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March 05, 2008

Get High and Read the Bible, They Did, Maybe

Moses For years I've heard talk that ergot poisoning in Upstate New York could have been responsible for the whole Mormon phenomenon..

Now it appears psychedelic experiences may be behind the whole Bible thing.

From News.com.au:

THE biblical Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

Writing in the British journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon of Jerusalem's Hebrew University said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an "altered state of awareness", Shanon hypothesised.

"In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings," Mr Shanon wrote.
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"On such occasions, one often feels that in seeing the light, one is encountering the ground of all Being ... many identify this power as God."

Mr Shanon wrote that he was very familiar with the affects of the ayahuasca plant, having "partaken of the ... brew about 160 times in various locales and contexts".

Hey dude, pass the Ayahuasca and read that passage again.

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Weeelll. I was just about to send you this. Glad I checked-in first. I should have known that no one beats the BS to an Old Testament psychedelic drug piece.

The reader of this e-mail is a genuine and authorized POPE!

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