DMT: Buddhism and Psychedelic Science (video)

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

Four-faced Brahma-Buddha fusion statue on a cultivated release of endogenous DMT, the entheogenic light show of the "spirit molecule" in the pineal gland (Mig_T_One/flickr.com)

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. More

• RickStrassman.com

Psychedelic Science 

Can psychedelics lose stigma, become viable treatment options?

KPCC FM (SCPR.org), Crawford Family Forum, Sept. 15, 2014, Pasadena

VIDEO: Psychedelic Science at the Crawford Family Forum (livestream rebroadcast)

 

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.
 

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. More  

Commentary 
Wisdom Quarterly

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"

Watch "The Spirit Molecule" on youtube.com

"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.
  

Buddha's parinirvana, Cave 26, Ajanta (BT)

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").

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).
 

Devas, "shining ones," have the power of transformation and are also human-hybrids.

 

Want to see beings of light? (Cortona)

What Dr. Strassman calls his "Buddhist model" may as well be called his Hindu model, which approaches Buddhism but 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 Ajanta Caves

Entrance to Ajanta Cave 19

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). More
 

Secret Space Mission Ends: After nearly two years in space, the Air Force's clandestine craft known as "X-37B" returns to Earth this week... More

DMT: The Spirit Molecule (the movie)

Dr. Rick Strassman, M.D.(LINK: Part 1 of 5)

Dr. Strassman, M.D.'s overview from his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule

In 1990, I began the first new human research with psychedelic, or hallucinogenic, drugs in the United States in over 20 years. These studies investigated the effects of N, N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, an extremely short-acting and powerful psychedelic. During the project's five years, I administered approximately 400 doses of DMT to 60 human volunteers.

The book DMT: The Spirit Molecule (rickstrassman.com)

This research took place at the University of New Mexico's School of Medicine in Albuquerque, where I was tenured Associate Professor of Psychiatry. I was drawn to DMT because of its presence in all of our bodies. Perhaps excessive DMT production, coming from the mysterious pineal gland, was involved in naturally occurring "psychedelic" states. These might include birth, death and near-death, psychosis, and mystical experiences.

Only later, while the study was well under way, did I also begin considering DMT's role in the "alien abduction" experience. The DMT project was founded on cutting edge brain science, especially the psychopharmacology of serotonin. However, my own background powerfully affected how we prepared people for, and supervised, their drug sessions. One of these was a decades-long relationship with a Zen Buddhist training monastery.

The Spirit Molecule examines what we know about psychedelic drugs in general, and DMT in particular. It then traces the DMT research project from its earliest intimations through the maze of committees and review boards to its actual performance.Our research subjects were healthy volunteers. The studies were not intended to be therapeutic, although all of us believed in the potentially beneficial properties of psychedelic drugs. The project generated a wealth of biological and psychological data, much of which I have already published in the scientific literature.

On the other hand, I have written nearly nothing about volunteers' stories. I hope these many excerpts from over 1000 pages of my bedside notes provide a sense of the remarkable emotional, psychological, and spiritual effects of this chemical.

Problems inside and outside of the research environment led to the end of these studies in 1995. Despite the difficulties we encountered, I am optimistic about the possible benefits of the controlled use of these drugs. Based upon what we learned in the New Mexico research, I offer a wide-ranging vision for DMT's role in our lives, and conclude by proposing a research agenda and optimal setting for future work with DMT and related drugs.

The late Willis Harman possessed one of the most discerning minds to apply himself to the field of psychedelic research. Willis, earlier in his career, had published the first and only scientific study using psychedelics to enhance the creative process. When I met him 30 years later in 1994, he was president of Institute of Noetic Sciences, an organization founded by the sixth man to walk on the moon, Edgar Mitchell.

Mitchell's mystical experience, stimulated by viewing the Earth on his return home, inspired him to study phenomenon outside the range of traditional science, which nevertheless might yield to a broader application of the scientific method.During a long walk together along the central California coastal range one day, he said firmly, "At the very least, we must enlarge the discussion about psychedelics."

It is in response to his request that I include highly speculative ideas and my own personal motivations for performing this research. This approach will satisfy no one in every respect. There is intense friction between what we know intellectually or even intuitively, and what we experience with the aid of DMT. As one of our volunteers exclaimed after his first high dose session, "Wow! I never expected that!"

Or, as Dogen, a thirteenth century Japanese Buddhist teacher said, "We must always be disturbed by the truth." Enthusiasts of the psychedelic drug culture may dislike the conclusion that DMT has no beneficial effects in and of itself; rather, the context in which people take them is at least as important. Proponents of drug control may condemn what they read as encouragement to take psychedelic drugs and a glorification of the DMT experience.

Practitioners and spokespersons of traditional religions may reject the suggestion that spiritual states can be accessed, and mystical information gained, through drugs. Those who have undergone "alien abduction" and their advocates may interpret as a challenge to the "reality" of their experiences my suggestion that DMT is intimately involved in these events. Opponents and supporters of abortion rights may find fault with my proposal that pineal DMT release at 49 days after conception marks the entrance of the spirit into the fetus.