It throws open the door to worlds beyond our imagination.
The consequence of this flood of DMT upon our dying brain-based mind is a pulling back of the veils normally hiding what Tibetan Buddhists call the bardo, or intermediary states between this life and the next. DMT opens our inner senses to these betwixt states with their myriad visions, thoughts, sounds, and feelings. As the body becomes totally inert, consciousness has completely left the body and now exists as a field among many fields of manifest things.
If you think you've died, there's two ways I tell people they can deal with it. One is 'Man, I'm dying, and I'm going to kick and scream and try and stop it.' The other is 'Okay, I'm dying, now let's see what this is like. Very interesting.' Easier said than done, of course.
" I was worried that the vibration would blow my head up, " "The colors and vibration were so intense I thought I would pop, " "I didn't think I would stay in my skin. "
" I no longer had a body, " "My body dissolved — I was pure awareness. "
" beautiful, colorful pink cobwebs; an elongation of light, " "tremendously intricate tiny geometric colors, like being one inch from a color television. "
" It was like the blue of a desert sky, but on another planet. The colors were a hundred times deeper. "
" My mind was definitely in a different place, but it was commenting on the state as it was going on. "
" I hated it. I've never been so frightened, " "menacing, " "incredible torture; I thought it would never end. "
" I tried to get myself worked up over what I was seeing, but I just wasn't able to respond emotionally. "
" You know how schizophrenics talk about different meanings to things? A leaf on the ground takes on great significance? That kind of thing. "
One volunteer who previously had used heroin thought this dose felt something like that drug: "There was a warm cotton batting sensation." (0.05 mg/kg)
However, DMT, as a true spirit molecule, gave our volunteers the trip they needed, rather than the one they wanted.
appealing to his "psychedelic machismo "
I guess I have a lot of unresolved feelings.
Maybe somethings been done. Maybe 15 minutes from now I won't be saying this.
" Very little. It's like a roto-rooter for your nervous system. It clears. some things free. It was purely energetic. There are cumulative effects. Something happened, something changed between the third and fourth doses. After the third, I just gave up. "
In many ways, a high dose of DMT is traumatic, bringing about a loss of control and annihilation of personal identity. "Shock" is a word we heard many times during the DMT studies. I even began using the term when I prepared people for their first 0.4 mg/kg session. Several volunteers recommended we print t-shirts with the words "I Survived 0.4" to hand out to those who successfully negotiated that morning's events.
By experiencing absolute loss of control in a safe and supportive situation, it might be possible to more fully contact, and thereby own and let go of, certain painful emotions.
" It's impossible to make sense of it. I'd rather do it again, to see what it's like. It's refreshing to get a change of perspective, to see how insignificant my everyday problems are. I felt peaceful this afternoon. There was a brief moment of wanting it to be over because it was so intense, but I remembered to breathe and settled back into it. It's so weird, impossible to prepare for, to know what to expect. I'd rather not introspect too much. "
You should patent it. I guess it's too late for that. If I could only hold onto this feeling. If everybody did this every day the world would be a much better place. Life would be a lot better. The potential for good is so great. Feeling good within yourself. I guess meditation is supposed to get you to the same place.
" I guess. DMT strips you down to your soul. I know that there is nothing to worry about. DMT showed me how to see beyond it all. Everything will basically be all right. I remember an idea of Samuel Coleridge: If you have a wonderful dream and bring a rose back with you and then you wake up and the rose is in your hand, that meant the dream was real. When I came home and saw the bruises and the holes in my arm I really felt like that—that it really did happen, and that I really was where I was, and felt what I felt. "
When I looked around, it seemed like the meaning or symbols were there. Some kind of core of reality where all meaning is stored. I burst into its main chamber.
There are no doors, there's nothing to go through. It's either over here — it's dark; or over there—there are images. You just can't do anything with them.
At the end I went past, beyond the apartments. I entered into a space, a crack in the earth. It wasn't horizontal, it was vertical. A crack in space.
There was no turning back. After a moment or two I became aware of something happening to my left. I saw a psychedelic, Day-Glo-colored space that approximated a room whose walls and floor had no clear separations or edges. It was throbbing and pulsing electrically. Rising in front of "me" was a podium-like table. It seemed that some presence was dealing/serving something to me. I wanted to know where I was and "sensed" the reply that I had no business there. The presence was not hostile, just somewhat annoyed and brusque.
The relentless scratchy, crackling visuals didn't last long. Then I was above a strange landscape, like Earth, but very unearthly. Mountains of some son. It was very friendly and inviting. It was so real I had to open my eyes. When I did the scene was overlaid on top of the room. I closed my eyes, and that removed the interference with what I had been seeing. It was like a super-bright Day-Glo poster, but much more complex. I was hovering miles above it. I had the very distinct sense of doing this, not just the visual perception. There were some telescopes, or microwave dishes, or water-tower things with antennae on them. I wish I could take you by the hand and show you. A vast expanse of horizon. The sun was different, different colors and hues than our sun.
In other words, it is "somewhere else" with "someone there" and "something happening, " but so familiar as to deceive us about its "otherness. "
Can our spiritual and religious structures encompass what truly resides within these different levels of existence?
There was an initial sense of panic. Then the most beautiful colors coalesced into beings. There were lots of beings. They were talking to me but they weren't making a sound. It was more as if they were blessing me, the spirits of life were blessing me. They were saying that life was good. At first it felt like I was going through a cave or a tunnel or into space, at a fast rate, definitely. I felt like a ball hurtling down to wherever it was.
" if death is like this, there's nothing to worry about. "
Then there was a message telling me that I had been given a gift, that this space was mine and I could go there anytime. I should feel blessed to have form, to live. It went on forever.
I felt evolution occurring. These intelligences are looking over us. There is hope beyond the mess we are making for ourselves.
This is real. It's totally unexpected, quite constant and objective. One could interpret your looking at my pupils as being observed, and the tubes in my body as the tubes I'm seeing. But that is a metaphor, and this is not at all a metaphor. It's an independent, constant reality.
DMT has shown me the reality that there is infinite variation on reality. There is the real possibility of adjacent dimensions. It may not be so simple as that there's alien planets with their own societies. This is too proximal. It's not like some kind of drug. It's more like an experience of a new technology than a drug.
You can choose to attend to this or not. It will continue to progress without you paying attention. You return not to where you left off, but to where things have gone since you left. It's not a hallucination, but an observation. When I'm there, I'm not intoxicated. I'm lucid and sober.
Laura asked "Was there any fear? "
Maybe at the onset, at just having my ego brushed aside.
" I can't talk with anyone about these things." "No one would understand. It's just too strange." "I want to remind myself that I'm not losing my mind. "
I remember that feeling from when I was a kid. When I was scared I would relax and say to myself, "The worst thing that can happen is I'll go to God" when I was afraid.
His comment reminded me of a Tibetan meditation practice I had learned many summers before. The method was simply to ask yourself over and over again, "Is this what I am?" With whatever answer you gave— "my body, " "my job, " "my relationships"—it was important to ask again, "Is this what I am?" My body, mind, identity, opinions, feelings, all began falling away. This meditation upset me so much that I ran outside and vomited.
When I was first going under there were these insect creatures all around me. They were clearly trying to break through. I was fighting letting go of who I am or was. The more I fought, the more demonic they became, probing into my psyche and being. I finally started letting go of parts of myself, as I could no longer keep so much of me together. As I did, I still clung to the idea that all was God, and that God was love, and I was giving myself up to God and God's love because I was certain I was dying. As I accepted my death and dissolution into God's love, the insectoids began to feed on my heart, devouring the feelings of love and surrender.
It's not like LSD. Things really closed in around me, in comparison to the spaciousness that I feel with LSD. There was no feeling of space. Everything was in close. I've never seen anything like that. They were interested in emotion. As I was holding on to my last thought, that God equals love, they said, "Even here? Even here?" I said, "Yes, of course." They were still there but I was making love to them at the same time. They feasted as they made love to me. I don't know if they were male or female or something else, but it was extremely alien, though not necessarily unpleasant. The thought came to me with certainty that they were manipulating my DNA, changing its structure.
And then it started fading. They didn't want me to go.
The sheer intensity was almost unbearable. The forms became increasingly sinister the more I fought.
My body doesn't feel quite my own. There is still something of the other dimension flowing through it. I feel permeated by something else.
It looked like it was in afield of black space.
I thought it would last and last and never go away
Her fears hinged on "being lost in an abyss, and of not being brave enough to face the challenge. "
There was a sound, like a hum that turned into a whoosh, and then I was blasted out of my body at such speed, with such force, as if it were the speed of light. The colors were aggressive, terrifying; I felt as if they would consume me, as if I were on a warp-speed conveyer belt heading straight into the cosmic psychedelic buzzsaw. I was terrified. I felt abandoned. I'm completely and totally lost. I have never been so alone. How can you describe what it feels like to be the only entity in the universe?
There are sounds: high-pitched singing, like angel voices. But they aren 't comforting. They are very impersonal and don't care about me. They are simply part of the background noise of blasting through the void of the universe. It felt like going backward from life in a physical body to life as simply an energy form with no body. The essence of who I am was alone in the void, back in the staging area for life where souls wait to incarnate. I was in a place where there are no physical life-forms, only colors and sounds. The singing angels were there only to observe me, not to comfort me. But even though they didn't comfort me, I did bring back an incredible sense of Love.
A male presence tries to communicate with me, but I don't understand. I use my mind to ask, "What?" The reply is garbled. It (he) is trying to tell me I will see something. But what? I try to ask, "Will I know it when I see it?" The presence tells me I will see something. Is it by the horizon's light I see in the vast darkness? There is a great roaring sound. It interferes with the voice because I know it is a jet "out there." I'm coming back. The Voice is gone.
It starts with my face seeming to harden up, become firm rather than nebulous. I feel the blood pressure cuff inflate. The rest of my body conies together, and I know I'm completely back. I lift up the eyeshades. I feel a deep and poignant love for Laura and Rick, whom I see first. I turn my head to see Kevin. What a beautiful relief.
They seemed pleased that we had discovered this technology. (Meaning DMT. – AB)
/ went directly into deep space. They knew I was coming back and they were ready for me. They told me there were many things they could share with us when we learn how to make more extended contact. Again, they wanted something from me, not just physical information. They were interested in emotions and feelings. I told them, "We have something we can give you: spirituality." / guess what I really meant was Love. I tried to figure out how to do this. I felt a tremendous energy, brilliant pink light with white edges, building on my left side. I knew it was spiritual energy and Love. They were on my right, so I reached out my hands across the universe and prepared to be a bridge. I let this energy pass through me to them. I said something like, "See, there I did it for you. You have it." They were grateful. 1 was coming down off the DMT, losing altitude. I would have to go back.
I was a little disappointed that experience was spent "giving" when what I wanted was spiritual enlightenment. Should I have asked for something to take back first? I guess I don't feel comfortable in my role as an earthly spiritual emissary. But I did my best. I always knew we weren't alone in the universe. I thought that the only way to encounter them is with bright lights and flying saucers in outer space. It never occurred to me to actually encounter them in our own inner space. I thought the only things we could encounter were things in our own personal sphere of archetypes and mythology. I expected spirit guides and angels, not alien life-forms.
It's so far out, so weird, so out of control, you have to learn something. / think I've learned what it's like to die, to be completely helpless in the throes of something. That's been helpful.
Stunned, I felt myself holding back. I relaxed and the environment began to change noticeably. I knew I was going through the first bardo of death, that I had been here many times before, and it was okay. "This is just like the last time, " I thought. Enough continuity with my waking consciousness gave me this thought next: "But this is my first time crossing over." I concluded I had broken out of time and space and either was experiencing my "normal" pattern of dying or was connected to a time in the future when, once again, I will know "this is the time I was in, back then, now. "
/ no longer fear death. It's like you're there one minute and then you're somewhere else, and that's just how it is.
The other side is very, very different. There are no words, body, or sounds there to limit things. I first saw deep space, white with stars. Then there was this multidimensional experience starting. It was alive. It was the aliveness that I heard. My body was trying to say, "Remember the body" as I was going into that place. It wasn't a desperate cry, but an attempt to keep it real, make the experience real from the point of view of the senses. The body wanted me back.
I thought I could see light down below, the world's light. It was like a little flap was lifted, like a simultaneous alternate reality.
It's like a cosmic joke. If we all knew what was waiting for us, we'd all kill ourselves. That's why we stay in this form for so long, to figure that out.
" One of our volunteers likes to say 'You can still be an atheist until 0.4.' "
There was the sound of the entire universe, more like a hum. It was pervasive, overwhelming. I thought, "Holy moly, how did I get into this?" Things weren't right and were getting more wrong all the time. Then my ability to perceive as a human being winked out. There were no more emotions, because emotions work only up to a certain point.
/ saw a man lying in a hospital room. He was naked with a person on either side of him, one female and one male. At first they didn't look like anybody I knew. They were perfect generic human beings. I recognized, in context, that they were me, you, and Laura. The way of knowing was totally different from this reality. I didn't know I was in a study of any kind. There was something wrong with him. He was there to get better. The hospital was a healing center. What was wrong with him was death. The naked person was dead. What killed the person was the stress from the DMT. None of my guardians or protectors made an appearance. They were out of the loop.
He was healed, more than healed. He was reborn. He got cured from death, healed from death. And then he became the creator of a whole universe. I gradually became more and more solid and moved toward my everyday presence. I watched the universe's creation down from fundamental mental energy to a vibratory rate to material things. I realized I was recreating the hospital and the room. As the world jelled more and more, I wanted to see it and asked to have the eyeshades taken off. I became fascinated with my fingers, like a newborn.
I've taught classes on how the universe is a construct of your own mind. And here it was happening. My attitude was different when I knew you were my creations. I felt as close to you as to my own son and daughter. I would have to say my experience was a classical death/rebirth experience. I had done it before, but never in the same way as with DMT. It was spectacular in imagery, texture, and atmosphere and had incredible lighting and effects. Boil it down and it's very, very classic.
The 0.2 was harrowing — this was way beyond. I knew the boundary beyond life existed. I never thought I'd be there, though, at such an early age. It's one of those things that old men talk about, like "once I got there." Its just the wrong place and time. I expect these sorts of things in the mountains with my friends in a more ceremonial setting.
vast energy slowing to vibrations, finally resulting in matter.
Then the patterns began. I said to myself, "Let me go through you. "
At that point it opened, and I was very much somewhere else. I believe it was at that point that I went out, into the universe—being, dancing with, a star system. I asked myself, "Why am I doing this to myself?" And then there was, "This is what you've always been searching for. This is what all of you has always been searching for. "
There was a movement of color. The colors were words. I heard what the colors were saying to me. I was trying to look out, but they were saying, "Go in." / was looking for God outside. They said, "God is in every cell of your body." And I was feeling it, totally open to it, and I kept opening to it more, and I just took it in. The colors kept telling me things, but they were telling me things so I not only heard what I was seeing, but also felt it in my cells. I say "felt, " but it was like no other "felt, " more like a knowing that was happening in my cells. That God is in everything and that we are all connected, and that God dances in every cell of life, and that every cell of life dances in God.
It came on fast and big, and an incredible pressure arose in my head, pushing me back. It blasted me into the realm in which pure living energy begins to take form. As it began to slow down, I saw the process of separated awareness. This slowing down creates form and consciousness. Before the slowing down, it's not there. It's not unconscious, but not conscious. It's real, of its own substance, not fragmented. It's amazing how slowly things move here on Earth!
Going out and slowing down into the periphery, to the fringes of it, into form. There is the endless outflow of creation, effortless, and then this vast process takes it back in. My little piece of energy goes in and out, too, not more or less than any other piece. You can't die. You can't go away. You can neither add nor subtract. There is a continual outflow that is immortality. The "I am" notion goes around and around. I have the certainty of that.
There were loads of paradoxes. I was not disoriented but there was no orientation. I didn't know where or who I was, but there was nothing to know who or where it was. I didn't have to wonder what to do next. There are no empty spaces, they were all filled up.
I immediately saw a bright yellow-white light directly in fiont of me. I chose to open to it. I was consumed by it and became part of it. There were no distinctions—no figures or lines, shadows or outlines. There was no body or anything inside or outside. I was devoid of self, of thought, of time, of space, of a sense of separateness or ego, or of anything but the white light. There are no symbols in my language that can begin to describe that sense of pure being, oneness, and ecstasy. There was a great sense of stillness and ecstasy.
It is frightening because I cannot terminate it [by opening my eyes]…. How unpleasant! Oh, how bad. It would be better to fall down in a faint. Will it endure still for one hour? Give me something so that I shall die quickly, it would be better to die. How were you capable to do such?
" There is no feeling of 'It's all fine.' There was no white light during my session. I still have a lot to work on. Part of my joy at the end was a feeling of accomplishment. "
Don was a thirty-six-year-old waiter and writer. His transpersonal highdose DMT sessions destabilized his world view so much that he stopped writing for the first time in years. As opposed to Elena, when Don met face-to-face the vast and impenetrable nature of the source of all existence, he despaired. Elena was steeped in Eastern mysticism, while Don was raised in, and continued believing in, the Catholic faith. Elena saw the love behind the "impersonal" void. Don, on the other hand, felt shocked, stunned, and betrayed by the absence of a personal God or Savior behind it all. DMT had knocked away his spiritual and philosophical underpinnings, and he found himself at a loss for something to replace them.
I recall being able to face the eternal fire of creation and not be burned, to bear the weight of the entire universe and not be crushed.
he bought a semiautomatic weapon, "just in case of Armageddon. "
By deconstructing, as it were, the facade of our sense of self, Buddhists believe we can access deeper layers of reality, compassion, love, and wisdom.
Holiness had won out over truth. This particular brand of Buddhism was no different from any other organization whose survival depended upon a uniformly accepted platform of ideas. Only they could determine what were permissible questions, and what were not.
Scientists conclude from this and more complex experiments that there are "invisible" light particles that interfere with those we can see, deflecting light in unexpected ways.
Only by learning how to deal with its strength can we harness the machine and go straight ahead to our goal.
In this case, the best analogy might be that DMT has reconfigured the brain's receptive qualities to now stop receiving "outside" information. It is only aware of its own existence, its own intrinsic nature. It displays its own consciousness or resonating frequencies, which have no particular content. Nevertheless, it is the ground upon which all of the programs depend for support—the space that the channels fill.
This space between channels, or the absence of channels, is not empty; rather, it is itself full. The content of the programs replaces this perfect emptiness with their busy fullness. Neither is its nature necessarily "potential." Rather, it is complete unto itself. It needs nothing to exist as it is. But it needs something in order to take shape or form, to manifest.
To date we have discovered no life-form that smokes, eats, or drinks human pineal glands, so…
the mind senses the departure of the life-force from it, the content of consciousness as it leaves the body.
Is it "spiritual" to kill countless laboratory animals so as to enhance our religious ecstasy or creative process?
Such a center would exist in a beautiful natural setting but would possess all the required medical facilities for emergency backup. There would be examples of exquisite art and architecture that could provide inspiration for those participating in the research protocols. Research scientists and staff would possess psychotherapeutic, psychedelic, and spiritual training and would work under medical direction. Protocols would occur in the fields of psychotherapy, creativity, spirituality, and the dying process. There would be studies, too, of the being-contact phenomenon and its relationship to parallel universes and dark matter.
" having been there oneself "
Over a cup of tea one summer day at his house in Switzerland, Albert Hofmann, who discovered LSD, shared with me his fondness for low doses of this drug.
But the question never changed.
This is the same question that Saul, a volunteer whom we've not yet met, encountered on his first high-dose DMT session. Let's close with his story.
[…]
The empty space in the room began sparkling. Large crystalline prisms appeared, a wild display of lights shooting off into all directions. More complicated and beautiful geometric patterns overlaid my visual field. My body felt cool and light. Was I about to faint? I closed my eyes, sighing, and thought, "My God! "
I heard absolutely nothing, but my mind was completely full of some sort of sound, like the aftereffects of a large ringing bell. I didn't know if I was breathing. I trusted things would be fine and let go of that thought before panic could set in.
The ecstasy was so great that my body could not contain it. Almost out of necessity, I felt my awareness rush out, leaving its physical container behind.
Out of the raging colossal waterfall of flaming color expanding into my visual field, the roaring silence, and an unspeakable joy, they stepped, or rather, emerged. Welcoming, curious, they almost sang, "Now do you see?" I felt their question pour into and fill every possible corner of my awareness: "Now do you see? Now do you see?" Trilling, sing-song voices, exerting enormous pressure on my mind.
There was no need to answer. It was as if someone had asked me, on a blazing cloudless midsummer afternoon in the New Mexico desert, "Is it bright? Is it bright?" The question and the answer are identical. Added to my "Yes!" was a deeper "Of course!" And finally, an intensely poignant "At last! "
I "stared" with my inner eyes, and we appraised each other. As they disappeared back into the torrent of color, now beginning to fade, I could hear some sounds in the room. I knew I was coming down. I felt my breathing, my face, my fingers, and I was dimly aware of an encroaching darkness. Were there flames, smoke, dust, battling troops, enormous suffering? I opened my eyes.