Religion and drugs

Fire walking is a very dangerous thing. I understand that some cultures do it to achieve their highest social status. This is a way for them to show their superiority above all others. How can one just randomly show up to the Kataragama affair and think that they will have achieved the proper state of being to be able to walk over fire unscathed? The people who do all the preparations properly are way more likely to survive. It takes 3 months to get your mind in the right place while Westerners try to butt right in at the end and take the front row to all the action and even try to participate. How can a total belief in a God give you the unquestioning power to be able to walk across fire, hold a scalding pot on your head, or be poked with needles and have nothing physically happen to you? These people would probably live forever because they can never get hurt. Does this make them shaman? They probably don’t have healing power but they certainly have supernatural powers. Pearce says that fire walking is an autistic power. How can an autistic power give you so much physical difference from the norm?

America is supposed to be the land of the free. I know that drugs are harmful and that the government wants to protect us but Sterling states that this land was founded by people who wanted the right to practice their own religion their own way. Why was that freedom taken away from us? The Native Americans have gotten congress to approve their right to use peyote in their spiritual rituals. If anything should be banned from Native Americans it should probably be gambling and drinking. Religion should have the right to use what they need when they need it. Religion and its practices, what ever they might be, have been around a whole lot longer then the laws of any country. People used to say what religious group they were from then they changed it to what country but their true loyalty lies with religion. They shouldn’t have to abide by what the government deems acceptable because they want to cut down on abusers. Just because they are illegal doesn’t mean that there are abusers out there.