24 April 2024
Too Much Light
An Excerpt from Exile and Ecstasy by Madison Margolin
MAPS Bulletin: Volume XXXIV Number 1 • 2024
My early experiences at the Hasidic psytrance festivals upstate got me into the musical genre that’s beloved by some, hated by many—heard as noise to those who can’t get into it. The psytrance scene has something of a gnome-like and elfin flair, and is a bit nerdier than the techno or house scenes popular in the electronic music world. Psytrance can be rapacious and complex, an invitation to dance off angst, and crash into joy. It’s a bit like punk rock, a bit like jam band psychedelic rock; more hippie than hardcore.
It felt like psytrance in particular had dark undertones beneath the glowing, neon patterns of projector lights that often accompanied the DJ sets; and those with a lot of trauma—OTD Hasidim and Israeli veterans—seemed to feed off it the most.
There was something about getting swept up by its sinuous psychedelic beats that, at least in my experience, arrested the monkey mind and let the body shake out the rest. If trauma really does live in the body, then it makes sense that music that inspires dancers to bop up and down in some sort of ecstatic stupor might be unconsciously attractive to those needing that kind of release.
Still, there was a fine line and menacing allure to the whole thing: all at once you could get high from the music, the drugs, or both, and access a sort of lightness of being, a light in general that could massage out the weight of life upon your shoulders—and yet, like a massage with too much pressure, it could also crack your vessel, so to speak, and like a bulb that’s burst, it could crack you out.
Observing the interplay of light and dark is really what got me interested in psytrance. And having noticed the obsession with artists like Goa Gil, I wanted to go straight to the source. My curiosity led me to the beachy hippie town of Arambol, on the northside of Goa, India—the psytrance capital of the world— where I met an Israeli traveler named Tomer. He was one of those tripped-out guys who talks exclusively about lofty spiritual topics, as if he’s peaking on acid at all times.
But, he told me, he’d seen “too much light” and hadn’t tripped in a decade. So what could explain his demeanor—was he still “there” in that trippy zone, integrating it all?
This concept of “too much light” in religious terms, or “spiritual emergence/emergency” in psychological terms, is something both seasoned mystics and psychedelic therapists have cautioned about.
The game isn’t to get high; the game is to get free.
Ram Dass
Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof and his wife, Christina Grof, first coined the term “spiritual emergence” in the late 1980s to describe “the movement of an individual to a more expanded way of being that involves enhanced emotional and psychosomatic health, greater freedom of personal choices, and a sense of deeper connection with other people, nature, and the cosmos.” However, when this emergence becomes chaotic, confusing, overwhelming, or detached from reality, it becomes known as a “spiritual emergency” to describe this state of crisis. For those suffering from a spiritual emergency, their day-to-day functioning may be impaired or they may experience psychosis. “Occasionally, the amount of unconscious material that emerges from deep levels of the psyche can be so enormous that the person involved can have difficulty functioning in everyday reality,” the Grofs write in The Stormy Search for the Self. Spiritual emergency could involve “one’s entire being” cycling through non-ordinary states of consciousness, intense emotions, visions, sensory shifts, and unusual thoughts, which may revolve around spiritual themes like death and rebirth, oneness with the universe, and encounters with mythological beings.
Stan Grof also coined the term “holotropic” (which literally means “moving toward wholeness”) to describe a state in which the ego dissolves and leaves room for the meta cognitive “inner healer” to shine through and do its work. “. . . many of the conditions, which are currently diagnosed as psychotic and indiscriminately treated by suppressive medication, are actually difficult states of a radical personality transformation and of spiritual opening,” he writes. “If they are correctly understood and supported, these psychospiritual crises can result in emotional and psychosomatic healing, remarkable psychological transformation, and consciousness evolution.”
Breathwork, meditation, fasting, sleep deprivation, self-flagellation, ecstatic dance, chanting, and psychedelics are all ways to enter into so-called holotropic states, which I’d say might fall under the umbrella of “psychedelic experience.” In fact, you don’t need a psychedelic substance in order to occasion a psychedelic experience, or to get into a holotropic state; but at the same time, these states (occasioned by a substance or not) can heal on physical, as well as psychological and spiritual levels.
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What are we actually talking about when we say “psychedelic” anyway? The term was originally coined by English psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in 1956 in a letter to Aldous Huxley to mean, etymologically speaking, “mind manifesting” or “soul made visible.” Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who first synthesized LSD, called it “medicine for the soul.” And so, in my definition, a “psychedelic” experience brings out our true essence, connecting us back to our core nature—the soul or spirit—while enabling us to really feel what it’s like to be in the body. When there’s less ego, our neshama—that individual piece of collective divinity inside each of us—is more prominent. It’s the experience of the soul, embodied.
“Ego death” plays a central role, referring to a temporary shift in cognition, from a self-centered to completely unbiased perspective. Scientifically speaking, it’s defined by established brain networks losing localized integrity and increasing global functional connectivity with the rest of the brain. By the brain being in this state of entropy, previously established neuronal connections can rewire in the brain and establish new pathways that can redefine a person’s sense of self. This is in part why some people, for instance, have been able to transcend their fixed patterns of thought in efforts to treat depression, anxiety, eating disorders, or addictions through psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy clinical trials with substances like psilocybin. If the ego is about boundaries between self and the outer world, ego death enables one to feel a sense of oneness or unity with other people, nature, or the cosmos. It’s less about “you” and more about the collective. A feeling of safety, of being “held by the universe,” as author and psychiatrist Julie Holland once put it to me, enables the nervous system to relax and allows healing to occur. The point being, “ego death” can be central to that feeling of oneness associated with the “mystical experience.”
In religious terms, “ego death” might be called bitul, or self-nullification. It’s a spiritual state associated with chochmah, or inner wisdom, and the experience of ayin, nothingness, in relation to G-d’s infinite light and ultimate, singular unity. It’s a form of spontaneous, ecstatic experience—a communion with HaShem. Scary as “ego death” may sound, bitul is a modality and meditation that conjoins with ultimate, deep-seated joy.
Too much light…could shatter one’s vessel, while sober, daily practices, like prayer, yoga, or meditation might trump the psychedelic shortcut to illumination. A steady discipline in the end offers more light than receiving it all in a heavy dose that could be too much to handle. This theme of the dangers of spiritual experience without proper preparation or “vessels” to contain the light pops up throughout Jewish literature, from the Torah to later mystical writings.
A classic case is the story of Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, who were inspired to bring a fire offering to G-d, even though it was not the allotted time. For this spontaneous expression of inner devotion, they were zapped out of existence. From a psychedelic perspective, one might say that their “‘set’” was right on; they yearned to connect with the Divine, but their “‘setting’” was off—right place at the wrong time. Similarly, there is the story of the four Mishnaic sages who entered Pardes—through a method of spiritual elevation consisting of intense meditation on G-d’s name—one died, one went mad, one became a heretic, and only Rabbi Akiva left in peace. Each of these rabbis was a massive Torah genius in his own right, and yet, the direct experience of the Divine unhinged them, all except Rabbi Akiva. The basic message according to rabbinic tradition is that direct spiritual experience is serious, sometimes even dangerous, and should be approached with respect and proper preparation. In seeing the light of heaven, only one of the four was able to grasp its unity; those who continued to grapple with duality—who couldn’t integrate—had their minds blown open.
Grounding practices are thus a vessel can harness that light, and guide psychedelic experience. It’s like this quote by Ram Dass: “The game isn’t to get high; the game is to get free.”
Madison Margolin
Madison Margolin is a journalist covering psychedelics and spirituality. She is the author of Exile & Ecstasy: Growing Up with Ram Dass & Coming of Age in the Jewish Psychedelic Underground. Also the host of the Be Here Now Network’s Set & Setting Podcast, as well as the co-founder of both DoubleBlind Magazine and the Jewish Psychedelic Summit, she has written for publications like Rolling Stone, Playboy, VICE, High Times, Lucid News, and Jewish publishing house and production studio Ayin Press, where she works as an editor curating psychedelic stories and interviews. With a master’s from Columbia Journalism School and a bachelor’s in rhetoric and linguistics from UC Berkeley, Madison has traveled everywhere from pot farms in the Emerald Triangle to the shores of the Ganges River and all over Israel|Palestine exploring the role of entheogens in religion, health, and conflict resolution. With a decade’s worth of experience covering psychedelics, cannabis, and religion/spirituality, Madison’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, KCRW, and other outlets. She offers classes, workshops, and consulting on the topic(s) of Judaism and psychedelics, and has presented at conferences like SXSW, Horizons: Perspectives in Psychedelics, the Association of Alternative News Media, and more.
