the gods experiment [warning: a tad bit of nudity]
I was browsing through the latest edition of Discover Magazine and stumbled upon a fascinating article by John Horgan entitled "The God Experiment," which asked this question: Suppose scientists found a way to give us permanent, blissful, mystical self-transcendence. Would we want that power?
Hell, yes! I cried, upsetting several customers in line with me at the Quick-ee Mart. I quote only part of the article here (it's worth the whole read) but this information boggles my mind:
Rick Strassman … a psychiatrist in New Mexico, traces spirituality to a single compound, dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. In his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Strassman proposes that DMT secreted by our own brains plays a profound role in human consciousness. Specifically, he hypothesizes that endogenous DMT triggers mystical visions, psychotic hallucinations, alien-abduction experiences, near-death experiences, and other exotic cognitive phenomena.
First synthesized by a Canadian chemist in 1931, DMT is the primary active ingredient of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic tea ingested as a sacrament by Amazonian Indians and by members of two churches in Brazil. (Although DMT is a controlled substance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that members of a church in New Mexico can ingest ayahuasca for religious purposes.) Pure DMT normally has no effect when consumed orally, because an enzyme in the gut renders it inactive. But in the 1950s Stephen Szara, a Hungarian chemist who later worked for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, discovered that when injected, DMT triggers an extremely powerful hallucinogenic trip lasting less than an hour.
Like the classic psychedelic compounds LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin, DMT resembles neurotransmitters such as serotonin. But what makes DMT unique among the known psychedelics is that trace amounts of it naturally occur in the human body. Scientists first isolated DMT in human blood in 1965, and in 1972 a group led by the Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod of the National Institutes of Health detected the compound in human brain tissue.
These discoveries led to speculation that endogenous DMT—perhaps produced in excess or improperly regulated by the body—contributes to schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. By the early 1980s, the DMT theory of psychosis was largely abandoned when psychedelic research involving humans became too controversial. But in 1990, arguing that DMT merited further investigation, Strassman obtained permission from federal authorities to inject the drug into human volunteers.
A Zen Buddhist, Strassman was intrigued by the possibility that endogenous DMT plays a role in triggering mystical experiences. He suspected that DMT might be produced in the pineal gland, a minute organ nestled deep in the brain. The pineal gland abounds both in chemical precursors of DMT, such as tryptophan, and in beta-carbolines, the same compounds that render DMT orally active in the South American brew ayahuasca by counteracting the enzyme in the gut that breaks down DMT. From 1990 to 1995, Strassman supervised more than 400 DMT sessions involving 60 volunteers at the University of New Mexico. These were the first sanctioned psychedelic experiments involving human subjects in the United States since the mid-1970s.
To a certain extent, the DMT sessions fulfilled Strassman's expectations. Many of his subjects reported quasi-religious sensations of bliss, ineffability, timelessness, and reconciliation of opposites; a certainty that consciousness continues after death of the body; and contact with "a supremely powerful, wise, and loving presence." Others underwent classic near-death experiences, feeling themselves leaving their bodies and moving through a tunnel toward a radiant light.
Volunteers also reported visions that did not fit neatly into Strassman's scientific or spiritual worldview, however. Forty-seven percent encountered otherworldly beings, variously described as clowns, elves, robots, insects, E.T.-style humanoids, or "entities" that defied description. These bizarre beings were not always friendly. One of Strassman's subjects claimed to have been eaten alive by insectoid creatures. In part out of concern about this negative experience, Strassman discontinued his research.
However, on page 56, there is a photograph of a yellow motorcycle helmet, the sort popular in 1970s Disney action movies (think: Condorman) with the following caption: Neurobiologist Michael Persinger has devised a wired helmet that he says induces religious experiences in those who wear it. Zounds! no more boring trips into the Mexican wilderness to hunt for peyote! No more glue sniffing! No more licking the glow - in - the - dark chemicals off the back of those cheap stars you get at planetariums!
Still, all joking aside, what fascinates me still is the idea of having the Divine1 flow through me and be able to actually do something with it — for the most part I simply pass out when Spirit enters and my friends tell me what happened much later. This, though, would let me channel all that energy into a sharp point. I suppose dimethyltryptamine, like anything, runs the danger of overuse, dependency, abuse; and I have the potential of being a terribly addictive person when left unchecked. It's one reason I gave up drinking. Perhaps, perhaps, if DMT had been used by more people, the old gods wouldn't have died out. Not everyone is a channel and even those who might be are also bound by their culture and time period to believe in only certain things. On the other hand, it probably would cut down on the self-righteousness I usually attribute to major religions. The poet Lucille Clifton said of receiving her own communication from beyond, or "gifts" as she calls them: "if the most righteous people were receiving gifts [instead of the humble] it would be much easier."
And at twilight he sacrificed
me, small thing, I had banished
him for some petty evil but he
returned as he always returns.Ai!, to hear his Ave Maria makes
me want to leave all this indomitable
chastity, your halfhearted sex so
I shivered with pleasure watching
those muscled thighs, that broken
wobble from yellow fever, typhus,
the tools of his trade. Of course,I clasped the monster to my
breast, expanding, scalding,
there was that terrible scorching
as he plunged, withdrew to
plunge again, let there be pain,I confided in his pale, feral
ear. A laugh in the darkness
and a warm summer breeze
I burst, mouth over me, tongue
inside; flame, a libation, flame
and jewels, flame a
flower. Just like that.
- I have never been comfortable with the limiting words we have in English to describe transcendence. I can talk vaguely about the sensations but in the end I fall back on cliched contemporary Judea-Christian words (Spirit, Divine, etc.) Being neither Christian nor believing in a monotheist male god leaves me at a bit of disadvantage but what can I do? I simply don't know what else to call these states of being. [back]