What do you think of Terrence McKennas theories about DMT and it's meaning?

[moneyboy]

Could it be, that our life on earth as fleshly human beings is just one step of evolving into a transdimensional being after death? Terrence McKenna said something about it in one of his speeches about the DMT-experience. He also said that on his many DMT-experiences, he mostly encountered friendly, loving beings, which cheered at him and welcomed him in the "other world". he even said the beings made little mechanical objects with their language (with their words or so) and handed them over to him as gifts.

So do you believe there might be some multidimensional, nonmaterial reality coexisting with ours, where the "souls" or DMT-beings live and that after death we begin a new existance in this foreign realm?

As far as I am concerned, I had the OBE once, where I was flying towards paradise with a wise guy (human looking being).

and if it could be possible, why for gods sake are not all the rocket-scientists in the world researching this stuff with all the hightech, superbrains and quantum computers they have? I would put all the money in the world in such research projects to find out how reality works and what the purpouse of life is!

 

[sekio]

Terrence McKenna had a pretty vivid imagination but the amount of theorizing he did that actually stands up to scrutiny is... slim, let's say.

why for gods sake are not all the rocket-scientists in the world researching this stuff with all the hightech, superbrains and quantum computers they have?

By what, pouring brine over the circuits and seeing what happens?

The problem you run into very quickly with most of TM's works is that they are all derived from hallucinations, and if you approach them from first principles (c.f. without smoking a bunch of DMT) you will find it difficult if not impossible to observe machine elves in a native state in the world we all live in. Even if you did smoke a bunch of DMT; it's not reproducible in the slightest.

So do you believe there might be some multidimensional, nonmaterial reality coexisting with ours, where the "souls" or DMT-beings live and that after death we begin a new existance in this foreign realm?

If there's been any indication of this then the only people to know are the psychedelic users. As of yet I have seen absolutely zero evidence to say that people "observing" this sort of construct are not just imagining it themselves.

 

[-=SS=-]

I never encountered any machine elves on my DMT adventures. I did encounter a beautiful female figure at the end of my trip, who stretched out her arm which passed right into my point of observation (such a weird feeling).. which I simultaneously felt as a tingle on my physical face/skull. Bam.. trip ends.. eyes open.. I feel a cold wind pass across my face. I actually met another man who had had a very similar experience to this. The only other entity I encountered was some mess of black squiggly lines/smoke that felt really malicious.. I genuinely felt threatened.. which was justification for not touching the stuff again.

Got no qualms about another dimension co-existing with this one, in fact I think it is the case.. and that entities do interact with us more than we imagine. If we could see what was really there I think we'd go mad.

As for Terence.. it was his living to tell stories. Remember that. His experiences provide a point of comparison, not something you should believe in rigidly. He also blew his mind on mushrooms and was continuing to tell his stories for years afterwards without telling anyone.. he had a powerful experience that really shook him up.

 

[moneyboy]

okay, I shouldn't take his talkings so serious then. maybe dmt is not so good for everyone, I also heard of one guy getting into serious trouble after smoking dmt on a really strong acid-trip. he then had to stay in a mental institution being constantly drugged with neuroleptics, poor dude.

do you know what kind of powerfull experience McKenna made? I'm just curious...

 

[Journyman16]

There might be more than just imagination to McKenna's ideas, or for that matter, anyone's personal experiences in hallucinatory states. It is difficult to simply discard them as rubbish because the world we live in can easily be described as hallucinatory itself.

Think about it - the evidence says it's all a hologram, an imitation in 3D of something else. The Solid isn't real, it's an apparency and the more closely you look at matter or energy the less there is anything there. Just because we share the hallucination with others doesn't make it any more real than what only one person experiences.

Here's a familiar sight... well at least part of it is.

The Milky Way is familiar to us all, until we change the frequency we use to view it. Maybe halluginogens change the frequency, letting us see realms we normally don't? If something so familiar can look so diffeerent simply because we change the wavelength we are accepting, how different might laternate realities look if we can change the vibration we are living?

Robert Monroe shared some very out-there experiences he had while astral travelling - he was not a story teller nor did he try to make money from the books - his business was something else that, while it had a tangential contact with the content of the books, relied not at all on the books. Hemisync turned out to be quite handy for those wishing to astral travel but what we experience while doing so can vary greatly, even from trip to trip.

Monroe seemed to be able to consistently return to specific locales and events - the books are worth a read. Journeys Out of the Body, Far Journeys, Ultimate Journey - in that order...

 

[sekio]

The Milky Way is familiar to us all, until we change the frequency we use to view it. Maybe halluginogens change the frequency, letting us see realms we normally don't? If something so familiar can look so diffeerent simply because we change the wavelength we are accepting, how different might laternate realities look if we can change the vibration we are living?

The problem I have with this is that perception would have to be mediated by things other than our sense organs. People have proven beyond a doubt that your eye isn't going to pick up radio waves... and at that point how is "sensing other universes" different from imagination, or scrying, or divination? It's just hallucinogen induced imaginative experience at that stage.

You have to do some pretty tricky rationalization to come up with an argument for why humans on psychedelics are the only way of sensing these other realms and nothing mechnaical we've come up with in fifty thousand years of invention can detect them.

 

[methamaniac]

Vibrational frequency awareness isnt something I can't dismiss.
I had too many experiences on psychedelics
to discard them all as hallucinations.
It wasnt the visuals or the imigination being vivid that convinces me I have another "sense'.
It was something else totally.
Something allowed me to experinece beyond my normal senses. I "tapped in" to something.
Or more I tuned into something.
This something was a powerful sense of awareness.
Very gentle, but a little intimidating.
It seemed to be "all knowing". It allowed me to know everything I wanted to know about myself.
Somethings I didnt like, some I did.
It was an overwhelming feeling that something bigger and greatly more powerful was speaking to me.
I know someone who has never experienced this will chalk it up to imigination and feeling what I wanted to feel.
But thats just it, I wasnt trying to feel or imagine any other "sense". Its like all of a sudden it kicked in. When it would I could feel exactly what my friend next to me was feeling.
Without them speaking a word or doing a thing.
I know this sounds crazy, but ive had a conversation by feeling emotion with four people not saying a single word. I admit that sounds absolutely non realistic. If I had not experienced this for myself I would roll my eyes without a shadow of a doubt. But im telling you
something allowed me to do something normal senses cant. How that works or exactly what this "is" is beyond me explaining.
Check out Joe Rogans ibogaine experience.
He's good at explaing his feeling of awareness.
Skip to about 8-9 minute mark if you want to get straight to what he experienced.
JOE ROGAN talks about IBOGA TRIP!!! Iboga Treatme…: http://youtu.be/RR9P7ksKktM

 

[Foreigner]

I believe concretely in perception of other frequencies and dimensions from an experiential standpoint, but my conclusion is that humans aren't meant to stay there. Certain humans see that stuff as part of their regular lives, but they don't live normal lives for the most part. Their functionality varies. For this reason I think psychedelics are meant to open us up to certain experiences in order to help us accomplish some psychospiritual tasks, and then return us to normal reality after. If you're attached to those extrasensory experiences then you're just adding more layers of Maya to your spiritual path, and what's the point?

Maybe I'm just a pragmatist but why go seeking complication? There's no need to have entity experiences to do what you're here to do. You're human and need to deal with the human realm. If you're trying to go anywhere else then you're just veering off the path.

 

[Journyman16]

The problem I have with this is that perception would have to be mediated by things other than our sense organs. People have proven beyond a doubt that your eye isn't going to pick up radio waves... and at that point how is "sensing other universes" different from imagination, or scrying, or divination? It's just hallucinogen induced imaginative experience at that stage.

You have to do some pretty tricky rationalization to come up with an argument for why humans on psychedelics are the only way of sensing these other realms and nothing mechnaical we've come up with in fifty thousand years of invention can detect them.

You're absolutely right about the mediation issue and if all we had were our normal 'five' senses that would pretty much cap it off as simply imagination.

But we have considerably more in our arsenal than just the basic physical senses. For example there are a series of experiments that clearly show people react to some things BEFORE THE EVENT - for example, showing subjects pleasant or horrible pictures, the brain can be seen to be preparing for the right choice of picture before the computer shows it.

Rupert Sheldrake has been running long-term experiments online and before that across the UK that get well above random results. YOu can join in if you want - http://www.sheldrake.org and he startd in Biology and went where the data took him. Even Rhine actually got results.

And in a universe that is apparently not here at all (at least for some of the time, depending on the theory) and where an obsrvation collapses a probability matrix into a definite result, is it really that hard to accept that maybe there are other realities than just the one our senses limit us to?

 

[Journyman16]

I believe concretely in perception of other frequencies and dimensions from an experiential standpoint, but my conclusion is that humans aren't meant to stay there. Certain humans see that stuff as part of their regular lives, but they don't live normal lives for the most part. Their functionality varies. For this reason I think psychedelics are meant to open us up to certain experiences in order to help us accomplish some psychospiritual tasks, and then return us to normal reality after. If you're attached to those extrasensory experiences then you're just adding more layers of Maya to your spiritual path, and what's the point?

Maybe I'm just a pragmatist but why go seeking complication? There's no need to have entity experiences to do what you're here to do. You're human and need to deal with the human realm. If you're trying to go anywhere else then you're just veering off the path.

IF (and it's a big if) there is a path. Maybe we are just here to learn? Perhaps we need to learn how to BE our Self or else we just go back into the melting pot when we leave this life and if we can maintain self no matter what, we get to progress and find new lives to learn?

In which case, maybe the astral or other worlds are knowledge we need to be sure we are not just a body but are actually drivers of a body just like we drive a car. Good drivers become very much a part of the car and feel assaulted when someone else gets too close to their mobile 'body.'

It's possible that the 'Fall of Man' was our identification with the physical life and so we became trapped in The Solid and growth is needed for us to return from whence we came.

 

[moneyboy]

When I was tripping together with 2 friends it was very incredible that when I closed my eyes, I could see a small image of myself and also 2 small images of them almost exactly at the position where they were sitting. it was like a little symbol or moving thing, hardly describeable. I believe this were our pinal glands in active mode.

Also I had this known feeling everything being alive and breathing on a strong acid trip in the forests. I could talk to trees via telepathy. this can't be hallucinations only, there must be something to it.

 

[herbavore]

I see compassion as 'the path'--learning to align the mind with compassionate thought, or the heart. It is a human puzzle. How do we navigate a life of biological directives, egotistical wants and needs, cultural blindspots and our deep knowledge that the suffering of another (tree, animal, human, planet) is actually our own suffering?

I believe there is much that we cannot see or even conceive of and I like to step into realms of altered consciousness simply as a way to step out of the limits of this narrow band--whether through dream or through some chemical agent or through the ecstasy of being that can sometimes happen mysteriously. But I do love this 'narrow band', all the more because I feel my time in it shortening. When you can wake up on any given morning and see this mundane and messy din as something you truly love, all the lines blur.

 

[Journyman16]

Compassion certainly seems to be a part of it all. Did you know there are studies showing that when a person does a good turn for another who is in need, not only do both of them come up in tone level but so does anyone who just views the act?

My thoughts for why we are here is more along the lines of us learning to be Self, aware and with knowledge and able to maintain a selfness even when we step out of the body.

 

[sekio]

Rupert Sheldrake has been running long-term experiments online and before that across the UK that get well above random results. YOu can join in if you want - http://www.sheldrake.org and he startd in Biology and went where the data took him. Even Rhine actually got results.

Disclaimer: I am the token skeptic here. I don't mean to invalidate anyone's experiences, I just am a physicalist at heart.

The Rhine involved in ESP, the one whom nobody can duplicate his work? Sheldrake is really no better if he's publishing in a non-peer-reviewed journal. (This is literally the first time I've ever heard of the Journal of (sic) International Society of Life Information Science.. what a mouthful.) Some of his claims (p values of 1x10^-15?? REALLY?) absolutely reek of cherry picking of data. (I also like the age old trick of padding the reference list with ten or twenty of your own papers, just to flesh it out )

If ESP, telepathy, Tarot, or whatever were reproducible, if humans could really sense alternate dimensions or astral beings, there would be a publication in Nature. If we found that retinal cells exposed to certain concentrations of serotonin became sensitive to radio waves, a publication in Cell. You would win a Nobel prize, probably in multiple fields. Hands down. But there's none of the above, just a whole lot of questionable evidence, and parapsychology has been going for... how long now?

 

[methamaniac]

^
"Materialism can explain alot......
except the questions we really want answers to."
-
I stold that from someone but cant remember who

 

[swilow]

^Or maybe it sort of does explain it, but its not the answers that we want. Observational bias is a hugely powerful phenomena.

Re: Terence. I totally dig the guy; as an orator and neologist and totally awesome wielder of english, he is unique and without peer . I take a lot of what he has said as fiction though, insightful and majestic and appealing and inspiring but largely without basis. The whole Timewave Zero thing was pure data cherry-picking, and has proven to have been incorrect. I do like his theory of psilocybin-induced expansion of human consciousness, and believe that there is some evidence that humans were using hallucinogens during some of the periods of time when we began creating art/symbolism, and I don't think the change from anatomically modern human to behavioural modernity has been adequately explaind by other means; but I think that changes in diet, changes in habitat and increasing genetic material are more likely catalysts, though hallucinogens could have played a symbiotic role.

So do you believe there might be some multidimensional, nonmaterial reality coexisting with ours, where the "souls" or DMT-beings live and that after death we begin a new existance in this foreign realm?

This I don't really buy; I refer to the last part of your sentence. I can accept that there may be other inhabited dimensions surrounding us, but, like Sekio, I'd have to point out that we really don't have the sensory organs to detect anything else beyond what we currently perceive, so its almost unanswerable, and DMT can't introduce any new senses for us; the trippy stuff is the same stuff we always sense but dramatically effected. I guess the existence of these places could be inferred by their effect on our dimension in some way, like how distant planets can be inferred from the orbital wobble of it's star, but how this could happen I have no idea. Its a fascinating, if not slightly eerie, concept

In terms of the experience of meeting other beings, I think this can be explained by functioning of the brain. I think that our sense of self is a sort of illusion whose foundation is the multiplicity of incoming and outgoing sensory input/impressions. We exist as a cohesive ammalgamation of this information, at the "top" of it, if you like. DMT (and other psychedelics) seem to splinter that sense of unity in a fundamental way, creating time-lags and sensory loops, so the DMT elves could be our self perceiving, as a third party, other parts of self; a feedback cycle, which could explain the fractal/hologram like nature of some DMT visuals. Our body is actually largely autonomous; we don't control things like digestion, blood pressure, stomach pH, pupillary dilation; in a way, we are home to a vast array of seperate forces always, and learn to unite them to create a meaningful whole. Whatever else, psychedelics can fundamentally alter the sense of self.

Side note: Salvia Divinorum is more powerful in enabling 'contact' experiences, for me at least. It's to terrifying to repeat often, but one of my first salvia trips introduced me to a totally convincing 'other' who had all the hallmarks of being aware, engaged and autonomous. I have no idea what happened there....

 

[Foreigner]

If ESP, telepathy, Tarot, or whatever were reproducible, if humans could really sense alternate dimensions or astral beings, there would be a publication in Nature. If we found that retinal cells exposed to certain concentrations of serotonin became sensitive to radio waves, a publication in Cell. You would win a Nobel prize, probably in multiple fields. Hands down. But there's none of the above, just a whole lot of questionable evidence, and parapsychology has been going for... how long now?

What testing methods would Nature use for these things, do you think? With tarot they could do a double blind easily, but telepathy? ESP? Sensitivity to different forms of waves?

If we could take retinal cells out of one of these special people and see through those, maybe... but what about the consciousness that's receiving the raw data? That's the part of the equation that's untestable. You can only test the physiological body parts, not the consciousness on the receiving end. Deductive reasoning is a disadvantage for this kind of investigation because it precludes the wealth of aggregate anecdotal information. There are already loads of statistics about people's experiences, but science writes it off as material phenomena without even testing.

There are plenty of people who perceive reality different than science claims according to the 5 senses. Can those people ever prove it though? Doubtful.

There's a lot of charlatans out there, no doubt, but there are also a lot of genuine cases. To say that there isn't any scientific evidence is due to the fact that no genuine inquiry into these subjects ever gets funding or long-term support. If you want to genuinely look, then look. Watch as your career goes up in smoke. The culture of material reductionism and physicality does not allow us to really look beyond, and that's because modern science arose as a counter to the oppression of religion.

The only country that has really put research into this stuff without persecuting its scientists has been Russia. Their science is less infested with the religious or the hard materialists.

Consciousness is not part of any scientific equation, yet it's the biggest wildcard. We haven't even adequately categorized the capabilities of consciousness because a small branch of human culture has decided that everyone perceives things through the exact same faculties as they do.

 

[methamaniac]

^Or maybe it sort of does explain it, but its not the answers that we want. Observational bias is a hugely powerful phenomena.

I would say it leads to glaucoma......
example:
Not being able to see undeniable evidence of the exquisitely fine tuned universe.
When your eyes begin to play tricks on ya you seem to see all kinds of things like universes multiplying ?

we really don't have the sensory organs to detect anything else beyond what we currently perceive

Seems like someone who believes in idea of vestigal functions (correct me if im wrong)
would not rule out a sense others seem to have experienced.

 

[Journyman16]

Disclaimer: I am the token skeptic here. I don't mean to invalidate anyone's experiences, I just am a physicalist at heart.

The Rhine involved in ESP, the one whom nobody can duplicate his work? Sheldrake is really no better if he's publishing in a non-peer-reviewed journal. (This is literally the first time I've ever heard of the Journal of (sic) International Society of Life Information Science.. what a mouthful.) Some of his claims (p values of 1x10^-15?? REALLY?) absolutely reek of cherry picking of data. (I also like the age old trick of padding the reference list with ten or twenty of your own papers, just to flesh it out )

If ESP, telepathy, Tarot, or whatever were reproducible, if humans could really sense alternate dimensions or astral beings, there would be a publication in Nature. If we found that retinal cells exposed to certain concentrations of serotonin became sensitive to radio waves, a publication in Cell. You would win a Nobel prize, probably in multiple fields. Hands down. But there's none of the above, just a whole lot of questionable evidence, and parapsychology has been going for... how long now?

Nothing wrong with being a sceptic - believe it or not, I am one myself.

First I would draw attention to the results from physics about observers and results. Especially in a domain such as the non-physical experiences of people, it is not hard to see how a disbelief would prevent the effect. Perhaps Randi has held onto his million not because nobody has anything to show but because of the hostile conditions he subjects them to?

I also try not to let peer review be a factor these days - it has become a tool of consensus in many fields and ESP/Psi has been anathema to a career for decades. Not being published in a peer review journal simply means those in the relevant field are only comfortable with duplication of their accepted knowledge. And if you know in advance you can't get published in a field, it takes a brave man to go ahead with the subject anyway, particularly as doing so is probably going to be the last time you work in your chosen field.

But, have you never had the phone ring or a knock at the door and suddenly thought of someone and it's them? Never had a sudden thought of a person not met for years and run into them in the street? There are lots of small events that almost everyone has experienced and small events added up are significant, and sometimes more significant than the atom bomb-level of event. When thousand of people demonstrate an effect, it doesn't really matter if a small group of closed minds refuse publication - the effect is still there.

I've had experiences all my life that, even though I am reasonable at science thinking, I have no explanation for. Some saved my life. I was getting ready to head out with a mate to (hopefully) pick up at a nearby town. All dressed and ready and 5 minutes before we were due to walk out I got seriously sick to the stomach. In spite of him pleading I refused to go - was seriously considering getting the other flat mate to take me to emergency. The guy I was supposed to go with left and within about 2 minutes I was perfectly fine. (no mobile phones in those days)

10 miles out of town he head-on'd a car going the other way - where I would have been sitting in the passenger seat the roof was digging into the seat.

Kinda predisposes you to thinking strange thoughts when things like that happen... :D

 

[sekio]

Not being published in a peer review journal simply means those in the relevant field are only comfortable with duplication of their accepted knowledge.

That's not it at all. The scientific community is perfectly willing to accept new theories even if they contradict older ones.
If you can't get published because nobody can duplicate your findings it's not scientific.

There was a scientific paper published a little while ago. It claimed you could turn normal cells into stem cells by exposure to mild acids or mechanical stress. Because this was a potential breakthrough, other authors at other laboratories attempted to reproduce the experiment by following the methods published. They found that the results of the paper could not be duplicated. Now we know a little bit more about the world.

I think it would be erroneous to say it was "supressed" because the reviewers were only "comfortable with duplication of their accepted knowledge". But I'm sure there are people who think so anyway.

And if you know in advance you can't get published in a field, it takes a brave man to go ahead with the subject anyway, particularly as doing so is probably going to be the last time you work in your chosen field.

Hardly. There's no reason chemists can't write biology papers, for instance. You don't lose your seat in the Chemists' Guild for heresy against the Art. A bigger concern for your scientific career is publishing knowingly false papers or altering data to suggest a certain result. Alexander Shulgin published all sorts of stuff about the chemistry of psychedelics - an actual reproducible science, mind you - while working at Dow Chemical and it took many years before they decided to let him go.

Again, if there were a paper published that clearly demonstrated psi effects to the sort of unambiguous level that proponents of psi claim (serious, 10^-15 is the kind of P-value that you get when you typo a formula, not something that is achievable in a "soft" science like that of human behaviour.) then it would be a fundamental revolution in biology, sociology, philosophy, physics, etc. It would not be the kind of thing that would get shelved and back-burnered.

Even if it were initially "supressed" by Evil Organizations, do you really think that people haven't tried to reproduce psi effects under blinded conditions?

But, have you never had the phone ring or a knock at the door and suddenly thought of someone and it's them? Never had a sudden thought of a person not met for years and run into them in the street? There are lots of small events that almost everyone has experienced and small events added up are significant,

Small synchronicities happening is one thing, claiming that humans can convincingly relay or receive non-sense-based information via telepathy is a much grander claim.

I guess the point I'm trying to make about all this is, as soon as the chips are down, ESPology has nothing on the hard sciences. Either it's an obvious, reproducible effect, or it's not. There is not exactly a preponderance of evidence for the former.