Episode 65 – Rick Strassman M.D. – DMT: The Spirit Molecule

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up guys this is a phenomenal conversation with dr. Rick Strassman the author of DMT the spirit molecule in it we get into some of the cultural ramifications of the usage of mt mt we talked about the stigma behind the usage of this compound you will enjoy this episode it was our second time with dr. Strassmann on the show so we thoroughly enjoyed his presence please pick up a copy of his book DMT the spirit molecule and dmt the soul prophecy also get to us

on Facebook and Twitter you can do that at the human XP thank you guys so much for listening if you like what we’re doing get to our support us page the human xpcom / donate and show us your support thanks guys so much you will enjoy this episode the human experience is activating the DMT in your brain as we speak to our guest dr. Rick Strassman dr. strassman welcome back to atrix peace her it’s a pleasure well thanks it’s nice to be on your show so dr.

Strasser and I think I think the last time that we spoke was actually exactly a year from now we we spoke in June of 2015 and we covered your second book soul prophecy I mean in the last year what would you say in a cultural regard hi and I’m diving right in here but what would you say in a cultural regard how do you think the perception of dmt DMT containing substances I you ask how do you think the perception of that has changed in mainstream culture

well I think when it comes to DMT within the scientific community even you know pure DMT within the lay community it’s still sort of a sleeper you know relative to ayahuasca in particular and you know relative to other drugs like you know silicide bin which are getting a lot of air time within the research community and LSD is beginning to get some attention within the academic world as well you know DMT there hasn’t been a lot of you know Newton you know new

scientific research with DMT you there’s a Hungarian group which is exploring the relationship between DMT and the sigma receptor which is a unique receptor in the brain but it’s still kind of esoteric uh you know so you know people aren’t you’re really talking about you know DMT like they are you know the other drugs you know that may change a colleague a junior colleague of mine a young guy from Britain who lives in Japan and isn’t is an academic in Japan

he and I just day in paper that actually just came out today in his final form and it is a model for the continuous infusion of pure DMT you know to keep people in that state for an extended period of time asking quite a few hits on the journal in which it appeared frontiers in pharmacology you so that may stir the pot some with you know DMT you know ayahuasca is increasingly you know popular uh you know uh no celebrities are you know taking it

talking about it you know Chelsea Handler I you know had an episode on ayahuasca on her show so Lindsay Lohan also has been you know talking about her ayahuasca experiences in a positive light to with respect to my work it’s been kind of a lukewarm reception because of my attempts to bridge the world of the Hebrew Bible with the psychedelic worlds and they’re still and probably will always continue to be a fair amount of friction between those

with an interest in the psychedelic state and the psychedelic drugs and the well at least you know their view or their perspective or their understanding of traditional Western religions like Judaism which is the the entity who’s your sacred book spiritual book I’ve tried to relate to the DMT experience but you you you kind of are known for breaking the door open on the DMP research I mean you you you kind of bridged that that gap that people and

people recognize your work as as revolutionary in in regards to DMT the spirit molecule I mean that’s that’s kind of all I hear about when I hear about DMT right and you know my current work or the work I’ve been applying myself to for the last gosh almost 20 years now is to you know take the DMT story further it kind of addresses the reason people take you know psychedelics I mean a lot of people take these drugs and want these kinds of experiences

for enjoyment for pleasure to increase their artistic or emotional appreciation of things but there will always be a fairly large minority of people that are interested in the spiritual properties of these drugs and the estates that they provide entrance to and my work kind of takes it into you know the realm of the Hebrew Bible as opposed to the most you know common religious your metaphors or religious models which are in Buddhism

and Latin American shamanism I mean why did you if I can ask why did you go there and why did you take it into this Judaism aspect I mean why why why go from from DMT the spirit molecule to DMT the soul prophecy well I kind of you know began the DMT work from a Buddhist spiritual model I had been you know steeped in Zen practice and study for over 20 years and I was expecting a particular type of religious or spiritual experience as a result of DMT

administration consistent with the Buddhist enlightenment experience you know ken show or Satori and that state is one of emptiness there’s no words there’s no your physical sensations there’s no content there’s no visions there’s no feelings there’s no concepts there’s a unification of one’s personality or a obliteration or merging or you know unification of one’s individual personality with the ground of all being which could be you know

verbalized or expressed as the white light the you know expression in in Buddhism is emptiness or no sunyata you know so that was you know those were the kinds of experiences that both myself and the volunteers were expecting I mean I came or was coming from a Buddhist background and most of my volunteers also had some experience with Eastern religions Eastern religious practices but the states which the higher dose of DMT occasion was anything

you know but like the Enlightenment state it was you know full of content feelings ideas it was it was a densely populated world of light where you people interacted with the you know contents that they encountered in that state the personality was maintained their interactions you know there were questions and answers there was healing and harming all kinds of things which were really extremely at you know extremely acting of the opposite end of

what both i and the volunteers were expecting yes oh that was one reason I started looking for other models I’m very curious about this I mean it seems very interesting because DMT has has such a profound difference between its its other other drugs I mean it and and as you said I mean there there seems to be a whole world a whole a content world of material of interaction of something I mean just to mean just to ask you directly do you do you believe that we

could be maybe moving into an alternate dimension as we ingest this compound I think that’s obviously the most important question or at least one of the most important questions that’s raised by the DMT experience are the contents of the visions real or are they just a hallucination and I just don’t think we can not decide but I think we need to keep our minds open to any and all possibilities you know when I concluded the first book on DMT the

spirit molecule I propose that perhaps DMT changed the receiving characteristics of the mind brain complex and allowed us to perceive normally in visible worlds like dark matter or parallel universes you know so it’s conceivable that one could develop a camera let’s say that could peer into dark matter take pictures in that and compare perhaps the contents of dark matter with the contents of the DMT experience but even if you know that

were I impossible it’s quite a long ways in the future and it might explain the you know mechanisms you know by which we could perceive usually invisible worlds but it wouldn’t necessarily address you know some of the larger questions like why are things configured in doesn’t matter you know why doesn’t giving DMT because grow an extra you know knows or you know something like that you know so it seems that the your presence of DMT e

in the human body as a naturally occurring compound and the effects of DMT seem to indicate that there’s a your reason for DMT you know being in the human body which is to you know provide access or a means of you know contacting these normally you know imperceptible worlds and comprehensible worlds you know they could well you know um they could you know I eat the experience or you know the content of that state could be you know simply

you know projection or a drug-induced hallucination but that you know brings meet you know to one of the other features of the DMT state that led me towards looking at the Hebrew Bible as a good model and that is the unerring or the unusual sense of reality that people return with after experiencing a high dose of DMT they you know feel as if the experience what they perceived in a state was as real or more real than everyday reality and the Buddhist model

and even you know the other two models that I brought to bear the you know psychoanalytic and the yo psychopharmacology models all three of them proposed the basic and reality of the DMT world so you know that was another reason that I wasn’t quite you know satisfied with you know the Buddhist model well on the latin-american shamanic model you know proposes you know the reality of the of the world’s one encounters on ayahuasca

which contains DMT but you know there isn’t really much of a you know moral your background which one could really you know kind of rely on within Latin American shamanism there’s a connection I mean there’s all of these states I mean if we’re go if we’re meditating these out-of-body States near-death experiences and I mean can you clarify this for me if I mean is this true the the myth that says that there is there’s a sort of DMT release the moment of

death does I mean have we measured that have we been able to analyze that is that real is that a true thing no it still is a it’s it you know still occupies the position of vennard of an urban as there were uh you know I speculated my you know DMT book that perhaps the stress of the dying by a process might be sufficient to increase the you know natural production of DMT but we still don’t know that I also speculate in the book that the time of birth is also

associated with of you know with with the increased production of DMT you know but we don’t know that either you know there is a study in Eastern Europe and hungry which is being planned and you know to look at concentrations of DMT in the blood of the fetus end of the umbilical cord at birth and the placenta and you don’t also look at the expression of the gene which is responsible or yeah well um will the expression of the gene responsible for

the enzyme that makes DMT in the placenta as well yeah I think within a year or you know so we will know you know some more about if there is increased production of DMT at the time of birth you know there’s a group in ann arbor michigan as well which is looking at you know DMT in experimental death you know giving animals a you know killing stimulus as it were and you know then you’re looking at the presence of DMT in the brain and yes so far those

studies you haven’t you know come up with anything definitive yet you know but to the extent you know that the birth process or the Orient the death process shares any features with the DMT experience it makes you know sense on that there’s an underlying you know common process to the extent that they resemble each other it’s interesting it’s it really is truly interesting the whole the research that you’ve done and and what’s come out of

it and and more so I think from a cultural regard to you know the people who are kind of ingesting this compound coming back and with these reports of meeting entities and and and encountering this you know this other space this other dimensional space it it’s it’s fascinating it’s it truly it’s remarkable that a this compound exists and be that it exists in naturally occurring in our bodies so I mean the only thing that we’re doing drinking

ayahuasca is preventing the breakdown from it breaking down in our stomach while while we drink this tea right well it’s a combination of factors uh because ayahuasca contains DMT you know if he just were taking the inhibitors of DMT break down they wouldn’t give you an ayahuasca experience it’s the combination of the two plants one contains DMT and the other will prevent it’s your breakdown in the gut and allow it to be orally active it’s you know

like an oral DMT experience all right it is a ma it’s quite a bit slower last longer one can work with the experience to a lot greater extent that than you can with a smoked or the injected form would you be able to put it on a scale I mean if there’s if an ayahuasca experience is a for then then smoking DMT maybe you know seven or an eight and then intravenously would be a ten I mean is there is there of variance in the type of experience that you have when

you’re when you’re when you’re ingesting it in different ways i think that with DMT anyway it’s a pretty clear-cut pharmacology the amount in your blood determines the intensity of the effect you know so if you can you know get enough into your bloodstream through smoking you know um you know by way of the lungs into the blood you know rather than directly into the blood like injecting it I think the smoked and the injected intensity you

know can be quite you know similar to each other they can both get you on you know to attend and I think also even with I’m the even with ayahuasca if you can attain the same levels in your blood of DMT which would be attained with smoking or injecting it you would have the a comparable level of intensity the problem with uh you know drinking that much ayahuasca is the side effects from the mao inhibitors the beta carbons might just be too much you know to be

able to reach those kinds of levels but but still you know I’ve heard or there’s plenty of reports of people who drink DMT who described experiences as intense as Folsom as complicated articulated comprehensive as anything one encounters with a smoked or injected form yeah you know I really want to address the cultural stigma that is that is behind and what what were you even talking about right now because I mean what does DMT scheduled as it’s a scalar schedule

one right so obviously there is there is something happening here that that can we can learn from and from my understanding of a schedule 1 substance there’s there’s no use or beneficial use for a schedule 1 compound so I mean why do you think I mean there’s we I mean there seems to be this vast spiritual learning that is that we’re capable of by ingesting compound and yet people are afraid because it’s labeled a schedule 1 because because the government has

declared it illegal and people are afraid to talk about it I mean when you know when I post this episode it it’s going to be labeled a draw episode and it just that that stigma that cultural idea bothers me and why do you think why do you think that is occurring why do you think that our society is still plagued with this idea of not being able to accept DMT as a resource yeah you know a few years ago I there was a New York psychiatrist named Gerald Clurman

who coined the phrase I a pharmacological Calvinism and you know I think there is you know some resistance against or in response to experiencing pleasure from drugs as opposed to experiencing pleasure from hard work or through religious grace or through your family life you know so the whole you know notion of you know pharmacological Calvinism is you only use you know drugs to cure illness well you don’t use them to enhance wellness or creativity or for

spiritual benefits or even for experiencing pleasure so I think it has to do you know something with the puritanical strain which exists in most you know societies I think also you know I also think that there are legitimate concerns about keeping fees you know drugs under your some your regulatory you know short leash as it were I you know they can be abused and they can be dangerous either in the wrong hands are taken by the wrong people you you don’t

need to be pretty stable hell the prepared your supervise then you’ll follow it up if you’re giving them you need to know what you’re doing you know so I think with the burgeoning of you know clinical research you know human studies which have taken place you know since you know my study began or was completed you know that you know that you know well well that there is a a rethinking of the placement of these you know drugs into schedule one the three

criteria for putting a dragon to schedule number one is that it can’t be used safely even under medical supervision and you know that’s not turning out to be the case at all because of all of these studies with these drugs for therapy and for understanding brain function and so on on the other is that the you don’t have got you know no known medical use but that also you know doesn’t really hold any water anymore because of all of the

you know positive studies that are coming out with respect to you know the treatment of OCD come you know the treatment of autism post-traumatic stress your substance abuse alcoholism tobacco abuse you know depression those kinds of things you know so the main criterion which still remains is that the drugs are highly abusable you know so the criteria you know two of the three criteria you know really aren’t in effect anymore so I think there’s going

to you know need to be you know the creation of a new schedule as much as anything which acknowledges the abuse ability of these drugs you know it amend it acknowledges you know that you know not everybody ought to be able to prescribe them that you need to be trained certified supervised and administering them and you have to be you know screened quite you know carefully if you’re going to be taking them and I don’t think that you know

necessarily is going to keep them in the hands of the elite but it would at least provide some it you know it provides them oversight and you know people are going to be taking whatever drugs they want and you know whatever circumstances you know that they feel like butt and you know if you could conceive of a new schedule where these you know drugs could be taken for any number of reasons for therapy for spirituality for creativity and you know

in specialized you know centers let’s say with specially trained individuals it would it would provide an option you know for the use of these drugs in a you know wider arena that is currently the case and it’s remarkable because at you know in any in any corner at any corner of any major city you could fight you can buy alcohol you can buy cigarettes alcohol turns people into complete idiots and it’s just the most vile substance available and yet it’s readily

available to anyone and everyone and I mean it I just feel like the system is so completely backwards and we’ve been we’ve been so programmed and so stigmatized by the quote war on drugs which have in my opinion has been an abject failure and and just and and classifying people who who explore who decide that they wish to explore these compounds I mean let’s take ayahuasca for example the people that I know who drink ayahuasca have reported remarkable

changes in their lives they are completely different people by drinking this tea this combination of this maoi and dmt and I mean how is that how is it possible that someone can realize that alcohol is a poison that they can move into a healthy lifestyle that they can change their work habits that they can find new ideas I mean even even Albert Creek the the guy who visualized the DNA molecule admittedly he was on he was micro dosing LSD at the

time that he visualized it right so so I mean it’s it’s just it’s astounding to me that we all this legislation is in place and the system is is designed to scare people away and and so easily are our people kind of labeled drug addicts drug users so outside of my rant just you there’s there’s what is the connection between the pineal gland and dmt um well you know before we move into the pineal you know maybe I could at least make my standard pitch for the

value of um of Education others hearing changed you know people’s hope you know points of view you know like your show and you know like what the you know the advocacy organizations out there doing you know CSP and maps and after and the Beckley foundation you know they’re all working you know hard to educate and also you know they’re supporting research you know so if you can educate people about these drugs and you could support research which demonstrates that

number you know the number one they’re safe and number two you know can be helpful in any number of you know circumstances then I think you know that the wheels will you know gradually you know shift direction and they’ll be a more you know open-minded approach but still I don’t think you know wholesale user or you know or more widespread availability is especially going to be helpful you know marijuana at least house you know normally used is a mild

intoxicant so I think it’s widespread availability isn’t going to cause the kinds of your problems that might occur if there were for example the widespread availability of LSD or DMT where anybody could just you know go into a store you demonstrate your legal agent buy it yeah you know so it’s a you know nuanced a you know situation are where you know case by case you know there are scheduled one drugs and their schedule and drugs you

know there’s heroin there’s marijuana there’s LSD there’s damn tea you know those are all scheduled on drugs but you know well and you know k 2 is a Schedule one drug you know so I think one needs to be you know discriminating in you know looking at each case well so the pineal gland yeah it’s a very interesting little organ in the middle of the brain and I have speculated a long time ago gosh 30 years plus now you know that there was a relationship

between spiritual experiences which are you felt to occur yes objectively in the anatomical location of the pineal you know which is you know just below the the the you know fontanel that the you know soft spot which occurs in infants and then you know seals up is you grow as you get older you know that’s always been experienced as you know the location subjectively of you know the ultimate spiritual experience it’s also the anatomic location of the pineal

gland you know so I you know proposed a number of years ago that perhaps the pineal gland at certain times produced you know DMT which wouldn’t be eight the you know psychedelic like your properties of those spiritual experiences and you know that had been speculated about within the context of esoteric and physiology is out there like the chacras in Cibola on the Yosef you wrote yeah you know so it was a speculation which I included in my DMT

book and actually three years ago you know the research your group in Ann Arbor that I mentioned was able you know to know to determine that there you know was DMT in the pineal gland of living rodents ah that’s a paper that came out about three years ago now you know so it is the case that in certain situations you know DM key is produced in the pineal you know but that still you know shouldn’t overpower the you know that what’s been known for

quite a long time since the 50s almost or the early 60s is you know the DMT as you made in the in the lung of well of every mammal that’s been investigated to date you know so it you could be you know that the lung is responsible for most of the DMT which is you know circulating most of the time and that the pineal may produce is you know DMT only at specific yes at specific moments that’s interesting I you know there is it it’s interesting to me because I you

know I’ll take this little bit personal here and and there’s there’s a there’s an organization church that I belonged to that uses ayahuasca as its sacrament I’m not going to drop its name either you know what I’m talking about or you don’t I have had total 23 ayahuasca experiences and um in it I’ve been drinking the tea for about two years it’s completely altered my being Who I am it I am a completely different person in a positive way I don’t drink I don’t

do drugs I there’s so many things so many positive effects that I just stood so what I what I really want to kind of ask you about is the last in last the most powerful perience that i’ve i’ve ever had drinking the tea there was there was a point in which I I encountered an intelligence it and it was I don’t know how to describe it to you other than it was just the most profound the most deep I mean in an ayahuasca experience there’s the ability to kind of move

around so you can choose what you decide to look at and what you’re not looking at and when I it felt as if I cross this sort of barrier and the moment that I did it was like it was like boom there was there was this sort of massive intelligence that just and it just said we are here we’ve been here for thousands of years for thousands of generations we’ve we’ve influenced your society I mean it it was almost like having alien contact I know this sounds

the sounds were absurd but it was it was the most powerful thing I’ve ever experienced and is there any translation that you can kind of offer well I think that’s one of the advantages of the Hebrew Bible to be honest it describes things like that it describes a experience which feels as real or more real than anything else it describes encounters with super powerful and intelligent beings who are usually invisible with whom we interact and who

influence our lives and our world and history and biology in all manner of ways and it also establishes a you know a theological hierarchy and a moral scaffolding that you can use in interacting with these beings asking them questions understanding their answers and then bringing back that information in a communicable way and yeah yeah I mean there was there was definitely an exchange of information and I mean I don’t want to get too deep

into this just because it’s highly personal for me but you know there there was there was a there was a remarkable feeling or profoundness that I felt after the experience in which I felt connected to all things and there was a beauty there was a true sense of joy just the wonder that I felt through that experience and the interconnectedness that I felt through just simply being alive just simply being able to breathe air that that renewed my sense of life

that renewed my sense of purpose and so I mean and and if you look at if you look at the state of ayahuasca tourism and the people the people who are failing there there’s Western medicine is failing to cure mental these mental diseases and you know which is why you see organizations like maps and the Hepner institute and the Beckley foundation which are creating doors for us to move through so that we can heal PTSD and these these psychological

disorders that have plagued our Western culture stigmatized society for generations now well you know you’re speaking about you know the good effects of you know psychedelics and in this particular case ayahuasca you know but I think it’s important that one you know not gild the lily as it were these you know drugs can’t be misused by either people taking them or people giving them you know Albert Hofmann was a Swiss German who discovered or invented LSD

and one of his best friends was a German soul was a you know former German soldier who served in world war one named Ernst younger who was a poster child for you know the Nazis and and even though he’s passed away continues to be an inspiration for any number of you know neo-nazi groups annual albert hofmann and nursing younger used to take LSD together um you know several times and you know you kind of wonder what they thought about or

talked about or you know hatched in the process and I’ve seen people become you’re horribly sadistic and abusive who take psychedelics and I’ve seen people you know give you know psychedelics to mess with people you know so I I think your experiences and you know those of the you know research subjects who are experiencing benefit you know they’d be speak the importance of you know set in setting the you know the intention and

the background of the you know people taking the drugs and the physical environment and your the set of you know those giving them you know they’re you know desires and intense for it you know you know forgiving you know the medications is it to heal or is it a harm is it for therapy is it to have you know sex with somebody you know so you know I like to think of these you know drugs as tools and very strong tools you know like you don’t nuclear power you

know way you know it can you know produce electricity to power a hospital or it can you know blow up you know a big you know city and kill hundreds of thousands of people yes so I i think you know these are very powerful drugs which both can be extremely useful but also can be just as destructive if there if father misapplied yeah absolutely and I you know I really think you know I agree with you it there there should be a cautionary note for you know anyone and

I I have heard stories about these these people who are you know on on this sort of sexual conquest while you know they’re they’re handing out psychedelics which is just horrible but essentially I think we the people who are studying these compounds and truly believe in them i think we are explorers and i think essentially we are looking for answers we were trying to find we’re looking to answers of life’s mystery and I think the one of the most intriguing

compounds on the planet happens to be DMT and you know there there there is this sort of sense of knowledge that that comes from from ingesting this compound well we clearly are more open to the reception of you know novel information you know novel perceptions so yeah I think we need to be able to you know determine to be able to you know tell if what we’re learning seeing feeling is helpful or true or not you know so I think it’s good to have some

benchmarks that we can use in determining lets you say the friendliness or the you know unfriendliness of the beings that we’re encountering you know the validity or the utility of what they’re telling us they’re not telling us so that’s why I think it’s good to have some benchmarks and if we’re looking at these drugs as aiding spiritual development then it’s good to have some spiritual benchmarks with which to kind of compare and

contrast and judge you know the merit of the things that were being exposed to any that could be Buddhism it could be Judaism it could be Islam it could be Hinduism you know a Christianity any number of things but you know it needs to be a why does it have to be associated with any religion I mean I don’t understand that that’s what I mean that’s what I don’t I don’t really understand why it went from DMT the spirit molecule to DMP the soul

prophecy and and suddenly I mean it seems like religion to me is is a very large problem here on this planet and I mean and suddenly you’re it seems like dr. Osmond if I can be you know completely direct and honest and radically kind of forward with you is you you seem to go from you know this this this open state where you were exploring to this structured state of ok I’m going to connect this to Judy Judaism why why did you why did you

decide to do that well there’s a couple of answers I or responses I guess to you know in a way I think I’ve expanded the conversation enormously you know rather than shrunk it my initial approach was the purely scientific model the brain on drugs or you know Freudian you know psychoanalytic psychology the clinical research model so by you know taking it out of those particular frameworks into the more spiritual you know it’s called

this I mean I coined the phrase spirit molecule what does spirit actually mean that means spirit can mean things which are you know normally invisible but I think spirit or spiritual can also point to the highest qualities of the human being that you know the highest concepts the highest emotions the highest work the highest prayer all those things you know so I think rather way no it’s interesting when my book first came out the DMT book actually you know in you

know 2001 I there was a book review in on in a deep in a defunct magazine called shaman’s drum and the reviewer you know said it shouldn’t be called the spirit molecule it should be called the dream molecule which you know I kind of you know took umbrage with because I felt it was more of a spiritual kind of experience but I think in your retrospect you know um um that the reviewer it was onto something because I was still working within the

brain only model and even with my theory about dark matter and parallel universes it was still sort of you know you know bottom-up approach like our brain changes and then is able to you perceive things and that’s just you know how it is yes so I’ve you know taken it from a more bottom up approach to a more you know top-down approach that the spiritual you know world is real and it influences us and we can be more receptive to it if our brain chemistry

is changed which then kind of takes you into the territory of well you know how do you optimize that as well as you know trying to understand some you know mechanisms you know by which um you know by which new that could happen so the in a way of optimizing it is by looking toward systems of thought which have also addressed spiritual questions you know things which aren’t you know um which are not you know normally visible and which influence our everyday life

behind the scenes as it were you know that were able to make you know contact with every so often through the altered states which are you know made available you know to us through either drugs or prayer fasting those kinds of things you know so I think it’s you know um when you were talking about religion being a problem I think it’s really important to distinguish between two different kinds of religion and you know there’s you

know one religion or one you know definition of I’m of religion which Spinoza and I you know call a superstition you know the religion of the masses which is what is imposed on the masses by the clerics who demand or you know who are interested in power and money and you know that is the more kind of you know superstitious religion which mostly has been created and is you know sustained as a means of you know political control you know the other

religion though is you know is what I know they used to call you know the religion of the elite and one comes to the religion of the elite or an adult religion or amateur religion you know through the observation of nature through you know understanding and probing into the nature of reality and then being you know being a puzzled by and looking you know for or you know some answers to the questions that come as a result of a careful investigation

of both you know nature which includes us our mind and and our human relationships and you know the well the medievalists used to prescribe a you know course of study which was you know necessary before one could actually begin to study religion you know things like first really being able to you know to master mathematics and grammar in physics natural science astronomy you know philosophy those kinds of things you know those were the

requirements to be able to then begin exploring you know the mysteries which would be you know revealed you know through religious and spiritual study and you know that clearly isn’t the kind of religion than most people you know think of but you know that’s the kind of religion that I think one ought to you know consider when attempting to make in a sense of and integrate the you know full you know spectrum of the spiritual you know your perceptions and ideas

which you come to us as a result of a big you know psychedelic experience yeah I understand and you know just just to to wrap that that segment up I just I can’t believe I’m doing this what I’m going to just to quote Karl Marx a religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature the heart of a heartless world and the soul of Solace conditions it is the opium of the people and that that quote is floated around for a while I mean people call it the opiate of the

masses but I think I understand the difference of what you’re saying I think there’s and I agree you know and I’ve read Spinoza enough to know you know the difference between okay there’s a religion that that is designed to to control and oppress human beings to control them it is the opiate of the masses as mr. Marx kind of tells us and there’s a there’s another which I would I would regard as more esoteric as more occult more hidden and that is designed

to kind of bring us into the spiritually aware States and that is designed to better our lives and in a way that were not indoctrinated uh right and I think you know um when it comes to you know looking at spiritual you know texts you know it isn’t like you there a cookbook or a John Grisham novel you know they can take you know years uh to crack like you know for example you know the book of Genesis which I’ve been you know reading

real carefully you know it took me like a year to read the book of Genesis and really understand what it was you know trying to say you know like it isn’t that the universe was created in you know 100 and whatever you know 68 hours but that there were stages in the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang up to the present day you know seven stages and you know that’s a special number special way of dividing you know things you know so you really

you know need a scorecard or a you know I’m a program a number of programs to be able to you know tell what is actually you know being described and I guess that’s what you’re talking about with the esoteric model you know that you really need to be able to you know dig below the surface of the text and the words to understand which uh what’s you know being said yeah certainly and you know which is you know one of the points that I like to make in my new book the

soil prophecy is you know that you know the text at least in the case of the Hebrew Bible is a prophetic text which was transmitted received in a prophetic state of consciousness which I think I you know demonstrate pretty convincingly you shares a lot of you know features you know with the dmt state you know so if that’s the case you know then the closer that you are to being in a prophetic state the more the text can you know resonate with your own mind and

you can understand deeper layers you know so that’s you know one of the I’m sure bound to be controversial you know suggestions that you know kind of grows out of my book is if if you are in a slightly altered state brought about by the psychedelics which overlaps or you share some you know features with a prophetic state you know then the text begins to make you know more sense than it normally would so dr.

stress- also try it you don the next time go ahead well the next time you’re drinking ayahuasca uh and you can get home and you’re still kind of altered you know open up your king james bible and you know read the first couple of chapters of you know genesis and you know see if it makes any more sense than it you did before I’ll keep that in mind I mean um dr. strassman we’re approaching or right at the end here and you know I just want to ask you this one

last question I your your what you’re 64 65 years old now 64 okay so you’re 64 years old you I think I think your research has is I mean you’ve defined your legacy the dmt the spirit molecule is known by anyone who who is studying these compounds is there has there been any point in your career in your life and and i’m sure you’ll you have a long life ahead of you but i mean is is there anything that you kind of would go back and change go back and alter go back and

you know just just make different is there anything that you would tell your younger self while you were researching these compounds anything different well man I’ll tell you I think I I think I was always at the you know the edge of my capacities um yeah you know I was thinking well you know maybe I could have had more psychotherapy oh and we found enough help me make some better decisions oh man earlier it may have helped me make some you know better

decisions about staff or about the exact grants that I wrote but uh you know I think I was operating on you know I have you know maximal horsepower every cylinder has been firing pretty much for most of my life I don’t think I could have done anything different you know if I were a different person let’s say my parents were different or I grew up in a different place or encounter different people in my life then I may have done

things differently but uh f you know it also may have been the case that i never got interested in this field so i think all things taken into account uh you know I think I’ve really met I’ve you know really optimized my gifts and my good luck fair enough sir fair enough i appreciate appreciate the answer dr.

strassman where can where can people find your work where can they get to your website yeah you know if anybody’s interested in contacting me you’re buying books from me directly which else and subscribe I’ve been sign they can get in contact with me you see my public appearances any planned events at Rick Strassman calm yeah or you can just you know google my name and my web site comes up uh you know quite readily yeah okay we’ll definitely make that available for

people alright guys this is another episode of the human experience thank you guys so much for listening dr. Strassman thank you so much for being here sir I really appreciate your work in your time we will see you guys next week you