A very rough cut

12 Comments

1. videowatcher says:

   January 20, 2009 at 6:51 pm

   It was an interesting start but I had several issues with it.

   First, it was all talking heads without a narrative presentation holding it together.
   After about 7 minutes, I lost interest in the talking heads because they kept saying the same things. The function of interviews is to strengthen or support the presentation of the narrator. Here, there was none. I need to see communities ancient and modern who did use drugs. i need illustrations and depictions. I need a movie to frame questions and then use shorter snippets of interview to give authority to the video.

   The film goes from Sinai and manna to modern times, they repeat ad naseum that we lost this in modernity. But for most, it was lost already in the Talmud, among the medieval philosophers, and synagogue of the last 2000 years. The synagogue or passover seder in the 4th or 14th centuries was not about drugs. Are you going back to the Bible?
   The film reminds me of those those who used to make the essence of Hinduism the ancient soma plant and ignore 3000 years of subsequent Hinduism. They were doing a religion of drugs, not “Hinduism and drugs”

   Finally, the Hasidim as proof is a bit much. Hasidim are nasty and at this point are more interesting and fair game for failedmessiah to document their sins and folly than to create a new false romanticism. Hasidism has become the new Rorschach test- wiesel makes them melancholic about the holocaust, renewal makes them egalitarian, and you make them about drugs.
2. videowatcher says:

   January 20, 2009 at 7:11 pm

   I have been told that the author this 1970 classic became a BT
   A child’s garden of grass (the official handbook for marijuana users),
   He might give an interesting counter voice.
   As would baba ram das who went from drugs to hinduism to selfless service.
3. Mobius says:

   January 20, 2009 at 7:43 pm

   I’m aware of everything you mentioned and the film itself will be structured as a narrative. This segment was cut from only 1 day’s worth of interviews which took place at a psychedelics conference earlier this year. There is much, much more to come.

   And FWIW, I interviewed Ram Dass, Reb Zalman, and many others when this project was going to result in a book. Now that it’s a film, I’m planning on reinterviewing all the previous subjects and many more, including Jewish substance abuse counselors, non-using baal teshuvot, Israeli government officials, etc. I promise it will be as thorough and objective as you could hope.

   As per the Hasidim, I agree that some of them are awful and that some of their views are objectionable. But I reject your overall characterization of them as “nasty.” I have many devout hasidic friends and family members who I have nothing but love and admiration for. I am not seeking to make chassidus “about drugs.” By invoking chassidus, I am only seeking to demonstrate that there is a long-standing rabbinic tradition that views manna as a psychoactive.
4. Reb Yudel says:

   January 20, 2009 at 8:47 pm

   *was* going to result in a book? Dude, it’s never too late to make a book. Make it a book-DVD one-two punch. Let’s talk.
5. bycenator says:

   January 21, 2009 at 2:01 pm

   Dan,

   I am happy to see some progress. My initial thoughts were also the strong need for an introduction and a weighted partial narrative (by you? or read by someone with a strong voice)

   I hope this doesn’t turn into something like “What the F*%# do we know”

   There is a lot of work to be done. This may just be a prelude to the book version. I think you can do a lot more with the written medium. Section on history, bible, secularism, modern, all things touched on in the interviews.

   Good work, keep it up, I hope to read up on this in my lifetime.

   Biggity
6. Batya says:

   January 24, 2009 at 8:44 am

   I followed this all the way through because I’m of the same generation as most of the interviewees, and because I’ve had some psychedelic experiences along the way of my own religious travels. The idea of using an initiatory substance to open the mind is an important one; it’s difficult to connect until you see what’s out there/in there. And, in my experience, it’s not difficult to re-connect to it without the use of substances, once you know what you’re looking for. And provided you’re not afraid.

   This is important work; please continue to post bits as you go along.

   BTW, what makes the first poster think that these techniques were “lost”? Maybe s/he didn’t see the speaker who addressed this question. As for the seder: um, four cups of wine ring a bell? Maybe the wine is a substitute for something else, or maybe there used to be something added to the wine (or maybe the wine in former days was more potent than the stuff we drink), but I think there are hints in its ceremonial use that should be examined.

   Interfaithfully (?), this leads to questions about the Christian ceremony of communion, ideas explored by a few daring authors in the late 60s/early 70s. Someone wrote that Jesus was a mushroom (amanita muscaria); others have speculated about the use of substances that can bring on feelings of oneness with the divine and with the community that are the rumored hallmarks of the communion experience.

   Before he became a New Age health guru, Andrew Weil put out a couple of good books about the human need to alter consciousness and the use of substances in initiation ceremonies: From Chocolate to Morphine is one of them.

   Not sure what the implications are for the future, because I think we need experienced elders around to guide initiations or we’ll spend several generations reinventing the wheel. Many of our guides were doubtless lost during the Shoah. Who will prepare folks to enter the Pardes?

   Great stuff. Keep us posted.
7. les says:

   January 24, 2009 at 9:25 pm

   2 comments:

   1. the people being interviewed use the term shaman in a way that would make many anthropologists cringe. they rip the word out of a very specific cultural context and then overgeneralize it. don’t you feel as the editor/filmmaker, you need to add a slightly more critical note?

   2. back in the sixties, when so many other people were taking drugs to see god, i took them mainly because it was fun (granted, i may have a slightly different definition of fun than some others), but i stopped taking them when it ceased to be fun. this, by the way, had less to to with any after effects from drugs, but much more with the social context or situation in which, after a while, i took the drugs, i.e. sitting on the floor in filthy, grungy apartments with a bikers, petty criminals, sleazoids and losers of every conceivable description, etc. ultimately, not a community with which i really wanted to feel a great “oneness.” i mean, really, every time i tried quoting the firesign theater, people would look at me funny (or worse). while i guess one can chalk that up to the general malaise that began to be more and more evident in the 70s, i find that most discussions of expanding or altering consciousness to rely on a somewhat tired, worn-out metaphysics, rather than, say, epistemology. or how about humor? how about poetry? in fact, since when does consciousness always automatically equal spirituality?
8. Dave says:

   January 29, 2009 at 4:32 pm

   “Someone wrote that Jesus was a mushroom (amanita muscaria)”

   John Allegro
   http://johnallegro.org/
9. Shred Lexicon says:

   February 2, 2009 at 9:45 pm

   I’m so happy that you’re finally doing this.

   Props. Can’t wait to see how this develops.
10. Chewtoy says:

    May 27, 2009 at 11:23 am

    Dan Merkur is good because he connects contemporary, personal experiences with concrete examples from religious tradition. That is something that needs a lot more emphasis in your film.

    The other interviewees are less interesting because their stories are little more than personal anecdotes, personally I’ve seen too much of those already. “I took Ecstasy on Yom Kippur”… Yeah, big deal. Only Pinchbeck mentions some context, but he doesn’t go deep enough.

    You should try to get Benny Shanon, professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Your film will not be complete without him.
11. Mobius says:

    May 31, 2009 at 2:40 pm

    already on my list, thanks, as are dozens of others. this was just a rough demo made from a few of many planned interviews.
12. Peter Margolis says:

    June 10, 2009 at 8:19 pm

    Alan Watts z”l had, in my opinion, the best line about the place of LSD in the spiritual journey: “When you get the message, hang up the phone”.