Psychedelics have informed my spiritual journey way back when. In the 90s, way before my Rabbinic ordination, I had the unusual privilege of joining my Rabbi and spiritual teacher along with his colleague in smoking the ganja (weed) before a Kabalat Shabbat event. Undoubtedly, with the mind altering substance’s help, this became a very meaningful weed smoking experience, proceeded with a deeply felt Kabalat Shabbat experience, infused with a sense of true holiness.It’s been a while though, and nowadays, thirty years hence, it is my experience that studying the holy Zohar, the Ari, and the works of Baal Hasulam through the night with a Knowing guide and the right group of fellow travelers goes deeper and leaves a more wholesome and sustainable imprint on my body/soul/spirit structure. Study has become a deeper experience than my previous blessed gifts of plant and chemical induced peeks behind the Pargod (curtain).
This week’s Parashat Ki Tisa delves into the Golden Calf challenge. I know the psychedelic experience to be real and blessed. Yet it readily lends itself to becoming a Golden Calf – shiny and powerful, nevertheless a substitute for the Real Thing. That is, the proactive inner work with the awakening heart and the willful spirit. The Gemara teaches (Bavli, Megila 6:)
״אִם יֹאמַר לְךָ אָדָם:… לֹא יָגַעְתִּי וּמָצָאתִי — אַל תַּאֲמֵן. יָגַעְתִּי וּמָצָאתִי — תַּאֲמֵן…״
“If a person says: I have attained without any effort, distrust their attainment. If a person says: I have put in the required effort and attained, do trust their attainment”. The substance can easily replace spiritual effort setting a person backward instead of leading him/her forward.
In my 20s, when I did my first LSD trip in the hills of the Galilee mountains, it was with a British long haired hippie I had met. We sat at the bonfire when he said to me: “Reuben take this sacred journey with trust and caution”. We took the substance as he began reading from a pocket-size copy of the Bhagavad-Gita while I stared at the flames and surrendered to the magic.
The ancient Havurat Hazohar, ten spiritual adepts led by Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, physically walked and spiritually journeyed the same Galilee hills. They left us a profound legacy in the form of the Zohar text. The Zohar is an inner-work guide or a Torah for the Light Walker. When I engage my mind and efforts with the letters of their sacred journey, a Presence from behind the veil makes Herself known to me, perhaps like she was to them. YHVH, BEING, becomes truly available in my experience when I crush the Calf figure, mix it with water and drink it to “death”. While she is Golden she is only a calf upon which ashes I may truly ascend and perhaps enter the spiritual Gate.
Nowadays there is a growing movement in the West of psychedelically enhanced inner work for both healing purposes as well as for deepening spiritual experience. As a community leader and guide, when asked, I approve the psychedelic path only as a means to an End, only as dust, never as a the Real Thing itself, as I finally understand my first LSD guide’s advice: “Trust and caution”.