People often dismiss psychedelic drug experiences as “hallucinations,” but users of DMT - a naturally-occurring psychoactive compound - claim a very particular kind of experience, that often feels as real to them as waking life. What’s more, users often have encounters with strange, sentient beings that seem to be more than mental fabrications. Further research on DMT promises to shed light on the mechanics of consciousness, and may even contribute to our understanding of other anomalous experiences, including UFO abductions and ancient Hebrew prophetism.

The Substance

N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, is a naturally-occurring psychoactive compound that is widely prevalent in nature. It is found in the biochemistry of all humans, as well as in every reptilian and mammalian species whose tissues have been analyzed for it.(1) It’s also been found in hundreds of plants, and is likely present in tens of thousands more.(2) Despite all this, DMT’s function in biology is still essentially a mystery. Tellingly, it’s one of the few compounds that our brains allow through the blood-brain barrier, which filters out all but a few essential substances.(3) What the brain does with this compound is still unknown, but studies of animals’ brains have shown increased levels under stress.(4)

DMT can be derived from various natural or synthetic sources and distilled to a crystalline form.(5) When either smoked, snorted, injected, or ingested with certain enzyme inhibitors, DMT is intensely psychoactive, producing a powerful altered state of consciousness. At higher doses, most users claim to leave their bodies and interact with strange beings in fantastical settings. This has led a range of writers and researchers to propose that the compound must play some role in producing visionary, spiritual, and other altered states of consciousness, such as dreams and near-death experiences.(6) 

Other plants, fungi, and animals contain compounds with DMT in their structure that also have powerful psychoactive qualities.(7) After ingestion, psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in “magic” mushrooms, becomes psilocin, or 4-hydroxy-DMT.(8) The Bufo alvarius, also called the Colorado River toad or Sonoran Desert toad, secretes a venom from its skin containing 5-methoxy-DMT, or 5-MeO-DMT, and bufotenin, or 5-Hydroxy-DMT, which is also present in mushrooms, plants, and mammals.(9)

People have been using DMT for its medicinal and psychoactive properties for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Rock paintings from pre-neolithic people living in the Sahara Desert provide evidence for the religious use of psychoactive mushrooms up to 9000 years ago.(10) In the ancient world, DMT was sourced from the bark and leaves of Acacia trees,(11) the roots or leaves of Reed Grass,(12) and in the powdered seeds of Cowhage, in India.(13) The Chinese have been distilling 5-Hydroxy-DMT from toad venom for at least a few hundred years.(14) Indigenous peoples in North and South America have long used DMT-containing plants for hunting, healing, and recreation, and to help induce spiritual experiences.(15) Christopher Columbus was the first to record the use of DMT for psychoactive effect in a letter from 1496, discussing a snuff used by the Taínos natives of the West Indies to commune with spirits. The snuff, now called Yopo, among other names, contains both DMT and 5-Hydroxy-DMT.(16) Several different tribes in South America drink a tea called ayahuasca that usually gets its DMT from the leaves of the Psychotria viridis plant. Shamans consume and administer the brew as a means of divination, and as a way to communicate with dead ancestors, and heal members of the tribe.(17)

Scientific Study

In 1931, the Canadian chemist Richard Manske first synthesized DMT in a laboratory setting, but no one experimented with its psychoactive effects for another quarter-century.(18) In 1955, Gordon Wasson, an amateur ethnomycologist from New York City, traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico to partake in a psilocybin mushroom ceremony with the indigenous Mazatecs. Wasson detailed his experiences in Life magazine in 1957, and helped bring psilocybin to popular attention.(19) Around the same time, many in the scientific community began experimenting with DMT. Its psychoactive effects were first scientifically documented in a study by Hungarian psychiatrists in 1956 and published two years later.(20) After 1961, scientists confirmed DMT’s presence in the human brain, blood, and urine, with later studies finding DMT and 5-MeO-DMT elsewhere in the body.(21)

Research into psychoactive drugs flourished throughout the 1960s, with hundreds of scientific papers and several books published on the topic.(22) Psychotherapists studied a number of compounds for their potential in relieving chronic mental disorders, and others took interest in their ability to invoke mystical and religious experiences.(23) In the now-famous “Good Friday Experiment” at Boston University in 1962, Walter Pahnke gave 10 of 20 divinity students capsules containing psilocybin before having them listen to a Protestant church service over loudspeakers. Most of the volunteers who received the psilocybin reported having a more mystical experience than those who were given the active placebo.(24)

This boom in research came to a halt when the U.S. government passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 and immediately prohibited all human trials for DMT and other schedule I drugs. Many similar laws were passed in other countries, making it nearly impossible for scientists anywhere to even find, let alone study, DMT. Still, black markets continued to fuel use around the world.(25) The Harvard Psychologist, Timothy Leary, who had studied psilocybin in the lab when it was legal, famously experimented with a range of psychedelic drugs, including DMT, and advocated for them publicly.(26) American brothers Terence and Dennis McKenna used DMT and other substances in the 1960s, and later wrote a book about psilocybin mushroom cultivation. Dennis then obtained his PhD in botanical sciences and now studies psychedelic compounds. In the 1980s, Terence began giving public lectures on consciousness and psychedelics, helping to popularize both DMT and psilocybin mushrooms in the english-speaking world.(27)

In the summer of 1988, Terrence had a "brainstorming session" with Dr. Rick Strassman, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, which Strassman credits with helping him focus his research on DMT.(28) After spending two years clearing regulatory requirements, Strassman began human trials on the compound in December of 1990: the first U.S. government-approved and funded research into a psychedelic in over 20 years.(29) He aimed to measure and describe the biological and psychological effects of DMT, and to document peoples’ qualitative descriptions of their experiences. His team administered 400 injections of DMT to roughly 60 volunteers at the University of New Mexico Hospital, taking only volunteers with previous psychedelic experiences.(30)

In 2001 Strassman published his research in DMT: The Spirit Molecule, in which he concluded that the DMT experience “led to an awareness of what we currently call spiritual levels of existence.”(31) Since Strassman began his study, there has been a renaissance in psychedelic research, and a dramatic shift in the way that psychoactive substances are portrayed in the news and other media.(32) In 2010, director Mitch Shultz produced a popular documentary on DMT, adopting the same name as Strassman’s book.(33) Strassman, Dennis Mckenna, and other leading researchers met for a DMT conference in 2015, and published the proceedings as the DMT Dialogues in 2018.(34) Scientists such as Christopher Timmermann of the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London, Dr. David Luke of the University of Greenwich, and Ede Frecska, chairman of the psychiatry department of Hungary’s University of Debrecen, are just a few who are actively researching DMT today.(35) Timmerman and others did EEG scans on the brains of DMT users, and found a decrease in alpha waves in the brain, as well as an increase in signal complexity, consistent with users of other psychedelic compounds.(36) However, they also found an increase in delta and theta waves, normally most prevalent in sleep. Many other scholars around the world are studying psilocybin, 5-MeO-DMT, and ayahuasca as well, especially for their applications in healing and mental health.(37) Psilocybin has been found to be very effective in reducing cluster headaches, and helping people beat their tobacco addictions, and ceremonial use of ayahuasca, too, can help users end substance dependence.(38) The therapeutic potential of pure DMT is less clear.(39) New research aims to extend the DMT experience so as to allow for easier study.​(40)

The DMT Experience

The human experience of smoking, injecting, or ingesting pure DMT varies by the dosage, and differs from person to person, and roughly 5% of users experience little or no effects at all. The experience is also heavily influenced by the environment, as well as the mindset and expectations of the user.(41) Among Strassman’s participants who responded to the injection, the effects were felt immediately. Shortly after injection, the participants said that they felt physically lighter, as though their consciousness had left their body. Some reported feelings of hot or cold, or the sensation of a crushing weight. Most of them remarked that colors became more intense, and reported hearing unusual sounds, such as an oscillating “wa-wa” noise, a ringing, or a crackling. Later in the experience, some reported hearing musical or “heavenly” sounds, and others reported spoken voices and even a cartoonish “sproing” sound.(42) 

Within about a minute of intensifying sensations, nearly all participants said that they experienced an intense “rush” that peaked around the two-to-three minute mark, and soon found themselves in an entirely new setting. Many saw kaleidoscopic patterns of geometry that morphed into fantastical scenes. Some participants saw star fields and planets, while others saw sprawling buildings and intricate machines, as well as plants and animals.(43) One volunteer described seeing a “large orangish sphere” that flashed and sparkled.(44) A minority of people experienced instances of telepathy, out-of-body experiences, and clairvoyance. After eight to ten minutes, users felt that the altered state was in decline, and most had fully returned to their normal state of consciousness after 30 to 45 minutes.(45)

Despite the fantastical content, most of the participants did not feel that their trips were hallucinations, but real world experiences. Most participants explicitly distinguished their trips from previous experiences of dreams and other drugs, and many felt as though they had perceived another dimension of reality. Some volunteers even called the DMT world, “more real than real.”(46) Users reported that they felt mentally alert and aware throughout the entire experience, and had retained full memory of the events.(47) Strassman identified marked changes in the users’ bodies, including increased heart rate, blood pressure, pupil diameter, and body temperature.(48) A minority of participants had some negative experiences, including shakiness, heart palpitations, and nausea, and a few felt that it was the most frightening experience of their lives.(49) Many felt anxiety, but those that were able to “let go” and relax had the best outcomes.(50)

The Beings

Over half of Strassman’s volunteers reported encounters with strange, sentient humanoids or animals. Later research by David Luke found that at higher doses nearly all participants encounter these beings.(51) The first record of an entity encounter on a DMT-related compound comes from the world’s first recorded use of ayahuasca by an Ecuadorian geographer in 1858. Manuel Villavincencio said that he was flying over a panorama of cities, parks, and towers, before finding himself in a forest having to defend himself from “terrible beings.”(52) The Hungarian psychiatrist Stephen Szára reported that one of the participants in his 1956 study said that the room was “full of spirits,” and a schizophrenic patient claimed to see “strange [black] creatures” that resembled dwarves. Another volunteer encountered what she described as "two quiet, sunlit Gods" who nodded in her direction.(53) Around the same time, a U.S. research team was studying the effects of DMT on psychotic patients, and reported a volunteer who found herself being hurt by “horrible” orange beings that were clearly not human.(54) In his lectures in the late 80s and 90s, Terence McKenna shared his experiences with beings he called “self-transforming machine elves,” a term that has since become very popular in psychedelic circles.(55) 

But Strassman’s participants described a wide range of different beings. Many saw therianthropes, or animal-human hybrids, as well as human-machine hybrids, and animal hybrids.(56) Some described the beings as “insectoid” or “reptilian,” while others described them as mechanical or robotic.(57) Others were made of nothing but light. One participant saw two entangled serpents that were both covered in eyes.(58) One described being in a space station and guided by “android-like creatures” that were a mix of crash-test dummies and Star Wars stormtroopers, many of which were busy with some unknown task.(59) Some participants perceived only parts of beings, while others saw only silhouettes or shadow forms. Still others only heard voices, or felt a presence.(60) Dr. Luke has found that even participants with no prior knowledge of the compound encountered the same kinds of entities.(61)

Often, the beings engaged the participant in communication, in the form of speech, telepathy, or visual symbols. Some beings gave warnings, while others offered help. Some healed participants, while others harmed them. Still others engaged in sexual acts with experiencers, or performed unfamiliar surgical procedures on their bodies. Many participants felt that the beings were there to teach, protect, or support them.(62) One participant described small “gremlins” with tails and wings alongside larger beings that she felt were there to “sustain and support” her.(63)

Participants frequently claimed that the beings caused them to feel or think certain things, often by directly engaging with their bodies. One participant described being pulled through a maze by a band of “jokers” with big noses and bells on their hats. She felt loved by the beings, and sensed that she had a “new body” in that moment that was “much more aware.”(64) Another participant found himself overlooking a cityscape that started toggling through different colours. He noticed a middle-aged female with light-green skin sitting beside him who was turning a dial that seemed to control the color of the scene. After asking the volunteer what he’d like, the woman stood up, walked over and touched his forehead, then used a sharp object to open up a panel in his temple which released a tremendous amount of pressure from his head.(65)

Significance

DMT is only one compound among a range of other psychedelics that all produce dazzling and mysterious effects. Users of LSD, mescaline, and salvia divinorum sometimes report similar transportative experiences and encounters with alien-like entities. People can also have similar experiences without drugs, through hypnosis, chanting, hyperventilation, fasting, and sleep deprivation.(66) In light of this fact, researchers have argued that it’s the body that produces the experience, and not the DMT, or any other drug.(67) Perhaps DMT and related compounds function like keys to locks inside the mind, granting us access to different networks in the brain.(68) Repeated DMT experiences do not build a tolerance in the user, unlike all other drugs which have a diminishing effect with each use.(69)

Many have hypothesized that altering the levels of DMT in one’s brain would result in an effect similar to adjusting the dials on a radio, allowing people to “tune in” to another wavelength of external information.(70) Computational neurobiologist and pharmacologist, Andrew Gallimore, argues that DMT appears to switch us into another “world-building mode” to perceive a different plane of reality.(71) Ede Frecska hypothesizes that DMT and other altered states of consciousness allows the brain to act as a type of “quantum array antenna” to receive nonlocal information.(72) Drawing on indiginous and shamanistic perspectives, Dennis McKenna feels that DMT and related compounds are “catalysts for cognitive evolution” created by an intelligence in nature to reconnect us with the natural world.(73)

In 2014’s DMT and the Soul of Prophecy, Strassman drew connections between the DMT experience and descriptions of prophetic visions in the Hebrew Bible, arguing that these connections suggest common underlying mechanisms.(74) Like the DMT beings, the angels and other entities encountered by the prophets demonstrated will, intellect, and awareness, and engaged in interactions that involved healing, harming, protecting, or communicating information. However, the canonical prophets placed much more importance on the messages conveyed by these beings, and less importance on the phenomenology of their experiences. DMT users, by contrast, tend to be overwhelmed by the experience itself, and receive no clear message or revelation.(75)

Some of Strassman’s participants referred to the beings as “aliens,” though none of the descriptions matched the short, almond-eyed “greys” whose image was then quite prevalent in U.S. culture.(76) Still, Strassman noticed a lot of similarities to the abduction experiences documented by the Harvard psychiatrist, John Mack. Both kinds of experiences typically began with bright lights, strange sounds, and vibrations in the body, and frequently involved feelings of paralysis. These beings, too, often gave warnings to experiencers, and did surgical-type work on their bodies.(77)

Strassman noted that nearly all medieval Jewish philosophers taught that the contents of the prophetic state - the visions of angels, demons, and apocalyptic scenery - were reflections of our own imaginations. Faced with the impossibility of representing the supernatural in physical form, it was thought that our minds drew on imagery from our memories and experiences to render the ineffable in a way that was coherent to the human senses.(78) Similarly, ufologist John Keel felt that the physical forms that the UFOs and aliens took in peoples’ experiences were cobbled together from the images available in their own memories and expectations.(79) In other words, the way that “they” appear may say more about ourselves than it does about them, whatever they are.

Conclusion

There is still a lot to learn about the role of DMT: what it does in nature, what it does in the human brain, and why it produces such fantastical psychoactive effects. But the places users go to, and the entities that they encounter there, have become a particular focus of inquiry. Maybe these beings are spirits, demons, angels, or aliens, or maybe they’re just projections of our subconscious minds. But studying them may reveal something about the workings of consciousness, and the nature of abductions, prophecy, and other anomalous experiences.

Source: https://www.thinkanomalous.com/DMT.html

DMT (dimethyltryptamine) is the most powerful and fast-acting of the tryptamine class of hallucinogens. After smoking DMT users regularly report fantastic trips to other dimensions and conversations with intelligent alien life forms. Meyer outlines DMT usage, pharmacology, mythology and occult application, including shamanic uses. He also presents fascinating anecdotal material regarding DMT “alien contact.” Materials from DMT researchers Terence McKenna, Gracie and Zarkov, and dozens of other correspondences are included, providing clues to deciphering the DMT “hyperspace” state.

“…and in search for answers people have feared to place themselves on the line and to actually wrestle with life and death out there in those strange, bardo-like dimensions, not realizing that there is no other way to win true knowledge…” – Terence McKenna

In this article, I wish to draw attention to a strange property of the tryptamine psychedelics, especially N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which sets them apart from other psychedelics, namely, their ability to place users in touch with a realm that is apparently inhabited by discarnate entities of an intelligent nature. The investigation of such a possibility clearly takes us to (and perhaps beyond) the fringes of what is considered scientifically acceptable. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of apparent alien contact is so impressive to those who have experienced it, and the implications of such contact are so radical, that the evidence deserves serious investigation.

The term “psychedelic” may be understood to denote a class of substances whose primary effect is to alter consciousness in an ego-transcending manner so that the experience of a person whose neurochemistry is altered by such a substance is enhanced and expanded in comparison with ordinary experience. This enhancement and expansion may be emotional, intellectual, intuitive, sensory, spiritual or somatic. The qualification that the experience involve a tendency to ego- transcendence is added partly to distinguish substances such as LSD and MDMA from stimulants such as amphetamine and cocaine and partly because it is one of the more remarkable properties of psychedelics that, by their means, we may enter mythological and spiritual dimensions not normally the concern of our everyday selves.

Psychedelics may be classified most easily in two ways: according to their effect on consciousness or according to their chemical structure. The former is difficult to quantify, and the data here tends to be of a literary nature (e.g., Horowitz [56]). Due to the regrettable proscription of the use of psychedelics in many countries, and to the suppression of research in this field, not much has been published during the last 20 years regarding the effects of psychedelics on consciousness. With the increasing recognition in more enlightened societies of the potential value of psychedelics we may hope to see a renewal of publication in this area.

The structural classification lends itself to quantitative scientific investigation. From such work as has been permitted in this field it seems that, for the most part, “hallucinogens are divided into two separate categories. The first…covers the substituted phenylalkylamines, with the prototype for these structures being mescaline. The second category includes indole-based compounds, including various substituted tryptamines, beta-carbolines, and LSD.” (Nichols [81], p. 97) Not all psychedelics fall into these two categories. Ketamine is clearly a psychedelic but is structurally unrelated to the phen-ethylamines or to the tryptamines. The most well-known psychedelic tryptamines consist of DMT and three variations on it:

5-MeO-DMT=5-methoxy-DMT 

psilocin=4-hydroxy-DMT 

psilocybin=4-phosphoryloxy-DMT

Psilocybin is converted to psilocin in the body. The corresponding diethyltryptamine analogues are similarly psychoactive (and reportedly longer lasting). Psychoactivity has been reported in a-methyltryptamine (Murphree [791), 4-methoxy-DMT and 5-methoxy-a-methyltryptamine (Nichols [811) and bufotenine, which is 5hydroxy-DMT (Fabing [23]and Turner [1261). 6-hydroxy-DMT has been reported as one of the excretory metabolites of DMT (Szara [118]). A review of the literature will reveal a considerable number of other tryptamine derivatives which either are known to be or may be psychoactive.

Although LSD is not a tryptamine, its molecular structure includes that of the tryptamine molecule. We cannot thereby simply classify it as a tryptamine psychedelic because its molecular structure also includes that of some psychedelic phenethylamines such as ?,5-dimethoxy-4-methyl-amphetamine (DOM) (Nichols [81], p. 114). Nevertheless, LSD is usually classified with the tryptamine psychedelics and seems more closely related to them because it is more readily displaced from receptor sites by the tryptamines than by the phenethylamines.

DMT has been found to occur naturally in mammalian brains (Barker [4] and Christian [171). “Indolealkylamines… are the only known hallucinogenic agents whose endogenous occurrence in mammals, including man, has been confirmed” (McKenna [67]). Szara [114]says that it “seems that the whole enzymatic apparatus exists in mammals which can produce tryptamine from tryptophane, DMT from tryptamine and 6- HDMT [the probably hallucinogenic 6-hydroxy-DMT] from DMT.”

The question as to what function DMT and related substances have in the mammalian body has not yet received a definite answer. DMT is structurally similar to serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine) which is well-known as a neurotransmitter in the mammalian brain. It has been suggested that DMT is also a neurotransmitter, but this has not been established. Strassman [110] has presented evidence that psychoactive tryptamines are produced indigenously by the pineal gland and are related to the metabolism of the pineal hormone melatonin. Clearly much research in this area remains to be done.

(a) Shamanic Usage

The history of human involvement with DMT probably goes back many thousands of years since DMT usage is associated with South American shamanism. Stafford [108] mentions that the “Spanish friar Ramon Paul, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to the New World, was the first to record native use of … ‘kohhobba’ to communicate with the spirit world” (p. 310). A series of distinguished ethnobotanists eventually established that the psychoactive ingredients of these native snuffs (known under various names, including cohoba, yopo, and epana) were obtained from plants such as Anadenanthera macrocarpa, formerly peregrina (Schultes [95] and Harner [481). Chemists then showed that the active ingredients consisted of various tryptamine derivatives, especially DMT, 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenine (Holmstedt [:55]and Fish 1251). “These and related indolealkylamines have been detected in members of at least five different plant families” (Nichols [81], p. 120).

Plant tryptamines are also used by Amazonian shamans in the form of ayahuasca, a dark Liquid formed by boiling sections of a vine from the Banisteriopsis genus, usually B. caapi (Rivier [881). This vine contains harmala alkaloids, in particular, harmine and harmaline, which are sufficient in themselves to induce visions. Usually another plant is added to the brew “to make the visions more intense” (according to the native shamans). This additional plant is often Psychotria Viridis, a plant which contains DMT and 5-MeO-DMT. Although the DMT content of ayahuasca is sometimes thought to derive solely from the additives, Stafford [108] reports that the leaves and stems of one species of Banisteriopsis, B. rusbyana, “have a large amount of N,N-DMT, 5-methoxy-N,N-DMT, 5-hydroxy-N,N-DMT [bufotenine] N-P-methyltetrahydro-P-carboline.”

DMT is not by itself orally active (in doses of up to one gram), since it is broken down in the gut by the enzyme monoamineoxidase (MAO). This breakdown may be prevented by the presence of an MAO inhibitor, allowing the DMT to enter the blood and reach the brain. Ayahuasca contains an MAO- inhibitor, namely, the P-carbolines derived from the B. caapi vine.

Ayahuasca is frequently consumed at night by a group of people (Kensinger [60]and McKenna [691), although there are large variations in its mode of usage among the Indian tribes of the Amazon. Currently the use of ayahuasca among Indians in the Amazon is declining due to the destruction of traditional tribal cultures. This lends an urgency to the preservation of the knowledge associated with its use, a knowledge which concerns not only the preparation and use of ayahuasca but also the manner in which the experiences of the practitioner are to be interpreted. In Brazil there is an interesting religious organization known as Santo daime, whose members use ayahuasca within a Catholic/Christian context [87].

In its Pure form DMT is a white powder. If it has not been completely purified during the synthetic process it may be encountered as a pale orange waxy material. Dose levels mentioned in this article refer to Pure DMT unless otherwise noted.

The amount of DMT needed to Produce significant Psychic effects when smoked is 5 mg to 20 mg, there being considerable variation in individual reaction. Some people have had “profound” effects with as little as 10 mg. A moderate dose is 20-25 mg, with 40-50 mg a large dose. A very large dose (e.g., 75 mg) will normally lead to loss of consciousness.

Stafford writes of DMT, DET (diethyltryptamine) and DPT (dipropyltryptamine) that “More often [compared to injection], these tryptamines are smoked because less is needed to feel the effects… The DMT peak lasts for three to ten minutes, and it’s all over in twenty to thirty minutes. DET and DMT, which have more subtle effects than DMT, may take a few minutes to register… DET lasts about an hour when smoked; the most intense part of a DPT experience is over in about twenty minutes.” ([108], p. 322)

Several different methods may be used to smoke DMT, and there are differences of opinion as to their efficiency. “Some users prefer to smoke a compound like DMT… in a small glass pipe. A small amount of the crystals or oil is placed in the bowl and then slowly heated until fumes begin to fill the pipe…. A regular pipe covered with a fine screen can be used.” (Stafford [1081) In this method the DMT should be spread over some plant material such as mint leaves, parsley, marijuana or mullein (which is smoked by asthmatics to clear bronchial passages); a flame is held over the bowel and the vaporized DMT is inhaled deeply. It is usually advisable to do this under the guidance of a person who is experienced in this practice.

When smoked, one or two deep inhalations may be sufficient in the case of some people to cause Profound effects very quickly, whereas others may require up to four or five inhalations for full effect. One should be in a position to lie or to lean back comfortably, since the effects of smoking a large amount (e.g., 30-40 mg) are usually physically incapacitating. Some favor a sitting position. As noted above, the effect is most intense in the first few minutes, and mostly wears off after about ten minutes. Since DMT occurs naturally in the human brain there are probably homeostatic mechanisms for regulating the concentration of DMT, which would explain the rapidity with which the effects wear off.

DMT has been extensively tested both in the U.S. and in Europe and is apparently quite safe in normal subjects. The only case of a severely adverse reaction which has been reported in the literature is that of a woman who received 40 mg intramuscularly and who “suddenly developed an extremely rapid heart rate 12 minutes after the injection; no pulse could be obtained; no blood pressure could be measured. There seemed to have been an onset of auricular fibrillation.” (Turner [126], p. 127) However, this woman was schizophrenic and at the time of the injection had been extremely tense and apprehensive.

I am informed that to Pursue DMT experimentation safely one should have good cardiovascular health and avoid drugs and foods which increase heart rate and blood pressure by direct stimulation of the heart or by vasoconstriction. DMT should not be used by anyone who is taking MAO inhibiting drugs.

The subjective effects of a good lungful of DMT are usually very intense, with consciousness usually overwhelmed by visual imagery. With eyes closed this may take the form of extremely complex, dynamic, geometric patterns, changing rapidly. Such a dose of DMT may produce a visual pattern consisting of overlapping annular patterns of small rhomboid elements all in saturated hues of red, yellow, green and blue. Gracie & Zarkov [44] refer to this, or something similar, as “the chrysanthemum pattern.” The pattern itself seems to be charged with a Portentous energy.

The state of consciousness characterized by amazing visual patterns seems to be a prelude to a more Profound state, which subjects report as contact with entities described as discarnate, nonhuman or alien. A very articulate account of the subjective effects of smoking DMT is given by Terence McKenna in his talk Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness [72], in which he recounts his contact with what he calls “elves.”

As usual with tryptamine psychedelics there is normally no loss of ego, although large doses will produce unconsciousness. There is often loss of body awareness. It is usually possible to think under the influence of DMT, but with larger doses it may become difficult to hold a thought, and sometimes confusion will occur.

With a fully effective dose (e.g., 25 mg), the experience is usually so bizarre that an inexperienced person may believe that he or she has died, or is dying, especially if body awareness is lost. If this belief arises then it is important to remember that one will survive and return to ordinary consciousness. In general, yielding to the temptation to believe that one has died is not helpful when navigating psychedelic states since the resultant anxiety will usually distract one from a scientific observation of what is going on. More experienced users, knowing that hitherto they have always survived, however weird the experience, can learn not to succumb to this anxiety.

As regards the nature of the DMT experience, we are still at the Baconian, data-gathering, stage. Before going on to offer some generalizations and speculation I shall here present some descriptions of DMT experiences, especially insofar as they relate to the question of contact with discarnate entities. Because the use of DMT is still illegal in certain countries whose governments do not yet recognize a person’s natural right to modify his or her consciousness in whatever way desired, the authors of these reports shall for now remain anonymous.

Subject S (no previous experience with DMT; written communication):

My first attempts with DMT have left me with some serious thoughts… I did less than 10 mg on my second attempt and had a very weird experience. Not only did I have what I can only call a “close encounter,” I was left with two thoughts. First, they were waiting for me, and they were not “friendly.”… ion the] third attempt lit] seemed like they could not wait for me to experiment. In this event, I did not have actual contact, but rather “felt” them wanting to get into my consciousness. The actual experience was far more frightening than any major “trip” previously experienced…. I was profoundly affected.

Subject O (description of first DMT experience; written communication):

Remember to breathe. Recline and get into position, subsumed by the momentum; before me I see an irridescent membrane, taut and gently pulsating, something stretching and pushing towards me, on the other side, straining to emerge. fissure rends, tears and inside I glimpse the existence of something/place consisting of a dense whirling body of brilliantly multicolored primordial life/thought stuff, seeping and beckoning… I breathe and return into the plexus, center of my being, to witness myself as an outline-constructed 2-0 diagramatic shell of many coherent light-points, revolving quadrated vortices, large central to smaller and then tiny outer, phosphorescent green and I… enter into utter emptiness, space matrix…. [I]mpression of basic colors, unmuted blue, yellow and red, shimmering into being depth imperceptible yet defined within the space, endlessly recurring back from/into the corner when, slowly, from around the edges they peer towards me, watching eyes bright and watching in small faces, then small hands to pull themselves, slowly, from behind and into view; they are small white-blond imp-kids, very old in bright, mostly red, fogs and caps; candy-store, shiny, teasing and inquisitive, very solemn and somewhat pleased (ah, here you are!) watching me as I meet only their eyes bright and dark without any words (look!) or any idea remembered they only want to convey (look!) through their eyes that I must know that THIS is what they/we are doing…

Subject O (second DMT experience; written communication):

…I found myself once again in the company of the “elves, ” as the focus of their attention and ministrations, but they appeared much less colorful and altogether preoccupied with the task at hand, i.e., pouring a golden, viscous liquid through a network of long, intertwining, transparent conduits which led into the middle of my abdomen…

Subject G (very experienced with DMT; Gracie [44], #5):

We each had taken 150 mg of pure MDA…. About hour 4, 1 decided to try smoking some DMT…. This time I saw the “elves” as multi– dimensional creatures formed by strands of visible language; they were more creaturely than I had ever seen them before…. The elves were dancing in and out of the multidimensional visible language matrix, “waving” their “arms” and “limbs/hands/fingers?” and “smiling” or “laughing, ” although I saw no faces as such. The elves were “telling” me (or I was understanding them to say) that I had seen them before, in early childhood. Memories were flooding back of seeing the elves: they looked just like they do now: evershifting,, folding, multidimensional, multicolored (what colors!), always laughing weaving/waving, showing me things, showing me the visible language they are created/creatures of, teaching me to speak and read.

Subject T (several previous DMT experiences; verbal communication):

I saw a tunnel, which I flew down at great speed. I approached the end of the tunnel, which was closed by two doors on which was written: THE END. I burst through these and was carried up through seven heavens, breaking through each one in turn. When I emerged at the top I was flying over a dark landscape (it seemed to be Mexico). I felt that this was all so weird that I should be scared (perhaps I had died), but I did not feel scared. I continued to fly on, over a ravine, leading up to a mountainside, and eventually saw a campfire. As I approached this, cautiously, I saw that on the other side of the fire was a human figure wearing a sombrero, whom I intuitively knew to be Don Juan. He invited me to come closer, and spoke to me.

Subject V (very experienced with DMT; verbal communication):

I was in a large space and saw what seemed to be thousands of the entities. They were rapidly passing something to and fro among themselves, and were looking intently at me, as if to say “See what we are doing” … I noticed what seemed to be an opening into a large space, like looking through a cave opening to a starry sky. As I approached this I saw that resting in the opening was a large crea- ture, with many arms, somewhat like an octopus, and all over the arms were eyes, mostly closed, as if the creature were asleep or slumbering. As I approached it the eyes opened, and it/they became aware of me. It did not seem especially well-disposed towards me, as if it did not wish to be bothered by a mere human, and I had the impression ! wasn’t going to get past it, so I did not try.

Subject M (several previous DMT experiences; written report; each of the following paragraphs in this section is a description of a separate experience):

(i) It was not until my fifth DMT trip that I became aware of alien contact. I took two inhalations from a mixture of 75 mg of DMT wax (less than 100″/0 pure) and mullein. The visual hallucination was experienced as overwhelming, totally amazing, incredible and unbelievable. I could only surrender to the experience, reminding myself that I would survive and attempt to deal with the sense that what I was seeing was completely impossible. I wondered whether this was what dying was like and reassured myself, through noting my breathing, that I was still alive. What I was experiencing was happening too quickly to comprehend. At one point I suddenly became aware of beings,, who were rapdily flitting about me. They appeared as dark, stick-like beings silhouetted against a rapidly- changing kaleidoscopic background. Although I could not make out much detail, I definitely feIt their presence.

(ii) On the sixth occasion I took two inhalations of about 35 ms of pure DMT in a glass pipe. Immediately upon closing my eyes I was overwhelmed by visual hallucination. This seemed to last but briefly, whereupon I passed abruptly through to another realm, losing all awareness of my body. II was as if there were alien beings there waiting for me, and I recall that they spoke to me as if they had been awaiting my arrival, but I cannot remember exactly what was said. This time, rather than (or as well as) flitting about me, the entities approached me from the front, rapidly and repeatedly, appearing to enter and pass through me. I could make no sense of what was happening. I opened my eyes and made contact with my companions, locating myself once move in the room from which had begun. Immediately I completely forgot what I had just experienced. The contents of the room appeared stable but weirdly distorted. I was able to recognize and to talk to my companions, but I felt and appeared very disoriented. …. The memory of this experience came back only when, Inter that evening, I smoked the remainder of what was left in the pipe — not enough to break through, but enough for me to remember….

(iii) …I got deeply into the visual hallucination. I was barely able to remind and to reassure myself that “DMT is safe,” though I had some difficulty recalling tire name “DMT. With eyes closed, I experienced intense, overwhelming visual imagery. I was seeing a large, extremely colorful surface, like a membrane, pulsating toward and away from me. …I recalled that I had seen this before, on previous DMT trips, but had forgotten it. During this experience I was aware of my breathing and heartbeat, and was careful to continue breathing deeply. The pattern was in intense hues, and its parts seemed to have meaning, as if they were letters of an alphabet, but I could not make sense of it. I was quite amazed. I felt that I was being shown something, and I tried to understand what I was seeing, but could not. I also heard elf-language, but it was not meaningful to me. Eventually the visions subsided with no breakthrough and no overt alien contact.

(iv) I smoked at around 2 a.m. with little effect and some vaguely unpleasant visual hallucination (harlequin-like gargoyles?). This might have been due to being tired and to having eaten substantially a few hours before. There was a sense of alien presence. Upon awakening next morning I noticed that my electronic alarm clock, while obviously still “ticking,” had stopped at the time I had been smoking the previous night. I have never known the clock to stop in this way before or since.

(v) Smoked 40-50 mg of DMT wax. …An overwhelming and confusing experience. My heart rate seemed to go way up, which caused me some concern. I had to remind myself that one does not die from smoking DMT. The experience was disjointed and erratic. There were white flashes, like subtitles in a film, except that they were not verbal but rather like a white-energy-being rushing quickly through the scene from left to right (what I now think of as “the white lightning being”). There was a strange, incomprehensible auditory hallucination. Confusing and unpleasant. I reflected that this is what hell might be like (good practice for hell: stay calm and try to observe what is happening).

(vi) Upon lying back I became aware of brightly colored, moving patterns, which I remembered having seen before on DMT (but having forgotten about — indeed even now, a half-hour later, I cannot recall them clearly). I was then immersed in a totally weird state, like being in a large multicolored hall whose walls (if it had walls) were moving incomprehensibly. …Apart from occasional awareness of my breathing I was hardly aware of my body at all. I seemed to be in another world, disembodied, and feeling flabbergasted. I seemed to be aware of the presence of other beings in the same space, but had only fleeting glimpses of them, as if they were shy about appearing to me. In this state I did not know what to do. It was as if I was offered a wish by the dragon but dill not understand what was being offered — or even that there was a dragon at all. Throughout there was elf-music, and elf-language in the background. I did not attend much to this since the visual effects were so overwhelming. As the influence of the DMT wore off I felt myself losing contact with this state and I knew that I would forget what was happening. It felt as if there were beings “waving goodbye. ”

(vii) I smoked 40 mg of pure DMT mixed with some marijuana. …I quickly entered into the trance state without noticing any great amount of the usual patterned visual hallucination. …I seemed to be falling away, spiraling into some large, black void, after which I seemed to be in a bright, open space in the presence of two other beings. Their forms were not very clear, but they seemed to be like children, as if we were together in a playground. They appeared to be moving very rapidly….The two beings seemed to be frying to attract my attention, and to communicate something to me, but I could not understand. It was as if they were trying to make me understand where I was. One even seemed to be holding up a sign, like a speech balloon, but, as I recall, the sign was blank. I attended to my breathing, and with this came an increased sense of self-identity, and with this a lessening of contact with the two beings.

(viii) Smoked 40 mg spread over mint leaves, in three tokes, sifting upright. 1Lly intention was to see what spirits, if any,, are currently about me. As the experience came upon me I managed to keep that intention, or at least, “What spirits…'” and also remembered to breathe regularly. A strange state of mind ensued, one of dynamic, patterned energy, in which I was not sure whether I was perceiving a scene, with a moving being, or not. I finally realized that the answer to my question regarding spirits was that there were indeed many around me, and that they were merry, hiding and playing a joke on me. However, I did not specifically see or hear any.

(ix) Smoked 40 mg of DMT wax spread over mint leaves as usual, sifting up leaning against a pillow….As the trance came on I was overwhelmed with visual imagery that I did not even attempt to make sense of. I struggled to remember who I was…..[I]] turned my attention to the visual component, and what I saw was an incredible amount of stuff coming at me in waves, sort of rolling toward me. There were two beings in the scene, and they were doing the rolling, definitely throwing all this stuff at me — I don’t know why. The scene changed, and there was more visual hallucination, but I don ‘t remember the details — all happening very quickly.

Based upon these reports and others I tentatively put forward the following classification of levels of experience associated with the effects of smoking DMT. This classification should be tested in the light of further reports, in particular those resulting from an experiment currently being conducted involving the administration of DMT via i.v. injection to about a dozen subjects. (Strassman [111])

Level I: Pre-hallucinatory experience.

This stage is characterized by an interior flowing of energy/consciousness. It may be extremely intense. It may have a positive feeling content.

Level II: Vivid, brilliantly colored, geometric visual hallucinations.

Here one is observing a patterned field, basically, two-dimensional, although it may have a pulsating quality. One may remember having seen this before.

Transitional Phase (Level IIB?): tunnel or breakthrough experience.  One may see or fly through a tunnel (a Passage to the next level). A veil may part, a membrane may be rent. There is a breakthrough to another world (or perhaps even a series of breakthroughs).

Alternatively, it may also happen that the transition from Level II to Level III is abrupt, almost instantaneous, with no experience of transition.

Level III: Three- or higher-dimensional space, possible contact with entities.

This stage is characterized by the experience of being in an “objective” space, that is, a space of at least three dimensions in which objects or entities may be encountered. Sometimes the entities appear to be intelligent and communicating beings. This stage may be extremely energetic with an experience of everything happening incomprehensibly fast. Alternatively, it may be relatively coherent. Travel is possible at Level III. One may, for example, assume the form and consciousness of a bird, and fly like a bird does (cf. Castaneda [15], pp. 191-196). The limits of this stage, if any, are unknown. There may be transitions to further stages.

Although the amazing geometrical visual hallucinations experienced under the influence of DMT are sufficient in themselves to command attention among students of psychedelics, the really interesting part of the experience is the apparent contact with alien beings. Since some may feel reluctant to admit the possible existence of alien beings getting in contact with DMT-modified humans, we should consider all hypotheses that might explain the observations, or at least, be consistent with them.

Several questions can be distinguished. Firstly, there is the question of the independent reality of the entities. Subjects report experiences of contact with communicating beings whose independent existence at the time seems self-evident. These experiences are not described as dream-like. If the entities have an existence independent of the DMT- influenced subject, then a realm of existence has been discovered which is quite other than the consensus reality which most of us assume is the only real world.

Such a discovery of “a separate reality” would directly challenge the foundations of the modern Western view of the world. I was tempted to say that it would be the most revolutionary change in our understanding of reality since the fish crawled out on land, but this would be overlooking the fact that the world view of the modern West is a comparatively recent invention, stemming mainly from the rise of materialist science in recent centuries. Earlier cultures had, and non-western cultures still have, more expansive views of the extent of reality.

Secondly, regardless of whether the entities are independently-existing or have no existence beyond the experience of the subject, what are they seen as and seen to be doing? What is happening, for example, when some subjects (e.g., Subject V) report seeing thousands of these entities simultaneously? Even more interesting is the phenomenon of communication, or attempted communication, which many subjects report (e.g., Subjects O, G, T and M). Some subjects also report seeing the entities communicating with each other, in some kind of mutual exchange — but of what?

Thirdly, the matter can be approached from the point of view of neuropharmacology. What exactly is going on when those DMT molecules get in there among the neurons of the brain, causing it to function in what appears subjectively to be a radically different manner?

Listed below are eight suggested interpretations of the DMT experience which imply answers (true or false) to some or all of the questions raised above. Some of these, like the experience itself, are bizarre, but at this stage any idea should be considered since in this matter the truth (to paraphrase J.B.S. Haldane) probably is not only stranger than we suppose but stranger than we can suppose.

(i) There are no alien entities at all; it’s merely subjective hallucination. The DMT state may be interesting, even extremely interesting, but really there are no independently-existing alien entities to be found.

(ii) DMT provides access to a Parallel or higher dimension, a truly alternate reality which is, in fact, inhabited by independently-existing intelligent entities forming (in the words of Terence McKenna) “an ecology of souls.”

(iii) DMT allows awareness of processes at a cellular or even atomic level. DMT smokers are tapping into the network of cells in the brain or even into communication among molecules themselves. It might even be an awareness of quantum mechanical processes at the atomic or subatomic level.

(iv) DMT is, perhaps, a neurotransmitter in reptilian brains and in the older, reptilian parts of mammalian brains, Flooding the human brain with DMT causes the older reptilian parts of the brain to dominate consciousness, resulting in a state of awareness which appears totally alien (and sometimes very frightening) to the everyday monkey mind.

(v) A non-human intelligent species created humans by genetic modification of existing primate stock then retreated, leaving behind biochemical methods for contacting them. The psychedelic tryptamines are chemical keys that activate certain programs in the human brain that were placed there intentionally by this alien species.

(vi) The realm to which DMT provides access is the world of the dead. The entities experienced are the souls, or personalities, of the departed, which retain some kind of life and ability to communicate. The realm of dead souls, commonly accepted by cultures and societies other than that of the modern West, is now accessible using DMT.

(vii) The entities experienced are beings from another time who have succeeded in mastering the art of time travel, not in a way which allows materialization but in a way which allows them to communicate with conscious beings such as ourselves.

(viii) The entities are probes from an extraterrestrial or an extradimensional species, sent out to make contact with organisms such as ourselves who are able to manipulate their nervous systems in a way which allows communication to take place.

These hypotheses can be expanded and are, of course, vulnerable to objections. No doubt other hypotheses are possible. These matters will not be resolved until we have more data with which to test these and other hypotheses.

In this section and the following one I shall present a view which elaborates upon interpretations (ii), (vi) and(vii). This is speculation but nevertheless provides a preliminary framework for steps toward an understanding of what the use of DMT reveals to us.

The world of ordinary, common, experience has three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension, forming a place and time for the apparent persistence of solid objects. Since this is a world of experience it belongs more to experience than to being. The being, or ontological nature, of this world may be quite different from what we experience it as. Psychedelic experience strongly suggests that (as William James hypothesized) ordinary experience is an island in a sea of possible modes of consciousness. Under the influence of substances such as LSD and psilocybin we venture outside of the world as commonly viewed and enter spaces which may be very strange indeed. This happens as a result of hanging our brain chemistry. Why then should we not regard ordinary experience too as a result of a particular mode of brain chemistry? Perhaps the world of ordinary experience is not a faithful representation of physical reality but rather is physical reality represented in the manner of ordinary brain functioning. By taking this idea seriously we may free our understanding of physical reality from the limitations imposed by the unthinking assumption that ordinary experience represents physical reality as it is. In fact physical reality may be totally bizarre and quite unlike anything we have thought it to be.

In his special theory of relativity, Albert Einstein demonstrated that the physical world (the world that can be measured by physical instruments, but is assumed to exist independently) is best understood as a four-dimensional space which may be separated into three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension in various ways, the particular separation depending on the motion of a hypothetical observer. It seems that DMT releases one’s consciousness from the ordinary experience of space and time and catapults one into direct experience of a four-dimensional world. This explains the feeling of incredulity which first-time users frequently report.

The DMT realm is described by some as “incredible,” “bizarre,” “unbelievable” and even “impossible,” and for many who have experienced it these terms are not an exaggeration. These terms make sense if the world experienced under DMT is a four-dimensional world experienced by a mind which is trying to make sense of it in terms of its usual categories of three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time. In the DMT state these categories no longer apply to whatever it is that is being experienced.

Some Persons report that it seems that in the DMT experience there is information transfer of some sort. If so, and if this information is quite unlike anything that we are used to dealing with (at least at a conscious level), then it may be that the bizarre quality of the experience results from attempting to impose categories of thought which are quite inapplicable. The space that one breaks through to under the influence of a large dose of DMT has been called “hyperspace” by Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham [74] and by Gracie & Zarkov [44]. I suggest that hyperspace is an experience of physical reality which is “closer” to it (or less mediated) than is our ordinary experience. In hyperspace one has direct experience of the four-dimensionality of physical reality. Parenthetically we may note a mildly interesting case of historical anticipation. In 1897 one H.C. Geppinger published a book entitled DMT: Dimensional Motion Times [31], an appropriate title for our current subject. However, he was, of course, quite unaware of what the initials “DMT” would later come to mean.

When reflecting upon his mescaline experiences Aldous Huxley suggested that there was something, which he called “Mind-at-Large,” which was filtered by the ordinary functioning of the human brain to Produce ordinary experience. One may view the human body and the human nervous system as a cybernetic system for constructing a stable representation of a world of enduring objects which are able to interact in ways that we are familiar with from our ordinary experience. This is analogous to a computer’s production of a stable video display — for even a simple blinking cursor requires complicated coordination of underlying physical processes to make it happen. In a sense we are (or at least may be thought of as) biological computers whose typical output is the world of everyday reality (as we experience it). When our biocomputational processes are modified by strange chemicals we have the opportunity to view the reality underlying ordinary experience in an entirely new way.

Einstein’s four-dimensional space-time may thus turn out to be not merely a flux of energetic point-events but to be (or to be contained in a higher-dimensional space which is) at least as organized as our ordinary world and which contains intelligent, communicating beings capable of interacting with us. As Hamlet remarked to his Aristotelian tutor, following an encounter with a dead soul (his deceased father), “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Should we be surprised to find that there are more intelligent, communicating, beings in the higher-dimensional reality underlying our ordinary experience than we find within that experience?

Hyperspace, as it is revealed by DMT (revealed to some, anyway) appears to be full of personal entities. They are non-physical in the sense that they are not objects in the three-dimensional space to which we are accustomed. Some of the beings encountered in the DMT state may once have been living humans, but perhaps such “dead souls” are in the minority among the intelligent beings in that realm.

In his classic The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries [21], W.Y. Evans-Wentz recorded many tales provided to him by local people of encounters with beings, variously called fairies, elves, the wee folk, the good people, the gentry, the Sidhe, the Tuatha De Danann, etc., who inhabit a realm normally beyond our ken. The belief in this order of beings was firm among the Celtic peoples of Britain and France at the time Evans-Wentz conducted his studies (c. 1900), but has since been largely supplanted by the beliefs instilled in the public by the rise of materialistic science and technology. Evans-Wentz collected numerous reports of elf-sightings, such as the following (which is part of an account given by a member of the Lower House of the Manx Parliament):

I looked across the river and saw a circle of supernatural light, which I have now come to regard as the “astral light” or the light of Nature, as it is called by mystics, and in which spirits become visible… [I]nto this space, and the circle of light, from the surrounding sides apparently, I saw come in twos and threes a great crowd of little beings smaller than Tom Thumb and his wife. All of them, who appeared like soldiers, were dressed in red. They moved back and forth amid the circle of light, as they formed into order like troops drilling. ([21], p. 113.)

Reviewing his data, Evans-Wentz writes:

We seem, in fact, to have arrived at a Point in our long investigations where we can postulate scientifically, on the showing of the data of psychical research, the existence of such invisible intelligence as gods, genii, daemons, all kinds of true fairies, and disembodied [i.e., deceased] men. ([21], p. 481)

He then goes on to quote an earlier researcher:

Either it is we who produce these phenomena [which, says Evans-Wentz, is unreasonable] or it is spirits. But mark this well: these spirits are not necessarily the souls of the dead; for other kinds of spiritual beings may exist, and space may be full of them without our ever knowing anything about it, except under unusual circumstances [such as a sudden change in brain chemistry]. Do we not find in the different ancient works of literature, demons, angels, gnomes, goblins, sprites, spectres, elementals, etc.’ Perhaps these legends are not without some foundation in fact. (Flammarion [28], quoted in [21], p. 481.)

Evans-Wentz concludes ([21], p. 490) that a realm of discarnate, intelligent forces known as fairies, elves, etc., exists “as a supernormal state of consciousness into which men and women may enter temporarily in dreams, trances, or in various ecstatic conditions,” such as, we may add, the condition produced by smoking DMT. I suggest that the faerie world studied by Evans-Wentz and the objective space into which one may enter under the influence of DMT are the same.

Who are we and how did we get here? Clearly we are personalities who develop in connection with our bodies. But are we personalities who have our origin in the development of our bodies? Or do we originate as hyperspatial entities who become associated with bodies for the purpose of acting in what appears to us as the ordinary world? The answer may be a combination of both. It may be that a personality must first come into existence in connection with a body but that, once developed, it may leave the body, and perhaps subsequently become associated with a new body. Or it may be that intelligent entities, most of whom were never human, can come into existence as beings in hyperspace by virtue of a creative power associated with the origin of hyperspace itself. In the more poetic words of an Irish seer, they may “draw their life out of the Soul of the World” ([21], p. 65).

DMT appears to allow us to leave our three-dimensional bodily organisms and enter into hyperspace where we can function (for a short period of earthly time while our brain biochemistry is altered) as disembodied personalities, able to communicate with other discarnate personalities. In fact it may be that this is what happens to us when we die. In death, however, unlike the DMT trance, you can’t return to your body. Once your body is destroyed, or is damaged so that it cannot function as a channel for your will, then you have entered hyperspace and you will remain there indefinitely or until association with a new body becomes possible. After telling of frequently seeing spiritual beings enveloped in shining light, one of Evan-Wentz’s informants says:

In whatever country we may be, I believe that we are for ever immersed in the spiritual world; but most of us cannot perceive it on account of the unrefined nature of our physical bodies. Through meditation and psychical training one can come to see the spiritual world and its beings. We pass into the spirit realm at death and come back into the human world at birth; and we continue to reincarnate until we have overcome all earthly desires and mortal appetites. Then the higher life is open to our consciousness and we cease to be human; we become divine beings. ([21], p. 84)

It now seems possible, by the use of the psychedelic tryptamines, to venture into the death state before we die and to accustom ourselves to that state. This is the path of the shaman and the spiritual warrior. At death, when the transition is finally and irrevocably made, the psychedelic explorer will enter a realm he or she knows from previous experience, and will, hopefully, not be swept away by fear and ignorance.

The idea that there might be a realm inhabited by alien beings able to communicate with humans in an intelligent manner, and that these beings may be contacted through the use of a psychedelic, is sufficiently bizarre that some may be tempted to reject it unthinkingly. Modern-day common sense certainly rejects the possibility entirely, but a scientific approach to the subject requires suspension of common sense in favor of an unbiased study of the available data. In this case the rawest data available is the actual subjective experience of the DMT state.

Further research is needed to distinguish among the possible interpretations presented above, or to Provide a basis for other interpretations. Basically this means further human explorations of the DMT experience, with articulate reports on the experience. This would allow us to begin to determine what are the common characteristics, in humans, of the experienced induced by smoking DMT. Do all subjects eventually experience (apparent) contact with alien beings? How is this contact related to dose and method of administration? In what form(s) do the entities (tend to) appear? How often are cases of human-alien communication reported? What is the content of this communication?

As an aid to further research in this field I have compiled the bibliography of publications, mostly articles concerning DMT, which is reproduced below.

Contact with alien entities in other worlds has long been reported from non-Western and pre-modern societies. Such reports are usually presented in the context of a particular mythology or cosmology that makes it difficult to relate them to a modern scientific view of the world. This may mean not that these reports are false, but that our scientific view of the world needs to be extended. A scientific attitude — that is, an open and questioning attitude to the advancement of knowledge, one which does not shun any repeatable observation regardless of how bizarre it may seem — is not inconsistent with the discovery of intelligent, non-human entities in a higher-dimensional realm. If they are there, and can be contacted reliably, let us see what they have to say.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank those people (you know who you are) who read earlier drafts of this article (it was begun in October, 1989 and completed in June, 1992) and who offered helpful criticism and suggestions for improvement.

Source: https://spiritmolecule.com/psychedelics/dmt/apparent-communication-with-discarnate-entities-induced-by-dmt?cn-reloaded=1

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

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

Features a foreword by Dennis McKenna, cover art by Beau Deeley, and thirty color illustrations by various artists, including Alex Grey, Android Jones, Martina Hoffmann, Luke Brown, Carey Thompson, Adam Scott Miller, Randal Roberts, along with Jay Bryan, Cyb, Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule, Art Van D'lay, Stuart Griggs, Jay Lincoln, Gwyllm Llwydd, Shiptu Shaboo, Marianna Stelmach, and Mister Strange.

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

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

Encounters with apparently sentient beings are reported by half of all first time users of the naturally occurring psychedelic DMT, yet the question of DMT beings and plant sentience, interspecies communication, discarnate consciousness, and perhaps even dialoguing with the divine has never been systematically explored.

In September 2015, ten of the world’s leading luminaries noted for exploring the mysterious compound DMT (dimethyltryptamine) gathered with other researchers at Tyringham Hall in England to discuss the subject. Over three days, they pooled their expertise from a wide range of subjects--archaeology, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, neuroscience, chemistry, and psychopharmacology, to name a few--to explore the notion of “entheogenic plant sentience” and the role of DMT as a conduit between Spirit and Matter.

Offering cutting-edge insights into this visionary domain, this book distills the potent exchange of ideas that occurred at Tyringham Hall, including presentations and discussions on DMT entities, the pineal gland, the possibility of DMT as a chemical messenger from an extraterrestrial civilization, the Amazonian shamanic perspective on Invisible Entities, morphic resonance, and the science behind hallucinations. Contributors to the talks and discussions include many leading thinkers in this field, including Rupert Sheldrake, Rick Strassman, Dennis McKenna, Graham Hancock, Jeremy Narby, Erik Davis, Ede Frecska, Luis Eduardo Luna, Bernard Carr, Robin Carhart-Harris, Graham St. John, David Luke, Andrew Gallimore, Peter Meyer, Jill Purce, William Rowlandson, Anton Bilton, Vimal Darpan, Santha Faiia, and Cosmo Feilding Mellen.

Found throughout the plant and animal kingdom, DMT (dimethyltryptamine) is also naturally occurring in humans, and may be released during near-death and actual death experiences, earning it the title “the spirit molecule.” When taken as a psychedelic, either via ayahuasca or in pure form, DMT is experientially considered to be one of the strongest and strangest of all entheogens. The majority of high-dose users report visions of unknown yet curiously familiar alien worlds and encounters with sentient nonhuman presences.

At a four-day symposium at Tyringham Hall in England in 2017, twenty of the world’s psychedelic luminaries gathered to discuss entheogenic entity encounters, consciousness expansion, visionary experiences, and the future of research in this field. Contributors to the talks and discussions include many leading thinkers, including the late Ralph Metzner, Chris Bache, Whitley Strieber, Je rey Kripal, Angela Voss, Bill Richards, Chris Timmermann, Michael Winkelman, Luis Eduardo Luna, Anton Bilton, Bernard Carr, Daniel Pinchbeck, Dennis McKenna, Ede Frecska, and David Luke.

This book distills the potent exchange of ideas that occurred at Tyringham Hall, including discussions about DMT beings, encounter experiences, alien abduction, plant sentience, the shamanic use of ayahuasca, neuroscientifi c DMT research, the connections between LSD and DMT entities, and the nature of mind and reality.

131. Dr. Rick Strassman On Whether Psychedelic Drugs Prove We Are More Than Our Brain

by Alex Tsakiris | Mar 25 | Consciousness Science | 0 comments

Noted DMT researcher Dr. Richard Strassman describes how DMT allows consciousness to enter an out-of-body, freestanding, independent realm of existence.

Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. Rick Strassman, author of, DMT – The Spirit Molecule.  As a researcher at the University of New Mexico Dr. Strassman received approval to inject volunteers with a psychedelic drug called DMT and  evaluate the effects. According to Strassman, “the most interesting results were that high doses of DMT seemed to allow the consciousness of our volunteers to enter an out-of-body, freestanding, independent realm of existence, inhabited by beings of light who oftentimes were expecting the volunteers and with whom the volunteers interacted.”

During the interview Mr. Tsakiris and Dr. Strassman discuss whether DMT-based psychedelic experiences provide evidence that our consciousness exists outside of the brain:

Alex Tsakiris: Virtually all of the near-death experience researchers, come to the conclusion sooner or later that consciousness must exist outside of the brain. How do we process that?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Well, it isn’t a new idea. Obviously spiritual traditions have believed it and taught it and have practiced it. It is a new idea within the Western scientific model, so one of the analogies that I make in the DMT book is the brain is a receiver as opposed to a generator of a particular channel of consciousness, Channel Normal, as it were.

Under extreme situations then the channel switches and as a result of being given DMT is the brain is now able to perceive channels of information that it couldn’t before. If you change your perspective on the relationship between the brain and consciousness then things start to become a bit clearer, but at the same time have been more mind-boggling, too.

Dr. Richard Strassman’s website

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Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris.

Today we welcome Dr. Rick Strassman, author of DMT – The Spirit Molecule, a fascinating book about his research with a psychedelic drug that causes some amazing out-of-body spiritual experiences. Here’s my interview with Rick:

Alex Tsakiris: All the folks, virtually all of the near-death experience researchers, come to the conclusion sooner or later that consciousness must exist outside of the brain. How do we process that?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Well, it isn’t a new idea. Obviously spiritual traditions have believed it and taught it and have practiced it. It is a new idea within the Western scientific model, so one of the analogies that I make in the DMT book is the brain is a receiver as opposed to a generator of a particular channel of consciousness, Channel Normal, as it were.

Under extreme situations then the channel switches and as a result of being given DMT is the brain is now able to perceive channels of information that it couldn’t before. If you change your perspective on the relationship between the brain and consciousness then things start to become a bit clearer, but at the same time have been more mind-boggling, too.

Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome Dr. Richard Strassman, author of DMT – The Spirit Molecule. Rick is also a distinguished academic and researcher, having received an MD in psychiatry, a Postgraduate Fellowship in Pharmacology and having a distinguished teaching and research career at the University of New Mexico.  Rick, welcome to Skeptiko.

Dr. Richard Strassman: Thanks for having me.

Alex Tsakiris: I want to jump right into the middle of this. I was just saying in the little bit of time we had before this interview, I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with your work and particularly this book about DMT. If they’re not, then they’re going to have to kind of brush up on it on their own because we’re going to jump into the middle of this. But let me give a very short introduction, and correct anything that I might get wrong.

In the 1990s you were a researcher at the University of New Mexico and you received approval, which is an amazing story in itself, to inject volunteers with this psychedelic drug, DMT, and then to evaluate the effects. Here’s part of what you said about the results of those experiments. This is a quote from you in another interview I found. It’s a great quote.

“The most interesting results were that high doses of DMT seemed to allow the consciousness of our volunteers to enter an out-of-body, freestanding, independent realm of existence, inhabited by beings of light who oftentimes were expecting the volunteers and with whom the volunteers interacted.”

Alex Tsakiris: So correct me if any of that’s wrong. Also, if you want to elaborate on that, that’s quite a lot for people to wrap their minds around right from the beginning.

Dr. Richard Strassman: Right, right. Well, that’s pretty much the case. It’s true, everything you said. That’s a good summary, too, actually.

Alex Tsakiris: So tell us a little bit about that research. I’m sure you’ve done that a million times, but the elevator speech-what was that all about?

Dr. Richard Strassman: I performed my studies between 1990 and 1995 and ostensibly it was a study to investigate effects and the mechanisms of action of a drug of abuse, which was DMT. I had ulterior motives, though, at the same time. These were to understand better the biology of spiritual experience, especially naturally-occurring spiritual experience, which might take place through meditation or as a result of a close brush with death. Even psychotic states sometimes partake of spiritual properties.

I was drawn to DMT because it’s a naturally-occurring compound in the human body. It also occurs in every other mammal which has been investigated to date. It also is found in either hundreds of plants or even thousands of plants. So as a candidate for a compound in a human body which could produce a mystical or spiritual experience, DMT seemed like a reasonable candidate.

Along the lines of the ulterior motives for my study I was interested in comparing the responses to giving DMT to people to descriptions of spontaneous spiritual experiences which occur without the drug. If I was able to determine significant overlaps or similarities in those two states, then to that extent I could argue for the possibility of involvement of andoginous DMT in those spontaneous, non-drug induced experiences.

Alex Tsakiris: I’m just going to interject. One thing I found interesting is you said that you hope your work-and I don’t know if this was at the time or later-but it might break down the dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical. I think that’s a very, very interesting point and I want to get into that.

But I just want to frame up the DMT research one little bit more and have you comment on it because what your research wound up doing, and I don’t know if this was your intent or not, but to a certain degree you provided independent confirmation of some aspects of this experience that many indigenous people around the world for hundreds of years have talked about.

A lot of people know about Iowaska and the Amazon and that people who experience Iowaska have the experience that you just talked about, leaving the body for another realm. What really intrigued me was it seems like where your research led you, and I guess the question is, did you see this coming that DMT seemed to lift the veil to some kind of inner dimensional reality that we don’t understand? Did you at all see that coming when you started this research?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Well, I kind of did and I kind of didn’t. I was more expecting the kinds of experiences more typical of Zen enlightenment experiences, without form, without ideas, without concepts, without images. Also without an interacting sense of self.

And I think a lot of the current interest in brain/spirituality issues either consciously or unconsciously is taking on kind of a Buddhist point of view, which is all of this spiritual content is a product of the mind as opposed to being perceived by the mind.

The part I didn’t expect was the more interactive ego maintenance types of experiences which were full of content and full of images. You know, the personality of the volunteer could still interact quite willfully with what was going on in their DMT state. So it was a spiritual experience for the volunteers but the type of spiritual experience or the quality of it was what caught me unaware.

Alex Tsakiris: I think I heard you say that you found it surprising that it was relational…

Dr. Richard Strassman: Right.

Alex Tsakiris: …versus that unifying all through nothing kind of Buddhist kind of interpretation of it. Do you want to elaborate on that?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Yeah. The experience of enlightenment, to what I understand of it anyway, is it’s unformed and uncreated and un-interacting in a way. You interact with it but the interaction is more of a beholding and a merging as opposed to willfully making decisions about what to ask and how to respond to these entities or being which one perceives in the DMT state.

Alex Tsakiris: I want you to dig into that a little bit. For the skeptical-minded folks that come and say, “What do you mean that’s reality-based?” I mean we’ve got a bunch of problems in pulling that apart. It’s all subjective, but then we do have this consensus reality that people can come back and report a lot of things that are similar. We say, “Yeah, that’s real.” Tear that apart. What do you mean these DMT experiences were real?

Dr. Richard Strassman: That’s a good question. There are a number of criteria. One is a sense of temporal continuity, both in what’s going on in that state-in other words, B follows A and C follows B-and you can track what’s going on in the world around you. That’s one of the criteria, anyway. Also there’s the maintenance of a sense of self in that state so that also is a criteria which is mapped, I think, in the DMT state.

Ultimately, though one kind of ends up defining what’s real based on overall gestalt of it feeling real. Does this feel real compared to other real experiences that somebody’s had? Ultimately that was the criterion on which the DMT volunteers based their statement of the DMT state being so real.

They even described it as being more real than real. They could clearly distinguish it from a dream or other kinds of auditory or visual types of unusual experiences which they may have had in the past. But also compared to everyday reality it just felt more real than their everyday reality.

Alex Tsakiris: Okay, so reality we kind of covered. What about the other word we’ve been kicking around, spiritual? Are DMT experiences by nature spiritual? Do they always create a spiritual experience? What is a spiritual experience? How do we define that?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Oh, well, Aristotle defined spiritual as non-corporeal, non-physical. In some ways that’s a good start because the kinds of experiences that the DMT volunteers underwent were the perceptions and interactions with non-corporeal things.

Most of the time, people don’t think of light as corporeal. I suppose you can but most of the time as compared to things like wood or stone or things like that, light is incorporeal or relatively incorporeal. Also, spiritual experience in some ways is an extension, like a qualitative extension of everyday reality. There are more intense emotions as opposed to being happy or feeling sad is ecstasy or terror. So those are more quantitative changes relative to everyday experience.

Alex Tsakiris: The whole discussion here about reality versus spiritual brings us back to this earlier snippet of a quote I had from you where you said you hoped your work will break down the dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical. I think that’s what you’re doing right here in this description.

Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit and take a little further why we would want to? Why is that a good idea? Why are we headed toward breaking down the dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical?

Dr. Richard Strassman: There are a couple of elements to your question. If you think about DMT, it’s a drug; it’s a chemical and we understand its mechanisms in the brain. At the same time, it is a chemical which seems to provide access to spiritual states of consciousness or at least states of consciousness which have traditionally been considered spiritual. So it’s kind of a transitional point. That’s the reason I call it the Spirit Molecule. It’s kind of a paradox in a way. Spirit is non-corporeal and the molecule is corporeal.

Alex Tsakiris: Let’s talk about NDEs a little bit because near-death experience research is a topic we’ve covered a lot on this show. It seems to me to really get at the heart of some of these issues regarding consciousness and spirituality.

My read of this research from the folks that I’ve talked with on this show seems to indicate that it’s highly suggestive that consciousness continues after clinical death. Or at least after some point at which the brain is not the way we normally think of a brain, without blood flow, without electricity and all that stuff.

So what is your understanding in terms of where NDE research is going? And how it fits with what you’ve discovered in your work with DMT.

Dr. Richard Strassman: So the whole issue of NDEs is interesting because I was actually anticipating a lot more of the classical kinds of near-death experiences in my volunteers than actually took place. I was speculating that the occurrence would be a lot more common because of some speculations that I had put forth about ability of stress-related release of DMT at the time of death. That’s purely speculative at this point but still I was able to marshal substantial evidence suggesting that DMT could possibly increase as a result of stress which occurs as you’re approaching death.

The issue of consciousness existing after somebody dies is an important issue, obviously, with all kinds of implications for morality and how we behave when we are alive. If our DMT research is any indication, it does seem that it is possible for consciousness to exist without being conscious of the body, anyway.

One of the extremely common experiences in the DMT work was that after an injection of DMT, the consciousness of the volunteer left the body. The internal pressure of the state was such that it just couldn’t be contained in the body anymore. Almost everybody in response to a large dose of DMT felt their body unable to contain the experience and their consciousness left the body. It was a disembodied consciousness that beheld the DMT experience or state.

Alex Tsakiris: That’s fascinating. But we have to probe that. What does that mean? It’s so totally overthrows our understanding of not only consciousness but what it means to be alive. What it means to be human. And yet, that is exactly my read of the near-death experience research and I’ve just had dozens of people on this show who aren’t familiar with the research and want to argue another point.

But virtually all of the near-death experience researchers come to the conclusion sooner or later that these experiences seem to be happening at a time when there is no brain, when they are clinically dead in the brain and therefore, consciousness must exist outside of the brain. How do we process that?

Dr. Richard Strassman: How do we process it? Well, it isn’t a new idea. Obviously the Tibetans have been talking about it for centuries. Spiritual traditions have believed it and taught it and have practiced it, getting people ready to die. So it isn’t a new idea.

It is a new idea within the Western scientific model, but still Ken Ring’s work and Moody’s work, that’s almost over 40 years old by now so it is establishing some presence within the scientific model of things. But still, how to understand it? So one of the analogies that I make in the DMT book is the brain is a receiver as opposed to a generator of a particular channel of consciousness, Channel Normal, as it were.

Under extreme situations then the channel switches and as a result of being given DMT the brain is now able to perceive channels of information that it couldn’t before. If you change your perspective on the relationship between the brain and consciousness then things start to become a bit clearer, but at the same time have been more mind-boggling, too.

Alex Tsakiris: Right. But it’s such an important leap to make. Now let’s jump over that chasm because it’s so much more fun on the other side to start speculating what that means and what this spiritual expanded consciousness might mean outside of this body, outside of this time frame that we’re in.

I guess the starting point for that would be to ask you about how this has shifted your experience spiritually, personally. What has your research done to you?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Kind of entering the study as a dyed-in-the-wool Zen Buddhist, I had over 20 years in experience and training and study in duo theodicies of the Zen monastery. And I was expecting those kinds of enlightenment experiences from people getting DMT. In a way, that view of things is a bit “scientific.” It posits that everything is a product of your mind as opposed to these experiences actually representing external, freestanding, other levels of reality. So I could kind of hold the Zen model of the mind and also the brain model of the mind in fairly good balance. They were pretty consistent with each other.

And as a result of my studies, that got overturned because the volunteers-even the ones with  meditation practice, Zen experience, they’d studied Buddhism, they were completely unprepared for the kinds of relational, non-unitive experiences that were much more typical of the effects of DMT.

So after my studies ended, I went back to the drawing board when it came to explanatory models. I toyed with other models, scientific models, to explain the freestanding, external reality basis of people’s experiences. I touched upon some of the ideas regarding dark matter and parallel universes and those kinds of concepts. And those were helpful in terms of explaining the mechanisms of action, let’s say.

At the same time, I even found those concepts and those models not that satisfactory because they were skirting around the issue of the spiritual. I suppose I’m speaking of spiritual in this context as to the information that’s contained in those states and what that information is good for.

Alex Tsakiris: Which is an important distinction, if I can just interject something? I think it’s a really important distinction to say we can jump on this other side and look at it really analytically, kind of at arm’s length. Or we can jump into the content and start pulling apart and putting back together the content in a way that makes sense.

I just think it’s really brave and interesting of you to go there. I think it’s brave for you to go there. But I also think it’s very interesting and opens up a lot of doors that I wish more people would do because whether it’s right or wrong, at least you’re taking a stab at it and saying if the science gets us to this point aren’t we obligated to then do some content analysis on the information we’re getting back from these experiences?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Right, exactly. The scientific models make sense but at the same time they really didn’t touch me in an emotional or “spiritual” kind of way. Like what does this mean? What good is it for? Is it going to make the world a better place? Is it going to help us make popcorn more quickly or generate world peace more quickly? You can always make a faster car and a bigger bomb but can you promote world peace and advocate for the poor and the widow?

So that’s when I began stepping out of both the scientific model and also in some ways the Buddhist model. The Buddhist model is useful to a certain point. It is a spiritual tradition and it’s got ethics and it’s got morals, but those come out of an undifferentiated state of enlightenment as opposed to being part and parcel of the actual spiritual experience.

As I was looking around for a tradition which made the ethical and the moral content part and parcel of this spiritual experience, I actually ended up back at the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament of my younger days as a child in Hebrew school. So over the last few years, I’ve been kicking around the idea of the Western spiritual pinnacle of spirituality as a prophetic state as described by the Old Testament prophets. If you read the accounts of Ezekiel or Isaiah or Jeremiah or Moses or any of these great characters in the Bible, their experiences are incredibly psychedelic. Also they comport quite closely with a number of the experiences of our DMT volunteers.

One of the strengths and the beauties of the Old Testament prophetic tradition is that the teaching, the experience, the words are in a Western context and also are just saturated with ethical and moral teachings. So I’ve been trying to pull together a psychedelic review of the Old Testament as the content of the current book I’m working on right now.

Alex Tsakiris: That’s fascinating and I want to go there a little bit. One of the points that you raise that sent you on this other journey towards Judaism is this unitive versus relational, and that’s you expected more of a Buddhist kind of know-nothing God and you found a relational, someone who’s there to guide you, some entity that you can interact with. That’s what your volunteers found.

It’s interesting because I compare that to what I’ve come to understand from the near-death experience, from reading a lot of accounts and talking to researchers. One of the things that struck me was that this unitive aspect of it seems to be primary in the near-death experience. There does seem to also be this relational part a lot of the time, but not all the time.

As a matter of fact, one of the leading researchers and a guy I really like because I like the way he presents, is Jeff Long, a radiation oncologist out of Louisiana, who has probably compiled and reviewed the largest database of near-death experiences. I was just speaking with him the other day and his follow-on book is about this unitive aspect of it and how the understanding that near-death experiencers come away with is this massively interconnected, that we’re all one, that there is this one light.

There is this one-now God may be getting into relational, but how do you pull that apart? How do you see that? Does that fit in with the experiences of your volunteers?

Dr. Richard Strassman: It isn’t consistent with the reports of my volunteers. I was just thinking about a book I read a couple of years back which talked about this issue. He put together a very cool book called, The Soul After Death, and he talked about the frequency of the white light experience in contemporary NDEs. He’s got an interesting take on it. There’s obviously a lot of different ways to interpret it.

He was comparing the quality of contemporary near-death experiences with those from a long time ago. They were much more terrifying and you’re judged and you go through Hell and you are attacked by demons and your faith is tested. So he proposes that one of the reasons that those experiences of the white light, especially ones with the emotional qualities of being loving and accepting and those kinds of things, are a result of contemporary spiritual perspectives.

Alex Tsakiris: I’ll certainly have to get Steven Rose on the show. He sounds like he’d be a great guest. Of course, I was raised Greek Orthodox. I’m like you. I can’t ever see myself going back to that religious tradition.

Dr. Richard Strassman: It’s a pretty scary tradition. He died a number of years back so you might have a hard time having him on your show.

Alex Tsakiris: Oh, wow, okay. I was going to interject that we will go on and talk about it because I’ll never have the opportunity to interview him. But I have to say that my understanding of near-death experience research would contradict that in a couple of ways.

One is that as the researchers have honed more in on the genuine death experience as opposed to the near-death, and that is they studied cardiac arrest patients and interviewed them immediately after the incident. They found much less of the scary NDEs; or I guess in general I can just say the quality of the NDE experience changed and it changed based on that dimension, which I think is interesting because that suggests that maybe some of those other interpretations and perceptions of the near-death experience had come through a more conscious state or reinterpretation of it.

But the other thing I’d say is when you look at it from a cultural perspective, which folks have done, and you analyze the near-death experience it doesn’t really hold up to the New Ageish feel-good-God. The data really kind of supports that model.

Dr. Richard Strassman: Yeah. And I didn’t completely agree with his perspective either because of the cross-cultural consistency, too. But it was an interesting spin on the friendly, white light and how commonly that’s encountered now-a-days as opposed to the harsh, judging, righteous God out there.

Alex Tsakiris: The whole thing gets back to this question that we just touched on here and that you raised in your work and that’s the degree to which our perception, our unique human experience, how that enters into our interpreting of the spiritual experience. Maybe you want to talk about that a little bit and how you found that in your volunteers. And also how that’s factored into your own spiritual quest since then.

And let me add to that. We’re kind of in this quandary because on one hand there’s such a prejudice against accepting people’s spiritual experiences. We tend to dismiss it. So many times in science we tend to dismiss it or downgrade it. And yet, at the same time there’s some evidence that suggests that we should be skeptical of even our own spiritual experience and we do need to compare it with others before we embrace it fully. Any thoughts on that?

Dr. Richard Strassman: In the case of most of my volunteers, they were not expecting the kinds of experiences that they ended up having. It was a relatively common refrain that I heard from the volunteers that they couldn’t have expected what their experience was like. They couldn’t have imagined it. They weren’t anticipating it at all that way. Most of them were actually going into the study with the expectation and also the hope of an enlightenment being kind of a Buddhist, white light type of experience. They were as caught off-guard and by surprise by the types of experiences they ended up having as much as I was.

Alex Tsakiris: Let’s drill into that a little bit because I have maybe glossed over some issues that are going to leave some people behind. A little bit of detail here might be interesting. So you have volunteers in New Mexico who don’t know anything about the DMT experiments; don’t know anything about Iowaska.

They have this experience and they see these reptilian beings that are similar to what these folks in the Amazon have seen for hundreds of years, right? You do have some kind of unexplainable correlation between what they’re experience is in terms of the beings, and these beings that indigenous people have experienced for a long time, right?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Yeah, and I performed my studies between 1990 and 1995 and Terrence McKenna’s stuff hadn’t really become quite as popular as it became consequently with respect to his descriptions of the sort of freestanding quality of the DMT world. I don’t think any of my volunteers were especially interested in UFOs or the abduction experience to any extent. Iowaska still hadn’t really emerged from the jungle as a popular cultural item.

Alex Tsakiris: Interesting. Let me shift back and talk about this prophecy work that you’re doing because it’s fascinating, it’s challenging at the same time. Here’s a quote from an article that I read of yours, an interview with you, and it says that you believe that “there’s tremendous power in the Old Testament Bible.” When you say that do you mean as opposed to the New Testament Bible? As opposed to the Badvagita, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to other “sacred” scripture?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Oh, I suppose in terms of the Old Testament it’s an old book. Obviously it’s a couple thousand years old. It’s kind of what the New Testament stands on in a way. The New Testament relies upon the Old Testament as confirming Jesus as the Messiah and even in the Qur’an there’s quite a few instances of Old Testament stories in the Qur’an, either verbatim or reworked.

If you take into account all the Muslims, all the Christians, and all the Jews in the world, they’re close to one-half of the world’s population. And it’s got staying power, the Bible. It still has a tremendous amount of influence. The Hebrew Bible, I think its perspective has really influenced every aspect of the West. Western science, Western philosophy, Western law.

Alex Tsakiris: No one would argue any of those points with you but you seem to be going someplace different, someplace further. That’s okay. I just want to understand that. You seem to be bridging this gap between spiritual reality and the Bible. And that’s okay. I just want to understand what that means for you-what that bridge is like.

Dr. Richard Strassman: Well, sure. So the power of the Bible, I think, kind of hinges on the prophetic state of mind out of which the text emerged. The power isn’t just because it gives good advice about law or economics. Its good advice is as a result of the source of the information in the first place. That source of information is the prophetic state of consciousness, which I am going to argue is a psychedelic state with features in common with the DMT experience.

Alex Tsakiris: So the New Testament characters that we’re talking about Ezekiel and the rest, were having psychedelic experiences, going into these other realms, bringing back information that we might want to pay attention to and might be relevant to our current situation.

Dr. Richard Strassman: Yeah. Yeah for sure it’s relevant. I mean, everybody knows the story about Adam and Eve and Abraham and Isaac and the Red Sea and the Ten Commandments, all that. So they are relevant. But the issue is where did that information come from? Is it possible for us to understand it, to tap into it ourselves? That’s where the psychedelic element of the prophetic state comes into play.

If DMT is a naturally-occurring compound which occurs possibly as a result of extreme stress or one’s biological constitution being so composed that DMT could be released spontaneously more often in one person than another, you could speculate that it is related to what you could call a prophetic state of consciousness.

And if you want to understand your psychedelic experience in Western terms and applicable to the Western mind and the Western culture, the Bible could be an extremely helpful guidebook to understand your experiences and to shape them and to apply them more than a Shamanic model might be or an Eastern religious model might be.

Alex Tsakiris: Great. I was with you right up until the end. That end really surprised me. Why more than? If this has occurred the way that you think it’s occurred, isn’t it reasonable to assume that it’s occurred in other traditions in other places and other times around the planet?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Yeah. There’s no question. At the same time we’re not jungle dwellers and we’re not Asians, at least me and you. So we have the background and we have a language and we even have genes, I would imagine, which are uniquely Western. So I think with respect to the Western view of spirituality and Western culture and the Western mind, the Bible would be more applicable than Buddhism, or Hinduism or Shamanism just because those really aren’t our cultures. That’s not our parent’s culture, our grandparent’s culture, or our great-grandparent’s culture.

Alex Tsakiris: I hear you and nice points. Reclaim the Bible. Reclaim our tradition. I just want to make sure you’re not suggesting that that tradition is somehow superior, better, straighter path to true knowing ultimate Truth, anything like that, because there’s some preferred position or some preferred status that the Bible holds above other sacred texts.

Dr. Richard Strassman: No, no. I think it came out of the Middle East 3,000 years ago or more. So for people whose genes and his mind and his culture are direct descendants of that text, I think it could be more relevant.

It’s interesting to speculate regarding different naturally-occurring psychedelics. I have made reference to finding the Foxy DMT as more typically generating an enlightenment kind of experience. Kind of a unitive, into a conceptless, imageless kind of existence. So it’s interesting to wonder if the Asian religions, if their practitioners and founders, if their biologies may have slightly differed from that of the West in terms of producing more of one type of andoginous hallucinogen than another.

Alex Tsakiris: I don’t know. I don’t see how we quite get there given that India and the Buddhist tradition came out of the Hindu tradition. The Hindu tradition would be highly relational, I guess, in your model. I mean, mediated by all sorts of different beings that sound a lot like the DMT trips. So I don’t know.

Dr. Richard Strassman: That could be. And clearly the Tibetan tradition is quite full of beings and of deities and things like that. And if you scratch below the surface, I think you would find in the Tibetan tradition that those are completely or entirely understood as projections of the mind.

Alex Tsakiris: I agree and I think that’s my understanding of it. I wasn’t going to go there too far because I’m certainly not an expert, but my understanding of it is that. My understanding also is that the two are resolvable in that the beings in those other states that we realize are transitional states towards that unifying state.

So I don’t go there too far because I don’t have direct experience with it and also I just don’t have the knowledge base in it. But I think that if I talk to a Buddhist scholar, and I have talked to several on the show, I kind of got a feeling that the Tibetan Buddhist would be able to resolve those differences pretty easily.

Dr. Richard Strassman: Yeah. Getting back to your question about superiority or one is better than the other, I don’t think that’s the case. I think that the Bible has been relegated as a kind of non-psychedelic tradition and the Shamanic model and the Buddhist model have taken center stage when discussing the spiritual properties of psychedelics. So I’m going to be proposing the Bible as an alternative model, one that’s as useful as the other and depending on one’s propensities and interests and tastes it could be more relevant.

Alex Tsakiris: Fascinating. And Rick, it sounds like there’s a book in there. Is there? Is there an upcoming book on this?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Yeah. Actually I’m about a quarter of the way through with it. It’s called The Soul of Prophesy. I hope it’s out in about the end of the year. That’s my hope and I think I can pull it off.

Alex Tsakiris: Great. What other projects are keeping you busy these days?

Dr. Richard Strassman: Well, that’s it. I was working on the book full-time until June last year. I had a bunch of tragedies that took place in my life so I took a break over the summer, but I got back to writing pretty much full-time in October. So that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing.

Alex Tsakiris: It’s certainly been great having you on Skeptiko. It’s just a fascinating topic and what you’ve brought to it is really, really a gift to all of us. So thanks for all of your work in this area.

Dr. Richard Strassman: You’re welcome. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about these things.

Source: https://skeptiko.com/rick-strassman-psychedelic-drugs-prove-we-are-more-than-our-brain/

From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted U.S. Government-approved and funded clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected sixty volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an extraordinarily riveting inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical found in the psychedelic Amazon brew, ayahuasca, is also manufactured by the human brain. In Strassman's volunteers, it consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, aliens, angels, and spirits. Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives.

Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by Rene Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the bold case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. Strassman also believes that "alien abduction experiences" are brought on by accidental releases of DMT. If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul.

After completing his groundbreaking research chronicled in DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Rick Strassman was left with one fundamental question: What does it mean that DMT, a simple chemical naturally found in all of our bodies, instantaneously opens us to an interactive spirit world that feels more real than our own world?

When his decades of clinical psychiatric research and Buddhist practice were unable to provide answers to this question, Strassman began searching for a more resonant spiritual model. He found that the visions of the Hebrew prophets--such as Ezekiel, Moses, Adam, and Daniel--were strikingly similar to those of the volunteers in his DMT studies. Carefully examining the concept of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, he characterizes a “prophetic state of consciousness” and explains how it may share biological and metaphysical mechanisms with the DMT effect.

Examining medieval commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, Strassman reveals how Jewish metaphysics provides a top-down model for both the prophetic and DMT states, a model he calls “theoneurology.” Theoneurology bridges biology and spirituality by proposing that the Divine communicates with us using the brain, and DMT--whether naturally produced or ingested--is a critical factor in such visionary experience. This model provides a counterpoint to “neurotheology,” which proposes that altered brain function simply generates the impression of a Divine-human encounter.

Theoneurology addresses issues critical to the full flowering of the psychedelic drug experience. Perhaps even more important, it points the way to a renewal of classical prophetic consciousness, the soul of Hebrew Bible prophecy, as well as unexpected directions for the evolution of contemporary spiritual practice.

For thousands of years, voyagers of inner space--spiritual seekers, shamans, and psychoactive drug users--have returned from their inner imaginal travels reporting encounters with alien intelligences. Inner Paths to Outer Space presents an innovative examination of how we can reach these other dimensions of existence and contact otherworldly beings. 

Based on their more than 60 combined years of research into the function of the brain, the authors reveal how psychoactive substances such as DMT allow the brain to bypass our five basic senses to unlock a multidimensional realm of existence where otherworldly communication occurs. They contend that our centuries-old search for alien life-forms has been misdirected and that the alien worlds reflected in visionary science fiction actually mirror the inner space world of our minds. The authors show that these “alien” worlds encountered through altered states of human awareness, either through the use of psychedelics or other methods, possess a sense of reality as great as, or greater than, those of the ordinary awareness perceived by our five senses.

It is organized into neurochemical models of paranormal experience (section 1), eld reports of intentional and spontaneous phenomena incorporating anthropological, historical and clinical cases, and personal accounts (section 2), surveys of paranormal belief and experience (section 3), experimental research (section 4), and a methodological critique of the experimental research with recommendations for further work (section 5). 

However, by regarding this unique molecule as equivalent to serotonin, an endogenous neuromodulator with a long-standing relationship with the brain, DMT’s effects may be explained. Serotonin has evolved to hold the brain’s thalamocortical system in a state in which the consensus world is built. When serotonin is replaced by DMT, the thalamocortical system shifts into an equivalent state, but one in which an apparently alien world is built. This suggests that DMT may be an ancestral neuromodulator, at one time secreted endogenously in psychedelic concentrations—a function apparently now lost. However, DMT maintains a number of unique pharmacological characteristics and a peculiar affi nity with the human brain that supports this model. Thus, the modern practice of ingesting exogenous DMT may be the reconstitution of an ancestral function.

Strassman’s work on DMT, which kickstarted what has become known as the ‘psychedelic renaissance’, led to the highly successful book DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2000) and a documentary of the same name, released in 2012. Both detailed the strange entities and worlds that his study volunteers encountered. His next book, DMT and the Soul of Prophecy (2014), would draw parallels between DMT trips and the prophetic experiences described in the Hebrew Bible – the visions of Hebrew prophets, such as Ezekiel, Moses, Adam, and Daniel.

His latest book, The Psychedelic Handbook: A Practical Guide to Psilocybin, LSD, Ketamine, MDMA, and DMT/Ayahuasca – as you can see from the subtitle – goes beyond the DMT experience. It covers not just the psychedelics mentioned in the subtitle but also mescaline (and the cacti that contain it: peyote and San Pedro), 5-MeO-DMT, ibogaine, and salvia. (You can read my book review here.)

I discussed with Rick this new direction he’s taken, as well as many crucial questions in the field of psychedelic research.

Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Rick. I wanted to say, firstly, that I really enjoyed reading your new book and appreciate that it gives such a comprehensive overview of many different psychedelics. Since your previous books have focused on DMT, what inspired you to take a broader approach in your new book?

Thank you for your kind words about the book. I feel some responsibility for the direction the psychedelic movement is taking, as our 1990s studies in Albuquerque initiated the North American renewal of human research with psychedelics. Much of the information people are exposed to comes from non-experts and/or those with overriding financial and/or religious stakes in the matter. So, this seems like a good time to present a brief yet thorough, comprehensive, and user-friendly review of the field: what psychedelics are, how they work, potential benefits and risks, legal and microdosing issues, and how to make the most of your own psychedelic experiences.

As part of the broad view of psychedelics you take, I noticed that you dedicate a fair bit of information about the risks of psychedelics. As you say, the “rush of enthusiasm regarding psychedelics” can mean that potential adverse events get overlooked or dismissed. Talking about the risks is valuable for the sake of balance and harm reduction. But given that there is still some stigma surrounding these substances, do you think risks need to be discussed in a certain way so that people aren’t overly fearful of them? I’m thinking here of how many people associate psychedelics with permanent insanity, suicidality, or frightening ‘flashbacks’.

I would rather people be afraid of taking psychedelics than take them casually. Terence McKenna used to say that before one smokes DMT, “one’s hand always shakes lighting the pipe.” Not everybody should take psychedelics–they carry risks, and I think the pendulum needs to swing back to a realistic assessment of the benefit-risk ratio. At this time, the ratio is heavily biased toward the benefit. 

Psychedelics can lead to chronic unremitting psychosis, accidental or intentional suicide or violence, and flashbacks. All of those are real risks. Just like with any other powerful drug – cancer chemotherapy, steroids, or antipsychotic medications – informed consent requires a clear description of risks and benefits. 

Unfortunately, we do not yet have good current data regarding how often psychosis, suicidality, or flashbacks occur. In a recent study from Amsterdam, 70% of 5-methoxy-DMT users reported flashbacks after a 5-methoxy-DMT retreat. In our studies of DMT and psilocybin, six people out of 53 had some serious adverse effects, and these were normal volunteers that we screened carefully and who all had previous experience with psychedelics.

In the preface to the book, you say, “By various means and in various settings, I am personally familiar with the effects of every substance I discuss in this handbook.” I’ve also heard you speak openly about your psychedelic experiences or what you’ve learned from them on some of your recent podcast appearances. Since you didn’t use to disclose your personal experiences, which I imagine many academics are hesitant to do, what made you decide to be more open about that? Was this a difficult thing to decide to do?

For many years I would answer questions about my own use of DMT along the lines of: “If I say I have, I’m accused of being a zealot; if I say I don’t, people will say I don’t know what I’m talking about.” That is, a yes and a no. 

I shared my first big DMT experience in a public interview with Graham Hancock in 2019 in Sedona. And I’ve been more forthcoming since then. I think researchers can benefit the field by discussing their own experiences if they do not use them to justify a conviction that psychedelics work because of the kind of experience they had. That is, if someone had a mystical-unitive experience, and they feel a profound impact from that experience, that does not mean that the mystical unitive experience is necessary for everyone or that it’s valid to conclude that mystical experiences heal—this is how psychedelics work. 

On the other hand, I think it’s useful to talk about one’s own psychedelic experiences if it is in the service of describing the experience as much as an observer as a participant, and using that experience as a springboard for research. In addition, I am less exposed than many scientists who are currently working in the field in terms of grants, permits, regulatory boards, university responsibilities, etc., and can speak more freely than many.

One point I found interesting in your book was how psychedelic researchers and users favour the mystical experience model, even though the mystical-unitive state may not be necessary for benefits, and, as you say, interactive-relational spiritual experiences can be just as profound and meaningful. I was reminded here of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, who spoke about relation – not unity – being fundamental and the ultimate source of meaning. How do you imagine that research could be more inclusive of interactive-relational experiences? Do you think that there should be questionnaires that try to measure them?

I think one can develop an interactive-relational rating scale in a similar manner to ones that measure the mystical-unitive state. In my book [DMT and the Soul of Prophecy] comparing the DMT state with that described in Hebrew biblical figures experiencing the prophetic state, I detail many different types of interactions occurring between a prophetic figure and his/her visions. Those types of interactions could be assessed using a rating scale that scores the presence and strength of those kinds of interactions.

You talk in the book about the potential benefits of non-psychedelic psychoplastogens: tweaked versions of psychedelics that help improve brain health but don’t cause psychedelic effects. I’ve seen some pushback against the idea of taking the trip out of psychedelics, as it’s seen as a way of favouring the biomedical model of distress, as well as for the related reason that true healing requires the psychedelic experience. How would you respond to these concerns?

In animals, both nonpsychedelic doses of typical psychedelics and “nonpsychedelic psychedelics” both stimulate neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. So, it does not seem necessary for behavioral effects to accompany these psychoplastogenic effects in rodents. Antidepressants also increase neuroplasticity. 

My sense is that these nonpsychedelic compounds (or nonpsychedelic doses of typical compounds) will work much like antidepressants. More or less effective on their own but more helpful when combined with psychotherapy. I think they should be the default for most people who would simply like to feel less depressed and not have to experience the rigors of a major psychedelic experience. 

On the other hand, the psychological effects of a psychedelic experience may produce even greater benefit and be indicated in more severe or difficult-to-treat cases. It’s again a matter of informed consent: does someone want a possibly – but not necessarily – less effective treatment with fewer side effects or a higher-risk treatment that may be more beneficial?

And people will always want to trip for various nonmedical reasons: meditation, creativity, prayer, fun, intimacy, nature appreciation, etc. I think there ought to be a model in which that kind of use can take place.

I was hoping we could now shift to the topic of microdosing, which has become a popular way of taking psychedelics. You point out that some studies on the benefits of microdosing deal with “a host of placebo-related factors – expectation, selection bias, and suggestibility.” If these reported benefits are largely down to the placebo effect, do you think it is morally problematic for companies and individuals to sell microdosing kits, courses, and coaching?

Much of the data regarding microdosing suggests that placebo response plays a major role in the described benefits. But placebo is a good thing if it is directed in the proper manner. One of the reasons psychedelics appear to be panaceas is perhaps due to their placebo-enhancing effects, and if small non-psychoactive doses of psychedelics also enhance the placebo response, I don’t see any harm if people feel better and there are no troubling toxicity issues. 

Microdosing may also stimulate neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, as well as produce some of the same serotonin receptor effects as SSRI antidepressants–these two factors play an additional role. 

When people sell microdosing kits, courses, and coaching, ethical considerations dictate they ought to be forthcoming regarding what’s known about efficacy, mechanisms, and potential side effects. They could even emphasize the potential placebo-enhancing effect of microdosing, rather than offering unproven biological theories. 

You mention in the book that there is a lot we don’t know about how psychedelics work. In light of this, what kinds of studies do you think are especially needed right now?

I think the placebo question is critically important. It could be a unifying theory of why psychedelics appear to do so many different things and in so many different contexts. It may be that the intensity of any psychedelic experience is the key determinant in activating the placebo response regardless of the specific type of experience: mystical-unitive, interactive-relational, pleasant or unpleasant, visual or emotional. Then this placebo response recruits the mind-body’s innate healing mechanisms—biological and psychological.

To the extent the placebo response relates to suggestibility, studies could assess baseline suggestibility of subjects and see if the more suggestible someone is, the more they respond to psychedelic-assisted therapy or other interventions. In addition, placebo-responsive conditions may be more responsive to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy than non-placebo-responsive ones; for example, depression vs cancer.

The presence of high levels of endogenous DMT in the mammalian brain is of interest here. Concentrations are as high as those for recognized neurotransmitters like serotonin. If there turns out to be an endogenous DMT neurotransmitter system, what role could such a neurotransmitter be playing that stimulates the same receptors that psychedelics stimulate? A compound that may regulate placebo responsiveness in all of us all of the time?

At the end of the book, you say you look forward to further research into psychedelics and “applying their effects for the common good”. What do you believe are the most substantial benefits that these compounds can offer to communities and society at large?

Psychedelics are “mind-manifesting/disclosing”. What the person has in their mind more or less conscious is what the drugs work on. Psychedelics can magnify the importance and meaning of both good and evil beliefs, feelings, or behavior. Neo-Nazis take psychedelics just like progressive eco-feminists. 

Stepping back, then, it seems as if psychedelics increase our commitment, the intensity of our relationship, to the things we have already been exposed to and are considering. Psychedelics can increase our determination and conviction regarding the best way to live our lives. But this doesn’t come from the drug, but from the drug interacting with what you bring to the experience.

Source: https://www.samwoolfe.com/2022/11/hype-psychedelics-interview-dr-rick-strassman.html