Arguing where DMT entities come from is moot says Dr Strassman. Besides, they’re angels

It’s how and what we learn from DM entities that counts. Not their origin, says Dr Strassman.

“The most important thing is how we use our words. Can we ask the right questions? Can we ask the right answers? And remember them?” says the Spirit Molecule author.

Dr Strassman might be wary of bringing established religions into psychedelic therapy. But he’s certainly not against using them to aid discovery. “The established model is ‘neurotheology’ which states the brain is at the centre of human experience. Things can get it off that: drugs, fasting sleep deprivation, that trigger brain reflex changes. But these are described after the fact as ‘spiritual’ and given terms like ‘openness’, ‘ecstasy’, ‘out of body experience.’ 

Modern science, which is informed by the biological, competitive model put forward by Sigmund Freud and Richard Dawkins, explains this as “We’re evolutionarily configured to be perceptive, compassionate, empathic and sociable to help us survive.”

This explanation might be tight, but fails to include the grander narrative that DMT is especially at pains to impress upon us is ‘real’, or ‘noetic’ to the scientific language. “During the 1990s tests, I learned that I wouldn’t get the same debriefs out of subjects unless I took their DMT experiences to be real,” says Strassman on his YouTube. And can we just explain away art, love, friendship, purpose and so many other wonderful things, as stuff we do to get laid?

“I expected Zen shunyata without form, feeling, consciousness, perception or volition… empty. It turned out DMT was everything but”

Theoneurology, outlined in Strassman’s book DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible flips the script, proposing the ‘divine’ whatever it might be, informs neurology. This could be said to suit the psychology of Carl Jung.

At this point it’s worth noting that the two Vital lecturers who’ve cautioned the most against ‘transcendence porn’ and the quest for a ‘mystical experience’, Bill Richards and Strassman, are both deeply religious individuals. 

“Buddhism saved my life after I dropped out of medical school,” Strassman says, “I became a serious practitioner for two decades. I’m in its debt. It was the closest thing I had come across that strengthened the psychedelic experience, and also strengthened my belief there was some intimate relationship between psychedelic states and buddhist practice.”

When he began his famous early 1990s DMT tests he expected the experiences to mirror buddhist teaching: “Both myself and the subjects expected something similar to Tensho, the Zen state of shinyata, “without form, feeling, consciousness, perception or volition… empty."

However, “It turned out that DMT was everything but that.”

He continues: “The beings, the visions, the information… The personality was maintained, even strengthened. There was space and time, it was distorted but it still existed. This was not consistent with my data.” Strassman was subjected to an ego death of sorts: “I had to go back to the drawing board.” (Dr Strassman’s N, N-Dimethyltryptamine DMT is not to be confused with 5-MEO DMT of Sandoran desert toad fame, which is said to produce a ‘white out’ experience.)

Other influences were at play in this ontological snafu. “I was being discouraged by the American buddhist organisation, for being too truth-orientated. I ended up studying judaism and being impressed by prophecy.” Ever the scientist, he uses ‘impressed’ to mean ‘could be useful’.

“Armed with an expanded definition of prophecy from Maimonides, I began to compare the visions from the Old Testament and DMT”

At the 2015 Tyringham Initiative gathering, Strassman stunned even the world-class psychedelic thinkers in attendance by delivering a bravura presentation on how Old Testament dialogue can be employed when chatting to DMT ‘entities’. (Read about it in the superlative DMT Dialogues book covering the whole conference, edited by Dr David Luke). Correspondence in hyperspace is notoriously difficult, and can include important elements like divulging the intentions of the entity in question, or decoding the information they relay.

To clarify, “Prophecy doesn’t always mean foretelling like the canonical prophets do. It includes any spiritual experience: from the nameless soldier who has a dream predicting victory for Israel to Moses on mount Sinai.” The key text to study apparently is The Guide of the Perplexed, written by the Ottoman Emperor Saladin’s physician and astronomer Maimonides’ in 1190. 

“Maimonides borrowed Aristotle’s concept of ‘active intellect’ conflating information from the past, present and possible future,” says Strassman in this interview with a Hebrew mystic channel.

According to Maimonides’ own introduction, “The Guide of the Perplexed has a second object: it seeks to explain certain obscure figures which occur in the Prophets. Even well-informed persons are bewildered if they understand these passages in their literal signification. But they are entirely relieved of their perplexity when we explain, or merely suggest that the terms are figurative.”

In recent podcast interviews Dr Strassman’s been keen to insist he’s presenting the notion as “an interested theologian” rather than a profile scientist. It doesn’t stop him bringing in medical anecdotes, like left-brain stroke victims seeing in ‘pixelated’ vision. Anyway, back to the Bible. 

“Armed with an expanded definition of prophecy from Maimonides, I began to compare the visions from the Old Testament and DMT. And, descriptively phenomenologically, the visions, the voices, the emotions, the effects on the body… were quite similar.”

You may’ve figured that we’re getting into the ‘advanced class’ of psychedelic use here. So I’ll end with this passage from the book of Ezekiel, a favourite with contemporary churches, abridged by Strassman in his 2015 Tyringham Initiative presentation.

“Ezekiel’s messages came from God and were intended to be given to the wider community. In chapter one, the heavens open, there’s a stormy wind, brilliant light, beings emerge from the fire. There are spheres, wheels. Ezekiel sees faces of beings: a man, a lion, an ox, an eagle. The beings run rapidly to-and-fro despite the immobility of their legs. Their backs and wings are full of eyes. Some beings fly through space. Thee is an expanse of blue, or a rainbow, above their heads. Ezekiel loses all strength, falls on his face. An angel stands him up, speaks to him, pulls him by the hair, and carries him through space.”