The distinction drawn between "unitive" experience and "manifestations" seems a bit artificial — perhaps not within the context of kabbalah, but within the context of psychedelic mysticism. In my book, Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist, I report on interviews I conducted with several innovators in Jewish life about how psychedelics shaped their theologies. For instance: "B., a Jewish educator and day school principal, told me that she took psychedelic drugs about a dozen times, 'always with a sense of spiritual mission.' She remembered with particular fondness a Shavuot . . . some thirty years ago, when she and three other women, all prominent in Jewish religious life today, 'borrowed' a Torah scroll from a day school, took it to a state park, ate hallucinogenic mushrooms and spent the day 'reading Torah along with woodland creatures, frogs and deer' who 'came out and participated.' B. admitted that 'the fact of connectedness or oneness that the Shema expresses first became clear to me on LSD." Continuing: "F., a successful writer and editor of religious books, told me that he had numerous psychedelic experiences in the 190s. 'I look back on nearly all okf them with great awe and respect,' he said. 'Each time was a "big occasion" with a consistent teaching: that there are all kinds of things going on in the spectrum that our normal waking consciousness doesn't pick up. It's like a dog whistle.Your ear doesn't hear all the frequencies. But with each 'awakening,' there is some residue left in the senses."

Nu, are these unitive or manifestation experiences? A key question, it seems to me, is whether there's a difference in which parts of the brain are lighting up. 

But the more important question is how such experiences affect our lives and life choices. In the magazine I edit, Jewish Currents, I interviewed five researchers who are studying psychedelic drugs today. Dr. Charles Grob noted that psychedelics "were catalytic in fostering opposition to the Vietnam War — and their role is very underappreciated." And Rick Doblin, who directs MAPS (a psychedelics research organization), observed that "large scale social change can be motivated by that unitive mystical experience, because once you have identified 'across boundaries,' it's less possible to get involved in scapegoating or demonizing others, or in wars that rely upon religious or national hatreds. That's why I would say that my work with psychedelics was motivated primarily as a response to the Holocaust."

In a world that desperately needs NEW cultivation and practical application of the unitive experience, discussions about how to site psychedelic mysticism within the architecture of Kabbalah, whilevery  interesting, feels to me like spinning the merkavah wheels . . .