The Psychedelic Handbook p.33

The notion of an underlying religious experience common to all traditions is not true. One need only look at the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) tradition of prophetic experience. There are no examples of a mystical-unitive state in this entire collection of twenty-four books. Rather, the prophetic experience is solely interactive and relational. Take a look at Chapter 1 of Ezekiel, where the heavens open and the prophet witnesses a host of celestial beings, spinning wheels, rotating spheres, fire, and ice. Stunned, he falls to the ground, and an angel lifts him, thus beginning a verbal dialogue between human and the divine.

Nevertheless, there is a widespread notion of a universal spiritual experience—“hardwired” into the human species—that psychedelics activate. This idea dominates discussions of the spiritual effects of psychedelics within and outside academics.

This has had two unfortunate effects. One is that it establishes a goal for any particular psychedelic session. That is, if someone taking a psychedelic—and those administering it—values the attainment of a mystical-unitive state, a sense of disappointment results on both sides if they fail to do so. A more pernicious result is the belief that interactive-relational spiritual experiences are inferior to mystical-unitive ones. This is an opinion, a theological stance, and lacks supporting evidence.

Comparing unfavorably the interactive-relational experience with the mystical-unitive one results in regarding unfavorably religious traditions for whom the interactive-relational experience is fundamental; that is, the basis of their tradition. As Judaism is the most well-known religion basing itself on the interactive-relational—that is, prophetic—experience, this has resulted in Jewish beliefs sitting in the crosshairs of psychedelicists—academic and lay—who promote the universal mystical-unitive state.

Rick Strassman – The Psychedelic Handbook: A Practical Guide to Psilocybin, LSD, Ketamine, MDMA, And DMT/Ayahuasca p.33

DMT and the Soul of Prophecy p.235

Traditional Buddhism teaches that there is no God external to us, one with whom our self attains a deeper and more highly developed relationship in the spiritual state. Instead, one reaches the goal of enlightenment by deconstructing that self and thereby experiencing absolute identification with an imageless, formless, and concept-free state of “emptiness.” The emptiness of enlightenment lacks any attributes, teaches no precepts, and possesses no personality, expectations, nor feelings.

Ethical-moral precepts do play a role in Buddhist practice, but they result from, rather than make up the essence of, the spiritual experience. In my Zen community, the three basic precepts were: (1) cease from evil, (2) do only good, and (3) do good for others. While these comport with the prophetic message, they represent an enlightened response to reality rather than constitute the message of enlightenment itself, because enlightenment by definition contains no message.

Buddhist ethics developed after the core enlightenment experience of the Buddha. He returned, as it were, with certain knowledge; for example, that there is no abiding self in the mind-body complex, that everyday existence is impermanent and therefore an improper relationship with it begets suffering. Therefore, deconstructing our relationship with the phenomenal world leads to inner peace. Buddhist interactive-relational guidelines, such as acting charitably, are secondary, not intrinsic, to a higher-order a-relational mystical-unitive experience.

In prophecy, there exists the maintenance and even intensification of one’s self in a highly dynamic and interactive relationship with a speaking, feeling, acting, and teaching God. Through prophecy, God communicates specific guidelines for beliefs and behavior that are consistent with the natural and moral laws He created and sustains. The prophetic experience is full of intelligible information, not devoid of it. The message, not its absence, is the soul of prophecy—its essential feature.

Rick Strassman – DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible p.235

Filled with Fire and Light p.4

The Romans had their legislators and gladiators, the Greeks their oracles and philosophers. As for the Jews, they had their prophets. Did they reveal the future? No. The present occupied them more deeply than the future. What they did was unravel the significance of the present so as to understand its consequences for the future. In so doing, they praised virtue and condemned the cheap seduction of evil. Their mission consisted of trying to reunite the people of Israel and the God of Israel.

Elie Wiesel –Filled with Fire and Light: Portraits and Legends from the Bible, Talmud, and Hasidic World p.4

DMT and the Soul of Prophecy p.176

In enlightenment, relatedness becomes most as the subject/object dichotomy drops away. If there is no object and no subject, there is no relationship. . .

While Buddhism does analyze relatedness, it does so in order to do away with it. The Abhidharma describes a twelve-step model called “dependent origination” that is consistent with Buddhism’s view that the phenomenal world, both inner and outer, has no inherent reality. This world is conditioned, composite, and ephemeral, and our restless, painful, unenlightened state results from mistaking the unreal for the real. More precisely, it is the result of a flawed relationship with the unreal, treating it as if it were real. Dependent origination teaches practitioners to treat all these seemingly real things as objects of meditation, the practice of which leads to a more enlightened consciousness.

Buddhism consequently has developed meditation practices that deconstruct the components of consensus reality. This process results in apprehending reality’s essential lack of substantiality and the futility of hoping to derive satisfaction from it. The practitioner “de-realizes” every object with the intended result of distancing “the self” from “it,” effectively precluding what we might traditionally consider a “relationship” with anything.

Rick Strassman – DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible p.176

DMT and the Soul of Prophecy p.57

Both of these non-Western systems have built into them characteristics chat indicate their being less than optimal religious models for the spiritual properties of the Western psychedelic drug experience. One is theological. Neither Buddhism nor indigenous shamanism are theocentric, positing God as the creator and sustainer of the natural and spiritual worlds. Buddhism, at least ostensibly, teaches that belief in an external God is not conducive to the inner work that one must engage in to attain the enlightened state. And shamanism emphasizes a multitude of invisible spiritual forces instead of God. I believe that in order for the psychedelic drug experience to exert the greatest possible influence on Western religious sensibilities, it is advantageous to present and interpret that experience in a manner consistent with religious notions already existing within those religions. The bedrock of all three major Western religions is the belief in God. Therefore, maintaining and building upon that belief seems more likely to be accepted than what might result from discarding it and substituting non-monotheistic beliefs.

The situation is more complex in Buddhism, at least for the school in which I trained. Both during ritual and everyday activities, we routinely prayed to the Buddha, bodhisattvas,* and deceased teachers within our lineage. We bowed to their photographs and statues. And our teacher taught that Buddhism is not atheistic after all, but that one must search for references to God in textual allusions. After some years the notion began pressing on me that if I were to bow and pray to something or someone, I preferred that it be the highest and most sublime “thing,” rather than a dead human or one of many spiritual beings. And if Buddhism needed to cloak its belief in God, there seemed to be an intellectual dishonesty underlying that decision.

In a similar nontheist manner, shamanism emphasizes evoking and controlling invisible spiritual forces of nature for healing, revenge, attracting a spouse, warfare, seeking lost items, and so forth. I again found myself chafing under a model that prayed to spirits instead of their creator and sustainer: God. While Christian elements such as belief in God and Jesus are making increasing headway into Latin American shamanism, this is a relatively new phenomenon and is not intrinsic to it.

Neither Latin American shamanism nor Buddhism will be able to claim much theological allegiance from Westerners who either believe in, or refuse to disbelieve in, God. Western atheistic students of Buddhism or shamanism may prefer interacting with the illusory nature of reality or a panoply of nature spirits than with their conflict-laden notion of God. However, the seeming lack of a recognizable God in both models is an obstacle to either of them providing a large-scale religious model for the contemporary Western psychedelic drug experience.

*Spiritual beings with particular characteristics such as love, compassion, courage, chergy, and so on. One may invoke their aid by prayer and other rituals.

Rick Strassman, MD – DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible p.57

Founding God’s Nation p.362

Modern readers are likely to be repelled by the law of the talion: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, strikes most of us as primitive, if not barbaric or cruel. Besides, what good can it do the victim if the perpetrator suffers an identical harm? In support of such negative judgments, there is little evidence that these punishments were ever meted out, as the Rabbis interpreted them as calling only for proportional monetary damages. But even if read literally, taken in context against the existing cultural and legal alternatives, the law of the talion is a giant step forward from the barbarism and mayhem of revenge cultures, even as it concedes something to popular demands for retributive justice.

First of all, the law of the talion establishes the principle of measure and fitness. It limits the impulse to take revenge by restricting the amount—no more than an eye for an eye—and the object of punishment: only the perpetrator shall be punished, not also (or instead) his wife or his children. (In the Code of Hammurabi, if an upper-class woman dies as a result of the blow, the daughter of the offender shall be put to death [209-210].) Second, the social class of the victim is irrelevant—another blow to the rule of honor and pride. (In the Code of Hammurabi, of the woman is lower class or us a bondwoman, the assailant pays only a fine, even if the woman dies from the injury [211-214].) Third, by announcing the punishment in advance, the ordinance removes it from the realm of discretion, limiting the ability of judges to favor members of their own class. The lives of all pregnant women (and their unborn babies) are of equal weight before the court. Finally, as in the previous ordinances, the law of the talion—though it might seem to be motivated by vengeful desires—in fact rejects the idea of revenge. It ignores the avenging motive of wounded pride and honor and address only the retribution of harm.

Leon Kass – Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus p.362