mountain
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Messages
- 207
A while ago, I wrote about a bad experience I had with smoked DMT, one that had me struggling to breathe. I've come to the conclusion that it was a combination of a bad physical condition and too heavy toking that caused it, and not the central effect of DMT as such.
After that experience, I've tried DMT twice - the last time was just a few minutes ago. Both times the dose was quite low, I'm guessing 20-30 mg, and the experiences were really fabulous. The first time, it was like I went into a higher level in my mind than normal. I could see my normal linguistic thinking from the outside, as it were, and I was able to see how it works to create meaning by combining units such as morphemes, words, phrases and clauses. I had control over the process, as usual, but under the influence of DMT new expressions seemed to come also out of nowhere, spontaneously. I'm not sure why, but in this state, many of my intellectual theories (which constitute much of my identity) seemed very superficial to me; they appeared to be crude constructions I have created simply in order to have an identity, not as a result of anything I really think or observe. This reminded me of a few quotations:
"Man does not think with his soul, as the philosopher imagined: he thinks as a consequence" (Jacques Lacan, meaning that language is a structure imposed on the subject from to outside, thus making "thinking" a mere symptom).
And "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves" (Carl Jung).
And now, the second time, I could basically witness how my attention was drawn from one thing to another (as it does when you have bad concentration). I felt all current purposeful lines of thought as transparent levels that I could switch between. Typically, I have no control over this process, because I'm unaware of the parallel processes in my mind - all I see is the one I'm currently "in", and thereby experience having just one mode of thought with variable contents - typically in a bland linguistically coded narrative. Note that, once again, I experienced thought and the "witness" as separate things, much like you would separate the body and the mind in a dualist philosophy of science.
However, I don't suppose that there is any actual ontological dualism at work here. Mostly, it just seems to me that the modularity of the mind works in such a way as to allow parallel processes to send "requests" to a more central or general processing unit. If I have bad attention and concentration, it might be because I keep unconsciously accepting requests from whatever thought I may have acquired. My experiences (I know, just a bunch of drug trips) seem to suggest that I could train a kind of metacognition, firstly to be a more efficient thinker, and secondly even to discover new aspects of the mind that remain obscured by the load of stuff that's on the mind at all times. As an example of how this is reflected in DMT experiences, I usually become aware of my bodily sense in a more complete way under the influence. I just remember that it's there, a neural map of my physical body that I can "listen to" effortlessly, revealing to by observation all aches, pains and maladjusted regions.
substancecode_DMT
categorycode_solo
categorycode_indoors
categorycode_lowdose
categorycode_recreational
categorycode_positive
explevel_experienced
After that experience, I've tried DMT twice - the last time was just a few minutes ago. Both times the dose was quite low, I'm guessing 20-30 mg, and the experiences were really fabulous. The first time, it was like I went into a higher level in my mind than normal. I could see my normal linguistic thinking from the outside, as it were, and I was able to see how it works to create meaning by combining units such as morphemes, words, phrases and clauses. I had control over the process, as usual, but under the influence of DMT new expressions seemed to come also out of nowhere, spontaneously. I'm not sure why, but in this state, many of my intellectual theories (which constitute much of my identity) seemed very superficial to me; they appeared to be crude constructions I have created simply in order to have an identity, not as a result of anything I really think or observe. This reminded me of a few quotations:
"Man does not think with his soul, as the philosopher imagined: he thinks as a consequence" (Jacques Lacan, meaning that language is a structure imposed on the subject from to outside, thus making "thinking" a mere symptom).
And "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves" (Carl Jung).
And now, the second time, I could basically witness how my attention was drawn from one thing to another (as it does when you have bad concentration). I felt all current purposeful lines of thought as transparent levels that I could switch between. Typically, I have no control over this process, because I'm unaware of the parallel processes in my mind - all I see is the one I'm currently "in", and thereby experience having just one mode of thought with variable contents - typically in a bland linguistically coded narrative. Note that, once again, I experienced thought and the "witness" as separate things, much like you would separate the body and the mind in a dualist philosophy of science.
However, I don't suppose that there is any actual ontological dualism at work here. Mostly, it just seems to me that the modularity of the mind works in such a way as to allow parallel processes to send "requests" to a more central or general processing unit. If I have bad attention and concentration, it might be because I keep unconsciously accepting requests from whatever thought I may have acquired. My experiences (I know, just a bunch of drug trips) seem to suggest that I could train a kind of metacognition, firstly to be a more efficient thinker, and secondly even to discover new aspects of the mind that remain obscured by the load of stuff that's on the mind at all times. As an example of how this is reflected in DMT experiences, I usually become aware of my bodily sense in a more complete way under the influence. I just remember that it's there, a neural map of my physical body that I can "listen to" effortlessly, revealing to by observation all aches, pains and maladjusted regions.
substancecode_DMT
categorycode_solo
categorycode_indoors
categorycode_lowdose
categorycode_recreational
categorycode_positive
explevel_experienced
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