From the "Improbability of Hyperspace" thread:


Just a question: How much do we really want to probe into what actually happens when you smoke DMT? I mean, perhaps this is a question that could receive academic attention if a large enough body of DMT users demanded an answer. How would we bring this question to the academic community in a way that they would take seriously?

Edit: Actually, this probably isn't the proper subforum for this thread. I'm sorry if that's the case, and perhaps somebody could move it.

How would academic studies help us to find an answer?

What do you mean anyway by "what happens when we smoalk", do you mean brain chemistry and activity?

If brain chemistry and activity can explain why hyperdimensional entities keep pouring weird liquids on me after I inhale vaporized DMT, then yes.

Otherwise, it's not my quote. Sorry. Maybe an MRI would show that the "hyperdimensional","entities","shower", and "liquid" perceiving parts of my brain are all active at that instant. That would be a nice start, but I think that most of us would like to know what consciousness is and what happens to it when it goes into hyperspace. I know it's a question that scientists and philosophers have been working at for thousands of years, but can't they just figure it out already.

But seriously, I don't know what would come of it. I just think that we spend a lot of time thinking about the phenomenon that is the experience of hyperspace, and that it would be interesting to see what professionals in the applicable fields think of it.

We know for a fact that something happens in the brain. All of the other things (elves and such), we don´t know. There has to be a connection between what happens within the brain and the experiences one has. That would mean that, whether elves and such are real or not, the content of the experience can not be completely separated from life as we know it on this 'material plain'...or well, ofcourse, logically it could. But then you would have to rely on coincidence: only if you would assume that there would be no connection between inhaling vaporised DMT and the following experience, that in other words it is merely coincidence that the experience has till now always followed the intake of the substance, (wich could logically be the case as the supposed link between the experience and the molecule is based on inductive logic) you could argue that there is no structural relationship between the 'material plain' and the 'spiritual experience'. (if you would agree with the use of the word 'spiritual' in relation to the experience)

I´m implying nothing here, except that there is no total discrepancy between spiritual experience and the material world. But we could have known that without DMT as well: my mind is able to move my body. (could also be inductive reasoning ofcourse, but how far are you willing to take that argument?)

Personally, I am most interested in the types of structures that result in/are consciousness. There are surely an infinite number of types of structures that could result in consciousness, but only one of those types is altered in a certain way when DMT is introduced. Study of such alteration may give clues as to how consciousness is structured within the brain.

On a side note, neurologists have used probes to extract the images seen by cats directly from their brains. I think that, at least at some point in the future, such researchers might be very interested in drugs like DMT. One day, we may be able to digitally record the visual component of our hyperspace journey and play it back afterwords, and this type of visualization will allow for analysis of the transformations of the visual field required to produce things like elves and hyperspace. I know these suggestions aren't very well-thought-out. I just think that, as excited as we are about the things we experience while on DMT, brain scientists should be at least as excited.

They also managed to get that working on people, too, apparently. Michio Kaku also spoke about this concept in some of his lectures, and how they figured a way to record thoughts and play them back. It's not yet extremely usable, but the point is that it's possible and will probably get better soon.

http://gizmodo.com/58431...lips-from-brain-activity

this is an interesting thread, i think that what happens to the user when dmt is ingested is a deeply human and intricate thing.

some say, and to some extent i can say i agree with it, that the mandala/chrysanthemum/dome is actually the door to what separates you as a human being and the rest of the godhead/collective consciousness/krsna/matrix of consciousness/what have you.

i think that in the same way that you explore your consciousness sober and through meditation can you answer your own question about what temporally and spatially happens in your mind when you ingest dmt.

obviously i'm no expert and the guess is anyone's, but maybe it defies science in the same way our true nature and the nature of the mind-body problem defies psychology and science. ultimately life IS a subjective experience, and objective explanations at some point will only detract from the experience itself.

ineffable, is the word i'm looking for

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineffable

"Terminology describing the nature of experience cannot be properly conveyed in dualistic symbolic language; it is believed that this knowledge is only held by the individual from which it originates." i believe that this can be applied to an extent to the DMT experience

Of course a brain scan would show all types of different activity in different parts of the brain on DMT, but the spirituality part is up to the user. We have no definitive answers on these things so one is neither right or wrong whether one chooses to believe that it's just a neurochemical reaction or an actual telescope to a dimension unviewable to the blind eye. I find myself obsessing over questions like this so I try not to think about it too much or I'll go crazy

I completely agree with both of you. I know that the conclusions that result from scientific experiment are mere interpretations of subjective experience... but I'm still interested in such interpretations. I wish I were not, but at least part of me isn't, so it's a trade off: I get to live both of my lives at the expense of feeling torn between them constantly.

The video resulting from the MRI scans was pretty awesome too, though I wonder why they decided to construct the images from youtube clips instead of a more structured/basic set of images like the basis functions of the discrete cosine transformation.