^^

Gibran, I am not talking about the experience of DMT itself. To know how a DMT experience is, you must of course ingest DMT. What I am talking about, and what this thread actually is about, is the information you come out with.

I don't believe you can get any information from DMT that you can't get through different means. But of course, you can only have a DMT experience by ingesting DMT. Do you see what I am saying now?

Burnt! I love this idea and have thought about it often!
IMO:


Objective knowledge is tremendously dangerous and there are many who are not ready for the existence of aliens, let alone a godlike "hyperspace" existing right under our noses! Facts are dangerous.


We are only allowed personal experiences, not objective facts.
A clear take-away "new fact" would be too much, be very disruptive, and set a dangerous cultural precedent.

On ethical grounds we may receive no facts beyond impressions, else we will 1) have a collective heart attack, 2) stop learning on our own and 3) become spoiled and fail.


oi.

Well, the original poll question was “Has a DMT experience provided you with information that would have been impossible for you to (have) known otherwise?”

The only answer to this particular question is “Yes”.

If we narrow the scope of the question, exclude certain types of information, or change the question in some other way, then the answer might be “No”. But the question as it was asked logically has only one answer.

I understand what you’re saying, and I understand the question you’re answering, but it’s not the question that was asked.

I like to think anything is possible- but due to the lack of evidence I find myself hard pressed to believe that you can experience the plunge through hyperspace- along with all the content: the EXPERIENCE/learning/revelations/growth and knowledge of yourself and the cosmos that comes along with it- without taking a psychedelic.

For instance I've lost all sense of my body as it dissolved into the impossible alien landscape of unfathomable complexity and I was no longer "ME" but all of "IT"; the 'beings' the geometry, the machines, ect of this place "i" used to be in, but now was. This type of revelation that humans being can experience their dissolution and apparent becoming of something else entirely is baffling and I can't imagine it occurring quite like that without a psychedelic. I don't know if this should be classified as knowledge at all, delusional or not, or attainable by other means, but to me it doesn't matter much as its just another unexplainable conundrum of human experience added to mounting pile.

That isn't to say that you can't have a realization in sober life that you would have come to earlier had you taken a psychedelic. I'm sure many people along with myself have had realizations about themselves or the universe that came to them during sober life, and later had similar or seemingly the same realizations during a trip, or know others who had the "same" realizations in sober or psychedelic states as they had.. But this is completely different from having the SAME EXPERIENCE. The unfolding of information in ones life (also the content itself), its lasting impact, and experience in general, is going to be different every time, to everyone, no matter how apparently similar the infos meaning is.. A lot more comes along with the unfolding of knowledge gained through experience and the impact that has on a person than just the short-cut-and-dried five sentence description of it on a piece of paper, which, although across experiences may appear to be the same in writing, is really much different to the life of a living, breathing, universe experiencing human with a brain flowing through time.

So you can say that people could have came to the "same" realizations about themselves by other means but I think the experience -and the seemingly identical realizations themselves- are going to be different every time, for everyone, and especially so in psychedelic states; which will inevitably lead to different outcomes. Maybe that is why some alcoholics have the realization that they are killing themselves in normal life and it doesn't have much impact, then had it again during a trip and it drastically altered the course of their life. So maybe its not right at all to call information learned through one experience the "same" as other possible experiences of ways to obtain it since no experience is EVER going to be exactly the same and thats what realizations, or the unfolding of information in life is- its an experience. i hope this ramble makes some sense

I am with yea on this burnt.

If you’re with burnt on this, then you assert that it’s possible to gain knowledge of having an experience without ever actually having the experience. How is this possible? Some kind of "magical" knowledge transfer?

Man, don't get hung up in the choice of words. I am absolutely confident that what burnt intended to ask (and in my mind he did so) was if we believe what we learn on DMT can be learned through different routes. No one thinks you can know what a DMT experience is without experiencing it, but to ask if one can get the same information in different ways is a totally reasonable question!

totally reasonable. but that's not what he asked. If Burnt is going to scrutinize the answers, its only reasonable we should scrutinize the question.

And it contains a logical fallacy, and is thus, as i said above, unanswerable.

JBArk

Can someone please explain to me how the realization that you have a problem when you drink every single day after taking LSD is somehow invalid knowledge? That is what burnt put forth in his origional post..wheather or not you can have insight another way isnt the point..the point is that either way the knowledge is valid. Why focus on HOW you got there? what the hell is the point in that?

Of course you can gain insight into life by other means..but so what? What the hell does that mean? This is all just a huge cop out..is it that hard to see that people do have meaning ful insight and valuable personal knowledge that come to them after taking LSD or DMT or mescaline?

"I post this poll because I want those who say yes to provide details. So we can investigate whether or not they truly are being objective enough about their experiences."

Go look at the old studies done on alcoholics with mescaline and LSD. Why should anyone here have to prove themselves to you? This isnt contoversial or mythilogical. The FACT is that some people do gainuseful insight into their life durring psychedelic psychotherapy. Are you going to agrue that when some heroin addict takes ibogain and realizes he has a huge fucking problem, and sees something in himslef he was previousily unaware of, that he isnt being objective enough?

How about you come back here with something to prove your point instead of expecting others to come here and prove theirs.

Im not even gunnapost in this thread again..Im done il just stay out of these discussions altogether from now on.

It is not invalid knowledge, and no one ever said it was. All that was put forth was an hypothesis that this knowledge potentially could have come from different sources too. Perhaps a bad example with alcoholism, yeah, but it's still a wonderful question if you look past the semantics.


You don't feel like you're preaching to the choir now? If we didn't see that people have meaningful insights and valuable personal knowledge through the use of entheogens, I very much doubt that we would have been here at this forum... That includes Burnt too.

I find the question Burnt is raising very interesting. What we experience is surely not the physical substance, we are merely experiencing what's behind the doors this substance opens in our mind. To ask if these doors might be opened by other means is something we all should applaud. For is it not the effects of the entheogens we really are interested in?

Then why on earth should we let this become an ego thing where we feel hurt because we think the entheogens haven't been given the appropriate respect? That's exactly what's happening. Sure, you can all go ahead and get hung up in poor choice of some words, if that's your thing. Personally, I'd rather discuss the subject of the thread than discuss if the thread poses an agreeable subject.

I have not smoked DMT, and I have NO FUCKING CLUE what a DMT breakthrough is like. I don't know what type of visual information is available there.

Unless you are burnt, you can’t be absolutely confident about his intent. Regardless, the answer to his original question would still be “yes”.

As jbark already noted, burnt holds his discussion partners to a very high standard. I expect no less of him. If he wanted to ask a different question, I’m sure he would have.


The original question was “Has a DMT experience provided you with information that would have been impossible for you to (have) known otherwise?”

Mind-altering chemicals alter our minds.

And our brain state is altered in a very particular chemical-dependent way. This alteration changes our perceptions in ways that they can’t otherwise be (why else would we use these drugs?). We see things that we otherwise couldn’t see. We hear things that we otherwise couldn’t hear. We become aware of things of which we would otherwise be unaware. It doesn’t matter if they’re hallucinations or divine revelations. Either way, we couldn’t experience certain particular things if our brains weren’t in a certain particular state.

[quote=Evening Glory Then why on earth should we let this become an ego thing where we feel hurt because we think the entheogens haven't been given the appropriate respect? That's exactly what's happening.[/quote]

Ahh I will post one more time here..

Is it really an ego thing?? Im not sure why you think it's an ego thing. I cant have an opinion?

The whole idea of "id get there anyway" just doest seem rational to me. It's so easy to say, "oh i could have figured that out anyway"..but by the that time saying that is kind of irrelevant.

I donteven know how to say it other than what I have said..am I the only one here who thinks that makes no sense? It's like saying "oh i didnt need to be in that situation, or go through that shitty time in my life to realize this or that"..except that is exactly what happened, and what brought you there..

"Perhaps I wouldn't have noticed it without the drug but I could have."

It's that statement that makes no sense to me. Imnot sure how you come to the conclusion that we are simply arguing over words? That statement is preaty clear to me..makes no sense to me. If you wouldnt have noticed something, but you "coud have" then why didnt you?

The thing here is that Ive spokenwith burnt enough times to know that hes not stupid, but I dont think he was aware of the paradox that lies in that statement. Sorry if its incovenient to people or "egotistical" that read into things and think about the implictions of them.

But hey, shoulda coulda woulda you know..

Be it knowledge really worth knowing or trivial knowledge that is just gained unavoidably through ordinary cirumstance.

The answer is yes.

Not just to DMT but to all things.

In the form the question was asked, I'd have to say yes. But as to what I am assuming the intention of the question was, I would say no.

I gained particular understanding though the use of DMT (well from one time out of about 100, and one of the very last times I smoked it). I have seen someone on this board explain almost the exact same experience/understanding I had, but through meditation...so if I had chosen a deep meditative practice, I probably would have come to the same knowledge that I had otherwise attained through DMT.

Gibran2 cracked it in his first post, it would be erroneous to vote no now.

I've absteined from voting though, because I think what Burnt was after was stuff like Ms Manic Minxx's story. So, I will just say that DMT did not give the dreamer any proof that there was anything external to himself going on in the experience, neither was he shown any proof that the experience was internal.

All he knows is that it often felt more real in there than it does in 'reality'. Does anyone else get that? That hyperspatial realisation of "Wait a minute, what I though was reality is bullshit, THIS PLACE is truth." Crazy. Is this a revelation, or does DMT just work on the brain's 'revelation receptors'?

The problem with this statement is the use of the word “all”. It’s true, and I think obvious, that many, perhaps even most personal revelations people have under the influence of entheogens could have been realized through other methods. But that isn’t what was claimed. The assertion was that all (non-delusional) personal revelations can be realized through other methods. This assertion is false for reasons already posted.


It's reasonable to say that LSD therapy is not the only way to treat alcoholism. This is true of practically all physical/psychological problems. So we can say that there are many different therapy-specific personal revelations, any one of which may lead someone to better health:

psychotherapy ==> psychotherapy-specific revelations ==> positive change
meditation ==> meditation-specific revelations ==> positive change
entheogen use ==> entheogen use-specific revelations ==> positive change

The original question didn’t ask about outcomes of personal revelations. It asked if there are personal revelations that can only be realized via entheogenic experiences. The answer is still, as it has always been, yes.

Yes I was looking for knowledge like ms manix described as being in the yes category. I'd like to go over things like that in more detail when we have enough reports.

Of course knowledge about the dmt experience can only be had through a dmt experience. Like how you can't describe red to a blind person you can't describe dmt without losing out on some information without experiencing the dmt experience. So yea thats not the kind of knowledge I was talking about.

Also I should add that while sometimes its highly unlikely to have certain revelations about oneself unless one takes psychedelics its not impossible. By impossible I really mean impossible. Like seeing the future / seeing things in places you were not at / gaining health knowledge. I want to understand these kind of revelations more.

I don't consider memory recovery impossible either. Psychedelics are well known to do this. However having memory of ones conception which some individuals claim to have under the influence of psychedelics would could as impossible because you have no brain then. (Although I've had that experience too I just don't think it was a real memory but a false memory because I can't fathom remembering that). Although remembering your birth itself might be possible because you have a functioning brain then. Conception I dunno.

So yea Gibran your totally right in the sense that you outlined in first post. But I was talking specifically about factual knowledge about the external world and perhaps the self (like memories about things that you can't really remember).

When we have more people with that kind of information I'd like to categorize it and see if its possible to come up with some kind of explanation or at least be in a position to ask better questions that could be tested while under the influence of dmt.

Burnt, I've got one thing I'd like to share here which may be of interest. On one journey, I came across a powerful entity. I knew that he was called "the Monkey King", and he appeared to be a very powerful monkey who had control over the very stuff of hyperspace. But I had no idea what or who the Monkey King was.

It turns out he is a well established figure in Chinese mythology, and one that I had absolutely no prior knowledge of, whatsoever.

He is an interesting character - a Monkey with a desire for knowledge and power, his ambition drives him up and forward to the point that he demands of the gods that they accept him into their ranks. But the very qualities that have brought him to this point prevent him from becoming a god, and he is trapped and tricked to limit his power.

On reading this, after the journey, I was quite shocked by how pertinent that myth was, how rich in relevance and meaning, and that I was shown an established myth of which I had no prior knowledge.