What is the role of visionary experience in religious text? Did the ancients use entheogenic plants, and does that even matter? And where is the “Jewish psychedelic” landscape headed today? In this candid conversation, Ayin contributing editor Madison Margolin speaks with author, professor, and rabbi Jay Michaelson about how Judaism can adapt to the new psychedelic frontier, and how altered states can enrich spiritual and religious life. The author of ten books—including Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism; God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice; God vs. Gay?: The Religious Case for Equality; The Secret That Is Not A Secret: Ten Heretical Tales; and The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship—Michaelson’s work focuses on the intersections of mysticism, sexuality, law, and psychedelics. As a field scholar at the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and a regular commentator on CNN, Michaelson also writes about contentious current events for outlets like Rolling Stone and The Forward, among others. Most recently, he organized a groundbreaking, first-of-its-kind conference at Harvard Law exploring legal avenues to sacramental psychedelic use among practitioners of monotheistic religions. On a mystical, practical, and academic level, he offers a unique perspective on how ancient wisdom and modern science can come together to deepen spiritual life.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Madison Margolin
What is at the root of the connection between psychedelics and spirituality?
Jay Michaelson
I think I want to answer that question in the form of memoir. For the last twenty-five years, I’ve been focused on two parallel but intersecting tracks. One is our public lives, which for me has taken the form of activism, journalism, et cetera. The second is the technologies that we have for being and becoming better people.
Along that second track, for around ten years, I was focused on Jewish spirituality, teaching Kabbalah, and writing books on those subjects. And then for another ten years or so, I focused mostly on meditation and mindfulness. And now, in the last five years, I’ve turned my attention to psychedelics.
My own psychedelic history goes back a long time—to 1991. So it’s not new for me, but my involvement in the field is. And that came not because of the so-called psychedelic renaissance, but actually because of changes in my own life. I used to go off on long meditation retreats, but now I’m the parent of a seven-year-old, and that’s not realistic, at least not in the way that we want to parent and live right now.
Psychedelics allow us to access states of mind that can occur without external substances, but faster. Being able to reach that point might take four or five days in meditation, but getting there within a couple of hours has real value if you think those states of mind can lead us closer to the sacred, to being better with one another, or to just being refreshed and recharged.
The Hasidim have this idea that we oscillate between the human point of view, which is the small mind—mochin de katnut, the mind that sees subject and object separation—and, if we’re lucky, mochin de gadlut, the expanded mind, which is God’s point of view. That language comes from second-generation Chabad Hasidism. I don’t think it’s necessarily that we’re seeing as God or becoming God on psychedelics, but that there’s an opportunity to see from that point of view—just like that opportunity exists in the context of prayer, or meditation, or Kabbalistic speculation.
So in a way, it’s like what Leonard Cohen said: new skin for the old ceremony. The old ceremony is seeing from God’s point of view, where the mind is different from the ordinary mind—a mind that serves us quite well, and has helped all animals on Earth be fruitful and multiply, but also to kill one another and do all the things that animals do. For me, there’s an intrinsic connection between psychedelics and spirituality: both have the capacity to transform and open the mind.
The Hasidim have this idea that we oscillate between the human point of view, which is the small mind—mochin de katnut, the mind that sees subject and object separation—and, if we’re lucky, mochin de gadlut, the expanded mind, which is God’s point of view.
MM
So what do psychedelics have to do with Judaism?
JM
I want to give two possible answers. There’s one that I know a lot of readers probably draw a lot of meaning from, but it’s not what animates my own work, and that is that there may be some ancient use of psychedelic or psychotropic substances in Judaism. I’m not an atheist on this question, but I am still an agnostic, which is to say, I haven’t yet seen evidence that’s really compelling for that view. But there’s no way to prove the negative either. It’s quite possible that the incense in the temple or the anointing oil or other sacred things may have had psychotropic properties. It’s possible that the acacia wood that is used over and over again in sacred contexts may have also been used for psychedelic purposes. So it may be true, but it’s not, for me, the central motivation.
What I am interested in is my second answer, which goes back to that phrase, “new skin for the old ceremony.” What I mean by that is that visionary, prophetic, and other non-ordinary experiences that we find all over biblical, Talmudic, and medieval literature are clearly central to the Jewish mystical path. They might not be central to normative Judaism, and that’s fine. I’m not really into normative Judaism anyway. But they are central to mysticism, prophecy, healing, insight, connection, communication with other realms, and the shift in the mind that I spoke about earlier. So that is motivating for me.
Whether or not our ancestors used the vocabulary of psychoactive compounds, they definitely had the basic grammar of: Do some practice and enter a non-ordinary mind state, which is extremely generative in different ways. So we have mind-altering techniques throughout the Jewish tradition. Fasting is one, as are the use of music and meditation techniques. And then, again, we have plenty of evidence for non-ordinary experience in Elijah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel, and even the theophany at Mount Sinai. In all of these, it’s not just that Ezekiel has a vision of the divine chariot, but he’s able to communicate with the divine or with those entities, and he’s able to gain insight and prophecy. That grammar is ubiquitous.
We live in a really different time, and so our brains are really different from those of people who lived only two hundred years ago, let alone two thousand years ago. The level of noise, both literal and figurative, that we experience every day would be completely mind-boggling to our spiritual ancestors—as would our disconnection from certain ways of being in nature and our use of technology. So it doesn’t surprise me that we reach for tools that might not have been necessary at an early age, but that help us expand our minds so that we can see clearly and contact aspects of our existence that are not usually accessible.
MM
When you say “grammar versus vocabulary,” can you explain what you mean?
JM
The grammar of the experience is the structure of the prophetic sentence: do a practice, cultivate a non-ordinary mind state, and generate some prophecy, experience, insight, or wisdom. The vocabulary is the terms and tools that are used for doing that, whether they are trance practices, magic, music, meditation, fasting, prayer, or psychedelics.
MM
What do you see as exciting developments in the contemporary psychedelic landscape?
JM
Obviously, the landscape is shifting very, very quickly and might be about to shift even more quickly with the change in government in the United States. Certainly, there is a faction of the administration that is very supportive of psychedelics. I think we’re about to pivot from too little access to psychedelics to too much access. If the changes in government that are being promised come to pass, there may not be enough regulation and supervision of psychedelics. There may be rapid approval of psychedelics as medicine without some of the guardrails that I think are necessary to prevent harm and keep people safe. I’m not sure we’re really prepared for that change, partly because there has been a lot of movement in the direction of increasing access, which I support in general.
Speaking personally, I come at this from an interdisciplinary point of view. I’m a rabbi. I also have a PhD in Jewish thought from Hebrew University, and I have a law degree. I’m not a scientist, I’m not a facilitator, and I’m not a mental health care professional. So for me, where I’ve been excited has been at that intersection of psychedelics, law, and religion. I think the field is getting a little bit more sophisticated in how we understand the different religious uses of psychedelics. I’m co-editing an anthology on psychedelic spiritual experiences at Emory University, which will hopefully show some of the breadth of what those experiences are in a richer way than we maybe saw in the previous generation of psychedelic scholarship.
At Harvard, I convened a large symposium to look at religious use of psychedelics in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities and how those communities can gain legal recognition for this practice. There are a lot of different ways in which spiritual and/or religious people relate to these compounds. There’s no one map, and there are obviously more than one compound. And there are real differences between, let’s say, an ayahuasca experience and a mushroom experience from a theological point of view and a psychological point of view. I do have a slightly optimistic belief that, although results may vary, psychedelics have the capacity to enhance the parts of our mind that might save the planet. Again, that doesn’t happen all the time. But their capacity to stimulate neuroplasticity and the growth of our brains is really needed right now. I don’t have a naive optimism. Some people have said psychedelics will just lead to the spiritualization of humanity. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think there’ll still be a lot of folks going in with one set of ideas and ideologies and coming out with that same set.
Doing activism is short-term. We want change, and we need it soon. Meditation, spirituality, psychedelics—I see these as longer-term practices that look at some of the factors of why we are the way we are, and what we can do about it.
But I do think that on balance, this is one of the tools of consciousness transformation that’s in our toolbox. And it does feel like that kind of shift is urgently needed. To return to the very first thing I said, a lot of my own work could be divided into short-term versus long-term. Doing activism is short-term. We want change, and we need it soon. Meditation, spirituality, psychedelics—I see these as longer-term practices that look at some of the factors of why we are the way we are, and what we can do about it.
MM
What are patterns or aspects of psychedelic culture or consciousness that you’re less excited about, or would like to see shift?
JM
I think if you have a positive, transformative experience, there’s almost a missionary zeal to imagine that that will happen for everyone. And I’m not sure that’s borne out. On the contrary, I think that view can lead not only to some sloppy thinking, but also sloppy actions. If there are cases of abuse, for example, those can get papered over by a utopian mission to not talk about that bad stuff because we want to make this change. And you see this over and over and over again. You see it in religious communities, obviously, but also in meditation, yoga, and spirituality and psychedelic communities. That missionary zeal is understandable from a psychological point of view, but it can be really destructive in terms of keeping people safe and reducing harm.
Within the Jewish mystical tradition, there are plenty of warnings about mystical practice: that it isn’t for everybody, and that you need to be really grounded before doing it. This is most famously referred to in the story of the four rabbis who went into the Pardes, and only one came back totally okay. That’s only a twenty-five percent success rate. If we see that as a proto-psychedelic experience—not that they’re necessarily using a psychedelic substance, but that they did some practice, went into a non-ordinary state, and came back with something—only one in four came back sane and within the tradition, right? One dies, one loses his mental capacity, and one commits apostasy, which I may think of as a positive result, but the tradition clearly does not. And that should serve as a wake-up call for those who have unbridled enthusiasm.
MM
I also think the redeeming quality of the one who survived the Pardes was his warning to the others that “when you reach pure marble stones, do not say: ‘Water, water.’” Can you elaborate on that?
JM
I’ve been wrestling with that text for thirty-two years. I think the best scholarly understanding of it is that they were doing contemplations of the Temple, which was a practice after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. These contemplations were almost like a Tibetan visualization, which also sometimes involves images of temples—a very intense contemplative practice centered on visualizing the physical temple, and thus, in a way, either keeping the memory alive or actually keeping the temple alive on the so-called astral plane. One part of the Temple was known as the Halls of Polished Marble. So maybe the mistake of calling the stones “water” has to do with thinking that the walls or floor are actually liquid instead of solid, or it could mean something like, if you’re having a psychedelic experience, and you feel like you’re drowning, that could lead to a difficult period in that experience, certainly.
It’s interesting, too, that there are a lot of accounts given of why Acher (whose name literally means “the other”) did what he did, why he became an apostate. In one story, he sees Metatron sitting on the throne of glory, and he thinks, That can’t be an angel because he’s sitting, and angels don’t have knees. So he thinks, Maybe it’s God, but it can’t be God because he has a form. So then he thinks there might be two gods. (There’s also the rabbinic story in which he sees somebody who’s fulfilling a mitzvah and dies right after doing it. So that seems to be a question of theodicy.) To me, the primary wisdom of that legend is that at the center of the Jewish tradition, there are people doing this contemplative work. And, yeah, it’s not for everybody. We could even say that this particular text seems to have a more negative view of mystical practice than other texts of the period in the Hekhalot and Merkava literature, which have a more positive orientation toward mystical practice overall. But even there, they saw it as being for the elites.
I think it’s definitely TBD what will happen if we have thousands or even millions of accidental mystics in America in the next couple of years, because people are encountering psychedelics in a mental health context. If they’re unprepared for the spiritual, visionary, or challenging psychological material that can arise, that should give us pause, right? I mean, imagine having your strongest trip and not being prepared for the fact that that might happen. We have seen that in the meditation world already, in a milder way.
MM
Do you think having a strong spiritual orientation or religious background affects people’s psychedelic experiences?
JM
I used to believe that everybody who did psychedelics was having some spiritual experience because I was almost every time, but that’s not true. Having a religious background definitely shapes the experience. I think it goes back to the etymology of psychedelic: mind-revealing. That is, it depends on what’s in your mind, and how you see things. I was involved in a 5-MEO ceremony, and I was having these intense mystical experiences—definitely up there with my highest meditation experiences, and some of the most powerful experiences of kedusha I’ve ever had. And then we’d go around the room to share and nobody else was having those experiences. It felt quite strange because to me, it was very obvious, especially with that medicine. I mean, how are people not having the experience of saccidānanda? But the reality is that not everybody is. And obviously, it’s possible to have a more non-theistic understanding of what’s happening.
On the other hand, data suggests that the more spiritual or religious experiences you have, the better your mental health outcomes. So let’s say that your intention is healing from trauma or working with depression or anxiety. It’s not well understood why psychedelics work. Is it the experience? Is it the physical aspect, the neuroplasticity? Is it the growth of new neural connections? What role does the shift in consciousness, the phenomenology of experiences in consciousness have to do with it? Is that central to the healing process, or is it ancillary? We don’t really know. I think we’ll have better information within just a few years. But there are people who go in with a non-religious intention and have very powerful transformative experiences.
Trauma is a good example. If you’re with somebody who’s really trauma-sensitive and trauma-aware, which is a pretty important caveat, it’s sometimes possible to approach the traumatic experience in a way that’s totally different from how an ordinary mind would. People have incredibly transformative experiences, and that may or may not have to do with religion. But just being able to connect with such a painful, formative part of one’s human experience can be transformative.
I used to believe that everybody who did psychedelics was having some spiritual experience because I was almost every time, but that’s not true . . . I think it goes back to the etymology of psychedelic: mind-revealing. That is, it depends on what’s in your mind, and how you see things.
MM
In thinking about psychedelics and Judaism, what would you like to see more of in the future?
JM
My answer to that question is to zoom back out. The institutional Jewish community needs to take the mental health crisis in America seriously, and they do not. This crisis shows up in people trying to find meaning in places that are problematic: in the manopshere, in extreme nationalism, in conspiracy theories, and so on. In Jewish traditions, there is an abundance of meaning, too much meaning sometimes, but it has not been a priority for institutions to center the tools of meaning-making and support people in their processes of personal growth. There are many such tools: prayer, study, community involvement, and yes, psychedelics. They all have the capacity to transform the mind and heart and provide pathways to sustainable, integrated meaning-making. But it takes time and resources to help people access and integrate these experiences, and to build community and do all the things that keep people from falling into some online abyss. If those holding the purse strings had more vision than paranoia, the advent of psychedelics could be the best thing that happened to Judaism in quite some time.
Madison Margolin is a journalist covering psychedelics, cannabis, spirituality, and Jewish life. She is the cofounder of DoubleBlind Magazine and has written for publications like Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Vice, among others. Also a cofounder of the Jewish Psychedelic Summit and host of the Set & Setting podcast on the Be Here Now Network, Madison has traveled from cannabis farms in Northern California to underground ceremonies in Brooklyn to the shores of the Ganges River and all over Israel|Palestine, reporting on the role of entheogens in religion, culture, and healing. Find out more about her work here, or follow her on social media.
Jay Michaelson is the author of ten books, including Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism and The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth, winner of the 2023 National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship. He holds an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence, a PhD in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, and a JD from Yale. Jay is a journalist at Rolling Stone and CNN, a rabbi, a longtime LGBTQ activist, and a teacher of Jewish and Buddhist meditation. He lives outside New York City with his husband and daughter.
Ayin Press is deeply grateful for the support of the Dr. Bronner’s Family Foundation, which made this project possible.