Purim: To drink or not to drink, what kind of question is that?

The Purim mitzvah of becoming intoxicated "Until one does not know," as the ultimate expression of God's oneness.

אמר רבא מיחייב איניש לבסומי בפוריא עד דלא ידע בין ארור המן לברוך מרדכי

Rava said: A person is obligated to become intoxicated with wine on Purim until he is so intoxicated that he does not know how to distinguish between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai.

מגילה ז׳ ב:ח׳

רבה ורבי זירא עבדו סעודת פורים בהדי הדדי איבסום קם רבה שחטיה לרבי זירא למחר בעי רחמי ואחייה לשנה אמר ליה ניתי מר ונעביד סעודת פורים בהדי הדדי אמר ליה לא בכל שעתא ושעתא מתרחיש ניסא

Megillah 7b:8

The Gemara relates that Rabba and Rabbi Zeira prepared a Purim feast with each other, and they became intoxicated to the point that Rabba arose and slaughtered Rabbi Zeira. The next day, when he became sober and realized what he had done, Rabba asked God for mercy, and revived him. The next year, Rabba said to Rabbi Zeira: Let the Master come and let us prepare the Purim feast with each other. He said to him: Miracles do not happen each and every hour, and I do not want to undergo that experience again.

The essence of divinity is found in every single thing -- nothing but it exists. Since it causes every thing to be, nothing can live by anything else. It enlivens them; its existence exist in each existent.
Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that Ein Sof emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of it, you have dualized. God forbid! Realize, rather, that Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not say, "This is stone and not God." God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.
Moses Cordovero, Elimah Rabbati, 24d-25a, The Essential Kabbalah, Daniel Matt p.24

What was the objections that people had to pantheism, God is everything? "Are you going to tell me that the excrement of a dog is also God?" And the answer to this would be - "Yes." What is wrong with that? It is only from the human perspective that we see a difference between that and challah. On the submolecular level, on the atomic, level, the all look the same. And if you look from a galactic perspective, what difference is there between one and the other? So if "God is everything," why are you and I here? Because we are the appearance of God in this particular form. And God likes to appear in countless forms and experience countless lives... deep down, the deepest level of the patter is that God is everything. So it's not that God created the world but that God became the world. Rabbi Zalman Shacther-Shalomi, Wrapped in a Holy Flame: Teachings of the Hasidic Masters, p.20

When I was younger, and an academic student of mysticism, I always imagined that mystical union would take place in some far-off place, under special conditions, probably to someone else. But when, on my first meditation retreat many years ago, the spark of God masquerading as me was blessed to recognize Herself at last, I was startled to realize the obvious: that since God is every where, mystical union would look perfectly ordinary, and would take the shape not of angels and clouds but of trees, walkways, bathrooms, and tables. p.42

Jeremy Fierstien

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