DMT: Six Accounts

Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a powerful psychedelic substance, a type of tryptamine alkaloid. It is a naturally occurring compound, found in various plants, and in small quantities in the human brain, where its function is unknown. It has also been synthesised in laboratories. DMT is famous for its power. Though the psychedelic trip it creates only lasts 5 to 30 minutes when smoked, the effect is profound and remarkable, with the feeling that the user is transported to a completely different place, immersed in kaleidoscopic sounds and images. It is an important chemical compound capable of moving us into a true other dimension. The accounts below were posted on Erowid, and represent the opinions of the individual authors who submit them. Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid, or by Quantum Pranx.

Infinity of the Now

by Synchrojet     2001 (male)

I FIRST TRIED THIS years ago, and misfired because the smoke was too harsh. The following is a very inadequate accounting of my second attempt – and first experience – with DMT. I had done a great deal of LSD and mushrooms, and considered myself experienced in terms of psychedelia. Having taken over ten grams of mushrooms more than once I felt that I could always remind myself that I, as the observer, had made a choice.

My partner, and so called trip guide, was an intelligent man in his fifties (I was thirty), and had also introduced me to peyote. We had agreed that the experience would occur at his place, and all of the usual pre-trip steps were taken… i.e., the fasting, the meditation, and so on. 

At this point I must interject that my meditations were, up to the experience, a facade, although I was not yet aware of this fact. I simply thought about myself. Real hard. Even some of the more difficult mushroom experiences that I had undergone up until then had not purged me of my buried feelings of inadequacy, and this is important to mention here, because I did not understand something very VERY crucial, and that is that I was not trying DMT to learn, but rather, to PROVE something to myself. This is very unwise. 

The crystals were smoked from a pipe, and among a few tobacco grounds. I was able to draw a good amount from the end of the pipe, and yet again, and I tried to hold the smoke but again, I could not. I exhaled, halfway expecting that I would get the so-called ‘museum dose’ of the compound. 

I have read much literature about DMT. I cannot say that anything has come close to adequately describing even the most miniscule element of the experience. I did not notice anything at all in terms of distortions before my mind went. 

The feeling is very difficult to relate with words. Imagine understanding your own mind to be a map, a very small representation of a very large idea, and suddenly discovering that it was, in fact, foldable, and that it had been folded for all time. 

I sensed my mind was flat, and very inadequate, and that I had been folded up and put away, so to speak, centuries ago, forever ago, because I was discarded. I was effluent. I was a remnant of a grand theme, once possible, but now ruined and shattered, and as a conscious entity I could not be destroyed, but only amused. The amusement ended when the occlusion to its purpose ended, and I became aware of my SOLITUDE. This was immediate and powerful. 

I cannot recall the transition to the void, there were no colors, or visions in the traditional sense. I realized immediately that I had actually poisoned myself, and this was not a DMT trip at all, this was death. 

This period of time is impossible to relate. Try to understand that there was no sensation of time at all. Nothing was linear, and my ideas seemed to come to me at impossible intervals. My brain had been killed, I could tell, because I could not think. I could only sense the overwhelming loneliness and shame. I had actually believed at some point, somewhere, that I was alive, but this was not possible, because I was a scrap of discarded thought, not worthy of keeping. It was a foregone conclusion that I would destroy myself. 

This seemed to be forever. 

There appeared in the vastness a tiny point of light. I remember realizing that I had not died at all, but that I had been dead. Then, not dead, but dormant. DORMANT. I was about to be born. 

The feeling of flying is not an accurate description of the sensation that accompanied my movement toward the point, which was gold, and, to my surprise, was actually metallic. I came immediately upon the source, which was a DNA scarab, a construct, an insect of impossible dimensions, miles in diameter and circumference. 

The skin of the carapace was polished to a high sheen and thin to the point of transparency. I could see tiny, endless arrangements of gears and pinions just beneath the gold wing, tiny points of alien light darted from what were molecular points of cognitive energy, impossible in color and detail, billions and billions of precision gears meshing quietly and generating consciousness, which was traversing a planned route, terrifying in its complexity, but beautiful in its exactitude. 

I followed a point, there was warmth, to the top of the scarab’s enormous body. It had a tiny human head, the size of a marble, attached via a series of DNA strands that had been transformed into a clear metal. The head was unaware of my presence and it had a small mouth, which opened to speak. 

From the mouth came forth the matured beam of thought, which had started from a cog (Cognitive) in the belly of the insect, years ago, and had grown as it rose to the head, morphing into a form of concentrated phosphene light. the beam poured from the tiny mouth, and became stacatto at once, and conical, in sections that grew, as ideas, and hypnotized me into allowing myself to be enveloped by a punctuated green, now a geometry of raw cognition without ego, and with a destination. 

I rode in the singular idea, aware of its purity and clarity, and above all, its sense of purpose, as it was not aware of my presence, and fell to a violet montage of heads which were dislocated and ethereal, but awaiting its arrival. 

I was, suddenly, inside of a brain. I became instantly aware of the physicality of the idea, which was A NOTE OF MUSIC. 

It was then revealed to me on a large screen, attached to a gleaming wall, that the brain was the brain of Bach, and the idea was one in a stream of many, and fell to his shaking hand in a dimly lit room, flickering with candlelight and heavy curtains, to the end of the point of his pen, where it was transcribed, in ink, and solidified forever. 

This, I realized, happened concurrently with the HEARING of that exact note, in that exact piece of music, namely, the second of Six Motets, and that I had, in some elusive past, cued that CD to play while I tripped, and I was now revisiting that precise moment, which occured exactly then, and only then, and required of the universe the creation of cognition and the receiving thereof, just to hear the one note, exactly there, in exactly that fashion. 

I watched the transcription through a telescope from a starship, and realized that it was diminished only by my yearning to beccome a stenographer of music (I am a musician). My own music seemed like noise. 

I saw the fatigue in the wrinkled forhead of the great master, Johann Sebastian Bach, as he received the beams of knowledge, and his music was living. 

From there I was told by a small man sitting in a plant that I was mediocre, and that in and of itself, my mediocrity had a function, which was to define what is great, and what is not, because how can the great be great if it is commonplace? 

I, in my mediocrity, was a necessary element of greatness, then, and this eased my spirit. 

I found myself at that point laying on a couch, and had a fleeting sensation of having taken a drug, and I realized that my heart was not beating, and that I was trying to enter my own body. I saw clearly the fear in my own eyes, and was saddened by my weakness. 

I became preoccupied with my lying. Everything I was, was lies. I was a liar. Even lying down, I was lying, always lying. My existence was a tangled cluster of lies, cancelling themselves out, struggling to make sense, surviving only on the energy that others gave when they turned to see the freak who could not tell the truth. And so I had lied to myself about DMT, and it was not a hallucinogen, it was a poison, used by all liars, to destroy themselves. I watched lies come out of my mouth. They were giant, glistening centipedes, hideously related in a mutant way to the glorious insects of cognition, but bastardized and diminished. I saw broken gears in their grotesque bodies, and they came from my own mouth while I lay there, motionless.

I then realized that they were being driven from me. I was undergoing a type of exorcism, and I was immediately aware of a ram on a hill of purple grasses, beyond a rushing stream of beautiful microscopic geometries. The ram had eyes all over its head, and beside was a horse that was ten feet tall at the shoulder, and breathing heavily. The horse watched, and then ran towards a greying horizon, while overhead a silver sun was spinning sounlessly. 

The ram had driven the lies from me, and I approached the stream. There were machines in the stream, and I was told not to touch the water, but to find the crossing, and I realized that the cross of Christ was not a cross, but a crossing, from judgement into salvation, and that the stories of religion were allegories, froming themselves again and again until they could be superimposed over the framework of machinery that was my own personal syntax. 

I realized the glory, the importance, of TRUTH. The truth was that my fear ruled my existence. Could salvation be truth? 

I was guided to my soft, pink brain by a dragonfly, which was piloted by a man with no eyes. 

It is impossible to adequately relate to those reading this that all of the above was occurring simultaneously, and yet, in right angles, and even moreover, in a corner of what I was to discover was a pile of powder on a floor, into which my eyeballs fell, and the dust did adhere. 

I got up, yet I did not move. 

My arm was hanging of the side of the couch, I remember, and there was my friend, watching a ball of regurgitated and spoiled silliness (television?), and he was unaware of my fear and astonishment, but turned his head to look at me.

His head was flat, and it scrolled as it turned, because there was no depth, and he himself was devoid of depth, and there was a pool of idea between I and he, and in the pool, an unfathomable depth, and in that depth, a monster.

How do I tell someone, anyone, that nothing so far related amounts to even one iota of the simultaneous aspect of dimensional revelation, and the absence of spacetime, and the simplicity of observation in the only-then-and-thereness of that particular embodiment of who I was and who I have become?

The experience cannot be shared, and as I read over what I have typed, I understand that I have only served to diminish the experience, and turn it into an absurdly inadequate written version of a cinematic version of a non-cinematic event. What do I say from here? 

Writing this seems like a wisp of a tentacle that remains, and seems like punishment, because it involves the re-integration of an ego so shattered, and yet necessary for day to day function, and I am acutely aware of my lies, insofar as I cannot tell what happened to any audience, no matter how hard I try.

There was, in the ‘comedown’, a moment of such beauty, when I became aware of the Motets, playing, still playing, perfectly and crisply, while I lay on the couch, being born.

A lot of people talk about the tragedy of one’s life if their most profound experiences were those occurring under the influence of a drug. 

Those people are unwatered seeds.

I have done DMT two other times. Each was more fantastic than the preceding. Indescribable, every second. I find that a part of me is convinced that this drug, this molecule, is of itself, alive, and was once married to us, and has since been divorced, and we are therefore in a state of bereavement and mourning.

And then I realize that we are longing, as humans, for contact, any contact, with ourselves and those whom we love, and that contact is so elusive, and seemingly inadequate, and yet, even every touch and word from another is a precious singularity, never to be repeated, but only diminished by retelling, and remembering, and finally, fading away.

I cannot communicate how my DMT experience altered everything forever. It was after this experience that I stopped all cocaine and crack, for good, never to visit them again. They are my enemy. I was taught this on, and by, DMT.

For those of you who are considering trying DMT, I would say, do not consider this to be even a shred of what to expect, there is NOTHING that can prepare you, there is no comparison to LSD, and while there may be some allegorical connection to the mushroom, the mushroom is like a movie of the actual life of DMT.

Anyway, I have talked incessantly to many people about the experiences I have had, and I wanted to share these aspects of this infinity here, if for no other reason, just to stimulate thought and curiosity. 

DMT is bigger than me. 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Mother Spirit Awaits

by universal shaman     2004 (male)

IT HAS BEEN A FEW WEEKS now since my first encounter with DMT, something long awaited and highly anticipated, but which completely transcended any expectations I had of it. I’d read a lot of McKenna’s rants about self-transforming machine elves, the Amazon shamans’ helping spirits and ancestors, and friends had told me about gnomes in giant stack hats running around in a fully psychedelic playground. No matter how much I heard about the alien intelligence encounters, I kept putting them aside as interpretations that colour and play off each other; like one person says they encountered aliens, and so the next person interprets their own trip in a similar way, which creates a chain of influence over every next tripper. However, I did expect something alien, something that I could recognise as alien, something sci-fi or fantastical, like a psychedelic Star Trek. I couldn’t have been further from the fact of the matter. 

I was at a friends house organising some other drug-related circumstances. It came up that he had a bit of DMT left and asked me if I was interested in trying some. –‘Absolutely not’– So we got in the car and drove to a place he recommended tripping at, up in the hills in a national park, a five minute walk through scrub into a secluded forest area. During the walk we talked about the feeling of the place, noting that there was a distinct pagan-ritual-site feel about the area, a kind of overarching, all-seeing watchful presence about the environment. But it was peaceful, clear-skied, and fairly shady and cool. In retrospect, I’m sure this comfortable place influenced the quality of the DMT flash. 

I had two attempts about 15 mins apart because the first was noticeably not a peak experience. But it was a good introduction to the totally alien nature of the dmt visions. Taking in the first toke, around 25mg, I began to notice weird body sensations, my trunk became slightly elongated, and everything was surging with an energy that was totally silent to the ears but like a raging river in my mind. My heart felt like it was about to burst through my rib cage as I reached the peak of the inhalation. I let out a single laugh as I began to exhale, partly because the sensations were awesome, not unlike the body rushes of mushrooms, but I was mostly just ecstatic that DMT molecules were finally having their way with my mind. 

I closed my eyes and was immediately face to face with a supreme being of sorts. It had no face, and its form was like a string of multicoloured lights constantly morphing; like a clown making a series of balloon animals, beginning with a dog, he alters a couple of parts, holds it differently to reveal a dolphin, and so on. It was certainly a living presence, and without a face it was still somehow staring eye to eye with me as though it knew everything about my entire life. There was no sense of emotional attachment, but there was definite supra-linguistic communication happening. This being and I were travelling at great speed through an infinite stretch of deep space – I was chasing it. It stayed the same distance away from me the whole time and seemed to be at ease with the speed, while I was struggling to keep up. It was as though it wanted me there, but not yet, not in this way. It was telling me to come back when I could keep up with it, when I could catch up and pass straight through it. Maybe this was the membrane that separates the being’s world with mine, the chrysanthemum that McKenna described. 

The being zoomed away and the effects started to fade, leaving me in a blissful kind of luminescent state that surpassed any notion of Zen states or meditative bliss. The real world had become indescribably fresh and crystal clear while I had my eyes closed. 

Fifteen minutes later, and the second attempt was around twice the dose of the first, and began just the same, the visual environment became kind of fuzzy and my body seemed to spaghettify just slightly. But within seconds of this there was a distinct difference. I had only heard this described in other people’s accounts once, I think, and I had totally forgotten about the possibility of it happening until it actually happened to me. 

Just after I released the toke, I looked around to see what was happening to my senses as I was coming up—-when the entire universe began to buzz. It was like a deep bass feedback loop that you sometimes hear in electronic music, like the humming noise of flying saucers in movies, very electronic and computer-like, but unbelievably real and right there – all around me. I immediately thought that the DMT had unlocked a whole new realm of sound that we don’t normally hear – a background kind of sound that would distract our ears from ‘normal’ functioning – the sound that matter makes. I’ve perceived the vibrations of matter and subatomic particles on other trips, mushrooms, acid, and once or twice even on the old hooch, but now with DMT it was a totally audible reality. And more than just audible, this sharp bassy hum that was coming out of everything made everything vibrate, including myself and my sitter next to me. It was so intense and pervasive that I had to close my eyes to escape the motion sickness of this vibrating mass of existence.

When I did, the buzz began to mutate and break up into all these telephonic/electronic modem-like noises, like a kaleidoscope of sound. The sounds built and built, reaching a peak that culminated in a vortex which sucked everything in existence, the buzzing, the environment around me, and my entire being into a totally foreign dimension: and there I was with total silence.

The buzzing was gone, and I was in a room looking at a wall. The wall was like a complex scaffold of constantly morphing angular prisms shimmering with colours that are completely beyond the descriptions of any language, and totally awe-inspiring. I felt an uncontrollable smile grow across my face – reality-check – but I kept watching. I immediately noticed that there was something more than just the wall. I noticed at first there was something in the wall, popping out occasionally to show me it was there, it wanted me to recognise it before it would fully come out though.

It was something like watching the flat surface of a calm beach and seeing a dolphin periodically break the surface for air. When I recognised that there was definitely something living swimming through this scaffold of unbelievable shapes and colours, it came out. It was a non-human female being flying around this hyper dimensional ‘room’. She wore a flowing cape or gown that streamed directly off a big round glowing face, the kind of face that a 3-year-old kid draws – a circle with dots for eyes and a curved line for a mouth.

That’s all there was of her. But her face was so alive, compassionate, and enlightened. She was so happy when I realised she was there. Then I watched as a pedestal literally grew out of the floor of this ‘room’, made of the same unearthly super-brilliant scaffolding. My attention must have been distracted by this thing growing out of the ground because the female being got in my face and communicated to me (not in words) “look at what’s ON the pedestal!” I looked up and saw a diamond shaped object that was made of similar stuff to the walls – but infinitely more brilliant, more dazzling, more unspeakably awesome.

And as my smile grew and total awe and amazement filled me, this female being began flying around the object at great speed, keeping her eyes fixed on me. She was doing flips and sharp turns and cheering as though she was celebrating the fact that she had the chance to show me. She kept communicating to me, “Look at it! Look at it! Isn’t this awesome?!” This continued, and I kept my eyes on that unbelievable object as the scene began to fade.

I became aware of my hands folded in my lap, slightly sweaty, my body was on an up and full of energy as my mind began to return to the reality of sitting in a forest setting next to the person who had just initiated me into yet another, but easily the most awesome, dimension of conscious reality. I was left feeling unusually happy for at least a week after that experience. It has also left me with a profound sense of fulfilment and far greater purpose and perspective in my life’s quest to understand the nature of this human existence.

From these experiences, I have to say DMT is quite patently the most accessible of the deep psychedelic states; and in terms of the practical, empirical analysis of one’s own shamanic journeys, this is by far the ‘easiest’ landscape to traverse that I have encountered. Mushrooms require a huge amount of dedication and spiritual preparation (weeks and months for the most rewarding outcomes), massive amounts of attention, and a great deal of energy to keep myself at least partly detatched from the emotional roller coasters that the mushroom state can draw me into, particularly because of the extended time of the trips. Same goes for powerful acid trips and other indole hallucinogens.

I say this not because DMT is so short acting, but because on a proper dose of DMT, one’s being is thrust into a peak experience – there is no choice in the matter. On mushrooms or acid one must guide his or her own thoughts and emotions through precarious unknown landscapes, and even then a peak experience is not guaranteed. DMT, however, seems to serve a peak experience on a platter with a salad on the side. I knew from the moment I started toking, to when I found myself in another-dimensional-room, I KNEW this was RIGHT. The DMT wanted me there, and took me there. All I had to do was receive it graciously.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Within and Without

by Morninggloryseed      2001  (male)

I CAREFULLY WEIGHED OUT and prepared two dosages of DMT for my best friend and myself. This was my second experiment with DMT, and his first. My previous experience involved a ‘test dosage’ of twenty milligrams, which produced a mild plus-two intensity trip. The dosage this time was forty milligrams each. Each of us had been anticipating this day for some time. Being avid psychedelic enthusiasts, we both had dreamed of the time that we would take DMT together. Now it was finally here!

We decided to smoke the DMT at my friend’s home because his residence offers a truly warm and comforting feel. The actual room in which we consumed the material was made completely dark except for candlelight. A decision was made to trip without the aid of music, partially because we did not wish to color the experience, but also because we could not agree on what to listen too! We spent the remaining few hours preceding the trip in silent prayer and private contemplation. Shortly before I prepared the pipes for smoking, I lit some incense and walked around the house entering each room to pray and offer the smoke as a token of respect for my surroundings.

When the zero hour arrived we were both nervous, but ready as two could ever be for such an experience. Although having a sober guide would have been the most responsible thing to do, we decided to smoke it simultaneously instead of one after the other, as each of us wanted to go through this experience together. More incense was lit. The DMT was carefully placed into our glass pipes, and I ignited both torches. One final prayer was said and then we commenced with the smoking process. Inhaling the material proved to be a little difficult, as it did have the strong plasticy taste others have described. My friend had a bit more difficulty smoking it than I did, and I recall him entering a coughing fit after his first hit.

The effects began before I could even finish smoking the drug, and the trip quickly became very intense. I found it very difficult to finish what was left in the pipe. Sitting cross-legged in front of my friend, I turned and looked into his eyes. He smiled, let out a little laughter, and then shut his eyes. Then it really began to affect me. First a powerful rush hit my body, though it was much less immersive and overwhelming compared to 5-MeO-DMT. Next everything in my surrounding vision started to vibrate with life and energy. Then suddenly, it was if a flash had gone of in my head, and I left my body. Now I was in a very different place. I could still see the room, but now I was looking at it from a different dimension. I remember thinking to myself, “This is how things really are”. The DMT dimension is not any more or less real than our ‘normal’ world. It is simply different.

I recall closing my eyes and immediately seeing what I can only describe as a female creature that reminded me of what medieval witch. Her head was triangular but her body appeared to have the same shape as a human-like figure. She almost appeared animated, yet I could not call her ‘cartoon-like’. What I will never forget is the life in her eyes. Unlike the visions I’ve experienced with other psychedelics, this vision did not seem connected to my ego in any way. It appeared to exist on its own, completely independent of myself. She smiled and expended her hand towards me. I felt as though she wanted me to take it but I didn’t because it was all a little intimidating.

The idea of directly interacting with an entity I was seeing on DMT suddenly seemed very unnerving to me. I don’t know why I felt this way because I only felt warm and friendly vibes coming from her. I just did not feel completely at ease with the situation. I rejected her hand and she soon disappeared. I only wonder if I did the right thing. 

The next vision I recall was a multi-armed goddess dancing against a golden background. Again there was this life force I could see in her eyes. Almost as if I was looking into the soul of this vision. The manor in which she was dancing, and the feelings I experienced as a result of witnessing this display, was very powerful and emotional for me. Though I can’t explain in words what it was all about, her dancing seemed to have a deeper meaning. As though each movement held a new mystery into the greater scheme of things. It was one of the more beautiful displays I have ever seen in my life. The ironic thing is my best friend later reported seeing the exact same vision as I did, and it seemed to occur for him at the same time I experienced it. I believe our minds were on the same level at this point; or rather we were at the same place. When I opened my eyes, I saw him staring at me and then he smiled. He then reached out his hand for mine and I took it. When this happened, out two bodies seemed to form into one object. We hovered and floated about the room in a sea of color and light, spinning into hyperspace.

Shortly after, I can remember looking over my shoulder to see this being dressed in what I can only describe as a being dressed in disco-influenced conquistador clothing gesturing for me to follow it. It seemed to want to lead me into the bedroom just behind it. Again, what really stood to me was the life it had in its eyes. This just did not seem like a simple psychedelic vision. As with the first entity I encountered, this was as ‘real’ to me as anything else. For some reason I did not get good vibes from this thing. I do not know what it wanted from me, but I felt I was wise to ignore it.

I recall once hearing from McKenna that not all the entities you will meet on DMT have the best intentions. I sure did not feel this one did and it soon disappeared. I closed my eyes again to witness multi-colored geometric castles rapidly being destroyed and then recreated right before my very amazed mind.

I opened my eyes and discovered that my body was covered with objects that seemed to be exploring me. These were small machine-like forms that seemed to float just above the surface of my skin, never actually touching it. They reminded me of miniature robotic vacuum cleaners with scanning noses. Advanced mechanical objects, each attempting to report on a different region of my body. Amazingly enough, this did not frighten me in any way. I simply closed my eyes again and let these objects continue to explore me. However when I shut my eyes they were still there! They continued to shuffle about in my line of sight before eventually disappearing, only to be replaced with other visions. I have no idea what it all meant, but everything seemed to have purpose. I opened my eyes again and noticed that around seven minutes had passed since we took the DMT.

At this point I had started to come down from the DMT, and things quickly died out. I remember closing my eyes one final time and seeing more visions of various creatures. Wolf-like creatures with lizard heads now appeared and swam past my eyes with complete ease. I recall one turning its head to stare at me. As before, these beings had life in their eyes. They were more to me than just simple visions, but at this point there was little interaction between them and I. They simply floated past my line of sight. When I opened my eyes, the normal world had returned for the most part, only now it was bathed in a golden light. The trails were incredible, more than just simple after-images. When I moved my hand in from of my eyes the image fell apart into colors and fractals.

By the fifteen-minute point, little remained of the effects. I simply had a pleasant awareness in my body. There was the sensation of warmth and relaxation, and a strong sense of euphoria at having survived the experience. Within thirty minutes I felt completely normal, and the drug left no residue. DMT was very easy on my body. My friend commented that his throat was a little sore, but other than that all was well for him too.

Conclusion…

In the end DMT showed me something very important…that my consciousness is not just confined to this (normal) waking state. It is possible to exist in more than one dimension at any given moment in time and space. In addition I believe there are beings, entities, things (whatever you wish to label them as) that can exist both within and without “myself.” These elemental beings are a part of me, but they also exist separately from who I am. Like many things in the universe, both opposites are true. We can through various methods (including DMT) choose to make contact with these beings and dimensions if we so desire. For this teaching I am ever grateful because it was an important lesson to learn. My next lesson will be learning to reach similar states of mind without drugs. 

I did not experience any insights or deep revelations into myself, nor into the makeup of the universe from this trip. DMT doesn’t seem to be much of a mind-expanding drug, in the same sense of LSD or mescaline. This trip simply wasn’t focused on “me”, or my world and experience. The DMT experience is well beyond “me.” It is instead a voyage, an experience where “I” am taken to different realms, levels, and dimensions that exist both within and without myself. Who I am, and my place in the grand scheme of things, is only an afterthought.

For that reason I see the continual and repeated use of DMT to be very limiting. Once we are made aware of these other realities, the entire point of smoking DMT is lost. One just doesn’t need it anymore. I feel oral DMT (ayahusaca) will have a lot more to offer me in the way of universal insights and cosmic revelations, but I have decided to save that experience for much later in life. 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Fire From Within

by Bio-Blog28       2003 (male)

I HAVE ALWAYS FANCIED myself a psychedelic adventurer, a believer in the mystical quality of the worlds surrounding us. In the footsteps of Huxley, Leary, Metzner, Alpert, McKenna, Castaneda, and Strassman (to name a few of the pioneers) I walk with arms outstrecthed and wings unfurled, open to the multidude of experiences psychedelics have to offer. My use of psychedelics has been solely for the purposes of spiritual enhancement and mental discovery. I have tried almost all common substances with psychedelic properties and have read as much literature on the topic as possible. My intent with any psychedelic journey is to make sense of a certain situation and/or a transformation amongst my mundane world. I have always found profundity, cosmological insight, and a sensibility that is derived from the intricate threads of wisdom woven within the tapestries of my body and the universe. 

This account I am about to give is purely in the realm of the mytho-poetic. And by this I mean as I write this I have only put together a few of the pieces that composed my DMT experience. My ability to reflect upon and extricate meaning from the experience can only be implemented through a poetic description because the experience was, well, poetic. 

Before I get to it I want to set the stage. I have been planning this adventure for about a year now always cautious about where my mental/spiritual/corporeal state is. I have had astrological advisors, polarity practitioners, cranio-sacral practitioners, and close friends alike talk with me about when and when not to take DMT. I have friends who have had many experiences with DMT and those with none. And I valued everyones’ opinion especially those closest to me. The only person however who knew when the best time to leap into the crack between worlds was me. Needless to say, my mundane life had taken quite the dramatic turn of events and I had a dream that I took DMT and transformed into a Panther or some sort of large feline running through along a desert plateau. I identify with the feline archetype and in Chinese astrology I was born during the year of the tiger. Whern I have dreams such as this I interpret them as good omen and a time to take a psychedelic trip.

One of my best friends who personally made a batch of DMT invited me to his and his girlfriend’s home on the beach to take the DMT leap. If there was anyone whom I could trust administering this drug to me it was him. And the space that was offered to me was very warm and comfortable. We waited until twilight, around 5:45 pm PST. We lit the room with candles, closed all curtains, and instilled the room with silence. I could not hear anything but a distant roll of ocean waves that were nothing less than soothing. As I do before any psychedelic journey, I practiced some very basic yoga stretches that I have learned from Bikram and Iyengar Yoga. And after about 10 minutes of this I faced the north, west, south, and east and said a prayer for each direction: my safety, my ability to trust, my ability to find clarity, and for my capacity to retain wisdom and understanding.

These prayers firmly established my intent for this experience and with humility and courage I sat down on the couch and let my friend administer the DMT, which he did with a glass pipe that had never been used. His girlfriend who is also a close friend of mine was in the room as well. Both would sit with me and hold space and make sure I was safe. The time was 6pm, twilight, the crack between the worlds as it were.

The first inhalation was deep and I could taste a burnt musky scent incomparable to anything I have ever tasted before. I held in the smoke for nearly 15 seconds, exhaled and felt very light. Upon the second inhalation I felt very dizzy and while I exhaled I fell back onto the couch lying horizontally. My pulse rate shot way up and I was exttremely hot. Immediately I heard a cracking in my ears followed by a loud ringing that only lasted about 10 seconds. Silence. My body trembled and I began breathing deeply and heavily letting out long sighs and moans.

I visually witnessed the room disappearing like an evanescent footprint on the sand slowly being washed away by the tide. Then there was total and immense darkness. And as though I was propelled by some inexplicable force, my body was rocketed forward in a horizontal motion faster than anything I could comprehend. Swirls of light danced around me and I saw particles of matter all around exploding into multicolored fragments. The terror I initally experienced was unfathomable. I felt like I was dying and that I had no control whatsoever. And at once, I surrendered to this death and in a sense celebrated it. As soon as I did this I saw a strange multi-limbed entity approach me on my left, swooping in and craddling my body as though I was an infant. It did not speak nor do I remember anything other than it had many arms. It was very warm and non-threatening and it spoke to me with its touch and nothing more. Its presence was extremely nurturing and it smiled with such seraphic peace and benediction.

The particles of light exploding around me, soft mercurial waves of color enveloping me and draping me with care, muslin arms holding me gently the universe expanding and contracting, angels dancing on effervescent stars, galaxies of light, sounds of butterfly wings burning, tendril tongues leaping like flames form a campfire, all derivations of geometrical patterns making reasonable the irrational.

Dewdrops slipping off of buttercups, a warm desert breeze, a cactus field of great saguaros and ox tongues swaying gently as sheets of stars pass above, careening archetypes appearing and disappearing in front of me: a Pirandellonian clown, a giant black horse with a honey colored mane, an archer with an inviting grin, ferries with dragonfly wings, a wizard with soft spoken eyes, a lascivious young siren licking my chest with a long slippery buttermilk tongue, a bengalian tiger with piercing luminescent eyes, an old man laughing, a young girl crying, an Indian inside a pueblo praying over a dying boy menstruating through his nostrils, a aft man on rollerskates, and a crone in a purple shroud reaching her old withered hand to me…the whole of humanity dancing naked amongst the gods and godessess of the storm. These images passed by me so fast yet each intricate contour of their bodies I remember so clearly. This lasted for what seemed hours and I calmly resigned to the incomprenibly beautifully changing aspect of the universe.

The world runs by rhythms we can’t possibly comprehend, and to make peace with that is the essence of being human. This I felt like no other time in my life. No other experience was remotely close to this. And the whole time this presence or perhaps God, the Great Spirit was holding me in the warmest of embrace. And slowly it brought me back to my corporeal existence in the room on the couch, so gracefully and elegantly. My body felt like a lithe dandelion floating effortlessly back to the ground. I began laughing joyfully at the unbelievable nature of my experience. I felt like I now possessed an uncanny wisdom so powerful and so essential to my being that I retained a wondeful sense of self-confidence and peace. And as I opened my eyes I saw the room as it once was before. There were strange geometrical patterns all around, yet I knew that I was back from wherever I went. My friends were there, smiling. I thought my god, how long were they there? How could they have waited with me so long, so reserved and peaceful? Hours had passes, so I thought.

And to my amazment looking at the clock, only 6 minutes (earth time) had passed! I meditated for about 10 minutes and then slowly got up and walked around. My heart was still racing but within 10 more minutes I was calm and collected. The only residual affect occurred about 8 hours later when I awoke with anxiety and in a pool of sweat. I had shivers and chills and I immediately got in a warm bath and slowly regained my composure.

I watched the sunset that morning from my bedroom window and I felt a strong fire from within me that produced so much happiness and determination. This fire from within I had never experienced and now that I have it, it carries me forth into the world with speed, agility, and a sense that the universe is indeed incomprehensible, and that no mathematical formula, no graph nor chart can possibly explain the infinitude and eternal changing manifestations of this endless flow of life. And this flow of life is joyous.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Elven Antics Annex

by SFos    1996  (male)

A composite essay of my first two DMT trips 

DISCLAIMER: This is a pale reflection of a bottomless mystery. The things I say it is, it is now – these are but linguistic shrouds I am able to cloak it in. Please don’t think you know DMT from having read this, you don’t. But DO please consider trying some, go extract it from a plant – then you will KNOW. Everything here is with closed eyes unless otherwise indicated – this is really the only way to go DEEP. 

The small wooden pipe was in my mouth and a match was coming to light it. The scenario almost seemed like smoking pot except I knew the taste to be very wrong as the complex, sweetly acrid smoke filled my lungs. Anyway, my pulse never raced like this from the anticipation of getting stoned. 

The first thing was a sense of dropping away, but to say downward would be too simple. There were all sorts of frequency modulations and crescendoed stacatto pops as the trip descended. This sound data was quiveringly involved with these visual architectonic dream waters that were beginning to emerge, dripping and slipping amongst themselves, and my being became overwhelmed by vacuous, gravity-like suction experiences which impelled me further in. Around me I felt a crowding in of beings as if the Celtic Faerie land of Fay had become momentarily co-present with where I was. I sensed them, but did not experience these creatures.

The sucking experience took over for a while then, driving the morphological acrobatics of spacelove that lay before me. There was something about it that makes me think of a voluptuous alien seductress with big, fat lips pulling me to her body in the weirdest feeling embrace ever. It felt like I was being smeared sensually and lustfully around the space in some sort of vacuum-tube funhouse. At this point (maybe a minute into the experience) I started picking up something like the Escher painting of all those sets of stairs with figures descending by all manners of gravity, only its surfaces were emerald isles of what I can only describe as fractal Medusa liquid, serpentine and sexy. There was a thought that I was in a room full of aliens and they were playing with me, but that somehow they had conspired to make me this way – the alien carney music bar on the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars trilogy seems relevant.

Then I had the thought (which just seems to pop up and not really pertain): ‘What have I done! How did I get this way?’ Meaning, how did I come to enter something so foreign that my petty human ontological premises and hopeful body of knowledge seem like a wrench trying to adjust a camel? At that point I lost any touch with my body and was thrust forward into complete and utter amazement. The world became so crammed full of intricacy to the nth that it seemed every nook and cranny in my spacetime was exfoliating little crystalline dancing worlds, bellowing ecstasy. It moved like snakes move: all rippling of muscle and sun glinting scales. I cannot emphasize enough the catapulting, titanic motions of this iridescent zigzag bottlerocket, this nuanced, whittling circus of form, this Brobignagian roller coaster safari across the jeweled plains of wonderland, straining the limits of the knowable.

This is where I was when I felt a certain sort of shockwave across the dome of the sky which gave me memory of the real world. I then entered this whole journey that I would call extrication. Going in was ‘intrication’ or delving into intricacy, so coming back out was sensibly extrication. The experience was very literally an incedible groping back out of this wild wooly thing until I made it ‘out’, which afterwards I realized was only the physical action of opening my eyes. The pipe was in my mouth – its touching my lips had been the reality shockwave I’d felt. The woman who was handling the pipe for me looked like a fractal Medusa as well, but incarnate – she was buzzing all over with this really freaky energy. I said something like, ‘You expect me to call this a mouth?’, a comment which was silenced by the stem of the pipe. One toke and I was out of my body again, yanked back through the scrim of the worlds into the blast furnaces of heaven.

I ‘came to’ in some sense at this point and realized that I could do anything in a space like this, could instantly unfold my richest possible imaginings. ‘O.K.’, I said to myself, ‘What about trying to do what you believe possible by your perceptual theory of higher dimensional experience?’ You see, I got the idea that there is no reason why, in an inner experience, one has to have visions only in front of one. I began to believe this was an imprint that years of bringing the external world into construction of inner spaces had created, but was not necessary. I then tried to imagine what it would be like to see in every direction at once, i.e. what would a ball look like if you could see every side of it at once? I could sense it but not imagine it in my mind. So this is the challenge I set myself. It not only seemed to work (though with everything else going on inside, it was a bit like trying to do a sensitive physics experiment in the midst of a drunken bacchanal) but it did so immediately. I rushed upwards into this superspace that was a spun galactic ecology of stars, a swarming hive of dragonfly constellations . . . This was very profound, but in doing it, it seemed I had reduced the alien quality of what had been going on previous to this excursion.

I let my will go then and tumbled forward into elfland. Terence McKenna is apt in calling these entities ‘elves’. They are elves/not-elves. They don’t appear, they kind of ooze out of the woodwork seductively and before you know it they’re there – the whole realm is infested with these creatures like nothing else you could ever imagine. They do sing things that are like ‘self-dribbling jeweled basketballs’ or whatever you want to call them. They make Faberge egg concoctions with ingredient lists like: 1) space, 2) lust, 3) politics, 4) circus sideshows, 5) time, 6) gall bladders, 7) existential notions of polyfidelity, 8) cucumbers, 9) Beethoven’s 5th symphony, 10) the smell of petunias, and so on. This is somewhat of an arbitrary list, but the point is, all my categories of mind fell away because they were being ceaselessly synthesized and re-synthesized into these hyperdimensional objects, undulating, ululating along.

It makes me think of getting home from school when your mother says that she’s baked you some treats, only these are like no treats Mom ever made, and when you see them you almost want to say, ‘Aw, mom, you shouldn’t have. I mean you really shouldn’t have’. What you do with these elves is some sort of a game of catch, only the physics of the game has been replaced by the physics of synesthesia. In catching the things they threw, in playing with them, I participated in the ineffable mysteries that they were. This place is the Joycean ‘Merry go raum’. Being there I came to understand the Heraclitus fragment: ‘The Aeon is a child at play with colored balls’. It is this. As well I understand, ‘Still the first day, All Fool’s Day, here at the center.’ It is this too.

So for what seemed like centuries I played with the trippy freaky elves and they kept bringing me into atrium after atrium in the antics annex, and all I could do was wonder when we would get to their front door. As far as I know, we never did. Instead they said many things, though I can’t say they used what we would call a voice to accomplish this communication. I remember only parts of this. At first they said, ‘Build this’, indicating hyperspace. Later they amended this by saying, ‘Build it. He will come.’ from the movie Field of Dreams. Very funny.

Then it was as though alarms started to go off, and the whole space was going through these quivering emergency elaborations. I get the image of a submarine movie sequence when I think back on this, just when it has been discovered on the surface, the periscope retracts and the whole interior goes into haywire, preparatory gymnastics as all the hatches are battened down. There is a phenomenally high-energy dynamic associated with this part, as they try to get you out and shut the great bronze dancing doors of hyperspace. It is as if everything is charged with imponderable electricities and is racing around because someone shouted: ‘Places everyone!!’ They start cramming your soul out of there with a million hands at once, grabbing you by twelve dimensions you never knew your body had. Finally, the thing shuts and there is a sense of finality to that, but just as soon you are on to the next thing.

Slowly then it begins to make farewells and say its goodbyes. Ancient mythos holds that the world is supported by turtles ‘all the way down’, but as I came out of it, my sense was of jeweled great glass revolving elevators all the way down. I remember thinking that I was passing back through the 50,000 veils that the Sufis say the mystery has, one by one, and I clearly remember the awe I felt that each one of them was closed, sealed, and put away in a unique and voluptuous, succulent way. It was without question the most beautiful goodbye I have known in this life. There was no regret of leaving or longing not to leave, just an overpowering acceptance of the imminent return. This went on and upon opening my eyes I had this very zap experience and I was right back in this world, amazingly enough, only ten minutes gone.

Slight tracers on light and then these gone too. I was amazed of the idea that one could go back there, could in fact just go there, that where I had been felt entirely like it was a whole hyperspace, raging right next door. I remember saying, and being very sure of this as I still am now, ‘Those are the gods’. By which I meant, of all the things I’ve experienced in life, they are the most like real living gods, and should be called that. It was very interesting to me that I didn’t need to process a whole lot, which I usually require after the mushrooms.

Instead, I think I was in a state of being so existentially surpassed by the quality of what I had just been a part of, that I couldn’t muster any sort of conceptual or descriptive response to it at all. By default, I was left with just a purity of acceptance for it – I just simply had nothing to put to it in any sense. Instead I resorted to looking wildly and deeply into other peoples eyes and by some existential-perceptual force, to impress upon them the utter beauty of what I had just been. This seemed to work somewhat, though probably not. I definitely felt I had been closer to the core of the real than ever before and that this mystery is front and center to who we are as humans, who we really are. I felt very connected to my universe, very sensitive and strong and in touch with things. Because I apparently have the gift of being able to remember it quite well (others do not), I have to live with memory of its being out there somewhere: very real, very powerful, very alive.

There has not been an hour to pass since I did it that I haven’t thought of it and tried again to reference it to this world, failing. I do feel it is a very important experience to have as a human being, and in some sense a whole lot safer than mushrooms or acid. I say this because I am aware that I usually have time and opportunity in a traditional trip to come up with weird ideas and believe them which can be hell to integrate when things return to normal. DMT seems to be so awe-inspiring, one is just so floored by it, that there is no chance for trying to figure it out.

This is left for when you return, spacecraft still steaming.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The People Behind the Curtain

by C.G.     1998  (male) 

DRIFTING DEEPLY INTO THE visual ebb and flow of the DMT I just walked through the thin fabric of the visual fractal fantasy. It was like a gauze layer of the dream just separated and boom .. it was like walking from a dark night into a brightly lit casino in Las Vegas. I felt like I had walked behind the scenes into a series of rooms. Everything was prime color cranked up to it s fullest potential. The images were clear, crisp and vivid. many times more vivid then the early pre-room images. 

There were two people a man and a women or a girl and a boy. They appeared to me like simple balloon computer generated images. As soon as I stepped in the room, they glided up to me and spoke directly to me. They kept saying welcome back and words like: the big winner, he has returned, welcome to the end and the beginning, you are The One! As I looked around the room I felt the sense of some huge celebration upon my entry to this place. Bells were ringing, lights flashing fear began to rise in me as I felt the deep change in my world. The sprites begin to lead me around the room showing me how all my life they had been preparing me for this return. I was shown dozen of experiences simultaneously in my life, that had lead up to and been clues to this moment. I was shown in a flood and a onslaught of images, thoughts, situations, raw feelings that everything had been building to this moment. That this moment had been planned. 

They told me it was a gift. That I had been selected to be The One. I felt feelings of huge relief, excitement and fear in the sprites. At this moment in the experience I became afraid for my life. I felt that this gift would cost me my life. I did not want to be The One. The sprits felt this fear in me and begin to hold my hands and arms rushing me deeper into their world. I felt their fear and I begin to believe that I had stepped out of the dream, out of the drug, out of my body and mind and into this super world. I begin to believe in the transformation. As I walked deeper I could see standing in the middle of the room, in the center of this place, an object similar to an hour glass. It was slowly turning over. I became aware that this vessel, as it tipped over, transferring its contents from the small red end to the larger blue end was transforming me.

I felt my humanity slip out as I was filled with this new powerful light. A light of greater perception, of clarity. It felt like returning home. It felt familiar. It felt like I was waking up from a hollow, pale dream of reality. I felt god like and omnipotent. I realized the this gift was not only a gift but equally a death sentence for my physical body. I felt like I had been chosen to receive this not out of benevolence but out of a need to release this power and perception There had to be The One, to relieve the others. There had to be The One who perceived completely. I felt like Christ at the moment of realization of godhood and the inevitable moment of his crucifixion. I also felt like all this knowledge and perception was far too large to be processed by my physical mind and that death was the obvious transition. 

As this moment of realization hit me I felt the sprites smile and step back. They told me I WAS The One and this WAS real and that it would never end. 

They said do you not believe….. then see. 

At this moment I sat up (in the real world) and opened my eyes. This moment true panic set in. I was deeply hallucinating. The real world was being covered, transformed into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of energy. Every surface had something like movie film, one image after another lined up like film shown through an overhead projector. These were the prime images of our symbolic nature. Slowly rolling over every surface. like the sprites of the objects. I felt I was seeing time in a singularity. I felt like I was seeing the symbolic patters like a second perception of true meaning. In the real room there were two people sitting next to me. When I looked at them I felt reassured momentarily. Then they exploded into dozens of two dimensional layers of light. Looking like computer generated futurists paintings. Wafer thin halos created the shapes of my friends. Dave looked up at me and said Welcome Back causing me to panic. Because when he said welcome back I did not think it was back to reality but back into the fold of this super world I was in. Back as there chosen one or at least one amongst them. I perceived Dave and Poon as personal guides or Guardians or gatekeepers there to welcome me into this new exalted state. That moment stripped me of my world, my truths leading me to believe that my hallucinations were truth. I once again had the crashing feeling of winning, of being chosen, and being forced to receive this unwanted sentence of total vision. I had this crash as I could see once again the cause and effect of my being there and the price I would have to pay. I was the Bean King and the price of my gift would be perceptual transcendence but physical death. 

At this time I felt a collapsing feeling as I gave in to the experience excepting my fate. I remember thinking that the hour glass had turned a little farther and I was pouring out of this life into my new one. I said out loud: I am dying. Then I lost the support of my body, my self, my existence and I began to drift. 

Dave then touched my leg I remember being drawn back into my body and thinking to hell with this I am not going to die, not yet and I felt the sprites smiling around me looking at me. I felt the fear. I felt the exhilaration of my visions. I was back in the sprites room. Even though this place was vibrant and psychedelic it was within my ability to comprehend. The sprits began there pitch at me being a winner and The One. I felt they were taking me back down the hallway to open those iconic, electric vision and to my death. I then said out loud again I am dying to which Dave responded only three more minutes and you will be all right. 

Three more minutes.. Three more minutes was like a life raft that I sailed out of that world. As soon as I was able to believe that in three more minutes I would be normal again and everything began to fade. I felt in control of my body and my life. Slowly I drifted out of the their world, back through the gauzy world of colors and patterns. With a little extra coaxing from my friends I was able to wake up and separate my self from that moment. 

I still vibrate from the experience. I am very grateful to have been with my friends.