DMT and the Bible

DMT and the Bible is an interviwe conducted by Jeff Kripal to mark the publication of Dr. Rick Strassman's new book DMT and the Soul of  Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible, published by Park Street Press.

Jeff: Rick, can you tell us a bit about why you wrote this book?  Your work, of course, is well known and celebrated through your first book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule.  But this book seems like a ‘return to roots,’ as it were. Can you speak in particular to that?
Rick: I was left with a handful of difficult questions at the end of my DMT research in 1995. And I felt I had only partially worked them through in the process of writing DMT: The Spirit Molecule in 2000. It seemed to me that all of these questions would resolve themselves if I could only find the proper model or models that could help me understand the DMT effect. By the expression “the DMT effect,” I mean both the fact of DMT’s existence as well as its effects. What is the nature of the world that DMT reveals? How does it do it? Why does DMT exist in our bodies? What is the value of entering into the DMT state; that is, are we or the world any better off for having visited it?
There is a very useful book written by an early 15th century scholar, Joseph Albo, called The Book of Principles. The Hebrew word he uses which is translated as “principles” could also be translated as “roots.” This in the sense of “fundamentals.” In my case, this searching for fundamentals or roots relates to my search for a cogent model by which one could understand and integrate or utilize the DMT experience. It also refers to my deciding to return to my own roots in the Jewish spiritual tradition in order to search for that model...
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