Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a veteran psychonaut and founder of the Jewish renewal movement, once said: “To understand the depth of religion, one needs to have firsthand experience. It can be done with meditation. It can be done with sensory deprivation. It can be done a number of ways. But I think the psychedelic path is sometimes the easiest way, and it doesn’t require the long time that other approaches usually require.”
Schachter-Shalomi was no stranger to psychedelics. He’d tripped in the ‘60s with Timothy Leary and Ram Dass (né Richard Alpert), Harvard psychologists who pioneered research into LSD and magic mushrooms. Back then there was a lot of academic interest in mystical experiences and other benefits associated with of those drugs: in one experiment, Leary, Alpert, and psychiatrist Walter Pahnke gave shrooms to theology students at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel and found that nine of ten reported powerful spiritual highs. More >>