#2385 - Rick Strassman

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Rick Strassman (0:06)

Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. This is a book I wrote 11 years ago. Oh, okay.

Joe Rogan (0:17)

I haven't gotten that one before.

Rick Strassman (0:18)

Yeah, it compares, well, let's see, are we going to? Yeah, we're up. Yeah, it compares the DMT state to the state of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible.

Joe Rogan (0:30)

Do you think they're the same thing?

Rick Strassman (0:33)

Well, the phenomenology is pretty similar. Like if you read Chapter 1 of Ezekiel, there's flames and there's angels and there's wings and there's eyes on the back of wings and there's roaring sound and blue ice above the person. He flies through space. Yeah, quite psychedelic.

Joe Rogan (0:53)

Yeah, wheel within a wheel.

The description of the things that people usually, they try to say that it's some sort of a UAP. That's the common thing that people like to say, right?

Rick Strassman (1:07)

Well, it could be.

Joe Rogan (1:07)

Which also might be connected.

Rick Strassman (1:09)

It could be a DMT vision, though.

Joe Rogan (1:11)

Oh, easily.

Rick Strassman (1:12)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:12)

Well, you know the guys out of Jerusalem that think that the whole burning bush thing was DMT.

Rick Strassman (1:19)

Yeah. Well, that was the first theophany of Moses.

Joe Rogan (1:22)

Yeah.

Rick Strassman (1:23)

The first time he had a prophetic experience. Yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:27)

I mean, it's like that's what it is. It's literally a plant that has high levels of DMT. If you burned it and smoked it, it's kind of crazy that that's the way it comes. I mean, I really applaud you for learning ancient Hebrew, so you could go back and read it in the original tongue, which is really fascinating. Can you say it took 16 years to learn it?

Rick Strassman (1:56)

That prophecy book took 16 years to write, and I had to learn Hebrew while I was reading and doing the writing. Well, what's cool is the Hebrew word for bush, burning bush, is the same as Sinai, Mount Sinai. Really? Yeah.

Joe Rogan (2:15)

The word is the same?

Rick Strassman (2:17)

The same root. The thing about the Hebrew language, at least for biblical Hebrew, is every word is based on a three-letter root. So the word for bush contains those three letters, and the word for Sinai contains those same three letters.

Joe Rogan (2:36)

And how is that significant? Like, you could have that, I'm sure there's English examples of three letters that are similar, but completely different meaning. Like, why are those three letters as a root connect these words uniquely?

Rick Strassman (2:51)

Well, it could be that bush grew on Mount Sinai, and that was the significance of the location of the burning bush.

Joe Rogan (2:59)

Oh, I see. So, it was literally named after that experience.

Rick Strassman (3:03)

Could be. Could be. Yeah. Well, you're talking about the acacia bush, which releases DMT when it's burnt.

Joe Rogan (3:10)

And it's very common in that area, right?

Rick Strassman (3:12)

Yeah. In fact, there's a plant, it's a weed called Paganum harmilla, which also grows in that part of the world, and it contains beta-carbolines, which are the compounds responsible for making DMT, for making ayahuasca orally active. So they have their own ayahuasca plants available in tandem there.

Joe Rogan (3:39)

Isn't it bizarre that you saying that to many people listening sounds utterly crazy? Like the proposition, just proposing that these people that were writing these things down a long time ago, these experiences, they were probably experiencing some sort of a psychedelic state. And they were trying to describe it.

Rick Strassman (4:02)

Well, in thinking about psychedelic states back then and in the prophetic literature, you can think of the visions as being generated from the bottom up when you take something.

In the model of the Hebrew Bible anyway, it all comes down from God. So it's a top down causal relationship between the source of the visions and the visions, as opposed to them being generated by taking something. It's exogenous DMT versus endogenous DMT.

Joe Rogan (4:47)

And if we tried to, what is the difference for your interpretation? Like I know you had read the English version of the Bible, but what is the difference between learning ancient Hebrew and reading it in like the source language? Like what was it like for you? Like what made it different?

Rick Strassman (5:07)

Well, I mean, it might be helpful to even go back to why I started reading the Hebrew Bible.

Joe Rogan (5:13)