Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT

(Paperback)

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The Mystery School of Hyperspace is the first cultural history of DMT, an enigmatic compound whose psychopharmacological action has been known for sixty years. While DMT is known for producing powerful short-lasting effects including complex geometric patterns, out-of-body states and encounters with disincarnate entities, the tryptamine compound occurs throughout world flora and is naturally present in the brains of humans and other mammals. The celebrated status of DMT as "the brain's own psychedelic" has fired speculation about its role as a gateway to higher dimensional "hyperspace," a "spirit molecule" that facilitates the soul's reincarnation, God's own neurological medium, a compound that mimics the function of an "ancestral neuromodulator," among other theories prying open the lid on the Pandora's Box of consciousness.

Reviews

"Meticulously researched and highly readable. St John covers every imaginable aspect of DMTs place in the Western aesthetic and intellectual landscapes. Setting down his book, I came away with a new appreciation of just how embedded the DMT meme has become."
Rick Strassman MD, author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, DMT and the Soul of Prophecy, and clinical associate professor of psychiatry, University of New Mexico School of Medicine

"Graham St Johns book on DMT untangles the threadsof this holy molecule, from anthropological antiquity to labs in Hungary, from hipster soothsayers to visionary art at festivals, including some of the best descriptions of the wonderfullyweird tryptamine worlds inside all of us. ReadMystery School in Hyperspaceand appreciate the miracle in our midst."
Alex Grey, artist, and authorNet of Being

Combining the breadth of a scholar, the savvy of an underground journalist, and the open spirit of a radical empiricist, Graham St John has written the definitive cultural history of the weirdest molecule on the planet (and in your body). Mystery School in Hyperspacetells amazing tales, sheds light on the shadows, and brilliantly referees the ongoing psychoactive rumble between the sacred and profane.
Erik Davis, author ofTechgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information

"Scholars and psychonauts alike will find much to appreciate in this lucid, thoughtful, provocative, and thoroughly enjoyable cultural history of DMT. Meticulously researched and beautifully written,Mystery School in Hyperspaceis remarkable in its deft interweaving of neurochemistry, countercultural thought, spirituality, and the arts. In years to come, anyone with a serious interest in the socio-cultural significance of induced altered states will have read this book."
Christopher Partridge, Professor of Religious Studies, Lancaster University, UK.

Mystery School in Hyperspaceis the textbook history of DMT for serious students of transdimensional evolution. Graham St John's tour de force through the tapestry of alchemists, hippies, DJs, scientists, shamans, mystics, and seekers of the mystery that DMT reveals is an exhilarating ride and a thoroughly researched achievement. St John successfully builds up a historical profile of both dimethyltryptamine and the quest to understand it, piercing the mystery to bring back translinguistic trip reports that illuminate the central gnosis of our time. As the latest generation of psychonauts explores the invisible landscape of Terra Incognita,Mystery School in Hyperspacecould very well be the map that we have all been looking for."
Rak Razam, director ofAya: Awakenings

Boldly going where no one had gone before, Graham St John takes his readers on a properly hallucinatory yet extremely well documented tour through the history of DMT. Analyzing six decades of radical countercultural experimentation and exploration at the limits of human consciousness and beyond, this is a significant contribution to the emerging study of entheogenic religion"
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, University of Amsterdam

"Wrap your mind around the most ubiquitous and profound psychedelic on the planet, DMT! A multidimensional journey that provides a smorgasbord of information, and will give seasoned psychonauts, dogmatic academics, culture aficionados, and frankly any curious mind, plenty to chew on."
Mitch Schultz, founder of MYTHAPHI and director of DMT: The Spirit Molecule

Author Bio

Graham St John grew up in Australia, and holds a PhD in cultural anthropology, specializing in electronic dance music event-cultures, freak rituals and media, neotribes and entheogens. St John has authored several books, including Global Tribe- Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance (Equinox, 2012), Technomad- Global Raving Countercultures (Equinox, 2009), and the forthcoming Weekend Societies- Electronic Dance Music Festivals and Event-Cultures (Bloomsbury). The author has been awarded postdoctoral Fellowships in Australia, United States, Canada, and Switzerland, where he recently began researching the global Burning Man diaspora in Europe. A frequent speaker at conferences, dance festivals, and visionary arts gatherings, he is also the founding Executive Editor of Dancecult- Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture.