It has been over two years since I last entered something in this space. My apologies. This time two years ago I was in the midst of a move from Taos back to my house in Gallup New Mexico. And since making the move in Spring of 2012, all of my energies have been focused on completing my book on prophetic states, and repairing my house which had suffered some over six years of renting it out. As my homepage announces, the book is done and will appear in the Fall. And my house is again comfortable and warm.
Editing the prophetic states book with my publisher, Inner Traditions, will take up the next several months. I have also been working on editing and proofreading a mentor’s annotated English translation of a medieval Jewish commentary on the Book of Psalms. One of the lovely outcomes of my years of toiling to become an amateur Bible scholar is being able to contribute to the field in this way.
Completing the prophetic states book is the end of an era. I initially conceived the project in 1998 while living and working in the Pacific Northwest about halfway through writing DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Hence, the two projects are inextricably interrelated and finishing the prophecy book in many ways finishes the DMT work.
At the same time, I continue involved in psychedelic drug research albeit from a more advisory, than hands-on, position. For example, the University of New Mexico psilocybin-alcoholism study, a UNM neuropsychological and functional/structural neuroimaging study of the Santa Fe UDV nucleo, and an ayahuasca project in Brazil. I am still waiting for another DMT project to spring up somewhere in the world—I receive at least 10 requests a week from people interested in volunteering, so there is definitely interest in furthering our understanding of this enigmatic agent.
The future looks a little unclear at this point, to me at least (!). Steeping myself in the Hebrew Bible for so many years has impressed upon me the importance of the informational content of spiritual experience rather than simply the phenomenology, even when that phenomenology is overwhelmingly novel and inspiring. In other words, if we cannot articulate, apply, integrate, and share the “psychedelic/spiritual” information these states convey, I am afraid they will simply gather dust. Therefore, I am exploring how I might best promulgate the practical and theoretical implications of the psychedelic experience for a contemporary Western demographic.
Since I have found such a gold mine of information along these lines in the Hebrew Bible, continuing studying the text and sharing in a user-friendly way some of its ideas has appeal. At the same time, I could use a break from such heavy reference-dependent writing. Perhaps consistent with both these concerns would be some fictionalized autobiographical writing–“based on true events but exaggerated.” I have lived an interesting life from many perspectives, and I think sharing those experiences and extracting what I can from them for a general readership may serve my goals. And while I enjoy the vast audience that writing provides, I miss teaching at a more immediate level such as I did at UNM and in my various clinical experiences over the years. So, many things in the hopper and I’m sure I will be surprised and challenged by whatever falls out.