Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; interview with Dr. Rick Strassman by host Richard Syrett (coasttocoastam.com, 10-12-14); The Spirit Molecule
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| To get "high" means two opposite things, obtunding consciousness or expanding it (WQ). |
Research psychiatrist Dr. Rick Strassman reveals his U.S.-approved research on the "psychedelic" entheogenic compound DMT. Of it he says that naturally occurring DMT is able to produce "prophetic" states of consciousness, so it represents a bridge between biology and Buddhist spiritual and Judeo-Christian religious experience.
"Horizons Perspectives on Psychedelics" - Dr. Strassman presents a talk on "A Western Perspective of the Psychedelic Experience and the Old Testament" with empirical evidence.
Dr. Strassman understands the "psychedelic experience" to be much more than a much over-hyped 1960's phenomenon. As a society we may be collectively grateful for those days. But perhaps DMT explains something where we would least expect it, the Hebrew Bible! Dr. Strassman addresses the prejudice many, himself included, have about it.
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| VIDEO: Psychedelic Science at the Crawford Family Forum (livestream rebroadcast) |
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| Bjork says be wary of unseen beings! |
Forty-five years after the federal government criminalized
psychedelic drugs, new research into substances [entheogens and DMT stimulating substances] such as LSD, psilocybin (“shrooms” or “magic mushrooms”), and “Ecstasy” (MDMA, E, “Molly”) are showing them to be powerful therapeutic tools in treating multiple forms of anxiety and addiction, three medical researchers told KPCC’s health reporter Stephanie O’Neill on Sept. 15, 2014 at the Crawford Family Forum.
In fact, research into using psilocybin to treat anxiety in terminal cancer patients has progressed to the third and final phase of study, with trials around the country. And researchers believe it could be
approved for use in therapy (with a trained doctor) within five to 10 years, said Dr. Charles Grob, chief of Child Psychiatry and professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at
UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
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| I saw lights in the sky, possibly ETs. |
Powerful “
psycho-spiritual epiphanies” induced by psilocybin, for instance “eliminated death anxiety” among cancer patients involved in the tests, said Dr. Stephen Ross, associate professor of Psychiatry and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the
NYU Langone Medical Center, director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at Bellevue Hospital, clinical director of the NYU Langone Center of Excellence on Addiction, and director of the
NYU Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship.
“We see psilocybin as an effective treatment for
existential distress,” Ross said. Test subjects who took the drugs reported the “psycho-spiritual” insights as being “
one of the most meaningful events of their lives.”
These insights were particularly effective with addicts, who were able to finally understand the anguish their drug or alcohol use was creating with their loved ones. In tests in the 1950s through the 1970s, single doses of LSD were shown to promote sobriety among alcoholics for more than six months, Ross said.
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Commentary
Wisdom Quarterly
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| The underground inner sanctum, Cave 10, Ajanta, Maharashtra, India (Shaikh Munir/wiki) |
Indeed, DMT may actually reveal the purpose of the Bible. But how does one study a "Hebrew" or biblical phenomenon? For one thing, it might be better never to refer to Palestine, Islamic corollaries, Essenes, Gnostics, the pre-JudeoChristian Eastern roots of the texts coming from faraway Central Asia and India, neighboring Sumer, Egypt, Babylonia, and Mesopotamia, and other traditions like Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. Instead, emphasize the Jewishness of the research endeavor.
DMT: "The Spirit Molecule"
(EC) "The Spirit Molecule"
"The Spirit Molecule" (DMT) weaves an account of Dr. Strassman's groundbreaking DMT research through a multifaceted approach to this intriguing entheogen found in the human brain and almost every other organic substance. Utilizing interviews with a variety of experts to explain their thoughts and experiences with DMT within their respective fields, and discussions with Dr. Strassman's research-volunteers, this film brings to life the awesome effects of this simple compound, di-methyl-tryptamine (DMT), and far-reaching theories regarding its role in human consciousness.
Downplay the Buddhist angle that initially impelled your research interest in the psychedelic experience. Learn the miracle of how Dr. Strassman secured approval
and funding from the DEA, FDA, NIH, and NIDA.
Dr. Strassman began with what he refers to as "a Buddhist" model," relying on his limited understanding of Zen Buddhism, a Japanese Mahayana school that began in China (or Korea according to Koreans). He had no apparent awareness of a well evolved Buddhist psychology within the older Theravada tradition, which relies on a synthesized body of work known as the
Abhidharma (the systematically analytical and commentarial "
Higher Teaching").
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| Map: overview of Ajanta caves (Nevilzaveri) |
Zen is a form of Mahayana Buddhism, and Mahayana is steeped in Hinduism and Vedic
/Brahminical ideas of GOD (
Brahman, godhood
) and God (
Brahma), "enlightenment" (dissolving into impersonal Brahman), and liberation (rebirth with Brahman), all of which
differ from what the Buddha taught. But the Brahmin priests of old did all they could to save their tradition from irrelevance by melding it with the suddenly popular and universal teachings of the Awakened One, the Buddha, whom they regarded as a foreigner from the West (Indo-Scythia beyond Gandhara).
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| Devas, "shining ones," have the power of transformation and are also human-hybrids. |
What Dr. Strassman calls his "Buddhist model" may as well be called
his Hindu model, which approaches Buddhism bu
t is NOT actually in line with Buddhist teachings on
anatta (egolessness) or the reality of
devas (beings of light, ETs, earthbound fairies, celestial and interdimensional angels, lit. the "shining ones").
DMT in his scientific studies lead to the experience of unseen beings, dazzling light, and conventionally real worlds. What Strassman seems to have failed to distinguish is what Buddhism considers ultimate and conventional truth.
These worlds and experiences ARE very real in a
conventional sense, as real or more real than our day to day experience in this world.
Ultimately, both are an illusion, but no one ingesting DMT is having an
ultimately liberating insight, just an expanded state of consciousness. They are seeing more, but if any drug were able to liberate one, the Buddha and the arhats would be saying, "Never mind the meditation, the cultivation of virtue and concentration; just take this instead!"
Failing to understand Buddhism -- and its crucial distinction between ultimate and conventional reality and speech -- enough to incorporate it into his psychedelic research, Dr. Strassman reverted to his Jewish religiocultural roots.
He took up the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish (Sumerian, Mespotamian, Babylonian) conception of God (YHWH, the
plural Elohim, etc. the many other gods of the Bible taken to be a monotheistic entity when many entities are described and named, with one almighty one, i.e., Abraham's God).
The
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Website still presents the traditional dating: "The second phase of paintings started around 5th-6th centuries A.D. and continued for the next two centuries." Caves of the second period are 1-8, 11, 14-29, some possibly extensions of earlier caves. Caves 19,
26, and 29 are "shrine-houses" (
chaitya-grihas), the rest monastic residences (
viharas).
According to Spink (
Ajanta: History and Development Volume 5: Cave by Cave), the Ajanta Caves appear to have been abandoned by wealthy patrons shortly after the fall of Harishena, in about 480 CE. They were then gradually forgotten (ASI). During the intervening centuries the jungle grew back, and the caves were hidden, unvisited, and undisturbed, although the local population were aware of at least some of them (
interview with Walter Spink filmed at Ajanta in January 2012).
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