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_____For
the Rastafarians, however, whose beliefs are not only a religion, but a
way of life, the smoking of the herb symbolizes much more than an attempt
by the movement to "show its freedom from the laws of the 'Babylon'."
Rather, it is an intensely religious experience, the key to a new understanding
of the self, the universe, and God. According to a leading Rastafarian:
Man basically is God but this insight can only come to man with the use
of the herb. When you use the herb, you experience yourself as God. With
the use of the herb, you can exist in this dismal state of reality that
now exists in Jamaica. You cannot change man, but you can change yourself
by the use of the herb. When you are God you deal or relate to people like
a God. In this way you let your light shine, and when each of use lets his
light shine, we are creating a God-like culture and this is the cosmic unity
that we try to achieve in the Rastafarian community .
_____According to the Rastafarians, the average Jamaican is so brainwashed by colonialism that his entire system is programmed in the wrong way. His response to the world is conditioned by unseen forces due to European acculturation, and can only be "loosened up" through the use of the herb. The use of the herb results in a true revelation of Black consciousness which brings about the proper love for the Black race. One's true identity can finally be experienced, along with the revelation that Haile Selassie is God and that Ethiopia is the home of the Black people. _____For the Rastafarians, then, the smoking of the herb is both a reactionary device to society, freeing the follower from the establishment, and a religious sacrament, enabling the Rastafarian a oneness with both God and himself. Today, however, as he or she recites the prayer preceding the lighting of the herb: Glory be to the Father and to the maker of creation As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be World without end: Jah Rastafari: Eternal God Selassie I. |
| _____The Rastafarian movement is threatened by the emergence of crack as the drug of choice among Rastafarian youth, on Kingston's streets and elsewhere in Jamaica. If nothing else, this moral decline over which the older generations of Rastas are so disturbed illustrates precisely how they themselves view the use of the herb, a religious sacrament, in comparison with other illegal drugs. |  |
