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Setting the Stage
What is prophecy? And what are the psychedelic drugs? In this introductory chapter, I will lay the groundwork for the material that follows, ideas and information that will lead us on a journey taking in a vast religious, intellectual, and scientific landscape.
PROPHECY
The Hebrew Bible, or the “Old Testament,” considers prophecy to be the highest spiritual experience humans may attain. In the prophetic state one communicates with God or God’s angels, hears voices, sees visions, feels extraordinary emotions and physical sensations, and receives novel and valuable insights of a personal or collective nature. This definition of prophecy is much broader than the conventional one of foretelling or predicting. Prediction may occur in prophecy, but it doesn’t always or even frequently occur, and when it does occur, its accuracy often is uncertain. And one may accurately predict without having recourse to prophecy.
The Hebrew Bible is a prophetic text. It recounts innumerable prophetic episodes in dozens of biblical figures. Those who conveyed its legal, poetic, and wisdom content received this information while in a state of prophecy. Even the text’s historical narratives, according to some, required a prophet to accurately record them. And those who redacted the text, the ancient sages of Israel, partook of prophecy-like states on a regular basis. The Hebrew Bible emerged from the mind of prophecy and therefore is a prophetic text.
While the phenomenological characteristics of prophecy, including its visions and voices, are extraordinarily compelling, they do not explain why the Hebrew Bible has exerted such an enduring and pervasive influence on civilization. Rather, the prophetic message is responsible. This message derives from God and serves God’s purposes, some of which we understand and some we don’t.
Prophecy, or direct communication with God, began with the first humans, Adam and Eve, and a particular form of prophecy, what is called canonical prophecy, flourished during the monarchical era of Israel. This period began in the ancient Kingdom of Israel in the mid-eleventh century BCE, a time and place in which the canonical prophets found worthy targets for their ethical and moral teachings in the corrupt royalty and in general society. These figures left behind books bearing their names: Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and others. According to the rabbinical authorities of the early common era, prophecy “ended” in the mid-fifth century BCE—the early period of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. These clerical leaders made this declaration for a variety of reasons, theological and political. However, prophecy appears to have continued after its supposed end, albeit no longer within the mainstream of normative Judaism.
PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS
Since Ezekiel’s time, medical science has also ventured into the visionary realms, in this case through the effects of the psychedelic drugs. These unique mind-altering compounds, of which LSD*7 is the prototype, affect all facets of human consciousness in a relatively consistent manner. They modify perception, mood, thought processes, physical sensations, and will in ways that strikingly parallel stories we encounter when reading the Hebrew Bible. One perceives visions and voices, experiences extreme emotions and somatic sensations, and attains new insights into personal, social, and spiritual issues.
To date, however, the aesthetic contents of the Western psychedelic drug experience have had a much greater impact on our culture than the message conveyed. We see abundant evidence of this influence in “psychedelic” art, music, and technology. As yet, however, no cogent Western model of “psychedelic” spirituality has emerged, particularly one incorporating traditional Western religious beliefs and practices.
As with prophecy, the Western psychedelic drug experience burst into the larger culture and affected it in a highly public manner. These substances were the object of a tremendous amount of medical-psychiatric research in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, millions of young people experienced their effects in non-research settings, settings that also were associated with major social upheaval, including anti-government protests against the wars in Southeast Asia and reexamination of fundamental sexual mores. Psychedelic drugs also seem to have disappeared after declarations of their banishment by the authorities, in this case the political and scientific rather than the clerical authorities, and legitimate human studies ended with the enactment of legal restrictions in the 1960s and 1970s. And in the final analogy to prophecy, the use of psychedelic drugs continued playing an important role in our culture even after this proclamation, albeit outside the mainstream scientific and public arena. That situation is now changing with the resumption of medical research with these drugs. The psychedelic drug research renaissance now provides us with an opportunity to revisit critical elements related to both psychedelic drugs and the religious experience.
THE THEONEUROLOGICAL MODEL AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
In this book I present a new scientific model that joins the prophetic and psychedelic experiences by proposing that their shared phenomenology reflects shared mechanisms. These mechanisms of action—how experiences take place, or “how they work”—are biological and spiritual. Another way of phrasing this is that the mechanisms are physical and metaphysical. The objective data are manifestations of currently invisible metaphysical processes whose presence we infer from the observable phenomena.
I propose that the common biological denominator is the presence of elevated levels of DMT in the brains of individuals in both states. In prophecy, I hypothesize that DMT levels rise endogenously, and this mediates certain features of the experience. In my New Mexico research subjects, brain levels of DMT rose because I injected into their bloodstream large doses of the pure compound.
The common spiritual or metaphysical mechanisms involve what the medieval Jewish philosophers refer to as the “faculties” of the mind. One of these is the imaginative faculty, in which emerge the phenomenological contents—visions, voices, emotions, and so forth—of the experience. This is prophecy’s form, or “body.” The other is the rational faculty, whereby one interprets and communicates the information those contents convey. This message is prophecy’s essential nature, its “soul.”
This model also adds to the discussion the involvement of God, who is the ultimate arbiter of whether someone attains prophecy. While one may possess through birth or training high-functioning rational and imaginative faculties, these only determine one’s qualifications for prophecy, not its attainment. This model is theocentric inasmuch as God is the initiating and organizing principle, rather than brain anatomy and function assuming this role. It proposes that changes in brain function are the means by which God communicates with us, rather than proposing that changes in brain function create the impression of such communication. It is a top-down rather than a bottom-up model.
There are practical implications of a theoneurological understanding of prophecy. These emerge from speculating how the prophetic and DMT states’ resemblance to each other reflects similar mechanisms of action.
WHY A NEW MODEL?
I began my psychedelic drug research in 1990 hypothesizing that DMT administration would occasion states of consciousness with spiritual characteristics. If the effects of exogenous DMT replicated features of non-drug-induced spiritual experience, this would be consistent with a role for elevated endogenous DMT in these non-drug states. While contemporary psychopharmacological research models informed the design of my project, I also brought to it a specific spiritual orientation that had grown out of decades of lay Zen Buddhist study and practice. However, at the end of my research in 1995, I concluded that neither psychopharmacology nor Buddhism provided an adequate model for my volunteers’ experiences.
Two features of the DMT state were responsible for this lack. One was the overwhelming and unshakeable sense of the reality of those experiences. Taking this conviction at face value is inconsistent with Buddhism’s and brain sciences’ belief that their nature is wholly illusory, or hallucinatory. The other was the highly interactive and relational quality of volunteers’ experiences. This contrasted with the unitive nature of Zen enlightenment, in which one’s individuality drops away in a concept-free and imageless state. I thus began searching for alternative scientific and religious models, and this search ultimately led me to the Hebrew Bible and its notion of prophecy.
Twenty years ago, if someone had suggested turning to the Hebrew Bible for a model for the DMT experience, I would have been highly skeptical. Decades had passed since I had engaged with the Jewish tradition. More relevant, I had never considered the Hebrew Bible a source of insight into spiritual states in general, and certainly not into the psychedelic drug effect in particular. However, in seeking the best possible interpretation and application of my findings, the words of two of my original DMT mentors continually pushed me toward whatever direction seemed most promising.
Daniel X. Freedman, M.D., one of the fathers of modern American psychiatry, questioned the relevance of psychedelic drug research using the refrain “If so, so what?”1 What does the psychedelic experience mean? Why should these drugs’ effects concern us? What are they good for? The other mentor was Willis Harman, Ph.D., an engineer by training as well as a seminal figure in the use of LSD for enhancing creativity.2 Indirectly providing some exegesis*9 to Dr. Freedman’s cryptic mantra, he challenged me one day on a fateful walk along the central California coast by asserting: “At the very least, we must enlarge the discussion about psychedelics.” While neither suggested looking at Hebrew Bible prophecy to help explicate the psychedelic drug experience,†10 remembering their challenging words of encouragement inspired me to embark on and persist in this project.
WHAT THIS BOOK DOES NOT PROPOSE
I wish to forestall several misunderstandings that might arise from what you have so far read. First, I am not claiming that Hebrew Bible figures experienced prophecy by ingesting psychedelic plants or drugs. There is little, if any, evidence in the text for this idea. More important, the presence of endogenous psychedelics such as DMT, ones that the body makes on its own, militates against the necessity of demonstrating the use of exogenous substances.
Second, I am not a DMT zealot, declaring that “endogenous DMT alone causes prophecy.” I have chosen DMT as my model compound because we know more about its effects and biological mechanisms than about any other endogenous psychedelic substance. The state it occasions does share many features with the prophetic one. However, as we will see, the fit is not perfect with respect to the two states’ phenomenology, and is rather poor when it comes to their message content. In addition, no data yet exist regarding endogenous DMT activity in non-drug-induced altered mental states such as dreams, near-death, or any type of spiritual experience, let alone prophecy. Finally, DMT, or any other endogenous or exogenous agent, does not “cause” prophecy. It may be one of the elements involved in God communicating with humans but is no more the cause of prophecy than the television set is the “cause” of the content of a television show. That content originates outside of the physical device and is thus a higher-order phenomenon.
THE RISKS AND BENEFITS OF AMATEUR HEBREW BIBLE SCHOLARSHIP
This book lacks the imprimatur that would attach to it if I possessed formal academic or theological training in biblical studies. Even with such training, the vastness of the field of prophecy would have precluded my attaining anywhere near the mastery of the literature that I had obtained regarding the psychedelic drugs when I wrote DMT: The Spirit Molecule. However, I have dedicated myself to an ever-deepening, mostly self-directed, course of Hebrew Bible study since 1998, and I believe I have learned enough to begin sharing some of my findings and conclusions.
My status as a Hebrew Bible studies amateur, pursuing the field for love and not for money or institutional fealty, provides certain advantages that were unavailable while writing DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Here, I may speculate more freely, because I am not adhering to any particular institution’s or organization’s credo. While I attempted to distinguish between fact and conjecture in DMT: The Spirit Molecule, my scientific credentials and affiliations led a significant number of readers to assume the factual nature of many speculative ideas.*11 I hope my unaffiliated and non-credentialed status makes this less likely here.
THE CONTROVERSIAL NATURE OF THIS PROJECT
DMT and the Soul of Prophecy represents a departure from the clinical and research communities I have inhabited for many years. It also enters into a field—biblical studies—that receives little consideration and not a little antagonism from scientific and medical colleagues. Therefore, it is with some anxiety that I await responses from the scientific and medical communities outside of whose objective rigor I now stand some distance and from the biblically oriented spiritual communities, from whom I have had no formal training and with whom I have neither affiliation nor allegiance. Paradoxically, straddling both worlds has made it easier for me to attempt to resolve apparent conflicts between theology and science. It has made it easier to emphasize and build upon commonalities in methods, observations, theories, and goals relevant to both.
Nevertheless, the model I present is bound to raise objections from both scientific and religious readers. A theoneurological model requires that we take into account the God of the Hebrew Bible, a God who uses the brain as an agent rather than a God produced as an epiphenomenon of brain physiology. The God of the Hebrew Bible is externally existent and essentially incomprehensible, possesses certain expectations for our beliefs and behaviors, and through the operation of cause and effect metes out consequences for how we live our lives. This model at first blush may be unpalatable to a secular scientific audience. However, it may at the same time ease the dissonance that exists in the minds of those scientifically inclined individuals whose religious beliefs and practices play an important role in their personal lives. As such it may provide a greater integration of those beliefs into their scientific pursuits.
Those with a primarily faith-based approach to the Hebrew Bible may chafe at what they consider a medicalization of a revered spiritual tradition. Perhaps they will see my hypotheses interpreting away any validity to prophecy, inaccurately concluding that my model proposes: “It’s just your brain on DMT.” This is certainly not my intention, and in fact, my intention is nearly the opposite. I am attempting to explicate how God and humans relate to each other in the prophetic state at the interface of matter and spirit using the tools of metaphysics. This is far from saying that God is a phantom of our minds. Rather, God constituted our mind-brain complex so that we can communicate with the spiritual world, and DMT may be part of how that communication takes place. Therefore, I hope that those of a religious bent will find their faith even stronger as a result of seriously considering the ideas in this book.
I also anticipate resistance from some in the psychedelic subculture because of my emphasis on a Western religious tradition, which most have spurned. From its inception, the psychedelic community has struggled to balance hedonism with idealism, and it appears to me that over the last several decades, hedonism has come out ahead as the primary motivation to use these compounds. Among those taking psychedelic drugs for their spiritual properties, most are partial to Eastern religious or Latin American shamanic models rather than Western biblical ones. There is strong resistance to the suggestion that the Hebrew Bible, particularly with its concept of God, might aid in the development of a cogent psychedelic spirituality. I believe that here, too, just the opposite is the case, and hope to use my extensive background in the psychedelic research field to buttress this notion.
FOR WHOM THIS BOOK IS INTENDED
The more overtly spiritual considerations I present in DMT and the Soul of Prophecy may lose some prospective readers who found DMT: The Spirit Molecule of interest. However, I wish to broaden this book’s appeal to additional readers. For example, prophecy attracts many people due to its relationship with prediction, particularly within the context of apocalyptic, messianic, or utopian “end of times” forecasting. Learning about the original broader meaning of prophecy and its deeper spiritual implications will enlarge these readers’ appreciation of prophecy as more than simply divination or prognostication.
The burgeoning field of neurotheology, and of scientific study of spirituality in general, is making great strides in understanding biological concomitants of religious experience. At the same time, there exists a clear gap between the physiology and the moral and ethical messages these states contain. Evolutionary biology may provide one answer to “If so, so what?” That answer is: “Religious experience is good for you.” Here, the theoneurological model offers scientifically minded readers additional conceptual tools, ones that possess a higher level of abstraction than is currently the case. It does this by answering, “Prophecy is how God communicates with humans.” At the same time, it is absolutely consistent with the goals, methods, and findings of science.
I am also addressing this book to those whose non-drug-induced visionary experiences have inspired them to find a suitable religious system outside of the Western mainstream. I receive many e-mails from such individuals, who describe experiencing DMT-like states without ever partaking of the drug, most commonly during meditation or dreamlike states at the borderlands of wakefulness. Latin American shamanic and Eastern religious models address these types of altered states directly, which is part of their appeal. The Hebrew Bible and its concept of prophecy may provide a useful alternative framework by which to understand these phenomena.
While the psychedelic community may object to the God- and Hebrew Bible–oriented perspective of this book, they nevertheless are one of my target audiences. This group possesses a relatively inchoate and inarticulate view of these drugs’ spiritual potential. Therefore, I wish to demonstrate to such prospective readers how the notion of Hebrew Bible prophecy, with its familiar vocabulary, concepts, and narratives, provides a viable, culturally and psychologically compatible alternative to Latin American shamanic and Eastern religious systems.
New readers forming potentially the largest group are those interested in my discussion of Hebrew Bible prophecy in the context of a novel science-based theory of spirituality. Some new Jewish, Christian, and Muslim readers may already study and revere the text.*12 They especially may appreciate the extensive references to their sacred text and the discussion of how a theoneurological model sheds new light on prophetic experience. Others may wish to approach the material from the perspective of atheism, agnosticism, or simply curiosity about a venerable religious experience that has exerted millennia of profound influence throughout the world.
Finally, I wish to introduce all my readers to the writings of the medieval Jewish philosophers. This remarkable cadre of thinkers has shown me how to begin reconciling science and faith in a manner I previously had been completely ignorant of. If one simply gains an appreciation of these outstanding individuals by virtue of reading this book, I will have accomplished a worthy goal.
Sigmund Freud struggled to understand the Jewish religion and, in particular, the mind of Moses, its greatest prophet. The following excerpt from his Moses and Monotheism resonated with my own anxieties about writing DMT and the Soul of Prophecy:
At this point I expect to hear the reproach . . . that I have built up this edifice of conjectures with too great a certainty, for which no adequate grounds are to be found in the material itself. I think this reproach would be unjustified. I’ve already stressed the element of doubt in the introduction, put a query in front of the brackets, so to speak, and can therefore save myself the trouble of repeating it at each point inside the brackets. 4