DMT commands special attention, in the sense that it displays a kind of inexplicable intelligence.

I have found that psychedelic drugs in general can reveal an intelligence by shedding light on the subconscious mind - but this intelligence is our own. In this case, we are seeing the normally-invisible mechanics of the very brain which is being altered by these drugs. But DMT, and certainly at times other drugs like DPT, show us something else. Something beyond the brain.

- First, smoked DMT offers me a series of trips which catalyze a positive transformation of my unhealthy lifestyle - I begin to watch my diet, exercise regularly, and sleep well.

- Then, oral DMT in the form of ayahuasca offers me a powerful insight into the nature of my anxiety disorder, which was invaluable in that it allowed me to leave my isolation and attend college.

- DMT gifts me with an insight into the principles of Taoism that begins a life-changing exploration of Eastern philosophy.

- Most recently, on smoked DMT I meet the same "beings" which have been reported by an alarmingly significant multitude of DMT users - enthusiastic and welcoming light-beings who wish to show us something, tell us something.

- Etc.

What do all of these trips have in common? Given the popular assumptions about human beings, and reality in general, the likelihood that this series of events would arise by chance in the hallucinations of psychedelic intoxication is just too slim. The fact that, by flooding the brain with serotonin-mimicking compounds and lighting up 5HT2A receptors all over in a neurochemical fireworks-show, we are able to see such consistently intelligent and constructive effects, is so statistically unlikely as to be virtually impossible. I am reminded of the classic analogy of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and building a functional airplane. For example, when DMT taught me to love and accept my anxiety, this was totally counter-intuitive to me, and not something that my intellect alone could have discovered, yet it was the solution to my problem. And I encounter this sort of thing time and time again.

In sum, what we see in DMT is incompatible with our current view on the basic nature of reality, and so we've got to change the way we see things. My gut reaction was to attribute this intelligence to an advanced alien race, which was somehow communicating with us by our common entanglement in DMT "hyperspace". No, this doesn't really make sense, I've concluded. If aliens were able to communicate with us through DMT, their first order of business would not be to give humans paternal guidance.

Allow me to suggest another explanation. Look at these well-known facts of our cosmological and biological history, compare them to the above-mentioned effects of DMT, and see if you can spot a trend:

- The universe was born with physical constants, such as the acceleration due to gravity, or the mass of a proton, all falling within the very narrow range within which the development of life is permissible. For instance, a highly unlikely synergy between the strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces, creates what is known as carbon resonance, which causes an unusual abundance of carbon, without which life could not exist.

- In this universe, a planet formed within the habitable zone around a star we call the sun, with a source of water, and the appropriate atmospheric conditions to sustain its liquid phase.

- Under this liquid water, theoretically in the energetic chaos of deep-sea hydrothermal vents, abiogenesis, or the formation of life, occurred - an event so unlikely that, in the ~4.4 billion years that our oceans existed, it has observably taken place exactly once.

- This tree of life eventually produced the human being, a species with languages and technologies vastly more complex than anything seen elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Consider the fact that a stick, sharpened into a crude spear by a chimpanzee is probably the closest thing lesser apes have to the Large Hadron Collider.

- In some theoretical models, it is estimated that at a time in our evolutionary history, human population dwindled to numbers possibly as low as 3,000. Homo sapiens became what we would now recognize as an endangered species, and was threatened with extinction, yet, we survived.

- Etc.

For the same reason that human life has developed against all odds, DMT exhibits its inexplicable intelligence.

Clearly, there is some natural law, or force if you will, which gives the universe its tendency to do this thing, which is characteristic of life on earth. It is the tendency for the universe to build, essentially, what appears to be increasingly complex and spectacular phenomena.

As I understand it, in at least some interpretations of quantum mechanics, the way history plays out over time is not entirely deterministic, but there is an extent of randomness (i.e. unpredictability) in quantum events. As time passes, you can imagine that we are traveling along a continuously forking, branching path. Every time we reach a fork in the road, we roll the dice to decide whether to go left or right. This is how matter behaves on a basic level.

This is how I hypothesize "the force" to work. The unpredictable path that history takes through the tree of possibility is actually not strictly random. It is being biased by the force. Or, you can imagine that it is being pulled by the magnetic attraction of what lies at the end of the path, which is of course, whatever will happen when this trend of increasing complexity reaches its climax. In other words, the dice roll is rigged so that it favors human life, and whatever human life will become in millions or even billions of years.

Abiogenesis is the perfect illustration of this phenomenon. It's been suggested that the origin of life may have been a peptide composed of 32 amino acids. Every time you throw together 32 amino acids into a peptide chain, there is a 1 in 10^40 chance you'll get the hypothetical origin of life. For scale, there are ~10^80 atoms in the observable universe. If you take "the force" into consideration, that wee little self-replicating peptide didn't depend on luck entirely. History took the 10^40th fork in the road because it wanted life.

And this is exactly what we can observe in DMT trips. When we take DMT, we are creating the perfect breeding ground for observable manifestations of the so-called force. Namely, we are creating highly chaotic circumstances. In sobriety, the way our minds work is relatively mechanical and deterministic - we make observations, and respond to them accordingly. However, DMT introduces a wild card. However it works, it seems to stimulate visions and experiences which are completely unpredictable, and always unique. When we take DMT, we put ourselves in the position of facing a thousand forks in the road. And of course, the force always pulls us in the constructive direction. Out of the countless visions that I could possibly see, I'm shown one that enables me to attend college, only because in college I will learn skills with which I will contribute to humanity, and propel The Process.

Also, practices like divination with the I Ching begin to make sense in this paradigm. Perhaps someone long ago caught on to the fact that chance was on his side. Consulting the (seemingly) arbitrary cracks in a turtle shell for guidance is not such a silly idea after all, if those cracks are formed by an invisible intelligence.

I will give you a different perspective on the same idea.

We commonly make the error of assuming that the natural state of things is formless, ugly, and chaotic. That the natural tendency is for time to wear things down, and decay them, like when we see ancient architecture falling to ruin. And that it's up to us to keep things polished and tidy, and vigilantly defend the order and beauty of the world, lest it be swallowed up by the cruel wrath of nature, like the city of Pompeii.

Well, this is a complete 180-degree turnaround of the truth. In reality, the only ugliness that exists is an illusory perception of ugliness created by our egos. What we perceive as chaos and ruin is actually the divine order. Beauty is an intrinsic property of reality, and it's impossible to destroy - we can only alter the form that it takes. Like metal, we can melt it and mold it, and we can even hide it, but we cannot make it truly disappear.

So, when we take a drug with a powerful capacity to dissolve the ego, the mechanism which creates the illusion of ugliness is destroyed, and finally, the secret is told. The drug cuts right through the veil, and out spills endless love, divine perfection - like hitting a piñata with a bat, and it explodes into a shower of candy. This love and perfection is the seemingly bottomless generosity and inhuman intelligence of DMT.

That was a thoughtful write-up AppleCore. I was about to re-direct you to this thread before I realized it was yours

Ha. Actually, it's a good thing you did, because I think I sort of forgot about that thread, and have to catch up on all the replies.