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.
DMT and hyperspace
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?
Sounds Serious...
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