High on Mount Sinai?

. . . . . . .

High on Mount Sinai?
Jerusalem, Israel - 05 March 2008

The biblical Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant
when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai,
according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

Writing in the British journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon of
Jerusalem's Hebrew University said two plants in the Sinai desert
contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants
from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca
is prepared.

The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus
says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a
people in an "altered state of awareness," Shanon hypothesised.

"In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is
accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings," Shanon wrote.

"On such occasions, one often feels that in seeing the light, one is
encountering the ground of all Being ... many identify this power as
God." - Reuters

M&G