I'd also like to point out that science is NOT "knowing" something. Science is in fact a continual process of disproving. You do not prove something in a scientific experience, because even laws are subject to change. However, in the scientific method you create a hypothesis and test it, and whether or not that hypothesis is valid adds to a continual disproving. In other words, you never say, "This is how it is... in science." You say, "This is how it is... in this experiment and this is what I derive from this experiment."
Hah this made me laugh... not the post (which is totally correct) but your name! With a username like that you'd just HAVE to bee a veteran from the Hive, am I right?
I am a huge believer in and supporter of the sciences and I earned my degree in environmental science. As much as I know science can explain things, I think that science can still be wrong and it is an ever growing, mutating and expanding wealth of knowledge. There have been countless times in where western science has proposed a highly supported and backed theory to the world just to be proved wrong a short time later. There is still room for us to explain these "hallucinations" or DMT trips through science and in a spiritual context as well.
No, this is misunderstanding of what science is, which is really quite common, so don't feel like I'm being too down on you, it's an easy misconception.
Because you see, science cannot be wrong. It can't be right either. This is true in more than one way as well.
The first way that this is true is that science is a process. Processes cannot be right or wrong, they just are. If you perform the process, you can still reach an erroneous conclusion, or more likely and quite specifically relevant to the idea of major scientific theories having to be overturned, you can reach a conclusion that fits the data quite well yet is false because the dataset itself is incomplete. This is the case with the well-known example of Newton's theory of gravity. Based on the experimental data of the day it was a quite reasonable conclusion to reach, and eventually ended up becoming an incredibly influential theory that supported the use of the scientific method as a way to understand the world.
And if you look at things in a certain way, the theory still fits the data incredibly well today. For example, Newtonian physics is very good at predicting the motions experienced by and forces acting upon objects in our everyday lives. It is only when you get to seriously astronomical distances and incredibly large masses that the theory does not hold, because Newton had no conception of spacetime as a single thing, and thus couldn't predict how space time would react to the mass of an object the size of a planet or star. The mathematical frameworks and technological methods of gathering data that would contribute to Einstein's theories of relativity overturning traditional Newtonian mechanics simply hasn't been invented in Newton's day. So using the technology available and examining the data available, Newton's conclusions were excellent, and yet ultimately wrong.
But even though he was wrong, he didn't 'do the science wrong'. On the contrary he did the science right. It's just a natural part of science as a constant process that theories will be overturned and hypotheses invalidated. That's how science works fundamentally.
And second, notice that we speak of scientific *theories*. A theory cannot be right or wrong, only probable or improbable, and where a theory sits on the spectrum between those two extremes depends on how well it fits the data. So again, you can't say science was wrong about something, first because it's a process, and you can't label a process with a value judgement, and second because the things that science has revealed are stated in terms of theories.
This has been exploited by certain ideologues, for example trying to create doubt that evolution is real because after all, it is only a theory. But it is a theory which fits the data pretty much perfectly, and every subsequent discovery in that field validates it further, whether that discovery takes the form of a new fossil that fills in a blank space in our evolutionary trees or consists of watching single-felled organisms evolve right before our eyes as many generations pass in a short period of time, with the change in genotype usually being a result of some external stimulus being applied by the researcher. Nobody who understands the scientific method and the many aspects of science in general actually and honestly expects the theory of evolution to be overturned. But by its very nature, science never speaks in absolute truths, so we have the theory of evolution, not the fact of evolution.
I also don't know where you get this idea of 'Western science'. Science is science is science. I think you use the phrase because you wish to imply some sort of lack of sensitivity or receptivity to spiritual ideas or other mystical things, and in doing so you condemn science for its narrow view. Unfortunately for that attempt at paintings hence in a negative light, the vast majority of the science conducted between the fall of the Roman Empire and the renaissance was conducted by Arab Muslims. Hardly 'Western', right? The Chinese also practiced a lot of science in olden days (and it seems that aspect is returning). While the scientific method hasn't yet been described in exact terms, the experimentation conducted by the Muslims and Chinese was in that vein, and very much in the spirit of scientific inquiry.
As to the other part of that statement, it is the case that things that can't be disproven, like gods, DMT elves, spirits, whatever gets you going, are by definition outside the purview of science. If you cannot falsify something then you cannot apply the scientific method to it. It is worth noting however that every attempt to scientifically verify supernatural things despite their un-science-able nature has found nothing. As science tells us, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but I think it is best to remain skeptical to supernatural things until some sort of evidence exists.
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Ultimately, the DMT space is internally generated. If you believe otherwise, okay, but I will lump that in with the supernatural as defined above and refuse to believe in it until objective verification is possible.
The thing is, I don't see it as being any less wonderful that the human brain can produce hyperspace without any external factors besides DMT as opposed to DMT being a gateway to some other universe. That would surely be awe-inspiring if it did act as a gate like that, but for me it is equally awe-inspiring that our brains can generate such complex, all-encompassing phenomena simply due to a certain number of receptors in the brain being stimulate in a given fashion. The complexity of it and the visceral feeling of it being utterly real is fascinating in and of itself. The action of DMT during breakthroughs is even more crazy amazing because it is endogenous. Imagine if melatonin could create breakthrough states! The fact that DMT seems to be unique in this fashion (sure it's 5-MeO cousin can do something somewhat similar but it isn't to the best of my knowledge endogenous) is even more curious.
