Armstrong, Johnston, Strassman

IF YOU ARE GOING TO PRINT THIS TO READ IT:  You will use a lot less ink if you import it into your word-processor and convert it to black on white, rather than white on black.  You may also want to cut down on the font size

In TWO Parts:

I.    Reading Karen Armstrong's The Case for God (Go Back to First Page)

II.    Reading Brian Johnston's In the Realm of Inorganic Beings (Stay on this page)

In both parts, I drew on a book by Rick Strassman, M.D.:  DMT, The Spirit Molecule, A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, and to a much lesser extent, on Carl Sagan's posthumously published and ironically titled: The Varieties of Scientific Experience.

PART TWO

I next read Johnston's small book. It is very densely written and is a first person narrative of personal mystical experiences.

Brian T. Johnston wrote his book and titled it In The Realm of Inorganic Beings. He published it online at Smashwords.com in 2010 [an online-book outlet]). He sent me his book and asked me to review it.

Why did Johnston ask me to review his book? Because he found me online having favorably reviewed Amy Wallace's book on her experience living with Carlos Castaneda. He suggests in his book that Amy was not a true apprentice but a Castaneda-infatuated whiner. He says she must never have realized that Castaneda having sex with her was not an act of romantic love, but a sorcerer's way of binding that person to him for the journeys of the soul that lay ahead.

He may well be correct in his judgments, but how would he know? He was undoubtedly, in a technical sense, more of an apprentice than Amy because he wholeheartedly believed in and applied what was in the books without the inconvenience of daily seeing the far too human side of this spiritual leader.

But what if he had also lived with Castaneda, and had to put up with the daily strife amongst his followers and devotees, seeing who was the sexually favored change over time, just as in a Sultan's harem?

Johnston's explanation of sex with the master having afterlife implications reminded me strongly of the 'spiritual marriage' game played in Mormon Nauvoo, Illinois. There comely lasses (single or widowed, or even --in just one or a very few cases-- while yet married) were guaranteed the highest heaven with their beloved Prophet at their side if they would but consent to 'marry' him secretly. These plural, eternal marriages were consummated, as far as evidence exists, hence my thought of a similarity in the case of Castaneda's practice.

Power corrupts, and corruption isn't limited to the acquisition of money or land or things. The acquisitions by the powerful seem to often include multiple sexual partners, usually women.

Enough on that topic.

Johnston established his credentials as a mystic: from early experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs to later becoming a serious student of Rosicrucianism, rising in that organization's ranks to the very top and being one of the few able to straddle two worlds as is taught in that organization to be possible, But at the same time he was implementing the 'teachings of Don Juan' -the Mexican Native American shaman who regularly dealt with and conversed with the unseen beings of another dimension.

Carlos Castaneda's books were the source of Johnston's knowledge on this topic. He feels he surpassed both Castaneda's and Don Juan's experience base by becoming able to deal in a waking dream state with the inorganic beings and seeing them for what they are. I believe he feels both Castaneda and Don Juan were not aware of the full nature of the inorganic beings.

These men thought they were so powerful as to be able to use these beings as allies, instead it was they who were being used. At least that is the sense I came away with after reading Johnston's book.

Given this strong mysticism-flavored book by Johnston, and given that Armstrong was strongly averse to both mystics and mysticism, it was surprising to me that Johnston's book had a few important things in common with Armstrong's book.

1.    The first item of commonality is the need to stop the internal dialogue (to have the mind go beyond words into an apophatic state, suggests Armstrong), to experience the awareness of, and to be awestruck by, the Divine. This how Johnston explained this practice:

2.    The second item of commonality is that both believe there is no personal God. Where there is a difference, maybe, is in Johnston's suggesting God is a legion of demons: the inorganic beings. But wait, Armstrong approvingly cited Tillich saying that the interventionist personal God of the modern West is a fictitious tyrant!  Is that not comparable to our notion of a demon?

3.    Both Armstrong and Johnston like and expound on the Old Testament's story of Wisdom playing part in creation.  I find this to be a hallmark of esoteric treatises through time, starting with the ancient Book of Enoch perhaps.

4.     Both appeal to Plato, Freud and modern physics to support their analysis of reality.

5.    Now we are getting into a real stretch of a comparison, but Johnston says that the inorganic beings thrive on the life-energy released by emotional suffering. This means if you are happy and having fun, you are really pissing off the inorganic beings [or Calvin's God?  Couldn't help myself, sorry, a reminiscence back to my childhood as a Calvinist]. Armstrong says it is terrible that mystics tortured and seriously deprived themselves in order to placate and please God. Their suffering brought what they thought to be God-experience to them, but Armstrong says in so many words that since their suffering produced a non-existent personal God, whatever their experience was, it was not what they thought it was.

Johnston agrees with this, in a way.  He suggests that what people get when they step out of their normal state of consciousness is the awareness of inorganic beings: demons. When Jesus and heaven are sensed to be present by good Christian believers, who expect this, it is only the inorganic beings masquerading to fit one's expectations and present a make-believe heaven. They love guilt, Johnston says, as if the life force released by suffering from remorse is a special delicacy for them.

6.    I sensed both Johnston and Armstrong are very respectful of Buddha.

Don't get me wrong: many points in Johnston's book have no relation whatever to what Armstrong believes and that she asserts to be truth in her book. I think that will become apparent as you continue to read my review, but it does not answer the question: which one is correct when they are in obvious conflict?

Johnston says he started his inner journey at the age of 13 as a student of Maharishi Maresh Yogi. This inner journey eventually took him to “a miraculous world that very few have ever experienced and even fewer have shared with the general public.”

Johnston then experimented with 'power plants' as in the Castaneda books, but had to settle for what was available where he lived in Canada. He also experimented with LSD before it became illegal where he lived. It had some negative consequences for his mental health but also gave him insights into the realities that lay just beyond our normal perceptions. Shared hallucinations with his friends taught him that Don Juan's idea of an “agreed upon reality” had a foundation in fact.

He also, and this I think is important, agreed with Don Juan's saying that there are no hallucinations, each vision is a look through one of the many onion layers of the other realities that envelop our own current, 'normal' reality.

After a few years of such experimentation with drugs he completely turned away from it and sought to reconnect with the alternative realities through practicing the teaching of Don Juan, and an important aspect of that work was “not-doing, attempting to stop the internal dialogue and dreaming.” In other words, he was reaching for insight into other realities by reaching the apophatic state that is so strongly recommended by Armstrong.

He also spent much time in meditation, something he had learned in his earlier youth as previously mentioned. The result?

My consciousness did indeed expand as a result of meditation. I was especially aware of a point near the center of my forehead that I later learned was the pineal gland. The pineal gland is considered by many mystics to be the point of psychic awareness and can be enhanced through meditation to become more active and to enable the ability to contact higher levels of awareness. I also started to notice deeper levels of consciousness where it seemed that there were parts of my inner self that were somehow fragmented from the rest of my awareness.

Johnston later explains that this ability to focus on a particular part of the body in a meditative state was taught to him by the Rosicrucian order.

This mention of the pineal gland is a good place to stop and bring in another witness: Rick Strassman, MD, author of DMT, The Spirit Molecule, A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near Death and Mystical Experiences (Park Street Press, 2001). DMT, as it turns out, is a product of the pineal gland. So we will have some interesting comparisons to make as Johnston begins to reveal his 'other-realities' experiences as he enhanced his pineal gland's activity through meditation.

Johnston experienced past lives during these exercises, or so he thought. In of those lives he was as a famous mathematician/astrologer in Medieval Europe before Galileo. As a youngster he had dabbled, with his own telescope, in astronomy and wanted to become an astronomer, but did engineering instead which he always regretted although it served him well for decades.

He felt his experiences taught him the reality of the multiverse now being recognized in physics, and he does a nice job showing that both Indian (Hindu) and Islamic scriptures and thinkers declared there to be multiple worlds and universes. It is a nice job pulling together quotes from people who have obviously given this much thought. But I do not find it compelling evidence.

Strassman, on the other hand, also believes his study participants gave evidence of seeing into other parts of the multiverse on his pages 316-318, especially when subjects saw familiar types of settings that were just a bit odd in their makeup or functioning. After that he wonders if some of the more alien-like experiences of seeing hieroglyphics displayed and moving as in a ticker-tape isn't an instance of seeing into a dark matter parallel world. I found that discussion non-compelling, it is wild speculation, not evidence.

It was at this point in the Johnston book that I was remembering that I was once an avid reader of Castaneda's books, and a practitioner of some of the less esoteric practices (I still find power spots wherever I go and sit in them to muse, if not meditate).  But I was also of the opinion that all of this other-dimensional spooky stuff Castaneda discusses was just mental imaginative garbage.

To my surprise, just as I was having that recall moment Johnston addressed this very point:

Many people question the veracity of Carlos Castaneda’s work, but my having been involved with attempting to practice the techniques outlined in the collective works of Castaneda has proven to me beyond any shadow of a doubt that the methods work and that the concepts are valid. I practiced many exercises for over forty years and results that I achieved are remarkable. I have seen profound evidence that there are many "onion skins" to our existence and what we call dreams are merely a gateway to other realities. This is not to say that average dreams tap into other universes, but that the method of dreaming can actually take you to places that are just as real as what we have around us in our everyday reality.

OK. Let's bring Strassman in again to discuss how some of his DMT recipients felt about their experiences of other realities: participants resented doctor Strassman's comparing their experiences to a waking dream, they said it was 'real' (pages 313-314 offer a recap of many individual case descriptions).

Dr, Strassman leaves open the possibility that what was encountered, including beings living in these other dimensions and interacting with these subjects, was exactly what the experiencers said it was: real.  Remarkable.

Where Johnston goes next is tying the practices of the Rosicrucians to the improvement of health, citing ancient lore as basis for the Rosicrucian teachings and explaining that he has himself gone from rather sickly to very healthy. Great, I believe him.

He brings in the idea of a life force that if tapped can increase health. I found that interesting because the life-force motif becomes important in his discussion of the inorganic beings, which we will get to eventually.

At the very end of his introduction, Johnston lets it all out: he describes the beings he will be telling us about as being the ones described by the Toltecs (Don Juan's teachings). This to me was one of the more important explanatory notes in the book:

In western mysticism and religion there are many levels of spiritual beings. Dionysius the Areopagite formulated a whole series of beings ranging from minor angels at the bottom of the scale up to archangels at the top. There are also negative beings, such as devils and demons. These topics are covered in the Rosicrucian teachings and are illustrated as being literal. In the Toltec system it is somewhat different  there are organic beings such as humans and animals and inorganic beings. There are many types of inorganic beings, but the main ones that we are concerned with here are simply referred to as inorganic beings, or allies. The inorganic beings reside in a dimension that is adjacent to our own dimension, but displaced in what may be known as vibration. The structure of the universe in the Toltec system is such that there are many dimensions that are separated from each other by the thickness   symbolically   like onion skins. However, even though the thickness of each dimension is as thin as an onion skin, between each layer of the onion skins are the realms of the inorganic beings. These inorganic beings are similar to, but different from the demons of popular mythology. The similarity is that they can penetrate the consciousness of humans and feed off the energy that is provided by emotional responses. They stimulate within people negative emotions and this provides them energy that they absorb like food. The inorganic beings are very long lived and can exist for many thousands of years. This fact has profound implications for reincarnation and in fact is responsible for certain forms of reincarnation. Most people on the earth are being influenced by the inorganic beings and even such things as religion, which for the faithful is supposed to protect them from such things, are in fact being influenced just as readily as the so called sinners.

This was a stunning paragraph. Here Johnston declares his superiority, experience-based, over Don Juan: these are definitely not allies! He also explains the nature of all forms of afterlife species mentioned in myth and anecdote by other-world travelers of all times and places. The remainder of his book, consisting of descriptions of his experiences in the other dimensions of reality, the layers of reality between the onion-skins that surround us, actually supports this description.

Where the book goes next is into his research into the esoteric arcana of the world, which is very interesting, and then into his experiences in the realities between the onion-skin layers.

You need to read the book to catch all of the intricacies and nuances of his experiences, but there are several statements in these chapters that caused me to remember some of my own past experience (not particularly mystical).

Johnston makes clear that it took experience for him to move out of the gee-whiz stage that he was in when taking LSD as a youth for example. Without experience, it is tempting to become mesmerized by the pretty lights and patterns of the onion skins and not move through them into the alternate realities beyond.

That reminded me of Strassman's book where he sought volunteers with hallucinogen and mystical experience who would not just be staring at the light- show provided by their intravenous hit of DMT, but would move through into something more profound and hopefully meaningful to them.

In some cases Strassman's subjects did just that, in other cases they spent their few minutes under DMT influence watching the fascinating displays.

Once moved through the onion-skin around our reality, both some of Strassman's volunteers and Johnston encountered beings. Johnston said they can seem like friends and even perform a healing in you, but in the long run these are not allies.

Strassman's volunteers had some instances of being healed by these beings, most felt they wanted to go back to them, did not want to come back here, they felt love and well-being among them. There were just a few instances where the volunteers sensed something was not right, that they shouldn't be there, and in one instance the beings aggressively, sexually and painfully attacked a volunteer (pp. 252-253).

Seems like the same beings are being described. And they are certainly inorganic.  Hard to describe in clearer language since they take many shapes, ranging from popular descriptions of 'aliens' to alligators.

At one point moving through an onion-skin, Johnston had to give a pass-word to be able to pass by some very threatening entities and once past them saw the Tree of Life, as in the Eleusinian mysteries and the Mormon temple ritual. I mention this backward and present-day reflection because it shows the continuity of esoteric notions from the time well before our common era to now.

Johnston also, interestingly, speaks of the fragments of personality, his own, that he met that seemed to be lost and reflected the growth and development of his personality in his youth. He thought the goal was to reintegrate all these fragments into one's current personality and worked on that. In that same context, Johnston asserts that early hurts are remembered by the body, not the brain, and body pains can hide or mask difficult or painful memories. Focusing on these long-term chronic pain sources in meditation can allow a release of the buried memory, and that removes the pain.

In Strassman's book there was an instance of this type of pain, a recurring abdominal pain into which memories of childhood rape were hidden, being relieved after an encounter with the beings of the other dimension or reality (see his page 312 for a summary statement and pages 168-175 for the details).

I had never heard of such a thing, but Strassman's subjects also spoke of being shred into many pieces and feeling a healing power when in the presence of the alien (their word for inorganic) beings. Many actually felt prodded and poked and sampled and experimented on by entities that were described in many different ways.  Descriptions ranged all the way from jovial and cavorting clowns, to seriously sinister beings. Even when feeling threatened, an experiencer also reported feeling an overwhelming love.  Threat and love at the same time!

There were sexual, orgasmic, feelings reported by some, in one case when the otherworldly species was insect like! I mention this only because Johnston refers to sexual scenes in some of his encounters with animal-like inorganic beings.

Johnston also explains how he overcame his sexual feelings in one instance, feeling them inappropriate in the otherworldly setting in which they occurred, and that very much reminded me of Dante being taught by his Beatrice about true love being a Divine attribute. Lust was not in that same category. This was part of the process of Dante's purification by Beatrice so he could enter the Divine Presence. He did enter that Presence, by the way.

Dante, the greatest poet of all time, could not find words to describe his audience with God! Armstrong would have been proud. Johnston would perhaps have suspected an inorganic-being imposter?

The experience of “unity with the all” is a staple of mysticism and in his youth, Johnston had that experience:

Just after joining the Rosicrucians I had a very profound experience. I was standing in my living room and was suddenly overwhelmed by a presence that felt like total love. I fell to my knees and was totally unconscious of my surroundings. At the time I thought it was Jesus somehow contacting me. It was perhaps the most profound state of consciousness that I have ever perceived. For a long time after that I related this to other people as an example of being able to be in the state of cosmic consciousness.

The important point is that he thought it was Jesus, reflecting his culture-based expectation at that time. In my younger years I had a similar experience and had made a similar assumption regarding the source of the light and warmth. Had I stayed a Christian believer I would no doubt think so still, but like Johnston I have moved on from there (whether backwards or forwards I can't judge) and now, acknowledging the experience was “real,” I simply acknowledge that I do not know what or who caused that light and warmth in me.

This reminds me of Paul's experience with a light and a voice on the road to Tarsus. It also reminds me of the first revelation to Joseph Smith, originally described as a visitation by angels and later turned into a visitation by the Godhead, the Father and the Son mediated by the Holy Ghost. It is my view that these experiences reflect our expectations as they are at the time, and as we are then stimulated to learn more, they morph with the change in our understanding.  As our expectations change our interpretations of past events can also change, and often do.

Some of Strassman's subjects reported experiences of light and love and warmth as they reached and entered into other realities, and as stated before several also or instead felt it was an ominous experience. Their reports are very comparable to the ambivalence of alien abduction victims, and Strassman suggests that the perception alien beings experimenting on them is a reflection of an enhanced DMT-production episode in the brain.

A surprising (to me) number of Strassman's subjects would likely see Johnston's description of inorganic beings as pretty accurate, considering the internal attacks they suffered at the hands and through the instruments of these creatures. Several thought the creatures were feeding on them. But others thought the creatures were encouraging them to do right and live happy lives. Their reports are a mixed bag, as Johnston would have predicted. In his version of reality the creatures can be helpful, healing, and loving, but they are in the long run going to feed off the human misery that comes with every life, no matter how well lived.

Strassman is an M.D. and an experimental scientist. Does he go along with the idea that there are actually spheres of realities around us, and his subjects entered them and interacted with the inhabitants thereof?  We already saw that he leaves that possibility wide open.  (Strassman p.313)):

What happens when the spirit molecule pulls and pushes us beyond the physical and emotional level of awareness? We enter into invisible realms, ones we cannot normally sense and whose presence we can scarcely imagine. Even more surprising, these realms appear to be inhabited,

At a certain point, I decided to accept at face value volunteers' reports. . . . I think it is worth considering seriously whether it's possible that thee experiences were exactly what they seemed to be.

That is pretty radical for an MD to say. It is a very different approach than that, for example, taken by the famed evolutionary biologist Carl Sagan when it came to seeing the potential for mystical experiences being real. He said in his posthumously published book The Varieties of Scientific Experience, A Personal View of the Search for God (Ed. By Ann Druyan, the Penguin Press 2006), on pages 162-163:

Then there's the argument from experience. People have religious experiences. No question about it. They have them worldwide, and there are some interesting similarities in the religious experiences that are had worldwide. They are powerful, emotionally extremely convincing, and they often lead to people reforming their lives and doing good works, although the opposite also happens. Now, what about this? Well, I do not mean in any way to object to or deride religious experiences. But the question is, can any such experience provide other than anecdotal evidence of the existence of God or gods? One million UFO cases since 1947. And yet, as far as we can tell they do not correspond—any of them—to visitations to the Earth by spacecraft from elsewhere. Large numbers of people can have experiences that can be profound and moving and still not correspond to anything like an exact sense of external reality. And the same can be said not just about UFOs but about extrasensory perception and ghosts and leprechauns and so on. Every culture has things of this sort. That doesn't mean they all exist; it doesn't mean that any of them exist.

I also note that religious experiences can be brought on by specific molecules. There are many cultures that consciously imbibe or ingest those molecules in order to bring on a religious experience. The peyote cult of some Native Americans is exactly that, as is the use of wine as a sacrament in many Western religions. It's a very long list of materials that are taken by humans in order to produce a religious experience. This suggests that there is some molecular basis for the religious experience and that it need not correspond to some external reality. I think it's a fairly central point—that religious experiences, personal religious experiences, not the natural theological evidence for God, if any, can be brought on by molecules of finite complexity.

So, Sagan is not convinced. Neither am I, but that is beside the point since Strassman doesn't say these experiences prove anything, he just says that he accepts them at face value.

Now I want to go to another point that Johnston discloses over the personal history part of his book.

Johnston relates that his incessant looking into and living in the alternate state of consciousness negatively affected his mental health, his home life, his work life, and landed him in a hospital more than once. Armstrong would feel vindicated in her judgment passed on all mystics reading this.

Anti-psychotic medicines they gave him did not help, in fact they made things worse for him. But then he came to grips with his problem and solved it: he consulted his inner knowledge base and his other-reality mentor (not an immaterial being, but a disembodied master from another time and place who helped him heal from within). The solution was to cast his host of parasitic immaterial beings out, much like Christ cast demons out of crazy and sick people!

While in the “dreaming” state, he called his inorganic beings to him, engaged them to get their full attention, and when he had their full attention he said to them: “Be gone!” Then they were forced to leave him, and he could feel the relief as they exited him! Maybe his own words will make this clearer, although I will not cite the more dramatic accounts he gives of the actual process for some of the more difficult out-castings:

In the dreaming sequence where the inorganic beings were called and the command was given to it to "Be gone!" there was the intense realization that this thing had somehow been associated with me for a very long time. I felt very resentful thinking that I had enough of my own bad habits and foibles to keep me busy and that I didn't need any help from them. Later I had the realization that all people have a connection to the inorganic beings, some seemingly benevolent, while others were obviously highly destructive. At that time I no idea how strong this connection, how pervasive it was and how it has ruled our behavior as a species for untold thousands of years. . . . Don Juan explained to Carlos that the world was made of countless layers stacked upon one another with virtually no thickness. The other salient feature was that between the various layers of existence was the realm of the inorganic beings and then when one passed between the various layers of onion skins you had to pass through the realm of the inorganic beings. Like a multilayer sandwich the various realities which are explored in dreaming are separated from one another by a total realm where the inorganic beings dwell. Don Juan explained to Carlos that the inorganic beings lived infinitely longer than humans do and appear to us to almost immortal. Of course to be aware of the presence of the inorganic beings requires specific training and practice. This requires several years of practice in the realm of dreaming to accomplish and so is not readily accessible for the average person.

Part of stalking could also be considered to be recapitulation. Recapitulation is the reliving of events in the past in extreme detail. Not only are the events retold, but the emotions felt are played out with every nuance. To do this what I use is to try to attempt to get to the first moment a person was met and I keep repeating to myself '"what happened next?" and the scene plays out. This can be most tedious for long encounters, but can be most revealing to understand exactly what has gone on with any given situation, especially those that happened in the distant past. What is most interesting about this phenomenon is that the exact words that people say and the exact emotions that were felt during the experience are relived in every detail. This will be seen to be the most useful technique in dealing with the inorganic beings that inhabit all of us.

The goal is to be free from the influences of all outside sources beyond the rational mind. This includes the influences of the inner sub- personalities, the influences from past lives, and the influences of the inorganic beings. The inorganic beings have one desire and that is to tap into an energy source in order to feed from that source to prolong their lives and gain greater power. Life is quite rare in the universe and the opportunity for the inorganic beings to tap into a living creature is what these being seek throughout their extended existence. They do not just live for long periods of time, but rather live for possibly hundreds of thousands, or millions of years. This may be due to the difference in the way that we perceive time in the realm of being in which we exist and the way that time is in the realm of the inorganic beings. Because the realm of the inorganic beings is between the layers of onion skins of the various layers of the multiverse they exist outside of time as we know it.

The process of stalking the self lets one begin to understand where the emotions that one experiences are coming from, how to avoid indulging in inappropriate responses to situations as a result of the interactions of the various sub-personalities and how to reduce the influences coming from the cosmic and inorganic realms over which we have little control.


The reason I cite the above in detail is because it is quite different from what Strassman thought ought to be done. He thought there was potential therapeutic value for meeting with the immaterial beings, even in cases where these beings were perceived to be threatening to his volunteers. This is a part of Strassman's taking what the volunteer experiencers said at face value that I fail to understand. If there appears to be quite a bit that is negative, discomfiting, and downright hurtful to be expected in these encounters, and you really believe this to be a reflection of something real that happened in another dimension of reality, then why encourage persons to seek out this type of experience?

Just do it for science?

OK, that I understand, but don't do it for your own enlightenment, it may well give you the opposite.

Strassman, by the way, is convinced that his DMT experiments are the key to understanding the UFO-abduction phenomenon also mentioned by Sagan. A million cases already many years ago, and they all may be the result of a mass hysteria raising expectations then seen under the influence of a hyperactive pineal gland?! Why not? As Sagan says, the independently-verified factual basis supporting astronaut landings from elsewhere is as yet nonexistent.

So one can take chemicals that stimulate or imitate the output of the pineal gland.  A crisis can cause the pineal gland to increase its DMT output.  Its output can be increased through transcendental meditation (as in Johnston's case).  All of these reasons leading to a stimulated pineal gland make these encounters possible.  Very likely if you are not stopped in your tracks, mesmerized by the light and color and geometric patterns shows that start most sessions, you will see other realms and other life forms.

Why on Earth do we have a pineal gland? Why does our body even make DMT?  Does it have a function other than throwing us out of our current reality? Strassman tackles this issue.  He describes the outcome of taking anti-psychotic medications as “numbing” and “vitality-draining” on his page 327. Then he suggests that what anti-psychotic drugs do is interfere with the pineal gland. He then suggests that it requires a small amount of pineal DMT to have us feel normally alive and functional in our current reality.

On that page he likens our brains to a TV set capable of receiving many source-signals, and suggests that DMT in small amounts keeps us attuned to our own reality, which is a necessity for remaining effective in this world that we do live in. I think perhaps that is what Johnston came to conclude also: he had to stop the signals from the past and the immaterial beings to allow him to stay focused in the here and now, he had “to reduce the influences coming from the cosmic and inorganic realms” in order to live well.

So Strassman says that the evolutionary purpose of DMT is just that: to keep us focused on the present life. Does this put Strassman at odds with some religious zealots who say that all that matters is the next life, hence to be religious is to be ready to sacrifice anything inappropriate, such as an inappropriate desire, or any person that is trying to steer you into inappropriate thoughts or actions?  Yes.

Sagan, and here we perhaps depart quite far from the theme of Johnston's book --although maybe not-- has his own idea about the purpose of these chemicals in our body that can lead us to alternative states of consciousness (his pages 182-183):

. . . People certainly have spontaneous religious experiences. Sometimes they're brought about by deprivation, as with the fasting monks in the desert. There are a number of ways in which sensory deprivation can bring about these experiences. They also happen spontaneously to people in many different cultures, . . . . But also they can be brought about in a molecular way. And certainly the uniform experience, especially in the 1950s and '60s—pioneered by Aldoux Huxley and others—was that LSD and other such molecules produce religious experiences. And there are/were many religionists who objected to this, because they thought it was too easy; that is, you're not supposed to have a religious experience without doing some significant personal deprivation. Just taking whatever it was, five hundred micrograms of a tablet, was considered too easy.

Let's say there's a molecule that produces a religious experience, whatever the religious experience is. How does that come about? Virtually every time someone takes that molecule, he or she has a religious experience. Does that not suggest that there is a natural molecule that the body produces whose function it is to produce religious experiences, at least on occasion? What could that molecule be like? Let's give it a name . . . let's call it theophorin.

What could the selective advantage of theophorin be? How would it come about? Why would it be there? Well, what is the nature of the experience? The nature of the experience has, as I say, many different aspects. But one uniform aspect of it is an intense feeling of awe and humility before a power vastly greater than ourselves. And that sounds to me very much like a dominance-hierarchy molecule or part of a suite of molecules whose function it is to fit us into the dominance hierarchies—to suit us for the quest that was, according to Dostoyevsky, to strive for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship and obey.

Now what is the good of that? Why would that have any selective advantage? If for no other reason, it would produce social conformity, or, put in more favorable terms, it would ensure social stability and morality. And this is, of course, one of the principal justifications of religion.

This is, as I was already warning, a really far-out aside. But it actually comes back to Johnston's experiences, as I also hinted, or at least to what I believe about his experiences.

In my opinion. Sagan seriously derails from reality here.  First a point of agreement: these experiences are clearly at the root of some, if not all, religious traditions.  Just look at the revelations to Paul, Muhammad, or Joseph Smith among many others. I will grant him that.

But after becoming established, each of these religious traditions as well as others, clamped down on, and controlled, this phenomenon: it is dangerous to unity because everyone's revelation is different! In each of these cases these people split off from their own culture to form a new culture, emboldened to stand against authority by sure knowledge coming via a revelation, or many revelations.

In their very hearts they knew they were right and that the old religions were wrong.   Bloodshed followed in each case to a greater or lesser degree.

That is why within established religious cultures, this personal-revelation idea is either tightly controlled or even outright forbidden. In some Protestant religions seeking personal contact with God it is seen as playing with the Devil, since God has already revealed all there is to know in a book.

Mormons, on the contrary, are told to seek their own revelation, which is wonderfully empowering, but they are also told that if it does not confirm or at least conform to what has been taught by the recognized scriptures and appointed prophets, it is from the Devil. Ouch.

Among Catholic mystic there were revelators who described their experiences in terms supportive of the Church and they became revered either locally or more generally by being declared as Blessed or even as Saints. But among the revelators there were also many whose revelation called into question the need for the Church or its strict teachings and practices.

This freedom through personal spiritual insight was what fueled the wonderful set of heresies binned loosely as the 'Free Spirit' movement. There were Free Spirits of all types and grades, but some among them were living lives and teaching precepts very comparable with actions and words from devotees of the Free Love movement of the 1960s.

In the Catholic tradition, mystic revelators that did not gain a clerical confessor and interpreter as a supporter would run the risk of being persecuted, tortured, and even executed. On this website, I have a discussion of the Blessed Jan van Ruisbroec, whose life earned him a place that is just one step below sainthood, and Margaret Porete, a woman living near him who taught similar things, based on similar spiritual experiences (according to my view, that is), but her words did not conform to ecclesiastical dictate, she refused to remain silent when told to stop teaching in the Beguine houses of her region, and was burned at the stake in Paris. The entire mystical breeding-ground of the womens' (and mens') 'Beguine' movement was uprooted because of fear of a loss of control over these women (and men, who were more often called Beghards). See my pages on the Beguines, whom I consider to represent a genuine womens' movement in the High Middle Ages.

So, Sagan and I disagree. Believe me, he does not care. But what did any of this have to do with Johnston's experience?

A lot. Johnston was persecuted by those who did not understand him or believe him and he found himself in a sad state of affairs at home, at work, and inside himself. He did not seek anyone to obey and worship. It was not until later, in his pain, that help came much in the way that Carl Jung described the process of revelation: when the pain is sufficiently great then answers well up from within, from the unconscious, perhaps in communication with the collective unconscious that houses all experience and knowledge.

In Paul's case, Jung suggested, he was so overcome by guilt that his subconscious pulled up his vision of Christ.   In Johnston's case, I am suggesting, his sufferings finally brought up into his conscious mind this helper:

One night while meditating I was "contacted" by an entity who seemed very brusque and fierce. He seemed to go into my heart and do some sort of manipulation. I asked him who he was and he said he was the Cosmic Master of the Curanderos of the Zapoteca. I asked him why he went in my heart and he said it was where I needed the greatest work.

This was not an immaterial demonic being.

Johnston's account of how relief came to him is in full agreement with Jung's description of how when the pain is sufficient the subconscious produces a revelation from the collective unconscious, but he never cites Jung in his book. Instead he cites Rosicrucian teachings to the exact same effect:

The cosmic for the Rosicrucians is the collective consciousness of all beings in the universe, living, dead, spiritual and all others. This they call the cosmic mind and it is considered to [be] what lies underneath the subconscious of man.

I was quite pleased and comforted to read that Johnston is now living a productive and stable life in this world, having access to other realms as he wishes but no longer possessed by either his own past, his past lives, or those life-force eating inorganic beings.

I am not forced by his book to believe in such beings, but like Strassman's belief-door, my belief-door is also wide open.  I just need more than personal witness accounts and other types of anecdotal proof.

Don't tell me to go and get my own revelation concerning it, I have been misled by my interpretations of my own revelations, and especially by others' revelations, in the past.  Desiring a certain outcome in a revelation, or expecting a certain outcome, seems to be key to obtaining that outcome. The Book of Mormon actually says so in one of its most cited passages (Moroni 10:4):

And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

It works. I know. And all the while I was reading Johnston this verse stuck in my head and said to me: his is going into these alternate states of consciousness with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda, and the visions he saw were those he expected to see -- for a while-- until his own experience took him beyond the descriptions offered by his mystical mentors.

Then Johnston started to see these new realities more for what they were than apparently Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda had been able to see, and the picture pained by Johnston is a warning to be careful in the extreme and not to go naively into other realities inviting loving, smiling, light-emitting "allies" into yourself: they will eventually sap your life force.

Armstrong suggests that we need a religion to lead us to enlightenment in her last few pages.  She suggests that this enlightenment is not a dramatic rebirth but a slow but sure taking on a new way of being, one's becoming a new person at peace with him or her self and the world. Religious persons of this type, she says (page 329):

. . . have always desired to integrate with their daily lives the moments of rapture and insights that came to them in dreams, in their contemplation of nature, and in their intercourse with one another and with the animal world. Instead of being crushed and embittered by the sorrow of life, they sought to retain their peace and serenity in the midst of their pain. They yearned for the courage to overcome their terror of mortality; instead of being grasping and mean-spirited, they aspired to live generously, large-heartedly, and justly, and to inhabit every single part of their humanity. Instead of being a mere workaday cup, they wanted, as Confucius suggested, to transform themselves into a beautiful ritual vessel brimful of the sanctity that they were learning to see in life. They tried to honor the ineffable mystery they sensed in each human being and create societies that protected and welcomed the stranger, the alien, the poor, and the oppressed. Of course they often failed, sometimes abysmally. But overall they found that the disciplines of religion helped them to do all this. Those who applied themselves most assiduously showed that it was possible for mortal men and women to live on a higher, divine, or godlike plane and thus wake up to their true selves.

In large measure, I believe that Johnston's tortuous and torturous personal saga, strange as it may seem to us if we have not had his experiences, has brought him to this religious state. He is awake to this true self, living a life at a higher plane of awareness, and seeking to share his story.  

He is seeking to share his story, but not to reach out for disciples.  Rather, he wishes to warn others and teach them how to heal themselves if they feel they are afflicted as he was.

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