Mysticism, DMT & Dr. Rick Strassman

In the early 1990’s Psychiatrist Rick Strassman began to search for the biological mechanism involved in the experience of mysticism. He was intrigued with the epiphanies of Moses and other Old Testament prophets and sought to find the biological basis for their mystical experiences. He initially focused his research on melatonin, a substance naturally occurring in the pineal gland. This did not prove to be linked to the mystical experience.

However, another substance dimethyltryptamine (DMT), also produced in the pineal gland he found is linked to mystical, out of body experiences.The subjects in his study had multidimensional experiences on DMT, both visual and auditory hallucinations. They spoke of feeling that they were transported to another world where they felt it was as real as waking reality, able to communicate telepathically, and generally feeling connected to all of life in a transformative way. In DMT online forums today, people often speak of the experience as ‘breaking out of the simulation.’

Strassman’s background includes twenty years of training and experience in a Zen monastery. He expected the DMT experience would be similar to those kind of spiritual enlightenment experiences during meditation. But what he found was so much more than that. Over half of his research participants had the kind of mystical states described above.

This research was groundbreaking and told us what was going on in the brains of biblical prophets when they experienced a loss of sense of personal identity and deep mystical connection with the All, with God. Strassman has thus dubbed DMT the ‘spirit molecule’ as it is gateway to multidimensional experiences.

Although DMT naturally occurs in the human body, it can also be vaporized or injected as a drug. The DMT drug is so powerfully psychedelic that it has been banned in many countries, it is illegal to manufacture, buy, possess, or distribute the drug in the United States. The awakening experience can been so intense and disorienting that some people describe feeling lost in their lives afterward taking it.

Harvard Professor and psychonaut researcher, Michael Pollan, addresses this issue in his book How to Change Your Mind, with the recommendation that clinics be created to administer DMT (and similar substances) so that individuals can have proper after care to help them to assimilate back into their daily life after a mind-altering experience.

We didn’t have to set up clinics for this in ancient times because we had mystery schools that taught initiates how to incorporate these out of body experiences in their daily life about how to assimilate those transcendent experiences to live between the worlds, both in the seen and unseen realms.

The immense popularity of Michael Pollan’s work demonstrate the hunger we have to "step out of the matrix." And our desire to access altered states, is why our Creator put DMT within us.

In my courses, I work with people to prepare them to be ready to access this transcendent state naturally (activating DMT through sexual pleasure). However, learning how to trigger the release of DMT is only a part of what is needed to work with DMT within the brain and body - we then need a framework to incorporate our new insights. That framework is taught in my classes through the lens of esoteric Christianity.