious to minister to this deep affliction of the spirit that so many have fallen to. This is the only way.

PROFESSOR Ah, yes, the learned doctors, the Lords of the bench and pulpit, the same men of moral righteousness who sat in judgement of other enemies of the State; Christ, Joan of Arc, Socrates, Rajneesh, men who have no understanding of the social, biological and spiritual phenomenon they sit and judge. Drug users are considered unproductive, a symbol of a nation’s decline in both gross national product and morality. They are not living up to their function.

MADAM BLAVATSKY Human metaphors for a decaying society with the unspoken and awful possibility that they are actually the result of the decay rather than the cause.

FATHER INNOCENT And what of future generations, what of the children? If they are afflicted with this disease of drugs what will happen to the world? They must be told the truth, what do we tell them?

SHIVA (Drawing himself up to his full teaching position.) Let them know that these magical substances are medicine for the body, mind and soul, treasures that have been given to us for healing and growth, for transformation. Tell them the difference between a medicine, narcotic and poison is only one of dosage and intention, and the utmost respect and sensitivity is required if they are going to experiment with their nervous system and the temple that houses it. Let them act with responsibility and discrimination and in the awareness that both heavens and hells may be met along the way and that the fast path is not for everyone. Let them know and understand that there is a karmic price for everything and success as well as failure extracts its due. And let them feel no guilt in their urge to explore, to seek the spirit in their own way, for the central aim of life is to realize the divine in oneself and there is no single road to that experience. "Whoever comes to me through whatsoever form, I reach," says Krishna.

MADAM BLAVATSKY Forget this disease nonsense, Padre, once substance use is categorized under the rubric of disease it falls under the control of the legal-political-medical establishment, the power brokers of society and the ones least qualified to understand and give guidance because they are the ones with the most to lose by illegal drugs becoming legal and because they are resonating on a different level of consciousness and thus a different reality. They are the real criminals because they are in opposition to the law of nature. People have a right to take drugs because it is their nature to do so. That is a fundamental truth and there is no religion higher than truth.

RASTAMAN (Shouting from a top step.)

SOCRATES Truth and freedom are one and the same and if the State abandons the pursuit of freedom, if it fails to enrich the spirit of man with truth, then it is soulless and utterly worthless. All of the great advances in scientific activity and knowledge occurred during that time when the mind of man was not under the heavy foot of authority. When the mind soars freely the mysteries are revealed and the State is enriched, everyone profits.

BEARY (From the sidelines) Aristotle said if the State is to endure it must educate the youth in the spirit of its Constitution. The spirit, not the letter, not a rigid, dogmatic interpretation but the spirit, man! Question authority is not just a bumper sticker, it’s profound wisdom.

PROFESSOR (To Mohammed.) You’re riding around on winged horses all the time having divine hallucinations, you must have been taking some kind of drug.

MOHAMMED Absolutely not!

PROFESSOR And these leaves that you chew? That bundle you have there in your bag? (Pointing to Mohammed’s camel bag.)

MOHAMMED This is a staple of my people for coolness of mind. The desert life burns hard and we take strength and courage from it. Allah gives his faithful refreshments from paradise. This we call the flower of paradise.

PROFESSOR And the effects? The buzzzzzzz?

MOHAMMED Effects? No effects. It is a social lubricant, a pick me up, you could say, and is a part of our afternoon solemn hour when the chewer forgets his mundane problems and ruminates on loftier thoughts.

PROFESSOR Such as?

MOHAMMED The great mysteries of life, world politics. Brilliant ideas buzz through your head, solutions are made clear.

PROFESSOR Almost like Allah speaking?

MOHAMMED It is Allah speaking. The great Imam Yahya Hamid ad-Din declared that all good Muslims could partake of the flower as he himself did.

PROFESSOR Some would say you are using a drug.

MOHAMMED Only the ignorant would say such a thing. Allah gives the faithful natural medicine and Satan corrupts it in the laboratory. This just makes you more normal. This is the custom of my people. Alcohol is the great evil.

PROFESSOR Eighty lashes, is it not, for taking a sip of wine?

MOHAMMED Yes, but only forty for a slave.

PROFESSOR And for chewing these leaves? What is the penalty?

MOHAMMED Penalty? A taste of paradise could not be called to penalty. It is a reward. Praise be to Allah! (He kneels down on his prayer rug and does a few salaams toward Mecca.)
FATHER INNOCENT The law of nature is god’s law, divine command, and is not inspired by human legislation.

PROFESSOR Natural law is what is natural to man, what is in his nature to do and jurisprudence is remiss if it does not bend before custom and usage, before continued consensus. It is man’s nature to explore his psyche, his soul, if there is such a thing, his mind, the inner depths of his being and any law that denies him this right is an abomination.

MOHAMMED These health corrosive poisons make the consumer a prisoner, depression deepens into despair that turns into a terrible mania and the creativity of the nation dies a miserable death because of this vice.

FATHER INNOCENT The war on drugs is a battle for moral values and a crusade for human dignity against sin and disease.

MOHAMMED Homo narcoticus is Satan incarnate and a crime against Allah.

PROFESSOR Arbitrary morals, gentlemen, the violation of which does not interfere with the rights or freedom of others. The higher morals, like thou shalt not kill, do interfere with the rights of others so by definition it is a violation of higher morals (Dusting his nose) to deny me my pursuit of happiness. You cannot make up your minds what it is, sin, vice, disease or crime so you lump them all together when in reality it is none of them.

SOCRATES The golden mean, my friends, the golden mean, we must find the balance that is between right reason and excessive behavior, all things in moderation, the middle way (Nodding to Buddha) as my colleague says. People possess intrinsic value and moral sensibilities beyond the scope of civil law.

BUDDHA Thus I have heard, as rational beings we are thinking creators and capable of controlling the self. Control means neither inhibition or indulgence but implies discipline, freedom through discipline and discipline through freedom.

SOCRATES There is truly a law which is right reason, fitted to our nature, constant and everlasting. It can neither be evaded or amended nor wholly abolished…one law, everlasting and unchangeable, extending to all nations and at all times. What is right, what is just, is natural law, and it goes beyond man made law, beyond civil law for when civil law violates the principles of individual rights, when it usurps individual freedoms that should be ours by our very nature as rational and free human beings it should be abolished, for unjust laws are not really laws because they are against nature, they have the appearance of law but impose no moral obligation. Tell that to your children.

FATHER INNOCENT But that is anarchy! We are a nation of laws, not individuals who can do as they please! This natural law of yours is inspired by the devil, not by divine command.

PROFESSOR Natural law is not theist law, Padre, we are not all theists, and even in your country there are many faiths and beliefs that do not share your papist fantasy that you are the ultimate norm of morality and all must follow or be damned. Your Christian-Judeo traditions and that gentleman (Nods to Moses.) came up with the idea of eternal law with his Jewish god as the supreme lawgiver based on his revelations and the king’s divine right to rule. Gone were individual rights for everyone was turned into an instrument of the State and their value was derived from their function instead of their intrinsic human nature and worth.

BUDDHA No one can be free until we are all free.

FATHER INNOCENT And how can that be? Only by God’s grace.

PROFESSOR Your constitution. Just follow it. Your Declaration Of Independence. Read it again. It’s up to you, not your Christian god.

SOCRATES (Quoting) "…and let the people assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." (The pipe is passed to him and he takes a deep and reverential hit.) Bom Shiva! (Passes pipe to Buddha who takes a hit and passes it around the circle.)

BUDDHA Bom Shiva!

JESUS Bom Shiva!

MAMA COCA Bom Shiva!

MADAM BLAVATSKY Bom Shiva!

RASTAMAN Bom Shiva!

SUFI (Stops spinning long enough to take a hit.) Bom Shiva!

LAO TZU Bom Shiva!

CHIEF ROADMAN Bom Shiva!

MARIA SABINA Bom Shiva!

MOSES Bom Shiva!

SHIVA Bom Shiva!

FATHER INNOCENT But our Christian God as you call him appointed the men who wrote those documents. It is all God’s work.

PROFESSOR And those gentlemen grew and used those leafy green substances in their pipes that your gestapo puts people in jail for now in your country. Even the paper those documents were written on was made from the holy hemp plant. How wonderful is your god’s work, eh? Now only are the drug laws in violation of the constitution but most of the State sanctioned rehabilitation programs are Christian boot camps attempting to convert values and beliefs and in complete violation of the separation of church and state. Camus said when politics meets religion the offspring is the Inquisition.

BEARY Or as my old grampa used to say when government gets into bed with God every body gets screwed.

PROFESSOR Man has been consuming substances of no nutritive value from the beginning of recorded history for no other purpose than to produce a feeling of contentment and comfort, which one could say is one of the ultimate experiences, so few being available.

FATHER INNOCENT Life is full of ultimate experiences and drugs are one only by the stretch of a perverted imagination.

PROFESSOR And your communion wine?

FATHER INNOCENT We can drink our communion wine because it is the blood of our Lord.

SHIVA And we smoke our pipes for within them is contained the breath of God, that breathes this body yet is of another world.

MARIA SABINA (Who has been sitting silently wrapped in her rebozo.) There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby, and invisible. And there is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints, a world where everything has already happened and everything is known. That world talks, it has language of its own and I report what it says. The sacred mushroom takes me by the hand and brings me to the world where everything is known. It is they, the sacred mushrooms, that speak in a way that I can understand. I tell you what they have told me and what they have shown me. I am the spider woman. I am the hummingbird woman, I am the eagle woman, the fish woman, the woman who thunders, the woman who cries, woman of the shooting stars, woman of the heavens, woman of the earth am I, All woman am I, Every woman am I.

LAO TZU (Sitting on his haunches and blowing out a long, thin, dragon of thick, rich smoke.) When man is born, he is tender and weak, at death he is hard and stiff. When plants are alive, they are soft and supple. When they are dead they become brittle and dry. Therefore, hardness and stiffness are companions of death, and softness and gentleness are companion of life. When a tree is hard it will be cut down, the big and strong belong underneath, the gentle and weak belong at the top.

BUDDHA Soft as a rose, hard as a thunder bolt.

JESUS The first shall be last and the last shall be first, the angels and prophets of your time.

FATHER INNOCENT Angels of death! How can you call drug dealers angels?

MAMA COCA Angels of life, new life that makes you beautiful inside, new sight for the blind, rebirth in glorious luminosity!

MOSES A new prophet or angel is needed to herald in the next great American renewal.

SHIVA Have you not heard? The prophet Carlos is now among your people

MOHAMMED The Prophet Who?

SHIVA Carlos, Carlos, a wise man from America!

MOHAMMED Who is he? I’ve never heard of him. What does he have to say?

FATHER INNOCENT One of those psychedelic mutants from the 1960’s proclaiming liberation and anarchy.

SHIVA (Reading from a scroll he has taken from his bag.) The Proclamation of Liberation. We the citizens allied for the real liberation of our society hereby proclaim the real liberation of our society. We proclaim that the sacrament of God, known as hemp, cannabis, ganja and a multitude of other names is now liberated. All laws restricting its use cultivation or trade are now proclaimed invalid, illegitimate and illegal. It is proclaimed liberated for all of its 50,000 uses including fuel, fiber, food, pharmacopeia and fun. All those who attempt to enforce or execute any of the aforementioned invalid laws are hereby proclaimed criminals. We proclaim this liberation for not only all of humanity, but for all plants, all animals, and earth. We proclaim that any government in the world which attempts to prevent the implementation of this proclamation is invalid, illegitimate and illegal. We proclaim that it is the sacred and holy duty of all citizens of the world to overthrow every one of these invalid governments. We proclaim that the Age of Aquarius has now begun. We proclaim that Sat Yuga has now begun. We proclaim that the millenium has now begun. We proclaim peace on earth.

MOHAMMED Another drug-crazed madman, whose head the sword of Allah shall take with pleasure one day soon.

MOSES He is saying that the people must be liberated, he is saying they must be free to practice their religion, he is saying that when government keeps the people in bondage and perpetual humiliation it is the people’s God given right to overthrow that domination.

MOHAMMED Reform through divinely inspired revelation is the proper way.

FATHER INNOCENT This false prophet wants a government run by a bunch of drug crazies. Sex and fun, you heard, he said fun. The soul of the sluggard has nothing and that is the reason why. The sword of the Lord is needed with such people or the cloven hooves of their lecherous degeneracy will overrun us.

BUDDHA Thus have I heard, social objectives can best be gained by persuasion and dialogue, not force and suppression of civil rights. Democracy can be practiced on drugs, but not with guns or swords.

PROFESSOR Come, come, gentlemen, blockheads will always war against their superiors if given the chance. The gun is natural to man, an extension of the organ he loves so much yet feels so guilty about. With one he creates, with the other he destroys. Only man exterminates his own with such precision and relish, almost as if bloodletting is a basic, biological need, the fulfilling of a primal urge he has no control over.

MOHAMMED Or for profit and plunder. Women and gold. Economics.

PROFESSOR Women and gold, yes, and we can add to that drugs. Economics deals with the production, distribution and consumption of wealth and attempts to determine what is valuable (He sniffs and rubs his nose.) It studies the relative exchange values of goods and services at a given time and its models and theories are based on a value system and view of human nature that is not always consistent with reality. To wit: The fantastic wealth generated by these sacraments that is such an integral part of the economy…

BEARY (Who has been on a upper step listening to all this but can contain himself no longer.) Hey, man, those bozos don’t realize what they’re missing. Ten billion a year they spend on the drug war trying to eradicate a product that is America’s largest cash crop. What convoluted thinking, what stupidity, man, all that money going to the crooks when it could be going into the U.S. Treasury, all the money people would save if they didn’t have such a big monthly pot bill. Their heads are in the sand. Fifty million of us blowing all the cash up into the air and Big Brother isn’t getting a dime. I thought he was supposed to be so smart? If he really wants to have an economic pow-wow that has any meaning he should get all those pointy-headed advisors together, take their shoes off and sit down on the floor of the White House and smoke a few bowls. I think they’d pretty quick come up with some new answers.

PROFESSOR The rapid rise of capitalism in your country has often been attributed to the religious values and motives that provided the emotional push, the energy of the Puritans. The protestant work ethic resulted, work hard, save, be self denying and worldly success and your god’s grace will be yours. And frugality and saving was the backbone of that success. Take that away and the whole structure flounders. (Rubbing his nose) Who can save anymore?

BEARY That same spirit, that energy of the original Puritans, is still there but underground. The smart leader should activate that, not attempt to squash it down, which can’t e done anyway. History should tell them that. Go with the flow, go with the tide. It’s a more gentle ride and you can’t win anyway going against it.

PROFESSOR Man. A complex mass of mental and nervous habits bound together by desires and ideas, a jumble of forces with no destination but chance dictated by his senses, his organs of pleasure.

FATHER INNOCENT We gain the strength of the temptations we resist. Our strengths grow out of our weaknesses.

SHIVA To exist means to change. To be incomplete and open, to develop. Existence is part of a system but is not enclosed in that system. God needed a brain to express himself through. Evolution tells us that organs develop in response to a need, the function precedes the organ. So why not the brain? Mind came first, was all pervading, then gradually through many eons of evolutionary time fashioned and perfected this incredible organ to express itself through. And now that mind continues to grow and expand through the substances it created for itself, food for the mind, food for the gods, food that God created by, and for, Himself.

MAMA COCA Man must fall before he can rise, he must go down to the depths of the human condition before he can transcend. We are his angels. We fly the heavens on silver wings to give the brethren a taste of bliss, a glimpse of paradise, a feeling of happiness. Some people live in the god realms, others are here to serve. You know, the angel thing, Papa.

SOCRATES Is not good feeling a condition of appreciation? When we partake of this ambrosia we feel more deeply, we appreciate more fully, everyone wants to feel more, to have deeper and more meaningful experiences. It is a friend that gently guides you down these corridors and deepens the quality of your experiences. It is one of those little joys in life, people are starving for meaning in their lives and the old ways are not working anymore. Never is a man born whose work is not born with him. They are angels born to the task of keeping the world high and in the heaven realms.

FATHER INNOCENT You live in a world of dreams.

SOCRATES If we learn to dream, my friend, perhaps we can find the truth.

FATHER INNOCENT Drowsy fantasies can never know the truth. It is all in your imagination.

PROFESSOR Imagination is light. It is a new reality that is in the process of being created. Light weaving itself into new patterns and shapes, ideas and forms from the past that continue to grow, that small part, the seed whose nourishment comes from what it takes into itself.

FATHER INNOCENT And why don’t you use the acceptable drugs that are not against the law? (He taps a LUCKY on his thumbnail.)

MAMA COCA Because they are poison, good Padre, you are about to take ten minutes off your life. The government drugs keep the population down and the people in a state of contented coma or hypnosis which makes it easier for the masters of propaganda to do their work. It is not pleasure but death you put into your body. Is your life so miserable? (To Mohammed) Take me riding on your winged horse Great Prophet, and show me the pleasures of your paradise and I will show you the pleasures of mine.

MOHAMMED Be off Satan!

FATHER INNOCENT Oh, why hath God wrought this burden of pleasure, these evil ecstasies?

BUDDHA Let no man cling to what is pleasant or unpleasant. Not to have what is pleasant is pain and it is also pain to have what is unpleasant.

MARIA SABINA The more you go inside the world of Teonanacatl the more things are seen, your past and future which are there together as a single thing, already achieved, already happened… I saw stolen horses and buried cities, the existence of which was unknown, millions of things I saw and knew. I saw God and knew him, I saw an immense clock that ticks, the wheels that slowly go around and inside the stars, the earth, the entire universe, the day and the night, the cry and the smile, the happiness and the pain, I know them all, I have seen the secret of the infinite clockwork.

FATHER INNOCENT Crazy old woman. Misfits and malcontents, all of you. Heathens! Monkeys, elephants, penises, clockworks, you’re all crazy, you’re all deranged because of these drugs.

SOCRATES All of the great advances in the world have been made by the misfits and malcontents.

BEARY Most of us come into the world "on drugs" so is it any wonder that we have an appetite for them during our life? We get hooked in the birth canal. Anesthesia they call it. Later when the learned doctors ring the pharmaceutical bell we dutiful patients salivate and run to the pharmacy and plunk down our twenty dollar bill for instant relief, beyond the worldly dimension of pain and suffering.

FATHER INNOCENT They enslave you, only with God’s grace. (Crossing himself.)

MAMA COCA They can liberate or enslave. Some say there is no intoxicant greater than the love of man for woman… or woman for man. They say sex is the most powerful drug of all leading to the attainment of magical powers, alluring, seductive powers over yourself and others.

FATHER INNOCENT (Blushing) I have no need for such powers. Sex magic is a double sin.

MAMA COCA But you do have a need to free yourself from the confines of your self, from your ego. Prayer has not done it I can see. Denial has left lines of sorrow on your face, not joy.

FATHER INNOCENT In imitation of our Lord. I am of the cloth and have taken Christ as my spouse. Sex in marriage is not sinful as long as the intention is to beget offspring and without lust but even then it is a shameful act or people wouldn’t hide in the dark.

MAMA COCA Tell me about lust, Papa.

FATHER INNOCENT Lust is a terrible disease because it is independent of the will, it is a punishment for Adam’s sin, for eating the apple, the forbidden fruit. Of every tree in the garden he could have eaten, why did he have to eat that one? God told him he would surely die.

MAMA COCA But he did not die. His eyes became open and be became like God, they became self-conscious.

FATHER INNOCENT Ashamed of their nakedness and the growing lust, the wickedness between their legs, they wove fig leaves into aprons to cover themselves. (He blushes and covers his lap with his Bible.)

MAMA COCA They became self conscious, Papa, self consciousness is the difference between us and the monkeys, between the human and the animal world.

FATHER INNOCENT But they did die. They died to their divinity.

MAMA COCA Or did they wake up? One must die in order to be reborn.

FATHER INNOCENT Reborn to a life of drudgery for Adam, for Eve to suffer the pangs of childbirth for ever, this is what they were reborn to.

MAMA COCA For disobeying the Big Papa, eh? She saw the tree was good for food and a delight to the eyes, she saw that the fruit would make her wise. We all want to eat, we all want to see beauty instead of ugliness, we all want to be wise. And we all want to be free of chains that bind us. It was an experience of awakening for them both, a chance to throw off the chains of their oppressors and rulers, those big papas who want to control everything.

SOCRATES Eleusis was the supreme experience in an initiate’s life, of this the ancient testimony was unanimous. It was as if sight was given us after a long blindness, a sense of awe and wonder that words were unequal to, a brilliance and a profound silence that could never be communicated.

LAO TZU Silence is the way of Tao. He who knows does not speak.

FATHER INNOCENT Satan comes to us in many forms, as beautiful women (Looking at Mama Coca.) who prey on innocent men or as yellow Fu Manchus (Looking at Lao Tzu) preying on Christian white women. It all comes back to sex, sex, sex, sex. Moral insanity, a vice of the evil hearted and licentious. All of these drugs are alien blasphemy.

BEARY (Shouts down) You never saw anyone fall down in the gutter with a joint in their hand!

FATHER INNOCENT The drugs are responsible for the most terrifying plague of all, the epidemic of the devil, the purple patches, the stigmata is a satanic infestation released through the medium of drugs in order to conquer the world. It has already become evident in the body politic. They breed like rabbits, intemperate and debauched, and soon the world will be overrun. To derive pleasure from drugs and sex is not only immoral but is scientifically abnormal as well and those that have been led down that path are now paying the price for their sins. Sodom and Gomorrah all over again. Carefree pleasure seekers. A disease of the spirit, a disorder of the soul….

BEARY (Shouting from the top.) We are seekers, man! We are questers! We’re trying to figure out what it’s all about, just like you!

FATHER INNOCENT Normal people only experience relief from pain when they take drugs, not pleasure.

BUDDHA Everybody is in pain. To experience relief from pain is pleasure.

MAMA COCA What is wrong with pleasure?

SHIVA It is one of the four goals in life.

FATHER INNOCENT You must surrender your will to another, another person or a substance.

MAMA COCA It is called being vulnerable, good Padre, to be open and trusting. The sacrament releases you and opens you to the power of the soul. For many people it is the only way to get out of the mental consciousness that controls them.

BUDDHA To be sick is to suffer, to be lonely is to suffer, to be controlled by another is to suffer. All is suffering.

FATHER INNOCENT Suffering paves the way to God. When you recognize your need and helplessness in this chaos, then the grace can penetrate and an awakening can take place. It is the only way.

BUDDHA Be a lamp unto yourself.

PROFESSOR Grace comes only from you. All of this suffering is masochism. You cultivate pain and suffering as a way to salvation but you get stuck in the suffering and never go any further. But be that as it may, it that’s what turns you on, OK. But why force that on everyone else?

FATHER INNOCENT A shepherd’s duty to his flock.

PROFESSOR (Laughing) But we are not all of your flock! But you fellows keep trying, eh? (Dusting his nose from his little box.) And this is the question, to suffer or not to suffer, the fundamental dichotomy in the war on drugs. Some of us crave suffering, some of us crave not to suffer, or pleasure as you call it. Your alcohol gives you pleasure but it makes me suffer. The chemistry is wrong. No matter how much you preach you cannot change the chemistry. No matter how much legislation is passed you cannot change the chemistry. (Shouts up to the COP) What do you think about all this Officer?

POLICEMAN (Coming out of his shack and down a few steps.) It is the poor man medicine, Sahib, a little something to get one through a hard day. A great benefit for such a little sin. (He smiles as he accepts the pipe and takes a hit.) There are those that say bad things but that is for the newspaper and for those that give aid. Our government would never take away the poor man’s pleasure. It is part of our life. Our God smokes and eats it. It is part of our religion. And we are a democracy. There are many things we don’t have but we all have the liberty to worship our gods.

SOCRATES Liberty gives you the ability to control your own mind and body, your life, without interference from others. Tyrants claim they are promoting higher freedoms like the common good, security and equality as justification for denying you these basic liberties but it is coercion in fancy dress.

RASTAMAN Put a pig in a silk suit he’s still a pig! (He gives another shake of his behind.)

PROFESSOR (To Father Innocent) You practice a technique of suffering, to suffer more while they (nods to Buddha and Shiva) practice a technique to rid themselves of suffering and the use of these substances is part of that technique to empty the mind.

BUDDHA When the mind is empty the suffering stops.

PROFESSOR Your system attempts to stop the suffering through more suffering. You make yourself suffer until you are given grace. Maybe you get it, maybe you don’t. The responsibility is your god’s, not yours. The other way the responsibility is yours, you take responsibility for your reality and your own salvation.

LAO TZU The reality of the formless and the unreality of that which has form is known only to him who has sight. The good emperor wants his people to have sight. The bad emperor strives to keep them blind.

PROFESSOR Is it right for one religious group to butcher and incarcerate another religious group because of the kind of sacrament used in their rituals? And the people that suffer from afflictions that only these substances can relieve? What about them? And all that energy, all that man power and brain power uselessly squandered for what? Not only is this war of morality immoral but it is stupid as well.

SOCRATES A good government prohibits violence and protects liberty and enacts laws that are compatible with human nature. A bad government disregards these rights and uses violence against peaceful citizens. A coercive government is a government at war with its own people.

MOSES Neither society or government should invade our inner being without our permission.

FATHER INNOCENT But you heard what he said. Empty the mind! An empty mind is a stupid mind with nothing in it. Only an imbecile has nothing in his mind. That’s crazy! Why would anyone want to do that?

LAO TZU Crazy wisdom. An empty mind is a silent mind.

RASTAMAN Crazy, Daddy, crazy!

BUDDHA Empty does not mean blank. In an empty mind thought activity vanishes leaving it clean and pure. The whole universe is pervaded by reality which we do not see clearly. Our consciousness is opaque, not transparent, and so it casts a shadow over what is real. We see the shadow and not the substance and hence we suffer. The substance can be seen if the mind becomes clear, empty of thought activity. This is the purpose of meditation. To empty the mind in order to see clearly. (He accepts the pipe, puts it to his forehead for a moment, then takes a deep, sacramental hit, exhales, closes his eyes and goes into samadhi.)

RASTAMAN (Coming down to Center Stage with a big spliff in his hand.)