I kind of agree with this - that it doesn't read like a scientific paper... this is deliberate - it was meant for a broadly scientific audience rather than a specialist in neuroscience/neuropharmacology. This is why I go to great lengths to explain things in detail and to simplify as much as possible without losing the key substance. It is presented as an essay (it says essay at the top!), not a scientific paper. As such, there is a mix of science, opinion, conjecture, theory, etc. I'm glad it's receiving critical review and that it's arousing both (mainly) positive and some negative responses. As I've said before, if something you write doesn't make at least a few people spit and punch the wall, it's probably not that interesting (well that was my PhD supervisor that said that, but I kind of like it)... to be fair though, that quote at the end you quoted isn't representative of the whole essay - it was just me wrapping up...

Put like that I have no issue with it unto itself.

I do have a concern that like the work of Strassman it will be taken out of context and use to justify as proven concepts that are not proven. many people are not aware for example that his study was not conclusive, and that it did not end up providing evidence that DMT was "the spirit molecule" and that at the higher doses he employed in the study people did not have spiritual experiences, but had terrifying and horrific alien abduction experiences and so he terminated the experiments out of compassion for his subjects. This aspect of his study however is rarely focused upon or considered, rather people go around stating that he proved DMT was a spirit molecule and they largely draw upon the title.

It is demonstrable that DMT can afford experiences that are as spiritual as any experience, but that is not to say that all DMT experience are spiritual. However the emergent DMT religion and the belief set associated with it does hold as a central tenet that DMT is the spirit molecule and that all DMT experiences are spiritual or there is something wrong with the dose, the person or the DMT etc.

I have read far worse thesis papers for a PhD.

What i meant when i said "your explanation", i was referring to your analogy of religion and how people follow the crowd.

It would take me quite awhile to locate a few examples, and i will if you request, and it will have to be at home rather than from my phone. But besides members here i have experience with people around me that fall into the category of non bias dmt users who experienced what they felt as another place entirely.

Basically we have people that are either not biased and believe its hallucination, biased and believe its real, and the opposites of both. I dont really know what it is.

If it is really a different place in someway i think there are still aspects that are internal. Technically it would be an internal representation of a real place iirc from reading the paper.

My point about atheism and theism is there are no scientific studies that show heaven is real or not. But there are that at least attempt to point at the psychedelic experience as having an external source. To me apples and oranges, but i don't claim to know what im talking about you guys are def a little higher up on the knowledge ladder than I.

In terms of what I know, it is very little.
In terms of what i believe, well that includes the possibility of many things that correspond to such things as spirits, remote viewing, magical events, telepathic events etc.

It may be that DMT can allow in some cases, access to information that is beyond explanation, I personally believe that if and when this occurs it is verifiable beyond personal testimony. It seems to involve intention towards a particular goal or outcome and thus cannot be solely attributed to DMT.

For me there can conceptually both be profound spiritual experiences, mere hallucinatory states, as well as combinations of them.

If a human can have a spiritual experience sober, but also can experience non-spiritual states sober, then I assume they can experience analogous states upon psychedelics. However for a person to have a spiritual experience upon a psychedelic does not equate with that psychedelic being unto itself spiritual, in my opinion.

It stands to reason that if a person experiences say, telepathic events, when sober, then they could also have such experiences on DMT.
I have written my views on this and how it works etc and even proposed or shared my own ontology elsewhere on this forum. I cannot say that any ontology is going to be accurate or true, it is one of those things that cannot ever be objective, however efficacy means a lot to me in terms of validation.

In terms of experience I do not consider efficacy meaningful, however in terms of effects of a more measurable and verifiable nature I do.

Thus my testimony regarding my ontology comes from perceived cause and effect relationships beyond individual experience, that validates them to me, but that does not mean they are valid per say.

I view all psychedelics as being able to evoke experiences confirming emotionally; an ontological perspective. I also view suggestion as playing a major role in that evocation and have employed that to some degree for my own use and also note it is employed in the use of psychedelics as therapeutic agents for personal mental and emotional benefit.

I should add however that I did not mean to make an analogy to religion, rather I meant to claim outright that DMT is at the center of an emergent religion, for me it is not akin to an organized religion, but is a new organized religion undergoing codification.


I keep using and taking the word ontology for granted:
An ontology is in this sense :
"a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts"

as opposed to Ontology as the study of "that which is"

Hmm, i kind of see entheogens as being an ancient "religion" rather than a new one. And rather more based of their ability to help people rather than providing answers to the after life.

Sure there has been large movement in trying to identify the mechanism of these seemingly realistic environments but its rather calm to be calling it a new religion undergoing codification.

While we have many religious traditions associated with entheogenic plants, they are varied.

Keep in mind that ayahuasca (which contains DMT often) was used for warfare by many tribes.

Aztecs took mushrooms, but also practiced human sacrifice.

Inca took Trichocereus cactus, but also practiced human sacrifice.

This concept of entheogens as healing and positive is very modern, previously they were dualistic and not seen as healing or harmful, but able to be both.

What I am saying though is not that entheogens use correlates to an organized religion, but that DMT specifically is at the center of a new religion that is being codified. I will make a new post about it shortly.

And this is what I find to be particularly distasteful.

The following is all my opinion

This construction of yours, "the DMT religion" is what you are using to negate, or at the absolute minimum, subvert, numerous subjective experiences that you feel meet the tenets of your manufactured religion.

It is worth noting at the outset, that while numerous people have questioned your experiences, because they seem at odds with their own, this is a far cry from being


In fact, many, if not most, here on the Nexus would probably assert that the DMT experience is one of the most variable experiences (psychedelic or otherwise) that can be induced in a human being.

As you further assert

I can't help but view this as a straw man. Again, pointing to my belief that most would agree that the DMT experience is insanely variable. Furthermore, digging into the oodles of threads that attempt to dissect and reconstruct what "reality", "real", "illusion", etc. even mean, the notion that there is a large segment of folks claiming that the DMT experience is "real" beyond being a subjective experience, to the degree of dogmatism that you suggest strikes me as absurd.

I would go through and select the various sentences about your constructed religion that rub me the wrong way and address each one, but honestly, I find the whole thing rather exhausting. Instead, I will attempt to summarize my issue with your claims/approach.

You have taken the experiences, beliefs, assertions, emotions and other subjective components from a myriad of people's DMT experiences. People you have never met...people you may know an inkling of...people you may know "well" and have, from this cacophony of experiences, extracted memes and archetypes that you see to be coherent across their experiences. You then tie them up in a neat little bow and claim that these experiences are the result of various spokespeople as well as indoctrinations of varying degrees. Furthermore, you assert a dogma exists among these people...that they are actively vested in shutting down the opinions of people who don't conform to this "DMT religion" that you've constructed and ascribed to them.

From my perspective, you have created a category to house the experiences of people whose perspectives don't jive with your own by highlighting the ontological similarities they share and that are at odds with your own view, claiming these similarities evidence a dogmatic fundamentalism that refuses to acknowledge variability in the DMT experience (among other things), branding them as your constructed "DMT religion," and then summarily dismissing them.

Do you see why this strikes me as negating their experiences and views?

As I understand it:
- You present a body of people that you make uniform by ascribing them all to your constructed religion, because you feel that they have a certain set of beliefs regarding the DMT experience, which you feel qualifies them as belonging to your constructed "DMT religion"

- You allow no room for examining how/why they arrived at their beliefs/hypothesis/ worldviews.

- You essentially say that they cannot have created these hypotheses/outlooks of their experiences independently.

- Instead, you assert that their understandings of the experience are the result of them listening to "sanctified personages" (or their "disciples") and thereby predetermining ALL of their experiences, hypotheses, conclusions, etc. relating to DMT.

- You accuse them of being dogmatic, despite the fact that the only "explicit" code is the one that you have stitched together from the similarities you find among them.

- You claim that they believe in a uniform nature of effects, despite the evidence that many, if not most, would claim that DMT is one of the most variable experiences you can have.

- You conflate questioning an experience (or an explanation/understanding of an experience) that seems at odds with what many people report to experience (or feel/understand they have experienced) as labeling that experience as "invalid."

The statements that you made earlier in this thread along these lines were precisely the reason I accused you of negating other people's experiences. I was literally flabbergasted when I saw your post that further detailed your constructed DMT religion, on the heels of you stating that you were not at all looking to negate anyone's experience.

I hope, if I'm misunderstanding you, that my attempt to lay out my discomfort with your constructed "DMT religion" will help evidence where precisely my misunderstanding is.

A bit off topic..but as far as I know, there is no evidence that the Inca used Trichocereus cacti. The quechua peoples used it, but not the Inca. I think it has been shown though that the inca used anadenanthera. Many people seem to think the Inca used san pedro, and some people even think they used ayahuasca. I have never seen convincing evidence for either. Even many of the andean peoples who many refer to as "Inca" are not Inca at all.

Snozz,
please move that response to the thread I began about this topic specifically and we can continue from there:
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=52707
Thanks!

(Note I will respond there but not further here in this thread regarding that topic)

This is worth discussing further in it's own thread as well.

Suffice it to say there is a lot to this topic and this is not an ideal thread for that discussion.

if i could summarize this thread into an image, it would be this...

Great paper, scientific or not! Thanks for sharing.

It was mentioned in the paper that "The thalamocortical states that are generated under DMT
modulation are highly regular and highly specific" and that "we know this because
the worlds that appear are highly regular and highly specific to DMT." (489)

Is there any evidence that the thalamocortical states generated under DMT are regular and specific other than that derived from the analysis of subjective reports of the DMT experience?

I feel like we're just speculating if there isn't any other evidence that DMT is unique in its ability to create alien worlds. Trip reports sure seem to suggest that DMT is unique, but how can we be sure that the way in which DMT modulates the brain is also unique?

This is a good point and I think perhaps I was a little overzealous in the way I stated that point as being absolutely definitive. Watch this space is all I can say. I happen to be involved in the planning of a new functional imaging study that will look at neural activity during a DMT trip - can't say anymore than that, but it is being looked at...


Indeed, there is little to do but speculate at the moment regarding DMT's effect on neural activity. However, I think it's fair to say that DMT is indeed unique in its ability to create alien worlds, at least of the characteristic DMT kind - we only need subjective experiences to draw that conclusion (although some might say salvia is also a contender in this regard, although the worlds seem very differen). Whether neuroimaging technology is yet capable of measuring the sorts of characteristic changes in neural activity that DMT produces is not known - it's hard to even know what to look for. However, the study that is being planned might tell us something. Let's wait and see......................

A reply from the man himself

I hope you find promising results in your future studies. Personally, I would also like to recommend that you take a look at salvia first, as it would probably be easier to get approval to use an unscheduled substance in a functional imaging study.

Honestly I think that each psychedelic drug has its own characteristic qualities. As many have said, at high enough dosages, LSD and psilocybin can take you as far as DMT can.

I also think that most of the exceptional quality that people attribute to DMT alone comes from the fact that breakthrough dosages are not used as frequently with psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin as they are with DMT.

That being said, I definitely don't think that your entire paper is bonkers. There were a lot of interesting ideas in there.

Laughingcat,

I see you are still around, and i am enjoying the opportunity to learn some of the basics of neuroscience from your youtube video course.

Any updates that you would like to share?