In the previous post we heard what a number of subjects had to say regarding their encounters with other "beings." It's pretty far out stuff and if you feel most comfortable chalking it up to delusion, hallucination, dreaming, confabulation, mass hysteria or whatever -- please be my guest.
However, I have been immersed in this type of material for 20 years now and cannot so easily dismiss it. That is in part because strikingly similar and internally consistent reports have appeared with great regularity in the alien abduction literature for quite a while.
Strassman was not previously interested in, nor open to, the subject of alien abduction (considering it even more "fringe" than psychedelic research!). However, to his immense credit, he felt he could no longer "plead ignorance" of the phenomenon and he embarked on a study of the literature. Drawing on the landmark work of John Mack, the parallels became immediately obvious and "undeniable," which leads him to ask, rhetorically:
How can anyone doubt, after reading our accounts...that DMT elicits "typical" alien encounters? If presented with...our...accounts...could anyone distinguish our reports from those of a group of abductees?
And similar accounts are found elsewhere, too, not just in the traditional alien abduction literature. For example, using the TMI hemi-synch process Bruce Moen has reported numerous encounters with alien beings. Courtney Brown of the Farsight Institute has had similar encounters in his remote viewing excursions. And Ken Ring, one of the world's leading authorities on the Near Death Experience (NDE), noted in The Omega Project: Near Death Experiences, UFO's and Mind at Large, that he found people who "...in describing what purports to be an NDE begin to talk about UFOs and aliens in the same context."
So, from my own perspective there is something real going on here. Mindbogglingly unbelievable.....but real nonetheless.
In trying to come to grips with the reality of the experiences Strassman has to go pretty far afield, drawing on current thinking in cosmology and quantum mechanics....including notions of parallel universes, multiverses, dark matter, and WIMPS. In brief, he hypothesizes that DMT may open us to "other levels of reality," levels that we are usually unaware of in our normal state of consciousness.
As one subject put it:
DMT has shown me...that there is infinite variation on reality. There is the real possibility of adjacent dimensions. It may not be so simple as that there's alien planets with their own societies. This is too proximal....It's not a [sic] hallucination, but an observation. When I'm there, I'm not intoxicated. I'm lucid and sober.
In the book's conclusion Strassman expresses some disappointment that DMT didn't have quite the therapeutic effect that he had hoped for and it did not lend itself very readily to life altering mystical experiences. However, he did believe that:
Our volunteers unquestionably had some of the most intense, unusual and unexpected experiences of their lives....The spirit molecule dragged, pushed, pulled, and thrust [them] into themselves, out of their bodies, and through various planes of reality.
In closing I would have to agree with a statement made by John Mack in the book's front matter:
Strassman's important research contributes to a growing awareness that we inhabit a multidimensional universe that is far more complex and interesting than the one our scientific theories have shown us. It is of the utmost importance that we face the implications of this discovery....
If you would like to follow up on this fascinating topic I would, of course, encourage you to get the book. Or, failing that, you could read a comprehensive chapter-by-chapter synopsis by Caroline Taylor found on Goeff Stray's 2012: Dire Gnosis site.
Following the review there is a very interesting transcript of an e-mail exchange she conducted with Strassman in early 2002. Of special relevance is her query regarding the possible role of endogenous DMT in mediating Terence McKenna's final timewave "concresence" in 2012. To which Strassman responds that he has been "nursing a theory along these lines" for quite some time.
In the not too distant future I hope to post a review of a more recent book by Strassman et. al., Inner Paths to Outer Space as well as a recently released DVD, The Spirit Molecule.
Strassman can be contacted through his website Rick Strassman, M.D.
