I.
What is the role of psychedelics in esoteric Judaism? Let’s grant that certain substances exist that somehow expand (enhance? inhibit?) subjective experience. Let’s grant that, besides alcohol, I’ve never used these substances, but I am fascinated by them. Let’s grant that the role of such substances in the Halacha or Law of Judaism is best left to serious authorities, another source of fascination I leave unused. There remains another Jewish angle from which to discuss the role of such substances, mystical experience. They could aid the quest for a more G-dly existence.
Let’s try to assess things on their merits rather than accepting or rejecting anything a priori. One must keep a most open mind about psychedelics. Despite my one story with the ‘shrooms in that place one time, there is no reason a priori why Judaism and psychedelics ought not to overlap. We can be open without conceding to the dizzying fantasies that drugs underly all phenomena or that Judaism accepts all behavior.
II.
To my current knowledge, evidence is scant, without wishful thinking, that psychedelics (or any narcotic apart from alcohol) have ever been part of Jewish worship. They seem neither enshrined nor especially banned by Jewish Law or custom. Cannabis was commonly known to the Rabbis and repeatedly mentioned in the non-tantalizing form of hemp textiles in the Mishna and Talmud. For example:
Nothing is forbidden on account of kilayim except [a mixture of] wool and linen…Camel’s wool with sheep’s wool, that have been mixed together: if the greater part is camel’s wool, it is permitted [to mix it with linen], but if the greater part is sheep’s wool, it is forbidden; if it is half and half, it is forbidden. The same applies to kanbos (hemp) and linen mixed together.
Mishna Kilayim 9:1
Yet somehow, many Christians and even Jews familiar with some Hebrew have been taken in by fanciful interpretations of the Kneh-Bosem substance in the ancient anointing oil (it sounds like “cannabis!”) or the mysterious Maaleh Ashan/“smoke-raising herb” in the temple incense. “There’s a funny herb I’m very interested in” is poor motivation and reading that herb into these texts is pure speculation. There is no evidence that these terms refer to cannabis and no explanation as to why the sages wouldn’t just name the species with the same name they use elsewhere.1 Of course, with general gestures toward hidden meanings and esotericism, all things are possible, except taking the express Will of G-d seriously. To sanely buy into such an esoteric system, one must leverage a fixed received tradition and great reverence. Most who seek greater interpretative eccentricities to read narcotics into tradition do not overvalue their sanity.
Speaking of speculation, we find various folk beliefs (less charitably, scurrilous slander2) regarding the narcotic use of prophets and great rabbis. These portrayals also fail to convince. True, in the stories, the holy Baal Shem Tov would smoke his pipe and see from one end of the world to the other. Asking what was in the pipe is like the nudnik asking what flavor soup it was; someone has missed the point. No one believes the breed of the Baal Shem Tov’s flying horses is relevant. Everyone understands that they had no inherent ability to fly. It is ludicrous to propose that if the horses had been Clydesdales, the Baal Shem Tov could not have lifted them, but since they were lighter mustangs, they could experience the “leaping of the path.” If we pose such questions to the mavens of the contents of the Baal Shem Tov’s pipe, they can only answer, “I don’t know what was in the pipe but it’s clear that some kind of chemical enhancement was involved.” But this is not clear, and the association of smoking with the visions need not even be accidental. Perhaps it is not the active compound but the heat, the associated focus on the breath, or the curling smoke (incidentally, smoke per se has a much stronger circumstantial association with Jewish experiences of the Divine than any narcotic) that had the Baal Shem Tov smoking his pipe.
Of course, there are plenty of true cases in which drug use ultimately led to good things, i.e., the further presence of G-d on earth. I know more than one person who ended up keeping more of the Torah’s directives at least partly due to drug trips. Of course, sins also ultimately lead to good things, and we are commanded and empowered to make it so through repentance. If drug use is said to facilitate the Baal Shem Tov’s vision, we are in effect claiming drug use cannot have been an immoral act at that time, because it’s unthinkable that the holy BeSh”T would commit such an act. But drug use leading to a friend becoming more of a Torah scholar, for example, tells us nothing about the nature of the decision at the time. Murder has likely led someone to become more of a Torah scholar. We don’t tell children to become bandits because we want them to grow up into a Resh Lakish.
However, just because there is no firm evidence of the holy use of hallucinogens in Judaism doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
III.
A Talmudic question: Nu, if they used mind-altering substances in, say, the Temple service, would it have been so terrible? That is, would it uproot any principles in Judaism as it stands?
I don’t think so.
In many places in Judaism, we find that physical matters impact the spiritual and are vessels for the spiritual. The exact shape of the Temple structure, for example, embodies higher metaphysical structures. Wine was used in the Temple and is part of the sanctification of the Shabbos to this day. The extent to which alcohol is important to that wine's ritual role is beyond the scope of our discussion. The point is, we use many things in the service of G-d.
As we once discussed, the kabbalists and Jewish ethicists agree that though Judaism has a vital rational/reasoning component, this reasoning has never been seen as uninfluenced or "Vulcan." The Talmudic sages refused to try people who gave them gifts years ago for fear of bribed judgment. Thus, to have rationality influenced by the physical vessels inherent to Jewish life is no surprise. The medieval Sefer HaChinuch famously describes the heart as being “drawn after the commandments.” That is, the performance of the right (or wrong) actions affects our understanding and feeling. "Perfect" rational judgment, adhering to principle for its own sake, is extremely rare and usually achieved within the constraints of a court, it seems.
Were Judaism to condone drug use, it would likely be in this context, as a physical manifestation, component, or catalyst of spiritual growth. To have a physical aid to flights of transcendent worship and cleaving to G-d cannot, on this view, be seen as inherently wrong. “Not being sober,” or “losing our objective judgment,” is not only not an issue in Judaism, but we actively seek it. If all that’s wrong with narcotics is “not being sober,” it is hard to see how we could object in principle.
IV.
We must, at this point, introduce the Chassidic Tzadikkim to the discussion. These kabbalist mystics originating from Eastern Europe are known for the use of alcohol in just the way we have described. As the Alter Rebbe said at the circumcision of his great-grandson, the son of the Rebbe the Tzemach Tzedek, the Maharil:
May it be His will that we merit to the “day that is entirely mashke (“drink,” i.e., alcohol),”3 and not how the term is explained in the Midrash concerning Lot.4 If drink proceeds in the inappropriate way, it lowers one down, and one becomes lowly and shameful, but if it proceeds in the appropriate way, it can greatly assist. Drink has warmth in it.
May it be His will, that this should be a blessing. That drink should warm the body requires no blessing, because it is indeed the way of nature. Rather, the blesing is that it should warm the soul.
Sefer HaSichos 5704 p.129
In the talks of the various Chassidic Tzadikkim, Chassidus itself is compared to vitality, light, and warmth. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us, then, that the “warmth” of a drink can greatly help someone in their pursuit of G-dliness, if it is used in the appropriate way.
The role of alcohol in the service of G-d precedes the Chassidic Tzadikkim. We find in the Talmud that plying rabbis with wine garnered Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi new Torah:
Yehuda and Hizkiyya, sons of Rabbi Hiyya, were sitting at a meal before Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, and they were not saying anything. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi said to his servants: Add more wine for the young men, so that they will say something. Once they were inebriated, they loosened their tongues and said…
Tractate Sanhedrin 38a
Rabbi Akiva, too, served the sages much wine:
There was an incident with Rabbi Akiva who made a banquet for his son, and over each and every cup he brought he said: Wine and life to the mouth of the Sages, wine and life to the mouth of the Sages and to the mouth of their students.
Tractate Shabbos 67b
The SheLaH, in a celebrated passage, defends the behavior of those
Holy ones…who sometimes drank far too much as large feasts…their intent was for the sake of heaven, for from the joy of the wine they would be well and glad and from this they speak very many words of Torah at the table…for from joy, a sage will reveal the secrets of Torah…for in much joy, the intellect in the soul is strengthened, and one is more prepared to reveal the hidden depths of wisdom…”Wine enters, and the secret comes out”…that through feasting on wine, words of Torah come out that are called “esoteric wisdom.”
Shnei Luchos HaBris, Shaar HaOsiyos
Beyond the “warmth” found in the drink, there is clearly a dimension of revelatory power that enhances or brings forth Torah wisdom. It seems clear from these sources that, if used correctly by the right person, wine can help one to come closer to the mind of G-d.5
Now, if the only concern is the use of substances to reach a new point of view and the like, it seems hard to imagine why alcohol should be encouraged in the correct way and other substances, e.g. hallucinogens, should face a blanket ban. Of course, we are assuming in this comparison that just as vodka might possess “warmth” or intellectual powers that could be harnessed appropriately, other substances possess similarly felicitous qualities. By analogy, it would seem that wine’s role in Jewish spirituality could support a case for psychedelics in this limited sense.
Of course, even when drawing this connection, some distinctions must be retained. First, there is the simple historical fact that wine (and perhaps in some way alcohol, in general, can be thrown in) has been part of Jewish worship for millennia and psychedelics have not. This introduces the possibility that alcohol is permitted by some combination of factors that no other substance can attain, or in other words, that wine being sanctioned as part of the tradition is an essential prerequisite for its “spiritual” use.
Furthermore, many have attempted to distinguish between the effects of alcohol and other substances. Some who have tried both argue that alcohol is socializing and grounding, whereas cannabis is isolating and elevating, and thus the two substances have opposite spiritual effects. Even if we don’t buy into this argument entirely, it seems essential to remember that not necessarily are the effects of all substances created equal. For example, if it is the “warmth” of the drink that is important and that can in some way impart “spiritual warmth,” as the Alter Rebbe says, then it is unclear whether, even if we are theoretically open to it playing a role, cannabis could serve the same (or another) purpose.
The sources above are grounded in some kind of inherent quality of alcohol or wine, rather than their subjective effects on the individual, even if the individual’s correct use is required to achieve positive effects. Alcohol possesses warmth, rather than being warm to some individuals subjectively. Thus, even though wine, on the one hand, opens the door for the use of mind-altering substances in the service of G-d, on the other hand, it does so through an inherent nature that no other substance necessarily possesses. Arguments of “LSD works for me” would seem to be beside the point. The nature of LSD would need to be assessed first; whether it can be made to “work” follows from that assessment.
We must, then, proceed further into speculation. If a psychedelic of some sort could be shown to be like wine, that is, shown to possess Judaically useful qualities, what would be required for it to “work”? What would the holy use of LSD or psilocybin look like? How does one judge whether one is “lowly and shameful” or whether one has come closer to the Creator?
V.
We have seen that, in theory, nothing about the use of mushrooms for a religious pursuit uproots Judaism per se, although whether there are grounds to actually do such a thing is unclear even without consulting the Law. However, the Torah provides guidelines for spiritual experience, delineating the dangers of the “trip.” Just as we learn from alcohol that mind-altering substances can play a role in the worship of G-d, we learn from a story of the Talmud a safety protocol for all all journeys into the spiritual realms.
Four Rabbis walk into an orchard...
The Sages taught: Four entered the orchard [pardes], i.e., dealt with the loftiest secrets of Torah, and they are as follows: Ben Azzai; and ben Zoma; Acher, the other, a name for Elisha ben Avuya; and Rabbi Akiva…
Ben Azzai glimpsed at the Divine Presence and died…
Ben Zoma glimpsed at the Divine Presence and was harmed, i.e., he lost his mind…
Acher chopped down the shoots of saplings. In other words, he became a heretic.
Rabbi Akiva came out safely…Rabbi Akiva ascended in peace and descended in peace.
Talmud, Chagigah 14b-15b
The four outcomes of mystical experience: appear to be death, insanity, heresy, and peace. Only Rabbi Akiva was able to achieve the fourth result. We will examine each of these outcomes and what they mean for eating ‘shrooms at the next reception.
In the eyes of the Talmud, the only positive outcome is Rabbi Akiva, who "descended in peace" because he ascended in peace. The lesson is clear. If one goes spelunking in the veiled supra-rational lands beyond the waking mind, one ought to arrive with a plan. "Getting high" probably does not count as a plan, for reasons we’ll discuss soon. The plan seems to require an exit strategy. Rabbi Akiva “ascended in peace,” in other words, with peace as the guiding principle. He entered the orchard of mystical experience in order to leave it, all in the name of peace. The journey was not open-ended but directed toward the principle chosen beforehand, that of peace. Rabbi Akiva went there with the intention of coming back again.
But does this not reflect a bias toward non-mystical experience? Who gets to impose intention on whom? What is the baseline, and what is the variation? In this way, the story of Rabbi Akiva leads us to consider the first principles of Jewish spiritualism.
VI.
Per Jewish mystical works such as the Zohar et al., the soul has a profound experience of these realms before it is born into the physical body. Realms such as the orchard were known to us before G-d created us in our current incarnated forms. Indeed, we are taught that no attempt to return to these realms from within a biological body can be as profound as those experiences preceding our birth. So: We are created in a physical body with a rational mind by Divine intention. It is not an inescapable default. This cannot be emphasized enough.
The only justification for leaving the mundane state of being, in which we are close to our own biology, our groundedness within the external “objective” world, and our rationality, is to be able to attack it with renewed energy or from a new angle. This was the goal of Rabbi Akiva, who “ascended in peace.” It was his goal because this is part of the will of G-d in creating a human being, an embodied soul. Rabbi Akiva proceeded into the orchard not with his own egocentric impositions on experience, but rather toward G-d, and toward G-d means back out of the orchard.
Ironically, there is a certain point here where hard-nosed scientific skepticism of “mystical experience” and the Jewish view of spirituality meet. Men of the former category tend to dismiss all religions equally as purveyors of questionable metaphors, special pleading, and credulity toward things experiments cannot replicate.6 However, not all spiritual beliefs are equal. Our secular culture is an outgrowth of an outgrowth of Judaic monotheism and was able to emerge specifically due to certain structures shared in common. I would describe one of these important structures as the notion of an Absolute. In Judaism, G-d Himself is The Absolute. To the secular mindset, the absolute is matter. Both absolutes are difficult, if not impossible, to define without self-contradiction. Both absolutes are so central to their given perspectives that they stretch seamlessly from ontology through epistemology to ethics. And both absolutes can be considered absolutes because they transcend and defy the system of interlocking metaphors we might call "meaning."
The absolute of the physical and the absolute of the Divine are related in their “brute factitude.”In a sense, G-d just is and matter just is. Granted, to a believer in G-d, the matter is also rooted in G-d.7 Granted, to someone who only believes matter exists, G-d must be rooted in matter, something that sounds unreasonable enough for many of them to conclude that G-d does not exist. However, from their two very different vantage points, both admit a reality that cannot be changed by any number of perceptions. No matter how many angels or machine elves or shocking Doctor Strange worlds one encounters, to the Jew, G-d will always be its G-d. To the materialist atheist, it will be emergent from some arrangement of matter.
In Jewish mysticism, this Divine Absolute is paralleled by something in the soul, the absolute of the self. The convergence of all experiences in the one experiencer, which is us, reflects the convergence of all things in a single Divine source. In other words, not only is G-d, for us, beyond any metaphor or form, but we perceive ourselves not to be systems of rules or interlocking metaphors, but rather unified subjective selves. Our unified self derives from and is modeled after G-d’s Self.
If so, the myriad interlocking machine elf worlds those psychedelics open up before the psychonaut are, despite their endless size, complexity, and number, ultimately incommensurate to the one experiencing them. Indeed, there is something intuitive about the self being the same self that can adapt and change to be both a psychonaut and a “mundane-naut.” You contain multitudes and are only able to contain them because you transcend and unite them. Many of the same people who believe experience is largely constructed by the mind also conceive of the self as a tiny being awash in a vast universe, when in truth, they should come to the opposite conclusion—the human self can participate in realities in the realm of the truly astonishing and occult and also in the realm of the prosaic and mundane. This is because the self is very close to that Self who creates both the occult and the prosaic from Himself.
It is only in the brute fact, in the thing that is not “yet another angel” or “one world further” that we find something as simple, unified, and absolute as we are. No utterly logical system of causes and effects or analogies and analogues will ever be a human soul or even the mirrors of great human souls found in high art, the novel or the poem. The Torah is not written so inhumanly either. These infinite chains of causes and effects, lights and vessels, souls and bodies, symbol and symbolized, are very important. But they are not us, and not Him. They are not all. And because, as every mystic knows, the closer to the self, the closer to the real, they must all be at least somewhat external.
This is why, in Judaism, the Law is the ultimate, core reality and arbiter. The Law runs directly between the True Self of G-d and the created self of the Jew. Mysticism, or the Kabbalah, can never truly displace the Law or the direct Will of G-d. The self is ultimately more ultimate than anything it explores or experiences. Spirituality is not G-dliness per se, but it only G-dly when pursued to G-dly ends. And thus, rather than reflecting some sort of compromised clinging to the mundane, Rabbi Akiva’s decision to “ascend in peace” reflects the deepest and truest contextualization of spiritual experience.
So much for Rabbi Akiva.
What about everyone else?
VII.
Consider death, madness, and heresy.
They all have something in common. They all denote a certain separation from biological life or its inherent rationality. They are all escaping the plan of G-d's creation, rather than affirming it. They all reject the Divine intention of an embodied soul and its mundane intellectual world.
To be defined by one's intellect is death, to reject one's intellect is madness, and to worship one's intellect is idolatry. But to render naturally-possessed rationality nothing but an expression and manifestation of G-d and the soul, this is the safe way out of the orchard.
To be defined by one's intellect is death. No one is more dead and lifeless than the theoretician applying the bed of Sodom. No one is more depressed than the kings tied to the safe borders they have drawn and redrawn in their own heads. Rabbi Akiva could survive a trip beyond his intellectual borders with the correct orientation toward G-dliness. But some cannot live in this way; their life has an end; their lot is death.
To reject one's intellect is madness. Madness is the inability to communicate beyond oneself; it is the failure to form a majority; it is the denial of the other and thus, ultimately, the Creation. It is a dangerous state of maximal egoic extension masquerading as enlightenment, an erasure of the fundamental sovereignty of the self. Rabbi Akiva was able to remember himself.
To worship one's intellect is idolatry. All idolatry has (pseudo-)rational roots, is a result of thinking, and particularly of thinking that what is thought is all that is, and thus G-d beyond comprehension does not factor in. If G-d is not beyond comprehension, then neither is the self. Conformity becomes one’s natural state. Rabbi Akiva lost his assumptions about G-d, but did not need them.
Thus, there are three tests for the human intellect (in Judaism, anyway) -
G-d says to be joyous. Are you depressed/lifeless?
G-d says He creates everything. Do you think things are uncreated?
G-d warns against idols. Do you think everything is knowable?
Unfortunately, most people who use psychedelics to jumpstart or shortcut mystical experiences do not know enough about that experience or their mission in this world to use it correctly. The vast majority are not seeking G-d but merely "taking the experience as it comes."8 They are depressed or unsure of the createdness of all they know, or certain of the power of their mind.
We must conclude, then, that even if theoretically there was a role for psychedelics and the “trip” they facilitate in Judaism, most of us would not be ready to use them.
Symbols, metaphors, and infinite worlds of interlocking meaning are not always good for you. Metaphors are often more dangerous than guns and come with even less training. Because we come to the “thick” experience of reality that psychedelics provide from a culture that longs for them, a culture of the secular materialist absolute, the chances of us leveraging them properly are minimal. We yearn for the freedom to think deeply symbolic thoughts, something few modern forms of thinking allow us. However, just because they would jolt us to question the material absolute does not mean psychedelic substances are in service of the Divine absolute. We first need to study Rabbi Akiva’s “ascending in peace” method before we eat that ‘shroom.
VIII.
One might think, “Perhaps I will die or lose my mind or become an apostate, but is this not a small price to pay for a greater experience of truth.” Such a person would seek to pursue the psychedelic experience "for its own sake," not pragmatically.
But Jewish mysticism and esoteric wisdom place cleaving to G-d, “dveikus”, above any form of experience. Dveikus is not necessarily felt. In fact, all the deepest experiences of life, such as life itself, are “non-felt pleasures,” the deepest fullness of being
The highest goal of Jewish mysticism is to reach a state of total self-abnegation before and within the Divine, the soul in G-d like a torch thrust into a bonfire, a loss of distinct being. No felt experience can constitute a loss of distinct being because you are the one feeling it.
Thus, even on mystical grounds themselves, that is, by the goal not just of “worship” but also of “seeking deeper and truer experiences of the divine,” psychedelics can never be the highest rung.
The secret is that your experience of giving a coin to charity, because that act is the deepest and direct will of G-d, is unaided, a more profound encounter with the Divine than any worlds or beings opening before you by the power of psilocybin. G-d is neither spiritual nor physical but transcendent of that duality and found wherever He chooses to be, not wherever the chain of causes and effects and its logic places Him. And He desires to be in the mundane precisely because it is unlike Him.
Without knowledge of the mystical experience and a deep understanding of one's goal and purpose, no "pragmatic" use of psychedelics can be sanctioned in Judaism. We only make things better by knowing what they're for. We want the advantages of being Rabbi Akiva without doing the work Rabbi Akiva did to become Rabbi Akiva and “ascend in peace.” Only by embracing the Divine Absolute can the psychedelic “trip” might find a proper place in Judaism.
By the way, Chassidic Tzaddikim of our generation have said that the time for the use even of alcohol has passed and that such things are no longer necessary or appropriate for anyone. What once alcohol was needed to achieve can now be completed sober. The time of aids to the experience of the Divine may have passed. So much rich inner Torah has been revealed that anyone who desires can “warm themselves” with study alone. We stand on the threshold of the “day that it entirely mashke.” The G-d of esoterica, who is the G-d of mundanity, waits there for us, the selves he sent outward to find Him in the lowest.
Granted, in the case of the smoke-raising herb, its identity was meant to be a secret.
If we keep an open mind, one might ask, why is it slander? To which I’d reply if it’s not slander, why is it often so scurrilous? It is hard to find people who respect sages who will also matter-of-factly say they used narcotics in the way they might discuss their dress.
Rabbi Shmuel of Lubavitch, the Rebbe Maharash, younger brother to the Maharil at whose circumcision this statement was made, explains in a discourse that the “day that will be entirely drink” refers to the messianic era.
The Alter Rebbe, in a discourse, introduces another way in which wine is connected to the secrets of the Torah. The juice is hidden in the grapes and must be squeezed out. In this connection, we see that not all alcoholic drinks are created equal, and there may be a reason the traditional stories mention wine specifically. It is also the basis for comparing the Torah’s secrets to another liquid, oil, which must be extracted from the olive in a related but different process. The case for using psychedelics in Jewish spirituality is harder to build on olive oil than it is to build on wine.
I cannot help but mention, at least in a footnote, that this also describes much of the scientific enterprise.
And has different properties and definitions than the atheistic materialist would grant.
Taking things simply as they come seems to be the sine qua non of psychedelics use, a deadening rather than a motivating mysticism. We all have a friend who went on a trip, found out all things are one and came to the moral conclusion that to them, all things are permitted, and right and wrong do not exist. This is called Door #3, Heresy.
Akiva *knew* the Peace was/is baked-in. Knowledge..as opposed to belief..carries you through a lot.
Indigenous would say: Thanks for seeing my smoke.