Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT
By Graham St John
Foreword by Dennis McKenna
Published by Evolver Editions (an imprint of North Atlantic Books)
Paperback, E-book and Audiobook | 493 pages
Image Gallery (30 images - see selection below)
ISBN-10: ‎ 1583947329
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1583947326
Available in paperback ($18) & kindle ($9) from Amazon.

Since the mid-1950s, the psychoactive compound DMT has attracted the attention of experimentalists and prohibitionists, scientists and artists, alchemists and hyperspace emissaries. While most known as a crucial component of the “jungle alchemy” that is ayahuasca, DMT is a whole story unto itself. Until now, this story has remained untold. Mystery School in Hyperspace is the first book to delve into the history of this substance, the discovery of its properties, and the impact it has had on scientists, poets, artists, and musicians.

DMT has appeared at crucial junctures in countercultural history. William Burroughs was jacking the spice in Tangier at the turn of the 1960s. It was present at the meeting between Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and Tim Leary’s Millbrook associates. It guided the inception of the Grateful Dead in 1965. It showed up in Berkeley in the same year, falling into the hands of Terence McKenna, who would eventually become its champion in the post-rave neo-psychedelic movement of the 1990s. Its indole vapor drifted through Portugal’s Boom Festival and Nevada’s Burning Man, where DMT has been adopted as a spiritual technology supplying shape, color, and depth to a visionary arts movement. The growing prevalence of use is apparent in a vast networked independent research culture, and in its impact on fiction, film, music and metaphysics. As this book traces the effect of DMT’s release into the cultural bloodstream, the results should be of great interest to contemporary readers. 

The book permits a broad reading audience to join ongoing debates in studies in consciousness and theology where the brain is held to be either a generator or a receiver of consciousness. The implications of the “spirit molecule” or “the brain’s own psychedelic” among other theories illustrate that DMT may prise the lid on the Pandora’s Box of consciousness. 

Regarded as the “nightmare hallucinogen” or celebrated as the “spirit molecule,” labelled “psychotogenic” or “entheogenic,” considered a dangerous drug or the suspected X-factor in the evolution of consciousness, DMT is a powerful enigma. Documenting the scientists and artists drawn into its sphere of influence, navigating the liminal aesthetics of the “breakthrough” experience, tracing the novum of “hyperspace” in esoteric and science fiction currents, Mystery School in Hyperspace excavates the significance of this enigmatic phenomenon in the modern world.

Exposing a great many myths, this cultural history reveals how DMT has had a beneficial influence on the lives of those belonging to a vast underground network whose reports and initiatives expose drug war propaganda and shine a light in the shadows. This conversation is highly relevant at a time when significant advances are being made to lift the moratorium on human research with psychedelics.

Features a Foreword by Dennis McKenna, cover art by Beau Deeley (Divine Moments of Truth,www.beaudeeley.net), and thirty color illustrations by various artists, including Alex Grey, Android Jones, Martina Hoffmann, Luke Brown, Carey Thompson, Adam Scott Miller, Randal Roberts, along with Jay Bryan, Cyb, Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule, Art Van D’lay, Stuart Griggs, Jay Lincoln, Gwyllm Llwydd, Shiptu Shaboo, Marianna Stelmach, and Mister Strange.
 
Download Chapter 1, "DMT: An Enigma Wrapped in a Mystery"

Erik Davis chats with the author (Reality Sandwich)
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Kelly Neff interviews Graham St John about Mystery School in Hyperspace on Lucid Planet
 
PRAISE for Mystery School in Hyperspace

“Graham St John’s book on DMT untangles the threads of 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 wonderfully weird tryptamine worlds inside all of us. Read Mystery School in Hyperspace and appreciate the miracle in our midst.”
—Alex Grey, artist and author of Net of Being.

“Meticulously researched and highly readable. St John covers every imaginable aspect of DMT’s 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.

“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 Hyperspace tells amazing tales, sheds light on the shadows, and brilliantly referees the ongoing psychoactive rumble between the sacred and profane.”
—Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis: 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 Hyperspace is 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.

"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, Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy, University of Amsterdam.

"Mystery School in Hyperspace is 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. And as the latest generation of psychonauts explores the invisible landscape of Terra Incognita, Mystery School in Hyperspace could very well be the map that we have all been looking for..."
—Rak Razam, director of Aya: Awakenings.

“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,
 
"In Mystery School in Hyperspace, St John provides a full curriculum on DMT from its historical origins and geographical haunts, to today's uses, and, of course, to DMT's unique hyper-reality domain. Enriched by quotes, footnotes, URLs, and references, Mystery School in Hyperspace documents its resources and provides its readers with a vast wealth of leads for future explorations."
—Thomas B. Roberts, author of The Psychedelic Future of the Mind.
 
 
"I haven't been able to put this 'treasure chest of a book' down for days; I'm loving it so incredibly much! Graham St John did a truly remarkable job researching the cultural history of DMT and his wonderful work fills an extremely valuable niche. Great artwork too! I can't recommend this amazing book more highly; if this subject interests you, then you must read this book!" David J. Brown, author of The New Science of Psychedelics.
 
"Mystery School in Hyperspace by Graham St John is an extra-ordinarily powerful and thought-provoking book. Treading the space between academic research and sheer initiatory insight its greatest success is to be found in its sheer capacity to thoroughly engross the attention of its reader. It is an essential publication in a New World of mind exploration and one which I thoroughly recommend!" Spirituality Today 

"I feel that it is my psychonautical duty to state that the book is a must have for anyone interested in the discovery, history, influence, and potential of entheogenic tryptamines. . . . Meticulously researched and skillfully written, this recent work presents a fascinating account of the DMT phenomenon, from the underground research of the pioneers of the unnerving tryptamine dimensions to the current seekers of neoshamanic ayahuasca gnosis." Blair MacKenzie Blake, Tool (band) Newsletter Jan 2016.

"Mystery School in Hyperspace is a densely packed and far-ranging history that wonderfully reflects the ubiquity and experience of DMT. In some respects, when reading it, I would become lost in the threads, however this was not to the book's detriment as, just like the substance, one would always ultimately return to baseline. There is a deep mine of information that traverses many cultures, ideas, and personalities, and I imagine that I will be returning time and again to this terrific read." Robert Dickins, Psychedelic Press Vol XVI

"Mystery School in Hyperspace is an exceptionally well written, organized and presented work of impressive scholarship, making it very highly recommended for community and academic library collections." Midwest Book Review.

"This is a stellar book, which is very thorough in the research. . . . For someone who knows a lot about DMT such as myself, even I learnt a lot from reading Mystery School in Hyperspace. The book is written in a cross between a dry academic tone and a gonzo journaling of the different elements of DMT culture past and present. It reads well for a non-fiction book of this nature, and the content is compelling, so the pages turn as if by themselves." Julian Palmer

"There are 600 pages and none of them is less than interesting." Rob Doyle, Book of the Year in the Irish Independent