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

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.

• "Man Discovers Intelligent Beings After Consuming DMT,"
• "The fleeting reality of DMT machine elves," and
• "Psychedelics, Abortion, and the Chrysanthemum."

Responses from Readers

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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)

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"

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

"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!

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. ]

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Messages from the Salvia Universe.

Hello. I must say that i, too, find hallucinagens extremely facinating. I have met many different entities while tripping. But i beleive that i actually made a friend when i visited the world of salvia divinorum. I also learned that a probable 2 dimensional world would be at a diagonal. well, every time i do salvia, it feels like my whole world is trapped in a diagonal, like i can feel the slant's pressure on my entire body. that in itself makes me theorize that this may be a way of entering new dimensions. well, to tell you a little more about 'henry'... i was flying through the stripe of a couch and ended up in this small living room on a massive couch. i must have appeared to be very tiny on this couch. next to me was a doll that was wearing a red and white stripped shirt. he had white white skin with big x's for eyes and black, straight up and frankenstein like hair. he spoke to me telepathically. we were just sitting there staring at the clock on the wall talking about how his mom was going to be home soon and she wouldnt be pleased to find me there.

All the while, in the conscious realm, I feel as though if i only had a pen and paper i could easily and quickly draw what i was seeing. i began asking my actual friend next to me (also doing salvia) for pen and paper. it reached my hand after a lot of struggle on her part, and i quickly wrote down the name Henry just as the door knob to henry's house started turning. i zipped back into 'reality' only to realize that henry didnt tell me his name. It just sort of came out on the paper in an abrupt way. so there's my seemingly pointless account. now, here is what i have observed and thought about as time progressed. i know hallucinagens are not a joke or to be taken lightly. i do them in a serious manner with real intent. any time i have ever returned to the world of salvia, the people look the same: pure white skin, balloon shaped heads with black floating hair, and they all speak to me through my mind- they have a straight line for a mouth that never opens. i feel as though i have formed a relationship with henry. my friend recently told me about the many interactions with saliva. we never really discussed our trips after they happened. but she basically explained how she lterally was in another world where the people looked just as i had described above. they spoke to her telepathically as well. she would meditate and take a hit of salvia. she would trip for hours about this far away land and the people she met there. she visited a little too often and told me that her last interaction with Those people was very uncomfortable. they were angry that she was using salvia as a means of entertainment. they basically chased her away with fear. i tell you this because i found it incredible that we shared very similar encounters with look alike beings. i dont find it hard to believe terrance mckenna. i would love to hear what you think...

Hi Cliff,

I have just finished reading Jeremy Narby's Cosmic Serpent and thought it was a fascinating read, he ties alot of threads and ideas together including shamanism/bioglogy/mythology.

One of the interesting points in the book mentions a passage about an ayahuasca session experienced by Michael Harner, here's some excerpts from his trip:

"As I tried to accept my fate, an even lower portion of my brain began to transmit more visions and information. I was "told" that this new material was being presented to me because I was dying and therefore "safe" to receive these revelations. These were the secrets reserved for the dying and the dead, I was informed.

I could only very dimly perceive the givers of these thoughts: giant reptilian creatures reposing sluggishly at the lowermost depths of the back of my brain, where it met the top of the spinal column. I could only vaguely see them in what seemed to be gloomy, dark depths. Then they projected a visual scene in front of me. First they showed me the planet Earth as it was eons ago, before there was any life on it. I saw an ocean, barren land, and a bright blue sky.

Then black specks dropped from the sky by the hundreds and landed in front of me on the barren landscape. I could see that the "specks" were actually large, shiny, black creatures with stubby pterodactyl-like wings and huge whale-like bodies. Their heads were not visible to me. They flopped down, utterly exhausted from their trip, resting for eons. They explained to me in a kind of thought language that they were fleeing from something out in space. They had come to the planet Earth to escape their enemy. The creatures then showed me how they had created life on the planet in order to hide within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence.

Before me, the magnificence of plant and animal creation and speciation-hundreds of millions of years of activity-took place on a scale and with a vividness impossible to describe. I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside of all forms of life, including man.() They were the true masters of humanity and the entire planet, they told me. We humans were but the receptacles and servants of these creatures. For this reason they could speak to me from within myself."

and:

"These revelations, welling up from the depths of my mind, alternated with visions of the floating galley, which had almost finished taking my soul on board. The boat with its blue-jay headed deck crew was gradually drawing away, pulling my life force along as it headed toward a large fjord flanked by barren, worn hills.

I knew I had only a moment more to live. Strangely, I had no fear of the bird-headed people; they were welcome to have my soul if they could keep it. But I was afraid that somehow my soul might not remain on the horizontal plane of the fjord but might, through processes unknown but felt and dreaded, be acquired or re-acquired by the dragon-like denizens of the depths.

I suddenly felt my distinctive humanness, the contrast between my species and the ancient reptilian ancestors. I began to struggle against returning to the ancient ones, who were beginning to feel increasingly alien and possibly evil. "

and:

"Then I went back to the platform, eager to put my night's experiences on tape before I forgot anything. The work of recall went easily except for one portion of the trance that I could not remember. lt remained blank, as though a tape had been erased. I struggled for hours to remember what had happened in that part of the experience, and I virtually wrestled it back into my consciousness.

The recalcitrant material turned out to be the communication from the dragon-like creatures, including the revelation of their role in the evolution of life on this planet and their innate domination of living matter, including man. I was highly excited at rediscovering this material, and could not help but feel that I was not supposed to be able to bring it back from the nether regions of the mind.

I even had a peculiar sense of fear for my safety, because I now possessed a secret that the creatures had indicated was only intended for the dying. I immediately decided to share this knowledge with others so that the "secret" would not reside in me alone, and my life would not be in jeopardy. I put my outboard motor on a dugout canoe and left for an American evangelist mission station nearby.

I arrived about noon. The couple at the mission, Bob and Millie, were a cut above the average evangelists sent from the United States: hospitable, humorous, and compassionate.' I told them my story. When I described the reptile with water gushing out of his mouth, they exchanged glances, reached for their Bible, and read to me the following line from Chapter 12 in the Book of Revelation:

'And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood'

They explained to me that the word "serpent" was synonymous in the Bible with the words "dragon" and "Satan." I went on with my narrative. When I came to the part about the dragon-like creatures fleeing an enemy somewhere beyond the Earth and landing here to hide from their pursuers, Bob and Millie became excited and again read me more from the same passage in the Book of Revelation:

And there was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels. And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels with him.

I listened with surprise and wonder. The missionaries, in turn, seemed to be awed by the fact that an atheistic anthropologist, by taking the drink of the "witch doctors," could apparently have revealed to him some of the same holy material in the Book of Revelation. When I had finished my account, I was relieved to have shared my new knowledge."

and:

"I was now eager to solicit a professional opinion from the most supernaturally knowledgeable of the Indians, a blind shaman who had made many excursions into the spirit world with the aid of the ayahuasca drink. lt seemed only proper that a blind man might be able to be my guide to the world of darkness. I went to his hut, taking my notebook with me, and described my visions to him segment by segment.

At first I told him only the highlights; thus, when I came to the dragon-like creatures, I skipped their arrival from space and only said, "There were these giant black animals, something like great bats, longer than the length of this house, who said that they were the true masters of the world." There is no word for dragon in Conibo, so "giant bat" was the closest I could come to describe what I had seen.

He stared up toward me with his sightless eyes, and said with a grin, "Oh, they're always saying that. But they are only the Masters of Outer Darkness."

He waved his hand casually toward the sky. I felt a chill along the lower part of my spine, for I had not yet told him that I had seen them, in my trance, coming from outer space. I was stunned. What I had experienced was already familiar to this barefoot, blind shaman."

As a footnote, Harner wrote:

"In retrospect one could say they were almost like DNA"

Now I find the above excerpts fascinating because recently I came upon an article by a practitioner of Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual cultivation practice from the Buddha School and he paints a very similiar picture to Harner's account. Here's an excerpt:

"It was quiet again. But behind the quietness, there was an atmosphere of killing and depression. The sky was still bright. Stars began to blink. I saw some red stuff appear from the sky and the earth all around me. It seemed like they were types of red worms, countless in number and extremely long. They were surrounding me.

When they got closer, I was shocked to realize what they were. It was something I had always been familiar with: the double helix of DNA. Suddenly, I realized that the original lives on the earth did not contain DNA. It was something imposed on deformed human beings by extra-terrestrial beings. Hidden in the long chains was the secret of extra-terrestrial beings -- to take over human bodies and escape from the final judgement. Human beings, however, were instructed by the so-called scientists to take DNA as the basic construction unit of our lives, even a factor determining everything in life.

In the process of rapid deformation and corruption of human beings, the extra-terrestrial beings have incorporated a self-duplication mechanism into the bodies of human beings so that DNA will be duplicated and passed on to human off-springs to control human beings. In recent years, some people with a devil's mind have been enthusiastic in cloning animals, or even human. They are the representatives of the corrupt beings in other dimensions. Teacher said when he gave a lecture in May 1999, "Gods will not place a Primordial Spirit inside a cloned being because it is created by human beings.

Gods will certainly not recognize it. What will happen then? An extraterrestrial will break through at this weak point and place itself as the Primordial Spirit of that being." [unofficial translation of Lecture at the Fa-Conference in Canada (Toronto, May 23, 1999)] It is the same with the cloned animals. Their spirits are all extra-terrestrial beings. The famous sheep Dolly has a spirit of an octopus-like ET."

Full article is here: clearwisdom.net/emh/articl...11863p.html

All this stuff also seems to correlate well with the whole Adam and Eve and The Snake story and the creation story of the Amazonian Shamans which has the female and Male twin in which the Male God get's tricked by the female and ends up getting strangled by the "Strangler Vine".

Pretty interesting stuff, DNA may not be the fundamental building blocks of life after all but some kind of viral control mechanicism which ties our souls to matter.

Hello

I am just about a third of the way through your book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves and wanted to write and let you know that I find it thoroughly interesting and a great read.

I spent a few years living in Europe and learnt the language somewhat. The Germans have one word for describing both Heaven and Sky +Himmel+ which I always found to be rather odd.

On a slightly seperate note, I have been getting my minds around the concept of language related to thoughts and thinking. In 2002 I undertook an Ayahuasca journey, approximately 8 hours of hell. Upon my return i could not, and still cannot find words or language to express or to embody what it was that i experienced. After much research, I could not find one single aya experience written down that even came near to describing my own experience (this alone is psychologically tough to deal with and very lonely) . A brief dialogue with Benny Shannon (Antipodies of the Mind) ended up with confirmation that I was not psychotic (joy of joys) and that I fell into a catagory of "virtual reality" type of experiences, which less than 5% of those that undertake aya journies have. However, whilst I felt some light relief that that I could be catagorised, I was still agonised that I could not find words to express what I had experienced - as the content of my journey I could not find replicated anywhere else.

The experience was bursting through me and still is - and yet to be pregnant with such intense memories and feelings "that all made total sense" but not being able to describe them in words or language was and still is incredibly frustrating, whilst not being able to identify the experience anywhere else is incredibly fearful. Most suprisingly, whilst I was "there - in the throws of my ayahuasca hell" a few realisations, of which I will outline a few below, were immediately apparent and were communicated:

1) I remembered this "space, place" and knew that I had spent many eons there - and yet none of these memories had been available to my daily concious recall prior to my journey (though maybe a vague recollection from early childhood)

2) It felt like home

3) It was completely "alien". By alien, I do not mean the aliens as portrayed in the media i.e. two eyes, two arms, two legs (I honestly believe mankind creates media portrayed aliens more or less in its