QA128 QUESTION: [1964] Is smoking really harmful?
ANSWER: From our vantage point, anything that is done in compulsion and exaggeratedly is harmful, but never the outer act – the inner attitude. If that same inner attitude exists and manifests with something else, it is just as harmful.
It does not even have to be another substance, let us say like drugs or alcohol or even overeating. It could be a merely mental or emotional attitude – let us say a compulsion in being over-orderly or a compulsion in being disorganized. In all these things like compulsion, the same root may exist. This is what is really harmful.
Jesus said, “What you put into your mouth can never harm you.” When he said, “What comes out of your mouth,” it is meant what is in you. It is what is behind the misconceptions, the arising compulsions, the fears, the guilts, the hostilities that may make you cling to a certain outlet – even if it is not this outlet, as such – that is harmful, always and always.
