Climbing Jacob’s Ladder

ZALMAN SCHACHTER-SHALOMI

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is a rabbi who received ordination from Lubavitch. He is the author of From Age-ing to Sage-ing and is considered by many to be the founder of what is now known as Jewish Renewal. Reb Zalman is open, fluid, and energetic and steeped in Yiddishkeit and Torah Judaism. He now teaches at Naropa Institute in the Chair of World Wisdom.

Tim,

You may not get the credit or for that matter get blamed for what you did. But you did deep and far-reaching subversion of the old architectural cosmology and the accompanying rule of the rationalistic academic-intellectual hierarchy.

Because of LSD and other substances and—and this is essential—the way in which you showed us how to sacramentalize our relation to them and to their openings we learned that one can make mind moves and look at the shifting panorama from any perspective one wants. I can still hear your mantra, “You can be anything you want” from that record you made at Gerd’s.

Did you know that the very day on which LSD was invented was also the day of the Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw? I feel that there is some profound connection here, the words for which elude me.

 The trickster gods used you well in prison and in flight. Here, too, you taught us to see past the facades of law and order. You do care about life and health, harmony between all creatures of this planet and who knows what other forms of life. I remember that during the night you initiated me you were concerned about how people will use this most powerful “transporter,” how kids would not know if they were not gently shown how.

Those kids are now getting ready to get ready to retire. What are they going to do with their awareness? Maslow at his end had the right idea. Check out what’s ahead and spend some time in that consciousness. Oh if Castalia would be a retirement home! What a high ecstasy count in that place. Strobes and music, color organs, fine incense, a lot of loving touch, Terry McKenna as dietician, and the intimacy of shared is-ness. We might surf the Intranet.

Your fantastic introspection made you surf the information highway of our nervous system and talk about it—even as a stand-up philosopher—tripping through chakras, ancient texts, symbols, and myths—raising kundalini.

And you understood that we are getting the global spinal column together and beginning to raise the kundalini in it. The againsters have reason to fear, but not the pornography on the net. That is only the global kundalini at the second chakra. Wait! We are climbing Jacob’s Ladder. What a vista when we get up to chakra four and more.

And you wanted more. You found that in the infinitesimal there was the nexus of the infinite and the cosmic. I suppose you can’t wait until you get to do your head with a being from the implicate dimensions.

Thank you, Tim, for modeling the guy at the sky light, the bodhisattva. You helped us get ready for the third millennium while you moved on to the fifth or more.

Who are you, really, masked Anthropos? May you live long and prosper!

A hug to you from Zalman.