Tevet - The ‘Truth’ of the Psychedelic Experience?
A few weeks ago, I received a call from a religiously observant person who had recently become psychedelically engaged. His initial enthusiasm in this work and the personal and spiritual insights he was gaining from it were beginning to settle into doubt, on the way to despair. “Everything was so clear and so true,” he recalled, “especially God’s apologies to me. But now, I can’t tell if any of that was real, and even if it was, if it really means anything anyway.” I made a rookie psychedelic rabbi mistake—I launched into speaking authoritatively about being easy with oneself, the centrality of the integration experience, trusting intuition. In the middle of my soliloquy, I caught myself, and just said, “You know, what, I really don’t know, and I just want to say, whatever it is, truth or mirage, I’m here for you.”
My rabbinic shortfall aside, this and other conversations have gotten me thinking about how to evaluate the “truthiness” of psychedelic encounters, especially within religious frameworks. Since the sixties, researchers in both the nature of religious and psychedelic experiences have included some criteria about “intuitive knowledge” as a hallmark of these states of consciousness, whether they touch upon ultimate truths such as “the unity of all creation” or are of a more personal nature like “I am indebted to my body and should honor it.” Yet, the question of the epistemic value of psychedelic experience remains largely unresolved: Is it possible to gain real knowledge by taking psychedelic drugs, and if so, what do individuals and communities—especially communities of faith--do with such insights?
For many Jews, the eighth day of Hanukkah holds special importance beyond the culmination of the holiday. Inspired by the Torah reading of this day, the conclusion of the dedication of the very first sacred altar of the Jewish people, we read “This (in Hebrew, zot) is the dedication of the altar.” Connecting both the eight days of this Biblical celebration with the eight days of our holiday of light, Jews as early as the 16th century began referring to the last day of Hanukkah as Zot Hanukkah—This is Hanukkah. Many customs developed to honor the end of the holiday season, with many more saintly sages explaining their inner dimension of the day’s thisness, even going as far as ascribing it greater spiritual significance than the high holidays. What are we definitively pointing to when we say ‘zot’?
One great Hasidic luminary, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Gur or the Sfas Emes, writes that “the point which gives vitality to all things is called ‘zot’…and one can only truly discern this on Hanukkah…This is the encouragement we have while in Exile to know that even doubt is animated by this point…As these are days of miracles, even in our demoralized state, we come to know that the magnitude of the constriction we experience is equal to the good which is possible, for they come from the same Divine, benevolent source.” Rather than pointing to the truth of one thing, the Sfas Emes encourages us to first acknowledge the reality of inner experience of phenomena at all, and then to realize that awareness of our doubts, our old facts, should open us to the new knowledge that joy, trust, connection, are just as likely. As one psychedelic researcher, Chris Letheby, put it “…rather than helping us learn new factual information, psychedelics allow us to understand or appreciate already-known (or otherwise knowable) facts in deep, vivid, affectively and motivationally significant ways.”
By seeking out the models and language of spiritually and culturally respectful psychedelic support for Jews around the world, we can share the innermost teachings of our traditions, those which can help bring healing, comfort, and affirmation to those seeking it most. They wait for us—ready to light them anew, ready to light us anew, so we can whisper “Zot” to each other in the darkness of doubt for us to connect with our abundant vitality.
Zot Hanukkah sameah,
Z
