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Brian C. Muraresku

lines on the record: 31
first: 2022-12-28
most recent: 2022-12-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It's been a full 60 years since some of this controversy erupted. But like we talked about at the very beginning, despite that psychic load, I think that the clinical work certainly made an impact. The fact that a guy named Michael Pollen teaches English at Harvard in the fall makes a difference, informs the conversation. And I think that people are reapproaching this topic now. I don't know why it's taken 60 years, but reapproaching it with a real sober lens. And it's been, yeah, it's been really interesting to witness.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is a loaded question. Yeah, it's... I haven't talked about this publicly yet, but Leary is still a bit of a four letter word on campus. And just in generality, I mentioned these conversations with folks from the divinity school to the law school to the medical school, to the faculty of arts and sciences. There's a lot of genuine organic interest in this topic. And I noticed over the past couple years that the specter of Leary, the shadow of Leary kind of hangs in the corner of every conversation. Because for those who don't know, the Pied Piper of Psychedelic Enlightenment, Mr. Leary, gets a lot of flack for what happened at Harvard in the early 1960s. And when he and Dick Albert, who became Ramdas, were kicked off campus, that was the beginning of a long hiatus in these studies. So we're talking about this is about 60 years. So from 1962 until where we sit.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because, I mean, talking about life itself. So, I mean, I look at you as a hero, as a groundbreaker in a very real sense around this discipline and this topic. As a disciple of Shultes, amongst other accolades we could list. I think that some of the most impressive stuff you've done is like transforming the insights you've had on psychedelics or not. I don't know. Or maybe it's through your scholarship or your study into a desire to actually preserve these traditions. And what that means in some cases is preserving the plants themselves. Sometimes it means preserving the people. A lot of it has to do with very boring legal work, which is conserving land in places that's not always very easy. And if you wouldn't mind, I think that you're an example of doing good in the world based on ineffable”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That this medicalization that has captured the imagination over the past 20 years is just one very small aspect of what these things represent, how archaic they really are, stoned apes or not. These things, I'm talking about these plants and fungi, have been evolving for millions of years. And I think we always need to keep that in mind.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“could be an aid to a spiritual discipline that then transcends or at least sublimates psychedelics into a life dedicated to contemplative practice and action, like acting on that practice to actually do something in the world, something of benefit. I mentioned Glenn Shepard because he and I had a conversation a couple weeks ago just shows you how differently people think about psychedelics and his estimate was that something like 50% of Amazonian shamanism, at least with respect to ayahuasca, is not dedicated to health and wellness the way we think about it. But he said they're hunting rituals, which I thought was fascinating. And he was talking about his work with the Mashiginka. Mashiginga and all these hunters and why and how they use ayahuasca and other plants, other magical plants in these hunting rituals. And so I just think we have to remember.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And maybe that's where psychedelics come in, right? And you're reminding me of a conversation I had with Glenn Shepherd, who I'd love to talk about. So Augustine si comprehendis non es. Like, if your rational mind can fix in on it, you're probably not right about God. And I mentioned this Jesuit Carl Rahner who said that we shouldn't even use the word God. It's all aspirational. The rational mind has a tough time attaching to this. But yes, psychedelics as in the right way, these are not for everybody. I'm also super concerned about the public discourse and this notion of a panacea or a godpill. I think that under the right setting for otherwise consenting adults, I don't know when that is. Maybe it begins at 35 or later because life is psychedelic enough. You know, the infrequent occasional use of some of these compounds with people who know what the hell they're doing.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I did want to quote Roland Griffiths himself, who I think is going on the record about this now. And she wasn't talking about psychedelics, she was talking about these practices, these archaic ancient practices, techniques of ecstasy, in some cases that Eliadi talks about, that just kind of bring us back down to the notion of our true self. So you can call it ego dissolution and boundary dissolving, but it's essentially like entering into meditation or contemplative practice or yoga, you know, doing this stuff with the intention of losing the self, the false self, of the ego, in order to find something that's maybe more genuine so that, and here's the big, the whole point and the big kicker is so that you can reinvest that sense of self into everyone you meet and everything you see. And so to be a beacon of love and compassion through these practices, that was kind of the whole point.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And they are. That's why it's called a paradox. And I see you were citing in my recent conversation with Karen. You can find it on YouTube called The God Paradox. I think Paradox is a very good thing because I think that's, again, not ever having experienced them myself. It's one of the things that seems to occur in those who experience altered states of awareness under the influence of psychedelics. So distortions of time and space, okay, that's one thing. You mentioned ineffability, that's another. But, okay, so being part of yourself and also part of someone you're looking at or something you're looking at. So being here but also there simultaneously, now you get into some pretty quantum mind bending stuff. These are paradoxes. And I think like a Zen Cohen, they're there to remind us that life isn't easily reducible. And I was getting my phone out.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Under the right circumstances. And so, you know, like divinity schools are great places to host those conversations, English departments, maybe even in the arts. I think just I sense a real welcoming and an opening to what's really possible in the next chapter of the psychedelic conversation, which I think is that, our deep history and this unwritten future”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comparative religion from James to the 1950s, again, when this was all fair game, I think that I sense kind of a return to the big questions in addition to the relief of suffering, what do psychedelics really mean for people today? Why do people find meaning? Even if all you think about psychedelics are agents of relieving suffering for PTSD, okay, if you've ever talked to, and I've talked to several of these special forces, Navy SEALs who undergo these dramatic experiences with psychedelics, things like Ibogaine and 5MEO DMT, I mean, the things they talk about, you know, not in every case, but some of them have very weird transpersonal mystical experiences. Again, not across the board, but things that seem to tap into a collective understanding of the variety like James, the variety of spiritual experiences that can sometimes happen.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's going on? I'll share what I can. Yeah, there's lots of interest, and not just on that campus, but elsewhere. So I've had, like, the funnest part for me has been having these really cool conversations about the meaning of psychedelic studies, right? Writ large across all these campuses and in popular discourse. Again, things are very different from where they were even at Hopkins 20 years ago when a lot of this clinical work began. So I've had the funnest conversations at Harvard and Yale and Hopkins and certainly on the West Coast. So I've mentioned a few of those psychedelic centers already and where a lot of the focus has been on clinical work. Interestingly, at least for me, over the past couple years as a humanist, I'm seeing interest in things like divinity studies and ethnobotany that you and I both love and the social sciences and the things that William James was talking about at this weird intersection between philosophy, psychology,”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know, I don't know. You asked about the death and rebirth of Carl Ruck. So his career has certainly changed from the late 70s to where it is today. And I wonder, you know, the Vatican had its moment with Vatican II for the Catholics who are listening in the 1960s. And it's a big institution, maybe slow to change in certain respects. But there's always always been pockets in the church. And I look to a lot of these brotherhoods, sisterhoods. Like the Jesuits and the Dominicans and the Benedictines and the Franciscans, you know, educated folks who have big questions, same as you and me. And I think the best of them engage with the lay public. That's the mission. That's the ministry, engage with universities, engage with scholarship, engage with divinity schools. So I don't know. It's hard to say. But it's at least worthy of conversation.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, I mean, the Catholic Church that I know, and I grew up Catholic, I went to Catholic school for 12 years, and I was trained by the Jesuits in Latin and Greek. So I only learned Latin and Greek through the Jesuits. Like, I was always taught to ask questions. And from the very beginning, when I was bouncing from an office in Boston to places at the Vatican, I would get the same response. So I talked to the archivists, I would talk to the archaeologists.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, to be honest, I was more concerned about being burned at the stake of classical wisdom. I was really concerned about the reaction from some folks at Harvard and Greg Naj in particular, who I reached out to around the corner here many years ago, the former director of Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies. I mean, in answer to your question, like from the very first conversation I had with Greg, sort of like the classicist of classicists, he was not shocked by this line of investigation. And he encouraged me from our very first meeting. And I mentioned that because I talked about this dichotomy between the classical pre-Christian scholars and then what happens in the seminary today. You're learning the same Greek. Why is why are there two different approaches to this? Why is there a classical department and why is there a department of theology? I think what unites those scholars today is this notion of a truth proposition, the value of truth.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they're very complimentary. The same with these potions that you rightly suggest. The idea of alcohol as a vehicle for these other compounds. I got that idea from Terence McKenna. He mentions it in one page of Food of the Gods. And it was this notion of these archaic matriarchal psychedelic loving societies versus the later patriarchal alcohol lovers. And he mentions this notion that alcohol could have been this intermediary that really united the two. So spiked beer, spiked wine. So I think the drunken monkey isn't that controversial. The stone ape is far more controversial for reasons you can imagine, but it's worth looking into. This morning, as a matter of fact, I won't mention details, but I was talking to my friend Lee Berger, who is a paleoanthropologist in South Africa. And together we're taking like a very serious look at being able to scientifically test some of these stoned ape ideas.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which means just like it sounds. It's a chill out. It's a refrigerator. So you see hints of that at this funeral banquet with King Midas. And some of these vessels contain the remnants of what McGovern identified as calcium oxalate pointing to beer, tartaric acid pointing to wine, and potassium gluconate, pointing to something like honey or mead. So some sort of weird beer, wine, mead concoction that was used, as he says, to royally usher the king into the afterlife and maybe those attending this funeral banquet. So again, there's actual organic chemical data pointing to the existence of these potions, these compounds for centuries and centuries before Christianity.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, at the University of Pennsylvania. I consulted him when I was writing the book, and he put me in touch with a guy named Martin Zarnkow, who did the testing for Beerstone, by the way, Akobeckley Tepe, and has done some follow-up experiments there, which are really intriguing. Pat McGovern is known, amongst other things, for resurrecting some of these ancient potions and these ancient brews. And he pointed me to the Midas touch, for example, which he recreated. So that was based on a Phrygian potion, 8th century BC in Gordium. So this could be theoretically hearkening back to King Midas. What they found in the burial chamber there was the remnants of a funerary feast. And this is another theme that pops up again and again, especially in the Roman times into early Christianity. This notion of a funeral banquet, and there's even a word in Latin for this, refrigerium.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get intoxicated, but there's a great paper that came out. I think it was in 2012 about the ritual feasting. If you Google ritual feasting, Gobekli Tepe, German, and some combination thereof, you'll find a great paper on the feast.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All at the same time Without getting into too much detail, you're talking about Gobekli Tepe, which as far as we know, goes back about 12,000 years from where we are now, although some of these ritual elements that show up at this big megalithic site, 6,000 years, by the way, before Stonehenge, 7,000 years before the high civilizations, that we know, like Egypt and the Indus Valley and Sumeria, there's this place Gobekli Tepe, these giant megalithic T-shaped pillars that the German archaeological folks at the very least think were meant to represent some kind of deities. And in this big site in southeastern Turkey, at the upper register of the Fertile Crescent, 10th millennium, 9th millennium BC, they're finding these big limestone vats, six of them, and they could accommodate some of them 42 gallons of liquid. Okay, 42 gallons of what? It wasn't water. It wasn't safe to drink water all the time, by the way. So they weren't necessarily looking to...”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That seems to have been mixed with things like opium and cannabis and henbane and black nightshade in addition toads, frogs, and lizards, so some very funky wine actually did exist.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the time of the earliest Christians. So, you know, classicists know this. Like people who study Greek and Latin know this. And what's weird is that the people who study the pagan world are often very different from the priests and the pastors who study the New Testament from a very different angle. And this was pointed out by classicists in the early 20th century. And they go on to say things like, you know, how strange is it that a very big part of the literature and civilization of the ancient world is very much neglected by the very ones best able to investigate it, which is to say the Greek speakers and the scholars. And so just using that as like a big lens, you can then go in and find actual organic data, like physical proof that people were mixing things into wine. And I mentioned a few examples in the book, including from the first century at this Villa Vesuvio site outside Pompeii. They found actual traces of wine.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Literature is described as unusually intoxicating, seriously mind-altering, occasionally hallucinogenic, that's true, and potentially lethal. So very, very different wine from the wine of today. And in fact, you can look at dioscorides, right? The great physician who writes in the second half of the first century at the exact same time the gospels are being written, and you can read recipe after recipe of what to add to wine to produce any number of different effects, whether it's adding spices like frankincense and myrrh, whether it's adding poisons, how did Socrates die in the end with wine spiked with hemlock, things like aconite, and then funky things like mandrake or henbane or black nightshade, which Dioscorides says can produce not unpleasant visions. Okay, so we have actual literature that points to something like a psychedelic vision in the first century AD.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so you have to think about ancient wine. Okay, so without being heretical or speculative about it, ancient wine is very, very different from the wine we drink today. In fact, a common word used in ancient Greek, the language that was used to draft the gospels, the language that was used by St. Paul, the greatest missionary Christianity ever knew when he was preaching and converting to this Hellenic universe around the Mediterranean, writing letters in Greek to Greek speakers. The word they use for wine is pharmacos, right? So the word they use is drug. So wine was routinely referred to as a drug from like the time of Homer to the fall of the Roman Empire. So over a thousand years go by. And of course, there's a word for wine, oinos. And you see that in the New Testament. But this word pharmakos pops up as a ritual formula again and again. And the reason that is, is because wine at the time, and you see this in the ancient literature,”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which I think have far more in common with early Christianity, and we can talk about that later. But this notion of encountering the divine within through experience. So how did Aristotle define this notion of the Eleusinian vision? So he said that you went to Eleusis not to learn something, the Greek word mathane, like mathematics. You didn't go there to mathematically learn something, like doctrine, dogma, the way we think of religion today. You went there to experience something, Pathane. You went there to suffer, pathos, you went there to actually experience something. Well, this shows up in early Christianity too. And the other thing that shows up in early Christianity are secrets. So just look at Mark 4.11. You know, Jesus talks in parables and tells these weird stories because there was an exoteric form to the faith and an esoteric version. There's no controversy among Christian scholars that Christianity is born with secrets. You have a church father like Tertullian.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, I emphasize, I mean, the whole, a lot of the book is about psychedelics. Okay, let's be clear. But it's not, that's not the key that I'm talking about in the immortality key. I think the key that I'm talking about and the thing that unites these pagan religions with early Christianity is the notion of experience, right? The direct experience of the divine. There were whole movements dedicated to this, several different sects within the Gnostic circles of early Christianity that were dedicated to the proposition that you have a spark of the divine inside you and that Jesus came not to be worshipped but to instruct all of us, men, women, and children how to identify that spark, how to fulfill our mission on earth, and how to embody that divinity, which is to say that we're all divine, okay? And this is the proposition of the mysteries that belong to the pagan world too, whether it's the mysteries of Ellus that we talked about, the mysteries of Dionysus.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That clinical work that I mentioned, which is now 20 years in, in the case of psilocybin at the very least, and also with MDMA, the work of Rick Doblin at MAPS, he's been chugging away at that as well. And so I just think that our biases, our prejudices are slowly melting away, and certainly the work of Michael Polland, a journalist, did a great job with his book, How to Change Your Mind and his new book, This Is Your Mind on Plants. I think the cultural conversation around psychedelics has changed dramatically in the past five years, and a lot of it is just dumb luck.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have no idea, is the honest answer. Yeah, my life has taken a weird course the past two years. I think I alluded to it before. I think it's a lot of dumb luck, to be honest. I mean, I'm sitting across from somebody who spent a lot of his life researching this in earnest. And you yourself standing on the shoulders of people like Richard Evans Shultes, great ethnobotanist of the 20th century, who I know has been mentioned on this podcast before, deserve itly so. And then I don't know. I think the culture war really got in the way, not just of the clinical work, but also the arts and humanities and some of this scholarship that was not controversial in the days of William James at Harvard, by the way, more than 100 years ago. This was a respectable avenue of pursuit until the 1970s. And things have changed, I think, for a lot of different reasons, largely because of that.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just a few years into the war on drugs under Richard Nixon. So, you know, throughout the 80s and 90s, Carl and beyond, he was relegated to the periphery of classical scholarship. I think in the book, I call him the black sheep of the classics estate, a place you don't want to occupy. But he was tenured at Boston University, so they couldn't fire him. They couldn't get rid of him. And instead of just quietly going about his way, he basically spent another 30, 40 years just continuing to pound away at this hypothesis. He wrote about other things, and he's a fantastic scholar, by the way, trained at Yale and Harvard, but he really went after this idea of the ancient Greeks, the Romans, and potentially the earliest Christians using these kinds of drugs to instantiate these spiritual experiences. And slowly but surely, the culture came back around to where it was in the 1950s.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, that's good. Wow. Good question. Yeah, so he went through his own death and rebirth as a kind of microcosm of this scholarship, which is interesting. So yeah, the idea that dude, they were on psychedelics was not a popular theory in the late 1970s. So you mentioned Carl and Gordon and Albert Hoffman was the co-author, the famed discoverer of LSD back in the 1930s. And together they wrote this book called The Road to Ellusis, unveiling the secret of the mysteries in 1978. It was not well received by the academic establishment and least of all by the then president of Boston University, a guy named John Silber. And Ruck was excoriated for daring to suggest that the founders of rationality, right, of Western skepticism, that they could have entered so fully into such an irrational state of mind, and least of all through psychedelic drugs, which were also not popular in the late 19th century.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amongst other things to drink a potion called the Cukion, this magical potion, the recipe of which was secret, and you would go there, have this experience that has since been described as the culminating experience of a lifetime. And Karl Ruck, one of the professors who researched this at Boston University, described the experience as somehow making all previous seeing seem like blindness. So you went there to have a visionary encounter with goddesses, with strange beings. They called them Demeter and Persephone, the lady of the grain and the goddess of death, the goddess of the underworld. And it was claimed that only those who went to Eleusis, again, drank this potion, participated in the pilgrimage, would in fact achieve immortality. It was only they who would survive death. And we don't know what that means because it was all kept secret, but we do know that the best and brightest of both Greece and Rome visited.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. So for those who don't know, Eleusis still exists in one form or another. It's called Elefsina in today's world. And actually next year, 2023, Elfsina, of all the places in Europe, has been nominated to be the European Capital of Culture. So this might all seem like weird anecdotes and footnotes that belong in an unread book, but Elf Cina is back on the world map for one reason or another. In antiquity, Elusis, I've described as kind of like the Vatican of the ancient world. It's a few miles northwest of Athens. So during the classical period, so think 2,500 years ago and more, for about 2,000 years, this was the place that people went, men, women, sometimes children, slaves. People were invited to Eleusis, if you could afford it, and you had the time to make this pilgrimage to become immortal. That was the promise of Elusis. You went to this place.”
2022-12-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #646: Brian C. Muraresku with Dr. Mark Plotkin — The Eleusinian Mysteries, Discovering the Divine, The Immortality Key, The Pagan Continuity Hypothesis, Lessons from Scholar Karen Armstrong, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT