Editing Rick Strassman (section)

=== Religious models for integrating DMT experiences ===
Inspired by visions he had when he took [[Lysergic acid diethylamide|LSD]] in the early 1970s, Strassman began studying Buddhism as a young man. He trained for 20 years in [[Zen Buddhism]], received lay ordination in a Western Buddhist order, and led a meditation group of the order. But his work with DMT led him to feel Buddhist models may not be the most suitable way for us to explain and integrate the spiritual dimensions of the DMT experience:

{{quote|I worked through various models' methods of understanding the DMT volunteers' experiences, and found them wanting. The Buddhist psychological model didn't comport with the data—the "more real than real" element of volunteers' experiences (Buddhism proposes these phenomena are all generated by the mind, rather than "real" observations of external reality); [this] did nothing to suggest a satisfactory evolutionary explanation for the presence of DMT in the human body.<ref name="Interview: Dr. Rick Strassman">[https://boingboing.net/2011/05/03/strassman.html Interview: Dr. Rick Strassman]  / AVI SOLOMON / 6:39 AM TUE MAY 3, 2011</ref>}}

Strassman suggests that DMT experiences may most closely resemble those found in the Hebrew Bible's model of prophecy:

{{quote|The Hebrew Bible's model of prophecy is appealing because it comports well with the reports of the DMT volunteers. One's sense of self is maintained, there is an external free-standing independent-of-the-observer spiritual world. One relates to the content of the experience, rather than being dissolved into it.<ref name="Interview: Dr. Rick Strassman">[https://boingboing.net/2011/05/03/strassman.html Interview: Dr. Rick Strassman]  / AVI SOLOMON / 6:39 AM TUE MAY 3, 2011</ref>}}

Some of Strassman's experimental participants say that other entities can resemble creatures more like insects and aliens than anything in the Bible.<ref name="Dmt: the Spirit Molecule">Strassman (2001): 206-208.</ref> As a result, Strassman wrote that these experiences of his experimental participants "also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research."<ref name="Dmt: the Spirit Molecule2">Strassman (2001): 202.</ref> He has also hypothesized that endogenous DMT experiences could be the cause of [[alien abduction]] experiences.<ref name="Dmt: the Spirit Molecule2"/>