as far as I know noone here has thus far claimed to know anything about the existance of elves, other than James Kent..noone here has said they know, or is pretending to know where elves come from or if they are even elves.

Alot of people pretend they know what is going on in other peoples heads as well. Alot of people even pretend they know what is going on in experiences they themselves have never even had.

Maybe it is all pretend

IMO people who agree that DMT is no more astonishing than rubbing your eyes and seeing things, and that it 'looses its magic overtime', are very inexperienced with it. People like that with very little experience who then claim they understand hyperspace seem more naive to me than those who think it might be "real". I don't know whats real and whats not and am not claiming to have the answer, as james kent seems to be..but there are some utterly obvious indications he has little experience with it

Please elucidate. Explain how the brain is capable of such a thing.

I'm not saying it isn't explicable in terms of mere neurochemical processes; I'm simply saying that nothing I have encountered in the neuroscience literature thus far satisfactorily explains the dmt phenomenology in question, nor the physical action and subsequent subjective phenomenology of psychedelics in general.

While most mainstream scientists would would assert that the dmt induced "machine elves" are explainable solely on the basis of one's physiology/psychology in principle, most of these individuals would concede that such explanations extend far beyond neuroscience's explanatory capabilities at the present time.

Also, I would advise one to read Kent's more recent work on the topic, "Psychedelic Information Theory" (its available in pdf for free online, dont know where, but i have and read it...) In an article, psychologist David Luke says the following in regards to Kent's PIT:

"James Kent, appears to have taken a more ambiguous stance recently (Kent, 2010) by considering the entities simply as information generators. For Kent (2010), the question of the entities' reality is redundant given that they generate real information, and sometimes this seems to go beyond the experient's available sphere of knowledge. Nevertheless, according to Kent the entities cannot be trusted always to tell the truth and must be regarded as tricksters."

Nevertheless, I'd like to address the crux of Kent's argument against elves below. Kent states:

"So, within the framework of this equation one question remains: Why is the alien/elf archetype so common to the DMT experience? The only answer I have is that we humans must have innate evolutionary wetware that forces our senses to latch onto any piece of anthropomorphic data that pops into otherwise randomly uniform data -- like spotting the face of another human or a jaguar peering out from behind the bushes, or seeing another human moving through tall grass. The evolutionary advantage of such a trait is obvious, and in standard Rorschach tests even the most amorphous blobs are found to look like faces and/or people no matter what culture the observer is from. Now, given the amazing swirling kaleidoscopic imagery produced in the typical DMT trip, it is inevitable that anthropomorphic shapes will emerge and then express themselves in even greater detail as the mind latches onto them and "dreams" them into focus."

The whole diatribe above merely explains why certain ambiguous stimuli are verbally judged in anthropomorphic terms. When pressured by a clinician, Rorschach inkblots might be said to resemble human features, but, as anyone who has ever seen a Rorschach inkblot can attest to, they also distinctly look like...inkblots!

If it is merely something intrinsic to the neural "wetware" that inclines human beings to interpret amorphous stimuli in anthropomorphic terms (an assertion that needs further support itself), then why is it that these more mundane stimuli (e.g., inkblots) never undergo a radical transform into the distinct (dare I say, hyper-real) perceptions of the DMT elves we all know and love? Ambiguous stimuli are ambiguous stimuli - the same in principle. Kent says that on dmt, the "anthropomorphic shapes will emerge and then express themselves in even greater detail as the mind latches onto them and 'dreams' them into focus." But why, when "dreamt" into focus (however this happens exactly), do they appear as elves? It should be quite clear that the question Kent began with - "why elves?" - still remains. It really hasn't been touched.

Furthermore, the term “elf” is nothing more than a label applied to the entities that are perceived to inhabit the bottom-ranks of the DMT hyperspace. The term was coined and popularized by DMT pioneer Terence McKenna as a means to relate his experiences in a marginally comprehensible way to those unfamiliar with the phenomenology of DMT. Using the term “elves” to denote a class of perceived DMT induced entities hence became a meme in the psychedelic culture. McKenna was at pains to stress the ineffability of describing the DMT "elves".

The term “elf” merely serves as a convenient, but nonetheless inadequate, label to make the experience somewhat communicable to others. In actuality, DMT elves bear little semblance to common depictions of elves found in popular culture. Reference to the relevant DMT experiences in ordinary terms may make them seem more tractable, but this is at the expense of ignoring their phenomenology. Lastly, Kent offers no explanation for the idiosyncratic behavior of the "elves", such as why they are often perceived as manufacturing hyper-dimensional, semantically laden objects and presenting them to us.

yes, we've seen mr. kent's compelling treatise and poster on the matter; there are a few threads regarding it

..actually Terence described the 'elves' as 'self-transforming, jeweled, dribbling basket-balls, which bound forward and attempt to communicate in a musical 3D language.."
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Your arguments don´t realy question the fact that the DMT-experience is caused by processes in the brain. Your arguments question why the processes within the brain produce this specific type of experience.

Basically, you don´t question the fact that chocolade tastes sweet because there´s sugar in it. You question why sugar causes the specific sensation of sweetnes instead of, for instance saltynes or bitternes.

Science can show that it is indeed sugar, that causes this sensation. It cannot yet explain why the sensation of a sweet taste is the way it is. It cannot explain why sugar tastes sweet and why it doesn´t taste like pepper, unions or basil.

My argument was never intended to question such such a thing. My post was intended to shed light on our ignorance - neither you, I, nor any active scientist is capable of putting forth an adequate reductive explanation of the content of the subjective states induced via dmt in terms of mere neurochemical processes at the present time. In fact, if you read the Q and A section of "The Case Against Elves", the author urges us to accept that we are actually perceiving (through the modification of our brain via the neurochemical action of dmt) a normally hidden - in fact, quantum - layer of our world (and not an independent parallel one), and that these elf-ish archetypes of our collective unconscious are nonsentient interfaces that impart information about these sub-manifest levels of the world to us. I readily confess: I am in agreement with some of this. But this does not accord with what you said initially ("I think it´s important to realise that the brain is fully capable of producing these experiences by itself...the phenomena can be explained by pointing at the innate capability´s of the brain."

The brain is the organ of consciousness, in the sense that producing a physical system (e.g., a brain) with the right physical properties inevitably yields associated states of consciousness. The whole body of neuroscientific data has shown that there are tight correlations - and even causal relationships - between neural states in the brain and phenomenal states of consciousness. You perturb my brain, you correspondingly perturb my current state of consciousness. Clearly dmt, when it binds at sites in the synapse, has a profound effect on the brain, and thus on a subject's consciousness. This is a causal relationship, and I'm certainly not disputing that!

However, this says utterly nothing about the ontological status of the content represented in consciousness. I humbly point out that herein lies your (and many others' error. To give a trivial example: In order to have a conscious experience of an apple, our sensory systems must be stimulated in the appropriate way by the appropriate external object. Without this causal relationship - from the physical properties of the apple (surface spectral reflectance e.g.), to the corresponding processing of these physical stimuli in the brain - we would not have the resultant conscious experience/percept of an apple. Do we thus conclude that the apple (or the object that is represented in awareness) does not exist, or is wholly subjective? Usually no (unless we're skeptics/idealists).

.

Perhaps I am not following the point you're making with the apple, but the brain does not need external stimuli in order to create sensations and visions. In other words, the brain can readily create something that is not really there externally, without any causal relationship between the external world and the corresponding triggering of natural mechanisms within the brain. Moreover, the brain is also perfectly able to misinterpret external signals and create distorted models in consciousness, i.e hallucinations, delusions, illusions. We know this for a fact, and it can be easily illustrated with trivial optical illusions, for instance. The brain is a powerful organ no doubt, but it's also the greatest of tricksters.

Stimulate the brain by physical means in the right ways and you get funny, reproducible shit happening that has no relevance at all to the external world, except perhaps for distorted signals and interpretations. The brain does not create perfect models of the world around it, it often fails actually. This, among other things, is why subjective events happening in the DMT-flooded, overstimulated brain is pretty dubious. There is, in short, currently not many credible reasons to assume anything extraordinary is going on when someone smokes DMT except for all or a combination of the following; distortion of the senses, imagination running wild, hallucinations, interpretation of abnormal biochemical interactions and stimulation coupled with our personal inner life and unconscious processes etc.

This is not to say useful information can't come out of these states, but that something more is going on is more of a pipe dream and wishful thinking than it is plausible and realistic at the moment, imo. Of course this can be wrong, and I don't really know, I just try to keep my feet planted on the earth and go where the evidence is pointing

zapped17:'I humbly point out that herein lies your error'

No, i´m not making a mistake: I never said anything about the status of DMT-experiences.
I simply applied the logic or occams razor, wich ofcourse proofs nothing: if the brain is capable of producing the experience of seeing ghosts, then when someone says that he saw a ghost we have at least two theories about what happened at that moment in time: 1-the person has a brain that we know is capable of producing the experience of seeing ghosts, without there actually being any, and that is exactly what this persons brain did at the time. And hypothesis number 2-the person has a brain that we know is capable of producing the experience of seeing ghosts without there actually being any, and there was an actual ghost at the same time, wich is what this person saw.

Both theories are based on information about the world we live in. But the second theory needs only that, while the first theory needs an EXTRA element that we have no evidence on and of wich it´s existence IS unsure.

And the brain IS capable of producing experiences that feel 'real' to the experiencer, without them actually being real. Anyone who has ever had a very vivid dream will immediately admit that.

I want very bad to understand this in a rational grounded way yet my own personal experience seems to continue to defy and resist any kind of reductionist approach.


Daddy please tell me its not real ......

Enjoy the beauty that life brings into your life. If you wanna listen to the words of a doubter then that is up to you. If you wish to let someone persuade you that a wonderful, beautiful holiday experience was nothing more than a few brain synapses gone wrong then so be it.

That's right, listen to someone else, and have absolutely no faith and trust in yourself to know that what you have experienced is wonderful. You lot talking about jesters, clowns, elfs, oh c'mon guys, that's what television is for.. Speaking about that isn't it time you did something worthwhile , like watched "the jeremy kyle show"??

Polytrip this is sort of jumping to conclusions. We know that there are parts of the brain that when activated can produce experiences like seeing ghosts..but we dont know if that part of the brain simply allows us to see ghosts that are always there, or if the ghost is entirley a product of our own imagination. Even when it comes to vivid dream we cannot really make too many assumptions because we dont have the data to do so. All we know is that certain areas of the brain are active when we have these experiences, and that they play some role...We can speculate, but we can not say at this time that just because we stimulate some part of the brain in lab, that causes someone to see a ghost that we then have proof that the ghost is not there. Based on the data we have it is not logical to make that claim yet.

Note: The response here is a tad lengthy, but I encourage you - or anyone viewing this thread - to read the article excerpts provided below.

I agree with the first part of the above quote, but hold some reservations on the second part. There is, I believe, data from DMT experience that may indeed push us beyond mere neurochemical models (however not necessarily "physical" models). I will provide below two excerpts from two scholarly articles by psychologist and active researcher David Luke that I highly recommend should be read by anyone interested in the ontology of DMT experiences. The first is from "Discarnate Entities and Dimethyltrypamine", and the the second is from "Rock Art or Rorschach: Is there More to Entoptics than Meets the Eye?" Also highly recommended (and more mainstream) is:

Vollenweider, F.X., and Geyer, M.A., 2001. “A Systems Model of Altered Consciousness: Integrating Natural and Drug-induced Psychoses.” Brain Research Bulletin 56(5): 495–507.

"Vollenweider and Geyer (2001) have proposed that psychedelics both inhibit the 'gating' of extraneous sensory stimuli and simultaneously lead to an overload of internal information in the cortex. It is thought that these combined information-overload effects are at least partly responsible for the 'hallucinogenic' (a particularly laden medical term which obscures more than it reveals) experience with these drugs, as is indicated by an increased physiological startle response to incoming auditory stimuli (Vollenweider 2001). This disruption of
the sensory gating function by psychedelics could also underpin the neurochemistry of genuine psi experiences, which, like psychedelic experiences, are associated with the inhibition of ordinary sensory filtering, elevated creativity, boundary thinness, schizotypal symptoms, and self-expansiveness."

"Discarnate Entities and Dimethyltrypamine":

One alternative approach to investigating the ontology of shamanic entity encounters considers similarities in independent reports concerning the characteristics of particular entities, especially those encountered naively and without any cultural context from which the characteristics of the entity could be derived (Luke, 2008a). For instance, one such being that commonly appears to naïve DMT users is an entity consisting of multiple entwined serpents covered in multitudinous eyes, often forming a fibonacci-spiral-like geometrical shape. Obscure references to a similar mythological entity, sometimes identified as 'the angel of death', also exist in various cultural cosmologies, possibly indicating the trans-cultural nature of this entity (Luke, 2008a). Such data pose challenging questions as to whether the entity is culturally mediated— which seems unlikely given the obscurity of the cultural references — or a culture-free universal feature of DMT activation (naturally or artificially) in the brain, with possible incorporeal origins.
A similar phenomenological triangulation approach could fruitfully be made with other types of entities commonly encountered with DMT and ayahuasca, such as the bizarre preponderance of praying mantises (Luke, 2008b). It might be possible by such means to determine how statistically improbable is the occurrence of these shared visions. Such a methodology has its limitations, of course, nevertheless upon inspection of the literature it appears that such an approach has rarely been applied to the study of apparently collective visions and may point the baffled DMT ontologist in an enlightening direction.


"Rock Art or Rorschach: Is there More to Entoptics than Meets the Eye?":

My own experience consuming DMT- containing substances and mixtures has provided me with a host of geometric visual phenomena of such exquisite complexity, seeming impossibility, and baffling multidimensionality that it seems difficult to believe that “the patterns of connections between the retina and the striate cortex and of the neuronal circuits within the striate cortex determined their geometric form,” nor that “people [perceiving entopic phenomena following the ingestion of psychotropic substances] are seeing the structure of their own brain” (Lewis- Williams 2002: 126). The mescaline and perception researcher Smythies (1953: 346) had difficulty enough mapping the visual system to merely three-dimensional percepts: “how may these visions be related in their internal three-dimensional spatio-temporal structure to the electrical patterns in the cortex, which possesses an entirely different spatio-temporal structure determined by the complex convoluted shape of the cortex?” So how is it that a tangle of neurochemical “wiring” (a term used ad infinitum by Lewis-Williams) can be mapped to what the present author has perceived as a nonordinary extra-dimensional geometric vision? Approaching entoptic phenomena, then, from a first-hand phenomenological position there is good reason to agree with Shanon (2003: 6) about his observations from his own ayahuasca experiences when he further states that “to a great extent, most scientists ... who talk of hallucinations do not know what they are talking about and that, in fact, what they say is more a reflection of their conceptual presuppositions with regard to this subject matter than a fair characterization of the psychological phenomenology at hand.”
...
Multidimensional Form Constants
Following his experimentation with the psychedelic mescaline-containing cactus, peyote (Lophophora williamsii), Klüver (1926, 1966 [1928]) originally conceived form constants to fall into four different geometric categories: lattices, cobwebs, tunnels, and spirals. Later researchers used cocaine, LSD, and cannabis, as well as a variety of nondrug means of inducing geometric visual percepts (see Dronfield 1996) and they defined similar categorizations which Lewis-Williams and Dowson (198 finally combined to make six entoptic forms: grids, lattices, dots, zigzag lines, nested curves, and filigrees. More recently Dronfield (1996) opted for seven. Renderings of these geometric percepts on paper obviously look two-dimensional, although from my own experience with mescaline-containing cacti such patterns are often perceived to fit the structure of objects in consensus reality and look three-dimensional. In relation to their own mescaline-induced percepts Klüver (1926: 505) concurred that “the designs [as on rugs] seem to be localized on walls, on the floor, etc.,” as did Smythies (1956: 81) who noted that the “hallucinations are spatial and coloured entities and may possess not only a high degree of internal organization, but may also be closely integrated into the ‘veridical’ remainder of the visual field in which they occur.”
On tryptamine-based psychedelics, such as DMT, such geometric patterns may take the same form (frequently hexagons in this author’s own experience) but, unlike mescaline visions, can assume extra- dimensional qualities the likes of which do not ordinarily occur in waking reality. One of the most prominent researchers writing on their own tryptamine experiences, McKenna (1991: 35), supports this assertion: “there is an immense vividness to these interior landscapes, as if information were being presented three-dimensionally and deployed fourth-dimensionally, coded as light and as evolving surfaces.”
...All of the examples above clearly establish that the geometric percepts seen in certain altered states, such as those induced by ayahuasca and DMT, may assume extraordinary dimensional qualities that are virtually ineffable and exceedingly difficult to render in static two-dimensional art...
Taking this observation a step further, it is suggested that these percepts therefore challenge the received wisdom that Klüver’s psychedelic form constants are actually entoptic, that is, derived from within the optic system somewhere from the eyeball to the cortex (e.g. Lewis- Williams and Dowson 198. Not only is there the standard cognitive neuroscience miracle of electromagnetic impulses somehow becoming converted into the three-dimensional percepts of the outside world—a feat still not satisfactorily explained by neuroscientists or philosophers (see e.g. Velmans 2009)—but the mind is apparently also capable of multidimensional geometric perception beyond what is ordinarily perceived in the normal waking state.

Of course, much more needs be said, and such a topic probably requires its own separate thread anyway...

If i remember correctly, James Kent was arguing about elves. He did though, say that they might be the Plant spirits way of trying to communicate with people, and that this needed attention. Based on this reasoning i think it's fair to say that he wasn't sure about anything really. He was just explaining his theories. Reading what he wrote seems to trivialise the Psychadelic experience. I think it's the same as trivialising your dreams or any other experience. I guess you could say that any experience can be explained as a activity of the brain, but science does not have all the answers and there is stuff out there that happens that can't be measured, but does happen.

James Kent is basically telling you to disbelieve the amazing things you see. He has his theories on what dreams are too. Basically he does not believe that there is hyperspace, and probably not in astral projection. This is what it looks like.

Untill James Kent can prove that elves are not what they seem, then his word should be treated as mere speculation. He is entitled to his theories, but that is all they are.

Of course you said something about the ontological status of the DMT experiences. Thats kinda what this whole thread is about...

Your digression about the principle of Occam's Razor is a red herring. Did you consider what Kent said about the DMT experiences in the Q&A section of "The Case Against DMT Elves"? What would be your perspective on that - keeping the statement you made in your first post in mind?

"And the brain IS capable of producing experiences that feel 'real' to the experiencer,without them actually being real."

Yes, the as far as mainstream neuroscience is concerned, the brain mediates ALL experience, real or not. But now we have moved into the slippery topic of what is "real" and how do we know, or rather, what constitutes a veridical perception versus a falsidical perception? The problem here is we have no definite universally agreed upon concept of what is "real". But since this thread pertains on Kent's article, let's narrowing down the discussion again and consider his view. As I quoted previously, Kent:
"...[considers] the entities simply as information generators. For Kent (2010), the question of the entities' reality is redundant given that they generate real information, and sometimes this seems to go beyond the experient's available sphere of knowledge." According to Kent, the elves are non-sentient archetypal interfaces of our collective unconscious.

As I said, I think this is a decent explanation, given the data (see my response to "citta" somewhere below/above). Simply (dogmatically) asserting that "its all a hallucination because you can stimulate the brain into producing various sensations" has ZERO explanatory power. Explaining exactly HOW these particular DMT induced experiences are reducible to neurochemical reactions - i.e., entopic hallucinations - extends itself way beyond the current explanatory capabilities of neuroscience. It's possible that such a reductive explanation of the data cannot be given in principle, and only correlations can be drawn (which is all we have atm).

Oh, but i absolutely agree with you here. As i said: occams razor proofs nothing.

Actually, what i wanted to say was: Let´s NOT jump to conclusions. We cannot say anything about DMT entity´s, with absolute certainy. The fact that something may seem very real doesn´t mean shit, just like the fact that something doesn´t seem logical means shit.

I´m not preaching for any camp on the elves are real/imaginary debate. I´m preaching agnosticism. From an agnostic point of view though, i think occams razor makes sense when we think not in terms of truth or falsehood, but in terms of plausibility: when there is no evidence that elves are real and there are other ways of explaining an experience, that don´t need the existence of anything outside the scope of our knowledge, assuming that elves are real is jumping to conclusions.

When claiming that a statement is 'truth' instead of opinion, i think it´s better to be on the safe side and stick to what we know.

Really??

Prfessor David Nutt has stated that Psilocybin , for example, shuts down the reasoning parts of the brain, which is why people experience the "visions". The de-activation is responsible. This would explain that the brain is a kinda filter to protect the ego from information overload.

PERHAPS and ego can only exist with a limited amount of information? Maybe when DMT destroys the ego, entities are there to offer some kinda psychic cushioning and assistence to what awaits the traveller?

No...where did i say anything about the status of the DMT-experience? (except the statement that we cannot say anything about it with any certainty)I don´t give a fuck about what kent thinks btw. I´m just abstaining from a definitive judgement and staying on the cautious side when it comes to any claims about things we don´t know shit about.

I think it´s just wise to be cautious: we expect pharmaceutical company´s to be cautious with claims about a new drug, untill it´s been properly tested on humans, we expect world leaders to be cautious when making claims about weapons of mass destruction in iraq, etc.

So why not stick to those high principles ourselves?

What irritates me, and that may be the cause of why you think i´m being a sceptic here, is when people say that anyone who doesn´t blindly belief in something he experiences on a powerfull HALLUCINOGENIC drug is some left-brain fascist who wants to rob the world from it´s beauty and who wants to trivialise your experience or, well...your very life itself.

To reject criticism towards things experienced in a dream or during a psychedelic session, to reject criticism towards any random speculation about 'reality' is just a bit narcissistic.

When people get angry about science because it seems to contradict one of their own personal random speculations about the nature of the universe, when they even accuse science of being totalitarian and imperialistic because of this, while at least the scientist tries hard to see if he can falsify what he´s been working on for years..in other words: when people freely speculate about something like the nature of the universe and get angry when real and proper investigation doesn´t immediately seem to back-up the claims subsequently made...it´s not even a bit narcissistic. It´s VERY narcissistic. It´s like believing you are god, the center of the universe. Like your own, very personal belief would make it real.

Criticism is good. It´s the motor behind any real form of personal growth. Any lack of it is just lazynes.