The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion With No Name by Brian C. Muraresku

 

The Da Vinci Code grows up (without the murders or gorgeous sidekick)

Before reading this book I’d listened to a podcast interview between the author, Brian Muraresku, and Jaime Wheal (whose most recent book is on my playlist). In remarking on Muraresku’s book, I recall Wheal describing it as “Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code grown-up” (or words to that effect). And I must say that the comparison is apt. In this book, Muraresku provides an engaging narrative about a bit of an obsession that in 2007 from a chancing upon a magazine article that triggered his recollection of an obscure academic work he’d read during his prior life as a budding young classicist. In short, Muraresku combines an (intellectual) adventure tale—including hints of intrigue— with a travelogue around the Mediterranean and through time.


The secret— or rather secrets— that Muraresku pursues are those of ancient beverages. He and colleagues and their predecessors in this search believe that some of those beverages— beers and wines— may have been spiked with psychedelic or other psychoactive substances. And were not talking just alcohol, either. As Muraresku notes, we’re not sure which was the first human “biotechnology,” but the prize either goes to beer or bread. Both came from grains first gathered and then cultivated around 10-13 thousand years ago by humans at the dawn of civilization (agriculture and cities). But regardless of which came first, beer (or fermented grains of some sort) has been around a long time. And beer was used at one of the most famous sites of antiquity, the temple at Eleusis that hosted the Elysian mysteries, which Muraresku described as the “first spiritual capital of the West.” And what are the Elysian mysteries? What went on during this ancient Greek rite remains one of the best-kept secrets of antiquity. We really don’t know what was said or done during these rites except that these rites revolved around the Greek goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Suffice it to say that until the rites were shut down in 392 A.D. by nervous Roman authorities then ruling Greece, this place and the secret rites that occurred there had been a major phenomenon in the Greek-speaking world for about 1900 years. Among those who experienced the rite of the mysteries were Plato, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius, to name but three, who, between them, opined about a great many topics, but they never shared what they experienced there. And in a theme that will continue throughout the book and its investigation into other rites that may have included the use of psychoactive substances, the rites were controlled by and conducted by women.


After exploring the evidence surrounding the Elysian mysteries, off-shoots of which can be seen as far as Spain, Muraresku turns his attention to the cult of Dionysus, the god of wine (and “drugs”) whose cult came into prominence with the development of viticulture in the Greek-speaking world. Again, he pursues trails linguistic and scientific to determine whether the cult of Dionysus didn’t influence the early Christian cult of Jesus. Muraresku focuses on the Gospel of John and makes a compelling argument that John’s narrative was aimed at the Greek-speaking populations in the western Mediterranean, where the cult of Dionysus flourished. Could the wine that Jesus shared at the Last Supper have been spiked? And did subsequent celebrations of that Last Supper, which became Communion in the later tradition, also feature spiked wine? In investigating these possibilities, Muraresku travels to archeological sites in southern Italy, which included long-established colonies of Greeks and Phoenicians. He looks at a well-preserved farm near Mt. Vesuvius that that included residues of the beverages that were preserved courtesy of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that buried (and preserved) Pompeii in 79 C.E. Scientists found intriguing residues that suggested that the wine wasn’t just wine.


And in Da Vinci Code style, Muraresku, with his confederate, a Franciscan priest, gained access to the Vatican archives and the catacombs in a sort of behind-enemy-lines motif. Muraresku describes himself as a “good Catholic boy” who attended a Jesuit high school and a Jesuit law school (Georgetown). But he realizes that his hypothesis— that the wine of Jesus and “paleo-Christians” may have been spiked— would not sit well with the Vatican. As Muraresku notes, there are two things that the Catholic hierarchy has never been fond of: drugs and women in positions of power. Nevertheless, he gained access to some fascinating documents and viewed some fascinating frescoes in the catacombs under St. Peter’s Basilica that add intriguing pieces of evidence to his attempt to prove his hypothesis.


The final portion of the book touches on several related topics, including the late medieval to early modern infatuation by the Church with “witchcraft” and what eventually became the European witch craze of the 1500s on into the 1600s (and that spread to the Americas); the suppression of drug use by the indigenous peoples of the Americas (for instance, psilocybin); and that most intriguing of early modern personages, Giordano Bruno. Bruno was a proto-scientist, magician, and precursor of Galileo. (Galileo learned about how the Vatican reacted to unwanted theories by knowing of Bruno’s demise at the stake in 1600.) We learn that Bruno haled from Campania, the area around Naples that included the ancient Greek-speaking colonies dating from the time of Parmenides and that later gained notoriety for its “witches,” and their brews that were so feared and persecuted by the Church.


Muraresku opens his narrative and gives a brief apologia for his quest by relating the experience of a cancer patient, “Dinah,” who participates in a study undertaken by NYU researchers about the efficacy of psilocybin for providing relief for someone dealing with a life-threatening disease. For Dinah, a self-described atheist, her experience with the hallucinogen was life-altering. She has beaten the odds for survival after her cancer diagnosis, but she still lives, in a sense, under a death sentence (as do we all). But she reports that her outlook on life and death has changed because of her experience with the drug. And her experience is not unique. Continuing research at NYU, Johns Hopkins, and other institutions, as well as research (mostly surreptitious) outside the sanction of the academy, have produced similar results. Muraresku posits that these experiences allow individuals to “die before that die,” the counsel of the ancient Greeks who practiced rituals to gain this advantage, an advantage sought by Christians as well. Based on these researches and influential individual experimenters that were prominent before the War on Drugs was declared, such as Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, and Gordon Wasson (the ethnobotanist who reported on his use of psilocybin in a 1957 Life magazine article), Muraresku suggests that the use of psychedelics could prove a boon to those with psychological injuries and to further spiritual explorations. And here’s where I need to raise some concerns and questions.


Testimonials from users are useful and important, no question. But current subjects of medically guided experiments are tightly monitored, and (I assume) steps are taken to avoid a bad trip. Perhaps it's a trick of an aging memory or the result of anti-drug propaganda, but I recall that some folks suffered bad trips, some even fatal. How can we— or can we at all— avoid bad trips by users who escape any guidance? Or to put it more bluntly— and to risk the ire of one of the gods of contemporary culture— should these drugs be available to the uninitiated, or should these drugs be limited to those who have undertaken the requisite physical, learning, and ethical preparation that would make these drug trips safe for the user and the user’s society; i.e., an elite? We don’t want to foster a new class of lotus-eaters or a new herd of Circe’s pigs. I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I think it crucial to ask them. Muraresku, who choose to avoid any use of substances during the twelve years he spent in pursuit of his quest, suggests steps can and should be taken to make “the God pill” available and valuable to a potential user. He writes:

There are real-world benefits to all this supernatural mumbo jumbo. That “science of awe” with its increase in “pro-social behaviors such as kindness, self-sacrifice, co-operation and resource-sharing.” [Quoting Alan Watts.] After all, it’s not about altered states, but altered traits, as Huston Smith once summarized the value of psychedelics. If we took the God Pill, would we really all become better people? Would we love more and hate less? Would it make any difference? Only to the extent that the initial experience was sacred. And stayed sacred. Stayed meaningful. The Mysteries had a way of ritually ensuring the odds of that transformation from the mortal to the immortal: various stages of initiation, intense psychological preparation, a community of mentors, integration back into everyday life.

Muraresku, Brian C. The Immortality Key (p. 390). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Muraresku’s plan for making the “God pill” a social benefit strikes the right note, but it doesn’t seem plausible in practice. How many persons are willing to undertake any spiritual or practical discipline? Few indeed. This potential shortcut to spiritual enlightenment is certainly more attractive than years of meditation and other more traditional (and arduous) forms of spiritual initiation But if these drugs can be abused, and what drugs can’t be— and aren’t— abused— then we have a tough choice to make. No one will want to leave such as a decision to any government bureaucracy, ecclesiastical hierarchy, or any other authority not recognized in advance by the individual as rightfully holding such awesome power. A tough sell. Thus, we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t regulate access to something as potent as “the God pill.” And consider that any spiritual technology that has the potential to bring us closer to the angels will almost certainly have the power to bring us closer to the devil.


Another issue that Muraresku doesn’t address: what is the ontological status of drug-induced revelations? The same could be asked of any other technique that induces visions (or hallucinations, if you prefer— the choice of terms anticipates the answer). How do we, if at all, separate the wheat from the chaff? Does the relief and insight that Muraresku reports that the NYU test subject “Dinah” experienced only the reality of a pleasant dream, or is it a genuine insight into ultimate reality? And how would we know? Of course, if better dreams, better fantasies, only bring about better behavior, it’s still worthwhile pursuing such a remedy, just as taking an aspirin for a headache can make us a better companion. (Older readers: remember those television ads for aspirin back in the day?)


One final point of criticism (venial sins of omission and not commission), Muraresku suggests that the use of spiked wine in the paleo-Christian community aided its spread, which was, in fact, no small miracle. But there are many theories, many plausible explanations, about how and why Christianity spread so effectively even before it gained the imprimatur of the state and the power of the sword. Muraresku is certainly aware of these theories, but he doesn’t address them. Jesus is portrayed in John’s Gospel in significantly different ways than he is by the Synoptic Gospels, Paul, and others in the New Testament canon. (The Gnostics, as Muraresku notes, tend to follow the Johannine path and on the whole support Muraresku’s theory. And to be fair, Muraresku would not claim these theories as his own, he serves more as the investigator and advocate than the originator of these claims.) The political-social implications of Jesus’ message and the community bonds that formed around could have been enough to bring about the miracle of the spread and triumph of Christianity.


Although I’m sure that he’s a credit to our profession (law), it’s too bad that Muraresku concluded that a career path as a classicist wouldn’t suit him. And although he reports that his field of practice is “international law” (I’d guess international transactions in particular), he certainly learned how to present a strong case. He has the trappings of a fine advocate in the courtroom if he wants a career change. And because of all this, I’ll pass judgment on his argument according to legal standards. Has he proven his case? Certainly not beyond a reasonable doubt, and not by clear and convincing evidence. But the defense hasn’t put on its case, so one can’t pass any final judgment in any event. Plus, his toughest case will involve the Catholic Church. Good luck getting the Vatican into the courtroom of public opinion. They possess much of the evidence! However, in my role as an imaginary magistrate, I will rule that Muraresku’s case meets that standard of probable cause and that his case should come to a full trial (by academic fire). It’s an intriguing argument well-presented, and despite the qualms I expressed above, it could prove a ground-breaking case that would benefit humankind, which needs as much spiritual insight as it can get in the challenging times we face. I encourage him to pursue it.

The Wedge: Evolution, Consciousness, Stress & the Key to Human Resilience by Scott Carney

 

Published in 2020

I read The Wedge as a sequel to Carney's earlier book What Doesn't Kill Us, which reported about his dive into the Wim Hof Method. The Wim Hof Method involves a combination of cold exposure and intense breathing and breath-holds that seem to allow the nearly impossible in terms of control over autonomic functions in the body. What Doesn't Kill Us was intriguing, to say the least, as Carney had begun his inquiry with the idea of debunking the wild-eyed Dutchman. But by the end of his time with Wim Hof, Carney concluded that Wim Hof was on to something, and Carney was all in. And when I say "all in,' this includes a climactic climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro in near-record time while dressed only minimally--and even in the heart of Africa, it gets mighty cold there. This experience triggered Carney to look more deeply into what happens with the Wim Hof method and how it might be duplicated in some measure by other techniques. And thus, The Wedge.

Carney lays out his hypothesis upfront in clear, simple (but not too simple) prose: 

So what is the Wedge, exactly? The most comfortable way to think about the Wedge is that it is a choice to separate stimulus from response. . . . The Wedge is the measure of control that we all have to insert choice into the space between sensation of the outside world and the physiological responses that it triggers. . . [I]nevery situation a human might get themselves into, there’s always a tension between the challenge (stress) and the built-in automatic reactions. The Wedge intercedes and introduces a measure of control in things that otherwise feel uncontrollable.

Carney then compares this "wedge" space with our normal ego as it functions: 

The tricky thing about understanding the Wedge, and what makes it so incredibly difficult to explain, is that you—or rather, your ego—is not always the thing in charge. Remember, there is no self. All the parts of an individual and environment work together to generate an illusion of a self. Ego is just a perspective on the reality that we’re part of a superorganism.

Carney continues with some greater in-depth thoughts about how the wedge may work, and he notes three different pathways by which the wedge might operate: at the point of stress (from the environment), at the point of (bodily) sensation, and in our "mindset" or "orientation;" that is, "your mental attitude, expectations, emotions and disposition at the time that you receive sensation from your nervous system." From this deployment of a mindset, one can in some sense pre-load one's responses to stresses and sensations to allow a wedge to form. Carney also makes an important point about emotions, writing that

Emotions create a symbolic link between what’s happening in the world and what occurs inside of our bodies. And because evolution is a rather slow process, it would be hubristic to think that the sensory and emotional tools that Homo sapiens have access to appeared fully formed when the first member of our species started walking the Earth between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago.

Indeed, Carney argues 

Inserting a wedge requires learning the language that your body uses to communicate information about the environment. Its syntax and grammar aren’t made of words; they’re sensation, emotion, and keen observation of the links between your mind and the external world. 

Before I conclude this summary tour of Carney's thoughts and theories about the Wedge before he jumps into a series of concrete instances of its manifestations, I must note his discussion of fear, that most potent and often vexing emotion.

How we resolve the tension between risk and reward defines who we are. And fear is a guidepost for how we use the Wedge. It is as much an involuntary response to a prediction of the future as it is a sensation that immobilizes our biology and stops us from taking action. Mastering fear doesn’t mean ignoring danger, but rather finding a reason that makes danger worth it—separating the stimulus from the response.

Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neuroscientist, uses video from divers who investigate great white sharks to elicit fear in test subjects in his lab. (It would work for me.) Carney quotes and summarizes comments from Huberman about fear:

Fear would have meant he [the diver] was out of control. No choices. So maybe he wasn’t exactly afraid in the moment. It was something else. Huberman decides to paraphrase the great horror writer Stephen King: Fear has a lot to do with time frames. Before the event, a person experiences the dread of anticipation; during the event, there’s terror when they’re helpless in the moment; and after it’s over, a person remembers the experience as horror.

Carney continues:

Fear is an excellent inflection point to demonstrate the physiology of the Wedge. It’s powerful, visceral, has a strong influence on our behavior, and yet also preserves our ability to make choices about our actions. We experience fear on both a biological and psychological level. It triggers the fight-or-flight response just as reliably as the cold does, issues a burst of adrenaline, secretes sweat, dilates pupils and ramps up the heart rate. However, with fear, our bodily reactions are based on sights, sounds and our own idiosyncratic assessment of how things are changing around us in a bad way. It starts in the mind, not the body. And this is why I hope that his research into fear can help me dissect every other emotional and environmental interface that contributes to the Wedge. 

I spend a good deal of space quoting Carney on fear because it seems to me that in our world--and certainly its always been so in the human world--fear drives much of our behavior. Indeed, even though we no longer face man-eating beasts or the like, we suffer less tangible but more chronic fears that lead to more subtle reactions, such as "anxiety." Perhaps we do live in "The Age of Anxiety" as suggested by the W.H. Auden poem and the Scott Stossel non-fiction book. My own conclusion is that fear is an excellent and necessary warning system but a terribly unreliable guidance system. But because it's such a primal emotion, it's not easily corraled by the thinking brain. If Carney's book proves to have any value--and I certainly believe that it does--it's because his theme of dealing successfully with fear is the crux of the Wedge.

Lest I give you the wrong impression, Carney's book isn't simply an extended essay conjecturing about how the world and our bodies work. The other part of the book is a series of personal experiences and reporting on ideas and techniques about how we can deal with our world, especially fear-creating or uncomfortable experiences, in a manner that improves our resilience. One of the activities that Carney experiences and reports upon is playing catch with a heavy kettlebell. (A kettlebell is an iron ball with a handle attached that allows the user to swing it and thereby create a ballistic motion. It's an increasingly popular form of exercise imported from Russia, and, I must add, an excellent addition to any home gym.) Playing catch with a heavy object that will wreak havoc if it lands on the wrong place (such as your foot) requires an intensity of mind that must move beyond fear to successfully negotiate such a high-stakes game of catch. Carney also explores a variety of breathing techniques in addition to the standard Wim Hof method that he's been working with now for several years. He explores "the potato diet" and the use of saunas (in Lithuania, no less), flotation tank experiences, and two drugs: MDHD (Ecstacy) and ayahuasca. In undertaking the latter to experiences, Carney expresses the most hesitation. As he notes with all of his other wedge experiences and experiments, he could bail at any time, such as simply halting a breathing technique or quitting a game of kettlebell catch. But during a drug trip, Carney knew he couldn't simply stop and get off at any time that he wanted. He was therefore prudent. With the MDHD (Ecstasy), he took the drug along with his wife and under the guidance of two experienced therapists. They used the occasion as an opportunity for couples therapy. Carney also went to Peru to try ayahuasca, and again Carney expresses and practices what seems a reasonable degree of prudence in dealing with a substance in a land and culture far from his own.

I found the two experiences with the two different drugs the least informative, but I don't say that to denigrate those experiences or to criticize Carney. From what he says and my understanding of those types of experiences in general, I believe that they are the most complex to predict and describe. Most of the other experiences that he undertakes to explore and expand his wedge hypothesis are simpler and easy to "do at home," and he provides self-practice advice in a section on the end about "Techniques" for the (non-drug) practices.

At one point in thinking about writing this review, I was going to describe the book as having two parts: one part, which is represented by the several quotes at the beginning of this review, center on the wedge hypothesis and its grounding in science, and the other part about Carney's experiences and observations. But I realized that the book is too integrated to describe it this way. Carney's self-experimentation, observations, reporting, conjectures, and hypotheses are distributed throughout the book and make it an integrated whole. This scheme makes the book a delight to read and ponder. I believe that Carney is on to something here (and "it" has been "here" for all of human history), and he's bringing what has been largely lost (especially in modernity) back into focus. Thus, it's a book that is at once enlightening and entertaining, and well worth the read.