Ayahuasca and Kabbalah
Jay Michaelson
In 1954, Aldous Huxley published "The Doors of Perception," a famous essay observing that the effects of mescaline were remarkably similar to the unitive mysticism of the world's great religions, particularly Vedanta, the philosophical-mystical form of Hinduism which Huxley practiced. It caused an immediate sensation. Many in the public were outraged by its pro-pharmacological spirit, and many in the academy accused Huxley (like William James before him) of flattening different mystical traditions, and of disregarding distinctions between "sacred and profane" mystical practice.
But many more were inspired. Huxley's essay, and other works like it, set the agenda for 1960s spirituality, and what later came to be called the New Age movement. He provided a philosophical explanation of what was important about mescaline – that our perceptive faculties filter out more than they let in, and that mescaline, like meditation, opens those doors wider – and a personal account of what a "trip" was like. He showed how entheogens (as they later came to be called) could be a part of a sincere spiritual practice. And he perhaps unwittingly imported a certain Vedanta agenda of what the "ultimate" mystical experience was like: union. As has been argued by many scholars over the last few decades, this claim of ultimacy – that unio mystica is the peak form of mystical experience, with others defined by how close they approach it – is actually a rather partisan one. Why is "union with the All" superior to, or more true than, deity mysticism, visions of Krishna/Christ/spirits, and the text-based mysticism of the Kabbalah? Sure, for Vedanta it is – but that's just Vedanta's view.
Two generations of spiritual seekers have been influenced, for better and for worse, by this hierarchy. From the naive hippie to the sophisticated yogi, Jewish Renewalniks to Ken Wilberites, hundreds of thousands of spiritual practitioners have implicitly or explicitly assumed the prioritization of the unitive over all else: the point is that All is One.
Most of these constituencies are also, like Huxley, influenced by the psychedelic experience, primarily that of mushrooms and LSD. While most contemporary spiritual teachers have long since given these substances up, in favor of meditation and other mystical practices which afford the same experiences in a more reliable container (and one greatly enriched by self-examination and introspection), if you ask them, as I have, they'll admit that the psychedelic experience formed an important part of their spiritual initiation. Whether it's what got them on the road in the first place, or confirmed their earlier intuitions, psychedelics have set the agenda for a huge percentage of contemporary spiritual teachers, across religious and spiritual denominations, and many of their followers as well.
These two trends that "all is one" is the point, and that it accords with the psychedelic experience – have occasionally led to a distortion of religious and spiritual traditions. In the Kabbalah, for example, unitive mysticism is only a small part of a wide panoply of mystical experiences. Yes, there are texts which speak of annihilation of the self (bittul hayesh) and a unification with God (achdut). But these are, truthfully, in the minority. Many more are visionary texts, describing theophanies of all shapes and sizes; or records of prophecy or angelic communication; or less explicitly unitive accounts of proximity to the Divine. Yet there's a sense, among teachers of contemporary Kabbalah – and I'm not referring here to the Kabbalah Centre (where Madonna goes), which does not teach Kabbalah proper, but rather a unique and sometimes weird synthesis of Kabbalah, the Human Potential movement, and New Religious Movements like Scientology – that unitive mysticism is the summum bonum, the ultimate good.
Some Kabbalistic texts agree, but many others do not. For example, Rabbi Arthur Green, today one of progressive Judaism's leading teachers, in 1968 wrote an article (under a pseudonym) called "Psychedelics and Kabbalah," explicitly analogizing the psychedelic experiences to aspects of Kabbalistic teaching – but selecting those aspects of Kabbalah and Hasidism which fit the experience. Naturally, Green was also influenced by the many forms of non-Jewish mysticism popular at the time, most of whom asserted that "All is One," but in that essay, he makes clear that the psychedelic experience affected how he understood Kabbalah. Green, like fellow practitioner-academics Daniel Matt, has been enormously influential: their anthologies of Hasidic and Kabbalistic texts are read far more widely than the texts themselves, and are widely assumed to represent the mainstream of their respective traditions.
I am not taking a position on whether this "distortion" is for good or ill; in my own practice, the nondual/unitive perspective plays a central role, and I am grateful for it, whatever its sources. But I have a hunch that it is about to change.
The reason it is changing is that more and more Jewish spiritual seekers are pursuing non-unitive paths. This includes earth-based ritual, shamanic ritual, and other disciplines which, while they may hold the view that "all is one," provide experiences of differentiation (energies, elements, visions, etc). But perhaps more importantly, it includes drinking ayahuasca, smoking DMT, and visionary shamanic-entheogenic practices which offer different experiences from the unitive one. The ayahuasca trip, unlike the mescaline one, is not especially unitive: indeed, one of its hallmarks is the sense of communication with other life forms or consciousnesses. And while a sense of "all is One" is sometimes reported in the midst of the ayahuasca experience, it's more common to read reports of visions of phenomena – manifestation, not essence.
Some of these accounts are strikingly similar to texts from the Hechalot and Merkavah schools of Jewish mysticism, which flourished between the second and ninth centuries. In the texts from this period, we read detailed accounts of heavenly palaces, Divine chariots, and angels; of ascents to other realms which seem somehow to be in outer space or an extraterrestrial locale; of a sense of great danger, but also great awe, beauty and love; and of beings which travel on some kind of cosmic vehicle. The descriptions are visionary and auditory, much like the accounts of ayahuasca visions. They are "shamanic" journeys, both in the sense of being journeys of the soul to other realm and in the sense of a transformation of the self. They yield information, prophecy, revelation, theophany. And they are not really about "all is one."
Hechalot and Merkavah mysticism is studied in the academy, but it is little known in the contemporary spiritual world. It's complicated, arcane, and literally other-worldly. But just as the unitive moments of Hasidism appeal to those who have had a unitive experience on mushrooms, so too the visionary aspects of Hechalot and Merkavah mysticism appeal to those who have had a visionary experience on ayahuasca. The similarities are striking.
What's more, Hechalot and Merkavah mysticism, related as it is to gnosticism, provides one of world literature's richest libraries of other-worldly mystical experience. It's eerie how similar some of these millennia-old texts are to the records contemporary journeyers provide of the ayahuasca trip: the sense of being in "outer space," the tenuous links to consensual reality, the sense of danger, and above all the colorful descriptions of chambers, angels, songs, palaces, ascents, descents, fire, music, and so much more. It also provides a sense of history, context, and "belonging" to those who affiliate with Judaism, Christianity, or gnosticism; like unitive experiences, non-unitive visionary/ ecstatic experiences have a lineage within these traditions. Perhaps, too, it might offer guidance for those seeking to integrate such experiences into their lives.
To reiterate, I am taking no position on whether unitive or non-unitive experiences are "better," and see nondual essence and dualistic manifestation as two sides of the same ineffable unity. My point, simply, is that much of contemporary Western spirituality derives from a particular psychedelic experience and a particular form of mysticism it approximates. With the increasing popularity of ayahuasca and similar medicines, the former element has changed – and I think the latter will too.
In the esoteric world, this kind of change and interchange has always been with us. Hechalot mystics learned from the gnostics, who learned from the Jews, who learned from the Babylonians. Medieval Kabbalists learned from the Sufis, who learned from the Hindus, who learned from the Buddhists, who learned from other Hindus. One need not make the facile, and false, claim that all mysticism is the same thing in order to recognize that mystics across space and time have understood themselves to be gesturing toward the same truths, albeit in very different ways. And those differences advance, not obstruct, the progress of realization. After all, when one can ultimately know nothing, it helps to learn from everything.
Image by Akiva, used courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
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Relative and Absolute
Good article.
I'd just like to make a quick point; advaita (nondual) Vedanta does not preclude there being myriad astral realms or shamanic experiences. It does say that ultimately all is One - that all sensations, thoughts, experiences, objects, places, people, beings, mental states, whatever, are expressions of what is fundamentally an indivisible whole.
We're talking about Absolute truth and Relative truth. The absolute truth of our transcendent essence isn't a negation of the relative truth of our lives on Earth. We can talk of the transcendent truth of what is changeless, limitless, permanent (Emptiness), and the conventional truth of the world and realms we inhabit (Form) with its apparent polarities and distinctions and metamorphoses. In the relative sense there is positive and negative, pleasure and pain, light and dark, me and you. In the deeper absolute sense all there is just Hereness. This concept is called by Buddhists 'Two Truths'.
Something nondual mysticism has going for it is the preponderance of spiritual teachers that have directly experienced this Oneness and been moved to share their perception of it with the world. Adyashanti, Gangaji, Eckhart Tolle and Mooji are living exemplars of this.
But nondual awakening does not necessarily heal psychological or emotional dilemmas, nor does it provide access to transpersonal realms. Those wishing to explore such things often find shamanic work to be sine qua non, indispensable.
I personally have found shamanism to be the most useful path in my life with regard to self development. And nonduality to be the only thing that seems to offer final Truth or liberation (though my / this bodymind has yet to become that).
Resting as the Infinite, we explore the world of Form. Somebody else said that, but I can't remember who.
Good stuff.
I've found Kabbalah to be of great use for understanding and integrating my experiences with so-called entheogens. It's a comprehensive and beautiful language that is well worth learning. It's a bit surprising how many of the great mystics and visionaries of the last 500 years (at least) were supported by Kabbalistic writings - Kabbalah has been influencing our lives for a long time. Also, it seems important to have an organising, traditional structure with which to decipher and articulate the often bizzare visions that humans are capable of experiencing. A safety net perhaps. For those unwilling or unable to to take the tourist trail to the Amazon and hang out with shamans, Kabbalah might provide some sort of alternative lineage to align with. Or just blast off on your own. Whatever...
Prof. Benny Shanon, who wrote a comprehensive study of ayahuasca, has theorised that an "ayahuasca analogue" was being used by the ancient Hebrews. Apparently the seeds of the shrub Perganum harmala and the bark of the tree Mimosa hostilis produce a similar effect to ayahuasca. You all probably know this. Anyway, here's the article: http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Roberts.pdf The Hebrew language is also very interesting in this light.
Regarding celebrity promotion of spirituality, I can't resist sharing this Tom Cruise Scientology vid, which, one supposes, was not meant to be made public: http://popsugar.com/956675
"We've got to get those spectators either in the playing field, or OUTTA the arena."
Lovely chap.
schmamans
For those unwilling or unable to to take the tourist trail to the Amazon and hang out with shamans
The path of the naive dupe.
Essential video link: A talk on some inconvenient truths about ayahuasca tourism and cultural expropriation.
As for Benny Shannon's speculations, it is typical of the type of one-track mind that dominates literature on the subject since we lost Terence McKenna.
There is no evidence whatsoever for any ayahuasca analogues used by the ancient Hebrews (some of whom happened to come up with some of the most extreme religious fanaticism and racism known to us-see Deuteronomy).
It is in fact a major part of Judaist teachings to assert over and over again that God , divinity and so on originate in their religion and language - the original & true religion and language. There is a constant and desperate attempt to validate and re-validate what has been shown in practice to be very very far from any Sacred Truth. By constant and forceful repetition any lie can be turned into a given- but i digress.
Mimosa hostilis is not reported to grow in the Middle East or Egypt by anyone other than Shannon in his text (he fails to cite a reference for his statement). There are hundreds of Mimosa and Acacia species that only experts can ID down to species level. Only a handful of those hundreds contain the goods in usable amounts.
Quoting or taking the Old Testament as a source of any kind of truth or historical reference is an insult to your intelligence, don't buy it!
Shannon also writes: I shall note that in the case of ayahuasca, consumption is never alone, never for fun, always within a ritual grounded in a tradition (that is, what will be done during its course is set beforehand and known), directed (rather rigidly) by a person whose societal role is to do this, and
with all sorts of precautions being taken (especially for novices).
The expert hath spoken! :D
See what we want to see?
Such rigidity only exists within the minds of pious academics and the "facts" they try to peddle...
‘I shall put my secrets in the inner sanctum of man’s own mind. Then only those who really deserve it will be able to get to it.’
Again, the notion of the rewarding (and punishing) God and the worthy ones who "deserve" God's gifts. Naff said.
Expert Textpert
I'm tentatively in agreement with you about the jungle trip - there is an unpleasant whiff of orientialism about the scene. I'm not sure how much of it is coming from my own feet though. I came close to flying out to Peru at one point, but then changed my mind - I think that sort of "healing" might be an expensive indulgence...
As for Shanon's speculations about hebrew mimosa hostilis use - who can say? I take such theories lightly, and run with them for fun, as I can do also with McKenna's "stoned ape" theory. Did mimosa hostilis grow in the middle east 3000 years ago? How old is the sphynx? Is Jehovha a poltergeist dreamed up by the combined psychokinetic efforts of Moses and Aaron? Will Britney be OK?
no joke
Zoom out far enough & it
Zoom out far enough & it becomes apparent that the whole material universe is but a point...with an entirely different meaning ascribed by whatever realm it floats in. The instant any of our local dualisms are transcended, multiplicity must again be introduced at global levels. Our cage has always been born of our failure to properly bring infinity into focus. We move "freely" in space and time, but in transcendent contexts we are truly penned in by both!
With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another. - Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins
Borges
Circular Ruins, was my favorite Borges story,or i remember reading it at the time, having a very deep impression on me.Borges was my first South American author, which later lead me to read all the magic realism i could find. Borges wrote short stories and poetry.
I recall Terence Mckenna talking about Borges, stories, The Phoenix and The Aleph, he said they fit together.
nice article
the supernals
kabbablah
I found the kabbalah one of the least applicable systems, diametrically opposite to what natural entheogens, and especialy DMT and ayahuasca , are about, for me.
The intellectual analysis , categorization and straight lines of the kabbalah system displayed a rationalistic, masculine approach that did not feel organic , and was not much fun at all.
Perhaps this is down to personal style and taste. I found Tantra and some aspects of Chaos magic much more fruitful.
Nevertheless, i strongly feel that the attempt to apply traditional mystical systems to the psychedelic experience is failure. When i see people attempting to do that, alarm bells start to ring... A practice to complement the entheogenic work is probably necessary, but body-centered practices such as yoga or martial arts appear a lot more suitable than mental/astral works.
I also disagree with the idea that Huxley kick-started the newage scene.
Further, the statement that "the Gnostics learned from the Jews" is debatable. Which Gnostics, which Jews?
I believe progress is not possible as long as people stick to their racial or cultural identity (Jewish, American, etc...) This is all baggage we could all do without, these days.
Which Gnostics, Which Jews, Which Kabbablah?
William Blake, for example, was supposedly adapting a "Christian interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah as exemplified by Francis Mercury van Helmont’s Adumbratio kabbalae christianae, a treatise appended to the second volume of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala denudata." (!) http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeV/Reviews/Spector.html
Also of interest perhaps, is anarchist Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehuda_Ashlag
There's also a yopo merkabah thing floating around. You might find merkabah more interesting than the rationalist Kabbalah you're familiar with. Merkabah involves chanting, fasting, and fierce postures, to induce trance states that enable the ecstatic to break through the gates, dissolve the archonic guards and cavort with the divine ground. Its quite tantric (which tantra?) and a lot of fun for those with a penchant for that kind of thing, but still definitely Kabbalah.
Anyway, the small point that I am labouring is that Kabbalah is a tool, a technology, and can and has been put to divers uses by workers of many different castes colours creeds languages etc etc.
Some great stuff on your website by the way.
Not this , not that
Thanks...
I reject Judaism as a whole, and this includes its mystical side , the Kabbalah, as I reject Islam and Sufism, and Christianity with is "Gnosticism" ( Jonh Lash would say some Gnosticism has nothing to do with christianity, but i remain unconvinced).
Judaism in particular appears to me an excessively severe and masculine system, and i judge all these systems by their fruit, ie the cultures they have spawned. I have no worries about "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" there's plenty of babies being born all the time!
I prefer to look forwards and not to the past , and to remain in a position of uncertainty (as much as i can bear), rather than getting busy mapping out hyperspace . Maps such as the kabbalah are more like hindrance than help, as i see it.
I suppose there are stages in learning , and maps can be useful to begin with , to help one from losing it completely before they have what it takes to find it again. But there comes a point in spiritual growth, i believe, where all maps have to be discarded and a plunge into the unknown has to be undertaken...
How many of Crowley's follwers have heeded his advice to read The Book of the Law only once, and then destroy it, i wonder? The Book's real value is for the "student" that finally gets that there is no Law , or Book to dictate it, and that's where that scary freedom begins...
Yehuda Ashlag, never heard of him before, the wikipedia article states he had anti-imperialism beliefs and supported the kibbutz movement- which is really ironic, as the kibbutz (along with the state of Israel) are a direct result of violent imperialism and a cost-effective and seemingly libertarian way to establish occupation of stolen lands.... but then again, wikipedia is a zionist hotbed, so i won't take that article too seriously.
i wonder
magick books all have a destroy upon readin it clause
read: this is how the magick works
philosophy books do too
as do kabbalah follow the point.
poetry is zero, do zero upon readin.
TRANSCENDING .........NOW
but how do you transcend the word?
the Doors of Snakes
I am not exactly sure what the content of this article is attempting to infer.Other then it is a general discussion of how the movements that came to be in the 60's that revolved around such personages as Huxley and spawned the "New Age" movement.Well, there are various personages that stand out and there were certain intelligent people that gravitated to Huxley and others that moved in his circles.However i do not think that they sat down in a hot springs in Big Sur one day and say "hey let's start the New Age movement and someday some shaman kids can can blame us for New age yuppie "all is one" Madonna Kabbalah and Tom Cruise control Scientology".
Least we become even more dissociated then we only can first off Kabbalah is a basis of Tarot, so if you are interested in western systems of thought, say to compare to the I-Ching, or Runes or any of the potpourri of decks or types of divination tools that have poliferated since the Rider-Waite deck.Having said that there has been and still exists a lot of confusion about how all these wisdom schools in the contemporary context have been all lumped into the "New Age" all purpose designation.
Enter the native methods that hold power through connections of nature and the earth.
Now getting back to Kabbalah, and its "jewish" mystery school, we are here talking about the differences between say, Fundamentalist Islam and say Sufism.So if say, Kabbalah is based on the hebrew alphabet, does that mean that that is where the source stops? at the tippy top of the crown of kabbalah?
As far as Merkaba, we can point to gnosticism as a vehicle for this vehicle, and then we can see the source of this derives from Egypt.The Egyptin Book of the Coming Forth by Day.Which used a ritual method called "negative confession" which is a interesting mental technique that uses names and types of relations to walk down the pathways back to the source.Do we call this the "All is One" or do we call it the Hidden God? Do we find ourselves in The Western Lands with Burroughs and the Seven Souls?
Do we meet Don Juan there at a bus stop? Or Jim Morrison hitch hikeing in the Mojave passing though to the other side?
gatecrashing
Misrepresentation
In fact, Ken's so-called "Integral" theory is frequently criticized for being actually a "Differential" theory that is better at splitting and categorizing with an analytical/taxonomical/Kabbalistic enthusiasm than it is at providing unitive principles.
As a scholar of Ken's work, I am disappointed by how frequently people fail to recognize that he has worked tirelessly to criticize absolutism in every form, including the unitive absolutism of Huston Smith and Aldous Huxley. Admittedly, Ken skips over angelic taxonomies in his work - probably in an attempt to appeal to rational audiences - but the framework of his theory leaves ample room for them (as well as the potential for other people to rework the theory itself, as an acknowledgment of this multiplicity).
Also, as an addendum, I think it's important to distinguish betwen "unitive" and "nondual" spirituality. "All is One" is a statement of monism, not nondualism (which transcends and contains all opposites and therefore cannot be identified with any particular position, as Ken is wont to remind his readership).
I agree that as our culture matures into a more direct familiarity with subtle realms of consciousness, this multiplicity will become more apparent - much as an approaching plane first appears as one light, then several, then several lights on a single plane, then an assemblage of parts, and so on in an infinite oscillation of reciprocals. I'm just calling you and other critics to watch out, lest you continue to make unsubstantiated claims.
love
"There's no time for hatred - only questions..." - Jeff Buckley
Zaadz Visionary Music: michaelgarfield.zaadz.com
yeah
and what exactly is a "naive hippie?"
oh it's one of those "all is one" naive hippies
you can just tell by the way they look!
the clothes they wear and they don't take baths!
you can tell by the beads and long hair!
they march around with signs that say"all is one"
look over there a "naive hippie"
Naive hippie: A definition
Naive hippie: White middle class kid who never really got it, and is still playing Jesus, or Mary. Proof that no amount of cannabis, or LSD, will expand consciousness for most people. A true child of the gimme gimme , mamma's tittie generation, who is an adept at "sharing" as long as s/he doesn't actually have to give anything.
Known to swallow whole newage sewage and badly copied oriental doctrines, and chant "we are one" , meaning "we 're all the same". Believes him/herself a reincarnation of "indians" murdered by his/her ancestors. Displays ignorance of "indian" culture.
A product of alienated , decadent western culture, unable to think of or discuss about anything wrong on the planet- let alone his/her community, a pathological seeker of pleasure and a free lunch. Lazy, cowardly, socially apathetic and irresponsible. Will happily walk away with your lighter, money, and whatever else s/he needs from you, in the spirit of freedom and sharing. Will always be morally superior . With hippies, you lose!
its nice to know
Serious biz
again
Jerry Rules!
You jealous, hippies rule. Jerry reincarnation John the Baptist. "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD."
"We are all individualists till we wake up." P.G. Wodehouse
Ken Wilber idiot talk alot
i have to say
that my above response to your other post actually gives me pause, this is totally out of the conversation.
when it breaks down to calling names...ect.
Mucho ado about no things
I'm not sure if Ken Wilber is an idiot, as i find him too boring to be worth reading, but i agree with the rest of the statement.
Ultimately, people who make a living out of newage and the increasing desire of others for some ontological and philosophical fulfilment, have to sell books and make a nice comfortable living; and so they will tend to put out what their target market wants to consume...
let's pigeon hole people
and then make waving gestures with our arms...
i bet that really gets em...oh yeah.
anyway Ken Wilber has the ability to write books, so i guess we should call him a hippie or something. oh we could call him a book market dude, how about that, but at any rate we should make a point to put him down, well because , well, we can't understand him, well geeze.
Pretty hard to deny multiplicity...
...with a set of responses like these. I think we just popped open a shadow box. Every forest needs mulch - including a forest of ideas.
:)
love
"There's no time for hatred - only questions..." - Jeff Buckley
Zaadz Visionary Music: michaelgarfield.zaadz.com
hum
Perhaps i don't understand Wilber, being barely able to read or comprehend complex sentences , but I sure don't understand the people who want to read through an entire Ken Wilber book. Gimme a good South Park episode anytime. A true waste of a perfectly good education!
Cabala and Merkaba
its all some bodies obscure
there is no definition that will suit this, chariot means something in the kabbalah, it means somethng in merkabah, again various uses of the word merkabah in modern contexts with visiualizing and breathing and mantra, is perhaps similar to the original use of the "vehicle".Which was something different then.Science has yet to bring this all into a scientific perspective other then to have some fringe quantum people.That lie saying that words are like some new element waiting to be discovered.It's like people that make up different names to post on various forums on some site.
not that that is happening on RealitySandwich.
Tendency to classify
There is a marked desire to put things into categories and then assemble anecdotal, literary, historical, and philosophic knowledge in a manner that serves to hold such structures together. Of course, anyone we hear talking or writing about such things has obviously succumbed to this desire simply by virtue of having stuffed these ineffable concepts into words and phrases. Those who haven't don't bother speaking or writing, and are logically under-represented in any discourse.
I see this attempt to squeeze truth into linguistic boxes and syntactical structures to be fun and artistic in the "controlled folly" sense... as long as you don't start taking any of it too seriously. If you have experiences along the lines of those described in Kabbalah, if you journey into shamanic realms, or experience the mystical in any form whatsoever... you will be able to draw some parallels to various texts or thoughtforms you have experience with, and things you read or encounter later will resonate with the memories you have made. But, you will also have some unique sensations that will not fit into any of your schemas without altering the schemata to make them fit. People tend to engage in some spiritual smashing of square pegs into round holes until all is well with their belief system again... until the next unclassifiable event crashes their lattice that is.
Fact is, these things are infinitely more fluid and transformative than our discourses could capture. They also differ from time to time, place to place, and person to person. I would say that one is as likely to have unitive and non-unitive experiences with any number of substances and even within the same trip. What you manage to bring back from a journey, and how much of that you can express in any meaningful way, make up a tiny fraction of the totality of any "entheogenic" experience.
Furthermore, I would say that the traditional psychedelic experience of Hoffman's problem child, the various fun-guys, and the mescalito clans are far less unitive for the most part than the endogenous Tryptamine and its external analogues. The peak of a trip might reach some unitive state, but the bulk of the experience lies in the coming on, ramping up, upper plateau, and come down... and those parts are extremely non-unitvive. The main difference yaje and its cousins exhibit is a tendency to take you somewhere else (where you may have very unitive experiences) while psychedelics tend to warp and distort this reality and let you interact with the heavy stuff going down right here. Disassociatives are the most consistently unitive, but they will also give you plenty of dualistic bits to chew on. And salvinorin is... well, never really very unitive in its full on glory, dispite being very ego-crushing.
I have to agree with the first poster here and say that the absolute truth (all is one) doesn't contradict the infinite myriad of relative truths. Even more so, it is quite possible to shift focus between states moment to moment even as they are all happening simultaneously. Unity contains duality... and the ten thousand things. The ultimate ultimate state involves TOTAL AWARENESS of the one, the many, the field of being, the illusions manifested, and the infinite variety of expressions therein. Eternity and Infinity are completely unified and still thoroughly diversified.
IMO anyway, and through the limitations of language and epistemology of course.
fun
kabbalah should support all sorts of experience, it's when we make those connections that move up the tree that give it its fun, we begin with folly.Moving through the branches we see mercy balanced by severity.When we make the connection with Strenght.We are now able to comprehend other qualities.It's not so much "controled"
As it is an aquired taste.We savour the nuance.
whoa
The main difference yaje and its cousins exhibit is a tendency to take you somewhere else (where you may have very unitive experiences) while psychedelics tend to warp and distort this reality and let you interact with the heavy stuff going down right here. Disassociatives are the most consistently unitive, but they will also give you plenty of dualistic bits to chew on.
I think the limitations of language really got us there.
Many would say it is the dissociatives that truly take them somewhere or somewhen else, and yahé & friends do not take anyone anywhere other than right where they're at. Just a pedantic observation.
Otherwise , i agree with JahSun's post. Tendency to classify tends to get out of hand in these oh so heady entheogen online scenes.
0=2
limits of language
for sure....
This is primarily a semantics issue, and rests in your definitions of such vague abstractions as "right here" & "somewhere else" among other things.
Additionally, these things can do very different numbers on different people. We can all agree that there are different classes of medicines, but agreeing on what the different classes actually do is another story. Besides, there is significant difference between the various elements that make up each class.
The end result often has more to do with your intent and how you steer the thing than any innate proclivities of your chosen vehicle. Riding a Harley, is different than riding in a Hummer, is different than driving a Porsche etc., but where you end up is by & large a result of your steering.
Words can be frustrating in that nearly anything one says can be rephrased into the opposite and still be true... while nothing one says can be True at all.
levels
don't pigeon whole the indole
I saw faint lasers and designs come up on the roof.
then for two hours felt very strange and watched the swastika move back and forth
(a teaching on power)
then I rose up through my body, or chakras if you like, to a very high realm where there where royal beings controlling large cosmic forces.
they proceeded to tell me that there was no such thing as darkness
that the universe is all golden light contained in a golden sphere
a voice kept saying "it's on 24/7"
I saw how this was so.
that we see darkness because our minds can't perceive other wise and need the contrast to play the "game".
Seeing that the universe is one ball of light seems pretty unity to me.
I think it is limited to categorize a certain aspect of experience to each psychedelic. I don't see how experiencing phenomena of one sort rules out a unity experience. The world is all ready non-dual in all its variation. I would argue that one can only really truly engage with all manifestation if they have the non-dual point of view. Some one coming from duality would have a major problem with the entheogenic experience.
You are a good writer but this article is very half baked.
I believe that any psychedelic holds the possibility for the range of experience.
also
Maybe the experience is beyond these beliefs based in non-psycedelic experience. And if it was psychedelic experience, certainly was not from the rain forest.
maybe we should shut up a little bit before we start to understand.
a real context for ayahuasca would be closer to semantics, music, painting, non local physics and taoism.
but that is just what I think.
tao aya
22 degree refraction and Hebrew alphabet
Cabala, the One, and Unitive experiences
Ayahuasca and Kabbalah
I can see how anyone using any substance might find some release from limitations of everyday thought. As to whether or not all experiencers of the effects of such substances come to one conclusion so that they may be "unified" in an eschatological sense, I'd rather doubt it. But! I'd say there is one unifying factor in any experiencer's experience: consciousness. This is the message of Moses' experience on the hill or mount of Horeb: consciousness is consciousness and assumes any ideal you present in between. This is the "that" that we've presumed was some connective particle of a sentence about "Who" was speaking, rather than how consciousness behaves. The "that" is literally: fill in the blank. "I AM GOD" is the name that Jeremiah extolled as the savior of Israel. This is the secret of the inner chamber of the Temple, and which presupposes that those priests understood there was a power that could be good or evil, depending on how it was used. Thus the second admonition: do not use this name in vain, as whoever did so would be held accountable according to how they used this Name.
So, some authority, some SEER, stepped up and said: I AM GOD is "lovingkindness" rather than "revenge". So who was that? Our "God"? Or simply someone with wisdom and who saw that a simple people needed a stern figure to tell them: doing evil is bad, doing good is good. The principle remains the same, it is the same LAW perceived by Abraham and Jacob. All this before anyone had any idea of the physics of sound and echos or the "boomerang" concept that everyone seems to believe is implied in the term "karma". But if you study the Indo-European system of languages just a little, you can see in the term "karma" two terms: action, and "me" or "my". My action, my effects, my facing myself by what is returned to me from me through others.
Contrawise: the idea that the "God of Abraham", the principle that saved Abraham, et als., would visit upon his children the will that they should kill the children of others is an entirely speculative supposition that has become part and parcel of what so many call the "truth" of "the Bible". If we don't question this, we prove we don't understand this kernal of thought in the received ideas of the seers or any so-called scripture.
Jesus calls on the carpet teachers who present this so-called scripture as foundation for "divorce". They argue: well, there it is in Moses! And nonetheless, he says it is not from "I AM", but from the hard hearted "fathers" or founders of that culture.
Let that be as it may. The message from the "beginning" is evinced by Jacob sleeping on the stone: what you gaze upon, you bring forth. I AM, the good of all goods, can be both good and evil. YOU are the decider. You are the door. You let in, you let out what you choose. The PRINCIPLE is consciousness, which is what IAM means. No one but a fool thinks that consciousness in the universal sense should be evil, or mean or harsh. Everyone wants LOVINGKINDNESS, FAIRNESS, TRUTH OR RIGHT-USE-NESS. You do that, you have unity.But if you and a lot of others do not do that, you still have unity. One is pleasant, the other is harsh. You should choose what you want. Either way, you did it. You made that choice. One way is life, the other is death and more death. It is obvious to the logical, the message is one: your way of "life" is select. You have chosen to designate power to outside sources, and have turned your back on I AM, the only good, the only thing you know in fact, and so you follow like sheep the blind, when the light is right within, the only hope, the only GOOD, consciousness, your own very most good savior, the only one worthy of worship. Well, I sympathise with Joshua, when he said: do what you will, but I stand with I AM. Really, a very Jeffersonian individual was that Joshua, who saw that external worship was vain and weak and liable to foolhardiness. I AM our GOOD (read GOD or POWER) is ONE I AM. In other words, we all partake of or express exactly the same PRINCIPLE, but externalizing and personalizing this principle only results in divided purposes and efforts. WE all pull together or we all pull apart. This is what is lost on us modern Jews. WE don't want Jesus to be the prophet, that One, the Just One, because we don't like being set down as really falling short of the original MESSAGE. But we did lose the message, we don't even have a clue what was meant by Jacob's dream on the stone, or its relationship to power and authority today, and how this self-same message has become perverted to promote an veritable industry of death and license to do wrong and evil an injustice. Yet there is a witness in that very stone, and that stone is the planet itself which prosecutes everyone who is unwilling to CHOOSE a unifying stance: If good is to be expressed, I MUST EXPRESS IT. That is what the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the seers beheld in themselves: Lovingkindness, fairness, truth or righteousness between men and women. Each one knowing this one thing only: consciousness. I AM GOD (GOOD). Otherwise, lacking discrimination, you are lukewarm, sometimes good, sometimes evil, but all mixed up. Discriminate: choose: just,fair, kind, hesitant to lash out, ready to serve the needs of others, merciful to the wrongdoer, kind to widow, orhpan, poor. Right? Or not? Your judgement is on your own head. You made the judgement. You alone bear it.
perhaps i choose
Kabbalah is Illuminati religion!!!
Shilluminati
Kabbalah is a useful tool to explore consciousness. Its a map, and should not be mistaken for the territory, obviously. I don't think anyone need take it too seriously. It's not the only gateway. LSD works too, so I am told - but its apparently not for everyone. Brawling in the street also can transform one's consciousness, but again, not for everyone...
If my corkscrew broke, I might find other ways of getting at the wine, after all.
"Who ARE the Illuminati?" Fuck 'em.
cry wolf in the theater of madmen
there are all these internet denizens that sprout "illumaniti" everytime you mention anything to do with the tree of life.It's like saying that the sun or moon are owned by the catholic church.Maybe they think they own the stars or the earth, but that's what all this da Vinci code stuff is making common now, even Disney is getting into the act.Oh yeah there are some real secret badies around, there was also some underground folks too, is.
If you care to attempt to study the history of secret societies that is the real history as RAW spoke it, and how deep does the rabbit hole go? choose yer pill, red or blue?
Read your Lewis Carrol too.Read the match book cover, and send it in and you too can own your very own illumanati decoder ring.Or at least join the Rosicrucians and let Suzanne take you down to a place by the the river where she gives you tea and oranges tha came all the way from China....
For me, unitive experience is THE top one...
why do you need a PLAN
A man with a plan
Hi Zezt,
Is your reply directed at my comment above? I don't take the illuminati as seriously as they take themselves perhaps. I think that its a good idea to focus on becoming strong, healthy individuals rather than worry about the influence of some shadowy demon ridden elite who may not in fact exist. Hence my levity and fuck 'em attitude. They are not powerful....in fact they don't exist they just want you to believe they do....
If we focus our thoughts on the entropic elements we can be sucked into their whirlpool of nihilism and self destruction. So lets instead focus on the wholeness, health, potential. We might say that "total" is a finite word, and derives from German tot: death. "Whole" however comes from halle, health. So again, lets focus our attention consciously on health, and the flowering of the human being. Let the totalitarians bury themselves.
I choose to align myself with the the visionary poets Blake, Yeats, Coleridge, Hughes, Popa, etc all great creative lights and exemplars of human freedom and all "kabbalists" of some stripe. The value they found from Kabbalah was that it can, judiciously employed, provide a method for transforming the ego from a purely self-interested entity to one learning to act from connection with the atemporal origin of all being.
You ask what my end goal is. I don't have an end. At the moment, I am focusing on becoming fit enough to pass selection for the Royal Marine commandos.
Best wishes, love, rainbows, real trees, etc
Thom.
Contradictions
My own experience...
Enjoyable, interesting article, one of those that helped me in seeing that my own experiences were not unknown or totally strange.
I work both with Qabalah and Entheogens, in the realm of Alchemical laboratory work. I've always felt that Alchemy is the intersection of altered states experience and Qabalah, working as it does with literal physical substances to create mystical states of transport and insight.
To me, one of the most rewarding things about Alchemy is its lineage link to Qabalah, particularly to the work with the broken vessel idea of manifestation and the efforts to re-unite the sparks and re-enchant the world. As Erik Davis has pointed out, the Western approach is unique this way, in seeing the self and physical realm as an improvement project, rather than something to be denied and escaped from.
My experience with my own extracts of the Ayahuasca herbs really clicks with the ideas in this article, and the concept of refining the specificity of the self rather than melting into oneness. I have experienced the oneness from a few psychedelics, but when I worked with Banisteriopsis & Mimosa verrucosa in particular, the experience was very different.
I was shown how I am part of the all, yes, but a totally unique part, necessary to the workings of the whole, but not the same as it. Not like a cog in a machine, more like a jewel in a glittering diadem, plucked out of my setting to be turned and assessed, then stuck back in to make the whole shine a little brighter
It was very much an experience of individuation; I can't say if it came from my own Hermetic mindset, the Alchemical way the plant was worked with, the plant itself, or most likely, all that and more. But it was so different from many previous psychedelic experiences that it changed me deeply.
Strength & Wisdom,
Al-Qemi
www.al-kemi.com