Greg Bishop has written an excellent blog over at UFO Mystic discussing one of my favorite researchers, Dr. Rick Strassman, who in the 1990s conducted extensive research with Di-Methyl Tryptamine (DMT) not unlike the experiments of Terrence McKenna. Strassman
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Hi Micah,
Thanks for mentioning my work.
I think McKenna was one of the finest minds of the 20th century, and Strassman has done some crucial scientific research.
The funny thing about the Hopi though: they supposedly did/do not use hallucinogens. They were thought to be an island of Apollonian sensibility as opposed to some of nearby tribes, such as the peyote-eating Yaqui, who were, as anthropologist Ruth Benedict once said, Dionysian. (I’m beginning to wonder about this dichotomy though, with the easy availability of psychedelic plants such as Datura in northern Arizona.)
Anyway, in terms of the physical versus inner space ETs you mention, the Hopi say that once long ago they met with their gods and kachinas (messenger spirits) in the flesh– that is in the 3-dimensional world. Now, however, because of their general spiritual decline, these entities come only in the spirit.
These are accessed via shamanic drumming and hours and hours of dancing in the brutal heat of the desert, rather than through ingesting substances.
This inner/outer stuff is a messy problem–whether we’re seeing actual physcial abduction, mental experiences, or (as I think Whitley Strieber advocates) a combination of both.