Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [201]
In 4 Ezra there are three famous other techniques-fasting, eating flowers of the field, and drinking a fiery liquid. They can be understood as “triggering” techniques for achieving trance, as they are quite unusual behaviors otherwise in this society. The last item, drinking a fiery liquid, may even reflect the Persian tradition of imbibing psychedelic drugs, although it occurs inside a RISC, for the purposes of remembering Scripture, having the function of a magical memory potion.
Fasting is a well understood technique for achieving changes in consciousness and was practiced frequently by the heavenly journeyers; in some sense it does not matter whether the culture chooses to mark the activity as directly related to the vision or merely one of the preparations, like obtaining ritual purity. As a physical stimulus, fasting will not only bring on vivid dreams but can produce trance and other psychagogic states. While we do not know whether “the flowers of the field” ingested by the seer had any psychotropic properties, the description of the special diet may imply a specific agent and is, at the very least, a significant part of the fasting theme. Poppies, henbane, marijuana, and jimson weed, as well as other psychoactive plants, grow wild in profusion around the Mediterranean.
Hymn singing was the most important means of achieving ascent in the Merkabah texts.14 The repetition of mantras is a well-known technique for meditation in Hinduism and Buddhism. Although Jewish texts do not valorize hymn singing as a technique, very intent and highly concentrated hymn singing occurs throughout the texts. Hekhaloth Rabbati, for example, explicitly starts the ascent by saying that a certain psalm is to be recited by the adept exactly 112 times.
Trance is itself a widely varying combination of various physical states-including pulse, breathing, a complex variety of different brain waves, as well as quite different reports about the nature of consciousness and remembrance while possessed. Therefore an enormous variety of physical phenomena can be trained and selected by the traditions within a society as meaningful for a RISC experience. There are gradients in spirit possession and meditation, everything from light or no trance to deep unconsciousness. Given the evidence, it would be foolish either to deny or affirm that prophets or apocalypticists could or could not produce their writings in an altered state. Furthermore, it would be difficult to judge on the basis of the texts whether any particular one or combination of the physical characteristics of trance were present during these revelations.
The important thing, in the end, is what the texts claim, because that is the record of at least part of what is prescribed in the society. Claiming that they are visions is, in terms of the society, tantamount to them being so, unless there is specific evidence from the society to suggest that they are being faked. There must be evidence trusting or distrusting each report.
We should not shy away from comparing these Israelite religious experiences with those narrated in Persian thought, where the vision is explicitly caused by a narcotic drink. Though the heavenly journeys of Kartir and Arda Viraf were somewhat later than 1 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Abraham, for example, it would not be outrageous to think that the adept was sitting on earth while the spirit roamed the heavens in a RISC. This differs quite significantly from the older, mythological description, where the god or hero literally went to heaven. In these later, more mystical cases, we may posit that actual RISC experience is behind the accounts, though it cannot be ordinary experience, and it cannot be reconstructed in detail. Indeed, it may even be that the earlier mythological narratives mean to suggest RISC as well. Early literature is notoriously weak on experiential terminology. Frequently in Akkadian, for instance, dreaming is expressed by the phrase: “I slept and I saw.”
The Neurological Background of the Heavenly Journey
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