| This is a far cry from what Harner stated in Way of the Shaman, that humans are “receptacles and servants of these creatures.” I would like to bring the reader’s attention to this last paragraph and quote now: “I met dragon-like creatures who explained they were the true gods of this world.” This was in 1961 and this book was published in 1973. It’s very possible someone in UFO studies had read this. Either way, it’s one of the earlier notations of “reptilians” I have found predating Sitchen, Bouley and Icke. Sitchen’s 12th Planet did not come out until 1976. In 1965, it was discovered by German scientists that DMT is present in human blood and urine. (179) Studies on serotonin receptor sites in the brain revealed that ayahuasca drinkers have a higher density of serotonin transporter receptors in blood platelets. In their book, Inner Paths to Outer Space, Strassman, Wojtowicz, Luna and Frecska MD.s present a case of Jace Callaway who conducted self-experimentation with ayahuasca and took advantage of Single Photon Emission Computerized Tomography (SPECT) scanning facilities at Kuopia University which found a higher density of these serotonin transporter receptors in his frontal cortex which returned to normal when he stopped drinking the ayahuasca and the authors draw a contrast with this to the deficit of serotonin uptake sites found in alcoholics with aggressive disorders. Furthermore, it is argued that it may be possible to treat the symptoms of alcoholic aggressive disorder with tetrahydroharmaline. (180) Serotonin, an essential brain neurotransmitter is a tryptamine derivative also called 5-HydroxyTryptamine (5-HT). Serotonin derives from the amino acid Tryptophan. Aside from being found in mammals, serotonin is found in all bilateral animals including worms and insects, as well as in fungi and in plants. In humans, it is believed to help regulate mood and social behavior, appetite and digestion, sleep, memory, and sexual desire and function. Drugs that alter serotonin levels are used to treat depression, nausea, and migraine, and they may have a role in obesity and Parkinson's disease. Serotonin is also structurally related to LSD, Psilocybin mushrooms as well as DMT. (181) Graham St. John has written an excellent book all about the cultural history of DMT, titled Mystery School in Hyperspace which is well worth reading. Mentioned in the book of particular interest is the extensive early history revolving around people like William Burroughs, who St. John gives credit to DMT in Naked Lunch as being the method of psychoses and not an opiate, which has been widely assumed previously. Around 1961, apparently, Burroughs had “experiments with a DMT-enriched extract that he called “Prestonia,” and it was four years after that, in 1965 McKenna had his first experience with DMT in his apartment in Berkeley. A myth was perpetuated that McKenna obtained this from a fifty-gallon drum from a source at SRI, a non-profit research institute in Menlo Park. Graham maintains it’s more likely it |
came from a high school chemistry friend William Patrick Watson, who was working on a summer organic chemistry project at Stanford School of medicine. St Graham cites an unpublished account of events which led up to McKenna’s first trip on DMT, in which Watson believes that “rather than fencing government research chemicals as he thought, he (Watson) was an unwitting participant in a “controlled release program” in which these chemicals were selectively disseminated into civilian populations while maintaining plausibly deniability for the agencies conducting this covert program.” (182) Regardless of the way in which it happened, it appears that both Burroughs and McKenna, just as Kesey and Hunter, were all “guinea pigs“ in the government’s ongoing MK-Ultra program. This was not the sort of thing anyone had control over, it was a cultural situation where the work of the government, or at least some positive aspects of that work, were slipping into the fields of common use by people who wanted to self-experiment. In other words, the free your mind evangelists of the sixties were the side effect of government control mechanisms. It’s as though the attempt to master evil resulted in a crucible of good, or an opposite and equal reaction to a negative government action. The government scientists working on one project, were, in duality, birthing an agency and child who would grow up to oppose its parent, like most rebellious teenagers. The inventors of the atom bomb, directing its use for evil, would create a chemical atom bomb for the mind with potential to free the soul. In a letter from Burroughs to Allen Ginsburg on May 15, 1952, Burroughs based his ideas on the feedback of his former psychiatrist Dr. Lewis Wolberg when he wrote: “the US Army is conducting secret experiments with this drug. Next thing there will be armies of telepathy-controlled zombies marching around. No doubt about it, yage is a deal of tremendous implications and I’m the man who can dig it.” (183) (179) Inner Path to Outer Space, Journeys to Alien Worlds Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies, Rick Strassman M.D., Slawek Wojtowicz, M.D., Luis Eduardo Luna, Ph. D., and Ede Frecska, M.D., Park Street Press, VT., 2008, p. 35; F. Franzen and H. Gross, Tryptamine, N, N-dimethyltryptamine, N, N-dimethyl5-hydroxytryptamine and 5-methoxytryptamine in Human Blood and Urine," Nature 206 (1965):1052 (180) Inner Paths, p. 145 (181) Shamanism and Drug Propaganda, p. 8; Schultes and Hofmann: The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens, 1: 25-27 (182) Mystery School in Hyperspace, A Cultural History of DMT, Graham St. John, Evolver Editions, Berkeley, 2015, p. XIII (183) Mystery School, p. 22; Burroughs to Ginsberg, May 15, 1952, in William S. Burroughs, the Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945-1959, ed. Oliver Harris (New York, Penguin, 1994, p. 125 |