Inner Paths to Outer Space Quotes

“As I accepted my death and dissolution into God's love, the insectoids began feeding on my heart, devouring the feelings of love and surrender. They were interested in emotion. As I was holding on to my last thought - that God is love - they asked, "Even here? Even here?”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies

“During its history, humankind has devoted astonishing energy and ingenuity to altering consciousness. In a survey of 488 societies in all parts of the world, Erika Bourgignon23 found that 437 of the societies had one or more culturally patterned forms of ASC. This means that fully 90 percent of the world’s cultures have one or more institutionalized ASC. In tribal societies and Eastern cultures these are regarded— almost without exception—as sacred or revered conditions. Mystical or sacred states of consciousness are called samadhi in yoga, moksha in Hinduism, satori in Zen, fana in Sufism, and ruach hakodesh in kabbalah. In the West they are known as unio mystica (Christian mysticism), a numinal state (Carl Jung), peak experience (Abraham Maslow), holotropic experience (Stanislav Grof), cosmic consciousness (Richard Bucke), and flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi).”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies

“It is striking that our society has forgotten how critical LSD was in the early stages of the development of psychopharmacology, and that it continues to be a seminal contributor to the field today. It is reminiscent of the patriarchy “forgetting” the role of psychedelic plants in spiritual and religious settings. During the late 1940s through the late 1960s, hundreds of scientific papers and dozens of books, monographs, and scientific meetings discussed the latest in psychedelic drug research. Many of the key figures of academic psychiatry and pharmacology began their career in this field. Presidents of the American Psychiatric Association, chairmen of psychiatry departments, advisers to and members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—all cut their teeth in the psychedelic research field. It was an exciting, well-funded, and creative time.”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies

“Let us review three cases from widely separated locations in the world. A Tungus shaman in Siberia agrees to the request of tribal hunters to locate game during a poor hunting season. Using a drumming technique, he enters an ASC and provides information to help his hunters. The Western interpretation—if it accepts at all the validity of this kind of information—would be that the shaman calculates the behavior of the game according to weather and well-known environmental conditions. In other words, his is information based on cognitive processing of sensory data. The explanation of the shaman himself is different: Guidance has been provided by forest spirits. On another continent, hunters of the Kalahari !Kung tribe leave the settlement to hunt for a period that may last anywhere from two days to two weeks. The tribe’s timely preparation for the return of successful hunters is necessary for processing the game. The people left behind make the appropriate steps long before the hunters’ reappearance. Their foreknowledge of the hunters’ return could be explained rationally by attributing it to a messenger sent ahead or the use of tam-tam drums or smoke signals. The tribesmen report, however, that it is the spirit of ancestors who informs them when the hunters will return. Next, we move to the Amazon basin. The Shuar shaman is facing a new disease in the community. An herbal remedy is sought by adding leaves of a candidate plant into the hallucinogenic beverage ayahuasca, a sacrament indigenous to the Upper Amazon region. The shaman drinks it and, upon return to ordinary consciousness, decides the usefulness of the plant in question. Is his decision based on accumulation of ethnobotanical knowledge of several generations in combination with trial and error? The headhunter Shuar are not likely to be merciful to an ineffective medicine man, and his techniques must be working. As Luis Eduardo Luna explained to me, according to ayahuasqueros, the spirit of a new plant reveals itself with the help of the spirits associated with the ayahuasca. Sometimes, they also tell which plant to use next. We can point to the following contradiction: Healers from different cultures are unequivocal in their interpretation of the source of knowledge, whereas rational thinkers use diverging, unsystematic explanations. Which side should be slashed with Occam’s razor? Also called the “principle of parsimony,” Occam’s razor is usually interpreted to mean something like “Do not multiply hypotheses unnecessarily” or “Do not posit pluralities unnecessarily when generating explanatory models.” The principle of parsimony is used frequently by philosophers of science in an effort to establish criteria for choosing from theories with equal explanatory power. At first glance it is the “primitives” who multiply causes unnecessarily by referring to the supernatural. Yet Occam’s razor may be applied easily to the rational view, if those arguments are less parsimonious.”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies

“As Luis Eduardo Luna explained to me, according to ayahuasqueros, the spirit of a new plant reveals itself with the help of the spirits associated with the ayahuasca. Sometimes, they also tell which plant to use next.”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies

“a consensus has emerged that the vast majority of ritual ceremonies are concerned primarily with healing in a general sense. They exert influence on physical well-being, heighten identity, enhance interpersonal cohesion, reintegrate community into the environment, and mitigate perceived conflicts with supernatural powers. In spite of the cultural diversity of therapeutic institutions and practices, the fundamental healing principles show a good deal of cross-cultural uniformity.”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies

“Dobkin de Rios and Smith13 suggest that spiritual techniques for altering consciousness are typically repressed in state-level societies because they constitute a potential threat to the religious interpretations of those who hold social and religious power.”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies

“My job is to paint visionary pictures, from my own vision quest as well as from the interpretation of the visions of others. The art I produce is a practical form of magic that provides physical access to the imaginary realm. This book would have formed the basis for my own vision quest had it only been written earlier, but it shines with fascination to minds of all ages. It is a signpost to avenues by which the mind can see into the magical workings of creation in ways beyond the everyday human experience.”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies

“The paranormal is so inherently fascinating that for any valid conclusions to be reached from investigation, a searching and objective skepticism must leaven the desire to discover wonders.”
― Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics & Other Spiritual Technologies