 This video is brought to you by Spirit Medicine Walkers. More about it at the end of the video. When we first started our collaboration with Rick Strossman, we wanted to do at least two videos. What a joy it was that we get to do three. You see, while Rick's legendary DMT trials and book, The Spirit Molecule, are very well known, he actually has a second DMT book that is much less well known, DMT and the Soul of Prophecy. Now, of course, at Spirit Science, we do our best to balance spirituality and cutting-edge research. So today, we're collaborating with Rick one more time to look hold the mystical and the prophetic because of this reason especially. And at the end of this video, we'll share with you a bit more about this. Truly, it is just so critical for us to understand. When you have a mystical vision that seems to be of the future, what does that mean? Is it a prophecy, a potential, or just wishful thinking? The effects of psychedelics can be difficult to understand and apply, which is why models are so helpful. Just as biological models help explain what's happening inside the brain, models for subjective experience, what we are conscious of, also provide a valuable platform for exploration. We can approach the subjective psychedelic state, what it feels like when we are tripping from either a spiritual or a psychological perspective. And we find that the two definitely overlap. However, since today we're talking about the spiritual properties of psychedelics, we're going to continue focusing on this avenue for now. The hallmark of a major psychedelic experience, especially DMT, is the sense that what you are seeing, thinking, and feeling is more real than real. More true, intense, relevant, and convincing than anything you've ever experienced before. This is why spiritual traditions are helpful. They believe these experiences are real. Which is why they are so important to the traditions. In contrast, materialistic, reductionistic, scientific explanations, either psychological or biological, treat the content of spiritual experiences as unreal. They are something else. Alterations in brain function or uncovering unconscious material. Another strength of time in tested religious traditions is their emphasis on meaning and integration of spiritual experiences. How do we learn the most we can from these elevated states? What are the take-home lessons? How do we put them into practice? The millennia-old accumulated wisdom of religious models helps us address these questions. We don't have to reinvent the wheel every time we have a psychedelic experience. Nor do we have to return to the psychedelic state every time we need answers. Once we have found a spiritual system that works for us, we can find answers in our normal state of consciousness, consulting texts, teachers, or community. As far as spiritual models go, there are indigenous models, especially shamanism, which has the advantage of accepting the reality of the contents of the visions, including the spirit guides who frequently appear and play such an important role in healing and teaching. Eastern religions are another popular model here. Just look at one of the most popular early psychedelic handbooks that modeled itself after a centuries-old Buddhist text. The psychedelic experience, a manual, based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Currently, there's one particular spiritual model that hasn't been associated or discussed in relationship to the psychedelic experience, at least not very often, in fact, very scarcely. And those would be the western traditions, especially that we call Judeo-Christian. Many of us have rejected these religions, let alone even considered them in the first place, as playing a role in our spiritual lives. This is usually because of how we perceive them being misused by unscrupulous people in order to gain power, fame, and wealth. Even worse are those who commit terrible acts justifying themselves through distorted readings of the Bible. Add to this our childhood experiences with these religions. No one answered our questions about the strange language and stories, laws, poetry, and wisdom. But now, as psychedelics bring us deeper into spiritual matters, how many of us as adults have actually looked carefully at these traditions teach? The spiritual basis of both Judaism and Christianity is the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. And in my own research, I've found that Hebrew Bible prophecy is an attractive alternative model to Eastern religious, nature-based shamanic ones for understanding and integrating our psychedelic experiences. The Hebrew Bible is a collection of 24 books, some dating back thousands of years. Most people today don't realize that the Hebrew Bible underlies most of Western civilization, including theology, politics, economics, ethics and morality, philosophy, law, and ritual. Many of our most common names today are biblical, Daniel and Isaac, Sarah and Ruth. Today, one half of the world's population considers the Hebrew Bible its foundational, spiritual text, clearly making it a powerful and enduring collection of books. This is because the Hebrew Bible is a prophetic text, one that brings us closer to the power and timelessness of the prophetic experience. Why should we exclude ourselves from tapping its resources, especially if it can help us with our psychedelic journeys? Now, as we are entering the Hebrew Bible, please keep in mind that all translation is interpretation. There are many subtle differences in how translations treat specific words, and this affects the overall meaning of the text. For example, B, fruitful and multiply can be translated as a command or as a prediction. You will be fruitful and multiply. While learning biblical Hebrews beyond most of us, there are many good English translations, and since the Hebrew Bible is Jewish scripture, it makes sense to utilize a Jewish translation. What to read, however, is just the beginning, but how do we read it? We recommend a literal reading, not what it might be referring to, say, Jesus or psychedelic plants, but what is the text actually saying? Many misconceptions can be dealt with very quickly using this method. We can do this by assuming the universe of the Hebrew Bible is as real, or more so, than this universe, and see where that leads us. Here's an example. It appears that God angrily expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden because they ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Whatever that fruit was, some even think it was a psychedelic plant, a common interpretation is that God wanted humans to stay ignorant. However, it is the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. What's wrong with that, you might ask? Reading the story carefully, however, we learn that before eating the fruit, Adam and Eve were not ashamed of being naked, and afterwards they were, and tried hiding from God. Before, they lived in a world of truth, what's true and what's false. Now, they live in a world of subjectivity, opinions, emotion-driven conclusions and actions, good or bad, no longer what's true and what's false. In other words, they devolved and are no longer fit inhabitants of paradise. Once we ground ourselves in a plain reading of the text, we can search for its fundamental teachings, such as how to relate to the spiritual world and how to relate to the material one. In the first case, it is that there exists one God who created and sustains existence. In the second, relationship with the material world is the Golden Rule. Love your fellow as yourself. Applying Buddhist ideas to these concepts may make them easier to understand. This system says that all existence is karmic, the result of cause and effect. Things are now because of what came before. Understanding God as the creator and sustainer of cause and effect provides a foothold for accepting God's existence and activities. And the Golden Rule is a good example of the workings of reward and punishment, which is another way of expressing cause and effect. Certain behavior leads to certain consequences. Loving your fellow leads to positive consequences while hating him or her leads to negative ones. Getting back to prophecy. Most of us think of prophecy as predicting the future, but this is only one small aspect of the larger phenomenon. That larger phenomenon is any spiritual experience had by any figure in the text. These range from Moses on Mount Sinai to a nameless footholder accurately dreaming the outcome of a battle. In Chapter 1 of Ezekiel, the prophet hears an overwhelming roar, falls on his face. The heavens open and he sees beings with wings, with eyes on their wings. They move to and fro in ways he can't understand. An ice blue heavenly canopy flashing lightning, spinning wheels and spheres fill Ezekiel's visual field. An angel grabs him by the hair lifting him heavenward and begins speaking to him son of man. Does this sound familiar? This could just as well be a description of a modern-day DMT experience. The Hebrew Bible turns out to have an astonishing degree of overlap between the DMT effect and prophetic experience. However, the two states differ in one very important way. The prophetic experience is cognitive. It contains verbal information. It's filled with words spoken to the prophet by God or angels. And prophetic figures have a box full of verbal and cognitive tools helping them recognize what they see and how to initiate and carry on dialogue with God or angels. Just as important, they know how to communicate the prophetic message verbally to others. Today, the reigning scientific approach to spiritual experience is neurotheology, a bottom up model. Certain stimuli including psychedelics, prayer and meditation activate a brain reflex that results in an altered state of consciousness that we later label spiritual. It's your brain on drugs, or prayer or meditation. The brain generates the impression of communicating with God. Rick's work with the Soul of Prophecy, however, suggests that the Hebrew Bible's prophetic model lets us propose a top-down alternative, theoneurology. Here, God designed the brain in order to communicate with us. DMT is made in the brain and administering DMT produces effects similar to those described by the prophets. Let's then suggest that God communicates with us through producing visions that have their basis in elevated endogenous DMT. And the information the visions contain is determined by their source an external divine being. While many seek for references to psychedelics in the Bible, the presence of endogenous DMT makes this unnecessary, and the text provides no evidence for the use of any intoxicant other than wine. Although some do suggest that there are hints or subtle references for some kind of psychedelics here and there, though that is not as definitive as we would like it to be. Once the prophet receives his or her visions, they must extract information from them. This requires a different part of the mind than where the visions and voices reside. This is the intellect, the rational function of our thinking faculties that deal with ideas, concepts, and words. So, while DMT may mediate what we see, hear, and feel, it is the intellect, the thinking part of our mind that must decipher what they mean. This is why study if the prophetic text is so important. If we recognize what we are seeing, possess the vocabulary and communication skills aiding our ability to relate with the beings, we are much further ahead than simply witnessing a train of images that confuse and pull us. The Hebrew Bible is a prophetic text, just like Buddhist sutras are meditative texts. The Hebrew Bible is a record of prophetic experience, and just just studying sutras causes the mind to resonate with the mind of meditation. So, to study of the Hebrew Bible causes our mind to resonate without a prophecy, the source of the text. Even more intriguing is this idea. The psychedelics mimic elements of the prophetic experience, combining text study with psychedelic work may take us even further into prophecy-like realms. This is where our familiarity with the Hebrew Bible lessens the risk of false prophecy, keeps us grounded with its teachings and moral guidelines. It's not something we make up as we go along. Rather, we are stepping into a vast and powerful, deep and wide, thousands of year old tradition that supports and guides us, both in the psychedelic state and afterwards. It's not an easy tradition to enter, however, and requires dedication and working with trained teachers, text study and like-minded peers, just like Buddhism or Shamanism. Thank you so much for coming on this journey with us, and please give a round of applause to Rick Strossman for his amazing work over the years and for joining us in these fun psychedelic episodes. Truly, the best way that you can support him and his research is by going and getting his books, and spreading the word on his material. We hope this brief introduction to Biblical prophecy and DMT stimulates your curiosity about this way of interpreting and integrating your psychedelic experiences. Good luck. We're all familiar with psychedelics in some way or another. Whether we've gone on a journey ourselves, heard stories from others or just seen videos of people tripping balls during the 60s, the awareness of psychedelics is mainstream enough that most people are at least generally familiar with the subject. And while this is a great thing, it's also a big problem. Truth is, most people are only superficially aware of the deeper nature of psychedelics, what they are, how they work, what their value is, and even how to use them properly. Today, most people who use psychedelics don't have a proper education or understanding about what it is exactly that they're doing. And this is because as far as the mainstream is concerned psychedelics such as psilocybin mushrooms or ayahuasca are schedule 1 drugs with no medicinal value unless you're in Colorado or other countries where they're decriminalized or otherwise legal. But the challenge of a lack of education is something that is really hurting the psychedelic renaissance that we're finding ourselves just starting today. Because there are research initiatives out there that in the last 20 years have been making remarkable headway in demonstrating the exceptional value of psychedelics when used for healing. This includes but is not limited to being able to outright transform depression, anxiety, addiction to hard drugs and cigarettes and improve overall quality of life. But only, and that's a big only, if they're used properly. For justice psychedelics can be profoundly healing they can also be exceptionally damaging and lead to a life of psychosis if done improperly. As the secret CIA MK ultra experiments demonstrated you do someone with a high enough volume of honesty without them knowing and they will go crazy, period. Because of this lack of education journeying with them today can be a bit of a crapshoot. Maybe you have a good trip, maybe you have a really bad one. There are so many factors involved and in most circumstances today people are using these recreationally without truly tapping into the raw potential that these substances offer. It's like having a private jet all to yourself and then using it to drive without flying for two blocks just to get a cup of coffee. All the while you could fly anywhere in the world but you're not even aware that the plane can fly. This is why we created Spirit Medicine Walkers. We've connected with shamans, scientists, mystics and trained psychonauts who all have a history with not just psychedelics but navigating mystical and altered states and together we've created this 30 plus hour long master class experience to train you in everything you need to know about psychedelics and plant medicine healing and transformation. In this course you will learn the nature of psychedelics what they are and how they work, how to utilize plant medicine for deep transformative healing, how to avoid or mitigate the risk of a bad trip so that your journeys are always profoundly healing and transformative, how to prepare for a ceremony, how to navigate the psychic and psychedelic realms, where you go and to do once you're there, how to come out of the ceremony and ground in and integrate your new wisdom and gifts after the fact and the difference between the mystical states and the elusive prophetic states and so much more. The intention here is to empower you with a greater understanding so that you will always have a definitive awareness around your psychedelic adventures and even make sense of past experiences that may have left you feeling dizzy and confused. If you've ever had an interest in psychedelics whether you're experienced in them or not there's going to be something in here for you. Even if you're already an expert cosmonaut this course is designed to help you take your understanding even further. Along with the full course we also have a number of bonuses including an exclusive interview with an ayahuasca named Sarah from Rhythmia who speaks on the path of the shaman and a private Q&A with Dr. Rick the father of modern psychedelic research. On top of all of that I'll even personally show you how I created one of the most magical, automated psilocybin mushroom grow kits I've ever seen. This course is normally listed at $500 but right now we wanted to honor where so many people were at due to the shifts in the economy in the world so for a limited time we're opening up a 30-day group transformational experience with this course for only $50 so that you can jump in watch everything go through all of the material and we'll even have several group gatherings together to discuss the course material and go deeper into the wisdom that we're exploring together. You can use the link on this page to get access to the course now and I'll see you on the inside. Toodles!