Contact Highs: Intoxicants in ritual and yoga

In the last four years, Oregon, California, the District of Columbia, and Colorado have passed or are pending laws and initiatives aimed at legalizing or decriminalizing psychedelics. In yoga circles the use of mind altering substances has long been accepted, with many practioners pointing back to the earliest Sanskrit texts to demonstrate the long connection between the use of psychedelics in yoga spheres. This panel will examine these texts and current attitudes toward drug usage in yoga circles, with each paper closely exploring the contact between the use of intoxicants and practice. Further, each paper in its own way, calls into the question the assumptions about intoxicants made my modern researchers, scientists, and pop culture.

The first paper questions the identification of _soma_ with various psychedelic materials and explores the problematic implications of assuming that psychedelics lead to the same mystical states found in South Asian religious literature. Further, it examines the lasting impact of R. Gordon Wasson’s 1968 _Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality_, a book that has long been discredited in academic circles but continues to have an outsize influence on the popular and scientific understanding of yoga and altered states.

Staying on the theme of _soma_, the second paper shifts from botanical identifications and instead deeply explores the effects of pressing and drinking _soma_, namely in the abundance of “non-lexical vocables,” sounds and phonemes with no semantic meaning found in Sāmavedic chants. The speaker considers the impact of using a psychedelic on language and vocal patterning, arguing that scholars should move beyond botany and vague mystical experiences to explore how the _soma_ sacrifice shaped the ritual itself. Finally, it argues that this textual material can be used in cross-cultural comparisons with the aesthetic practices of other traditions in which non-lexical vocables appear in prayers and songs alongside the use of peyote and ayahuasca.

Our third paper calls into question what premodern South Asian texts meant by “intoxication,” pointing out that the Sanskrit words _unmatta/mada_ mean both madness and intoxication. What then is the difference between the two states? The authors explore the various distinctions between types of _unmatta/mada_ and examine the employment of various intoxicants. The paper argues that _surā_, or alcoholic beverages, were preferred for their effects of drunkenness rather than psychedelic delirium. The paper also notes that _surā_ was explicitly forbidden in Brahmanical society, leading to an exploration between intoxicant consumption and transgression.

Finally, the fourth paper returns to the present transnational yoga traditions, focusing on the intersections of yoga and psychedelic tourisms. This calls into question the historical linkages between yoga and psychoactive substances as well as the notion of yoga itself being a substitute for those substances. The paper discusses the Vedic use of soma by a long-haired (_keśin_), yogic and āyurvedic ingestion of poisons (_viṣa_), and tantric imbibing of initiatory drinks (_dravya_). This examination provides insight into psychedelic science and culture that examines techniques for achieving supernatural powers (_siddhi_), psychedelic experiences of the constructed mind (_nirmāṇcitta_), and the parallels of contemplation to Near Death Experience.

The authors of these four papers are both established and up-and-coming scholars whose work compliments one another by providing a wide overview of current trends in yogic and psychedelic studies. By focusing on both textual and practical applications of intoxication, the panel hits various viewpoints from many different angles without being repetitive.