Dr. Rick Strassman | DMT Beings, Prophetic State Contact, & Theoneurology

00:00 Embrace yourself, because you're about to dive into another free first hour episode of the Higher Side Chats. And we just want to let you know that whether your looking for a companion through your paranoid insomnia, entertaining yourself through one of life's mundane activities or trying to ward off the internal screams from all those sad smothered souls around the office THC is here and you should know that every episode of the higher side chats has an entire second hour for plus members Sign up at thehiresitechatsplus.com and you'll get years of Plus Show archives, lifetime forum access, a special invite to Greg Carlwood's monthly joint sessions MP3s of THC music bonus episodes tour videos and 10% off t-shirts grinders and whatever else ends up in The HireSite Store It's $8 a month that you won't miss so become a plus member and treat yourself in these troubled times always action packed and commercial free

00:51 Which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. 1930s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the fireside chats His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times From 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a fresh conversation, I'm Greg Carlwood These are the Hireside Chats. Hallelujah and hello, Hireside Chatters! From sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood and it's no surprise to anyone that the system thinks it has all the answers but as we've started digging deeper into things that our Western society has banned ignored or pushed out of the circle We find that many of those topics are not only important and deeply interconnected

01:50 But these subject areas might be some of the most important avenues of study to understand what it is to be human and where we actually are in the seven-layer Keiko reality. I'm talking about the toothless, authority-driven mainstream religions that have discarded their depth and remain so shallow that they're merely shadows of their more robust origins. As well as the rich spiritual meditative and shamanic practices of the indigenous cultures the empire has trampled over but also the blanket ban on psychedelics and entheogens and the labeling of them as dangerous and toxic substances that have no noteworthy value

02:27 And if we wanted to get crazy, we could add in a full range of higher side themes from near-death experience and remote viewing... ...to abduction encounters, strange sightings in the woods and occult ritual contact with something on the other side. Well across the board all we get is a big fat nothing to see here and that hypnotic pinwheel of pixels to keep us thoroughly sedated and moving through the old 9-5 Though the tide is turning, it can't come fast enough. And we're still playing catch-up to many cultures and past eras where exploration and experimentation in these realms were welcomed. And speaking of experimentation... One of the most famous cracks in the quarantine comes from today's powerhouse guest Dr Rick Strassman and his well known DMT trials over the five years between 1990 & 1995

03:16 Where, after a long two-year pursuit he actually got the system's rubber stamp to go ahead and perform the first new human studies on psychedelic drugs in over 2 decades. Which focused on the most powerful and naturally occurring compound Dimethyltryptamine And these DMT trials are famously described in Dr. Strassman well known book DMT The Spirit Molecule and the documentary of the same name These days, Dr. Strassman is the Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and the President and Co-Founder of The Cottonwood Research Foundation He's also released two more recent books that we're going to focus on today DMT & The Soul Of Prophecy A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible And his fictionalized autobiographical novel Joseph Levy Escapes Death

04:08 So let's get into it. The DMT doctor himself, my friend and yours Dr Strassman welcome to the higher side! Well thanks very much it's a pleasure to be here Yes, this is a real honor and pleasure for me. Your work has had a big impact on me and I'm sure the audience is familiar with the original DMT trials enough that we don't need to give them that much background but maybe we can start with why you chose dimethyltryptamine because you had options and this was what you decided to go with What was the thinking behind that? Well, I didn't start off looking at DMT. I began with an interest in the pineal gland as a spiritual type of organ and looked for some chemical it might produce that would have psychedelic effects. And this was just the time of melatonin gaining attention as involved in psychology and psychiatric problems so I began looking at melatonin

05:08 But that didn't turn out to be very psychoactive. As we now know, it's primarily sedating and by the time I finished my melatonin work, I had discovered or had learned about DMT which is also made in the body. It's naturally occurring. It's what is called endogenous and it also is quite powerfully psychedelic there's no question like was the case with melatonin and it had been used in previous studies before, had been given to safety humans in the 1950s and 1960s or early 1970s. And it was a relatively obscure drug so I wouldn't garner the same kind of publicity that an LSD study might. It was quite short-acting and I knew that giving a psychedelic on a research unit in a busy university hospital

06:06 Would be stressful and might trigger adverse reactions or panic attacks so i figured if it was a bad trip it would be a short trip wouldn't be a six ten hour that lsd trip so those were the main reasons i was also still focusing on the pineal as a potentially spiritual organ, and there were some circumstantial data suggesting that the pineal might make DMT even though it was not known to be the case then. Yes, that is some great context and it is pretty well known that DMT is a natural compound produced in hundreds if not thousands of plants out there. There's also some rodent studies that give us some clues but I still do hear a lot of confusion over this question

06:59 of if DMT is produced in the human body or more specifically where it's produced and when it's produced, what those catalysts are. And there has been some work done since your trials right? Is there anything we can say now that maybe you couldn't have said then that may be more definitive? Yeah well when people first discovered DMT in human tissues blood urine and spinal fluid they looked at the animal data which indicated it was made in the lungs primarily. So there were many studies that demonstrated the existence of DMT in human blood and it was always believed to be made in the lungs, but the last maybe 20 years or so 15-20 years with the advances in molecular biology

07:59 it was possible to locate more specifically where DMT might be made and in particular the presence of the necessary enzymes to synthesize DMT. The first human papers came out in 1999-2000 didn't really show much in the way of the presence of necessary enzymes in human tissues, including lung. So that put a damper on how to understand what specific organ DMT is made in. In the meantime, in 2013 there was a Rodent paper demonstrating DMT in the rodent pineal gland

08:58 So that in a way confirmed the hypothesis I put forth at the end of the DMT book in 2001. Wisdom from 2013 on was that there is DMT in a living rodent pineal. The question at that point though, is it being made in the pineal or is it being stored there from some other organ like the brain or lungs? So the same group in Ann Arbor, Michigan that discovered DMT in the pineal started to look more carefully at the organs that contained the enzymes necessary for the synthesis of DMT. And it turns out number one, the pineal gland does not have the necessary enzymes. The other finding was that the brain does. The brain itself contains

10:00 the machinery necessary for DMT synthesis. And also, the levels of DMT in the dying rodent brain increase by at least a factor two up to a factor I think eleven, but because of the pineal data they concluded that the DMT that was found in the pineal at that time 2013 was actually brain DMT that the probe snagged on the way in and out of the pineal gland. So, the whole pineal question is thrown into doubt again but what I think is the most important finding is the brain makes DMT so you don't really need a pineal gland and there are people without pineal glands who seem to live normal lives

10:57 So the pineal part of the puzzle is never a crucial part. The more important element was can you get enough DMT in the brain for psychoactive effects? And it turns out that concentrations of DMT in the rodent brain are as high as concentrations for the more well-known neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, so the concentrations of DMT in the brain rather high. They're comparable to well-known neurotransmitters, which then raises the possibility of a DMT neurotransmitter system which would be quite interesting. Each of the neurotransmitter systems is responsible for certain quality of consciousness in certain aspect. Serotonin is responsible for mood and impulsivity dopamine for reward

11:56 norepinephrine for excitation, stimulation. So if there turns out to be a DMT neurotransmitter system it would be fascinating to determine what part of consciousness that regulates. Yes! That is a great breakdown for people And so when it comes to those dmt trials i think a lot of people listening are vaguely familiar with the experiences that are talked about they are quite buried all over the map all over the spectrum but, i think people have heard some of them and. To hold in the other elements of your latest book how would you introduce people to dmt and the soul of prophecy where is this latest book fit and what does it take the research well

12:49 One of my questions that I brought to the DMT study was if DMT could produce spiritual experiences. And the model spiritual experience which I approached my research with was the Zen Buddhist model, I was raised Jewish but in my early 20's began a course of study and practice of Zen Buddhism so The ultimate goal of Zen Buddhist meditation is enlightenment, called a Kensho. The temporary at least attainment of Nirvana, Satori the flash of reality and the phenomenological nature of a Kensho is pretty free of content and imagery

13:44 feelings it's just kind of an awareness or a merging of the personality with the ground ball being so to speak. So there is no personality there is no sense of self there is no sense of time space and that kinda experience was really rare in my volunteers one person out of nearly five dozen describe that kinda effect and interestingly enough that was a fellow who was a religious studies major in college and had continued studying mysticism after graduating, and was really hoping for an interested in a mystical, unitive white light kind of experience. So that was our only volunteer with that kind of effect. Everybody else's experiences were much more personal

14:46 full of content, interactive relational extremely visual and all those strong feelings terror or bliss. People also retain their own sense of self their personality was maintained they were able to ask questions to provide answers to interact with the contents of the space that they found themselves in So, rather than the formless unit of white light experience the majority were interactional and relational. So I went back to the drawing board after my studies were over and gradually gravitated towards looking at religious models because they had been around much longer and we're quite adept both describing altered states brought on by

15:48 meditation or prayer and extracting information from those states. Not simply describing the colors, sounds and feelings but being able to extract useful and intelligible information like what's that state good for? What do you learn there that isn't otherwise available So I had studied Judaism and it didn't quite fit with the data. And, I looked at Shamanism and for any number of reasons passed on it as well. And I'm Jewish so I thought well maybe there's something in our tradition? So I started to read the Hebrew Bible and was really impressed with the descriptions

16:37 of the prophetic state by the prophets and other individuals that are articulated in the Hebrew Bible. There were a lot of similarities between the phenomenology of the prophetic state and the DMT state, you know, the visions and voices and physical feelings, the sense of reality so your book is a comparison of the prophetic state DMT state and what the similarities are, what the differences are. What the utility of the Hebrew Bible might be in terms of understanding and utilizing this psychedelic state? You know one thing before we talk much more about prophecy is my definition of it most people think about it as foretelling or predicting

17:35 But I expand that definition to include any spiritual experience described in the Hebrew Bible. So it could be an out-of-body state, it could be inspiration, it could be extra courage, it can be visions and voices of God or angels... so it includes the altered states that are described by the famous prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel for example. But it also includes any spiritual experience by anyone not necessarily a full-blown prophetic encounter with God there could be lower levels of prophecy without definition

18:23 Right right and i think this makes a lot of sense i've talked to many guests who the further you go back there seems to be a real connection between, empty jen's and religion and who knows exactly how deep it is but its in the mix at least experiences seem similar and. The big thing that interests me is that these seem to facilitate some kind of contact with beings or entities so yes whether it's these prophetic states or DMT seems like a much better match than the enlightenment states of the east and you introduce a term in this book called

19:00 Theoneurology, which you say uses as a bridge of modern reinterpretation of medieval Jewish metaphysics. And medieval Jewish metaphysics is something I know is very deep. I've looked at the tree of life a time or two but what can you tell us about this subject and what a modern reinterpretation of that looks like? Well, I'll try It's material that tends to land in the weeds pretty deep, but I'll do my best to not get drawn off onto too many tangents. You know it starts with Aristotle as most science does mostly philosophy as well so Aristotle divided the mind into the intellect and the imagination and

19:55 Every experience is some combination of those two mental faculties. The imagination is the location of anything which is not abstract, so it includes perceptions vision audition taste It includes emotions anxiety depression fear joy elation. It includes the body being comfortable and not being comfortable inner experiences of bodily processes, the body occupying space. So those are the experiences which are laid down and perceived in the imagination. The mind or intellect or rational faculty is everything except imagination so it's facts, abstract ideas, mathematics which aren't dependent on

20:59 physical representations as it were. So, the Arabs translated Aristotle first, the Muslim philosophers and then the Jews began to translate Aristotle from Arabic but in the processing by the Muslims of Aristotle it became more spiritualized The notion of god and angels and a man and the relationship among the three, i mean aristotle talk about inspiration and he believed in god but. The highly developed fully articulated motion of the prophetic experience wasn't quite part of what aristotle was working with

21:49 But for the Muslims it was, because of the importance of prophecy in Islam's mission. So the Jews then started to look at the Arabic writers about Aristotle and what is called metaphysics. Metaphysics is the physics of the invisible so it describes and works with the mechanisms which are behind non-physical manifestations. For example, thinking or feeling or prophecy So they began working out how does the prophetic state work? What is the science behind it but because back then there was no distinction between the natural world and spiritual world

22:48 The natural world was a reflection of the will and the power, the intelligence of the creator and sustainer of the natural world. And most commonly within those traditions called God. So a theory was developed that for communication to occur between God and man, which is the way one defines prophecy using those traditions' understanding. How would that work?

23:31 How would God communicate with humans? So the idea was that God emanated influence, radiated and it went down the line as it were through what was called intermediaries which would then spill out or radiate upon the human. Which would involve downloading divine information both into the imagination and intellect So you would have visions and you'd have voices that would occur within the arena of the imagination. And those images would represent divine information, what's a content of the visions was meant to communicate? So it would be up to the stimulated intellect

24:26 to interpret and extract the information which is being displayed on the screen of the imagination. So what I'm proposing in The Prophetic Statesbook, DMT and The Soul of Prophecy is that DMT mediates the imaginative contents of the prophetic experience of the voices and other visions But the way in which the DMT and prophetic states differ profoundly is in regard to the source of the elevated DMT, and the stimulation of the intellect. Which I don't think really occurs that much on the psychedelics It's more influenced by education and training those kinds of educational intellectual exercise

25:26 Right on well it is this contact that is so interesting to me and you have to set inside some kind of context and i do think that's a pretty good one it's a good background, understand how the plane in which these things take place in the imagination i guess we can call it. And I really want to try to understand these entities in both cases or either case. It is a massive interest of mine, maybe they're messengers of God and I love that this book categorically breaks down every aspect of these communions, the voices, the messages, the look and smell of these beings, the emotions they invoke, the lasting effects of the encounters... You really compare and contrast pretty much everything that you can

26:18 I did yeah it was a huge project that you can take me eighteen years from beginning to end. And it was a number of years into the project before actually put that theory to the test by doing the actual one-on-one comparisons are thinking about it and taking notes on your reading all this stuff, And I would just kind of casually say, oh yeah the DMT and prophetic states are really quite similar. But I hadn't really done the research, I hadn't really compared what was in the Bible with my records of the DMT experiences so I was really gratified by the overlap, the similarity but it was only limited and that the phenomenology was quite comparable but the message

27:15 value the content of the extracted information between the two states was quite different. Also, the prophetic state is a lot more interactive and highly refined which got me thinking about new way to describe spiritual experience the degree of interaction between contents of the state and the person undergoing it usually when you're tripping your kind of passive generally, you just let things happen to you don't really know exactly what to do or how to do it.

27:58 And one of the things that stands out in the prophetic literature is a number of ways with which to interact with the beings, with the contents of that state in order to get most out of that contact. Well said and i know that this jives with your background and thats probably why you are attracted to it as you said but i am curious why not choose another modern data set to compare it like the hundreds of ufo encounters or the communication that a cultist have with spirits through ritual because on one hand yeah this

28:37 First hands data set of these trip reports that you were there for the minister and on the other hand we're talking about text that are thousands of years old maybe been translated a few times they definitely. wanted to support their world view or were dealing with a religion so that's gonna probably take the way some of these things are described. Why did you i mean i know why it shows because it is in your background but why did u choose over say ufo encounters order those communion set up all this talk about with spirits that also seem kinda similar well i think from the point of view of phenomenology states

29:22 Yeah, the visions and the voices of UFO encounters are called spiritual encounters. And ease those kinds of things. The phenomenology is similar to both the DMT state and the prophetic state but kind of a burning issue as it were which has impelled me throughout this whole process is if so what? What is the significance of what's experienced in these states or these encounters You know, you have to point to the Hebrew Bible even though it's old but it has enduring influence throughout Western civilization. Our economy is based on the Bible, philosophy and theology ethics and morals psychology political science philosophy all of those are based ultimately on concepts notions which are introduced in Hebrew Bible

30:28 So it's extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily enduring. And any tradition that has got those attributes, those characteristics is the best available. It's the most powerful, the most influential and the most enduring but the important thing is to go straight to the original text you can't rely on the accretions which have formed over the millennia making it organized religion with all of the pros and cons which is associated with. So that's why I have isolated or limited my studies for the Hebrew Bible, very little rabbinic material no Talmud to speak of, no Kabbalah so that has allowed me to really study carefully the Hebrew Bible for quite a while in your original language in your original Hebrew

31:30 and rely on all the classical commentaries as well which unpack and unlock some very difficult semantic grammatical narrative material. Those are fair points, Something else I was going to say about the original text, see I grew up in a private Catholic school and I mention that only because something that I recently learned is that the encounters with these so-called angels that were described or depicted to me as a child way different in the original accounts. They don't look like the winged and halo-ed holy figures that you see in the stained glass window, these things are sometimes covered with eyes, ten limbs of fire, winged lions, reptiles, multiple faces...and this is how a lot of the beings from the Hebrew Bible are described at least those the things you reproduce in this book now

32:27 Now we're talking that is a closer match to the weird spectrum of things seen in the dmt experience. Well that's right yeah if you begin reading chapter one of this it's totally mind blowing there's no waters and ezekiel said he falls down, and then he has his vision these winged beings with eyes on their backs under wings They're spending their moving there turning without their legs change is completely you know there's a huge blue expanse he's grabbed by an angel. Why are they hearing good things space they're spinning ball spinning wheels there's no fire yeah he's terrified it is quite the empty line yes and let's get a little bit into the messages

33:23 That come through in these encounters which i think is the real meat to help us understand our relationship to these beans and both cases sometimes they do just seem like their appearances but there is something to be said about common threads of the contact and certain messages that we can pull on right yeah well if you look at. The message is that my volunteers came back with your personal mostly personal they had attained greater insight into certain psychological personality features. They may have resolved certain conflicts, physical or emotional or psychological. The spiritual experiences except for that one fellow I was talking about early on the rest of people's spiritual experiences

34:24 The content was consistent with personalities, with their pre-existence personalities. So one person was a programmer and software designer in our study and his peak vision was being in a white room with bits of information pouring out the basic It's an existence the ones in this area of existence so that kind of a flash is consistent with the nature of volunteer himself it wasn't as if he came back with new verbally communicable insights or knowledge that everybody doesn't already know at least intellectually.

35:14 the pre-existing ideas that he had, and notions, the assumptions just became that much more real and true and certain. But if you look in the Hebrew Bible what is the prophetic message? And it's pretty vast! I don't know if would be useful to go over them piecemeal but the two main lessons from the Hebrew Bible one of them relates to ideas, to thinking, to the truth. And you know the other relates to how to live in a world behaviorally So the first truth as it were is that there's one God and that's the message of the Hebrew Bible with regards to belief There is one god who was the creator and sustainer of existence and with respect to the behavioral

36:12 key or the behavioral piece of information it's a golden rule which is to love your fellow as yourself and everything else behaviorally. Devolves from the golden rule you know loans and property boundaries and houses in buildings and weights and measures all that evolves from the golden rule ultimately you love your fellow ask yourself And with respect to the thinking process is what you keep in your mind and how you understand everything around you it all begins with. There being one god right see that's the curious thing when i look at that set of data its like well,

37:07 Did they selectively edit stories or did they twist the accounts to fit the ones that justify their world view i mean that's the thing like i don't know how, how literal or how accurate these ancient stories are compared to the dmt trials that you did first hand is it an apples to apples comparison well. It's an apple to apple solution And that's the solution which I came to in understanding the reality of the DMT experiences. It is also a solution I came to regarding the reality of the accounts in the Hebrew Bible and that solution is, to treat them as if they were real. In which case you can then say okay what follows from that? Then you apply yourself

38:05 to understanding what's going on in that real alternative universe, using all of the tools at your disposal. You know your thinking, your intuition, your knowledge yeah you know your tools of observation... With the DMT stories or accounts of the DMT volunteers I was hearing accounts of experiences and in the Hebrew Bible you're doing the same thing pretty much You're hearing accounts of experiences and they could be edited but everything's edited even the DMT reports. They are being edited by the mind and psychology of the volunteer so you can't get too hung up on what's your original text or what's your original experience

38:56 You've got what you've got and we've got the tools at your disposal that you've got. And then get to work in trying to figure out what's going on and what it means, how do i apply it? What makes sense doesn't make sense so you're stepping into an alternative level of reality and both sets up experiences. Add a second comment on us because there meaning and their profound influence Who understand what they're about and what to make of them how to live our lives in accord with him.

39:32 Fair, totally fair. It is what it is you know? It is what we got and so one of the things you touch on repeatedly in the book is false prophecy. To quote the book you say, We must take great care in deciding whether the information we obtain during a drug experience is accurate true or beneficial rather than simply another way in which we delude ourselves and others And it seems like there was a lot of scholarly study into the prophetic state accounts. It seems like you've maybe tried to apply this thinking to the DMT encounters, vetting the beings and their messages for either their honesty or their deception is that right? Yeah you have to vet the beings if you can anyway yeah and you need to ask them the right questions and then be able to interpret what they're saying back to you

40:28 There's an encounter in the book of Joshua. He is about to attack Jericho and he has a vision of an angel, like a scary being with a sword in its hand kind of like one of my volunteers did. And you know Joshua turns to the being or confronts the being and says are you with us? Or are you against us? The angel responded in the positive, like I'm here to help But just that question and the approach you take with a being to fearlessly say, who are you? And what are you here for. Then they're in a way compelled to respond honestly so if the angel said Joshua I'm against you then Joshua would respond a lot differently So there's the whole question of false prophecy Who do you believe

41:33 Or what visions do you believe? What beings do you believe, but also the figure of the prophet. A lot of people who take a lot of psychedelics want to present themselves as a prophet, as spiritually enlightened individual as result of their drug use so in a way they're claiming prophecy in their possession So you want to make certain that it's not false prophesy and that is good, its helpful, true So in the prophetic literature, there's a lot of discussion about what is true prophet and what is false prophet. And it's kind of moving target but there are some basic guidelines you know all because an individual can perform a miracle does not mean that they are prophet You need to look at the message rather than at the miracle so if the message

42:34 goes against the notion of one god and the importance of the golden rule, it's not prophecy. It is not a prophetic message so that person is a false prophet The other is that you look at the character of the individual either as a prophetic figure in the text or the psychedelic individual in the present and you look at their character are they good people? Bad people i guess you know do they beat their spouse did a steel do they lie to the bully that kind of person you would not follow no matter what is it because there are based character so both character and message i think her the main discriminating criteria.

43:28 Yeah it's interesting because when people have these experiences they tend to be so astonished they take them at face value and then you dig a little deeper inside well we should maybe unpack this, what more carefully and of course the character of the individuals important cuz i could just be making the whole thing up to try to seem special but what about the character of the entities themselves how would you even really. Assess such a thing is mentioned that guidelines love if they violate the truth that there is one true God, that's something that's frowned upon. Of course in the church and the golden rule is very important but I do hear a lot of DMT reports where they describe a lot of love maybe not even language necessarily but that the beings are communicating some type of love so it just gets difficult because especially if they're trying to

44:23 deceive they might present themselves in one way just seems very difficult is there more you can say about either criteria we would use or. Just how to assess such a thing especially when they aren't even our own encounters you know a lot of these are something that your having to interpret third hand, right now the key notion well i'm gonna couple of issues that you raised no one is the fact that the beings are oftentimes beneficent. They are loving and healing, yeah? And that's fine I mean there is no problem with that, that's great but because you have that experience it doesn't necessarily make you special It isn't like you become a prophet or your enlightened so thats one issue to not go overboard or to misinterpret nature

45:27 of the interaction with the being if it is beneficial. And the other issue is how to actually distinguish between a beneficent being and more malevolent one, and isn't easy all the time. One of my colleagues said to avoid beings with horns or fangs or stingers those kinds of things like horrible looking beings so I'm not sure That is a universal finding, but it's good advice in general. I think you also need to be able like you were describing before You need to be able to vet the beings so... ...you want some techniques to be able to do that So you can ask them questions and there are a lot of good examples of people in the Hebrew Bible asking questions of the beings, of the angels

46:37 If they don't understand what's going on, they can ask the angel to explain. You could argue with them you can ask for things that are important. You can praise them and thank them so there is a number of ways of interacting with beings that we can learn about from the accounts of prophetic experience in the text which is very interesting notion most people when they think about Hebrew Bible get a little upset, they become up in arms a bit. But if you look at it carefully from an unbiased point of view like with your fresh eyes as it were there's a lot of useful information and ideas and techniques that can be found there You know its interesting the whole Jewish Hebrew Bible thing And is reception by the new age The psychedelic community in particular

47:44 But I guess more to the point could be, you know the Buddhist community. There is a book which just came out about a month ago called American Jubu and it's all about relationship between Buddhism and Judaism and she does raise the issue of psychedelics that lot of people became Buddhists after taking acid and a lot of people that turned to Judaism also were experienced with psychedelics kind of opened a window to get them to start to look at the tradition in a more experiential manner. So, a couple years ago I was invited to do a TEDx talk in a community on the West Coast with a large number of Bapakasana presence, Buddhist presence and the person that invited me wanted me to discuss the current situation with psychedelics

48:47 So I said, well, I've kind of moved into the more religious elements of the implications of my work. And he said oh that's cool there are a lot of Buddhists here and most people in the audience will dig it out. Well, coming at it from the perspective of the Hebrew Bible and he said well you know that might be your problem. And I say how exactly? He says well you know that is religious So I said, well you know Buddhism is religious. There's all these Buddhists most of whom were Jews in the first place and he said well you know Buddhism really isn't a religion but Judaism is somehow so the whole thing of reintroducing the Hebrew Bible to the larger group has been a challenge but I stick to it and think its great model not only a model there's some alternative western one

49:47 it underlies a western civilization so there's something to be said. So yeah, that's been interesting. Yeah you gotta follow the road that feels best to you and if it feels right go with it! And before we run out of time we got to switch gears just tell people about your semi-autobiographical novel Joseph Levy Escapes Death probably a surprise to people but I guess what should they know about this book that amazon categorizes as medical humor. Medical humor yeah well it's accounts of the life and times of my alter ego joseph levy who falls ill, when the twenty tens with a couple bad infections bad healthcare calamity is internet date relations

50:43 Yeah, just kind of the modern palette of healthcare and internet dating. So it's experiences which are perceived through a certain lens like a certain aspect or character. Kind of curmudgeonly, funny complaints is hopeful Things work out things don't work out he feels betrayed he feels rewarded and it's kind of dark. There is a fair amount to medical humor like what do you think smelling yeah so i think its rank most highly in the medical human heart but still sales are slow i went with one man publisher which since determined this kinda like self publishing

51:37 So the marketing is the main thing at that point. But yeah, it's ranked 10,000 for medical humor but for the other things even lower so lots of people describe that they laugh when they read the book. That's a good thing and part of my intent was to get people to laugh or have people laugh but its kind of dark too since I was reading a review on Goodreads And the reviewer said i was glad when it was over. I was happy to finish the book so its kinda like a rorschach test, like an inkblot test you know your reaction to the book kind of determines or is

52:24 Function of your personality if you have no sense of humor you hate the book if your really progressive liberal new age intersectional person. You'll hit the but if u been around the block and you are so idealistic is pretty funny it is your right that its dark and, it is humorous and gets pretty raw at times i mean i definitely appreciate some of Joseph's inner dialogue and his commentary on the people he encounters and of course a little herpes in diary sprinkled in there for good measure. Yeah it is pretty dark and why through the lens of an alter ego rather than just straight autobiography, yeah you know that's good question few months ago your gram hancock and i were having dinner before the event we did in sedona in may

53:25 And he said, what's the difference between you and Joseph Levy? And I said well i'm a nicer guy. So that's kind of the difference between the two characters. You know Joseph Levy is an exaggeration like a number of slices of my personality which are amplified in isolated for effect to tell a good story stir people up make them laugh so quite do that with a true autobiographical approach because, you know, that's the bit more nuanced and addresses a different collection of issues.

54:10 Yes, and if you are going to be that dark and raw and sometimes negative or aggressive people are gonna come in put that on you. And they're gonna think that's about you whether... Or instead of just saying it's a splinter of yourself and its part of you but you know you don't have to own all that stuff sticking with the Jewish theme its similar to curb your enthusiasm Larry David often says that the way he is in the show is a lot of times how you might visualize things if you had the balls to do them, the way he might want to end his head and it's similar. It's a characterization or dramatization of maybe some of that inner dialogue wrapped up in a disembodied person, wrapped up and put it into Joseph Levy canister I guess? Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it yeah

55:02 Is an exaggeration caricature constructed in such a manner to be entertaining and grossing. Has it been surprising to people that see that be your next book usually are this realm of heavy science have people followed you over this new category yeah why did i write the book well my standard answer is your writers right, end to be honest it took me a long time to recover from being sick and i wrote a lot I did a lot of journaling. And then when I started to recuperate and felt fine again, I spent a lot of time in psychotherapy like how did that happen? And I want to make sure that doesn't happen again so I was processing it like a lot for a number of years afterwards and it was just what was on my mind than what I was writing about so after certain point I looked at all the stuff I had written this way oh there's a little book here! So that's kind of how it came about

56:06 Right on right what is enjoyable i hope people do follow you over there as different as it is from your previous work and just before we go i don't usually make these things personal but i do have the great doctor strassman here, add a few months before im going on an ayahuasca retreat in peru marty signed up deposits paid flights are booked. And i have some psychedelic experience but nothing like this do you have any advice for a person who is gonna soon be going into this intense ayahuasca experience. Well yeah you know develop your tool bag develop some things u wanna work on, where can your intent and think that's probably the most important thing is working in ten but at the same time educate yourself about ways to

57:01 You with the experience being emotions physical sensations training you'll be stimulating your imagination with ios and in the meantime you need to. Can develop a rational faculty intellect in preparation for divisions good advice and based on youtube comments i see sometimes i got the tool bag thing down pretty well But man, it's going to be awesome. Obviously a little scary but anything worth doing is a little scary and I could talk to you all day but i really should be letting you get on with your day do remind the people maybe about the book or any sort of social media stuff or links you might want them to have before we really button this thing up well i have a facebook page

58:00 There's a couple of specious Rick Strassman on there, some fakes but I'm pretty easy to find on Facebook and also I have my own website rickstrassman.com and I answer every email or that's not entirely true probably you know not answered one or two emails in 20 years but do my best to answer most emails then you can order the books through my website i will sign and inscribe them So, consider that. Yeah and I have the links to podcasts like this one and videos on my website and I post them when they're up on Facebook as well

58:46 Right on, very cool. Well you've definitely put your mark on the world and I was really impressed with DMT and The Soul of Prophecy getting down to the nature of these beings in these experiences is a tough thing to do so i salute you for trying thanks again and do take care well thanks oh you know one point or you know what thing i want to say before we completely sign off sure a couple years ago book came out called DMT Dialogues by park street press the empty dialogue and came out in twenty eighteen. And it's all about the beans its transcribe talks that occurred up in tearing ham institute, and there is a conference there about the DMT beings and lectures that were given including one that i gave are transcribed into dmg dialogues so if you really want to get into the weeds with the beings

59:44 I've got a chapter in there as well which is my latest thinking about the beans. Yeah that's awesome i definitely appreciate that resource and in the weeds with the bean sounds like a good name for a podcast should you ever start one. Alright thanks again huge fan of your work thanks for spending time with me im honored, im humbled and can't wait to get this out to people. You got it. Take care! And as the Mandalorians say, this is the way good people! Dr Rick Strassman in the house probably not what the people expected but hopefully something that people enjoyed Obviously Rick's work had a big impact on the subjects I'm interested in I remember reading The Spirit Molecule while working and The Sunglass Hut kiosk and the UTC mall many moons ago

1:00:45 I would never have thought i'd have any reason or chance to interview him down the line. It's a crazy world we live in and maybe this comparison of the beings that show up in prophetic states in the Hebrew Bible wouldn't be my first choice as subjects, but a breakdown of any beings from anywhere is provocative enough for me And I'm glad i got to ask him some things point blank because his work has been kind of brought into the realms of bro science and hippie ideology. You know, a lot of people have run to some pretty extreme lengths with his work and it seems clear to me that he likes to be a bit more measured and methodical even though the subject matter is quite strange

1:01:33 So yeah, this might not have been the exact point in Dr. Strassman's career and line of study that interests me most but when Dr. Strassman has a new book out you jump on it if you host a show like this! The book is quite awesome with all the dense categories of material to analyze and I voiced my concern with the authenticity of the prophetic state accounts they pass through many hands They're written down or possibly tweaked to be included in a religious context in this grouping of stories, so certain details could be twisted to fit the narrative of the church. And clearly we're not talking about The Vatican but this is still foundational material So I'm still a little skeptical What do I know? He's been studying this stuff for many years! I'd rather just celebrate the moment and not get too hung up on it

1:02:27 I just want to have a good time, and a good time we did have. It's definitely a book that i'm glad to have on the shelf and even if you're only primarily interested in the one half of it there is no better detail for detail breakdown of the beings that people experience on DMT than what I've found And its interesting that Dr. Strassman seems more skeptical or at least more cautious when it comes to the DMT entities There are nuances in the messages and interactions that would make a person feel that way. I fully understand, some particular accounts are quite brutal but if your only interaction with the human happened to be the Zodiac Killer then it might just as easily cover your perspective of humans So surely there are exceptions to every rule but its damn fun to talk about

1:03:20 And it's just kind of exciting to get past the, are the entities real? kind of conversation and start way further down the road to actually profiling them. Analyzing that data from even the prophetic state accounts with Dr. Strassman's background is a real treat! It's like he pulled out the exact parts of the Hebrew Bible that I would care about and then held them up for the light and however you look at it. As he said in the interview, you have to vet the beans so consider them vetted people! And in this episode and every episode there is an extra hour for Plus subscribers and Patreon people

1:04:02 And in today's we get deeper into the weird stuff. How Dr. Strassman views the imagination, where do these beings come from? What do we know about their realm? Comparing and contrasting the emotional content of these experiences what dr strassman thinks about the nexus of psychedelic culture silicon valley and where ideas come from are smartphones the work of demons We also talked about the Huxley-Leary debate. Who should be messing with these compounds? Should they only be for the elite or should they be for the masses? And we got a nice little anecdote about Rick's 1986 DMT trip administered by the late, great Terrence McKenna himself! So fun stuff that I really hadn't heard Dr. Strassman talk about before personally

1:04:53 Also before we go I have to give a shout out to THC's magic man behind the curtain, our audio editor who worked his magic on this one for sure and stitched Dr. Strassman's choppy signal out of the conversation he was on a less than perfect internet connection when we recorded this and Our editor tried his best to hide that fact. But sign up for PLUS if you like what I do and how i do it at thehiresidechats.com That's the show, big thanks again to The Good Doctor! Check out his books if they've piqued your interest and I will see ya next time Your move spirits beings demons angels in the vast entities of the other world...your fuckin' move

1:05:56 I'm too high, so I spill Watch out! I can't stay running around Can't stay down, down I'm too high, so I spill

1:07:35 afraid to do the time I ain't gonna take none of your proven wrongs and I can't stand no putting me down yeah, yeah, yeah I spell on you

1:08:27 Oh, so you're mine The highest I've ever knew You're not afraid to do the time Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh