Podcast: Download (Duration: 59:08 — 81.2MB)

I am in the film to take you to the interest. I think, guys, this is a phenomenon 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 DMT and talk about the stigma behind the usage of this compound. You will enjoy this episode. It was our second time with Dr. Strassman on the show, so I 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 @thehumanXP. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you like what were doing, get to our support us page, thehumanXP.com/donate and show us your support. Thanks guys, so much. You will enjoy this episode of the human experience, activating the DMT in your brain as we speak to our guest Dr. Rick Strassman.

Dr. Strassman, welcome back to HXP.

Certainly. A pleasure.

So Dr. Strassman, I think the lesson that we spoke was actually exactly a year from now, we spoke in June 2015, and we covered your second book, “Soul Prophecy”. I mean, in the last year, what would you say in it in a cultural regard of junk diving writing here. But what would you say intercultural regard, how do you think the perception of DMT-containing substances?

Ayahuasca’s perception of that has changed in mainstream culture was, think when it comes to DMT, was in those scientific community even in a pure DMT. Within the Lake community is still sort of a sleeper, you know, relative to ayahuasca, in particular. And, you know, relative to other drugs, which are doing a lot of airtime within the research community time. And LSD is beginning to get some attention within the academic world, as well DMT. There hasn’t been a lot of, you know, need of fun, no new you, scientific research with DMT. 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, you know? So people aren’t really talking about your DMT, like there are the other drugs.

You may change a colleague. A junior colleague of mine, the young guy from Britain who lives in Japan, and is an academic in Japan on the key. And I just published a paper that actually, just cannot today, in its final form. And it is a model for the continuous infusion of pure DMT. Your jerky people on that date for an extended to, of time, is getting quite a few hits on the journal, in which it appeared frontiers and pharmacology that we may Easter the pot some with your DMT. Your ayahuasca is increasingly popular. Celebrities are you taking it, talking about it. Chelsea Handler had an episode on ayahuasca. Also, Lindsay Lohan has been talking about her ayahuasca experiences in a positive light.

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 there’s still, and probably will always continue to be, a fair amount of friction between those with an interest in the biology of psychedelic states and the psychedelic drugs, and see well their view, or their perspective, or their understanding of the traditional Western religions like Judaism, which is the entity whose your sacred book, spiritual book.

I’ve tried to relate to the DMT experience, but you kind of are known for breaking the door open on the DMT research and you kind of bridged that so that people can people recognize your work as as revolutionary in regards to “DMT: The Spirit Molecule”.

That’s kind of all I hear about when I hear about DMT. And, you know, my current work, the work of applying myself for the last cause for almost 20 years now, is to take the DMT story. You further kind of address the reason people take psychedelics. I mean, a lot of people take these drugs and want these kinds of experiences for enjoyment, for pleasure, to increase 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 states that they provide entrance to. And my work takes it into your realm of the Hebrew Bible, as opposed to most of your common religious metaphors, your religious models which are you Buddhism and Latin American shamanism, provided you.

If I can ask, why did you go there? And why did you take into this Judaism aspect? And why go from “DMT: The Spirit Molecule” to “DMT: The Soul Prophecy”?

Well, I kind of began the DMT work from a Buddhist spiritual model. It has you steeped in Zen practice and study for over 20 years bomb, that I was expecting a particular type of religious or spiritual experience as a result of DMT administration consistent with the Buddhist enlightenment experienc. You can show versatility and of that state is one of emptiness. There’s no words. There’s no physical sensations. There’s no contents. There’s no visions. There’s no feelings. There’s no concepts. There is a unification of one’s personality. Your obliteration are merging in a unification of one’s individual personality, with the ground of all being, which could be verbalized are expressed as the white lights on the, you know. The expression end up in Buddhism as emptiness. Or you soon got to your spouse in those with the kinds of experiences that both myself and the volunteers were expecting. I mean, I was coming from a Buddhist background and most of my volunteers also have some experience with Eastern religions, Eastern religious practices.

But the states which the higher dose of DMT occasion was anything but the enlightenment state. It was your full of content feelings, ideas. It was there, a your densely populated world of people interacted with. They give contents that they encountered in that state. The personality was maintained. Their interactions were there, questions and answers were there. Healing and harming all kinds of things which were really extremely that, you know, the extract extremely active the opposite end of what the volunteers were expecting. So that’s one reason I started looking further models. I’m very curious about this and it seems very interesting, because DMT has had such a profound difference. Between it’s other drugs, immediate and as you setting there, there seems to be a whole world, a whole a content world of material, of interaction, of something.

I mean, just to me just ask you directly, 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 released — one of the most important questions that’s raised of the DMT experience. Are the contents of the visions real or are they just a hallucination? And I just don’t think we cannot 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 by the 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 of parallel universes, you know? So it’s conceivable that one could develop a camera. Let’s say that computer into dark matter take pictures and compare, perhaps, the contents of dark matter with the contents of the DMT experience.

But even if you are that worried, I do possible, it’s quite a long ways in the future and it might explain see you mechanisms by which we could perceive usually invisible worlds, but would necessarily address some of the larger questions like, why are things configured didn’t is matter you? Why this and giving DMT? Because grow an extra nose or something like that. So it just seems that the presence of DMT in the human body is a naturally occur in compound and the effects of DMT seem to indicate that there are, say your reason for DMT human being in the human body, which is to you provide access or amines of your contacting these. Normally you imperceptible worlds and reprehensible worlds, you know, they could all Cunard you the experience, sort of the content of the state could be is simply a your protection. Already your drug-induced hallucination, but that brings me to you, to one of the other features of the DMT states, that you led me up towards looking at the Hebrew Bible as a good model. And of that is the unerring, the unshrinkable sense of reality that people return with after experiencing a high dose of DMT state.

You feel as if the experience, what they perceived, and as state is real or more real than everyday reality, and the Buddhist model, and even now the other two models that are brought to bear: the psychoanalytic and the you psychopharmacology models. All three of them propose the basic reality of the DMT world, so you know there’s another reason for that time I wasn’t quite satisfied with the Buddhist model. You eat as well on the Latin American to Monarch model of your proposes.

The reality of the worlds one encounters on ayahuasca, which contains DMT, but some you know there is really much of your moral, your background, which one can’t rely on within Latin American shamanism. There’s a connection aiming. There’s all of these states. I mean, if we’re going for meditating, these out-of-body states that near-death experiences, and I mean, if can you clarify this for me, if it is true, the myth that says that there is, there is a sort of DMT release. The moment that does, I mean, how we measured that. Have we been able to analyze that? Is that real? Is that a true thing? It still occupies the position of the nerd, of the urban myth, as it were. You know, I speculate in my DMT book that perhaps the stress of that dying process, might you be sufficient to increase the 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 the increase production of DMT, but we don’t know that either.

Of the other is a study in Eastern Europe and Hungary, which is being planned. And you know to look at concentrations of DMT in the blood of the fetus and of the umbilical cord that birth and the placenta. And you don’t also look at the expression of the gene, which is responsible, or you would be talking with the expression of the gene responsible for the enzyme that makes DMT in the placenta, as well. Yeah, I think within a year or so we will know some more about if there is increase production of DMT at the time of birth. There’s a group in Ann Arbor Michigan, as well, which is looking at DMT in experimental death. You are giving animals a telling stimulus, as it were, and then you’re looking at the presence of DMT in the brain. And you’re so far through studies. Happen to your come up with anything definitive yet you but to the extent that the birth process is it or the best you process shares any features with the DMT experience.

It makes your sense that there is an underlying common process to the extent that they resemble each other. And interestingly, it’s really, truly interesting. The whole research that you’ve done and what’s come out of it. And more so, I think, from a cultural regard to, you know, that the people who are kind of ingesting this compound coming back in with these reports of meeting entities and encountering this here, this other space, this other dimensional space.

It’s fascinating. It’s truly remarkable that this compound exists and exists in naturally occurring in our bodies. So. I mean, during we’re doing, drinking ayahuasca is preventing the breakdown, from it breaking down in your stomach, while only drink this tea. Right?

Well as sick combination of factors you, because I was good contains DMT. If your taking it, the inhibitors of DMT breakdown, they wouldn’t give you an ayahuasca experience. On this the combination of the two plants, one contains DMT, then the other will prevent it’s breakdown in the gut and allow it to be orally active. And all DMT experiences find it is a must, quite a bit it’s slower, last longer. One can work with the experience to a greater extent that you can with the smoked, or the injected. Would you be able to put it on a scale? I mean, if there’s even ayahuasca experience, then then’s smoking DMT. Maybe in seven or eight. And then intravenously would be a 10. I mean, is there variance in the type of experience you have when you’re ingesting in different ways ?

I think that with DMT, anyway, it’s a pretty clear-cut pharmacology. The amount in your blood determines the intensity the affect, so if you can you get enough into your bloodstream through smoking, you know, by way of the lungs into the blood your rather than directly into the blood like injecting it, I think the smoked and the injected intensity can be quite similar to each other. They can both get you to attend. And I think also, even with ayahuasca, if you can attain the same levels in your blood of DMT, which would attain the smoking or injecting. It you have a comparable level of intensity. The problem with drinking that much ayahuasca is the side effects from the mail inhibitors, the human beta couplings, smudges too much to be able to reach those kinds of levels. But still, you know, I’ve for heard there’s plenty of reports of people who drink DMT to describe experiences as intense as your full. Some is complicated articulated comprehensive is anything one encounters with the smoked or injected or what have you.

I really want to address the cultural stigma that is behind them, but we’re even talking about, because, I mean, what is DMT scheduled? Is it counted a schedule one, right? So obviously there is something happening here that we can learn from. And from my understanding of schedule one substances, there’s no use or beneficial use for a schedule one compound. So, why do you think we see coming, there seems to be this vast spiritual learning? That is, that we’re capable of ingesting a compound. And yet people are afraid, because it’s labeled a schedule one, because the government has declared it illegal and people are afraid to talk about it. I mean, when I post this episode it can be labeled a drug episode. And just that stigma, that cultural idea, bothers me. And what do you think is occurring?

What we think that Ark societies still played with this idea of not being able to accept DMT as a resource. If you, years ago, there was a New York psychiatrist named Gerald Klarman who coined the phrase, I have pharmacological Calvinism. And, you know, I think there is some resistance against our response to experiencing pleasure from drugs, as opposed to experiencing pleasure from hard work, or through religious grace, or a family life. So the whole notion of pharmacological Calvinism is, you only used your drugs to cure illness or you don’t use them to enhance wellness, or creativity, or for spiritual benefits, or even for experiencing pleasure. So, I think it has something to do with the puritanical strain which exists in most societies. I think also Europe. I also think that there are legitimate concerns about keeping these drugs under some the regulatory short leash, as it were. They can be abused and they can be dangerous, either in the wrong hands or taken by the wrong people.

You need to be pretty stable, healthy, prepared, supervised and followed up. If you’re giving them, you need to know what you’re doing. So I think with the burgeoning of clinical research in human studies, which have taken place since my study began or was completed. That the young, that you will Buddha, Thursday. You’re rethinking of the placement of these audio drugs into schedule one. Of the three criteria for putting a drug-induced schedule number one is that it is used safely, even under medical supervision. And 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 you have got, you know, no known medical use, but that also doesn’t really hold any water anymore because of all of the positive studies that are coming out with respect to the treatment of OCD, come the treatment of autism, posttraumatic stress, substance abuse, alcoholism, doctor abuse, unit depression —those kinds of things. So the main criterion which still remains is that the drugs are highly abusable so the criteria. two of the three criteria, you really aren’t affected anymore. So I think since going to, you need to be in the creative can of a new schedule, as much as anything, which acknowledges the abuse ability of these drugs. And it acknowledges that 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 screened quite carefully if you’re going to be taking them. And I don’t think that necessarily is going to keep them in the hands of the elite, but it would at least provide some. It would provide some oversight and you people are going to be take whatever drugs they want in whatever circumstances, if you like. But, you know, if you could conceive of the new schedule where these audio drugs could be taken for any number of reasons for therapy for spirituality, for creativity, and then specialized centers.

Let’s say I was a specially trained individual. Would you provide an option for the use of these drugs in a your wider arena than is currently the case? And it’s remarkable because at any corner of any major city you confront you can buy alcohol, 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 just feels like the system is so completely backwards and we’ve been so programmed and so stigmatized by the, quote war on drugs, which has been my view, has been an abject failure. And just classifying people who explore, who decide that they wish to explore these compounds. 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 MAOIs and DMT. And, I mean, how is it possible that someone can realize that alcohol is poison — that they can we move into healthy lifestyle, that they can change their work habits, that they can find new ideas.

I mean, even if Albert Crick, the guy who visualized the DNA molecule, admittedly, he was micro-dosing LSD. At the time they visualized it right, so to me it’s just … it’s astounding to me that we have all this legislation in place and the system is is designed to scare people away. And so easily are people kind of labeled drug addicts, drug users. So I’m outside of my rants. Just, what is the connection between the pineal gland and DMT?

Well, before we move into the pineal, maybe I could at least make my standard pitch for the value of the of automotive education. Your sphere changed. Your peoples. Your points of view. You like your show and, you know, like, what the advocacy organizations out there are doing, use ESP and maps and after in the Beckley foundation. They’re all working you hard to educate and also you’re there supporting research. So, if you can educate people about these drugs and you could support research which demonstrates that number, you know, number one, they’re safe, and number two, you can be helpful in any number of circumstances. Then thinking about the wheels will gradually shift direction. And be a more, you know, open-minded approach. But still, I don’t think in a wholesale useful for you, or all the more widespread availability is especially going to be helpful. Marijuana at least helps, normally used as mild intoxicants. So I think its widespread availability is endemic cause the kinds of your problems that might occur if there are.

For example, the widespread availability of LSD your DMT, where anybody could just you go into a store demonstrates your legal age, and buy that you. So, it’s, you know, a nuanced situation where, case-by-case there are schedule one drugs and their schedule one drugs, there’s heroine, marijuana, there’s LSD, there’s DMT. Those are all schedule one drugs, but the you know Lord and K2’s schedule one drug, so I think one these to be discriminating. In acunae’s case, where also the pineal gland.

Yeah, there is a very interesting little organ in the middle of the brain and I’ve speculated a long time ago, cautioned 30 years plus now, that there was a relationship between spiritual experiences, which are felt to occur subjectively in the anatomical location of the pineal node, which is just below the fontanelle — that soft spot which occurs in infants and then seals up as you get older. You know, that’s always been experienced out of this new location, subjectively of the ultimate spiritual experience. That is also the anatomical location of the pineal gland, so I know proposed a number of years ago that perhaps the pineal gland, at certain times produced DMT, which would mediates see the psychedelic like the properties of the spiritual experiences. And that has been speculated about within the context of the esoteric physiology is out there. Like the truckers and couple, the use of your arts, you know, so it was a speculation, which I included in my DMT book.

Actually, about three years ago, what new the research group in Ann Arbor that I mentioned was able to determine that there was you DMT in the pineal gland of living rodents. A paper that came out about three years ago. So it is the case that in certain situations DMT is produced in the pineal, but still you shouldn’t overpower. The new book has been known for quite a long time uses the 50s almost further, early 60s, is the DMT is made in the another one of the will of every mammal. The best been investigated to date, so if you could be that the line is responsible for most of the DMT, which is circulating most of the time, and that the pineal may be predictors your DMT. Only at the specific use, at specific moments, is interesting ride and there is.

It’s interesting to me because I need help take this a little personal here. There’s an organization church that I belong to that uses ayahuasca as a sacrament. Not to drop its name, you know what I’m talking about? I have had total 23 ayahuasca experiences and in it. I’ve been drinking the tea for about two years. It’s completely altered my being, who I am. I am a completely different person in a positive way. I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. There’s some meetings, actually positive effects. So what I really wanted to kind of ask you about is the last, the most powerful experience I’ve ever had drinking the tea, there was a point in which I encountered an intelligence 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 ayahuasca experience there is the ability to kind of move around to see. You can choose what you decide to look at, what you’re not looking at. And when I could, I felt as if I cross the sort of barrier at the moment that I did, it was like there was this sort of massive intelligence. You said we are here, these being here for thousands of years, thousands of generations. We’ve influenced society and it was almost like having healing contacted. I know this sounds, absurd but it was the most powerful thing I’ve ever experienced. Is there a 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 an 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 how we interact with them who influence our lives, and our world, and history and biology, in all manner of ways. And it also establishes a feel logical hierarchy and a moral scaffolding, so you can use it in interacting with these beings, asking them questions, understanding their answers, and then bringing back that information in a communicable way.

I mean, there was definitely exchange of information and I don’t want to get too deep into this just because it’s highly personal for me. But in there was there was a remarkable feeling or profound this, that I felt after the experience in which they 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 in the interconnectedness that I felt through, just simply being alive, just simply being in the Paris air, that renewed my sense of life, that renewed my sense of purpose, and so, I mean, if you look at it, if you look at the status of ayahuasca tourism.

The people who are failing.Then there’s Western medicine failing to cure mental management diseases, which is why you see organizations like maps and the hacker, It’s the foundation which are creating doors for us to move through, so that we can heal PTSD. And the psychological disorders that. It played our Western culture, stigmatized society for generations.

Well, you know,you’re speaking about the good effects of your psychedelics, and in this particular case, ayahuasca. But I think it’s important that one not gild the lily has there were these your drugs you can be misused by, either people taking them where people giving them, you know? Albert Hoffman was a Swiss-German who discovered or invented LSD, and one of his best friends was a Jew, a former German soldier who served in World War I. Name difference younger who was a poster child for the Nazis, and even though he’s passed away, yet continues to be an inspiration for any number of neo-Nazi groups. And Albert Hoffman, a nurse younger, used to take LSD together several times. You kind of wonder what they thought about, talked about, you hatched in the process. And I’ve seen people become horribly sadistic and abusive who take psychedelics. And I’ve seen people give psychedelics to mess with people. So I think your experiences and those of the research subjects, you are are experiencing the benefit, the bespeak, the importance said in setting the intention and the background, keep people taking the drugs, and geophysical on environment .And you set those giving them their desires and intense for it.

But, you know, for giving the medications is a distillers at the harm business, for therapy,is adapting sex with somebody. So, you know, I like to think of these your drugs as tools, and very strong tools. You know, like, you don’t need nuclear power if you can you produce electricity to your power hospital. Origin blowup the big your city and kill hundreds of thousands of people. So I think these are very powerful drugs, which both can be extremely useful, but also can be just it as destructive if served misapplied.

Yeah, absolutely! You know, I really think, and I agree with you that there should be a cautionary note for anyone. I have heard stories about these people who are in the sort of sexual conquest while in their their handing out of psychedelics, which is just horrible. But essentiall, 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, that we’re trying to find what 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 in there is this sort of sense of knowledge that comes from ingesting this compound.

Well we clearly are more open to see your reception of your novel information, your novel perceptions. So I think we need to be able to determine to be able to your tell if what we’re learning, seeing, feeling, is helpful or true or not. So I think it’s good to have some benchmarks that we can use in the determining. Let’s say the friendliness or the unfriendliness of the beings that we’re encountering. The validity of the utility of whether telling us or not telling us, so that’s why I think it’s good to have some benchmarks. If we’re looking at these drugs as a leading spiritual development, vendors good to have some spiritual benchmarks with which to kind of compare and contrast and judge the merits of the things that were being exposed. That can be Buddhism, that could be Judaism, it could be Islamic, be Hinduism. Christianity is number of things, but, you know, it needs to be.

Why does it have to be associate with any religion a matter understand? What I mean is, why don’t I really understand why it went from “DMT: The Spirit Molecule” to “DMT: The Soul Prophecy? Suddenly it seems like religion to me is a very large problem here on this planet. Suddenly it seems like buckshot and if I can be in completely direct and honest — radically kind of phone with you. You seem to go from, you know, this open state where you are exploring this structured state. OK, I’m going to connect this to Judaism. why did you decide to do that?

Well there’s a couple of answers or responses, I guess. You know, in a way I think I’ve expanded the conversation enormously rather than shrunk it. My initial approach was the purely scientific model, the brain on drugs, or your Freudian psychoanalytic psychology, the clinical research mode. So by taking it out of those particular frameworks into the more spiritual, you know, is called the spam enough. I coined the phrase “spirit molecule”, which actually means many things. Spirit can mean things which are normally invisible, but I think spirit or spiritual can also point to the highest qualities of the human being sought. The highest concepts, the highest emotions, the highest work, the highest prayer. All those things.

You know, so I think rather than Windows interesting when my book first came out about DMT. Actually in one of the other results, your book review in arm in a deflating already in a now-defunct magazine called “Shaman’s Drum”. Of the reviewer, you said it shouldn’t be called “The Spirit Molecule”, it should be called “The Dream Molecule”, which, you know, I kind of your took umbrage with it, because I felt it was more of his spiritual kind of experience. But, I think in retrospect that the reviewer you was onto something, because I was still working within the brain-only model. Even with my youth theory about dark matter and parallel universes, it was still sort of a bottom-up approach. Like our brain changes, and then is able to perceive things. That’s just how feel taking it from a more bottom-up approach to a more top-down approach. The spiritual world is real and influences us, and we can be more receptive to the farm brain chemistry is changed, which, then, kind of takes you into the territory. How do you optimize that on as you’re trying to understand some mechanisms about, by which new that could happen. So the away of optimized to hit is by a looking toward your systems of thought, which have also addressed spiritual questions. But things which aren’t them, which aren’t normally visible, which influence our everyday life, behind the scenes, as it were. That we’re able to make contact with, every so often, through altered states, which are made available to us through the drugs — where prayer and fasting — these kinds of things audio.

When you were talking about religion being a problem, I think it’s really important to distinguish between your two different kinds of religion users: Human religion, or one of your definition of them. Of religion workshop Spinoza and I call this superstition. The religion of the masses, which is what is imposed on the masses, by the clerics who demand, or who are interested in your power and money. That is the more common of superstitious religion, which mostly has been created and is sustained as a means of political control. The other religion, though, is what Spinoza used to call “the religion of the elite”. One comes to the religion of the elite as an adult religion or a mixture religion through the observation of nature, through, you know, understanding alien probing into the nature of reality, and then being puzzled by looking for your some answers to the questions that come as a result of a careful investigation of boasting our nature, which includes us or mind, our human relationships and see what the brother medievalists used to prescribe. The day course of study, which was necessary before one can actually begin to study religion, things like first really, be able to master mathematics and grammar, physics, natural science, astronomy, philosophy — those kinds of things. Those were the requirements to be able to then began exploring the mysteries, which would be revealed through religious and spiritual study. That clearly isn’t the kind of religion the most people think of, but that’s the kind of religion that I think one ought to consider when attempting to integrate, see your full spectrum of the spiritual, you know? Your perceptions and ideas which come to us as a result of a big psychedelic experience.

Yeah, I understand. It’s just about time to wrap this segment up. By just a peculiar doing this our going to just a, quote called marks religion”, is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. The opium of the people is floated around for a while. People caught the opiate of the masses, but I think I understand the difference of what you’re saying. I agree and I’ve read Spinoza enough to know the difference between, OK, there’s religion that is designed to control and oppress human beings — to control to the end. It is the opiate of the masses as Mr. Marks kind of tells us, and there’s another, which I would regard as more esoteric, as more occult, more hidden, and 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 we’re not indoctrinated.

Right. I think you know what when it comes to looking at spiritual texts, you know, it is unlike a cookbook or a John Grisham novel, you know? They can take, you know, years to crack. For example, the book of Genesis, which I’ve been your read will carefully, took me like a year to read the book of Genesis. i really understood then what it was you’re trying to say, like it isn’t that the universe was created in, you know, a hundred and 60 hours, but that there were stages in the evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang up to the present day seven stages. another Their special number, special way of dividing things, you know. So you really need a scorecard or aid. You program a number of programs to be able to you tell what it is actually you’re being described .I guess that’s what you’re talking about with the esoteric model, that you really need to be able to dig below the surface of the text and the words to understand what’s what’s.

Your being, said Gasser, and know which is one the appointed like to make in my new book “The Soul Prophecy” is that the text listed 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’d demonstrate pretty convincingly. A lot of features with the DMT state, so if that’s the case, then the close sure that are being a prophetic state. The more the text can you resonate with your own mind and can understand deeper layers. So that’s sure bound to be controversy. All your suggestions that you can’t Rosetta my book, if you are in a slightly altered states brought about by the psychedelics, which overlaps. Sure some features with the prophetic state, then the text begins to make more sense than I would normally understand.

Dr. Strassman, the next time you’re drinking ayahuasca and you get home and still kind of altered, you know, open up your King James Bible and read the first couple of chapters of Genesis and you see if it makes anymore sense than it did before. Keep that in mind.

Dr. Strassman, we’re approaching the end here. I just want ask you this one last question. What would your 64-year-old say to your XX-year-old? I think your research has defined your legacy. “DMT: The Spirit Molecule” is known by anyone who is studying these compounds. Has there been any point in your career, in your life and I’m sure you’ll get you along like that. But I mean, is there anything that you kind of would go back and change, go back and alter, go back and notice, just make different? What would tell your younger self while you researching these compounds?

I think I was always at the edge of my capacities, you know? I think, you know, maybe creatives have more psychotherapy, a lifetime of help me make some better decisions on matters, you know, may have helped you make some you better decisions about staff, or about the exact grants that I wrote, but I think I was operating on that 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 different person and my parents were different, or I grew up in a different place, or encounter different people in my life, I may have done things differently, better at, you know? It’s also made in the case that I’d never got interested in this field. So putting all things taken into account, I think of, really, I’d drive really optimize to my gifts and my good luck. Enough serve there.

I appreciate answer that, Dr. Strassman. Where can people find your work? Where can they get your website? You know, if you’re interested in contacting me, buying books for me directly, which I’ll sign. They can get in contact with me using my public appearances, any planned events, at RickStrassman.com. Or you can just Google my name and my website comes up quite readily for you.

OK, we’ll definitely make that available for people. Thank you guys so much for listening. Dr. Strassman, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your work and your time. We will see you guys next week.