DMT, Moses, and the Quest for Transcendence

[Carl Sagan]

Source:
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/Pickover/pc/dmt.html

>>> •
>>>
>>> • The material in this article is presented in final format in my book
>>> Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves.
>>> •
>>> • DMT, Moses, and the Quest for Transcendence
>>> • by Cliff Pickover, Reality Carnival
>>> •
>>> • "DMT in the pineal glands of Biblical prophets gave God to humanity
>>> and let ordinary humans perceive parallel universes."
>>> •
>>> •
>>> The molecule DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) is a psychoactive chemical
>>> that causes intense visions and can induce its users to quickly enter a
>>> completely different "environment" that some have likened to an alien
>>> or parallel universe. The transition from our world to theirs occurs
>>> with no cessation of consciousness or quality of awareness. In this
>>> environment, beings often appear who interact with the person who is
>>> using DMT. The beings appear to inhabit this parallel realm. The DMT
>>> experience has the feel of reality in terms of detail and potential for
>>> exploration. The creatures encountered are often identified as being
>>> alienlike or elflike. Some of the creatures appear to be
>>> three-dimensional. Others appear to lack depth.
>>> •
>>> • Author Terence McKenna has used DMT and feels that, "Right here and
>>> now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence
>>> that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien... What is
>>> driving religious feeling today is a wish for contact with this other
>>> universe." The aliens seen while using DMT present themselves "with
>>> information that is not drawn from the personal history of the
>>> individual."
>>> •
>>> •
>>> DMT is also naturally produced in small quantities in the human brain,
>>> and it has been hypothesized that DMT is produced in the pineal gland
>>> in the brain. The pineal gland appears in the developing human fetus
>>> around 49 days after conception. Perhaps an embryo should not be
>>> considered human until DMT production commences. Note that "zygotic
>>> personhood" (the idea that a fertilized egg is a person) is a recent
>>> concept. For example, before 1869, the Catholic church believed that
>>> the embryo was not a person until it was 40 days old. (See my letter to
>>> President Bush on Cloning, Abortion, and Stem Cell Research.) Naturally
>>> occurring DMT may play a role in near-death experiences and
>>> alien-abduction experiences.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Is it possible that the reality exposed to humans by injecting DMT is
>>> in some sense a valid reality, on par with our normal reality? Our
>>> minds, which evolved to help us run from lions on the African savannas,
>>> might not be engineered to see these other realities under normal
>>> circumstances.
>>> •
>>> • What is the guarantee that our minds are naturally designed to sense
>>> the "true reality"? Perhaps there is no guarantee. If this concept
>>> seems weird, consider a far-fetched example. Imagine a creature or
>>> phenomena that has been lurking among us since the dawn of evolution.
>>> If our ancient ancestors died every time they perceived the phenomena,
>>> evolution would favor creatures who did not perceive the creatures or
>>> phenomena. One might counter this argument by saying that our modern
>>> instruments, such as X-ray machines and cameras, should be able to make
>>> the creatures apparent to us, even if our unaided sensorium is not up
>>> to the task. Reasoning further, because our instruments have not made
>>> these realms apparent to us, the realms must not be real. However,
>>> perhaps our traditional instruments and theories are also not up to the
>>> task. Or perhaps our interpretation of the instruments' results is
>>> incomplete. Perhaps DMT is an instrument.
>>> •
>>> • As a metaphor, consider infrared goggles. A person leans on a tree.
>>> At night, we don't see the person. Put the goggles on, and a new
>>> reality results -- a truer reality -- and we see the man. Similarly, is
>>> it possible that our brain is a filter, and the use of DMT is like
>>> slipping on infrared goggles, allowing us to perceive a valid reality
>>> that is inches away and all around us?
>>> •
>>> •
>>> In my book The Science of Aliens, I write about some of Whitley
>>> Strieber's experiences. Strieber is famous for his book Communion,
>>> which describes his encouters with aliens. When I had written my book,
>>> I was somewhat "down" on Strieber due to some of the more zany
>>> descriptions he once gave of "aliens" he encountered. Some looked
>>> cartoonlike, while others were the more standard versions of aliens
>>> that most of us contemplate today. In light of reading about DMT
>>> experiences, I can see more of an overlap in Strieber's descriptions
>>> and DMT-induced aliens.
>>> •
>>> • According to Phillip Klass's UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game,
>>> Strieber appears to have had a lifetime of unusual experiences. For
>>> example, in April 1977 Strieber held a brief conversation with a voice
>>> that had come over his stereo system in his New York apartment.
>>> Streiber has also encountered robotlike aliens, aliens with pug noses
>>> wearing blue coveralls, an alien with an inept cardboard imitation of a
>>> blue double-breasted suit (complete with a white triangle handkerchief
>>> sticking out of the pocket), and tall aliens in tan jumpsuits. One
>>> alien had a "ridiculous excuse for a curly black toupee on his head."
>>> Strieber once even saw a giant, ugly insect that made him feel mothered
>>> and loved. Another time he reported seeing the head of a living woman
>>> named Kathie Davis on a shelf inside a UFO. We can view these
>>> descriptions in a new light, now that we know that DMT can often
>>> produce visions of cartoon-like aliens.
>>> •
>>> • If we were to hunt for the DMT elves, would we direct our attention
>>> to Hawking's waveform model of the universe or Everett's many-worlds
>>> interpretation of quantum mechanics, or even higher dimensions?
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Is it possible that that some of our human ancestors produced more DMT
>>> than we do today? For example, many of the ancient Bible stories
>>> describe prophets with DMT-like experiences. (See my book The Paradox
>>> of God.) Consider as one example (Isaiah 6):
>>> • Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they
>>> covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two
>>> they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
>>> •
>>> • "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of
>>> his glory."
>>> •
>>> • At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and
>>> the temple was filled with smoke.
>>> • These sorts of ecstatic singing and repetitive exaltations remind me
>>> of subjects who took DMT and heard: "Now do you see? Now do you see?"
>>> along with singing voices. (These cases are described in Rick
>>> Strassman's book DMT: The Spirit Molecule.)
>>> •
>>> • Maybe this is why the ancients seemed so in touch with God and with
>>> miracles and visions. Maybe Moses and Jesus had a greater rate of
>>> pineal DMT production than most.
>>> •
>>> • When I asked Rick Strassman, M.D., author of DMT: The Spirit
>>> Molecule, about my theory, he responded: I'm not familiar with a
>>> specific theory that we made more DMT in the old days than now. But,
>>> are you familiar with Jaynes' idea of the bicameral mind--that people
>>> routinely hallucinated until the connections between our hemispheres
>>> got evolved out for whatever reason? I don't think hemispheric
>>> connections would support his idea as much as might higher levels of
>>> endogenous DMT. If indeed we made more DMT in the past, this may have
>>> to do with the increase in artificial light that has come upon us in
>>> the last 1000 years or so.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Also, recall that DMT experiences sometimes include 2-D cartoon-like
>>> characters. Often DMT entities lack depth. Could a higher-production of
>>> DMT in ancient people influenced artwork. Is that part of the reason
>>> why cave paintings and Egyptian art are so two dimensional?
>>> •
>>> • One way to imagine how other realities could exist side by side with
>>> our own is to consider the forces that produced the diversity of senses
>>> and intelligences right here on Earth. In a real way, there are already
>>> alien worlds right here among us. Every Earthly creature perceives the
>>> world in an "alien" way. Dogs. Bees. Bats. Cats. They experience the
>>> world with different kinds of senses. They can smell what we cannot,
>>> they can see what we cannot, they can hear what we cannot. If the
>>> organisms of the Earth were somehow able to describe their world to
>>> you, it would probably not be recognizable to you. It would seem like
>>> the wildest world from any science-fiction story. Moreover, if you were
>>> able to describe the world to another species, they would "see" no
>>> resemblance to their own. Our sense of reality would be different; our
>>> way of thinking would be different, and even the practical technology
>>> we would produce would be different. We do not have to contemplate
>>> aliens or science fiction to imagine alienlike senses and bodies. The
>>> animal world of Earth is so diverse and full of different senses, that
>>> creatures are already walking among us possessing "alien" awarenesses
>>> beyond our understanding.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> By studying the creatures of the Earth, we can hypothesize on the
>>> diversity of realities here on Earth. Aliens would no doubt see a
>>> different world than we do. To best understand this, consider the
>>> Indian luna moth, which has a wingspread of about 10 cm (4 inches). To
>>> our eyes, both the male and female moths are light green and
>>> indistinguishable from each other. But the luna moths themselves
>>> perceive in the ultraviolet range of light, and to them the female
>>> looks quite different from the male. Other creatures have a hard time
>>> seeing the moths when they rest on green leaves, but luna moths are not
>>> camouflaged to one another since they see each other as brilliantly
>>> colored.
>>> •
>>> • For a related Reality Carnival story, see "People with Charles
>>> Bonnet Syndrome See Beings from Parallel Universes" and "DMT Users See
>>> Insect Gods".
>>> •
>>> • I have also covered the following stories in the Reality Carnival:
>>>>>> • "Man Discovers Intelligent Beings After Consuming DMT,"
>>>>>> • "The fleeting reality of DMT machine elves," and
>>>>>> • "Psychedelics, Abortion, and the Chrysanthemum."
>>> • (Just scan through the Reality Carnival entries until you find these
>>> stories.)
>>> • Responses from Readers
>>> •
>>> Roger Essig, aka "Rogdog", asks artist Alex Grey about the existence
>>> of DMT beings here.
>>> •
>>> • Rogdog has tried DMT.
>>> •
>>> • Rogdog awaits his next DMT encounter to test his theories about
>>> entity contact. The following are excerpts from his thoughts on the
>>> subject.
>>> •
>>> • It truly is something that haunts, excites, bewilders and astonishes
>>> me everytime I think back to that fateful day I was 'cursed' with a DMT
>>> encounter.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> (DMT Entity encountered by Rogdog. Click image to enlarge.)
>>> •
>>> • Maybe in the end the Dzogchen buddhists provide an explanation
>>> regarding the "alien" entity contact, essentially saying that all
>>> projections are from the ground luminosity. I have a certain knowing
>>> that there was an energy in front of me, independent from me, yet only
>>> appearing to me when I closed my eyes and sought to go deeper.
>>> •
>>> • How many Dzogchen practitoners throughout history have experienced
>>> first hand smoked DMT crystals, what would they say then?
>>> •
>>> • While using DMT, I could perceive moving energy segments of
>>> brilliant colour all over his skin and bone structure of his face. I
>>> managed to push myself back in a last effort and lay back. About 15
>>> seconds had passed since my second toke.
>>> •
>>> • I know that I was having an intense revelation, one that I can not
>>> talk about here, but one I remember every time I use DMT, the
>>> revelation was one of Ultimate Realness, that is all I can say. The
>>> visuals I definitely recall with utmost clarity, I feel gifted this way.
>>> •
>>> • I closed my eyes and focused immediately into the distance, it was
>>> very clear, crystalline and symmetric yet totally organic. Out of the
>>> terrifyingly complex colours and patterns emerged and formed an entity
>>> that sneered at me, grinning wildly with two piercing eyes, it was free
>>> floating and fractalising. Swirling arms and appendages formed out of
>>> its now more solid ethereal body of light.
>>> •
>>> • I sensed or imagined that smaller invisible beings were slicing me
>>> up across the chest and stomach with laser sharp instruments, it was
>>> painful, but somewhat acceptable and bearable. In retrospect, this was
>>> perhaps the DMT vapour touching my lung pathways. The Entity formed
>>> greater within my closed eye visual perception and was growing more
>>> menacing, I felt it trying to attach it self to me, or get inside me
>>> somehow. I did what I felt had to do. I mentally said and intended the
>>> thought "COME ON THEN!" and threatened back at it what it was doing to
>>> me. With this, it started to dissipate, in the reverse way that it had
>>> formed. As it subsided away back into the colourful patterns and
>>> geometrics I pleaded with it to come back, but it had gone.
>>> •
>>> • This experience was the most profoundly moving experience of my
>>> known live experience of this life on Earth. As I breathed deeper and
>>> deeper I felt body sensations, detachement , all thought was still
>>> functioning, wanted to experience union, but had a reality shift
>>> instead. Every visual perception was doubled....
>>> •
>>> • More info, here.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> David says: I do not have much experience with DMT, so I'll compare it
>>> to a similar hallucinogen I have more personal knowledge about: "magic"
>>> mushrooms.
>>> •
>>> • Do they give you a clearer vision of reality? Here is a parable to
>>> help illustrate this question in a real world example: I was sitting on
>>> the edge of my driveway about two hours after drinking mushroom tea.
>>> Just staring at a cluster of pebbles that were laying there on the
>>> ground next to me. All of a sudden my focus shifted to a particular one
>>> of these rocks and I gazed at it for what must have been approximately
>>> ten seconds. Then, quite unexpectedly, this rock bubbled up above the
>>> crowd, turned into a fly, and buzzed off. The effect this had on my
>>> thought process at the time was astounding... before this happened I
>>> was probably thinking about girls or food or something. After the event
>>> the rest of the "trip" was spent thinking about that rock. In any group
>>> of things, how many of them actually exist and how many of them are
>>> placed by my mind to fill in the gaps? zero? some? all? if any, why?
>>> etc.. To this day I know only one thing for certain about that event:
>>> The rock was never there to begin with. I have no idea whether or not
>>> the mushrooms "helped" me see it. Furthermore, I have no idea whether
>>> or not that particular rock were any different in essence then its
>>> neighbors.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Tufr says: I suppose anything is possible. However, the people who
>>> have reported these experiences personalize them. From what I've read
>>> they aren't simply perceiving the aliens, their also experiencing the
>>> aliens examine them with little space probes.
>>> •
>>> • Under the influence of DMT these people perceive instruments,
>>> machines and aliens, much of this centering around themselves. So I
>>> suppose the first question would be why and how could such a thing
>>> happen without affecting one's present normal reality. If the aliens
>>> are always there and experimenting upon us, one wonders how we have the
>>> time to get anything done.
>>> •
>>> • By the way, if DMT acts to reveal the true reality, I believe it
>>> would be more accurate to label it a machine not an instrument. As far
>>> as I know, instruments are used to measure things, and machines perform
>>> work. Waking us up and pushing us into the real universe and out of our
>>> limited perception would be real work, so I think DMT would aptly be
>>> called a machine not an instrument.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Dan Platt: Do two people who have taken DMT observing the same space
>>> see the same things? Do their actions produce the same effects as
>>> observed by both observers? Do blind experiments work? (ie when one
>>> person does something that affects the strange space, can other persons
>>> who are unaware of the first person's actions reliably see the effects?)
>>> •
>>> • It seems to me that positron tomography can show which parts of the
>>> brain are metabolising, and therefore whether the images start from
>>> memory spaces or from the visual cortex; likewise, if it comes from the
>>> visual cortex, it should be possible to trace it to images on the
>>> retina; if so, it may be possible to see whether this will work on eyes
>>> harvested from lab animals...
>>> •
>>> • It seems to me that doing the experiments with multiple observers
>>> might be "easier," except that toxicity of high doses of DMT wasn't
>>> spelled out.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Craig says: Well, maybe -- but is the DMT scenario likely? I mean,
>>> give the vast number of possible chemical compounds, why should DMT be
>>> "special"? Perhaps DMT is more like putting on kaleidoscope glasses? Or
>>> glasses with uranium lenses? Or glasses with spring-loaded nine inch
>>> steel spikes hidden in the frames that poke your eyes out when you put
>>> them on?
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Graham says: This DMT page is provocative and eye-catching, but not
>>> particularly strange.
>>> •
>>> • (1) 'Seeing a different world' is not the same as 'seeing the world
>>> differently'. Everybody (including different species) sees the world
>>> differently: there's no basis for jumping to the conclusion they are
>>> all seeing different worlds. In any case, what we think we are seeing
>>> we may not be seeing at all - that is it may not be the result of some
>>> light from outside falling on our eyes. Retinas, optic nerves,
>>> associated brain receptors may all be stimulated by other factors,
>>> including DMT.
>>> •
>>> • To prove that, just close your eyes.
>>> •
>>> • (2) The concept of God (and gods) existed long before Abraham left
>>> Ur. The Biblical prophets have no claim to primacy.
>>> •
>>> • I suspect the concept of supernatural forces arose quite rationally
>>> from trying to account for the origin of physical events. Why is there
>>> thunder? Thunder sounds like someone is angry. There must be someone
>>> who is angry. I can't make it thunder, neither can anyone I know. The
>>> someone who is angry must be some other kind of being - or a human who
>>> has special powers.
>>> •
>>> • Hence - not unreasonably - the idea of God (or gods, demons,
>>> sprites, wizards...). No chemicals needed.
>>> •
>>> • And of course, once you conceive of It, you may well dream of It.
>>> •
>>> • The dream - or whatever - comes after the concept.
>>> •
>>> • If you're content to accept that some things just happen - or that
>>> you don't know why they do, and don't care, then you don't need the
>>> supernatural. Or science either, since they both arise from the human
>>> need to explain things with causes.
>>> •
>>> • (3) I agree with Dan Platt and Craig
>>> •
>>> •
>>> From Michael: Excellent article, Cliff. I wonder if the small amount
>>> of DMT already present in the human brain is there to act as a catalyst
>>> when the right conditions are extant. Perhaps under times of stress,
>>> when endorphins are most readily manufactured in the brain, and other
>>> hormonal balances are shifted DMT production may also be stimulated or
>>> a small percentage (that already present) of DMT will suffice tip open
>>> the 'gateway' to changed perception.
>>> •
>>> • It is fascintaing to speculate on the visions of psychotropic
>>> substances. They do carry such a weight of feeling so fully real that
>>> in effect they can and do so completely absorb our attention and we
>>> accept them as real. What are these sprites, elves, entities, and
>>> dimensions that come to our attention under the influence of DMT?
>>> •
>>> • To take them as the habitants of higher realms or more refined
>>> realities moves the speculation in one direction. In what direction
>>> would we proceed if the creatures were seen with a an eye towards
>>> metaphor? It could be that these sprites represent Jungian gestalt
>>> types. If this idea has any merit, here is where I make a big stretch.
>>> It could be that under certain circumstances DMT plays a role in a
>>> person's personal growth. Or, at least DMT is part and parcel to those
>>> moments and experiences having the potential to stimulate one's life
>>> into inquiry as to the nature of existance.
>>> •
>>> • But what do I know... I remember the first time I heard that some
>>> scientists and doctors reported that it was impossible to dream in
>>> color. Their report indicated that humans were not wired for color
>>> dreams. What a hoot! I remember laughing out loud. I have never had
>>> anything but technicolor panoramic full-sense-around with dolby digital
>>> sound dreams.
>>> •
>>> • thanks again, michael. ps - and thanks for making it easier to
>>> respond to the reality carnival site.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Sherry says: I have had similar encounters for years with strange
>>> beings and would like to see if the ingestion of DMT does increase
>>> access to parallel universes. I am 64 and have never taken drugs at all
>>> in my life. But I have always been psychic to some degree. At 24, I had
>>> the worst case of flu and saw the grey beings making passes over my
>>> body Then my children would see beings that lived in the trees close to
>>> the house. They had conversations with the beings for about 6 years
>>> till they reached teen age years. Once, at night, our barn disappeared.
>>> I could see a figure squatting at watching me approach- it was a woman
>>> about 50 with long straight coarse hair -- lots of white in it. I was
>>> stunned that a woman could squat so easily . I stood for at least 30
>>> min and just watched her.
>>> •
>>> • Once, I noticed a light source on the brick in our den. I watched
>>> the light and it started to show pictures -- my ceilings are 8 ft tall
>>> and the brick is from top to bottom -- large ant-like creatures or
>>> praying mantis type creatures were walking and dragging humans which
>>> were screaming and praying to be saved-- they were being eaten alive-
>>> small kids too. I am not a religious person at all -- dont believe in
>>> hell or heaven. I have seen an entity who gives me lectures. I am a old
>>> farmwoman -- had some lost time years ago-- saw one thing that I could
>>> not explain that i thought was a ship -- but otherwise my days are
>>> spent gardening and animal care and the chickens -- and caring for my
>>> husband of 72 -- our lives are quiet and the only thing about me that
>>> is different is that i have taken lessons of some kind for years as i
>>> love to study. I simply know that somehow this very normal Sherry that
>>> exists in this 3-D world is not all of me.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Jeremy G. says: I have an interesting idea about one speculative
>>> fantasy regarding aliens called "homo feteros." Because humans have
>>> become increasingly neotonic during our evolution (larger eyes, bigger
>>> forehead, smaller nose), those neotonic looking aliens are really a
>>> future evolution of humans who learned to travel back in time. And, if
>>> Freud is right, the alien sex abduction thing would fit into that
>>> picture. In the future, once we learn to bring babies to term outside
>>> mothers' wombs, artificial gestation periods will allow the fetus's
>>> brain to continue developing to far larger sizes, perhaps. What do you
>>> think?
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Gary A. says: Some scientists says that the brain (nervous system) is
>>> the source of consciousness; an idea prevalent in the West for some
>>> time now. Personally, I'm taking a Hindu/Buddhist "holographic"
>>> viewpoint, which has Consciousness (from a monist point of view) is the
>>> "Source" of everything, including the brain/nervous system, and the
>>> latter is only monitoring the activities of all-pervasive
>>> "Consciousness-In- Itself". However, the Western term "awareness", or
>>> "consciousness" differs from that of Hinduism/Buddhism, the latter
>>> being close to Spinoza's "Substance", the ground of pure Being which
>>> Aristotle and Plotinus talked about.
>>> •
>>> • The Western notion is that awareness/consciousness is an emergent
>>> property of the nervous system not possessed in any way by the lowest
>>> of organisms, the latter being perhaps subconsciously "aware" in the
>>> broadest sense. Monism on the other hand, while not dismissing that the
>>> brain mediates awareness, flatly denies that the brain is the source of
>>> awareness, either in a relative or Absolute sense. To use an analogy,
>>> say you have Einstein's brain floating in an aquarium, with various
>>> tiny fish swimming around. Then, you enhance the brain by attaching an
>>> optic nerve so it can see the fish. The brain is now aware. The water
>>> in this scenario is analogous to the all- pervasive "Consciousness"
>>> alluded to by the mystics. It's omnipresent, all-pervasive! Rocks, the
>>> sky, cars, etc; are the same "Consciousness" as is the brain; but the
>>> latter is capable of expressing relative self-awareness: reflecting
>>> upon itself. This self- reflection is what Western psychologists are
>>> referring to when they mention awareness. But not so with mystics, East
>>> and West. The brain is floating in and AS Consciousness, the expression
>>> of It. Thus, brain is not the Source of Consciousness, or even
>>> awareness; but rather an entity which is monitoring Consciousness which
>>> is everywhere. With these two different perspectives, we can see how
>>> the Western viewpoint (except for mystics and New-Agers); can reconcile
>>> supposed out of body and life after physical death with Monism. This
>>> can be done since awareness can be anywhere, even outside of the
>>> body/brain; whereas in the orthodox Western viewpoint, when the brain
>>> is dead, YOU are dead, no afterlife since awareness in any state would
>>> be dependent upon the BRAIN. To conclude, the journal is taking the
>>> orthodox Western viewpoint which is closely allied to atheism and no
>>> life after physical death, since it's difficult to reconcile the latter
>>> with the consistency of having an afterlife with no corporeal body. In
>>> Hinduism/Buddhism and many other religions, no problem! Subtle bodies
>>> can exist independent of the physical brain, and can travel outside of
>>> the physical body.
>>> •
>>> • Hallucinogenic substances such as DMT open the door between world:
>>> the physical and the non-physical. Various visions such as the tunnel,
>>> meeting dead relatives while people on the operating table, etc; have
>>> to be "explained away" in the orthodox theory. Again, no problem with
>>> the holographic viewpoint. The entire universe is "encoded" within the
>>> brain, acting as a monitor for anything, anywhere: images in a
>>> non-spatial/non-temporal context, more like the atmosphere of Jupiter
>>> rather than a linear pathway. Substances like DMT suck you into immense
>>> eddies of universal awareness not easily dismissed as "hallucinations",
>>> among those with direct experience in these matters.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Olly H. says: It's probably not so wise to publicly advertise one's
>>> former experience with psychedelics, but what the hell-
>>> •
>>> • Years ago, I experimented occasionally with exotic psychedelics,
>>> among them DPT, which is an analogue of DMT. It was an extraordinarily
>>> intense experience. At one point during the session, I had the sense
>>> that I was in the company of peculiarly elusive "elves", which though
>>> decidedly good natured, seemed to have a decidedly mischeivous sense of
>>> humor.
>>> •
>>> • The most extraordinary thing about thing about these "elves" was
>>> that if you tried to "focus in on them" in any way, they would sort of
>>> "evaporate", but if you just sort of "let go", and "forgot about them",
>>> you would "see" them clearer. Once you could "see them" clearer, you
>>> would be irresistably tempted to try to "increase your focus" in order
>>> to "see them" even clearer, which would of course make them "evaporate"
>>> again. These DPT elves seemed to find my futile attempts to get a good
>>> "focus" on them rather amusing; they seemed to be saying "catch us if
>>> you can! he he he he!!"
>>> •
>>> • It was like you couldn't see them if you "tried to", but once you
>>> succeeded in "letting go"; in "not trying" enough so that you could
>>> "see them" a little, the "sight of them was so fascinating that the
>>> temptation to "try harder" so that you could "see them clearer" was
>>> irresistable- but this "effort" would render them imperceivable! And
>>> they thought this was hysterical.
>>> •
>>> • Weird, but fascinating .
>>> •
>>> • [PS: I am not one of these guys who thinks that drug induced
>>> hallucinations are real- whatever "real " means. I just thought it was
>>> a real cool experience worth sharing with the group!]
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • One group member, who seems to want to remain anonymous sent this to
>>> me and gave me permission to post.
>>> • ***
>>> • Cliff,
>>> • In response to developing a group mind.I wasn't quite sure if this
>>> was appropriate for the group,but I wanted to relay this experience.You
>>> might have noted that I've made references to the entheogens here and
>>> there,& this can be a sensitive subject.Quite awhile ago I went on an
>>> out of body group excursion (stay with me here) what happened was that
>>> we each "partook" of the entheogen (in this case DMT) ,linked hands and
>>> had a verbal guide take us on a trip.
>>> • We went back to the beginning of the universe (together) and
>>> experienced the formation of the celestial bodies,the planets and
>>> eventually (big skip in steps here!) experienced the birth of humanity.
>>> It was likely a psychological phenomenon caused by suggestion that
>>> allowed "us" to have a group bonding in this way, & with thorough
>>> examination I'm sure it could be picked apart.It is very unlikely that
>>> this is what you had in mind,or is it a very realistic possibility that
>>> the group could (or would) do this.
>>> • You posed an earlier question "Do you believe that DMT provides
>>> users with valuable insight as the chemical opens the doors of
>>> perception,revealing a new reality inches away,but impossible to
>>> perceive with our ordinary sensorium? Well, I can only say that it
>>> certainly seems to feel that way,whether or not the experience is
>>> "real".
>>> • On a more feasible note about the group mind.I recently posted about
>>> accessing or inducing experiences (whatever they might be) without
>>> "taking" anything.I do believe that investigating this could be an
>>> avenue of creating a group mind.It sounds kind of "cultish" though.
>>> Maybe "we" as a human race will approach the next stage in evolution
>>> when we learn to do this.I actually had a dream about a DMT experience
>>> several years after my introduction.In my dream the scenario was
>>> different,but the same dimensional doors were accessed.I was so excited
>>> that I called a friend ,who is a hypnotherapist, he was in agreement
>>> with me in thinking that the experience has been imprinted, and could
>>> very well be accessed at will.I haven't had the opportunity to look
>>> into this matter further as of yet.
>>> • If DMT is naturally occurring in the human body,how can it be
>>> considered illegal? Would this not mean that ANY person could be
>>> incarcerated at any given time for posession? including the person who
>>> was incarcerating you! I just don't get it.
>>> • I don't want you to get me wrong cliff,I'm about as straight edged
>>> as you can get at this point in my life,but my mind will always be
>>> free. -take care,
>>> • p.s. Feel free to use this ,or parts of it,with the group if you
>>> think its suitable or relevant. (I attached a picture of myself so you
>>> can see who is pestering you)
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • "Do I believe that DMT provides users with valuable insight?"
>>> • I experimented with DMT on several occasions in the past, and found
>>> that it provided access to a truly extraordinary mindspace, perhaps
>>> most importantly characterized by the preposterous but nevertheless
>>> wholly convincing sensation that "it" (the DMT induced 'mind-space')
>>> was far closer to 'reality as it really is' than ordinary, everyday
>>> experience. I was left with the curious impression that ordinary,
>>> everyday experience might more aptly be characterized as the
>>> hallucination here, and that the 'warped' impression of reailty I
>>> experienced under the influence of DMT was in fact more 'genuine'.
>>> • I could write a tome about my experiences with DMT, so profund and
>>> life changing were they, starting with my first few failed attempts to
>>> penetrate the 'DMT mind-space' (which failed because I was too timid to
>>> inflict a full fledged dose upon myself), and ending with an experience
>>> which would be best characterized as a genuine 'experience of the
>>> Divine'- quite a statement for an avowed atheist such as myself (there
>>> is a pithy term for such an experience, but, infortunately, it eludes
>>> me at the moment).
>>> • I'd love to rivet you folks with the details of this saga, but alas,
>>> I am a slave of the clock.
>>> • "We went back to the beginning of the universe (together) and
>>> experienced the formation of the celestial bodies,the planets and
>>> eventually (big skip in steps here!) experienced the birth of humanity"
>>> • ---
>>> • This is very interesting.
>>> • One of my DMT experiences took place on a beach at night, and after
>>> the peak, when I was able 'to see reality' again, to some degree, I
>>> became fixated upon what I later realized was the moon.
>>> • It appeared to me as though I was witnessing the Big Bang- that all
>>> of reality was emananting out of that point of light I ordinarily
>>> recognize as the moon. As I returned to 'normalcy', staring at the
>>> moon, it seemed not so much that I was slowly but surely re-integrating
>>> all of the objects of ordinary experience into my awareness, but that I
>>> was, in some extraordinary sense, witnessing their creation.
>>> • I was, in some sense, witnessing the history of the entire universe,
>>> from the Big Bang to me.
>>> • It is important to recognize here that the metaphorical aspect of
>>> this was apparent. I was never under the impression that I was 'really'
>>> witnessing the 'actual' history of the universe. I was a well aware
>>> that what I saw merely 'looked like' the Big Bang, and that the 'return
>>> to normalcy' was merely a very interestig simulation of 'creation'- an
>>> artifact of a powerful hallucinogen wearing off.
>>> • Nevertheless, I also understood that this distinction was ultimately
>>> meaningless, and what I saw that night remains the most profound
>>> experience of my life.
>>> • I was so deeply moved by the experience that to this day, whenever I
>>> pass that place on the beach, I find myself overcome with a sense of
>>> awe for the fact that anything exists at all, and just how long- and
>>> how short- all of time has been.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From: James Kent
>>> • Sent: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 02:51:05 -0700
>>> • Subject: DMT Elves
>>> • Hey Clifford,
>>> • James Kent here, I run the website http://tripzine.com. I published
>>> a psychedelic magazine for many years, and a friend recently pointed me
>>> to your article on DMT, Moses and Aliens. Since you asked people to
>>> voice their opinion I shall...
>>> • I have done DMT quite a bit, have interviewed and spent time with
>>> the late Terence McKenna, am friends with Rick Strassman, and have
>>> studied this issue very closely for the past fifteen years. And though
>>> I have not published the results of all my research (yet), I would like
>>> to share with you some of my conclusions concerning DMT and the
>>> dramatic phenomena it produces.
>>> • In short, I do not believe DMT is a gateway to an alternate
>>> dimension, nor does it provide contact with elves and alien entities.
>>> Yes, DMT produces a vivid other-worldly landscape when ingested, often
>>> including elves, aliens, insects, snakes, jaguars, etc. This is true
>>> for the majority of people who try it. Some people do not have such
>>> vivid reactions, but many do. Although this may appear at first glance
>>> to be "shocking," it is actually no more shocking then the fact that
>>> most people dream at night, or that most people see geometric patterns
>>> when they close their eyes and press against their eyeballs (pressure
>>> phosphenes). The only difference between dreams, phosphenes, and DMT
>>> visuals is that DMT is illegal and very hard to come by, so most people
>>> never have the opportunity to experience it. If we could all hold our
>>> breath for a minute and produce vivid hallucinations of alien
>>> landscapes it would seem downright mundane, a mere curiosity of the
>>> human condition. However, since this particular alien landscape is
>>> produced by a specific rare substance (DMT), people seem to think it is
>>> akin to unlocking the mysteries of the universe when they actually get
>>> their hands on it and try it.
>>> • Now don't get me wrong, DMT is stunning in its effect, no doubt.
>>> But, like anything, when you do it many times the magic tends to wear
>>> off and reveal itself for what it is, an abberation of the brain's
>>> perceptual mechanics. To illustrate this I would like to offer the
>>> following observations:
>>> • 1. DMT acts primarily at the 5-HT2A receptor, which is where all
>>> hallucinogenic tryptamines work their visual magic. Without going into
>>> all the details here, let's just assume for a moment that a molecule
>>> with the proper shape acting at the 5-HT2A sites can significantly
>>> disrupt or enhance visual sensory processing. If this is the case, then
>>> dumping DMT into the perceptual wetworks is akin to messing with the
>>> logic that produces the display on the monitor you are looking at right
>>> now. Any programmer can tell you that a single line of code consisting
>>> of only a few characters can drastically alter the way your screen
>>> presents the data coming from your video card. It can make the screen
>>> flicker, blink, warp, twist, or fall into infinitely recursive
>>> fractalline chaos. If that happens is your monitor now displaying an
>>> "alternate reality" or "parallel dimension"? No, it is not. It is
>>> simply taking the same old data and processing it with a new factor in
>>> the base algorithm. Small tweak, dramatic results. Since the sensory
>>> processing system is so delicate, any chemical perturbation can cause
>>> it to fall into chaos, and as we all know chaos does not produce random
>>> noise, it produces some pretty damn trippy patterns.
>>> • 2. The sensation of seeing aliens, elves, or being in the presence
>>> of God(s) is not unique to DMT users. Otherwise sane people who have
>>> never tried DMT report these sensations all the time, and it is
>>> generally treated as a sign of psychosis. However, recent research has
>>> shown that by stimulating parts of the temporal lobe you can reliably
>>> reproduce the feeling of being in the presence of God (also known as
>>> "seeing the light" or having a "religious epiphany"). It is an innate
>>> human sensation (just like the feeling that "I'm being watched" is an
>>> innate human sensation) we just don't catalog it as such because it is
>>> relatively rare, happening perhaps only once in a lifetime to those who
>>> do not artificially stimulate themselves, perhaps never in a lifetime.
>>> Some people have very dramatic religious epiphanies with angels and
>>> demons and all form of cherubim marching through with horns and such
>>> with no drugs whatsoever, and though it is a common event we generally
>>> treat it as a psychological abberation (though back in the day it was
>>> the stuff prophets were made of). Since this kind of religious vision
>>> phenomena is something our brains can already do on their own, the fact
>>> that a substance like DMT can reproduce this phenomena is not much of a
>>> stretch.
>>> • 3. The archetypal DMT "entities" are pretty well categorized, with
>>> most people seeing elves or aliens or fairies or angels or some kind of
>>> loopy little spirits that dance about and tell riddles. Sometimes it is
>>> a spirit-animal like a jaguar or a snake, sometimes it is none of the
>>> above and goes totally off the map. But getting back to the elf thing
>>> (which is what many people find to be the most curious aspect), I
>>> initially found it very surprising to be confronted by elves in my DMT
>>> experiences (and on psilocybe mushrooms as well), and did indeed
>>> perceive them as externalized disencarnate beings, even managing to
>>> carry on rudimentary conversations of sorts. However, the more I
>>> experimented with the substance the more I found that the "elves" were
>>> merely machinations of my own mind. While under the influence I found I
>>> could think them into existence, and then think them right out of
>>> existence simply by willing it so. Sometimes I could not produce elves,
>>> and my mind would wander through all sorts of magnificient and amazing
>>> creations, but the times that I did see elves I tried very hard to
>>> press them into giving up some non-transient feature that would comfirm
>>> at least a rudimentary "autonomous existence" beyond my own
>>> imagination. Of course, I could not. Whenever I tried to pull any
>>> information out of the entities regarding themselves, the data that was
>>> given up was always relevant only to me. The elves could not give me
>>> any piece of data I did not already know, nor could their existence be
>>> sustained under any kind of prolonged scrutiny. Like a dream, once you
>>> realize you are dreaming you are actually slipping into wakefulness and
>>> the dream fades. So it is with the elves. When you try to shine a light
>>> of reason on them they dissolve like shadows.
>>> • 4. Which brings me to my last point. Psychedelics in general have an
>>> amazing capacity to activate the mind's eye, or what I call the
>>> imaginal workspace. In our day-to-day lives we have two active areas
>>> that are processing our perception of reality. The first is the primary
>>> workspace where all our sense data is compiled in our pre-frontal
>>> cortex to give us our waking picture of reality. The second is the
>>> imaginal workspace, where we can think about abstract thoughts or
>>> visualize the contents of our cupboards from memory (or whatever). The
>>> imaginal workspace is generally running in the background, helping us
>>> plan our actions by visualizing them in advance (like driving to the
>>> grocery store for instance. We visualize the store, plan a route, and
>>> then go). All the while our primary workspace is taking up most of our
>>> attention. This balance flips, however, when we are caught in deep
>>> abstract thinking, like daydreaming or trying to solve a difficult
>>> problem. And when we sleep the primary workspace is actually taken-over
>>> by the imaginal workspace to process all the backlogged data that was
>>> set aside during the waking day. When this happens we dream. Our
>>> primary workspace is filled with imaginal data, and suddenly we are
>>> immersed in an imaginal reality that looks and feels just as solid as
>>> waking reality because it is being processed by the same high-end gear
>>> that we use to processess waking reality. The only difference between
>>> being awake and dreaming is the origin of the data being processed in
>>> the primary workspace. When you are awake you are processing external
>>> sense data in the primary workspace. When you are dreaming you are
>>> processing internal (imaginal) data in the primary workspace. Now I
>>> have done many many experiments with lucid dreaming and self-induced
>>> hypnogogic states and I can tell you that the switch from external to
>>> internal data sources feeding into the primary workspace (and
>>> vice-versa) happens in a split second. It is too quick to notice unless
>>> you are waiting and watching very carefully for the hand-off. One
>>> second you are awake and listening to the faucet drip, the next second
>>> you are wandering through a dream parking lot searching for your car.
>>> If you catch yourself and wake back up again you are back to the
>>> drip-drip-drip of the faucet. Close your eyes and the drips fade away
>>> and you are back in the dream lot (or wherever). So, knowing this, it
>>> is not much of a stretch to assume that psychedelics play some kind of
>>> role in this hand-off between sensory and imaginal data flowing into
>>> our primary workspace, muddying up the selective inputs so that
>>> everything is crashing in at once, making it impossible to distiguish
>>> what is real and what is imaginal until the drug wears off. Concrete
>>> psychedelic visuals may be nothing more than chaotic sense data
>>> overlapped with images created from waking dreams.
>>> • So, with all of this in mind the one question remains: Why is the
>>> alien/elf archetype so common to the DMT experience? The only answer I
>>> have is that we humans must have some kind of innate evolutionary
>>> wetworking that forces us to latch onto any piece of anthropomorphic
>>> data that pops up in otherwise random sensory data, such as spotting a
>>> face peering out from behind the bushes, or spotting another human form
>>> hiding in the tall grass. The evolutionary advantage of such a trait is
>>> obvious, and in standard Rorschach tests even the most ambiguous blobs
>>> are found to look like faces or people no matter what culture the
>>> observer is from. Now, given the amazing swirling kaliedescopic imagery
>>> produced in the typical DMT trip, it is inevitable that anthropomorphic
>>> shapes will emerge and then express themselves in even greater detail
>>> as the mind latches onto them and "dreams" them into focus. With the
>>> imaginal workflow kicked into high gear, it is not surprising that
>>> these emergent anthropomorphic entities can then speak to us, revealing
>>> shocking details from our own subconscious in a conversational stream
>>> of visual theater. Given all of this, in a nutshell, the case for
>>> automous disencarnate DMT entities is closed. All that is needed to
>>> produce them is our own over-activated imagination, and thus Occam's
>>> razor wipes them right off the table and into the fairy-dust bin.
>>> • In conclusion I would just like to mention a couple more things. The
>>> visions produced by DMT are not solely elfs and alien entities. A wide
>>> variety of archetypes and just plain-old whacked-out stoner shit creeps
>>> into the mix. It is highly individual and in many cases is heavily
>>> dependent on set and setting. This fact alone (more than anything else)
>>> leads me to believe that the DMT enitites are mere figments. If, for
>>> example, everyone always saw talking penguins and only talking penguins
>>> while high on DMT, that would be much harder to explain and much more
>>> mysterious. The fact that DMT "consciousness" reveals itself in so many
>>> forms tells me that the "messenger" -- be it elf, alien, jaguar, or
>>> whatever -- is basically arbitrary within the context of the patterns
>>> and
>>> • archetypes our minds are generally trained to pick out of random
>>> noise. However (and this is the good part), the really interesting
>>> thing about DMT experiences is not the elves (messengers) themselves,
>>> but what it is they are saying (the message). And when you get to the
>>> heart of what the typical DMT message is, it is usually something about
>>> the environment or living systems or the vast plant consciousness that
>>> penetrates our world. The "Gaia consciousness" that infuses the
>>> experience is undeniable, and what to make of that I don't know, other
>>> than to entertain the possibility that this ancient plant consciousness
>>> actually exists and is attempting to make itself known through the
>>> DMT-enlightened mammal brain. If so, then this is the real discovery of
>>> the DMT experience, and this is the topic that should be looked at more
>>> closely. In the context of DMT being a two-way radio for plant-human
>>> communication, the "elves" themselves are nothing more than a
>>> cartoonish interface for the exchange of information.
>>> • Whoah dude, that's heavy.
>>> • Thanks for reading all the way through. If you're interested in
>>> doing an interview for our website I'd love to set something up.
>>> • Peace out,
>>> • James Kent
http://tripzine.com
>>> •
>>> • More from James Kent:
>>> • Hey, thanks for writing back. Comments below:
>>> • > Hi, thanks for your great note! May I have permission to excerpt
>>> from it in a book I'm doing? May I have permission to excerpt from it
>>> for my web site?
>>> • Sure, as long as you include my name and provide a link to
>>> tripzine.com with the excerpt. This is just a quick summary of a larger
>>> piece I am working on with all the related research notes and sources,
>>> but it provides the basics.
>>> • > Is the magazine still going?
>>> • No, we published our last issue in Feb. It was taking up too much of
>>> my time and not really making any money, so I am not printing anymore.
>>> I will continue to release new material on the website, which gets more
>>> readers by far than any issue of the mag, and will probably release
>>> books and compilations in the future, but I'm done with the magazine
>>> business. Since 1993 I have published 15 issues under various names
>>> (Psychedelic Illuminations, TRP, and Trip).
>>> • >> Benny Shannon's excellent book has many pages telling us why DMT
>>> visions are NOT like dreams.
>>> • I have not read this book, but I know the argument. This is a
>>> discreet point so I will try to make it again. I agree that DMT visions
>>> are not dreams, but suspect they utilize the same internal brain organs
>>> and neural circuitry that dreams do to produce the internal imagery.
>>> Psychedelic visuals are generally kinetic geometric matrices (2-D or
>>> 3-D depending on substance and level of trip, DMT being very good at
>>> producing 3-D matrices) with "embedded images" which emerge from the
>>> matrix, morph, and fade along with the user's own train of thought or
>>> subsconscious inclinations. The geometric matrices are a result of the
>>> visual processing system falling into a chaotic state, thus causing
>>> feedback, trails, and frame-translation errors (visual flanging,
>>> perspective distortion, etc.). The eye receives light on the retina in
>>> a series of concentric circles with the highest concentration in the
>>> center. We only receive about 80% of the actual picture of what's in
>>> front of us on the retina, and the rest (like the stuff left out on the
>>> periphery and in the blind spot) is "added in" by our own brains to
>>> fill in the missing pieces in the final picture of reality. This "fill
>>> in the blank" aspect of the brain sometimes causes us to mistakenly see
>>> something "out of the corner of our eye" which on closer inspection is
>>> not actually there. Along the pathway from the retina to the prefontal
>>> cortex, the sense data must be translated from a series of concentric
>>> rings of dots to a concrete image of outlines, fills, and shading that
>>> we perceive as reality. This process is called "frame translation."
>>> Lines are etched out on our retina by a process called "lateral
>>> inhibition", which allows one retina to take priority over the retina
>>> next to it if it perceives a hard line or shift in shading that infers
>>> an outline. If lateral inhibition is inhibited, the edges of what we
>>> see tend to drift and blur, causing perspective distortion, creeping
>>> light and shadows, and patterns that seem to "crawl". At more dramatic
>>> levels of this kind of activity, the "frame" of reality actually begins
>>> to rotate and twist, and if you leave "trails" on an image that is
>>> rotating you create a 2-D geometric lattice. If this lattice twists
>>> forwards or backwards it produces depth of field, thus a 3-D matix
>>> appears.
>>> • Okay, so that is part one. These shifting lines and shadows and
>>> geometric lattice imagery I have described should be familiar to anyone
>>> who has taken a psychedelic tryptamine. Now, when you add an
>>> over-active "dream engine" trying to impose patterns and order on these
>>> kinetic matrices, an infinite number of patterns and visions can
>>> emerge. They are unlike dreams in that they do not appear as a slightly
>>> different version of hard reality, but this is because dream data comes
>>> from the hippocampus (memory), which generally stores data related to
>>> everyday stuff. DMT data comes from the brains own pattern-matching
>>> systems trying to impose order on a chaotic pattern, thus "filling in
>>> the blanks" and trying to piece together what is going on, which is why
>>> "visuals" become more elaborate on the periphery -- ie in the corner of
>>> the eye where there is more missing data to fill -- and tend to become
>>> less-so when examined front and center (for example, "elves" tend to
>>> hang out in the periphery, and tend to dissappear when you try to focus
>>> directly on them). Since what we are seeing in the psychedelic state is
>>> so "alien" to our normal sensory input, it is no wonder that the
>>> landscapes and visions our brain tries to impose on them are likewise
>>> very alien. That said, I have seen all kinds of mundane stuff in DMT
>>> visions: toasters, faces of people I know (usually family), people
>>> copulating, scenes of human suffering and warfare, clowns and
>>> harlequins, trains, skulls, trees, oceans, animals, dancing cartoon
>>> rats, strands of DNA, rotating atomic and molecular structures, etc.
>>> All very terrestrial stuff. The basic difference between dreams and DMT
>>> visuals is that dreams are snippets of incongruous memories forced into
>>> a consistent narrative by the pre-frontal cortex, DMT visuals are
>>> chaotic geometic patterns forced into a consistent narrative by the
>>> prefontal cortex. The source of the data is different (though sometimes
>>> overlapping), but the process of turning random data into "contextual
>>> meaning" happens in the same place in the brain, weather we are awake,
>>> dreaming, or tripping.
>>> • > DMT visions have nothing to do with the psychonaut's life and they
>>> are not as chaotic or illogical as the plots of our dreams. They do not
>>> contain simple household objects that you see in dreams.
>>> • I disagree with this. You can impose any imagery you want in the DMT
>>> state. I know a guy who always sees tricked-out cartoon hot-rods when
>>> he smokes DMT. I know a woman who only sees hideous zombie-like faces
>>> of corpses. I have seen vivid images from my own life (memories, family
>>> members, etc.) as well as mundane objects in the DMT state. If the user
>>> stays "unfocused" the imagery tends to dribble randomly out of the
>>> subconscious (hence the archetypes) and will swirl into the realm of
>>> the fantastic, but if you are "looking" for something in the visions
>>> you can generally make it appear.
>>> • > No matter how hard I try, I can not imagine the vast, intricate,
>>> ornate palaces and temples common in the DMTverse.
>>> • True! But this is because you cannot consciously "will" your visual
>>> system to collapse into a chaotic state, or you cannot "will" your
>>> temporal lobe to become excited and produce the presence of god (well,
>>> maybe long-practicing mystics can). There is too much neurochemical
>>> redundancy to keep your brain from falling into these states just at
>>> any old time (unless you are schizophrenic). The ornate places and
>>> temples are heavenly archetypes, this is obvious when you look at
>>> ancient architecture, especially in the middle east and asia. This does
>>> not mean they are "real" in the sense that they actually exist
>>> somewhere in hyperspace, they are imaginal blueprints forged from the
>>> subconscious. I think you sell the human imagination short when you say
>>> things like "No one could ever envision such things on their own."
>>> Maybe people raised on the limited flotsam of TV and pop culture can't,
>>> but brilliant creative types sure can. That said, I am not adverse to
>>> the notion that there is some kind of "ancient alien history" embedded
>>> in our DNA somewhere that produces these kinds of visions, or that the
>>> heavenly archetypes (such as vast temples, angels, etc.) are actually
>>> representative of some kind of hyperspatial kingdom where souls dwell
>>> after death (or something like that), but such things are impossible to
>>> prove in any empirical way, so flatly saying that this is the case is
>>> highly suspect to me. What I will concede is that humans across all
>>> cultures have alien and heavenly archetypes embedded in their
>>> subconscious, and psychedelic tryptamines can access the archetypes
>>> with a high level of success. Where these archetypes come from or what
>>> they mean is the subject of eternal debate.
>>> • > Many psycnonauts have the distinct feeling that the visions are
>>> not simply products of their own mind.
>>> • True, but most psychonauts are just beginning to explore thier own
>>> mind and are usually very surprised at what pops out when they they
>>> start messing around with it. The first people who discovered fractals
>>> had the distinct feeling that these amazing other-worldly images and
>>> patterns could not simply be the products of a single line of code, and
>>> yet they are. Complexity breeds all kinds of weird shit, and the human
>>> brain is the most complex system on the planet.
>>> • > The goal for future researchers it to determine whether the
>>> psychonauts can return to our world with new "factual" information.
>>> • I have attempted this experiment in many ways and with many people.
>>> The answer seems to be "No." I have had many people argue with me about
>>> this but none could provide a concrete example that was convincing in
>>> any way. The information retrieved from the psychedelic states is
>>> usally generalized common wisdom applicable to the user's own life (or
>>> human life in general). The notion that rainforest shaman can divine
>>> "information" about a plant just by ingesting it in an ayahuasca brew
>>> illustrates to me the mind's amazing ability to extrapolate holistic
>>> data on a specific system when only given on little bits and pieces of
>>> data to work with. This ability is amplified by the psychedelic state,
>>> but it does not produce "new" information, just more refined and
>>> detailed analysis of what we already know. This is the "fill in the
>>> blanks" property of the brain I discussed earlier in the context of the
>>> visual system, but logic systems use this technique as well.
>>> • > I discuss in the book I'm doing that we should search out these
>>> entities just like scientists search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
>>> • I'm all for trying to get a grip on the pheonomena, but have little
>>> expectation that anyone will ever make "absolute contact" that proves
>>> an autonomous existence of hyperspatial entities. I am more inclined to
>>> believe that they are very strange and unexplored facets of the human
>>> psyche, but I also believe in samsara and the transmigration of souls,
>>> which makes the notion that these entities could be "disembodied souls"
>>> who are floating around in hyperspace very tempting to latch onto. And
>>> yet, even wanting to believe that I have not been able to convince
>>> myself that this is the case even after repeated experimentation and
>>> confrontation with these entities. All I can come up with is that they
>>> are figments, or that if they ARE disembodied souls or hyperspatial
>>> entities, the disconnect between their intelligence and human
>>> intelligence is such that they are not able to reveal anything lasting,
>>> tangible, or definitive about their own nature. In short, they say all
>>> kinds of things, some of it profound, some if it gibberish. But none of
>>> it points definitively to any deeper truth about what they are or where
>>> they come from.
>>> • > What do you think of the ornate palaces that people see and seem
>>> to be able to traverse?
>>> • I could ask you the same thing about J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth.
>>> He (and legions of fans) could certainly envision this world and
>>> traverse it with very adept skill. The product he produced is very
>>> vivid, ornate, and fantastical. Does that make it real? No. DMT visions
>>> certainly do have thier own very unusual asthetic, to be sure, as do
>>> mushrooms, LSD, 2-CB, Mescaline, etc. Each one produces a distinct set
>>> of visual imagery, each one a slightly different variation on a basic
>>> fractally recursive theme. But this in no more surprising to me than
>>> the fact that two different fractal algorithms produce different
>>> results, and yet they all share the same intrinsic qualities and are
>>> instantly recognizable as "fractals." As I said, the ornate places may
>>> be heavenly archetypes, they may be the product of the mind imposing
>>> order or chaotic patterns, but I have seen nothing that implies to me
>>> that they are "real" places somewhere. They are by definition fleeting
>>> and ephemeral. The fact that DMT produces a consistent "style" of
>>> visions in human brains across all cultures is no more surprising to me
>>> then the fact that pressure phosphenes the smae kind of geometric
>>> visuals in human brains across all cultures, or that a specific fractal
>>> algorithm will produce the same imagery no matter which computer it is
>>> running on. It would be more surprising to me if DMT produced wildly
>>> different visions in each person who tried it (as LSD tends to, which I
>>> find infinitely more fascinating). As it is, DMT appears to produce
>>> amazingly consistent visual patterns is all users. That is a
>>> scientifically significant fact, and yet it only points to the
>>> conclusion that it is very simple in it's action with not a lot of room
>>> for variation.
>>> • > There is a sense of enchantment, of sanctity, of beauty, a sense
>>> of gaining privileged access to knowledge and that their intelligence
>>> is increased.
>>> • Yes! I agree that all these aspects of the human mind are aplified
>>> under the influence of DMT. One does not have to take DMT to have
>>> epiphanies of beauty and sanctity. DMT does increase intelligence,
>>> which I define as the brain's ability to retain many specific pieces of
>>> data in working memory while simultaneously performing analysis on
>>> them. DMT (and other psychedelics) certainly amplify this capacity, and
>>> thus amplify the brain's capacity to apply contextual meaning or
>>> "profundity" on whatever it may be experiencing. If the psychedelically
>>> amplified brain happens to be focused on an imaginary alien landscape,
>>> then the profundity of that alien landscape suddenly goes through the
>>> roof!
>>> • > The world around them appears to be constructed, composed with
>>> care like a work of art or an intricate hand-spun fabric, and guided
>>> like actors in a play. They feel as if a veil has been lifted and so
>>> that they see something that has always been transpiring.
>>> • Yes, this aspect of the experience is more relevant to me than the
>>> elves or whatnot. The exposing of the deeper fabric of reality that we
>>> don't normally see is the big secret of the DMT (and other psychedelic)
>>> state. This is a product of the amplified mind exploring the nature of
>>> hard reality. The quantum levels of flux become apparant and the
>>> "hardness" of reality disappears into a vibrating mass of infinitely
>>> deep energy, which it actually is. The profundity of this realization
>>> is very heavy, yet it is nothing that we do not already know. It is
>>> just that quantum nature of our world made manifest for our limited
>>> senses.
>>> • > Shanon tells us that the DMTverse appears to be another world with
>>> an existence independent of the psychonaut.
>>> • Well, the "real" world exists independently of the observer, we just
>>> don't dwell on this fact very often. Why does a deeper uderstanding or
>>> vision of this world have to be classified as "another" world or a
>>> paralell world? Why not just assume it is a hidden (or hard to see)
>>> aspect of this one? Sensing quantum reality is not the same as entering
>>> "another world." It is just experiencing another layer of the same old
>>> world we already live in (like the infrared goggles thing). Giving this
>>> hidden layer of reality some kind of vague "mystical" properties only
>>> mucks up the analysis of what is really going on when we experience it.
>>> • > The worlds exhibit internal consistencies and at time seem to be
>>> even "more real" that our ordinary world and exist independent of our
>>> ordinary flow of time. Many psychonauts return with a certainty that
>>> consciousness continues after death. They return with the idea of a
>>> soul existing beyond the body, somehow woven into the fabric of the
>>> universe.
>>> • I agree. This may well be the case. Time is an illusion of our
>>> senses. The soul may be timeless. Again, this conjecture is
>>> metaphysically savory but impossible to prove. The mystery just gets
>>> deeper when you probe it. My conclusion is that the things we see in
>>> the psychedelic state are a confusing mixture of a "deeper hidden
>>> reality" that is there all the time (the product of amplified senses),
>>> plus detailed imaginal renderings of our own subconscious desires and
>>> fears (made manifest by an overstimulated brain imposing order on
>>> chaotic patterns). Sorting out which is which (seperating the "hard
>>> signal" from the "chaotic noise" and "imaginal rendering") is the hard
>>> part of the psychonautic journey. Flatly accepting the entirity of the
>>> experience as "undeniably real" and "truth" is a mistake that makes
>>> "psychedelic philosphers" appear as little more than new-age jokes
>>> enamored with their own visions and with no capacity for deeper
>>> analytical thinking. It drives me crazy.
>>> • > DMT psychonauts may see a new world superimposed on the "normal world"
>>> • So do people suffering from delusions.
>>> • > This new world is completely navigatable
>>> • I disagree. This new world is fleeting and ephemeral, constantly
>>> shifting and morphing. You can "navigate" somewhat by choosing which
>>> direction you would like to "morph into" next, but the "imaginal
>>> worlds" of the DMT experience do not have a solid and consistent
>>> structure. They are transient and elusive. If you want to talk about
>>> total delusional immersion in a hard imaginal world, you need to get
>>> into the kind of experiences people have on Datura and the like. These
>>> substances can make you think you are standing in line at the grocery
>>> store when you have actually walked into your own coat closet. These
>>> are what I refer to as "concrete" hallucinations that are fully
>>> immersive. In contrast, the DMT visions appear as "perceptual
>>> distortions" which produce stylized renderings of the reality that is
>>> in front of us. Close your eyes and you get a swirling, highly detailed
>>> alien landscape. Open them and you see a very distorted view of the
>>> space in front of you overlapped with these same swirling geometrical
>>> lattices, with the occasional "hard" object such as an elf or something
>>> popping out of the mix.
>>> • I think in general people like to romanticize the DMT state and make
>>> it more than it is becuase they deperately want there to be a hidden
>>> hyperspatial world filled with michevious sprites and god-like
>>> entities. However, when one closely studies the experience over and
>>> over again over time you come to see that a lot of the romanticized
>>> notions are not what is actually happening in the state, and people
>>> tend to "editorialize" the content of the experience in hindsight in
>>> order to make it into something more than what it actually is. As I've
>>> said, I've done DMT a number of times, each time with the intent to
>>> find some deeper truth to the experience. The only thing I can say for
>>> certain is that it is different every time. The asthetic of the visual
>>> phenomena is consitent, unique, and wonderous, but the content that is
>>> generated within the experience conforms to no hard or simple rules
>>> like "entering a hyperspatial dimension" or "visitation from alien
>>> entities." Everybody experiences something slightly different, and yet
>>> they all want to apply it to some kind of "alice in wonderland" style
>>> trip down the rabbit-hole and convince themselves that they've been
>>> exposed to a deeper truth or something of vast spiritual significance.
>>> In doing so they revise the experience to fit into some kind of
>>> narrative that makes sense, thus creating wishful non-truths, such as
>>> the statement that DMT worlds are concrete navigable spaces, or that
>>> elves appear for everyone every time. This is simply not the case. It
>>> is a mis-representation of the actual experience. It would be cool if
>>> it was true, but the truth if far more elusive and complex then the
>>> simple metaphysical fairy-tale notions we like to apply.
>>> • Gotta go,
>>> • James
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From Chris:
>>> • Years ago I experimented with these spaces too and for a couple of
>>> years there I was visiting almost every week and certainly at least
>>> once a fortnight. The beings I worked with were in numerous forms and
>>> communicated in various ways although the essence was that everything
>>> is love, there is nothing less. Reality is constructed from our
>>> imagination and the reality we experience is made from their bodies
>>> holding forms for us to experience. There is nothing essentially you
>>> can do wrong and all experience is just that experience.
>>> • Of course this frequency of usage blew my circuits wide open to the
>>> point where I was 'hearing' the beings talk to me telepathically and
>>> over time I came to realise that they were initiating me and preparing
>>> me for the final experience.
>>> • If you find what i am writing interesting you may want to look at my
>>> articles on my art site:
>>> • the first details the connection between all facets of reality as we
>>> experience it... Click here.
>>> • and this second one was the last huge experience I had... Click here
>>> • There were many other experiences that I am still writing down and
>>> will put onto my website in the future.
>>> • In the meantime I am creating visual art about the work and have
>>> been involved in the creation of the erowid visionary arts vaults for
>>> the past 3 years.
>>> • Hopefully my information helps to fit more pieces of the puzzle together.
>>> • Right now I am in the process of mapping hyperspace from my past
>>> experiences. When I have finished that I will put up a website about it
>>> and hopefully people will be interested in seeing the information and
>>> can map themselves and experiences to it or add to it.
>>> • may the source be you 
chris
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From D. Moore:
>>> • I'm a 32 year old male, who has tried DMT, reddish orange crack
>>> rock, smoked on 5 seperate occasions at doses no smaller than 150mg.
>>> Each event has have me with a number of unique insights, some of which
>>> are revelations. None are more accumlative than two perceptions, a
>>> longing to return home, and the feeling of being cursed. Cursed is
>>> somewhat a poor term to describe it, as it describes different
>>> thoughts. Cursed in one sense is I'm aware of my exiled from
>>> Eden....cursed in the other sense of being the unfornatue soul to bear
>>> an enormous quanity of memories that span across all time, and other
>>> times that remembrance is no differnet then recalling something from
>>> one childhood; that is remembering the innocent feeling and emotional
>>> awe of the experience, but seeing back is a bit fuzz'n but also
>>> littered with a slightly different interpetation at the same time...
>>> • when trip'n comes up in conversation, more often than not, DMT is
>>> left out, at which point is when I inject it (no pun intended). People
>>> ask me to describe it, in otherwords contrast to what they know which
>>> is often LSD. My response is that LSD/acid is fingerpaints for
>>> preschoolers. Many take offensive to that remark, but quickly
>>> understand once explained that DMT is so powerful, so harsh that after
>>> only a couple of tokes of what tastes like burnt plastic that you are
>>> completely convinced that you're entire reality has changed. You are on
>>> the starship enterprise, Picard is screaming at you, demanding you to
>>> identify yourself, who are you, what are you doing here, and that
>>> goddamn stale earl grey tea on his breath is annoyingly the hell out of
>>> you. Going on to describe other experiences, but I always label it with
>>> a warning that I never gotten, all experiences, all these memories
>>> across all time, no time, and other times...how could of they have
>>> happened in mere 15 minutes. disturbing feeling, a daily occurance for
>>> me, another kind of curse....
>>> • one of my more revelating experiences. second time trying....first
>>> inhaling, rolling thundering, everything was shaking, roaring
>>> devesationg, but according to my babysitters, i was completely still
>>> except for the moment i feel backwards and crack my head on the floor
>>> (I was sitting down and had pillows down)....back to the
>>> experience...holding in the nasty tasting vapors...i noticed i wasn't
>>> gasping for air, putting my hand on my heart nad it no longer was
>>> beating, then BOOM my body literaly exploded and I was shot out in all
>>> directions...zipping thru the clouds, into space, I was infinitely
>>> going faster, infintely going to slower, and infintely still, I was
>>> larger than the universe, I was smaller than the smallest thing in the
>>> universe, I was also nothing in the universe...thinking forwards,
>>> thinking backwards, when I tried to think both at the same time, it
>>> resissted me, but i kept trying and then there was no thinking, but
>>> there was...I saw the mayan clock, clicking down to the last moment,
>>> the end of time, there i was amped to the next level, I understood that
>>> the end of time wasn't physically destructive, such sillyness, the end
>>> of time means the end of thinking lineraly, i could see the present,
>>> the past and the future, i could hear the voices from the past
>>> communicating with the voices of the future, we are all here, but none
>>> were able to communicate with the voices from the present. the voices
>>> from the past and future rejoiced at my prescenes, pushing me to
>>> realize more, think of them as one, again thinking of them as one, i
>>> saw some sort of stain glass church window, almost like the twlight
>>> zone door, but a window out in the middle of nowhere but everywhere,
>>> feeling of being trapped, i became enraged, i needed to break thru that
>>> window, moving at incredible speeds slamming into the window, resisted,
>>> moved back infinitely far, again the voices from the future and past
>>> both in unison, move without traveling,....it dawned on me, so i moved
>>> forward and backwards at increidble speeds, smashing into the window
>>> one both sides at the same time, breaking thru! such incredible
>>> destruction, floating away from what appeared to be a hole in what
>>> appeared to be a grape, our universe was just but one of many universes
>>> hanging from a vine with no beginning nor end...i explored other
>>> universes.. many of them dead, few like ours, some absolutely bizzar
>>> with it's own laws of physicals, one i recall the most is planets were
>>> pockets of vaccum, and space was fluidic, not quite water....i seen
>>> entire civilizations born and die, seen universes collapse, only to be
>>> reborn in a endless repeating cycle....hooded reptiles that i sense
>>> them as evil, little elves like from golden axe, you slash at them they
>>> dropped things...but how did i get back....upon entering one universe,
>>> dark at first, but i could see this light at the end, only one light,
>>> closer and closer, but i noticed i was being sucked in, i couldn't
>>> flee! going faster than i could gone faster, then SLURP, the light was
>>> my eyes seeing this world....then i understood...our physical universe
>>> is the light universe, limited but boundless, our minds the dark
>>> universe...infinite but bounded....
>>> • dmt has changed me forever, for good...for bad...i don't know, but i
>>> could show you some things i remember finding in my dmt trips that
>>> would probably trip you out...and i wonder how do I KNOW THIS, HOW IS
>>> IT POSSIBLE, ask me about what i call the geometric truth of
>>> divinity....i just want to return home
>>> • hope this is informative for you
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From" godisflawed":
>>> • I do not believe the previous person, D. Moore, has tried DMT. Here
>>> are my reasons:
>>> • *The stated dosage (150 mg) is about twice the max a human can
>>> imbibe at one sitting. Those seeking the most intense DMT experience
>>> usually smoke doses in the 40-50 mg range, and many prefer DMT the
>>> 20-30 mg range. The rapid onset and quick breakdown of the active
>>> principal places limits on the max amount that can be imbibed at once
>>> (which is realistically about 75 mgs). It's VERY hard to smoke 75 mgs
>>> of DMT.
>>> • I suppose someone could stick 150 mgs in a pipe and pass out after a
>>> few tokes and imagine they'd inhaled 150 mg, but they'd realistically
>>> have inhaled ony about 50mg-75 mgs of DMT vapor. So maybe our poster
>>> here is honest about what he thinks he imbibed, but naive. Or perhaps
>>> he is just clueless about actual dosages and is pulling the 150 mg
>>> figure out of his ass.
>>> • * I've never heard of 'orange, crack rock ' DMT. Any decent
>>> extraction of DMT should yield a white or off white crystal or powder.
>>> • * Finally, the trip he describes (Picard screaming etc.) is nothing
>>> like any DMT trip I have ever heard of. It is very much more like what
>>> many who have never done a drug like DMT often IMAGINE such experiences
>>> to be like.
>>> • I could be wrong but I doubt it. The post just doesn't ring true to
>>> me, and I'm as experienced with DMT as anyone need be.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From Juan:
>>> • Hi Cliff. Thanks again for sending me Stars of Heaven and Chaos in
>>> Wonderland, as always your books are exciting to read. I just finished
>>> the first 4 chapters of Sex Drugs Einstein and Elves. All the topics
>>> raise the same issues I keep working on for my academic studies, they
>>> have been very helpful.
>>> • Question.Hope it's not too rambling. On your views on DMT you seem
>>> to lean towards proposing the external reality of the DMTverse. In my
>>> case, every time I take ayahuasca, I flip flop between such a realist
>>> mind independent view and the skeptical all it is constructed view. I
>>> was wondering if you ever considered a middle ground. I noticed that
>>> you are on the editorial board of Idealistic studies. Some
>>> interpretations of post Kantian idealism see it as proposing that the
>>> mind participates in the creation of reality and I lean, as of today,
>>> seeing DMT as revealing in some way how our minds can create a whole
>>> new reality.
>>> • In the book you say how the person's background shapes the meaning
>>> of the experience but I wonder how much of the actual experience is
>>> brought by us and how much is "too alien". The similarities of the
>>> experiences of people who take ayahuasca no matter what the setting
>>> (snakes and jaguars in urban places) is perplexing at the least. It
>>> does give credence to the realist view. On the other hand most people
>>> have read about DMT before taking it so expectations may account for
>>> it. Following John Horgan's suggestion in his review of Shannon, we
>>> would have to give DMT to Scandinavian villagers to see if they see
>>> jaguars and snakes.
>>> • Shannon views it as purely constructed but I find both the realist
>>> and his as not perfect explanations. I find it hard to believe that I
>>> have somewhere in my mind a blueprint for Egyptian hieroglyphs, maybe
>>> for pyramidal buildings but the imagery I think is historically
>>> contingent.
>>> • So, what if our mind colors the experience and yet there is
>>> something external? I haven't seen elves yet, unless you count some
>>> tiny alien looking beings that I later identified as the Japanese
>>> spirits from the movie Princess Mononoke. Other times is too aliens to
>>> think it is from my memory. Can there be an interplay? You asked in
>>> your website whether drugs reveal a true valid reality or simply
>>> distort reality, can it somehow be both? What's your take on the role
>>> of consciousness in reality, would you agree with Einstein' mind
>>> independent reality or with Niels Bohr's observer interacting one?
>>> • If you've read this whole thing thanks for your time. Best, Juan
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From Barry M.
>>> • Fostering endogenous DMT production through darkness. Basic premise
>>> is that extended photon deprivation (complete darkness for up to 72
>>> hours and more) causes the pineal gland to begin producing/dumping
>>> extra portions of DMT (and other goodies) into the brain (after a
>>> series of electro-bio displacements). This goes back into the ancient
>>> methods used by mystic monks/recluses spending days upon end in caves
>>> in complete darkness etc. Now, there is a woman Dr. in Finland I
>>> believe who is also working along the pineal trail documenting
>>> endogenous DMT production, but I can't remember her name and did not
>>> bookmark her...sorry.
>>> • Mantak Chia schedules guided 'dark room' retreats in his Thailand
>>> Taoist school, where participants can spend up to two weeks in total
>>> darkness after several weeks of dietary and mental preparations. They
>>> are fed and housed in comfortable surroundings and guided by Mantak
>>> himself in conscious, group explorations of the feedback loops of the
>>> sub-quantum, geometric, morphing fractal field (always wanted to say
>>> that to someone who could probably understand).
>>> • Ananda (and a couple other 'new age' mentors...Drunvalo Melchizidek
>>> being another) had head injuries at an early age that resulted in the
>>> decalcification (jump start) of the pineal gland, thus producing
>>> additional amounts of DMT and the resulting 'cosmic info window' that
>>> opened for them into varying techniques of activating the Merkaba body
>>> tied holonomicly/fractally to the center of the Galaxy (Hunabku).
>>> Again, the techniques are based on geometric fractals, including
>>> bio-sonics and bio-phosphene algorythms. (Hint: John J. Falone said it
>>> beautifully simple...."Reality IS the imagination, in slow motion")
>>> Ananda also has a wealth of scientific links at his site...mixed in
>>> with a bunch of new age rhetoric and looping, open-ended syntaxes to
>>> charm the pants off any ardent occult neuro-linquist.
>>> • For detailed info see the links I provided to get you started. And
>>> search out John J. Falone's book for a good midnight reader.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From gaspaheangea
>>> • Flying aliens and strange machines don't really interest me all that
>>> much. It's one thing to experience otherworldliness, but if all you can
>>> come back to is describing weird insect machines or strange language
>>> aliens, then most people's eyes glaze over (not that either of these
>>> are a bad thing for people), but when someone goes out of this world
>>> and returns, and brings back with them 'bug eyed bejewelled crystalline
>>> insect machines' and 'an intense incomprehensible feeling which is hard
>>> to grasp'. The first slams into everyone's cognition like a bad science
>>> fiction movie, but the second just slips past most people's interest
>>> filters because there's nothing to hold on to, and people always want
>>> things to have something to grab their interest.
>>> • speculation and experience:
>>> • so what about the five methoxylated variety of dmt? structurally,
>>> it's the same as melatonin around the carbon with the methoxyl group,
>>> and very different on the other end, with the two methyl groups of dmt
>>> I believe it's known that this as well as the regular sort of dmt are
>>> notoriously unselective about which serotonin receptors they bind to,
>>> so there's a matter of degree as well as kind: do different tryptamine
>>> analogues stimulate different serotonin receptors in different ways
>>> depending on tryptamine/receptor combination, or is it the same sort of
>>> stimulation except that it varies with respect to how long the
>>> tryptamine is in the receptor before the brain's natural machinery
>>> removes it? another question is whether there is a firm boundary
>>> between melatonin and serotonin receptors, and whether there is cross
>>> reactivity of tryptamines in both types of receptor. the other other
>>> question here concerns natural production of n,n and 5-meo-n,n .. what
>>> are the biosynthetic pathways through which these are synthesized and
>>> how is their production regulated. (end chem digression)
>>> • Experience
>>> • Language doesn't work to well for me here. To try to encapsulate in
>>> language what was essentially a nonlinguistic experience is not
>>> possible.
>>> • This might work as a stepping stone:
>>> http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/absorption.html#N4
>>> • I listened to Brian Eno's Music for Airports 1/1, and took in the
>>> vapor, and closed my eyes.
>>> • I think when the stereotypical westerner in a box imagines
>>> nothingness or void, the notion is usually of this immense blackness,
>>> something which is forcefully and in-your-face absent of all manner of
>>> things. This was not the character of my experience. "absenceless"
>>> works equally well as "presenceless": in the first case there are no
>>> absences, and in the second case, since there are no absences, there
>>> are no differentiation which allow a given thing to be present. Also,
>>> while there was no differentation, there was no homogeneity in the
>>> sense of overwhelming sameness. The perception of sameness requires a
>>> comparison, which requires making a distinction somewhere and then
>>> performing a test, or registering a change. The processes of making
>>> distinctions or registering a change require that you be able to hold
>>> onto something. If you are unable to hold on because there is no thing
>>> to hold on to , you cannot make distinctions or register change.
>>> • There is a stated thing called 'nonduality' or 'advaita', the
>>> essence of this being that the world is like Indra's pearls, a lattice
>>> work of reflecting pearls, each one nothingness, all obtaining their
>>> properties by their relationship to other pearls. No object with any
>>> intrinsic properties by itself. People talk about this but don't
>>> usually have any day to day experience of this, and I suspect the
>>> number of people who are encouraging this as a philosophy fail to
>>> recognize the distinction between the experience of it, and the belief
>>> that one is living or percieving nondually.
>>> • The idea that objects have no intrinsic properties of their own but
>>> develop/obtain/possess/come to have those properties by their
>>> interaction with other object should have been the nail in the coffin
>>> of the philosophy of objectivism after its subjunctive miscarriage. It
>>> is interesting to note that the wikipedia entries on metaphysical
>>> objectivism and objectivist philosophy both use the word 'independent'
>>> in the first few sentences and make no further mention of it. This is
>>> called 'dependent origination'. A box of wood obtains its boxness from
>>> the particular arrangement of wooden slats. Some objectivists will say
>>> 'it is itself', the meaningless tautology on which that entire
>>> philosophy seems to drag itself onward by. The box of wood may be
>>> turned into a slide rule by various transformations of the parts of the
>>> box. But to assert that the box is composed of indecomposable primes,
>>> such as atoms, is also to say that those primes have independent
>>> natures, and this too is known to be false. Atoms can be transfigured
>>> nuclearly. Our perceptual tweezers have high enough resolutions to
>>> allow us to do such transformations. Science exists by the virtue that
>>> these transformations are consistent. High energy theoretical physics
>>> (anthropomorphising for a moment) desires to reduce the universe to
>>> some kind of indecomposable prime, but even that assumes that the
>>> indecomposable primes exist independently.
>>> • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_origination
>>> • I probably have a less Buddhist take on it than does the Buddhist doctine.
>>> • This is also worth checking out:
>>> • http://www.geocities.com/jiji_muge/mmk.html
>>> • ...
>>> • So I had an experience that didn't quite fit into language So did
>>> other people:
>>> • http://www.lycaeum.org/drugs/trip.report/tryptamines.shtml#14
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • Question: What's your opinion? Are the DMT visions telling us
>>> anything about ultimate reality? Or are they telling us something about
>>> the workings of the human brain
>>> • Answer
>>> • You first have to define 'ultimate reality'. It is quite a journey
>>> from brushing your teeth in the morning with crusty eyes to
>>> morphing/merging into godhead. Of course the vision of brushing your
>>> teeth also tells us something about reality. As does a beer and a shot.
>>> But not 'ultimate' reality. (Name me something that does NOT alter
>>> consciousness and I'll go out and say a prayer for it) It also tells us
>>> something about the workings of the human brain. Brushing your teeth is
>>> also a DMT induced vision, as is a beer and a shot, albeit a DNA
>>> controlled bubble consensus using varying, subconsciously controlled
>>> degrees of DMT 'leakage', designed to retain our focus in this shared
>>> wavelength/dimension.
>>> • I see the brain as the hardware, the synapse firing patterns are the
>>> software, and psycho-actives and conscious 'thoughts' are like
>>> wild-card hackers cueing novelty awareness to retain our sense of
>>> interest and experience from atrophying. (thoughts tweak the synapse
>>> discharge patterns, thus morphing perception/awareness/experience) We
>>> designed ourselves to have a continuous experience of infinite
>>> possibilities and expressions. Cosmic entertainment, and someone is
>>> always laughing, or making love.
>>> • On one end of the scale is a personal experience of imploding
>>> bio-phosphene discharge, the awareness of 'illuminated being'. The
>>> rising Kundalini Serpent. At the other, the experience of complete
>>> void, yet, an active/kinetic vacuum. Kether to the Qabbalists. In
>>> between is what we can make of it all (reality synthesis) and the
>>> symbols and archetypes are like building blocks from the encoded DNA
>>> book of infinite bi-polar language/expression potential. The bi-polar
>>> binary tension/torsion stresses between opposites in cyclic
>>> expansion/contraction; fractal spin-resonance. Yin Yang. Mumbo Jumbo.
>>> Helter Skelter. Right brain. Left brain. All things polar. The current
>>> consensus 'reality' that I am here & you are there. It all certainly
>>> appears to be intelligently designed evolution...epigenisis as we used
>>> to call it.
>>> • Do you consider the beings seen in the DMT world to be real entities
>>> with some kind of independent existence, or are they more akin to
>>> hallucinations of our brains?
>>> • Anthropomorphic archetypes. They have an independent existence as
>>> archetypes only. But they are also more than that. It is very difficult
>>> for us to realize something that is both independent AND dependant AT
>>> THE SAME TIME. Like trying to imagine all existence and all dimensions
>>> of space/time are present in a void. The concept of the holographic
>>> universe or the String theory are close, but most can't grasp that idea
>>> either. They are formless, but when 'confronted' will take on form
>>> suitable/adaptable to the observer. (We are not evolved to the point
>>> yet where we can imagine or find words for 99.99% of existence, not to
>>> mention we can yet only experience less than .01% of the
>>> electromagnetic spectrum etc.) (Before you look into a mirror, who is
>>> there? Can you merely imagine looking into an imaginary mirror and see
>>> your face? Is your imagination real or imaginary?)
>>> • Intra-stellar beings of the DMT variety (Sentient or not? Who knows?
>>> A rock has 'rock consciousness' but not necessarily 'aware' of itself
>>> as a rock or anything else for that matter. But it has to have 'rock
>>> consciousness' to be in existence....be-ing. Is a UFO a sentient being?
>>> Why, within a group of people, will some see the UFO, while others may
>>> not, or see something entirely different? What about Bigfoot etc.? But
>>> I digress.) ...DMT beings will tend to conform to a
>>> collective/consensus visual form (anthropomorphic is only one option)
>>> that is determined by the DNA spin-resonance shared among the observers
>>> and/or the DNA signature of the biological chemistry responsible for
>>> the altered awareness of the observer.
>>> • I don't think the 'mind' can hallucinate as normally thought of. On
>>> the other hand, what we term consensus reality could well be an agreed
>>> upon hallucination for the 'time' being. But the tweaking of the
>>> synapse discharge patterns within the brain will certainly effect the
>>> brains' response to stimuli, whether real or imaginary, and will
>>> entertain the observer with phantom realities that may appear true and
>>> real, and trigger floods of emotion and cascading resonant thoughts,
>>> and the observer will adjust his 'reality' & survival instincts
>>> accordingly until proven or adjusted or altered otherwise.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From Jenifer:
>>> • Hi Cliff, I read a page of your site with much interest, and decided
>>> to reply to your question about the reality or non-reality of DMT
>>> experiences. I recently wrote an essay on the Caterpillar chapter in
>>> Alice in Wonderland, titled "Archetype of Transformation", in which I
>>> explore the DMT angle among others; here's an excerpt that goes into
>>> that question:
>>> • "Throughout her dream-adventures, Alice struggles with the
>>> epistemological question of whether her experiences are real. Are our
>>> dreams and other altered-state experiences any less “real” than our
>>> waking life? Writes Rick Strassman in his book DMT, The Spirit
>>> Molecule: 'The other planes of existence are always there … but we
>>> cannot perceive them because we are not designed to do so; our
>>> hard-wiring keeps us tuned in to Channel Normal.' Rather than seeing
>>> these other planes as pure hallucination, Strassman accepts them as
>>> realities that we tune in to when in these altered states."
>>> • Hope that's helpful. I actually believe that all our experience is a
>>> product of our mind, thus the question of whether the DMT apparitions
>>> are real or creations of our mind is a bit irrelevant. It's all real,
>>> and ultimately, all good!
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From Luke:
>>> • Has anyone heard of any research work on drugs and magical thinking?
>>> It seems to me that psychoactives, particularly hallucinogens like
>>> Cannabis (THC), LSD, DMT, Psilocybin and Salvia Divinorum (Salvinorin
>>> A) definitely seem to promote magical thinking. By magical i mean
>>> thinking that doesnt match rational or empirical guidelines, stuff that
>>> is more childlike, denial of ordinary cause and effect. (Actually it's
>>> hard to define !)
>>> • The pro hallucinogen lobby often seem to claim that a good trip or
>>> experience actually enhances rational thinking. Peope speak of visions
>>> of nature, energy forms, higher dimensions or glimpses of the history
>>> of the universe (also like Near Death Experiences). Much of the subject
>>> matter of trips are very scientific. Is this self delusion ? Are people
>>> watching a kind of virtual son et lumiere that is a kind of fiction or
>>> is the drug actually allowing them to see further and deeper into
>>> reality. Kekule's dream of the benzene snakes was a useful pointer for
>>> him in his work, its said that leading scientists like Carl Sagan have
>>> been fond of smoking grass. If inspiring drug experiences can foster
>>> scientific inquiry is the magical thinking just an embellishment ? Or
>>> are the experiences bogus and better avoided ?
>>> • While experimenting with Salvia Divinorum I noticed that my
>>> personality underwent a radical change. I started thinking that
>>> California was "just up the road" and that important people in the
>>> counterculture or powerful mystics were monitoring me for similarities
>>> to Charles Manson. It was funny at the time but later i pondered and
>>> realised that i seemed to have substituted a kind of simplified cartoon
>>> picture for my usual reality-based map of the world around me. It was
>>> as if I was inhabiting an anthropomorphised universe where social
>>> factors were vividly real but the overall world picture and intuitive
>>> map had had lurid cartoon oversimplifications inserted or pasted into
>>> the global reality model.
>>> • I realised that this was a bout of magical thinking that seemed to
>>> have been engendered by the drug. In short the drug was acting as a
>>> true "psychotomimetic" (lit. "madness mimicking"). At the time i felt
>>> euphoric and amused by the new perspective, subjectively i felt that i
>>> was grokking reality in an enhanced and deeply intuitive way but my
>>> skeptical cast of mind has made me doubt this in the lucid drug free
>>> state i am now in. I just did a google for "magical thinking and drugs"
>>> or "drugs and magical thinking" and have found that there is nothing
>>> online about this topic.
>>> • For some reason introducing hallucinogens makes you feel you have
>>> grasped deep and powerful truths but i feel this may be a deluded state
>>> of mind. Could there be any tests or experimental work to elucidate
>>> this matter ?
>>> • Also of course i may have been being over subjective in my
>>> interpretations of the drug effects and magically imagining that i was
>>> magically thinking. This is fair in so far as that any testimony about
>>> my perceived inner state should be questioned due to my intoxication at
>>> the time.
>>> • There used to be a saying among Psychiatrists that "You can't talk
>>> to an illness" meaning that anything uttered by schizophrenics in the
>>> grip of psychosis was meaningless babble. I suppose that many would put
>>> drug inspired experiences in the same category. This seems to annul the
>>> "psychonaut" approach of people such as Daniel Pinchbeck, journalist
>>> and author of "Breaking Open the Head". The book paints a picture of
>>> enhanced self knowledge and insights available through experiences with
>>> hallucinogens. It is a fashionable meme currently, what with Erowid and
>>> numerous other online discussion sites about drugs.
>>> • Some of us question the magical thinking involved in most religious
>>> and spiritual discourse. It seems possible to me that drugs may be an
>>> instant ticket to increased magical thinking. Could there be a chemical
>>> or neural angle to this that could be experimentally assessed ?
>>> • I hope anyone reading this can respond and we can debate it.
>>> • [Cliff responds, one book, which most people I talk to do not seem
>>> to be familiar with, is
>>> • The Antipodes of the Mind : Charting the Phenomenology of the
>>> Ayahuasca Experience (Paperback) by Benny Shanon
>>> • http://tinyurl.com/fscvq
>>> • If you haven't read that, I think you would find it of interest. ]
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From Mahmoodless to Luke:
>>> • You seem to be suggesting a false dichotomy here; either 'drugs are
>>> good and provoke profound insight', or 'drugs are bad and provoke
>>> magical thinking', or perhaps some combinatin of the two. The range of
>>> reactions to psychedlic drugs is doubtless more complex and varied than
>>> these two possibilities.
>>> • In any event, both types of experiences ('scienific' and 'magical')
>>> are frequently reported, but this difference may well be more a
>>> reflection of the person using the drug than the drug being used
>>> (intellectuals experience profound insight, 'Erowid dudes' think they
>>> can read minds, etc.)
>>> • It is also important to keep in mind that there has been very little
>>> serious research in the are of subjective human experience of
>>> psychedelics (such research had been banned for most of the last 40
>>> years), so many if not most of the sort of subjective user reports you
>>> describe are anecdotal.
>>> • Nevertheless, it is interesting that 'psychonauts' seem often to go
>>> off into either a 'scientific' or 'religious' direction, as this is
>>> true of the world of 'sober' experience as well, isn't it? Perhaps if
>>> the precise manner in which these drugs affect the brain were better
>>> understood, it might provide some insight into the nature of 'magical
>>> thinking' versus rational skepticism in world of ordinary, sober
>>> experience.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From Tyler:
>>> • Hello,
>>> • I'm just a highschool student, but extremely interested in your
>>> writing. I am about 2/3 through "Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves" and
>>> can't put it down. It seems to strike all the areas that interest me,
>>> such as the nature of reality, quantum mechanics, and hallucinogenic
>>> substances.
>>> • I think I have a topic you might want to stumble upon: Salvia
>>> Divinorum. If you haven't already heard alot about this, you might want
>>> to research it. If you need any first-hand accounts, feel free to ask.
>>> I find that it has alot in common with the DMTverse. Heres one small
>>> account after roughly 1/3g of 20x potency Salvia Divinorum:
>>> • After consumption, it was roughly 15 seconds before I feel backwards
>>> into a fractal universe. Then, I seemed to be shooting through
>>> kaleidescopic images forward at an incredible rate. These turned into
>>> small square buildings, golden. Soon, i glanced to the side to see that
>>> there was a small, elvish creature with a control panel. It was some
>>> scientific experiment on the human mind that these creatures were
>>> conducting. I felt as if they were testing mental ability somehow. In
>>> other experiments, on two occasions the people I was with during
>>> consumption seemed to transform into these elves for breif moments,
>>> before kaleidescopic images were brought on.
>>> • The strange part about salvia divinorum is that it seems to expand
>>> your mind. For a while, I was struggling with mathematics. Then I had a
>>> salvia trip where I heard a deep, greek voice that somehow I identified
>>> as Pythagoras. I saw numbers and derivatives solving themselves out in
>>> my head, and everything around me turned into symbols and increments.
>>> After that, my problems in mathematics were gone. I have nearly aced
>>> every math test since then, and I got a near perfect score on the SAT
>>> math section. I know that this wasnt just placebo effect or just me
>>> trying harder, it was like black and white, frustration to inspiration.
>>> It seems that somehow during the experience I saw numbers for what they
>>> truly are, and since then, it has just all made sense. I now plan on
>>> majoring in mathematics.
>>> • Anyways, I just thought you might find that interesting. By the way,
>>> I'm currently writing a research paper on Pi (the movie), and I see
>>> that in your book you take an interest to it, so after I am finished if
>>> you are curious enough to read, I'd be glad to send it to you.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From JimmyP:
>>> • Dear Cliff, I don't believe that reading about the effects and
>>> possibilities of these drugs is an adequate substitute for actually
>>> experiencing their effects. These drugs, they directly affect
>>> perception, and our perception is really all that exists.
>>> • The first time I took LSD (which I did out of pretty much unsatiable
>>> curiousity as a result of anecdotes I had read, one example being a
>>> person 'smelling' the doorbell when it rung.)was the first time I
>>> realized how much my perception of the world was contrived and limited,
>>> and that the world changed when my mind changed, but of course the
>>> world didn't change, only my mind, and I noticed things that I had
>>> never noticed before. My conclusion being that 'reality' is literally
>>> 'in your head', how you choose to interpret your sensory information,
>>> and what information is important. These drugs break down your
>>> information-filters. Ridiculous robotic behaviors become very apparent,
>>> and you are practically assaulted with information. I recall one
>>> instance where I was looking at a lawn, and I could see,
>>> simultaneously, all of the visible insects that were crawling along the
>>> blades of grass, and it wasn't a hallucination, I could see them
>>> because anyone can see them, but we filter information in order to be
>>> able to function properly, and I definitely was not functioning
>>> properly.
>>> • The human mind is the most interesting thing in the universe as far
>>> as I know (which admittedly isn't much), and you have an interesting
>>> mind; psychedelics offer a way to hack into your mind, don't you want
>>> to know what's going on in there? I bother to write this because I
>>> believe you would have something to offer if you had these experiences
>>> yourself, anecdotes from random internet weirdos like myself don't have
>>> much of an affect on the world but your experiences might.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From Jarrod:
>>> • Dear Clifford,
>>> • Hello, I am jarrod, a mild-mannered American chap. Kudos on your
>>> book Sex, Drugs, Einstein & Elves. I've dived into it and it is rather
>>> captivating, seeing as how I have dedicated the last few years to
>>> studying seriously 'nonordinary' states of reality and psychedelics as
>>> a catalyst thereto.
>>> • The mathematical, Platonic Ideal type revelations during DMT trances
>>> fascinate me. A friend of mine recently drank ayahuasca (I myself have
>>> drank the vile jungle soup once) and she had direct apprehension of the
>>> mathematical construct of reality; the 'blueprints' if you will. Hebrew
>>> characters were ever-present, even though she has no understanding of
>>> Hebrew and has only seen the characters a few times in her life. She
>>> described the characters as being the language of reality, the divine
>>> logos made manifest. She concluded that the Magi and ancients were
>>> attempting a direct, mystical grasp of the cosmos by inscribing Hebrew
>>> and the various ancient Babylonian scripts. This was a kind of
>>> intuitive understanding, but it was nonetheless one of the most
>>> shocking and revelatory experiences she's experienced.
>>> • Have you any knowledge of DXM (dextromethorphan)?
>>> [http://third-plateau.org; http://www.dextroverse.org]. It is a
>>> 'sister' of ketamine; at least, they are both dissociative
>>> anaesthetics. I am a bit wary of synthetics, and have tried ketamine
>>> but once. DXM, however, is quite a tantalizing magikal potion that my
>>> nervous system gleefully toys with.
>>> • The DXM trance is quite ineffable. It seems to instantly transport
>>> you into 'monk' awareness, or a kind of single-pointed, God-intoxicated
>>> consciousness. A friend of mine, who is quite hedonic and avoids
>>> anything remotely meditative or involving concentration, remarked that
>>> the DXM state is like being instantly plummeted into the awareness of a
>>> celibate monk that's been fasting and self-mortifying for weeks. This
>>> kind of cannon blast into Hyper-reality is exactly why religious
>>> authorities are so skeptical of 'chemognosis'; "All results, none of
>>> the work!" This is an understandable criticism, but hasn't hindered my
>>> chemognosis experiments.
>>> • DXM medicinally is an anaesthetic, and an anesthetizing of the body
>>> is exactly what happens. In this state, I have an instant grasp of the
>>> 'subtle' body described in eastern and western occultism; the various
>>> etheric bodies, or auras, as well as the dynamos of energy - the
>>> chakras. This perception is supposed to be gained thru the extremely
>>> rigorous disciplines of yoga, asana, breath control, and the various
>>> concentrative disciplines of western magic and Tantrism. A fascinating
>>> side-effect of the anaesthetizing, or dissociating, of the physical
>>> body is an instant grasp of the subtle bodies that is supposed to
>>> result only after the impulses of the muscles and the various
>>> psycho-physical impulses have been stilled. DXM takes care of that job
>>> quite efficiently; on the upper doses or 'plateaus,' one has complete
>>> out-of-body as well as near-death/death experiences. In a way, the DXM
>>> state is geared specifically for yoga and the understanding of the
>>> subtle vibratory states; not 'non-physical' phenomena, but phenomena
>>> not normally perceived by the senses. On a light dose experience, after
>>> having engaged in ascetic practices lasting for days, I had a Kundalini
>>> awakening that resulted in an enduring state of bliss and the
>>> non-necessity of sleep or food for days. Kundalini, as you may know, is
>>> the mythical serpent or goddess form lying dormant at the base chakra
>>> of the human body, near the anus. The goal of some Tantric and yogic
>>> practices is to unite kundalini -- or shakti, the femininely-attributed
>>> dynamism of reality -- with Siva, the static aspect of the Godhead.
>>> Siva is located at the crown chakra, near the pineal gland. Indeed,
>>> modern yogic teachers are correlating the pineal gland with the subtle
>>> chakric force at the crown of the head. Interestingly, the awakened
>>> serpent wrapping around the 2 subtle channels, racing vertically along
>>> the central sushumna channel, is a diagram identical to the alchemical
>>> Caduceus, designed with two serpents encoiled around a central staff.
>>> • At any rate, an understanding of the subtle energies is a lifelong
>>> pursuit, and the bizarrely alien state of DXM has given me much access.
>>> Psychedelics and hyper-reality indeed need a scientific approach, as
>>> you suggest in Sex,drugs.... I myself aspire to engage in such a
>>> pursuit.
>>> • I hope to have exchanges with you when time avails. Your ideas are
>>> indeed on the fringes of the fringes, and they quench the thirst of all
>>> those global psychonauts that dwell in subterranean caves.
>>> • Honorably,
Jarrod
>>> •
>>> •
>>> • From Malcolm:
>>> • Dear Cliff,
>>> • I recently came across the james kent email on DMT elves and his
>>> hypothesis that these alien beings only impart information that the
>>> subject is already aware of. Whilst this hypothesis may be correct in
>>> circumstances where the vision are induced through
>>> ingested/smoked/injected DMT and the 'imaginal workspace is imposed
>>> onto the primary' my own experience tells a very different story.
>>> • DMT is a substance I first encountered in August 2005 and again more
>>> recently. What I refere to below though is a spiritual experience or
>>> experiences (since it covered a period of some seven months) and was as
>>> a consequence of intense concentration on building a model I was
>>> working on this model in Nov 2004; a conceptual model which I began to
>>> call Di-functional modelling. The essence of the model is that it was
>>> two centred (self and whole) and I was using/developing it in the
>>> context of sustainability. The model revealed a hidden component, what
>>> at first I termed the conceptual core. I began to realize that this
>>> component was incorporeal in nature (why it had been hidden) and
>>> similarly begun to become engrossed in trying to understand it…. Then
>>> it all happened.. The coming of the Spiral…
>>> • I was subjected to a cerebral movement; a force shifted from my
>>> temple area to my crown and a sensation that I can only describe as the
>>> two halves of my brain parting took place. This was accompanied by a
>>> massive increase in the rooms luminescence and the emission of a white
>>> and purple spiralling light from my crown. I experienced a flood of
>>> knowledge; more than I could actually cope with and a week later I had
>>> abandoned everything and was on a flight to India…
>>> • So far nothing spectacular or what could not be explained/dismissed
>>> by an articulate psychologists. It is what happened in India that is
>>> incredible…
>>> • I was subjected to visions, visitations by lights and 'implanting'
>>> (bad terminology) of messages…. These visions, lights and messages led
>>> me to Pakistan Kashmir. They told me to go to the temple where "the two
>>> rivers meet and start a library".. Prior to recieving these messages I
>>> had no knowledge of Kashmir yet I was given very precise and relevant
>>> information....
>>> • For this place exists.. it is in the Neelam Valley, the Abode of
>>> Goddess Sharda.. there are two rivers, there is a temple (established
>>> AD24) and it was once the most important University in the Middle East…
>>> it is similarly off limits to foreigners as it lies a few Kilometres
>>> north of the Line of Control… I was the first to get permission to
>>> visit in over 20 years… (I was broke, unemployed… etc, etc)
>>> • Now this is the stunning bit… the model I had drawn, that had caused
>>> the spiritual experience is the Symbol of Sharda, 'A central core
>>> surrounded by three circles' ..
>>> • On returning many have tried to drag me off this path but
>>> fortunately I kept a diary and notes. I didn't understand everything
>>> the lights taught me, many of the diagrams confused me, but I drew them
>>> and I kept them…
>>> • Subsequently one of the diagrams turned out to be the Ten Sefirot (I
>>> had no previous knowledge of this diagram) and more recently my feeble
>>> attempts at trying to understand the original model further has
>>> revealed two integer sequences…
>>> • The evolutionary sequence 1, 1, 4, 13, 43, is defined by the equation:
>>> • a(n) = 3*a(n-1) + a(n-2). (Ref OEIS id A003688)
>>> • and
>>> • The interactive sequence 1, 18, 1944, 524880, 264539520,
>>> (214277011200, , ,) is defined by the equation:
>>> • a(n)=-1/b(2n) where 1/(e^y-e^(y/3))= sum(i=-1,inf,b(i)*y^i) (Ref
>>> OEIS id A068181)
>>> • These two sequences pair up so that the evolutionary and interactive
>>> sequences form the pairs 1:1 - 4:18 - 13:1944 - 43:524,880 –
>>> 142:214,277,011,200.
>>> • I may have the second sequence wrong.. but it's a neural net.. I
>>> think it's the way consciousness works or rather the pathways between
>>> neurons. I similarly think it may be something you understand better
>>> than me.
>>> • There is more information on this (including the actual journey) on
>>> lulu.com (the gardens of Gaia)
>>> • I've been largely unable to get any feed back from anyone
>>> (Scientific or religious) but feel your interest and intellect may be
>>> more receptive. If it's not, no worries but if this does interest you
>>> then please do download the pdfs from the link below and please give me
>>> some feed back.. it's likely I will take the works off line in the next
>>> few weeks (too much walking this road alone)
>>> • Similarly the visions messages have long stopped.. (much to my regret)
>>> • if you are interested the works can be downloaded here 

>>> •
>>> •
>>> Voice your opinion. Tell me what you think. Can drugs reveal a true,
>>> valid reality, or do they simply distort our perception of reality.
>>> •
>>> •
>>> Other interpretations of what the DMT beings really are can be found here.
>>> •
>>> Another nice drawing of a DMT being can be found here.
>>> •
>>> Here's some more artwork encouraged by DMT.
>>> •
>>> See also the MetaFilter discussion: "The user briefly finds himself to
>>> be in a world where the laws of physics and logic have been subtly or
>>> grossly changed - an experience as jarring as the witnessing of the
>>> non-euclidean angles described by Lovecraft... and then the real world
>>> reasserts itself."
>>> •
>>> •
>>>
>>> • Return to Reality Carnival.
>>> •
>>> • If you like stories like this, Reality Carnival has many more.

--

• Religion is Myth-Information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World