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DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences| Media: | Paperback | | Author: | Rick Strassman MD | | Publisher: | Park Street Press | | Release date: | 01 December, 2000 | | List price: | $16.95 |
| Our price: | $11.53 that is 32% off! |
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| DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences |
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Absolutely fantastic. Best you'll find about DMT |
This is the best you'll find regarding DMT.
This was a great book that covered very well the legal, medical, and technical parts of getting the research approved and the actual study in the first half of the book. The second half had the actual experiments with some fascinating personal accounts.
I would personally reccomend this to both people who are interested in psychedelics as more than just an intoxicating good time, as well as people wishing to learn more about the "near death" phenomena. |
| DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences - Rick Strassman MD |
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An absorbing journey to other worlds |
I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Dr Strassman. Once begun I could not stop. I was fascinated to learn how much time and effort went into the project and the results of it.
I found Dr Strassman's views to be professional and balanced. As he writes in the book, no one will be entirely pleased by his conclusions but I liked the way in which he remained an impartial observer.
I feel that I have gained valuable insights into myself and many of my life experiences as a result of just reading this book.
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| Rick Strassman MD - DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences |
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An essential read for the entheonaut |
Dr. strassman's book was one of the first I read when I decided to embark upon an entheogenic spiritual path. I highly recommend it to those considering entheogens as spiritual agents and catalysts.
Dr. strassman is to be commended on at least two counts. He dared to apply for permission to study psychedelics under controlled scientific conditions. Second, as a Buddhist he dared to propose to a close-minded Buddhist community that psychedelics could be a useful agent for spiritual growth.
This is a wonderful book for those first considering embarking upon an entheo-based spiritual path. It is one thing to read the largely unfiltered experiences of people who experience DMT on the Erowid experience vaults ( www.erowid.org ) and quite another to read the experiences as recounted by subjects in a controlled scientific experiment. This book marvelously demonstrates the similarity of various persons' "contact" experiences. I call them "contact" experiences because the world of DMT is a world of sentience, of other beings, of contact with (sometimes terrifyingly) alien minds.
A whole host of interesting spiritual, theological and philosophical questions are raised by these experiences. People sometimes describe the DMT experience as more "real" than waking daily life. What then is the "primary" reality, when dualistic mundane consciousness appears more a dream than the psychedelic experience? And the DMT experience comprises a world of myriad beings, of many "spirits", all alive and communicative. Does the well populated and diverse animate universe of the DMT experience suggest that the pantheistic and animistic world of the aboriginal shaman describes the noetic spiritual world better than the simple God/Devil Heaven/Hell model handed to us by Christianity? Further, the common experience of contact with apparently nonhuman minds seems to throw us into new territory not really mapped out by any conventional spiritual path (though Hinduism and shamanistic paths seem to be the best fits for these visions).
Dr. strassman's book is also valuable as a diary of one researcher's attempts to fulfill the nearly impossible conditions that the government imposes on researchers attempting to do work on prohibited psychoactives. This book should serve to discourage all but the most determined scientists from doing further research on psychedelics, at least in the United States. In this age of neurochemistry, the pharmaceutical industry is devoting increasing money to research into brain chemistry. If the United States is to retain its economic lead, these unreasonable restrictions on research into potent brain agents must come to an end. If they do not, we will increasingly lose scientific talent to Europe and Asia (just as is happening already due to our bans on stem cell research).
On the downside Dr. strassman's book is not a handbook to the entheogenic path for the practitioner. The intravenous mode of DMT delivery that he uses is not available to the layman. And, the clinical settings that Dr. strassman was forced to use were highly inappropriate and unconducive to a positive entheogenic experience.
Those who are about to undertake a DMT experience should be in a comfortable, safe place; have a sitter; and use a precisely controlled dose. I do not trust the commonly used path of smoking DMT or working with it through the medium of ayahuasca, because of the difficulty of proper dosing. I believe that the most common cause of terrifying or negative experiences with most psychedelics is due to overdose, and bad set (mindset) and setting (environment). I would like to see intravenous DMT become available to laymen, so that DMT dosing can be more precisely controlled.
Overall, this book is a valuable and lasting contribution to 20th and 21st century human understanding of the psychedelic experience, and essential reading for every walker of this spiritual path.
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