I heard david susuki once refer to something called the 'ethnosphere'.
Im not sure whom originally coined the phrase but its basically like the biosphere [the global sum of all ecosystems] except the ethnos, [if you get the prefix] meaning the global sum of populations and cultures.
What Suzuki did was i suppose you could say he embraced this rather bland term, and elaborated upon it in an interesting way by arguing:
[im paraphrasing obviously]
1. the collection of culture must be humanity's greatest legacy.
2. It is through the converging and conjoining of populations that propels us even further past our own inhibition.
[He speaks alot about co-habitation, as if it is our destiny to watch eachother's backs.]

Anyways these arguements go on for days, not just Suzuki but thousands that share similar beliefs of an embedded necessity... an ancestral call to convene with eachother and conspire wth one another [for more than just basic reasons].
I have often wodered if these 'complex geometric patterns' we all tend to experience are a translation of exactly what I've just described. That we are the direct epitomie of such interwoven, super-symmetrical visions and that they are conceptualizations of the universe.
What we can say for sure is that there's strong indication of a pre-destination or a provocation in us to be this way...
Even now... science is beginning to confirm that humanity is a tightly-tethered organization [i.e mirror neurons].
The implications are huge.

To address the question regarding origin of entities and is there some way to pin point such benign forces?
Short answer [like you said] will likely be 'no' for an indefinite period of time.
However...
if there is an 'ethnosphere' or whatever ud like to call it... a place where diversity finds common ground; where individual is but contributer to a collective consciousness... then I would have to point my finger at our own imaginations for having founded such unearthly entities. Perhaps these visitors are embodiements of our own felt-prescence of 'alienation'.
[this is purely just an inquest as to other possible explainations btw, not my personal opinion]

Last thing to think about:
Suzuki defines the ethnosphere as "the sum total of all of the ways that human beings have imagined the world into existence."
Rita Dove said "You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.
Jessamyn West believed "Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures."

Such a thing that has shaped us into the culture we are,
cradled our inspiration into creation,
allowed us to breathe colors into words,
songs into celebration,
stories into life.
This is a realm of infinite importance; infinite capability.

i think ur asking the right questions [ska]. i wish i knew how much of dmt was beyond our own imaginings.
I too, have felt an estranged embrace during certain particularly difficult voyages.
But I can never remember enough to know for sure...

This is the major issue.

If we could remember EVERYTHING that transpires, we would surely have less uncertainty about what it is and what it means. It all makes perfect sense while it is happening, no?

As for the term ethnosphere... It is an interesting, concept. It differs somewhat from the more prevalent noosphere concept, but they certainly cover similar ground. Do you think the idea different enough to warrant a separate discussion or is this more of a subset in your mind?

Dmt is certainly a strange, wierd, and far out experience, and i can understand you not wanting to go there. But i believe it is like India: you say you'll never return, but you'll be back!!!.....Patience

I once wanted to save Lucifer.

I still think it's one of the highest ideas I've ever had,
provided we understand that saving is not succumbing.

A warrior of God is the warrior of non-duality:
his love, acceptance and understanding cuts through the fear,
his compassion makes the fractured one whole again.

This has always incited great curiosity in me. Such insight into the nature of our existence and the laws of the universe are achieved in an instant as one breaks through the veil, only this understanding can never (for me anyway) be fully recovered without DMTs influence. Everytime I broke through it was always 'Ofcourse! I KNEW this all along!' and then I desperately try and make mental notes that I can use to recount the experience but when I come back I only have a rough idea of what transpired. The best explanation I managed to find that somewhat satisfied this frustration was in regards to the limitations of the physical brain:


"The astral brain is capable of remembering both your astral experiences and your physical experiences, while the physical brain is capable, at least in the vast majority of humans, of remembering only the physical plane experiences and forgets almost completely its experiences on the astral. This is because an etheric web, a concentrated center in the etheric double, exists in the head region, preventing astral plane experiences from gaining entrance to the waking consciousness. This is indeed a blessing for the physical brain is not capable of withstanding the vibrational impacts it would be called upon to endure if this protective web were not present."


Perhaps the comprehensive recollection of everything we experience in hyperspace would interfere with our ability to function on the physical plane? Or perhaps one can develop a lasting connection between hyperspace and the physical with wisdom and dedication...

Both of these things, IMHO.

Your quote rings true, despite the limitations of words to describe these things adequately. I usually just leave it at the idea that multidimensional information and knowledge doesn't fit into the tiny temporal mind all that well... and that the borderlands between states of consciousness (even from one dream into another) have a kind of frontier with a sort of customs interdiction. Some types of knowledge must be smuggled across.

This is not saying that my way of describing it is any more accurate than another. Just that the images more closely resemble my subjective experience.

ive written a post about this before.
Dr.Psy that first paragraph you wrote was perfectly worded - i find it interesting how sometimes a low-dmt dose[smoked] will if im lucky create A surge of cognitive functions dmt-related... like it'll toss me into a montage of previous trips/realizations for maybe a minute or two. Maybe itll be like a re-visit to an old ayahuasca journey i kept close to my heart or something, but ill see certain specifics more vividly and be able to 'sense' certain things about it i wouldnt normally be able to come across in a clear-headed state.
It happens very rarely, but thats really the only way ive been able to ressurect the "forgotten lore" as they say.

and may I just say to HF... do you realise how insane this sounds!?


although i dont want to admit it because id really love to smuggle say... a metaphor or a couple nice descriptive sentences [at least!] across that damn border for a short story or poem or something, but your probably right, i brains r jus too smalls
WAIT A MINUTE...
maybe if i raise ph to salt metaphorical terms out of aqueous solution with sodium hydroxide... this may allow for less conspicuous transport across the border? oR SHOULD I USE FASA FOR EASY STORAGE WHEN CROSSING??
im completely kidding though, what you said makes perfect sense... however, it might no be the best 'table talk' when home for thanksgiving dinner or out on your first date with x or y.
Which brings up the question... do us border crossers not find it infinetly times harder to make even light conversation of said topics with unaffiliated and unknowledgeable peoples?
Ive tried before... and have retreated out of fear for sounding a tad too asymmetrical.

i remember my first time considering trying dmt when i was 17-18... i went home that night and wikipedia'd DMT. Scrolled down to the effect descrption [this was some time ago] to see if id be interested...
besides some minor physical details it said one thing about the actual trip/hallucinations:
"Frequently users will describe the experience as ineffable."
I was like... wtf does that mean?
did a quick google search and realised how lame it was to have 'description' and 'ineffable' in the same sentence. Having learned nothing i went along with procurring the chemical.
After i tried it...
it became so apparent to me how among all the english arsenal that existed, the word 'ineffable' was actually best-suited for the job.

pce

This post makes me think that there should be somekind of anti-dmt agent nearby when you smoke dmt that will instantly and completley baseline the excess dmt in your system instantly snapping you out of the trip. It may sound stupid but it could be possible.

Vaporized DMT wears off in ~5 minutes after ingestion. What's the point in trying to suppress that? By the time you administer this magical anti dmt agent, you are already coming down anyway.

And also, instead of flipping out, try simply meditating.

- With all the popularity of DMT and u tube videos, etc, it's very easy for people to forget just how powerful an experience DMT can be. It certainly helps if you have tried sub breakthrough doses beforehand, and certainly requires a certain "inner strength".

- If it's too much for you, then that's because you are not really ready for it, and it will tell you so. Although DMT can be an incredible experience, it can also be like hell to those that are unprepared. Certainly not to be taken lightly.

-Know your limits!!!

http://www.youtube.com/w...eature=player_detailpage

Heheheh. Do I ever.

I did put the disclaimer there that it is merely my metaphor... I don't believe in anything like a physical border crossing type experience. Certainly, there is no strip search cubicle for astral body cavity searches... (that we can remember)

But, my experience in crossing these borders is somehow captured in this smuggling (and somewhat rule based) thing. It is like by agreeing to enter a certain dreamworld, you agree to playing by its ground rules. Certain knowledge is like contraband. Thus, the amnesic return.

If you decide to play W of W (I don't play), you are not allowed to do certain things or skip ahead in your character's storyline... you would have to hack the game, and this isn't impossible, just not common knowledge of how to do it. And, you might risk getting yourself banned.

Similarly, it isn't impossible to bring drugs across borders.

I don't think you get banned from Dreamworlds or Hyperspace for cheating, so to speak. I do think that the world's you have chosen to believe in might not remain believable with certain precious info, though.

(again, this is certainly some TTLG stuff here)

Here in this body, at this time... there are many things I know that I know, which I simply can not recall. I also can not fly. When I am dreaming, not even lucid dreaming, I can nearly always fly. Many of my dreams are very stable, consistent and can even seem more real than my waking life. As someone who lucid dreams, pays attention, and is always on the lookout for dream clues... they have to be incredibly realistic to fool me.

So to continue this analogy to its conclusion... perhaps if you smuggle enough contraband knowledge into this waking life, you would become lucid that this is also a dream. Maybe this is the nirbikalpa samadhi... total enlightenment.

Who knows?

Indeed. The experience from smoked NN,DMT is far too fast. Far too difficult to remember.

Either THAT or you remember it perfectly, until you exit the journey and your Ego reinstates
most of it's barriers, no longer allowing you access to memories of the experiences you
just had a minute ago. Like the Ego supresses the memories as soon as it regains control.

This was a method of mine too, I found that after some heavy trips where I seemed to remember far less than low/medium dose trips (other than that something truly INEFFABLE occurred), low doses would help bring tiny bite-sized pieces of the experience back that I could try and disseminate in the confines of my physical brain. I find this with other substances too, particularly salvia where I would always go into this warped horrifying reality that I would get 'trapped' in, and then eventually make my way out of only to have forgotten what that reality was actually like. So I'd find myself trying it again at some point only to immediately remember what it was like and be saying to myself 'why on EARTH would you decide to come back here again?!'. It was only until I took a very low dose of salvia that I understood the horror was related to my ego desperately gripping onto THIS reality. With dissociatives as well I have had many insights that fully make sense while under the influence but only remain as 'facts' as opposed to 'concepts' when I return. Eg. The fact that 'Love is the unifying force of the universe' vs. the entire understanding of how and why this is. I'd then try and explain such realizations to friends and would end up admitting 'I don't really understand it but I KNOW that it's the case!', hardly a convincing argument in any discussion!





I like this analogy HF. It certainly feels like one may be 'breaking the rules' when trying to bring across as much as possible from hyperspace to this plane. Particularly in trips where the entities we encounter ar dismissive or even forcefully eject our very presence there. Sometimes I feel like I've visited places where I'm not 'supposed' to be, but don't understand or remember what went on most of the time so I'm sure said entities weren't too bothered. To continue with your analogy, if one does manage to smuggle contraband across, one could find themselves rich beyond their wildest dreams. But could one also bring contraband across that causes trouble in some way. Is all knowledge from the other side beneficial? Or could our curiosity get us in trouble? These are just questions of mine and I actually couldn't see what kind of knowledge would be harmful, unless it got into the wrong hands maybe...

i rapped upon my description for dmt last night [i intended to make it really descriptive and everything].
Eventually realising, i could only came up with a couple sentences and that there wasnt really anything more i could concievably add:

"This ineffable apprehension of macrocosmic proportion,
comes sweeping too swiftly, too far, too few between.
To elucidate such abstruse things, I wish, I wish there were a means;
To luminate such things unseen, has always been a dream I've dreamed."

HF, my fav. quote from waking life is:
"The worst thing you can do... is believe you're alive.
When really you're asleep in Life's waiting room."

kind of speaks to the fact that yes, we can conceptualize the 'illusion' of stone cold reality...
but can we truly fully believe it? and what would happen if we did? if we could take enough evidence back from hyperspace,
to believe it 100%? What would be the result?
As was insinuated, it would probably become impossible to function.


After a recent trip, i came to the conclusion that this realm of fixed variables [life] must be completely dependant
[and only really possible] under the condition of an acessible, open-ended, unbound realm.

I think the Shroedinger cat 'experiment' is an under-exterted ideal that we could apply here...
which is to say simply, you cannot have a 'this' without a 'that'.
And so... we're actually a part of both places at once, the collective of this reality and it's higher one.
i think i'd be impossible to have a reality of rules [like the one were living]
without some link to the source that essentially set them.
[which would be the dmt realm imo]
GOOD TALK THOUGH, i enjoy these conversations very much.

Did someone *cough* OP *cough* recently change the title/subject of this thread?
"Once I believed "

Sneaky.. So what's your current standpoint on the big bad DMT boogiemen, have they changed?

I did indeed. I thought it appropriate given that this is certainly not the end of my relationship with the spirit molecule. Though its lessons may seem overly harsh at times I believe they are often neccessary just took me awhile to realise this

I've found this more than true in each of my journeys. I cross over, 'see' what my life looks like on the other side, and it's always AH-HA!. NOW I remember! Of course! This is all so simple how could I ever forget this?

Then 90% of the time Teo will show up and repeat to me the telepathic words, 'it doesn't translate well does it?' and I always have to agree with him. There is just no way to say it (I've tried), no way to conciously understand it (I've tried) and continue to be a human. I've been told that 'in order to know the truth, you have to collapse the illusion that inevitably comprises your entire human self'. Or in other words, once you know EVERYTHING you can't play human anymore. This is why we can't bring it all back with us. It really is for our own education and continued growth, ime.

Humanity, as I understand it, is a learning exercise for our soul and it's a pretty demanding one. Of course there is no proof to backup this claim, but it's what I've come to understand from my own inner explorations. The memories of hyperspacial interaction almost have to be entirely (or almost entirely) forgotten or at least their meaning warped upon return or else being human would be even more difficult than it already is. Let's face it, if we could really bring back with us ALL of what we know when we're over there, I make the claim that we wouldn't want to be human anymore! What would be the point in the human experience if we already knew how the story was going to play out? I know I wouldn't continue playing the game, being human is a drag A LOTof the time.

I'd take being a disembodied point of concious awareness observing the universe any day over my 9-5. But my normal, limited human life has a TON of worth to my soul's growth, imo.

I didn't read this on these forums but I read a guys report of a journey he had where he tried to make excuses for his failings as a human to a hyperspace being. The entity was puzzled by his efforts to apologize for being human and relayed to him the message: "To me, you're like someone who struggles to walk on the ocean floor and apologizes for getting wet."

I was always fascinated with this quote from the Bible:



My current understanding is that the mirror alluded here is the "objective" world we experience as a "subject". There is only one being, experiencing itself from a multitude of viewpoints. This is the knowledge that we can't bring back, probably because the carrier (the mandala) is not mature, not balanced, not optimized enough (yet) to carry the weight of this knowledge (it would burn out = go mad).

Sidenote: having an idea of what the secret might be doesn't mean we "remember" it. Remembering here means unshakeable solidity, the crystallisation of inevitable truth on a gut-level, a knowledge that would change *everything*. Not just an idea to entertain, but a new way of being.

With psychedelics we can switch back and forth between heaven and earth. Some people use them to escape from earth. But their primary purpose (for me at least) would be to teach us how to bridge the two, how to intertwine the two into a living embodiment of truth.

I only saw a quick mention of shamanism in this discussion, which I think is more important for getting into and exiting these places safely than the physical surroundings, or the substance or method you use to get there.

I know the OP referred to guardian spirits. This is a simple lesson... your guardian spirits said dont touch that. But you went and touched it, and it sucked. Simple. Lesson learned. Always heed your guardian spirits. Are these animal, plant or ancestor spirits that you have?

Also, someone mentioned only travelling with ayahuasca in their system. This is excellent conduct, and that post is exactly what using these SACRED substances is all about.

I've only had recurring trips when my use got out of control. I think it simply means, "What are you doing here? You havent even used the information that we've given you, yet you come back for more. Stop wasting our time. What are you dong?" When you dont heed that warning, you get sent or drawn into darker and darker places until you get the message.

I think having intention is also one of the most important aspects of journeying. It is vital to avoid getting "lost" in some rough places.

Only after I gained ayahuasca as a spirit ally did I start "fighting" "evil" beings when necessary whith a sword I once found in a bookstore in a literal sleeping dream. I have found this to be the most effective way to get out of a situation when there is an obvious thing to fight off. However...

Sometimes it is tough to tell what is evil, as you know, you struggled with this. This is when you listen to your spirit allies. I've been to places that you speak of once on mushrooms, and was for sure the climax of a period of abusive, unreflective relationship with them. I was heavily traumitized by this, and my trips for years were very difficul after that, even after about a years break.

Also, surrendering is another issue. Its difficult to know when to surrender and when to fight. I once had a psilo-huasca adventure in which I was shown (first I heard it, then the revelation came) that the earth is constantly feeding upon itself. Then, slowly, I began to be eaten by this thing I was surrounded by(I would call it gaia...the biological life force something like that). At this point I recognized it as an initiatory destruction of my ego and went with it, which turned out to be the most rewarding and significant journey I've ever had. However, before all of this occured I was swallowed by a huge snake, which is a classic example of the beginning of a shamanic intitiation.

During your break, read about shamanism. Do some excersises. Get some spirit allies, I would focus on plants first. Then ancestral, then animal, but I'm no authority on the subject really, just highly interested. Finally, once you've collected these resources/protectors, you will probably be drawn to journeying again. I would suggest not smoking DMT, or purely DMT in absence of some other biological matter. Even smoking or making a weak tea out of MHRB would be good, AS LONG AS YOU DRINK IT WITH THE INTENTION OF FORMING A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PLANT SPIRIRT THAT IS PROVIDING THE EXPERIENCE. It is most important to meet the plant spirit from which the experience is coming. I have the feeling that extracted chemicals are a recipe for disaster because they dont guide you, they dont help you, they just send you somewhere random, might be good might be bad.

In conclusion, I've had this happen, and it lead me to shamanism, which later lead me back to psychedelics in plant form. I have had difficult journeys since, but not one of them has been damaging, and all provide me with information I use in my day to day living.

Sorry to hear about your tough time...dont feel alone, many have been there...it will subside. These bad experiences are almost unavoidable in our society that wont allow us the means to have intiations and practical/traditional knowledge necessary to avoid such problems.

Namaste

I think Tek pretty much summed it up perfectly.
Its trully fascinating, to confirm that so many people share the exact same kind of experience.

my formula is as such:
:arrow: packs the pipe
:arrow: smokens the dm-tizzO
:arrow: starts taking full effect
:arrow: enters hyperspace
:arrow: chillin' ...
:arrow: chillin' some more...
:arrow: shizag. Looks like some thoughts are brewing up...
:arrow: wait for it... wait for it...
:arrow: and here it comes...
:arrow: bang diggity! sudden epiphany!!
:arrow: chillin' on that epiphster' for a while...
:arrow: OHHHH... snap diggity X2!?
:arrow: realization that the epiphany is not so unfounded,
but rather something that was known all along [just slightly out of sight perhaps]
:arrow: WHOA!
:arrow: AN EPIPHANY WITHIN AN EPIPHANY!?
:arrow: brief moments of ultimate clarity and content in having ressurected such valuable information

:arrow: the trip winds own
:arrow: begins to slip out of hyperspace
:arrow: completely forgets what the epiphany was
:arrow: only a feeling of famialiarity remains from the experience [lame]
:arrow: comes back to reality
:arrow: feels like the information that was acessed would not jive very well with human life anyways

Having gone through this a handful of times now, Im beginning to feel even a slight insinuation of irony in it, almost.