Rambam on Psychedelics - Part 1: How Mushrooms Mess With Emunah

Although this is the first in a five part series, it is the most important. Even if you aren't a paid subscriber, I urge you to read the free section on emunah.

With gratitude to Hashem, I’m pleased to announce that I am officially listed as a teacher on YUTorah! Special thanks to Alex K., the sponsor of this week’s content, for suggesting that I make my debut in conjunction with Nach Yomi’s recent start of Sefer Mishlei and for helping make it possible. I’ll begin by uploading all 600+ of my Mishlei shiurim, including shiurim on every pasuk in chapters 10–14, 16, and 18–24, as well as most of chapter 15 and assorted other pesukim. After that, I’ll upload my other shiurim. For now, if you—or anyone you know—are interested in my Mishlei shiurim, you can find them at: https://www.yutorah.org/teachers/Rabbi-Matt-Schneeweiss.

A link to a printer-friendly version of the full article can be found at the very end, for paid subscribers only.

This article presupposes you’ve read Rambam on Psychedelics: Series Introduction. To remind you of the key disclaimers: I have no firsthand experience with psychedelics, I’m not advocating their use, and the views expressed here are my own.

Rambam on Psychedelics - Part 1: How Mushrooms Mess With Emunah

Rambam’s Definition of Emunah

Rambam defines emunah in Moreh ha’Nevuchim 1:50 within his extended discussion of Divine attributes. While it’s important to study every statement of the Rambam in context (especially in the Moreh), that would take us too far afield from the topic at hand. My focus here is on emunah itself—as a phenomenon in our mental (and/or spiritual) lives, independent of Rambam’s theological context.

Strictly speaking, Rambam doesn’t use the Hebrew word emunah in this chapter. He wrote the Moreh in Judeo-Arabic, and the term he uses is iʿtiqād. I’ll begin by quoting the relevant passage with that word left untranslated and then present my own rendering, which I’ve synthesized from the six translations available to me.

Know, you who study my treatise, that iʿtiqād is not what is uttered with the mouth, but what is formed in the soul when it is held to be true that the thing actually is as it has been conceived… For iʿtiqād comes only after mental conception: it is the conviction that what has been conceived in the mind exists outside the mind just as it was conceived. And if this iʿtiqād is accompanied by the realization that no alternative is at all possible—that the mind finds no grounds to reject this conviction or to entertain the possibility of its opposite—then this is certainty.

Translators render iʿtiqād in different ways, each with its own shade of meaning. R’ Shmuel ibn Tibbon (1150–1230) translates it as emunah in some places and ha’amanah in others. Michael Friedlander (1833–1910) uses both “faith” and “belief.” Shlomo Pines (1908–1990) prefers “belief” exclusively, as does Lenn E. Goodman (1944–). R’ Yosef Qafih (1917–2000) insists on de’ah, and R’ Yochai Makbili (1970–) opts for ha’amanah.

Since Makbili does such an excellent job explaining the concept of iʿtiqād and justifying his translation decision in his expanded note on this chapter, I’ll quote his note in full, with my emphasis in bold:

The Arabic term iʿtiqād is the noun form of the verb meaning “to hold the thought that a certain proposition is true,” regardless of whether that proposition is in fact true. It is important to emphasize that ha’amanah is not limited to a religious context; it appears in any field requiring a judgment about which view is correct, such as philosophy, science, politics, and the like.

Ibn Tibbon translated iʿtiqād as ha’amanah, whereas other translations render it as emunah (faith) or de’ah (opinion). However, the word emunah is ambiguous: on the one hand, it can refer to treating a logical claim or proposition about reality as true … on the other hand, it can refer to a person’s subjective experience of trust or reliance … We did not translate iʿtiqād as de’ah because the root la’da’at (“to know”) pertains only to things that are true, whereas ha’amanah applies even to what is false. Additionally, Rambam uses de’ah in a variety of senses, such as character traits, intellect, active thought, and more.

Taking all this into account, I prefer to translate iʿtiqād as emunah in Hebrew and as “conviction” in English. To be convinced of a proposition is “to hold that proposition to be true.” As Makbili notes, one can be “convinced” of a proposition regardless of whether it’s true in fact. “Conviction” is distinct enough in meaning to set it apart from “faith,” and it’s more multivalent than “belief,” while carrying less connotative baggage.

Two more points before concluding this section. First, emunah is subject to degrees. For example:

• If I hear a claim but don’t even understand what’s being said, then I can’t have any emunah at all. As Rambam put it: “iʿtiqād comes only after mental conception.” The same holds for intrinsically incoherent claims. That’s why the Ramban, in the Disputation at Barcelona (which took place this week 762 years ago), said about the Trinity: “ein adam maamin mah she’eino yode’a—a person cannot have conviction in that which he doesn’t know!” To claim that God is absolutely One and also Three is as incoherent as saying square circles are real, since neither object of belief can be conceived in the mind.

• The more I understand a claim and the more compelling I find it based on evidence and reason, the stronger my emunah becomes. The more questions or doubts arise, the more unstable that emunah is.

• And if I’ve examined and ruled out all possible alternatives, I’ve reached the highest level of emunah, which Rambam refers to as “certainty” or “absolute conviction.”

Second, emunah can flow from different sources. The intellect is not the sole factor. For example:

• I might hear a claim from a total stranger and not attach much emunah to it, but if that same claim is repeated by an authority I trust, or someone whose knowledge I respect, my emunah will be greater.

• Emotions play a huge role in emunah, for better and for worse. It’s easier to have emunah in a belief that is emotionally appealing or aligned with one’s desires. For this reason, emunah can ebb and flow based on a person’s psychological state.

• Similarly, there’s often a correlation between emunah and behavior. Someone who lives a halachically observant lifestyle will have an easier time sustaining emunah in, say, Torah min ha’Shamayim (the Divine origin of Torah), than someone who doesn’t keep halacha. The cognitive dissonance generated by the latter’s behavior can threaten or erode their emunah even without any change in their knowledge.

• Emunah is also shaped by the people we surround ourselves with, such as friends, peers, or simply members of our broader society. (See Hilchos Deios 6:1.)

• There are surely other factors as well, such as physical wellbeing, mental health, energy, and so on.

For all these reasons, I find the following analogy helpful. Picture a person’s emunah in any given belief—religious, political, scientific, or otherwise—as controlled by a panel of dials that can be cranked up or down, depending on various intellectual, authoritative, emotional, societal, behavioral, and other factors. These dials don’t operate in isolation; turning one can override or amplify the others.

For example, an unexpected change in one’s emotional life might turn up the emotional emunah dial on a comforting belief, while turning down the previously dominant intellectual forces that had kept their emunah in check. Alternatively, a person’s exposure to a new social environment—say, an intellectually rigorous setting with high standards of evidence—might gradually raise the intellectual dial, prompting them to reexamine beliefs they once accepted on authority or emotion alone.

Now that we’ve clarified Rambam’s definition of emunah, we are finally in a position to tackle the question implicit in the title of this article: How do psychedelics mess with emunah?