“Robin Scott, the Cannabis Guru”
GQ Magazine
Former top scholar at Rugby School, and graduate of Oxford University, where I specialised in Religious and Political Philosophy, I first smoked Cannabis at the age of 18 in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco, in the Summer of Love 1967. I first cultivated Cannabis in Scotland in 1972 – the story of which is told in my book The Case for Cannabis – published last year. A former Scientologist and veteran Yoga practitioner, I spent three years & three months in prison in the UK in the 1990s for growing the best and most potent Cannabis ever recorded at that time, a record I’m proud of!”
I live on Facebook at Robin Scott | Facebook.
In 1994 a friend of mine gave me a book by the great 20th century Guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), entitled: Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, which I read with interest. It was at a time when, in my mid-40s, I had returned to the smoking of Cannabis after a 20-year abstinence, and I was enjoying a resurgence in my sex life with my lovely wife at the time, Adrienne. So, it was a synchronistic gift, which helped me to understand better the sexual re-awakening that we were experiencing.
Curiously, when I was the top scholar of my year at Rugby School in the early 60s, the first literary classic I had studied there was neither Latin nor Greek, but a translation of the Hindu classic Tantric text, the Kama Sutra, which was passed around ‘under the desk’ as a naughty book! Ironically, although I didn’t realise it at the time, this proved to be my most important sex education as a teenager, because it imprinted in me the concept that Sex wasn’t something dirty to be ashamed of, but rather the enlightened pastime of sophisticated, cultured people who understood the aesthetic and spiritual value of sexuality in an uninhibited manner.
Tantra is a widely misunderstood subject, shrouded in mystery. The word in Sanskrit literally means ‘thread’ or ‘weave’, in the sense of ‘extension’ or ‘continuity’; but Tantric Yoga has taken on the meaning of ‘the Yoga of Sex’. In its simplicity, the concept of Tantric Yoga is that you can transform sexual ecstasy into spiritual ecstasy, so that Tantra is a method of achieving spiritual enlightenment. After an aspiring Yogi has spent some years in the practice of Hatha Yoga postures, and in purifying all aspects of life, both physically and morally, then the Yogi graduates to Kundalini Yoga, which raises the sexual and psychic energy in the body. In turn, the Yogi eventually graduates to Tantric Yoga, in which the mysteries of sexuality are fully explored. This usually involves the Karmic permission to suspend the normal rules of purification in order to enhance the sexual experience, through the eating of meat, for example, or the use of Cannabis, as in our case.
The most immediate realisation that I gained from reading Osho’s book, Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, was that Tantric sex is not when your Guru becomes your lover – as most unscrupulous Gurus would have you believe – but when your lover becomes your Guru. That is, when your lover becomes the most important person in the world to you, your teacher, whom you respect and revere beyond all others, and from whom you take advice, and for whom you care completely.
Going back even further to my childhood days, I was hugely influenced by the chivalrous concepts of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I especially admired Galahad, the Pure Knight, who alone found the Holy Grail after an exhaustive search with two other knights. It intrigued me that the only knight to find the Holy Grail was the pure one, the good one. All my life I have identified powerfully with Sir Galahad, at the price of being considered a ‘goody-goody’. Purification is also an important concept in Hindu philosophy, as a prerequisite to the higher levels of enlightenment. There are many theories as to what exactly the Holy Grail consists of. The simplest version is that it was the chalice from which Jesus drank the wine at the Last Supper, and in which Joseph of Arimathea collected Christ’s blood at the Crucifixion, thereby imbuing it with mystic qualities. Other theories advance the notion that the Sang Real, the Royal Blood, refers to the possible bloodline of Jesus’ own children.
A few years ago, I was chatting on Facebook with a lovely friend of mine, a beautiful young mother living in Florida. We were discussing the perennial question: ‘what do women really want?’ I came up with the suggestion that what women really want is exactly the same as what men really want: True Love, and Great Sex! To my delight, my young friend agreed with me – and the notion has stuck with me ever since. I began to perceive True Love and Great Sex as the Holy Grail of human experience, and this ties in well with Osho’s teaching that Tantra is indeed the Supreme Understanding. Of course, there are many other routes to Enlightenment, but the path of Tantric Yoga is the royal road to Immortality.
So, the conclusion I have come to is this: truly loving and ecstatic sex between a man and a woman is indeed the summit of human experience, the Holy Grail of life that we are all seeking. There are many other sources of pleasure in life, but the orgasmic thrill of great sex is the greatest of all, in my opinion and experience. Plato’s concept of two separated halves seeking to re-unite with each other would also tie in well with this idea. The importance of Cannabis in facilitating the raising of the sexual experience to its highest levels is significant, because it plays a vital role as an aphrodisiac in empowering humans to achieve the mountain peaks of Pure Love, the sublime sexual and spiritual adventure. What we’re saying is that True Love and Great Sex is the ultimate human experience, ne plus ultra.
To elaborate: what I am suggesting here is that Tantric Yoga is indeed the Supreme Understanding, because it is in mystical sexual union that we achieve our highest states of power and transcendence. Enlightenment as an individual is a great achievement, but shared enlightenment as a couple is a quantum leap beyond, and raises our sights as to what we can aspire to in this life. Indeed, just as an individual’s Hatha Yoga session consists of a series of postures, so Tantric Yoga consists of a series of sexual positions created by a couple, in the tradition of the Kama Sutra. Think of Sex as a form of Yoga – that’s what Tantra is. Envision sex as a Yoga session, with a sequence of positions; it’s like a ballet. Far from being something guilty and shameful, Sex represents our greatest opportunity to realise our true nature as immortal spiritual beings, operating a physical body here on the Earth plane.
And the secret to True Love is very simple:
“This above all, to thine own self be true….
Thou canst not then be false to any man”
Shakespeare
By which I mean: all you have to do to realise True Love is simply be true to yourself, and to your lover, at all times. And this will take you all the way to the poetic pinnacle of Beauty and Truth.
© Copyright Robin Scott 2021
