Sivan - Revealing the Heart of Torah
“No one yet understands the mysterious intelligence within plants or the implications of the idea that nature communicates in a basic chemical language that is unconscious but profound. We do not yet understand how hallucinogens transform the message in the unconscious into revelations beheld by the conscious mind.” While Terrence McKenna did not claim Jewish ancestry, his ideas of how insights gained through psychedelic exploration deeply resonates with several notions of how Torah is revealed to the Jewish people.
One of the fundamental sacred myths of the Jewish mystical traditions is the ontological entanglement between the triad of Divinity-Human-Wisdom. As the Zohar transmits: There are three dimensions that are intertwined with one another: The Holy Blessed One, the Torah, and Israel. And each one contains dimensions upon dimensions, hidden ones and revealed ones. (Zohar III:73a). This unique relationship allows for the transference of essence, knowledge, and experience between each of these bodies, mysteriously able to take on aspects of each other in some sort of psychedelic dynamism that flattens assumed hierarchies between the Knower, the Knowing, and the Known. In a particular state, a person could confidently say they are embodying the Divine, becoming the Torah, all of the people Israel all at once. This text, for me, is a key to understanding the potential for expanded consciousness in a particular Jewish frame and understanding the teachings of our most beloved teachers as guides to profound states of being, especially with regards to the revelation of Torah.
It is already commonplace to state that Giving of the Torah is ongoing, not merely one moment in time and space, but a continual process of disclosing Divine wisdom and will. But how and where does this revelation occur? Our beloved Rebbe, Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, teaches that it happens as closely as possible, in the body of the practitioner:
Before one begins to study Torah, one should contemplate that they are preparing to absorb the mind and will of the Blessed One that is in the Torah, into their own soul and body. And if they will merit, they will be as is described in the end of the Tikunnei Zohar (Tikkun 10), “your mouth is Sinai… the sounds and vapors that are emitting from your mouth are those about which it is written ‘and all the people saw the sounds’ etc…. And you appear in the visage of your Master at the time of opening with ‘I am’ (Anochi).” How powerfully will one’s entire being be activated by this! To the point at which even the intellectual aspects of Torah will not remain intellectual for a person, as a mere exercise of the intellectual faculties, but will enter through the entire body and its garments to one’s soul. (Derech Hamelech, Vayetzeh)
The Rebbe says simply, that every day, we should “contemplate” an entire transformation of our Jewish bodies into the triad of revelation—becoming the mountain, the Divine Self, and the refined container to receive them. Divine reality is known to us (only?) through our own effort of intention, of manifesting and holding imaginal constructs, of widening the aperture of experience to include that which often feels far beyond us. Here, the daily study of Torah becomes a total transformation of being. McKenna felt this occur with psychoactive plants. For the Jewish people, we learn the terrain of the mysterious transfer of Divine consciousness through learning our sacred texts in an altered state.
In the mystical tradition, Torah is much more than Divine communication. It is a transmission of Divinity Itself. Torah is an expression of Divine Being. It is, itself, a revelation of God. This is encapsulated in the opening word that God issued on Mount Sinai - “Anochi” אָנֹכִי - the Divine “I”. From that word, all of Torah, all of Divine teaching flows to us, allowing us to touch into that Divine Being that is making Itself known to us through Torah. This orientation is already hinted at in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 105a), discussing the meaning of the first Divine utterance at Mount Sinai, “I am YHVH your God who took you out of Egypt from the house of bondage.”
“Anochi” is an acronym for: I have written My Soul and transmitted it.
Rav Kook, in his mystical commentary to the Talmud, Ein Aya, draws out the dimensions of this simple statement in poetic brilliance:
“Anochi” - Me… I Myself… I and no other.
“My Soul” - The essential light of life, that animates all that is, like the soul that animates the body.
“Have written” - That which I have poured into the written, apparent letters.
“And transmitted it” - I have handed it over to expand according to the capacities of its recipients to receive this highest, most sacred gift.
And in its entirety, it is unified in the mystery of highest unity, which is the light that shines from the Torah’s first utterance that includes all within the power of its unity. “Anochi - I have written My Soul and transmitted it.”
The Self-Ness of Divinity is apparent and accessible within the letters of text, containing every mystery of existence, from the lowest to the most supernal. Here, we understand that Divine consciousness is much like Aldous Huxley’s cerebral reducing valve—our ability to receive the fullness of revelation is dependent on our capacity to receive it. How do we achieve this, in spiritual practice and psychedelic work?
In his commentary to Devarim 4:39, Rabbeinu Bachya ben Asher ibn Halawa (1255–1340, Spain), asks us to strip away all of our notions of Divine Self, to return to the potent Void:
“And bring it into your heart” - This is an active commandment from the Torah to know the Blessed One. And we are commanded to know the Divine and explore its Oneness, and to not rely on received tradition alone… And since Divine reality is not something that a person can easily comprehend with their mind, the verse says “bring it into your heart,” as one who meditates on something needs to repeatedly meditate on it. This is as we see with Elijah (Kings I 19:11-12). “God was not in the wind; and after the wind - an earthquake, God was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake - fire, God was not in the fire; and after the fire - a subtle, silent voice.” These verses are communicating that when a person tries to conceive of what [God] is - is It wind, or an earthquake, or fire? - they have to repeatedly go back and destroy the intellectual construct they had built and everything they had thought up until that point. And at the end of all thought, they find concealment and nothingness. And this is the meaning of “after the fire, a subtle, silent voice,” as it is written in Sefer Yetzirah (1:8), “restrain your mouth from speaking and your heart from considering.”
The mind holds certain images, biases, and formations of what constitutes reality—for Rabbeinu Bachya, it is these very images which limit our capacity to receive the fullness of revelation. This Via Negativa meditation practice, penetrating into the layers of consciousness beyond culture, language, and natural phenomenon, lead the journeyer to that which is no the longer the Divine Self, but the Divine Nothing, the silent womb of existence, the root of Torah itself.
In the spirit of discovering our true nature, our own portion in Torah, and our Mother of all, I wish you a Shavuot of inner expansion, receiving more than you could ever conceive, to become a wider vessel for the wisdom this world needs so desperately.
Z
