# Video: Are Psychedelics Theologically Significant for Judaism? April 27, 2023 On April 27, 2023, The Center for the Study of World Religions co-hosted this discussion with panelists Sam S. B. Shonkoff, Taube Family Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. Melila Hellner-Eshed, professor of Jewish mysticism in the Department of Jewish Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, author and affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary. Throughout millennia, Jews have explored individual and communal consciousness through a variety of techniques and traditions. More recently, Jews have played an outsized role in the “psychedelic renaissance” as researchers, practitioners, and advocates, including prominent leaders. A surge of interest in these substances creates an opportunity to reflect on non-ordinary experiences in Jewish life and theology more broadly. This event was co-hosted with shefa, Jewish Psychedelic Support and The Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. **Are Psychedelics Theologically Significant for Judaism?** SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School. SPEAKER 2 : Are psychedelics theologically significant for Judaism? April 27, 2023. CHARLES STANG: Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Charles Stang. And I have the privilege of serving as the director of the Center For The Study of World Religions here at Harvard Divinity School. So welcome to this afternoon's event, a panel, discussion, taking up the question, are psychedelics theologically significant for Judaism? Now this panel is this year's last event in our very popular series on psychedelics and the future of religion, which is in turn part of the Center's Transcendence and Transformation Initiative or TNT, as we call it, now concluding its second year. I would like to thank our two co-sponsors, the Richard C. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, and Shefa, an organization devoted to Jewish psychedelic support. And I'd also like to acknowledge and thank Rachael Petersen for all her invaluable help in bringing this panel together. I will soon introduce Zac Kamenetz, Founder and CEO of Shefa, who will in turn introduce our three panelists. But before I do that, I want to make an important announcement. TNT's new podcast, "Pop Apocalypse" is now live hosted by TNT postdoctoral fellow Matthew J. Dillon. This podcast explores the mystical, and the mythic, the paranormal, and the psychedelic in popular culture. Two episodes have been released so far, both of which might be of interest to this audience. The first is entitled, "Waking From The Flesh Dream." And it features visionary artists, Alex and Allyson Grey. And it takes up their early performance art, the ecstatic experiences behind their paintings, the history of their Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, and the culture shift around psychedelics in the last 20 years. The second episode entitled, "Psychedelic Gnosis And The Imaginal Double," features the visionary artist novel and historian Laurence Caruana. I've listened to the first episode in full, and it's riveting. And I'm looking forward to diving into the second this weekend. So as always, the best way to stay abreast of what we're doing here at the Center, and especially our online public programming is to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We will drop links to the podcast and to the newsletter in the chat function. So now, it's my great pleasure to introduce Zac Kamenetz, Founder and CEO of Shefa. Zac is a rabbi and community leader based in Berkeley, California. He holds an MA in Biblical Literatures-- Literature and Languages from UC Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. And he received rabbinic ordination in 2012. As the founder and CEO of Shefa, the first organization dedicated to Jewish psychedelic support, Zac is pioneering a movement to integrate safe and supported psychedelic use into the Jewish spiritual tradition, advocating for individuals and communities to heal personal and communal traumas, and inspiring a Jewish religious and creative Renaissance in the 21st century. So I will soon disappear, and Zac will appear to introduce our three panelists. And I will return around 1:00 PM when we open to conversation-- when we open the conversation to audience questions. So those of you who are joining us, if you'd like to pose a question or a comment, please do so with the Q&A function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. And please indicate if you'd prefer that your question remain anonymous. If we have time only for some of the questions, which I expect, given how many people have joined, I want to rest-- I want you to assure you that we will pass on all the questions and the comments to the panelists so that they can see what their remarks have provoked in you. So without further ado, Zac, the floor is yours. ZAC KAMENETZ: Thank you, Charlie. And Thanks to the Center for hosting us today, as well as the Graduate Theological Union for co-sponsoring today's event. My name is Rabbi Zac Kamenetz. And I also want to thank Rachel Peterson, who is a graduate student researcher at Harvard Div, and my friend and colleague, who encouraged me to convene this panel on behalf of Shefa, and the growing community of psychedelically engaged and curious Jews around the world. As we settle into this phase of the reemergence of psychedelics as medicines and allies for personal and communal inner exploration, we think it is vital to begin exploring this, the implications of their adoption by Spiritual and religious traditions without continuous lineages or legacies of psychedelic use, as well as evolving beyond perennial models of consciousness and reality, which often allied critical nuances within particular traditions. Today's panel is an attempt to elevate the discourse both in the Jewish and psychedelic fields, and bring the conversations happening within the Jewish psychedelic community to a wider audience. Thank you for playing and discovering with us. I'd like to introduce today's moderator and panelists. Sam Shonkoff is the Toby family assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. His research focuses on Modern Jewish Modes of Spirituality, particularly in German Jewish Hasidic and Neo-Hasidic contexts. He is the co-editor of Hasidism, Writing On Devotion Community And Life In The Modern World, editor of Martin Buber, His Intellectual And Scholarly Legacy, and his essays have appeared recently in the Journal of Religion, Journal of Jewish Thought And Philosophy, and The Routledge Handbook Of Religion And The Body. Shonkoff is also a collaborator with the UC Berkeley Center for Science of-- Science of Psychedelics. Melila Hellner-Eshed is a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. She has taught for the past 25 years on Jewish mysticism and the Zohar at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and serves on the faculty of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality. Her publications include, A River Flows From Eden, The Language Of Mystical Experience In The Zohar, Seekers Of The Face, The Secrets Of The Idra Raba In The Zohar, and her new book co-written with Omri Shachar, On The Path Of The Tree Of Life, An Introduction To The Zohar Is Forthcoming. Melilla is active in the Sulha community, a reconciliation project that brings together Israelis and Palestinians. And finally Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, who is affiliated with the Chicago Theological Seminary and the author of nine books on Judaism and contemplative practice. His most recent, The Heresy Of Jacob Frank, From Jewish Messianism To Esoteric Myth won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award. Outside the Academy, Jay has been writing about Judaism and psychedelics for 15 years and taught meditation in Jewish Buddhist and secular contexts for 20 years. Jay's next book and his first work of fiction, The Secret That Is Not A Secret, 10 Heretical Tales published by Eon Press will be out in December. Thank you friends. Take it away. SAM SHONKOFF: Thank you, Rabbi Zac. Thank you so much to the Harvard Divinity School, The Center for the Study of World Religions, Charles Stang, and Rachel Peterson, everyone who helped to make this program possible. I'm thrilled to have this conversation with you, Jay and Melila. And I figured we would begin with each of us just sort of responding with some opening personal reflections on this question of our psychedelics theologically significant for Judaism, as a way of really throwing some logs on the fire for our discussion that's coming. It's kind of a bold chutzpahdic question to try to answer, like I'd say my-- I'll open up with some reflections here. Are psychedelics theologically significant for Judaism is a deeply personal question for different people, but I'll speak from my own vantage point with three aspects here. As a scholar of Jewish mysticism, I am interested in ways that experiences of human divine encounter. Let alone the expressions of those experiences are perhaps uncontrollable transcendent in some sense, but also always historically situated and hermeneutical textured. So that's to say I'm interested in how revelatory experiences generate new theology and how that theology, in turn, generates new experiences. As Jeffrey Krehbiel puts it in a line that I love, "Experience can catalyze new interpretation, just as interpretation can catalyze new experience." So my own scholarship focuses on the modern period. So whether there is some deep ancestral history of intersections between Judaism and psychedelics in ancient Israel, or in other periods long ago, I kind of will defer to them on this. From what I can see, in my own area of research, I see this as a relatively new phenomenon. This intersection between psychedelics and Jewish tradition in a robust way really being about half a century old for all intents and purposes. And so I wonder, how does Jews having psychedelic experiences change the ways in which Jews understands the divine? And how do those understandings and expressions after altered Jewish spirituality more broadly, which then, in turn, both produces new theological sources and produces new interpretations of older theological sources? And you see the sort of hermeneutical circle here that interplay is very interesting to me and seems significant in terms of understanding the impact that psychedelic experiences and substances will have on Jewish theology. In my own work, I'm also-- I'm also working on a project that uses a movement called Neo-Hasidism as a case study here. Hasidism, itself, is an early modern Eastern European movement of Jewish mysticism. And Neo-Hasidism really a 20th century phenomenon and through the present day. It refers to Jews who are not Hasidic themselves, generally more secular, but not necessarily, who are nonetheless, drawing upon Hasidism, Hasidic sources, tales, melodies, aesthetics, and so on for their own purposes of spiritual or cultural renewal. And it so happens that especially in a kind of second wave of Neo-Hasidism in North America really starting in the '60s. Psychedelics actually do play a quite pivotal role in the trajectory, in the unfolding of this movement of Neo-Hasidism. And I'm interested in looking at what's going on interpretively, hermeneutically at that confluence, and observing ways in which-- ways in which these participants and leaders of this movement are refracting Hasidism through the prism of psychedelics, and also the other way around, refracting psychedelics themselves through the prism of Hasidism, how the tradition itself and those sources and practices are transforming their understanding of those substances. And I think that this case study, and there are others, help us think about what does it even mean to have this theological interplay between psychedelics and a tradition. And I'll just say finally, that also as somebody who's a historian of modern Jewish culture and modern Jewish religiosity, I'm attentive to ways in which, particularly in the European and North American contexts. The Jewish mystical tradition was quite explicitly systematically swept under the rug, starting really in the 18th century and the Enlightenment, spiritual techniques and paradigms that had been quite mainstream in Jewish practice for centuries at that point were suppressed and projected outwards. And so I think that today, we can think of Jewish engagement with psychedelics as some people's attempts to be a sort of jumpstart for inert engines or a kind of shock treatment for atrophied spirits in some way, perhaps a transitional moment, perhaps something that will continue to endure and deepen roots in the tradition. These remain open questions, and whether that is theologically significant in the end, in my mind, will depend on the extent to which those experiences reinvigorate, renew, and perhaps revolutionize Jewish plunges into the various media of Jewish theology, specifically Jewish sources, Jewish practices broadly conceived. And again, that remains an open question, I think, one that has already been evolving for at least half a century or so, but one that I suspect we're still at a quite early phase in. I'd like to pass it off, please, to you, Melila. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: Hey. Thanks, Sam. Hello, everybody out there. I'm speaking to you from Jerusalem. It's evening time. I'm delighted to be on this panel with these two lovely people. And I want to say as well maybe that's the place where you started. But the way I would formulate the basic question would first of all be, you know, might there-- yeah, I'll ask might there be theologically significant aspects to the use of psychedelics within Jewish religious culture, spiritual culture. And I am coming to this question with anavah, with humility. We're looking at things that are new. And we have to move between the audacity, and chutzpah, and a place of actually just observing things. So I want to say that what I love and what I do is I'm very, very interested in the encounters between human beings and Divinity. You know, I'm interested in that personally. I'm interested in it as a scholar and as a writer. I'm interested as a teacher. And I'm interested in the different languages and different images that people have come up with throughout the ages to speak of that encounter that many times is so transformative. It interests me in all religions. I'm very, very interested in this question in Hinduism, and Islamic mysticism, in Christian mysticism-- maybe to a lesser extent of intense delving into it. But being a participant in the Jewish religion, yeah, I see myself as a part and active living part-- taking part in Judaism. I'm very, very interested in reading slowly and carefully, and with a lot of place for astonishment and surprise, reading into texts that leave a kind of imprints and a regime or kind of residual effect of these encounters. And I think this kind of connects to the question of psychedelics because not so much from the point of view of asking what exactly are the substances that these people might have been taking, but actually being very interested in what are the states of expanded consciousness that they are reporting about, right? That is a fascinating aspect. I think later when we'll be speaking about where do we find it within Jewish history, Jewish intellectual history or literary history, we'll go into specifics which are very interesting for me. I just want to say that as beginning comments, my main field of research and great love is the Zohar. And the Zohar is the masterpiece of Jewish mysticism of the Middle Ages. And it's a fascinating world. You can spend a few lifetimes in it. And I've been spending quite a few decades of living there or learning how to go in and out of that world. But it is also the crown of imaginal-- I mean, book of mystical imagination that leaves us with the rest of Kabbalistic literature with a great, great gift. I feel really that that's the gift, with the gift of teaching us or transmitting the experienced notion that reality is multilayered, that reality has many layers. And the one that what you see is what you get is just the literal, the first level. And that actually part of our role and our capacity as human beings is to learn how to actually kind of come into contact with those different layers. And therefore, I think the question of transitioning into altered states. And looking at the different languages that come out of those states is something very fascinating that this literature-- that this literature teaches. And I think that has to do with what we're discussing here, like what helps-- what helps us move from our daily kind of regular, whatever normal state of consciousness, of the everyday into special kind of dimensions or zones, where we can enter and exit with the riches that may bring to us. And everything else that we'll be talking about here seems to me to be fascinating. So I'm waiting for us to jump into everything. I do want to say that the question of the intersection of psychedelics and my scholarship is partially what I just said. That's where it intersects. I think another aspect where it comes into live discussion is having classrooms today, where students come with their experiences that they've had using different kinds of psychoactive stuff, Israel has a lot of it, and be very attentive to the languages they're bringing back to where are they connecting it to their Jewish experience, to their Jewish language to Hebrew. I think those things are very, very fascinating, also from the point of view of what does it mean about the classroom, what does it mean about research, et cetera. So I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. And, Jay, my friend, it's yours. JAY MICHAELSON: Thanks, Melila. This is really fun. We were saying before we started that this is how we get to hang out on our different ends of North America and also different continents. So-- and thank you to everybody who say I'm already thanked at the beginning. I'm glad he remembered everybody since I'm terrible at that. I want to say one sort of preparatory thing, and then make kind of one point, and then have a little transition to our conversation because I think that'll be really fun. You know, from my perspective, again, as a scholar-- of religion and religious studies lessons from a historical matter, I'm interested in the kind of phenomenology of religious and mystical and psychedelic experience. And for me, I think, the question of experience is the general question underlying the question of whether psychedelics are theologically significant. So there's no question anyone who's had any experience with psychedelics knows they create experiences. And the experiences are interesting for some of us, although clearly not all of us. They do often have a religious or a mystical tone. And they frequently have a tone or a sensation in the experience that it has the quality of being true. So the question then has to be well, what's the value of that experience? And I think this is a much larger question than around psychedelics. Arguably, in American Christianity, for example, there's a huge split really between those who privilege certain kinds of, I would say, mystical experiences. So I'm thinking of charismatics, many evangelicals, and so forth. And those who are more skeptical of those experiences, which would be mainline Catholics, mainline Protestants, and so forth. That's certainly true in the Jewish context as well, where in certainly in large swaths of the Orthodox Jewish community, there's an active suspicion of experience. And there are plenty of Jewish texts and resources for them. I'm thinking of Nadab and Abihu. There are plenty of examples-- or the four who go into Pardes, only one of whom really makes it back OK. There are plenty of resources for not just epistemological skepticism within the Jewish tradition, but actual hostility to experience being a ground of Theology or of truth seeking. So that skepticism is in tension with the sense of the psychedelic experience that it is revelatory, that it's revealing not just a pleasant experience, which or unpleasant experience for that matter, but something that's profoundly true, that may be true about the self and the body mind system, or that may even be true about reality or God if that's an active concept. My hunch and this is pure speculation is that I think those traditions and spiritualities which privilege experience seem to be on the ascendance right now, in the sort of postmodern West, as other ties around religion. So family and the Jewish tradition, let's say, Holocaust, belief systems, and so forth, as those ties loosen, it seems to be a general phenomenon that religious systems that and spirituality, in particular, which separates entirely or could overlap, but which conceptually separates from sort of gnomic religion, those systems which have more experience seem to be on the ascendant. So that would suggest that together with the more mainstreaming of psychedelics. That would suggest that whatever this impact or relevance of experience is on theology or worldview may increase as experience eccentric forms of spirituality increase. So clearly, I think that to me is the underlying question. That's sort of baseline. For me, as I think, it's just a matter of temperament. I could disguise it in terms of scholarly commitments or philosophical commitments. But I think my own-- I sort of joke that I want to have as many peak experiences as possible, and then doubt all of them, which Rabbi David Ingber, who's a friend of many of us, I think, on this call couldn't believe when I told him that 20 years ago, he said you doubt your own peak experiences. And I said, yes, all the time. That could be about pluralism, and compassion, and avoiding domination, or fundamentalism, or it could be how I'm wired. But there is always for me, not just the scholarly skepticism, which Melila and Sam, I think, you both voiced really clearly. But even a personal, if not quite skepticism, then hesitancy, anavah, humility, which Melila mentioned, that accompanies these profound experiences, partly because we've seen the role that fundamentalism can play in making life miserable. And I tend to validate the experiences of a extreme, conservative, religious fundamentalist having a spiritual experience. Certainly as a scholar, it's not my place to audit those. So I see that there can be a causal relationship, not just between psychedelics and awesome, pluralistic, lovely experiences, but also between mystical experience and violence or domination, and authoritarianism. So there's a lot of humility to put it mildly, maybe even some fear around the way that we can privilege experience theologically. So second point that I want to make the second of 3 is it's clear that there is a or there are multiple god slash goddess experiences that are possible through psychedelics. There are also already multiple god and goddess experiences within the sweep of Jewish history and Jewish tradition, the warrior god who fights on the side of the Israelites, the womb god, the compassionate one, the Judging God, the force for ethics or the force for good in the world. The mystical god with whom one can unite or approach or be in proximity to, or yearn for. The personal god, who kind of looks out for us; the goddess, imminent in nature; the philosophical god, all of these are-- these are all Hechsher-- all of these to one degree or another, I guess. All of these have precedent within Jewish history. So there's already a plurality of theologies and god images. And of course, I'd go well beyond that to include everything, Christ, Buddha, anything, and any experiences, as well as conceptions. It seems, as though, the psychedelic experience tends more towards some of those experiences than others. It seems that it tends more toward what some sages call satcitananda, being consciousness bliss. It seems to incline toward the unit of or perhaps toward the non dual. It seems to reveal something about a primordial oneness that comes with an aura of compassion around it. And yet, as I wrote-- gosh, almost 15 years ago at this point, there are some medicines which lead to other experiences. So ayahuasca and other visionary medicines can actually lead more toward a radical polytheism or encounters with figures, which might be seen as angels or demonic. It might be a polytheism with a monosomy behind it as in some, for example, some Hindu philosophies. But it might just also be a kind of polytheism, or animism, or nature mysticism. And I think there's been a tendency, as I wrote in that article 15 years ago. Because of the-- as Sam said, the psychedelics have played a particular role in the Renaissance in Jewish spirituality in the 1960s and '70s, right, tended to be either psilocybin and LSD experiences that led to more on the unit of side, and less of the visionary multiplicity side. There tended to be an assumption almost. I don't know if it's quite-- I don't want to put it down by saying an assumption. But there seemed to be a conception that psychedelics means unity. And so I mean, I wrote a book about non theology, like, obviously, inspiring for me. But it is possible that even within psychedelics, there could be a plurality of theological experiences, and thus conclusions. At the very least, I'm definitely on the team that does not want to say that a god of my experience is the god of every voice that's in the scriptures. There are clearly multiple deities already there. There's that saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer that everything looks like a nail, I think we want multiple tools, not only the tool of our own experience when looking at the diversity of Jewish texts and traditions. I think both of you already kind of mentioned that. And it's a radical unknowingness. I don't know if this powerful experience that I've had many times is also what, let's say, Christian mystics write about. It seems very different from what some contemporary Pentecostals might experience when they're speaking in tongues or charismatics, but I don't know. I don't know what they feel like in their trances or their mystical experiences for that matter. It might be different projections of my mind's and theirs into imagination. It might be any sort of way of conceptualizing that, which is difficult to conceptualize. As Sam said, the text creates the interpretation that their text affects the interpretation, the interpretation then affects the text, effects the theology. So my mystical experience may or may not be somebody else's mystical experience. And it may be somebody else's simple pleasure or experience of the drug as a drug not as some numinous encounter with something ineffable or transpersonal. Last thing I want to say, the third point, is looking at our interests in the question, obviously, there are scholarly interests. There are also kind of spiritual contemporary Jewish interests. It's possible to be interested in this intersection because psychedelic experience can make Jewish experience deeper and richer. My tendency is actually the opposite. I'm interested in how my Jewish cultural and religious lamination and background makes the psychedelic experience deeper. So Sam recently gave a presentation on an astonishing document by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a founder of Jewish Renewal, talking about a psychedelic experience and how important it was for him to have kind of Jewish stuff with him, not just physical stuff-- although that too, you know, like tallis and tefillin and things like that, but also that conceptual frame and all of the symbols that were part of it. I love having Jewish stuff around in my medicine experiences. It seems-- it feels both comforting, but also deepening, connecting me to home, and folkways, roots, connections to ancestors. I'm definitely not making any claim about theology or God Torah in Israel. But there just feels-- there's a deepening that takes place that I think is really valuable. And certainly, as Melila just alluded to and could explore in great detail since I've read you out at many times, there's plenty of evidence of some altered states that are related to prophecy. Maybe not with these tools, but ecstasies, prophetic experiences, group prophetic experiences as in the Zohar or at least altered experiences, some kind of transpersonal experience. Abolafia, Ezekiel, Hasidism, Neo-Hasidism. It's also-- I have a sort of open-minded question as to the relationship of substances to those experiences, ergot outbreaks. It's interesting that poison grain makes an appearance in some Hasidic stories. But I'm certainly not looking for, let's say, \[HEBREW\] or validation, either of those texts or of my own experience. But certainly, there is at the core level, returning to my first point, the notion that experience can be profoundly generative and revelatory within multiple Jewish, mystical, and esoteric traditions. And so then it's almost a question only of means of what tools and what processes, whether it's only ecstatic prayer or ecstatic meditation, or something else, or wine, or whatever, or if also these additional tools can be, I think, Sam, you know, your metaphor like the jumpstart or shock treatment can also be employed. So that is my opening spiel. SAM SHONKOFF: Amazing. Wow. Well, I kind of am tempted to turn it back to you, Melila. I'm interested-- I mean, this question that Jay raised about, like, really honestly, historically speaking, like to what extent have experiences been valued as generative of Jewish theology, as relevant, as revealing? I mean, didn't the rabbis of the Talmud say that the age of prophecy is over. Like, do we just abandon that? But you're in your scholarship, in your book on the Zohar, on religion-- on mystical experience, religious experience in the Zohar, I'm just curious to hear you-- what thoughts you have on that question? Because I agree with you, Jay, that the question of the relationship between experiences and theological innovation. And the tradition seems to be really central here to thinking about psychedelics. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: Mm-hmm. I think these are fascinating questions. We do have to remember, and I think, Jay, you alluded to that in some kind of way. We have so many theologies. Judaism doesn't have a theology, right? I mean, we don't do theology on that level. People try to do all kinds of systematic stuff, but there are-- you can just open up the deck of god images and Judaism. It's huge, right? Like every century, you have a different imagination, different language. And they somehow fit in a-- you can put them together in the deck, which I think is fascinating in itself. But when I'm thinking of the role of experience or I would say the role of experience, it seems to be very important, right? That has very high importance in ways of understanding and having language around God. I think really we have it all in the Tanakh. I mean, it's true that we're not biblical Jews. But if we look at our ground language, our ground language is that language of the Tanakh of scripture of the Bible. And when you look at Ezekiel, and Isaiah, and the elders kind of looking at God or Moses, seeing the great vision, right, of the burning bush, or I mean-- and these are all kind of in the hard-- in the drive of Jewish collective consciousness. They have a big role in structuring language around experiences of encountering-- of encountering the divine. I'm thinking-- I'm thinking of Moses. I'm thinking of the radiance of the face. I'm thinking of Daniel, right? He says, I became different, right? It has altered me, the experience has altered me. All that goes into the big lexicon of languages around which what's legit, legitimate language to be speaking about, encounters with God or the world, the world of divinity. So first of all, I find that those special, special states, those special heightened peak experiences of people and the most important one, of course, is the one that we all were part of which is standing at Sinai, where everybody's in this, you know, totally open state of seeing voices, seeing sounds, and this synesthetic experience, in an experience of being very, very close to death, right? The fear, the awe, the excitement described and transmitted year after year, not just in Torah reading, but in the holiday and \[HEBREW\] coming up, I mean-- so, first of all, I want to say it's full of that. That lends the language, right? When you try to say how does Rosh be in the Zohar experience the divine? Is it possible to experience the divine as being face to face with someone? They say, yeah, that's what it says about Moses, right? So the ground language is always there. I mean, in whatever way, we play-- play with it is another question. But I wanted to say-- I wanted to say that that's something that I find very interesting. And also, I really-- in the way I understand it, I think at the heart of religions, there's a fire. There's a fire of intense experience. And that intense-- that intense fire is so strong \[HEBREW\]. Everybody moves back. It's very it's very difficult to withstand it without, like, dying from overexposure. So when you look at systematic religion-- systematic religion is kind of a systems of cooling down, right? Cooling down, cooling down, how do you-- how do you put this into structure, into language, et cetera, which on the one hand becomes a way of re-accessing those experiences. And on the other hand, it sometimes I'll suffice it, right? It keeps you back. Another thing that I thought would be really interesting to think about, from the point of view of theologies, is that when we move from biblical ways of imagining God into the world of rabbinics-- and, Jay, you said that about the story of the four who entered Pardes, which is such an archetypal central story that tells of four sages, four rabbinic sages that stepped into the divine world or stepped across the threshold of the regular world. And only one out of four seems to be able to kind of enter and exit in peace, right? \[HEBREW\] is only set about to be Akiva. And that the story that one goes mad, and that one dies, and that one totally leaves the fold, I think is a very meaningful story from the point of view of saying people-- this path is a path full of dangers. It's a path full of dangers. One out of four, one out of four really come out and change religion, or they change our language. They change the horizon of the way we understand God and the way we kind of have language to speak of Divinity. But it means that this is a path, the path of entering intense openings of consciousness need to be dealt with a lot of attention, right, a lot of \[HEBREW\]. Because, like they say in the Tosefta, it's a path where on one side is fire and the other side is ice. And you have to know how to navigate. It's about navigating with humility, with accuracy, with letting go of notions that what works in this reality, also works in that reality. So I think it's very powerful that in rabbinic literature, I mean, we'll get to mystical stuff later. I don't want to talk too much. But I just want to say that in rabbinic literature, we have these ideas that-- how would I call it? Like, creative innovations and study of Torah create by themselves expanded states, which if we retracted \[HEBREW\] and in the Babylonian Talmud, we have these amazing descriptions of how all of nature partakes in the experience, right? The trees start singing and clapping, fire comes down, the Ring of Fire is around-- so it's very it's very powerful that they speak about that as people who, on the one hand are sitting and creating law, creating religion-- Judaism as structure, not as theologies. And on the other hand, the same people can have these outstanding experiences that they bring back into the treasure troves of the way we think in our different-- in our different theologies. So I'll keep-- I'll keep the Middle Ages for later, but I'm just saying it's so fascinating the way that different layers have different takes about paths that create these altered states. And the way they relate to the way we speak about the divine. JAY MICHAELSON: Yeah, I was really struck by that. Maybe this will be our Talmudic section, and then Sam, you can wrestle us over to the medieval period. But first, I was struck, Melila, with what you just said that a few people have asked already in the chat. Do we think that X or Y or Z figure were using psychedelics? And for me, I'm more interested in what I think-- what I think I heard you say a little bit about like there's almost this vocabulary or grammar of altered state experience that clearly is present. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: Absolutely. JAY MICHAELSON: And there is not a lot-- you know, Ezekiel sits down by a river. He doesn't say, and then I ate a mushroom or something. But he sits down by a river, gazes into the river, has a vision. The four that go into Pardes is same way. And it feels to me more-- I'm more inspired by that sort of general move than by which tools were used. I think there's sometimes an anxiety like is this tool kosher or not, even for people who aren't religious in that sense. But just like, is this OK or am I more Akiva or am I more Acher in using this particular medicine? By the way I thin I always think it's like two came out OK. Maybe Acher was fine. You know, he's the one who left entirely. Maybe that was the right decision for him. I've always felt that was also a polemic. I always felt like this was like-- this is the very beginning we think of the Heikhalot mystical speculations. And these are probably overlapping, but different communities and different iterations of what Jewishness in the post temple period was going to look like. Was it going to look like mystical practice, or was it going to look like the sort of normative practice, or both? And I've always taken that with a grain of salt. I was curious, just this is a total selfish digression. But I've wondered this question for now 23 years. What do you think the "water, water" is about, where it's like when you enter, there's a visualization probably of the temple? And there's a warning that says when you enter the stone of polished marble, don't say water. And I remember asking my professor that in 1990, and not being satisfied with the answer. You got anything on that? SAM SHONKOFF: I've always imagined that "water, water" is-- there's a sort of luminosity. There's some kind of vision, but don't think that it's going to drown you, right, just continue proceeding. JAY MICHAELSON: So don't be afraid. It's a Talmudic \[HEBREW\] to just keep you going forward in the journey. SAM SHONKOFF: Yeah. Well, there's also-- I mean, another part of that Tosefta that you referred to Melila, the rabbinic commentary on before, who entered the Pardes that I love and I feel like doesn't get enough playtime these days is the additional image of walking in the Garden of the King, of the Divine, and that one of the challenges there and the reason it says that Akiva was able to move unscathed through the experience was that he didn't take his eyes off the king, that there's this way. Actually, part of where it gets-- where we suffer more and maybe where it can break us even on some level is when we start trying to run away when we say "water, water" and try to flee, or when we just can't look anymore at what's happening and can't sort of surrender to the image in that way. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: Yeah. I also think-- I mean, there's so many ways of looking at it. But I also think that \[HEBREW\], do not say "water, water" also has to do with just being with what is happening in such a state, and that immediately defining it. Because I think that's exactly either one of the things that one shouldn't be doing is schlepping, you know, carrying everything that makes sense to you in one dimension into the other one, and then demanding it to stand to be of the same type. And actually, the ability to stand watching ripples of light, and not include, not say, not-- even if it's a \[HEBREW\], even if it's an ecstatic comment, it's kind of to hold it in, I think, is another way of maybe of looking at it. But there's so many ways that we can. I'm not sure they would want to add to that. Yeah. SAM SHONKOFF: That's-- of course. So this has started to come up. And I want to kind of amplify it. And also, while I'm amplifying things, I just want to amplify Charlie Stang, his comment in the chat. We're seeing more questions, I think, come in the chat, put them in the Q&A, It'll make it a lot easier, the Q&A button to the right of the chat button will make it easier later. But OK. So a question now that I want to bring here is like maybe this isn't anything new at all, right? That there have been various techniques throughout Jewish history of altering consciousness. We can point to-- I mean, we talked about Ezekiel at the river that the merkabah mystics apparently had some practice of gazing into the surface of water, which if you've tried it is quite a mind-altering experience, and that that's what it meant for him to be at the river. And different techniques, especially ones that are borrowed from other cultures, appropriated, borrowed different techniques of prayer used that were in Jewish circles in 13th century Egypt, inspired by encounters with Sufi prayer practices-- we can look at Abolafia and different practices of contemplation and meditation that he was borrowing from other sort of cultural contexts that were altering consciousness in very profound ways. I think even the 1990s of the sort of Jewish mindfulness, you know, tidal wave that was experimenting with practices that were, in many ways, new to Jewish communities and were indeed changing the ways that people thought about Divinity, the ways that people were reading sources, and is this just another one of those? Or does psychedelic-- does ingestion of psychedelic substances, is that something different? Is it just more of the same? Or do you see this as actually some sort of qualitative shift? JAY MICHAELSON: All right. Well, Melila, since you kept yourself muted, I \[INAUDIBLE\]. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: Yeah, Jay, if you'd like to start, yeah. JAY MICHAELSON: Yeah. I love that question. And obviously, I have no answer to it. In a certain way, everything is qualitatively so different. I mean, what are we doing right now, right? We're like talking about hidden wisdom that was forbidden to talk about after The Frankist Episode, of course, by the way. I have to do some self-promotion. And we're talking about it on this these devices, which are completely miraculous, which would I have no idea, you know, like Arthur Clark said this technology would look like magic. So we're doing it in a way that's a little bit more gender inclusive and other inclusive than any Jewish tradition ever was for 96% of the Jewish-- the sweep of the Jewish history. So I don't know if it may be qualitatively different, but it feels like everything is qualitatively different. So I almost don't see it as anomalous in that regard. I mean, if we can say "kaddish" on Zoom during a global pandemic, you know, that feels like the paradigm has shifted in a certain way. I don't mean to be glib about it, but it does feel to me as though that the pace of change-- this seems to be in keeping with the current pace of change, such that-- again, that's why I go back to again, some of the questions in the chat. Like, the Nadab and Abihu episode, which does seem to reference whether it's strange fire or whether it's incense, and whether that-- like, I don't know-- to me, it's less essential as to whether that's the same medicines that I might know. That is in my-- my short stories actually have a lot of that. That's coming out in December. But as a scholarly matter, I have no idea. But I am profoundly interested in the notion that there's some kind of spiritual practice that can then lead to this rupture. And here are some tools for staying secure or safe on the way, on the \[HEBREW\]. I'm very interested in the kind of-- this is a little glib. But those Zohar circle that Melila has written so much about maybe as the Shefa Psychedelic integration circle of the 13th and 14th century, that this was a group practice, right? That this was not-- and you know, these mystics are dying with a kiss, right? They're not playing around. And there seems to be-- so those like-- that general understanding of depths of reality that are somehow accessible in different ways, that have parallels, and that also have those rewards. And here are some communities-- here's do this with community, do this with tools, that feels to me enduring and central. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: \[HEBREW\]. I wanted to add-- Sam, to your question, you know, is this something new? Is it different? There's a beautiful story in the Zohar, which I think speaks to this question. There's a story-- it's a very long story, and at the end of which, all the \[HEBREW\], all the disciples of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai-- they come to \[INAUDIBLE\] to the house of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. And Rabbi Shimon notices there's one of them who hasn't talked all day. He says \[HEBREW\]. I see you haven't talked. Can you-- OK, you start lighting up the night. And he opens and quotes the song of song saying, you should kiss me with the kisses of your mouth \[HEBREW\]. Yeah? For your love is more intoxicating. \[HEBREW\] comes from \[HEBREW\] intoxication than wine. And then \[INAUDIBLE\] in commenting, doing his kind of Zohar riff on it says yeah, you know, guys, what is it that we're so-- what's this wine that we are so intoxicated by? And he says it's God. So when you read it, he says it's God. That's why we're \[AUDIO OUT\]. So when I read that, I say to myself, these people, they have their techniques of going in, you know, going into that zone. And not only that they had techniques which would allow what Jay, what you're talking about, things that would allow that rapture like. And also that the faith, that working through the study, the engagement, the love of Torah, if you do it in certain ways, things are going to open up. And it's not about ingesting stuff. It's a different mode. It's staying awake at night. It's doing all-- I mean, they have ways of doing it. I think what is very fascinating about, I mean, now, we're taking this new wave of interest in psychedelics. But I think the very formative essay that Art Green wrote when he was a young student in Brandeis, and he was 21-- I think those questions are still very, very important-- is that because our experience is of such sudden, unmediated experience with what we experience as the divine, the gods or the goddesses or the winged powers, or the intelligence-- that the question that he asks there is like, if you can just go there, and, just like that, kind of cut through all the veils, then like why sit and work for years on these texts and try to decipher? That was the first-- that's Art's wow moment. Like, what do we do now with Jewish theology? But I think that when he returns to it, it's something that's still relevant to us, what he's saying, you know? When he returns and kind of reflects on it and says, well, there's experience, but actually to learn the pathways is a very important thing. It's like \[HEBREW\], I mean, in the Hasidic-- in the commentary about Shavuot that's coming up soon, where he says maybe it's good that everybody backed off and said we can't handle the fact-- we can't handle this. It's too intense. Because experience is something that you're in. And then it's not there. And the question is, can one learn the path that actually allows you to learn the way in a slow, gradual way and not just be blasted into the \[? galut, ?\] but actually know how to make the move of growing into this. So I don't know. I just think these are such-- it's fascinating questions. So yes, it does have a qualitative difference. If you know, all you have to do is take something in, make a blessing, take it in, and go wherever they're going to take you. But actually, does that have any theological significance? Is that theologically significant? That's \[HEBREW\]. I would say people have amazing experiences. Some of their experience might impact the way they experience the divine, for sure. But I think to say the illogically meaningful is actually when people that have gone into, you know, \[HEBREW\], that they went in and have incredible experiences have the capacity of emerging, you know, from that experience of that encounter, and being able to say something about it that's connected in some kind of way-- either through language, through holidays, through ideas that we have in Torah or ideas that we have in different theologies that can connect it to that. Then we can talk about something that's meaningful beyond the idiosyncratic, amazing, meaningfulness that it might have for me. I think that's when you feel that it's impacting actually about the way we can start thinking about it in a way that we can also transmit it and speak about it. And that's something amazing. You know, Erich Neumann, when he says in "Mystical Man," he says that's the midlife mystical experience that is really of great worth is being able to dip into the \[INAUDIBLE\], but also come out and say something about it. Turn it into something that actually makes sense in some kind of way or is coherent with the culture. JAY MICHAELSON: I think I want to slightly push back on the \[HEBREW\] why would this be theologically \[INAUDIBLE\]. So I totally agree, right? And also you did a perfect transition to now talk about the 19th, 20th, and 21st century. So Sam is really happy because we've now moved on to the next era, and the one he studies. But right, because I mean-- I think the early Hasidim definitely thought that these experiences were theologically significant, whether it's like \[INAUDIBLE\] or \[INAUDIBLE\]-- MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: Yeah. JAY MICHAELSON: --rabbi, or any of the ones who are-- and Rabbi Nachman-- for them-- and Rabbi Nachman, a very different mode, but still, that these were generative and also truth revealing. And even back to the Pardes, like the fact that Acher could have an experience and then leave Judaism, that, to me, is theologically significant, that there was something that was seen. I mean, again, the Talmud has other reasons why he left, but just if we just isolate that experience. So-- and I think just speaking personally, like these experiences, which now for me, it's been 24 years that I've been having these experiences with some regularity, and some with medicine, and some on meditation retreat, and there are some in other practices, Earth based practices. I'll be at a Beltane thing in four days, or whatever it is. There are different modalities and ways in, but that has shifted my own personal theology many, many times. And it just doesn't feel not as a scholar, but as a practitioner. When something just doesn't feel aligned with compassion, this sounds very sanctimonious, I apologize. But like, when it doesn't feel that way, like it feels-- that just feels theologically rotten to me, like rotten food, like it just feels like slightly repulsive, like if it's something that's leading to more cruelty and maybe that's because I'm such a wonderfully advanced human being, but I doubt it. I think it's more that. There just have been numerous experiences where the aspect of compassion or love that comes along with it, it's not that is \[? integratable, ?\] that's not just the like, you know, I was dealing with my cleaning up after my kid, and then I had a mystical experience. And now, I'm back cleaning up for my kid. No, I mean the cleaning up is connected to me for the values and the sensations that emerged from that experience. SAM SHONKOFF: Mm-hmm. So we're getting into deep territory here with-- I mean, thinking about the preparation for the experience. We can say, or what occasions the experience in the way of what you were speaking about about the contrast that Art Green drew in this 1968, 1969 article on LSD and Kabbalah and what does it mean to-- And are those pathways up the mountain that are slower and more deliberate, perhaps, at least more cultivated like to what extent are those pathways so overgrown now from neglect and from lack of foot traffic, that right this discourse that has come up a couple of times about Moses must have been tripping. Ezekiel must have been tripping. That on some level, like that's a modern discourse worthy of research in its own right. That's a weird distinctively, modern contemporary imagination. And I think it involves a sort of amnesia, right? That there's a forgetting of these ancestral techniques and technologies that did not necessarily involve ingesting a psychedelic substance, that have been so forgotten, that one can only imagine now that they must have been tripping. And also, this question of whether the communal interpersonal integration process is a necessary ingredient of these experiences being theologically meaningful or as, Jay, you're putting whether even experiences that are indeed like quite limited to a particular individual on their own personal path as a Jewish person or as in the case of Acher, a formerly Jewish person, right-- whether these are, nonetheless, theologically significant in their own right? I want to in a moment, we should probably just open this up to Q&A now. We got 7 minutes. JAY MICHAELSON: I'm reading Q's. SAM SHONKOFF: We've got some good-- JAY MICHAELSON: I've been trying to respond to a couple of them. SAM SHONKOFF: Yeah. So I'm going to invite \[AUDIO OUT\] back in to help us sift through some of these questions there. CHARLES STANG: Hey. Yeah, there is a lot of questions. And many of them are being put in the chat. So we have to go to two different places to sort through them all. I'm going to ask a question of you all. First of all, thank you. This has been very rich to listen to. I want to ask you a question that gets behind a lot of the questions that I'm seeing. And to some degree, you've already anticipated it, which is not answering the historical questions of was Ezekiel tripping or is there a psychedelic embedded in this or that biblical story? But the implicit question behind those, which is what are we after? What's at stake in asking about historical precedence of psychedelics in Judaism? Why are Jews or others interested in that question of historical precedents? And if you'll permit me, I just want to-- this is obviously a burning question also in Christianity and psychedelics. So that last year-- two years ago, we had Brian Muraresku in this series, and his book The Immortality Key, which was exploring evidence for psychedelic use in the ancient Mediterranean. And more specifically, it's really drilling into the evidence for psychedelics in the Eleusinian mysteries, and then early Christianity. There, in both cases, you, of course, have a ritual around a drink, the kykeon in the case of the Eleusinian mysteries, and of course, the Eucharist, the wine in Christianity. Very briefly, and in my very humble opinion, I've read the book now quite closely, twice. The evidence for the Eleusinian studies still indirect, but seems encouraging. I think it's very plausible that the kykeon was psychoactive. I don't think there's any good evidence yet for the Eucharist. And frankly, I don't think there will be evidence that could-- I don't think there will be evidence. I think there will be more evidence to come to light on Eleusinian. But I'm trying to get at why are we so interested in this question. And so I'm going to ask it of you all, with respect to Judaism, but the same question could be posed to Christians. My suspicion is that it goes back to Sam's opening remarks that there are a lot of contemporary Jews who feel as if the tradition has suppressed experience as a significant component. And many contemporary Jews, who are having these pretty powerful experiences occasioned by psychedelics, or perhaps by other modalities. And they want to know then how they can hold those experiences. And I feel like there's like-- there's one way to make these experiences licit is to find them in the historical record. That must be. But is it just that or is there more to looking for precedent? Why should we care about the ancient? I mean, I think another possibility is that this is lurking around Brian's work as well. There is a hypothesis, which I very much disagree with, that somehow psychedelics are the-- explain the birth of religion. I mean, that's kind of the stoned ape hypothesis, crossed with the study of religion. And I feel like some people are sort of advocating that, too. Like, oh, well, it's not just that my psychedelic experience, I want to find historical precedent in my tradition to make it listed and maybe even deepen my engagement, my tradition. But maybe I'm actually back at the very origins of what religion is. And I'm tripping with Ezekiel means. He and I are-- we're really at the start of this thing. And I would love to hear your reflections on that meta question of why people seem to care so much about the ancient. SAM SHONKOFF: Mm. JAY MICHAELSON: I can take the first bite at that. I mean, I think sometimes it's validating the experience, and sometimes it's validating the tradition. CHARLES STANG: Yeah. JAY MICHAELSON: Like, is Judaism worth it? Well, it's worth it if it's grounded in this awesome experience. CHARLES STANG: I see. JAY MICHAELSON: Because I definitely-- I don't-- this is me in some voice. Like, I don't believe in the old man in the sky. I don't believe in the creation myth, but I do believe in the psychedelic experience. And so if that's the root of Judaism, then Judaism has some value. I think that's one version of it. And I think that's also true, you know, then there's also-- there's the flip, which is the legitimizing of the experience. Like, I've had this powerful experience. I want it. That's why I joked about it being kosher. I want this to be like aligned in some way. I want this to-- and again, we've seen in the Jewish tradition, there are mystical experiences that lead you off the derech, meaning of the path. And so I think it's a-- at least, it's a concern with historical precedent to see-- is this leading me astray? Is this demonic? Is this a \[HEBREW\]? Is this foreign worship? Is this idolatry? Or is it cool? And I think to me, that goes to some of the core psychology of religion around what's OK and what's not OK, am I OK? Am I not OK? Guilt, and all of that whole package. And I am interested for the folks who have asked that question in the chat, in holding it light, in a non-judgmental way, but inquiring as to what my intention is or what's at stake, the way you put it, Charles. What's at stake in this question? Not as an accusatory thing, like don't ask that question. But it's a very-- we see it a lot. And there was a whole-- the Shefa, there's a psychedelic Judaism Facebook group back when we all used to use Facebook. And this was like a big long thing. And there were people with very strong opinions that cannabis is in the Torah. And it's not where it isn't, or this, or that. And yeah, in a non-accusatory, non-judgmental way, I think your question is one I want to pose in response. It's a very Jewish thing. You're supposed for Christian theology. You answered a question with a question. But that's like the Jews are supposed to do that. I think answering that question with a question is profoundly right, like that's fine as a question. And what's at stake? And that to me invites a kind of discernment around how we value experience and/or tradition. And that for me feels like what's it-- but I get it, though. I don't want to sound dismissive of that question because these can be profoundly unsettling experiences. Certainly, my first ayahuasca experience, which I never write about ever and only talk about-- this is the first Zoom recorded thing I've ever talked about it-- was deeply heretical. I spent a while with Ganesh. I spent a while with Ayahuasca herself with Ayaruna, who seemed like I asked her if she was Lilith, and she sort of laughed at me, and said how ridiculous that question was. That she didn't anything, need anything from me. I needed stuff from her. Shut up. That's what Lilith-- that's what your men said about me. That's not me. And I thought that was a great response from her. And just the idea that the reality of this other entity, and she wasn't the only one-- multiple other entities was very still 20 years later from that first experience-- something like that-- is still-- it's an open question for me. And it's definitely an open theological question. And I'll leave it that. I can say more. I'll leave it at that. SAM SHONKOFF: Yeah. I also just want to note that these questions of history are, I think, even more deeply questions of Jewish memory, and that this is what Jews and people of all religious traditions, I think-- but I'll just speak about the Jewish context-- have always done, right? The rabbis of the Talmud were deeply engaged with their own liturgies, practices of prayer, laying to fill in, and imagines the patriarchs of Genesis as dominating the morning, afternoon, and evening prayers, like they did. They imagined that Abraham couldn't possibly have served milk and meat to the angels. And Abraham kept kosher, Maimonides, imagine Moses as a philosopher, right? And so people have contemporary folks having profound psychedelic experiences are-- they're refracting Torah through that prism. And that's a question that comes out as historical discourse, and those are interesting questions. But I think even more deeply, it's a question of Jewish cultural memory. CHARLES STANG: Mm. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: I think I'd like to add to that, I mean, I totally I totally agree with everything that was said by both of you. But I want to add maybe that we care about these questions also because when we find footprints, imprints, soulscapes that are describing these things in classical and ancient texts that belong to one's culture, it's that sense that these are the wells that the ancestors dug. It's something so-- I mean, it's a Hasidic take on it. But it's like the feeling that-- some other people have the feeling that there is a veil over our eyes. And there are ways that we could \[HEBREW\]. We can open. We can unveil that. And we can see different-- we can see reality in a different perspective. But the notion that somebody's already opened up, somebody's already opened up the well, like it's so the weird we're in that business. We're looking for ways of connecting to the different wells that are being opened. I think that's another reason that we're looking for that like a-- CHARLES STANG: OK. There's a question I'd like to pose, but it seems an odd one to pose at the end. Because in some sense, I feel like we should have posted much more explicitly at the beginning, seemed-- SAM SHONKOFF: We like odd here. This is good. CHARLES STANG: OK. Cyclical. Sam, you spoke-- you address this question to some degree. And maybe Jay and Melila, you did, too, but I missed it. But-- which is just-- can we reflect briefly on what are the criteria by which we assess something as theologically significant within Judaism? First of all, the category of Theology is not native to Judaism, and nor is it to Islam. It's a category that has a kind of contested legacy. So I understand in Judaism. So that in and of itself is interesting. And the significance, what does it mean for something to be theologically significant? Sam, you spoke about that in terms of whether and how these experiences, occasion, a kind of return to the tradition, if I missed-- is that unfair? Well, maybe you could-- SAM SHONKOFF: Maybe somehow stimulate that interplay between experiences and-- CHARLES STANG: Yes. SAM SHONKOFF: --traditional engagement with the tradition. Yeah. \- OK. So I felt like that was one way of getting a theological significance. Is there a kind of robust energetic, dynamic, dialectic between experience and tradition that these medicines or psychedelics can occasion? You want to add to that, Sam, or Melila, or Jay? If you want to just say a word about that framework for theological significance. SAM SHONKOFF: | think you're muted, Melila. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: I think, Jay, that you said it very beautifully. Like, it would be, you know, when you said, look, it can be-- first of all, \[INAUDIBLE\] theological significance for the person who's having the experience, right? You're saying you don't want to say that not-- that that's insignificant theologically. I totally agree with that on a personal level. I'm just saying that I think when we're talking about for Judaism, it's just looking at it from different circles from the point of view, not of significance of-- significance from the point of view that it actually you know, the Yiddish that you come up with from an experience gets worked through into the river of the way different Jews are thinking about something. I think from that point-- from that point of view, I'm talking about significance from the point of view of transmission, that it turns into something that not really-- that isn't just the way it impacts and the way I say \[HEBREW\]. What happens to me when I think about ancestors when I say that blessing? God who remembers the good parts of my ancestors, you know, that I-- something changed in the way that I see that. But the question is, who can take that and turn it into language that I can teach in class, that we can work with, that you write in your \[HEBREW\], that you write in your next book? I think that's-- it's just a question of the order in which we're doing it. And it's not that it's less significant on a personal level. It's just when does it-- when does it impact in a more collective-- in a more collective way. I think that's what I'm asking. Because I think that it's true. Judaism doesn't demand like it's not an Orthodox religion. So you don't have a doxa about how you're supposed to understand God. You can be in synagogue with people that have a totally different take on-- or totally different theology. And we can stand together. So I just wanted to add that. But I totally agree with you, Jay, on the meaningfulness on the personal level. JAY MICHAELSON: Yeah. Thank you. I feel like that process of osmosis feels almost inevitable. You know, whether if it's a formal theologian, or Franz Rosenzweig or Martin Buber, or something. You know, Buber-- sorry, I shouldn't say anything about Buber in Sam's presence because he's a Buber expert. But he had certain experiences that led him to one philosophical outlook, and then he had other spiritual experiences that led him to reject that outlook. That the one he rejected is more consonant with common, let's say, new age psychedelia, by the way, right? To reject that, and that was very impactful. And I think going down the line from abstruse philosopher, to mystic, to legend maker, to poet, to artist, to everybody, that feels so-- I guess yeah, I don't-- it feels like if it's going to be theologically significant to Jews, it's going to be theological significant to Judaism sooner or later. Or feminist theology is this way, queer theology is this way, Indigenous minded theology, theologies of racial justice, right? All of these trickle out in ways that sometimes they're top down. But more often, are just, yeah, osmosis. CHARLES STANG: Mm. I want to highlight another-- thank you all for that. And I mean, it's curious, Jay. You sort of moved that question from not answering about theological significance for Judaism, but the distinction between what's theologically significant for Jews versus what's theologically significant for Judaism, suggesting that there's a-- that one leads to the other. JAY MICHAELSON: But I think that's because of what Melila said, right? There's not like the authority. There's not the catechism. There's not the-- and so it's always funny when I teach kids this actually. It's really funny. To get that through, like, what does Judaism say about X, or Y, or Z? It's like, well, you know, who's asking, right? Like which authority? So that's why I think the osmosis process is particularly relevant here because there's not like an appeals process in a Supreme Court, you know? CHARLES STANG: I think that though in this framework, Christianity often serves as a foil to this understanding. JAY MICHAELSON: Yeah. CHARLES STANG: That the fact of the matter is that what you've just described just absolutely obtains-- JAY MICHAELSON: Right. CHARLES STANG: \[INAUDIBLE\] actual historical instantiation of Christianity. JAY MICHAELSON: Right. CHARLES STANG: It's no-- JAY MICHAELSON: Of course, yeah. CHARLES STANG: --top down dictate that somehow governs what people experience and believe. But I want to highlight something else you said early on, Jay, which really struck me and resonated, which is this question about doubting one's own experience. Because one of the things, I think, that I've experienced in the psychedelic Renaissance as it crosses paths with religion is well, first of all, there's what I've called psychedelic evangelism. People who have had psychedelics experience, who feel like everybody needs to do this, right? It's like the apostle Paul tripped, and everybody needs to be tripping. But then the other is a psychedelic literalism and even fundamentalism. And that is to say if I've had an experience, that experience, I can kind of-- I can take that experience almost literally as literally true. And I can hold to it as if it were bedrock. And I think I just want to highlight that I took your point to be there's no reason to think that your experience somehow, or a singular experience should not be put through the fire of discernment maybe relative to other experiences you've had. But equally, other experiences that other people have had. And I think this is what's-- this is one of the benefits of having-- the benefits of communities what I call communities of discernment when you're talking about experiences of this scale, transcendent or transformative experiences is that if you have a community of discernment that can help you sift through these experiences and understand how to weigh them, and make meaning out of them. I mean, the-- again, I'll pivot to something I know in the Christian tradition. People are having all sorts of wild experiences sometimes of Christ, sometimes of Angels, sometimes of demons in monastic communities, those are not taken at face value. In fact, very often, if you have a experience of the divine that gets put through a pretty significant wringer of skepticism because in that worldview, the demons are precisely trying to make you think that you're having experiences of Christ to lead you down a particular path. So I'm wondering if you're seeing in your various constituencies, communities, people who are working with these medicines, do you see that kind of commitment to disciplined discernment? JAY MICHAELSON: I mean, I see the rigor that you just mentioned in Orthodox communities all the time. Even if we go back to the '60s and '70s, where there was discussion about Judaism and meditation, Judaism and psychedelics, et cetera. And there was overwhelming rejection from what I would call traditional Orthodox authorities. I haven't seen it as much. I'm interested with the rise of conspirituality, which I think the panelists know about, but maybe not everyone listening, the convergence of what we might call usually progressive left wing spirituality with conspiracy theorizing and stuff like that, in a lot of different forms, that I've seen subjectively-- this is purely anecdotal, value less-- an increased interest in discernment among what I would call progressively minded spiritual practitioners. Because we've just seen so many people, including beloved people really go off the rails. And so we haven't-- I mean, I guess you could go back to past examples, like the Manson family or something like that. But we haven't-- I don't think we've seen recently this kind of ordinarily things we used to think would always like if everyone would do yoga and everyone would meditate, we would just definitely get to world peace. And we'd be fine. And it's going to naturally lead to that. And just we've seen in the last five years that it frequently does not, and leads to its opposite. I mean, Melila, maybe there's more experience with this in Israel. I remember when I was living in Israel and I met hard right wing nationalist hippies for the first time. And I had never encountered that, right? People who are like authentically like pot-smoking hippies, like in the hills of the West Bank with extreme nationalistic views. CHARLES STANG: Mm. JAY MICHAELSON: And so I don't see a lot of what you're asking, but I'm wondering if we're going to see more because of these kinds of unusual juxtapositions that we haven't seen in most of the last 50 years. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: Sam, I'd love to hear you. What do you think? SAM SHONKOFF: Yeah. Well, I want to hear you too. But I mean, what's-- I think we do need more people, studying this in the contemporary world. Madison Margolin is a journalist, who I think is doing a lot of interesting work on contemporary spheres, but there's very little. But from the part of the elephant that I'm investigating, and what I see and experience, my sense is that actually psychedelic engagement seems to be helping to re-elasticized Jewish theology in some way, that actually it's a lot of people are interested in it precisely because these experiences sort of break out of literalist, narrow, sort of frozen conceptions of God. And actually, one sees that even in taking the same psychedelic multiple times in different situations and on different days, that it can open up radically different visions, radically different intuitions, and feelings, and messages to the point that one, I think, it really enlivens a theology of the \[HEBREW\], of the different sort of divine countenances, faces, dimensions that are always sort of ebbing, and flowing, expanding, contracting, transmuting. So I imagine that for people who get very an Orthodox about a psychedelic vision they had, probably haven't done it many times. And so I-- that's mostly what I've seen, is people sharing the different, sometimes surprising experiences that they've had, that feel somehow theologically flush, and recognizing that the next time could be a very different paradigm. CHARLES STANG: \[INAUDIBLE\] SAM SHONKOFF: If that's even the right word for it. CHARLES STANG: Melila-- JAY MICHAELSON: And that was true for Art's piece. The very first-- I mean, as foundational as that was, it was based on what one or two experiences, right? And he later came to have different views. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: Yeah. \[INAUDIBLE\]. CHARLES STANG: I'm conscious of the fact that we have-- we are at time. But, Melila, I want to give you an opportunity. Did you have anything you wanted to say in response to that last thread? MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: I would just like to add that on the optimistic side of as both of you are saying, these experiences are just giving more color to our Jewish experience for a lot of people. That's what's happening. I mean-- and people that have been very, very strange, you can see that a lot in Israel people that have been very estranged or could only find any kind of connection to religious experience. In India, they find themselves kind of the doors are thrown open. And from that point of view, it's just very interesting to see what does it do to prayer? What does it do to the playfulness? What does it do to religious imagination? And I think that on the side of discernment, yes, there's a lot of problems. We're people. We have amazing things happen to us. But people come in with certain baggage. And it doesn't always like transform them and take all that away. And we are who we are. And then the question is, what is the way that we're using this as wonderful medicine, like as tools in the art of wanting to be alive, alive in this world, alive and open? And to see that there's many pitfalls of all kinds, they've all been said here. I need not to repeat them, but it's still to know the-- to know the danger, and to know he riches, and you know, and to decide \[HEBREW\]. Which path do people want to create for themselves within that? Thank you. CHARLES STANG: Thank you. And Thank you all-- Sam, for moderating, Melila, Jay, for your wise words, and for Zac, who is not visible, but is still with us, I think. Thank you all so much for making this panel possible. There he is. Thanks, Zac. And thanks for the staff, who, of course, make this possible in a very concrete way. And because we had this scheduled only till 1:30, I feel it's incumbent upon me to wrap it up for their sake, if not for ours and our audience members. So for those of you who are wondering this, of course, is being recorded. It will be posted and circulated through our newsletter. So if you had to-- if you want to distribute it to anyone else, you'll be able to do so. So thank you all. And this is, I believe, one of our last public event-- online events in the Center. So we're soon approaching the summer. And we will pick this conversation up about psychedelics in the future of religion in the fall. Until then, I wish you all the best. MELILA HELLNER-ESHED: And Thank you, Zac. SAM SHONKOFF: Thanks to all of you. JAY MICHAELSON: Thank you. CHARLES STANG: OK. Take care. SAM SHONKOFF: Bye bye. CHARLES STANG: Bye, bye. SPEAKER 2 : Sponsors, Shefa, Jewish Psychedelic Support, the Berkeley Graduate Theological Union, Center For The Study Of World Religions. SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2023, the President and Fellows of Harvard College. \[OUTRO MUSIC\] See also:- [ Center for the Study of World Religions ](/media-topic/center-study-world-religions) - [ CSWR ](/media-topic/cswr) - [ Judaism ](/media-topic/judaism) - [ Video ](/news-classification/video) - [ The Future of the Study of Religion ](/programming-threads/future-study-religion)