My opinion, take it or leave it:
First of all, as a disclaimer, it's not supposed that people are making contact with alien entities or another world/dimension/reality every time they use DMT. Some people find this a good enough reason to disregard the reality of all DMT experiences. James Kent, for example, suggested that because a friend of his only ever saw visions of distorted corpse-like faces on DMT, that it's just an unpredictable hallucinogen and shouldn't be taken too seriously. I think this is a mistake.
To use a really flawed and tired analogy, you can cause all sorts of meaningless distortion by interfering with the tuning of a radio receiver. It's variable and unpredictable, and often there's nothing to make of the result, but that doesn't mean it isn't capable of being retuned to something real. The waters are also muddied by the large number of maladjusted or "ideologically keen" people having anomalous experiences.
There are reasonable expectations for what "mind arbitrarily running wild under the influence of a destabilising psychoactive drug" would be like. What is experienced when you seem to make contact with these entities/worlds/dimensions/realities can be so well defined in its alien character, and so purposeful in its content, that reducing it to the effects of a drug feels like an irrational stretch that makes light of the obvious.
In the moment, there are many indescribable impressions that tip you off to the reality of the encounter and the nature of what you're dealing with, but unfortunately they don't carry much weight once you're back here.
Nobody really has any idea what weird mechanics might be underpinning the DMT experience, or how this world/dimension/reality we're in now might structurally relate to something else. I think it is foolish to assume that these experiences are never real, or that you cannot be harmed in some way by interfacing with some of these beings. I am not claiming that I know any of this for certain, but overwhelmingly this is what my instincts tell me.
There are many, many reports of extremely frightening encounters with some of these beings, with a recurring set of themes: they have an agenda, they want to consume the user, operate on them, imprison them, perform a sexual act on them, or harvest something from them. It's common for beings to make offers [sometimes proposed "trades"] that the user doesn't understand, and then become very annoyed if the user doesn't accept or cooperate. There are often elements of torture, perversion, disgust and belittlement. It can be seriously traumatising.
Furthermore, the positive experiences are often not entirely positive. There can be an awful, sinister undertone to everything that is going on. I get the impression that most people experience this and know what I'm talking about here, but when they come back they tend to forget or marginalise this aspect because it's difficult to reconcile, complicates a good story, and they don't want to discourage others from trying it.
It's like you're given your time on the bouncy castle, and it's so grand that you try not to look the gift horse in the mouth. You want to have it, but barely out of sight the other kids are rummaging through your backpack. It can be a very conflicted experience.
Sometimes this is just a playful sort of jest or mockery, maybe, but many people (either immediately or after several trips) get wise to something happening in the background. There's often this sense of illusion and distraction, and people may realise that they're being given a mesmerising display, or being artificially filled with a sensation of bliss and joy, to keep them busy while some strange procedure is performed on them.
This doesn't necessarily mean these beings are up to no good. I mean, if we encounter an injured animal, we might want to help, but we cannot effectively communicate with them. So we take charge in their best interests and restrain or anaesthetise them while we fix the problem.
Sometimes there appears to be good intent behind these procedures, but other times something clearly malevolent or offensively weird is going on. People who've had these experiences know that these "lawyers' explanations", like the mind amplifying and distorting memories or fears of being in the dentist chair, or something, are painfully naive.
These hostile or tricksy encounters are a lot more common than people seem to think, and the same (in my view, irresponsible) advice is given every time somebody reports them:
Quote:> It was a frightening experience, but it wasn't real.
> A bad environment or state of mind caused the bad experience to manifest. (It's true that a bad set and setting is likely to lead to a bad experience, but what of the reality of the bad experience?)
> It was your ego struggling. You needed to let go and surrender to whatever was happening, even if it "presented" as malevolent, because it was just a manifestation of your own resistance.
> It was a trial or test of some sort, and would give way to a rewarding experience if you'd just let the thing have its way.
...or some variation thereof.
On a crap platform like Reddit it'll simply be downvoted to oblivion, but historically on the Nexus, advice of caution regarding the possible reality and consequences of these encounters has often been met with hostility, including by those who themselves believe in the reality of the experience (I'm not talking about the NGC-thing, which clearly reads like a bad fanfic).
The waters are again muddied, because maybe some of these experiences
aren't real, and maybe some of them
are just valid therapeutic experiences where the user is pushed to confront something unpleasant for their psychological growth, or whatever.
People can believe whatever they want about the DMT experience. Again, I'm not claiming to know for certain that it can be real, or what you should do if confronted by seemingly hostile entities with questionable proposals, but I think we're all gambling with this stuff.
In this world, if a shady character approached and tried to take a bite out of you, tried to rape you, tried to distract you while their accomplice picked your pocket, or tried to swap a penny for your liver, you wouldn't second guess yourself. And that's to say nothing of elaborate scams and hoaxes where the reality isn't immediately obvious.
I'm reminded of this quote:
ghostman wrote:I think we are fucking with our souls, not bending our minds. It's like stealing a space ship and cruising the galaxy without a proper understanding of how the craft is powered or how to maintain it. We are not qualified soul engineers.
Does the DMT experience involve some immaterial part of us visiting another place? Does it allow beings from outside this world to interface with our minds? I don't know. At least in this world, the consequences of hostile encounters are fairly predictable. Would you really bet that you're risking nothing in these bizarre realms? Are you really going to trust the opinion of anybody who tells you that it's harmless, and that you should let these beings do whatever they want?
The safest assumption is that this is an unpredictable ticket to a multitude of possibly real places and experiences - at least as multiplistic as the one we're in now - some possibly beneficial or harmless, some possibly harmful, some not involving entities either way.
Assuming you have the choice or ability to deny or resist some of the apparently hostile interactions, I think you should deny or resist with as much force of will as you can muster.