Research experiments on DMT also revealed, on June 21, 1957, a different subject found herself: “In a big place, and they were hurting me. They were not human. They were horrible.” (167) Terrence McKenna, in The Invisible Landscape, conceived after taking large amounts of psilocybin in the Amazon, that is was possible that “information stored in the neural-genetic material might be made available to consciousness . . . by intercalation of tryptamines [e.g. DMT] and beta-carbolines [e.g. harmaline, the second essential ingredient of ayahuasca] into the genetic material. We reasoned that both neural DNA and neural RNA were involved in this process.” (168) Hancock has picked up the McKenna philosophy when he states: “If the information were in some way “written” or recorded on DNA that we all share, and if nature has designed us to access this information in trance states by means of our shared human neurology, then all the otherwise inexplicable commonalities, and all the universal motifs, imagery, and phenomena that are experienced by different hallucinating individuals, would make perfect sense.” (169) In The Cosmic Serpent, Narby describes DNA as: “an ancient high biotechnology containing over a hundred trillion times as much information by volume as our most sophisticated information-storage devices. Could one still speak of a technology in these circumstances? Yes, because there is no other word to qualify this duplicable, information-storing module. DNA is only ten atoms wide and as such constitutes a sort of ultimate technology. It is organic and so miniaturized that it approaches the limits of material existence.” (170) DNA itself, has an interesting relationship with Tryptophan, which it utilizes for building life. (171) In a report published in London on August 8, 2004, Crick admitted to colleagues that he was high on LSD in 1953 when he “perceived the double helix shape.” (172) Serotonin, DMT, psilocybin, ibogaine and LSD all contain a nucleus, or basic building block, of tryptamine, derived from the amino acid tryptophan. (173) On May 23, 2013, Strassman’s Research Organization Cottonwood, announced that DMT had been found in the pineal glands of rats and mice. This was a milestone step in the advancement of understanding DMT and the role it plays in mammalian brains. In a paper published on June 27, 2019, in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of scientists at the University of Michigan have shown that the mammalian brain has all the tools it needs to make DMT. The only differences this team found, in contrast to Strassman’s hypothesis of pineal gland production, were that two of the enzymes required to manufacture DMT were also found in the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus, leading them to conclude it’s likely not the pineal gland which is the primary source driving DMT synthesis. (174) |
On the nature of DMT and ayahuasca visions, for those who have not tried it, Benny Shanon, Professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, documented several hundred ayahuasca experiences and reports: “The frequency of facilities pertaining to amusement parks in the visions is, it seems to me, disproportionately high. Especially noted are carousels and Ferris Wheels.” (175) Michael Harner, author of Way of the Shaman (1980) writes that he saw a “supernatural carnival of demons” when he first drank ayahuasca. (176) Harner, also writes about his experience on ayahuasca in 1961, as one of the first westerners to partake in the ceremony, in which he claims he had a “spectacular vision in which he saw dragon-like creatures that came to earth fleeing something, perhaps an enemy, “out in space” after a journey that had lasted for “eons” and “the creatures showed me how they had created life on the planet in order to hide within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence. Before me, the magnificence of plant and animal creation and speciation – hundreds of millions of years of activity – took place on a scale and with a vividness impossible to imagine. I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside all forms of life, including man. They were the true masters of humanity and the entire planet, they told me. We humans were but the receptacles and servants of these creatures. For this reason, they could speak to me from within myself. In retrospect one could say they were almost like DNA, although at that time, in 1961, I knew nothing of DNA.” (177) Harner claims he had the vision in 1961, but he wrote this book in 1980. Let’s read what he originally stated in 1973 in his book, Hallucinogens and Shamanism: “For several hours after drinking the brew, I felt myself, although awake, in a world literally beyond my wildest dreams. I met bird-headed people, as well as dragon-like creatures who explained that they were the true gods of this world. I enlisted the services of other spirit helpers in attempting to fly through the far reaches of the Galaxy. Transported into a trance where the supernatural seemed natural, I realized that anthropologists, including myself, had profoundly underestimated the importance of the drug in affecting native ideology.” (178) (167) William J. Turner MD and Sidney Merlis MD, "Effect of Some Indolealkylamines on Man," AMA Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 81, 1959, pp. 121-9 (168) Supernatural, p. 271; McKenna, Invisible Landscape, p. 104 (169) ibid, p. 270 (170) ibid, p. 272; Cosmic Serpent, Narby, p. 103-4 (171) ibid, p. 281; Francis Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, Futura Macdonald, London, 1982, p. 171-3 (172) ibid, p. 281; Daily Mail, London, August 8, 2004, p. 44-5 (173) ibid, p. 282; After Strassman, 2001, pp 34-36 (174) https://www.inverse.com/article/57145-natural-sources-of-dmt-human-and-rat-brains (175) Benny Shannon, The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 128 (176) The Way of the Shaman, 1990, page 3 (177) Supernatural, p. 301; Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman, Harper, San Francisco, 1980, 1990, p. 4 (178) Hallucinogens and Shamanism, p. 7 |