"In the Orient, intoxication is regarded as a divine gift that brings people closer to the supernatural; Western man, by contrast, rather seeks to forget himself."
Rudolf Gelpke, Vom Rausch im Orient und im Okzident (On intoxication in the Orient and the Occident), 1966
For thousands of years, humanity has used cannabis and other psychoactive plants and their derivatives for medicinal purposes, but also deliberately to induce altered states of consciousness. So why is it that the modern West in particular experiences a cannaphobia so strong that it even affects low-THC products such as hemp or CBD oils, while a far more toxic psychoactive substance like alcohol is largely accepted?
Was it mainly down to the prohibition policy of drug commissioner Harry J. Anslinger in the 1930s? The motives behind his policy were, among other things, economic, racist and xenophobic. One of Anslinger's aims was to criminalise and marginalise certain groups such as African Americans and Mexicans, which contributed to social control and a kind of "repatriation" through exclusion. Another major factor was probably that he headed an agency (the Federal Bureau of Narcotics) that was increasingly losing its field of work (and with it its reason to exist) after the end of alcohol prohibition. There is no doubt that Anslinger's work in the USA, with a disinformation campaign lasting decades, was influential worldwide and still has a strong impact today: in the end, Anslinger was instrumental in having his prohibition enshrined in the UN drug conventions.
But is the prohibition of cannabis and many other psychoactive substances based on a deeper cultural phobia that we need to consider? A historical look at how earlier cultures dealt with cannabis may help us understand why our society today finds it so hard to recognise the value of mind-altering substances like cannabis and not to react to their effects with exaggerated panic.
Rudolf Gelpke, a wanderer between Orient and Occident
In the turbulent 1960s, when the West was in a deep crisis of modernity and millions of young people were looking for spiritual alternatives and new ways of living, a Swiss scholar of Islamic studies from Basel formulated a cultural critique of the West that is still of interest today. Rudolf Gelpke (1928-1972), a man between worlds who devoted his life to studying the Orient and human states of consciousness, described in his groundbreaking 1966 work "Vom Rausch im Orient und im Okzident" a fundamental cultural turn regarding the dominance of Western culture: the "outer Westernisation of the world" would be followed by an "inner Easternisation of the West".
This thesis was based on the intense life experience of a researcher who, like hardly anyone else, had immersed himself in both worlds. He studied Islamic studies under Fritz Meier, one of the most renowned experts on Sufi mysticism of his time. But Gelpke's path led far beyond academic Oriental studies: he lived in Iran for years, married an Iranian woman and in 1967 converted to Shia Islam under the name Mostafa Eslami.
What set Gelpke's work apart from other Orientalists, however, was his systematic study of mind-altering substances as a key to understanding mystical experiences. His early experiments with hashish and opium in an Oriental context led to a friendship with his fellow Swiss Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD. Together they undertook what Gelpke poetically called "journeys into the outer space of the soul": controlled self-experiments that added an existential dimension to his scholarly work.
For Gelpke, these experiences were not an end in themselves but research tools. They opened his eyes to what he saw as the fundamental difference between the Eastern and Western mindset.
The West: functionality, security and "freedom"
The depth and precision with which Gelpke analyses the values and dynamics of modern Western culture come from his broader perspective, rooted in his experience and knowledge of Eastern cultures and of Islam in particular. On the very first page, Gelpke begins to dissect the pathology of Western culture like a surgeon exposing a tumour:
"One of the most courted idols of our time is called 'security'. Its temples are the palaces of banks and insurance companies, and no god of the past ever had more, or more expensive, temples built for it. (...) In the age of a democracy that has become anonymous, of abstract human rights, of organisation and organisations, of masses and managers, of statistics and 'the happiness of the greatest number', of atom smashing, space research and automation, in such an age one has to deceive the life of every individual about the fact that they have increasingly become mere, interchangeable functions in a social and technical mechanism of almost ant-colony precision and perfection." (Gelpke 1982/first ed. 1966, p. 13)
According to Gelpke, the ever more perfect safeguarding of our existence offered by this "ant colony" is part of the promise of eternal progress, and this promise helps keep us from leaving our cage. What really counts in our Western society is the "principle of performance, utilitarian thinking and faith in the future". At the same time, the West preaches the freedom of the individual, a freedom, however, that is not really what it claims to be. Gelpke quotes the Persian scholar Mojtaba Minowi to show that the Western and Eastern concepts of freedom are fundamentally different. In the West, "freedom" means creating more and more needs, all of which are then satisfied, whereas in the East people are convinced that "one must shed more and more needs in order to become independent, outwardly and inwardly." [1]
In general, Gelpke says, the ideal image of the human being in the West is completely different from that in the East. In the West he sees the "Faustian doer", a man of action with a radical drive for knowledge, progress and power. In the tradition of many Eastern cultures, by contrast, he sees three figures who together form a human ideal: the just ruler, the absolute lover and the mystical seeker of God.
Two aspects that are important for us come into play here, and they fundamentally distinguish Eastern from Western culture. While the West, shaped by Christianity, upholds an ascetic ideal, love and eroticism play a completely different, positive role in the East and are deeply woven into the Eastern ideal. This includes the idea that erotic union leads to a complete dissolution of the ego. The mystical search for God, which takes place through an inner journey of consciousness, is also linked to the goal of completely dissolving the self. Accordingly, Gelpke says, these traditions also show a fundamentally different attitude towards death.
Building on this analysis, Gelpke also assesses the unprecedented "triumphal march of Western culture", which sees itself as "culturally" superior. The superiority of Western cultures, Gelpke argues, is not really "cultural" in a positive sense:
"The conquest of India by the English or of Indonesia by the Dutch are victories of unscrupulous business methods, well-organised greed for profit and technical dynamism over the static sluggishness and aristocratic nonchalance of extremely complex social hierarchies, which had too much savoir-vivre, joy of life and sense of form, play and rules to be a match, in the long run, for these so practically minded traders and puritan calculators from the West." (Gelpke 1982/first ed. 1966, p. 23)
"Intoxication" in the Orient and the Occident
Building on these analyses, Gelpke arrives at an interesting observation about how psychoactive substances are judged in Eastern and Western culture:
"Here we come to a point of the utmost importance: the Oriental has a fundamentally different relationship to the phenomenon of 'intoxication' than the Westerner. For the latter, reality is the outside world. As a result, he will always be tempted to condemn every way of life, every view and indeed everything that keeps people from outward action as an 'escape' from and out of reality. The Oriental takes the opposite view: for him the 'path inward', the mystical journey, is the only experience of reality that pierces space and time, and with them the veil of the transient. So, from his point of view, it is the one who lives outwardly who 'flees': the man of action."
(Gelpke 1982/first ed. 1966, pp. 53-54)
It should be noted here that the term "Rausch" (intoxication) is actually misleading when it comes to altered states of consciousness such as those triggered by cannabis. The German word "Rausch" goes back to the Middle High German "rūsch", whose meaning is also given as "rushing, rushing movement, impetuosity, raging". The verb "rūsen" means roughly "to make noise, roar, rage and scream". The aggressive undertone of "Rausch" still resonates today, for example in the words "Kampfrausch" (battle frenzy) and "Blutrausch" (blood frenzy).
Gelpke himself questions the term and notes that in the West "Rausch" is strongly shaped by the effect of alcohol, which of course differs markedly from substances like opium or hashish. In what follows, I will therefore speak of an "altered state of consciousness" rather than "intoxication", to avoid this misunderstanding.
Gelpke describes several reasons why the West favours alcohol, while the East prefers substances such as opium or hashish. In the West, he says, alcohol is used to impose one's will with even fewer inhibitions and to realise one's desires in the outside world. Substances like opium and hashish, on the other hand, are often described as "paralysing the will"; this was above all the objection of the French poet Charles Baudelaire to hashish. In the East, however, this is not a problem, because hashish, also called Waraq olchiâl ("leaf of imagination") or Dugh-e wahdat ("sour milk of divine unity"), gives wings to the imagination and enables an inner, mystical journey that ultimately leads to union with the divine and thus to the dissolution of the self, a process anchored in the Eastern human ideal.
How did cannabis or opium, and the altered states of consciousness that come with them, influence art and culture in the East? Gelpke argues that this influence was enormous and tells of his encounters with Persian professional storytellers, singers, dancers, poets and other artists who confirmed to him that they used hashish or opium in their work.
What we can learn from Gelpke
These remarks only cover a few key ideas and recurring themes from Gelpke's excellently researched and nuanced book. I warmly recommend it to anyone interested in the topics it covers. Even today, almost 60 years later, we can learn some important lessons from it:
1. Cultural self-knowledge
Our view of the effects of certain psychoactive substances is shaped not only by how they actually affect us, but is deeply rooted in our culturally shaped values and human ideals. Only a deeper understanding of this complex cultural background allows us to understand fears and attitudes towards cannabis or other substances and to deal with them constructively. We can call this process cultural self-knowledge. The better I understand how a particular culture has shaped me, the better I understand where my attitude towards certain substances comes from.
Western cannaphobia is not primarily based on science but stems from a cultural worldview that puts productivity above contemplation and outward achievement above inner experience. This insight is the first step towards a more rational approach to psychoactive substances.
2. The effect of different substances on our historical cultural development
Gelpke recognised that different psychoactive substances foster different cultural developments. Alcohol, culturally accepted in the West, tends to reinforce extroverted, sociable behaviour and thus fits the Western emphasis on social activity and outward achievement. Cannabis, on the other hand, tends to encourage introspective, contemplative states, qualities that seem suspicious to the Western achievement-oriented society but can be invaluable for spiritual and creative development.
3. Expanding consciousness as cultural exchange
Gelpke's vision of the "inner Easternisation of the West" shows that cultural change often happens through the adoption of foreign techniques of consciousness. Integrating Eastern meditation practices and mind-altering substances into Western contexts is not, in itself, cultural appropriation but a necessary broadening of our intellectual horizons.
This process, however, requires respect for and understanding of the original cultural contexts. Anyone in the West who uses cannabis or psychedelics should be aware of the thousand-year-old spiritual traditions these practices come from.
4. Cannabis as a bridge between cultures
A particularly topical aspect of Gelpke's work is his view of cannabis as a cultural bridge. In a time of growing global polarisation, the substance that Gelpke saw as a mediator between Eastern and Western consciousness could indeed contribute to understanding between different cultures.
Between Easternisation and Westernisation: the dialectic of cultural change
Gelpke's vision of the "inner Easternisation of the West" was, as he himself mentions at the end of his book, already in full swing by the mid-1960s. The Beatles made pilgrimages to India, Zen Buddhism conquered American universities, and a whole generation looked to Eastern spirituality for alternatives to Western rationality. What Gelpke could not foresee at the time, however, was the simultaneous acceleration of the opposite process: the "outer Westernisation of the world".
In the decades after 1966 we saw an unprecedented globalisation of Western values, technologies and ways of life. From Tokyo to Mumbai, from São Paulo to Lagos, the Western model (consumer capitalism, technological rationality, individualistic life plans) permeated traditional cultures with a speed and intensity that far exceeded even the colonial conquests of the past. The internet, multinational corporations and the global media landscape carried the Western way of life and its underlying values to the remotest corners of the earth.
Paradoxically, however, this process also strengthened the longing for what the West had lost. While the world became outwardly Westernised, Western societies themselves grew more aware of the limits and costs of their own model. Burnout, depression, ecological disasters and the climate crisis revealed the downside of a culture that had perfected Gelpke's "triad of performance principle, utilitarian thinking and faith in the future".
Today, in 2025, we are experiencing a second wave of Easternisation that has been under way since the 1990s but is more complex and ambivalent than the first. Meditation is not only practised but digitised and commercialised through apps such as Headspace and Calm. Mindfulness becomes a productivity tool in companies that at the same time push their employees to maximum efficiency. Cannabis is being legalised, but within a framework of capitalist marketing that often has little in common with the spiritual traditions the plant comes from.
So where do we stand, and where is this heading?
On the one hand, the signs of a deeper transformation are unmistakable. The climate movement fundamentally questions the Western growth paradigm. Young people are turning away from materialistic life goals and searching for meaning and authenticity. Research into cannabis and other psychoactive substances such as LSD, ketamine or psilocybin and their therapeutic potential is challenging established views of consciousness and healing. These developments suggest that this time Easternisation could reach a wider public than in the 1960s.
On the other hand, the way Eastern practices are being Westernised shows the enormous absorptive power of capitalist culture. Yoga becomes a fitness programme, meditation a way to reduce stress, cannabis a lifestyle product. The spiritual dimension, which Gelpke considered the essence of Eastern forms of consciousness, is at risk of getting lost in the process.
The commercialisation of Eastern spirituality and mind-altering substances threatens to water down their deeper meanings. Here Gelpke's work offers important guidance: it shows that genuine cultural exchange requires not superficial adoption, but a deep understanding of the underlying worldviews.
Western society today faces the task of giving the development Gelpke predicted a good direction: creating a culture that combines the achievements of the West (scientific rationality, technological innovation, individual freedom) with the wisdom of the East (contemplation, wholeness, spiritual depth).
Cannabis and other mind-altering substances can be important tools in this process, provided we overcome our culturally conditioned phobias and reservations and approach them with the same openness and respect that Rudolf Gelpke showed in his groundbreaking work. His vision of a world in which Eastern wisdom and Western rationality complement each other fruitfully is more relevant today than ever. And his analysis of the cultural roots of our attitude to mind-altering substances offers the key to a more enlightened way of dealing with these powerful tools of consciousness.
