Bhang and Ecstasy: Dissolving Identity Through Altered States

Mirabai was known to consume bhang—cannabis—as part of her devotional practice, a controversial choice that her communities criticized. Yet her practice illuminates something essential: sometimes identity is so rigid, so defended, that only altered consciousness can crack it open. Bhang offers temporary dissolution of the boundaries between self and other, past and present, grief and joy. For someone grieving lost identity, this practice suggests something radical: sometimes you must temporarily step outside the self entirely to gain perspective on it. This might be meditation, ecstatic movement, plant medicine used wisely, or any practice that dissolves ordinary consciousness. The point is not escape but clarity. When the usual identity-boundaries dissolve, you see them as constructs. You experience yourself as process rather than fixed thing. Mirabai's ecstatic states were not indulgence; they were glimpses of the Self beyond the self that grieves. Such experiences teach that what you're mourning is temporary, while what you fundamentally are is not.