Purim and the Light of Intoxication

On Purim, famously, we are admonished to become so intoxicated that we “Cannot tell the difference between cursed be Haman and Blessed be Mordechai.” For some of us, this is a mitzvah we look forward to all year. It offers release, affirmed and encouraged by our religious and spiritual tradition. It includes what we would usually think of as the domain of the evil inclination –drunkenness, wildness, the flaunting of dress codes, even of gender boundaries –in the service of ecstasy and celebration. That, at least, is the idea. 

From a religious point of view, what does the possibility of drunkenness mean? Why does alcohol intensify our emotions, marijuana change our perspective, and hallucinogens like Ayahuasca spark spiritual experiences? Why are physical compounds able to influence and transform our consciousness, our inner awareness, our sense of self?

The Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of LIadi, explains in his book Torah Or that there are two ways in which the infinite divine light penetrates into our world. The first way is when the light is progressively hidden and enclosed, but also embedded, in successive worlds, levels or sefirot, until it reaches our consciousness, thought, words, and actions. This light is called “the light that fills all worlds”. Here, hiddenness and revelation go hand in hand. The light is concealed, but it is also actually there, beneath layers of hiddenness and disguise. 

But there is another way in which the infinite light descends: In an instantaneous flash from “the light that surrounds all worlds.” The rebbe describes it as “skipping” or “leaping”; it ignores the space-time continuum and its limitations. As my friend Rabbi Michael Paley remarked, it fits in nicely with quantum theory, in which two linked atoms respond to each other instantly, even if they are situated twenty billion light years away from each other. 

See, this flash of light, this shining, is what creates and gives life to the material world. Whereas the light of our soul, our spirit, our consciousness, moves down through the vessels of divine wisdom and understanding, love and rigor and so on, world below world in a hierarchical system, the light that creates the physical world flashes directly from the infinite, from the surrounding light beyond our world and all created worlds. 

The material world is created ex-nihilo. Its somethingness, if I understand the Alter Rebbe correctly, the obdurate quality of physical reality, the quality that you stub your toe against, the thingness of things that just are, this could only come about through this direct and instant “skipping” light. It reproduces the quality of God as S/he is in Himself, before His connection with the world. The light surrounding all worlds, the rebbe says, shines indiscriminately towards everything equally. In fact, from the perspective of this light, there is no hierarchy separating levels of spirit or spirit and matter. The transcendence of God is utter; spirit and matter are the same from this height. 

There is an advantage, from our point of view, to “the light that fills all worlds,” because when the infinite light descends in stages, although it is concealed, it actually abides, whereas the instantaneous “leap” is only a glint, a sparkle, a gleam. And the advantage of the gleam is that it is a revelation of the infinite light as it truly is, unadulterated. The Rebbe connects this with the respective advantages of Torah over mitzvot and of mitzvot over Torah (Torah coming from the light that fills all worlds and mitzvot from the quantum leap), but that is for another exploration. 

The changes to our consciousness and the revelations that can be catalyzed by chemical compounds are now comprehensible: There is infinite light that flashes from within materiality and gives it life. This is humbling but also liberating. From this perspective, our souls are not higher or better than our bodies, or even then a stone or a clog of dirt. It is also dangerous; we must always be aware oof our fragility and the power of these compounds. And also Liberating, because somehow in this knowledge, we are gifted with a shimmer of the dazzling light of the infinite divine. Happy Purim!