“Other worlds” out of this world

No media product, whether it was article, textbook, or book has better summed up the central themes of this class better than the documentary, “Other worlds.”
Among the many interesting and well thought our topics presented during the film the idea that science, religion and philosophy are all really related resonated the most with me. Not only are they related, but also the gateway to confirm this idea comes through altered states of consciousness.
This film also confirms that techniques and knowledge for entering, traveling and returning from these altered states is not as easy as ingesting a plant and waiting for the fuzzy stuff to begin. The shamans in this film are described to use almost every technique discussed by our class to enter other realms of consciousness. They experience deprivation, chant, use psychotropic plants, inflict pain—it was all mentioned and described in the film. Not only did they use these techniques they perfected and acted as a guide for others to the point that experts on the film called what they did a “science.”
Getting back to the my main point, the double helix discussion during this film has to be convincing evidence we consider the relationship between what people experience during an altered state and DNA. The noble prize guy was very compelling, but the fact that the double helix has appeared in native artwork on five separate continents has to show a relationship between the two.
Science is brought into the fold through the DNA portion, but religion is tied in with assertion made early in the film, that every major religion started with an individual that could have possibly been in an altered state of consciousness at the time of contact with higher beings. Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha all have these similar experiences.
Finally philosophy is easily related to all this because the central theme of altered states revolves around how we perceive reality. The question of how we perceive reality begins in Modern Greek philosophy with Socrates and Plato, follows through every other philosophical unit, right up to Emmanuel Kant and beyond.
This blog is only the tip of the iceberg in relationship to all the interesting topics brought up by “Other worlds.”
One more this I though was interesting and is just an observation I had about the film. At two point in the film the eye movements of the shaman and the French filmmaker looked like eyes in the state of REM. (At 28:54 for the Shaman and 56:00 for the filmmaker) The film also discussed the Chacruna plants ability to increase serotonin level in the brain. As we discussed before serotonin levels also increase when we dream. Could the altered states seen in the film be related to dreaming?