One of the things that both fascinates and scares me about DMT is the fact that people claim that time ceases to exist and they felt the experience last for an "eternity".
But if you're here to read about it, how could it have been an eternity?

I have experienced time dilation and contraction on cannabis and lsd, and have also had the sense of time crumbling and moving both forward and backwards at the same time on a high dose of ketamine, but I wouldn't call it an eternity. I have yet to have a DMT "breakthrough" though.

Perhaps time is an illusion, and perhaps all there is is the present moment, but at times it really feels real.

I also find the subject interesting because whatever happens after we die, it will probably last an eternity.

Because time can slow to the point of non-existence, or you're simply in a higher mode of consciousness where the idea of time doesn't exist, is why it can feel like an eternity.

It's almost like there are two "clocks" running at the same time. There's gonna be the clock that's ticking away in consensual reality, and there's the DMT participant's perceptual clock. After a few minutes (or whatever limited time) on the consensual clock, the perception of eternity will contract to ordinary temporal perception. Whenever I have a breakthrough in which the godhead is present, as I approach the godhead it's like I can literally feel the "particles" of time expanding and exploding culminating with contact where the whole notion of time becomes irrelevant. It's one of those phenomena that's not easily put to words. In a realm where subject and object blur to obscurity, the idea of time has little effect because the relationships that time normally indicates between you and the rest of the world becomes practically non-existent.