Roger Smith
MW 11:30-1:00 pm
Eng 119
FAVORITE SONG
	My favorite song, from a lyrical standpoint is “Right in Two” by Psychedelic Metal band Tool, from Los Angeles. The lyrics were written by Tool’s singer, Maynard James Keenan, and they elegantly interweave visuals from science, history, and religion together, side-by-side in order to analyze where we’ve been as a species, where we’re going as a species and where we stand right now. The lyrics are personally important to me because I regard science and spirituality so highly, and it is apparent that the lyricist does too.
	“Angels on the sideline, puzzled and amused. Why did Father give these humans free will? Now they’re all confused. Don’t these talking monkeys know that Eden has enough to go around? Plenty in this Holy Garden, silly monkeys, where there’s one they’re bound to divide it right in two.” This is the first line in the song, and sets up what is to come very well. We have Judeo-Christian imagery with “Angels”, “Father” and “Eden”, but the humans are referred to as “talking monkeys” taking that imagery from scientific implications. This is one of my favorite lines because of how it interprets Eden, that is, that we never actually left. I think the biblical story of Eden is a fairy tale. When you really think about it, we live on planet Eden. This planet is a bio-sphere which contains everything necessary for our survival, which to me is no different than Eden. If we humans hadn’t put ourselves in charge, the Earth would still be more or less indistinguishable from paradise. That’s what the last line above is about. We couldn’t share Eden as one unit; we had to divide it amongst ourselves in squabble. We have only one planet, and it can accommodate all of us but we’ve decided to divide it all, land and other resources included.
	“Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here.” This is one of my favorite single lines in a poem ever written and to truly comprehend its meaning requires a lot of background information. This line advocates personal freedom over one’s own nervous system, specifically the use of ancient, ritualistic, natural substances used in spiritual or religious contexts and the unfortunate outcomes of politics towards the use of these “entheogens” in the 20th century. Tool advocates DMT or dimethyltryptamine use for religious, sacred and spiritual purposes, it’s no secret to fans. The effects of DMT are very intense, but extremely short-lasting. By the time the first “hit” is exhaled, the objective day-to-day universe is replaced by a vivid, constantly transforming, extra-dimensional landscape often inhabited by interactive bio-technologies and spiritual entities who may or may not guide the experience until the visuals cease fifteen minutes later. Interacting with and/or receiving messages from magical, scientifically-advanced or religious entities (elves, aliens, demons, Jesus, Krishna, deceased loved ones), merging with “the divine light”, feeling as though one is literally going through the death-process, even being abducted and experimented on by alien-creatures with inconceivable medical tools are all extremely common, if not the most common of all reported experiences. These experiences are universal to every human being introduced to the chemical no matter what cultural background he or she comes from. Even indigenous tribes, culturally isolated from the rest of the world with no concept of things like alien-abduction still report indistinguishable experiences in their parlance. The intensity of DMT cannot be compared to other psychedelics like LSD at all; If LSD was a carousel, DMT would be the entire amusement park. Despite being the most powerful hallucinatory substance known to our species, DMT is a safe, non-addictive, ancient chemical with a rich history of both human and animal use. Our species has literally been using this chemical for religious and medicinal purposes for millennia and many DMT-containing plants remain vital to South American tribes today for treating burns. Dimethyltryptamine is perhaps one of the most ancient psychoactive substances known to man in that it is actually produced in the brain by the pineal gland and is found in plant and animal sources including vines, grass, tree roots and bark, fungi, toads and in the bone marrow of giraffes. It is speculated and even adopted by some scientists that DMT may play a role in the visual aspect of our dreams. The chemical’s precursor is found in large amounts in human brains that have started to go through the death process, and many doctors like Rick Strassman believe this chemical is responsible for the recurring spiritual aspects reported in Near-Death Experiences. Revived patients from the fringes of life and death often report about seeing a divine white light, being surrounded by loved ones and experiencing unconditional love coming from a source a God-like source (when they don’t report about agonizing torture and hell-fire common in both “bad-DMT-trips” and terrifying NDE’s). Many psychologists like Dr. Richard Alpert and Dr. Timothy Leary (Satan, himself!) believe that DMT is responsible for every religious and mystic vision ever reported, right down to good ol’ Revelation and all of its crazy multi-headed demon-beasts. It should come to no surprise that so many different people and religions find the “dream and death” chemical to be crucial to their own understanding of the soul and its relationship with the body and universe. Unfortunately, our government has legislated this chemical to be just as illegal as heroin, the date-rape drug, and ecstasy and even more illegal than cocaine/crack, crystal-meth, opium, PCP, tobacco and alcohol even though we’re all holding! DMT has a documented medicinal and religious history (alcohol’s only excuse for legality), has never caused one death due to an overdose or unfortunate accident, has zero potential for abuse, little to non-existent adverse health effects depending on method of ingestion, no adverse long-term effects, and it is impossible to dose somebody with DMT unknowingly as a cruel prank. Many legitimate churches including some Christian-themed DMT churches have had to fight in the Supreme Court for their right to possess and ingest DMT as their sacrament. Some have won. Some have not. There are people in jail right now simply because they wanted to have a chance at glimpsing divinity during their one chance to be alive, breathing and human. They never robbed anybody, killed anybody or hurt anybody. They just wanted a chance to experience reality with a different antenna other than serotonin. They just wanted to understand and experience the last chemical that human-beings experience before the soul leaves the body forever, while they still have the liberty of “coming down” instead of “passing on”. Every human being should be allowed to worship the way they choose, especially with the knowledge we have about DMT and its relationship to our dreams and the death-process. Read the lyric quoted at the beginning of this paragraph one more time, now that you know more about DMT… It amazes me how Maynard of Tool condenses this entire paragraph into one, simple, elegant sentence. He is a true poet and I believe he is spiritually touched.
	The song concludes with the lines “Angels on the sideline again, benched along with patience and reason. Angels on the sideline again, wondering when this tug-of-war will end”. We are divine beings capable of surviving years beyond the life of our sun and planet. On this cosmic scale, just like to the angels, all of our bitter hatred towards each other is so petty. Not only are we destroying our brothers and sisters lives with war, but we are destroying the chances of the survival of our species in doing so.   This is my favorite song, because it really puts everything into perspective in a unique way. Religion (Christianity), Science (Evolution), and pseudo-religious pseudo-scientific spirituality (DMT) are all blended together to paint humanity with poetry. I know this wasn’t supposed to be this long, but I’m a musician and a writer so with this topic, you were just begging for a 1,300 word essay.