What has DMT taught you? I'm fascinated by the universe and consciousness and am open to all possibilities and I experimented with psilocybin and mescaline but I was a close-minded militant atheist at the time, now I'm on a kind of spiritual journey but I can't use drugs, I see people talking about how DMT teaches them the truth or LSD enlightens them and they say it's beyond words, I personally don't believe that the truth could be beyond words and I am hoping you can enlighten me today, I have listened to a ton of Terrence McKenna, perhaps you can recommend other psychedelically inspired thinkers? I like what Bill Hicks said about us all being one consciousness and I would like to see how I can pass this idea and others through my critical filters.

I'm not sure using "critical filters" is necessarily the best approach for this, to be honest with you. Part of the problem with western society is that we've all been hoodwinked into believing that it's possible to "think" our way to the solution of any possible problem. The mind is a powerful tool in the realm of thoughts but, in my opinion, "thinking" is not the way to get you to any sort of acceptance of universal oneness.

If you're interested in the subject from a spiritual standpoint, it's EVERYWHERE. Pick practically any religious system and oneness is there. For Hindus it is "Brahman". For Muslims (the Sufis in particular) it is "Tawhid". Buddha. Lao-Tzu. If you prefer the occult, dig into any esoteric tradition from Roscrucians to Masons to Kabbalists - hell, read about what Helena Blavatsky was doing at the end of the 1800s.

If you insist on wrapping your thoughts around something, try looking into "quantum entanglement" - it works because every iota of matter and space in the entire universe is still connected from the big bang. I'm a big fan of John Horgan, his books are funny and sharp as a razor. Read "The End of Science" and then "Rational Mysticism".

If you're seriously interested in starting down that path, I'd HIGHLY recommend "The Untethered Soul" by Michael Singer - it's basically Jyana Yoga in plain English and is a brilliant piece of mental kung-fu. The first step in understanding who and what you are is understanding who and what you're not. Good luck and happy travels

I've only just started my explorations with DMT, but my one "breakthrough" experience taught me loads. It showed me that myself and every part of the universe is infinitely deeper, more beautiful and more full of life than I could have ever imagined. It allowed me to see time as a profound and meaningful joke, showing me that moments are never lost, or even separate from each other, but constantly evolving together as one giant, wacky whole. It allowed me to feel the interconnections of myself to my universe. It allowed me to experience a heaven beyond my wildest dreams, and made me realize how amazing it is to be a human. It gave me a vision of worlds we could create if we always had access to these untapped potentials hiding inside our minds and bodies. It taught me to be more sympathetic to those who have yet to experience anything so wildly fun, stimulating, challenging, and touching. It taught me many other things and inspired me in many ways, as it has done to many others. A lot of it really is beyond words and is something you have to experience for yourself. It's kind of the same for "enlightening" ideas of others. They can open up your mind and help lead you to understanding, but if you don't experience proof of their knowledge, then you're forced to just accept it on faith, and that can only take you so far. Many truths can be relayed through writing, speaking, etc., but it seems to me that best truths have to be experienced firsthand.

That all being said, these psychedelic tools can only take one so far. It's up to each person how much they bring back from their journeys, and how well they apply those lessons to themselves and their world. And just curious, why can't you use these tools?

In Michael Gazzaniga's split-brain studies, he studied patients who had already had their corpus callosum severed to relieve them of cerebral troubles (which it did) and they continued their lives rather normally. Curious enough, Gazzaniga wondered how they could continue a normal life if the connection between the hemispheres (the corpus callosum) had been severed. He hypothesized it was because both hemispheres were receiving information via each eye (left eye to right hemisphere and right eye to left hemisphere), so in his experiments, he would put an eye patch over one eye at a time. What he discovered was that when one eye was covered and the other was receiving visual stimuli, it would only use its corresponding hemisphere. By showing the same stimulus to different eyes, it became apparent that it was practically like there were two different brains with completely different personalities, tendencies, opinions and modes of processing.

It was from these studies that the characterizations of the hemispheres emerged. Though they may tend to be a bit overgeneralized at times in regards to what goes on in what part of the brain, the studies made it clear that the way each hemisphere processed information was very real and distinctive from the other. It was gathered that the right brain is pre-lingual, thinks in wholes and symbols and is emotional. The left brain on the other hand is rooted in language and thinks analytically in parts. So when the left brain is showed 3 connected lines, it thinks, "3 connected lines" whereas the right brain sees the same image as a triangle. This is all fine and well conceptually from the split-brain perspective, but normal people's hemispheres coordinate with each other. We can generally see both based on how we shift our attention (or mode of perception).

When babies are born into the world, they are right brain dominant. They have no language, and as such they cannot break down (analyze) and label their sensory input, and as such they think holistically and are incredibly emotional ranging from pure bliss to uncontrollable fear and anxiety. Upon acquiring language, the left hemisphere proceeds to develop at a faster rate than the right hemisphere, as those blissful childhood experiences melt away to be replaced by new narratives of the world. This continues into adulthood by which point most normal individuals become extremely restricted by language which is the lens through which they experience the world. The left brain dominant mode of thinking works great for everyday busy tasks, but there is a range of experiences that are largely experienced via the right brain. These include transcendental experiences, unions with the godhead, and the psychedelic experience by and large. They are very much symbolic and visual with dissolution of the linguistic ego such that they are experienced for themselves in their entirety and are hard to put to language. Many such experiences include the feeling of wholeness or unity with everything that is or at the least present in the vision. Experienced through child-like eyes, there is no distinction of the self, no subject-object relation.

The two hemispheres employ different forms of valid logic. The left hemisphere uses "either-or" logic: things are either one way or another. Something is big or small, hot or cold, real or fake, good or evil. The right brain uses "both-and" logic which captures the nature of transcendental experiences characterized by non-duality. God is both good and evil, big and small, light and dark, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, etc...These pairs of opposites can be experienced seemingly paradoxically simultaneously, and come across as perfectly understandable under the right brain mode of processing in those states. However, as anyone with any experience with DMT can attest to, as soon as the experience is over, the data that was perceived in those states rapidly begins fading from memory and fast. As is its nature, as soon as it's given the opportunity, the left brain will instantly start to try to create a narrative as to what ridiculous event just happened. It will try to linearly analyze, and reduce to language the wholesome, symbolic, holographic data that is rather indivisible. The data comes across as virtually incompatible.

The Buddhists, Egyptians and other esoteric schools of thought realized the significance and importance of balancing the hemispheres. They realized that it was important to enter into the transcendental state, and then strike a balance between intuition and "rationality" to paint the most accurate picture, because if either one gets "too much power", it's prone to errors. What Gazzaniga found in his split-brain experiments was that the left brain would come up with a narrative even where there was none, and often it would be downright silly and clearly wrong. So that's the long version of why I think the DMT experience is so hard to put into words; by and large, they're ontologically incompatible.

[EDIT]: Additionally I believe that we're simply not as good at describing visual imagery than we tend to give ourselves credit for. If we describe the sunset at the park to someone (even as perceived in a sober state), the only reason why a good deal of the story might get across is because you can break down the scene into its components that you either observed or more importantly expect to observe, followed by the fact that most people would be able to relate to the experience in some way, but it's highly unlikely that they would be able to picture the scene the way you saw it. The way you saw it was much more detailed, and exists most perfectly in the experience itself and not the relay of the experience. Hyperspace is unfamiliar with items and features not commonly experienced by the average human, so most will find it hard to relate by conjuring an accurate representation in their head with the limited, vague and largely metaphorical details that are used to make your information as "portable" and "transferable" as possible derived from our weak ability to put labels on individual components of the experience.

This reminds me of something stated by Swami Vivekanande:

"There is no god unless you can see him, and there is no soul unless you percieve it."

Now what this means to me is that its better to be, for lack of better word, an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite. I mean you shouldn't believe in something just for the sake of believing. Unless you have direct perception of something it's better not to believe. But then again that's just my interpretation of a man wise beyond my own comprehension.

Peace and have a Grate day!

:recapitulating chorus:
"those who claim to be enlightened, aren't; don't seek the truth, you'll never find it"

Philosophically, I agree with this sarcastic little ditty, 100%.

There is a significant differentiation between having an enlightening experience or seeing the light... and those who proclaim that they are themselves, indeed "enlightened".

As John C. Lilly so eloquently puts it (and I paraphrase), "As soon as we approach any truth, another level reveals itself beyond that one, which supersedes what appeared to be the ultimate truth... it's endless." It only makes sense, given that the Eternal has no beginning, nor any ending.

I do concur with the philosophy which emphasizes how impossible it is to achieve a complete understanding of the "ultimate truth". This does not necessarily mean that truth should not be sought, whatsoever. On the contrary, such contemplative effort exercises our perceptual capacity. The spiritual quest unarguably expands one's consciousness. IMO, it methodically awakens an alternate lens of perception, and in so doing, cultivates a far deeper degree of focus.

The way I see it, the truth is like a stairway leading into whatever it is... that is beyond this level of experiential being. It is naive and delusional to believe that any single step could be called the ultimate step, all truths are part of a fluid continuum. They are just steps ascending further and further into the unknown. I advocate exploring such dimensions, wholeheartedly.

exactly.

DMT revealed to me that there would never be any end to creation, consciousness, or information. Before this experience I was obsessed with finding the "it" or final enlightenment. I hoped to find some technique or method that would allow me to live a life of let-go without continuously furthering my consciousness.

After breaking through among many other changes, I found that even normal activities like doing chores or sitting in bed thinking held intense significance and importance to my personal conscious growth. The holy-ness of everyday life. Reminds me of what alot of Zen masters were talking about.