Psych Drugs and Yoga

I am in the midst of a med change--I was on risperdal for about 4 years, but started to have a bad reaction to it--doc took me off it and started me on abilify, which has less extra-pyramidal symptoms, but is hard to get used to. One reason is that I feel freer mentally on it, whereas I am used to having my mind really "nailed down". Both of these drugs are atypical anti-psychotics.

Yoga means to control the ever-disturbing mind and senses--by whatever means necessary! If it is necessary for me to have a whole bunch of sex to bring the mind under control, I can do that. If it is necessary to deviate from the yogi's diet of one chapatti a day, no butter, and eat beef like a Muslim, I can do that, too. Sometimes we just have to depend on the Chaitya Guru--God in the heart, to advise us--sometimes the external guidance is not there.

There is really no practice, no kind of pretzel one can twist oneself into, which will control the mind as well as drugs--if you have an extremely wayward mind, there is nothing for it but anti-psychotics, valium, and other drugs which the late L.Ron Hubbard taught his "disciples" to hate. Hate they might, but Dianetic processing is so ineffectual in this regard, that Ron had to refuse to audit anyone with any history of hospitalization.

So I favor the chanting of the Maha-mantra as the best thing to help bring the mind under control when combined with drugs. Of course, the Maha-mantra shouldnt be used for our purposes--we are to be used for it's purposes! This is sometimes called "bhakti yoga" but really, we dont have any bhakti, or love of Godhead--it's merely mantra yoga, and sticking with one thing is very important--one mantra. I personally have had enough of scatterbrained Masters who couldnt stick to one thing--Crowley is one, and Sant Keshavadas was another. If Crowley had just taken up the chanting of Hare Krishna and stuck with it his whole life until death, he would have had quite a different history. And Sant Keshavadas would have joined the Gaudiya Math instead of criticising that we werent "cosmic",

In those matters, there is a lot of politics these days. I think I am really not in ISKCON nor in the Gaudiya Math, but I feel I am closer to the Gaudiya Math through Srila Sridhar Dev Maharaj. Essentially, I am an independent Hare Krishna who loves Srila Prabhupada and Srila Sridhar Dev and does not want to join a faction in the quarrels between devotees..