{"id":5910,"date":"2015-06-25T10:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-06-25T14:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=5910"},"modified":"2015-06-24T10:39:50","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T14:39:50","slug":"unlocking-spirituality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2015\/06\/25\/unlocking-spirituality\/","title":{"rendered":"Unlocking Spirituality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0056.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-5957\" style=\"margin-right: 5px\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0056-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"DMT\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" align=\"left\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0056-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0056-679x1024.jpg 679w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0056.jpg 719w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a>People have always been fascinated with the idea of a soul.\u00a0 One researcher, Rick Strassman, took this interest to the extreme and performed government approved research using the psychedelic drug N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, also known as the spirit molecule.\u00a0 A short acting and highly powerful hallucinogenic drug, DMT is both synthesizable from the plant ayahuasca as well as being naturally occurring in the pineal gland of mammals.\u00a0 The study follows 60 human volunteers taking this drug and the book <em>DMT: The Spirit Molecule<\/em> details their personal experiences during the experiment.\u00a0 Strassman undertook this study due to his interest in the pineal gland as a potential biological locus for spiritual experiences.\u00a0 Although the study was ended in 1995, Strassman believes it was very successful and gathered a wealth of biological and psychological information from it.\u00a0 Rick Strassman is a currently practicing psychiatrist in New Mexico.\u00a0 In 2014 he published a second book on the topic, <em>DMT and the soul of prophecy: a new science of spiritual revelation in the Hebrew Bible<\/em>.<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0059.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-5960\" style=\"margin-left: 5px\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0059-300x257.jpg\" alt=\"DMT\" width=\"300\" height=\"257\" align=\"right\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0059-300x257.jpg 300w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0059-1024x878.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/files\/2015\/05\/IMG_0059.jpg 1198w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Interest in his study was strong and in 2010 a documentary with the same title, <em>DMT: The Spirit Molecule, <\/em>came out.\u00a0 The movie follows the same experiment as the book and interviews many experts, including Strassman, on the topic of the powerful psychedelic drug DMT and its potential for unlocking human spirituality.\u00a0 For further information on this topic, there are also many books on the plant ayahuasca, taken by native people in the Amazon, in the Santo Domingo Collection.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/id.lib.harvard.edu\/aleph\/011069304\/catalog\" target=\"_blank\">DMT: The Spirit Molecule<\/a><\/em> is available at Widener Library in the Santo Domingo Collection.\u00a0 <em><a href=\"http:\/\/id.lib.harvard.edu\/aleph\/014212405\/catalog\" target=\"_blank\">DMT and the soul of prophecy: a new science of spiritual revelation in the Hebrew Bible<\/a><\/em> is also available at Harvard in the Andover Theological Library.<\/p>\n<p><em>Thanks to Emma Clement, Santo Domingo Library Assistant, for contributing this post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. People have always been fascinated with the idea of a soul.\u00a0 One researcher, Rick Strassman, took this interest to the extreme and performed government approved research using the psychedelic drug N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, also known as the spirit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6243,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[72741],"tags":[113736,72720],"class_list":["post-5910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-widener-library","tag-julio-mario-santo-domingo","tag-julio-mario-santo-domingo-collection"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-1xk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5910"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6135,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910\/revisions\/6135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}