Smoked DMT has shown me all of the above and more: earth scenes, heavenly realms, aliens/ufo's/star systems, temples, deities and imagery from every culture on earth, coherent stories, and impossible outlandish things. It's incredibly variable and unpredictable, unlike these other compounds which generally seem more reliable and repeatable in the style of visionary space they elicit.

...Gayle Highpine has never smoked DMT. I have gotten into this with her enough times and while I have respect for her experience with ayahuasca, she has some opinions on both DMT and mushrooms that I find dismissive, unrealistic and lacking personal experience...

...I wonder how much of all of this is just an appeal to culture...

Ayahuasca is Banisteriopsis caapi. It contains mostly harmine. B. caapi itself contains no DMT and can be used as is to produce visionary states that are like mental day dreams which lack true visual content. Often admixtures are used to increase the visual content of the ayahuasca dreams. Most admixture plants contain DMT.

Harmine used alone, can produce a mild dreamy psychedelic experience in which daydreams or lucid dreams can be experienced if the user chooses to do so. These dreams from harmine alone are vague and lack visual content, but usually have story lines and can be quite complex just like a real dream. Harmine allows one to go in and out of dream consciousness at will. It takes some practice to learn how to enter a lucid dream with harmine alone. Harmine won’t make you enter a lucid dream. You have to do it yourself by allowing your mind to drift off into a lucid dream.

DMT used alone, produces an intense visual experience, often very chaotic and fast moving, and quite amazing to watch. The visions of DMT alone usually lack meaningful content. The DMT visions are often just constantly morphine colors and shapes. Most of it makes absolutely no sense. Rarely will the visuals present to you a full blown dream with people, places, a story line, etc. But this does sometimes happen. But usually you just get a bunch of bazaar visions that are difficult to understand.

When combined, as in ayahuasca, the harmine brings a dreamy quality to the DMT experience that makes it more like one is experiencing an actual dream, not just a bunch of fancy colors. With the two together, you have the visuals of DMT, plus the dream content of harmine. Harmine is the boss here in this combination if used in ayahuasca proportions where harmine is not just used as an MAOI but is used specifically to allow dream consciousness to be entered by the user. DMT is just an additive used to increase the visual portion of the harmine induced dreams.

Using harmine in very low doses, just as an MAOI, is not the same as using properly made ayahuasca. If harmine is used in low doses just for it’s MAOI effects, the trip lacks dream content and is just a bunch of bazaar DMT visual effects. This is not ayahuasca-like, it’s just orally activated DMT. That’s not the same. Its true that some ayahuasca is prepared this way, but such ayahuasca is considered inferior by most natives. With ayahuasca, the DMT is just an additive, not the main course. This is why ayahausca made with only caapi is still called ayahuasca and considered nearly as powerful as ayahuasca made with additive plants containing DMT.

This is something a lot of people don’t get. Ayahuasca is not simple orally activated DMT. It is the dream consciousness effects of harmine that are at play in ayahuasca. In order to experience lucid dreams from harmine without DMT, you need to practice a lot. But once you know how to do it, you don’t need DMT added to it anymore, unless you want the extra visual depth that DMT adds to the dreams.

So, “Dmt Or Ayahuasca?”, well that question is a personal question. Some people prefer DMT-less ayahuasca. Some people prefer just orally activated DMT. Some people prefer ayahuasca with a side order of DMT. Some people prefer the truly bazaar effects of smoked DMT alone.

My personal opinion is that DMT alone is FUN and can be quite frightening. It’s like a roller coaster ride and I like roller coasters. But don’t expect a deep meaningful life changing experience from it. Its pure visual FUN and nothing more. If I want a more meaningful experience I’d use an oral ayahuasca extract, or a smoked Yopo extract (not as effective as ayahuasca because Yopo is low on harmala-like alkaloids).

Authentic ayahuasca, high in harmine, and low on DMT, is like entering a full blown 3D dream with dream characters, storylines, etc. This can be a life changing experience. It’s more like sitting in a theater for several hours absorbing a story that’s meaningful because its about you. You leave with memories of places, things, people, etc., and possibly a new view on life.

My experience with smoked DMT was qualitatively different from the realms and beings ayahuasca introduced me to. For whereas the ayahuasca worlds seemed rich, luxurious, and abundant in the transformations of organic and supernatural life, DMT brought me to a world--or to some aspect of a world--that appeared from the outset to be highly artificial, constructed, inorganic, and in essence technological.

‘Release the genius inside you – Shut down your brain’ announced the cover of the New Scientist in April 2004.

For the last three years scientists at the Centre for the Mind have been attempting to find out if a higher level of mental functioning may be available to all of us. Professor Allan Snyder has proposed that such functions are latent in everyone and are suppressed by the activity of the ‘evolutionary advanced’ rational side of the brain. By ‘switching off’ the left side of the brain, they hoped to turn ‘normal’ people into ‘geniuses’.

Initially treated with scepticism, recent results have caused shock waves in the scientific community. It appears that a whole new layer of function lies dormant in all of us. Have they found the key to our future evolution or have they unknowingly unlocked an ancient mystery that has its origins in prehistory?

A new theory of human evolution, proposed by Tony Wright and Graham Gynn in ‘Left in the Dark’, convincingly argues that the human brain owes part of its extraordinary development to the biochemistry of a specialist fruit diet. The hormone-related chemicals in tropical fruit initiated an internal hormone mechanism that increasingly promoted brain growth and elevated neural activity. When humans were forced from their tropical forest ‘Garden of Eden’ some two hundred thousand years ago, this link with biochemically rich fruit was lost.

The internal hormone mechanism that fuelled brain expansion stalled, and the process went into reverse. This caused a breakdown in part of the brain; some functions were lost and our sense of self changed for the worse – a golden age descended in stages to our present materialist, fear-based age of plastic and Prozac. These neurological effects are now being revealed and verified by today’s cutting edge science.

Professor Allan Snyder has suggested that the rational/conceptual mind functions by editing out much of the raw data (reality) that we gather via all our senses. He believes that many processes and skills are lost in this screening. The latest results from the Centre for the Mind do indeed show that if the rational brain areas are ‘shut down’ enhanced artistic and mathematical ability and improved memory emerge. These skills mirror those of autistic savants and also occur in some patients in which the left hemisphere has been damaged. Snyder thinks the human brain has ‘traded in’ these skills for the benefits of the logical reasoning mind. However his research may be beginning to uncover a much larger story. A number of his subjects have reported perceptual changes too – feelings of euphoria and bliss more normally associated with ‘peak experiences’ and meditation.

If the rational mind suppresses a ‘second self’ that, not only has a number of enhanced skills but also a sense of self that is vibrant, peaceful and connected, could there be something wrong with it? Could it be that all our stressful, niggling mental activity really does hide a place of energetic calm and well-being? It can be no coincidence that religious practices from all traditions and ages have been designed to pacify or negate the activities of the logical mind to allow a different sense of consciousness to come through.

5-MeO-DMT was the compound responsible for both my own spiritual awakening, my renewed interest in psychedelics, and for my subsequent sustained investigation into the endogenous entheogens. In an effort to keep track of my thoughts in the period after my original transpersonal mystical experience on 5-MeO-DMT in 2003, and with little thought or hope of publication, I wrote the original version(s) of Tryptamine Palace for the population of Burning Man (where I knew it would find an interested audience) and gifted it as a book on the ‘playa’ in 2006 and 2007 to my fellow ‘Burners’. (As far as I know this was the first book written for and gifted at Burning Man.) Encouraged by the reception at Burning Man, I was preparing the book for self-publication (with the help of EROWID’sJon Hanna) when I sent 2 copies of the original BM versions to 2 different publishers just so I could get used to getting rejected. To my great surprise the respected meta-physical publisher Inner Traditions actually accepted Tryptamine Palace for publication, and after considerable further effort (and infinite patience from my suffering editors) was published world-wide in 2009. Tryptamine Palace is the first major book written specifically about 5-MeO-DMT and contains numerous detailed descriptions of 5-MeO-DMT’s unique brand of (what Alex Grey calls) ‘experimental mysticism’.

Tryptamine Palace by James OrocBy attempting to describe the impossibly intense and paradoxically fleeting “5-MeO-DMT experience,” (Hereafter abbreviated at points within this book as “5MDE.”) I am now moving onto purely subjective ground. I must stress that the chronology that I provide here is only my personal interpretation of my experiences on 5-MeO-DMT, gleaned from my own experimentation. And so while the following information is taken from “the front lines,” so to speak, it cannot be overstated that every individual’s experience is unique. And so what happens to me when I smoke 5-MeO-DMT will not necessarily happen to you, if you choose to smoke it.

But for myself, after 5 years of fairly regular usage of 5-MeO-DMT in both its natural and (lab-produced) synthetic forms, I have come to believe that certain consistent patterns have emerged:

1. I fully inhale the smoke, generally holding on until my vision of the physical surroundings has begun to break into fractals, and then I exhale. Virtually immediately upon exhalation, my vision experiences a field of light-fractals. My mind then dissolves into white light, and the vision of my eyes is no longer relevant (or at least no longer recognizes my physical environment). This white light—which blazes with the focused intensity of a laser and which is both whiter-than-white, yet also sparkling with brilliant color—may be the crux of the experience. The first time I smoked 5-MeO-DMT, the only instruction I was given by the friend who provided it to me was to stay in this light for as long as possible.

2. At this point a variety of inner phenomena can appear. Some people report seeing protector spirits (animals or angels), while others describe communicating directly with the light. In some of my early journeys, I walked across plains of stars and talked with a Goddess who appeared in a blend of changing forms, some familiar, some archetypical, and I remember she laughed and treated me like a child. Whoever is in charge in that dimension, they know to keep it simple when we visit there; we are children compared to them, and they teach us things in the slow methodical way any good teacher does, one simple lesson at a time.

The following quotation is from Stanislav Grof’s extensive road map of the transpersonal experience, The Cosmic Game:

“Immediately following the experience of total annihilation—‘hitting cosmic bottom’—we are overwhelmed by visions of light that has a supernatural radiance and beauty and is usually perceived as sacred. This divine epiphany can be associated with displays of beautiful rainbows, diaphanous peacock designs, and visions of celestial realms with angelic beings or deities appearing in light. This is also the time when we can experience a profound encounter with the archetypal figure of the Great Mother Goddess or one of her many culture-bound forms.”

Once, early on in my experimentations, when I was hyper-excited by some of the strange and wonderful ideas I had encountered in Terence McKenna’s wild book The Archaic Revival, I meditated with serious resolve on the questions, “What are you? Can you let me know?” before I made my journey to that other dimension. After reading McKenna’s book I was intoxicated with the ideas of gods, aliens, and other-dimensional beings and I was certain that this was the correct way of attempting to communicate with them: surely they would respect my intent. Then, as soon as I exhaled, the answer from the other side blasted me like a million volts of pure electricity threatening to fry me to my core:

Love. That is all you need to know. I am Love.

This answer is one of the oldest known to man, and the core of many great religions; but it was not one that I had expected, nor one that I had been looking for. In fact, I would probably have never had considered it as an option at all. But as an answer to a child who is making his first frightful steps into the unknown, it could not be paralleled for its effect. “Do not fear,” this other dimension declares, “There is an ocean of love over here.”

After that experience, I stopped asking questions.

3. In this tunnel of light I relive all the experiences in my life in an instant. Your whole life flashes before you like the wave of a hand – the passage of time is like a game here. All the people I have known and loved surround me as I become a part of them and they become a part of me as I expand out of my form towards realization.

Everybody seems very happy and excited at this point, with a keen sense of humor attached to the fact that I/we have had the great secret-and-answer contained within us all along. The multitude of faces around me keep laughing and silently shouting at me, “You knew it all along! We knew it all along! It’s all right! We all knew it all the time! You exist! This is real! This is it! Now just relax! And just … Be.”

4. Everything that has come before in my life seems to have led to this point, to this moment. There is no sense of time. I am somehow splitting, growing, spreading outwards, and becoming a part of everything. I am permutating and connecting with the entire universe from within my very being. As I expand out and integrate into the happy multitudes and the universe beyond them, then my ego/identity begins to dissolve as the realization dawns that I am returning to the Source from where everything came. Looking around, in a dimension without time or space, I recognize everything and everyone as One, as the embodiment of all those beings who I have managed to love the most unconditionally. There is a definite feeling, that to go past this point, I have to relax, believe, and somehow, let go.

Coil - Methoxy-N, N-Dimethyl (5-MeO-DMT)At this point I have also heard a sound —and this is another experience commonly reported by tryptamine smokers—which grows to become the most incredible, all-encompassing note. It is pure other-worldly angel music, which I can only describe with the word Aum (or Om). The primordial noise. The logos. The original sound of creation. A transcendental note that I effortlessly dissolve into.

Dissolution into an omniscient state of Oneness. A place where there is no difference between G/d, the physical universe, or me. We have ceased to exist as separate entities and now resonate as One. Resonating with the possession of a knowledge that radiates with the surest sense of Love—a love that is in everything, and is everything, and is so much more. A conscious Love more intelligent than anything we have ever known. A Love so great that it defies the need for a physical form, and yet paradoxically realizes itself in us, and in all of creation. Aum. I become that Love and I know that everything is One, everything is;

G/d

An infinite pulsating field of intelligent energy that all physical forms manifest from, and into which one day everything shall return: an all-encompassing brilliant bejeweled light of Love. The Godhead, the Supreme Mystery, the Conscious Infinity, the Pure Light, Brahman, Yahweh, whatever you wish to call it—it is the Unnamable Name, and yet paradoxically it is also the Creation Principle—and yet I recognize It. I know that It is real, that I am a part of It, and that in this moment I am able to return to It, like the Sufi ‘moth to the flame’.

Resonating as one with my G/d and now having ceased to exist other than as a part of that divinity, all I have to do is breathe to feel the waves of omniscient energy radiate in and out of my ocean of bliss. My friends, my lovers, my life, my species, my world, —we are all One and we are all part of G/d. Atman (individual consciousness) and Brahman (universal consciousness) as One. There is no way to differentiate between anything: I am lost in waves of an awestruck ecstasy that cannot be described, an ego-less bliss. Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fascinans is revealed within the singular realization of the true nature of my G/d: that G/d paradoxically resides both without and within.

Physically, I believe this is when I go into the quietest part of my journey—I’m generally peacefully lying down and saying nothing. I am only in this indescribable cosmic resonance for a few short minutes, ten or fifteen at the most, but it makes no difference to me, since I no longer have any concept of time, and its passage could just as easily be considered infinite. This is the period of an intense singularity for some: the white-out (as it is sometimes called), a total dissolution. It is my belief that my consciousness exists during this state in resonance with a realm that is actually beyond ordinary human comprehension. Freed of the matter of my body, my consciousness is able to function in a manner that it can’t understand, or barely even remember, once it has returned to the limitations of its corporeal form.

I believe that what I have been experiencing is the universal state of consciousness before the knowledge of ego and self, a state of undifferentiated ‘Cosmic Consciousness’ that historically William James has described as ‘Absolute Consciousness’, that Aldous Huxley called “Mind (with a capital M)”, and what is now commonly known amongst the entheogenic community as “God Consciousness.” Me, I just call it G/d for short. Which is a very clinical way of describing what has historically proven to be the most important and awe-inspiring force upon the development of humankind: our ability to achieve some kind of mystical resonance with this G/d; the subsequent realization that the source of this G/d lies within; and the energy and inspiration that this realization has subsequently released into our human society.

Beyond Omega by Denis Konstantin5. “I” have now ceased to exist; there is no knowledge or recognition of “myself”. And yet my consciousness remains, clearly still thinking and experiencing, while seemingly now knowing everything, all knowledge and information within my grasp

Suddenly (probably as the 5-MeO-DMT first starts to wear off) there is the taste of fear: This is all too much. At the apparent pinnacle of the experience, when time has ceased to exist and I have dissolved into this G/d consciousness and lost all sense of my own identity, then I find myself abruptly searching around wildly in this out-of-body dimension, surrounded by layers of information and understanding, struggling to remember how this has all been possible. I exist as pure formless consciousness without limitations - until “I” consciously realize this anomaly. Asking myself; “How did this happen? How have I come so far?” And then finally the killer. “Who am I?”

“I” begins to think: “I must have an identity? How long has this been going on? What is going on here? How is this possible? I must exist! Something really weird is happening here…” From the moment that I recognize that the experience can be recognized, instead of simply being in the experience—then my ego-based identity begins to assert itself, and suddenly it is way, way, too much. I struggle to remember a beginning, a start to “my” own existence – and with this search comes the terror, followed by an abrupt departure from this indescribable state of grace.

6. “You have smoked 5-MeO-DMT,” I usually hear a voice say. And then the remembering pours back in a tellurian wave as my being inexorably flows from a dimension without matter or time back into this physical one. My vision suddenly focuses – I can see bizarrely for a moment between the two worlds, seemingly vibrating in both of them at once - before I am suddenly dropped disorientated back into an awe-struck heap on the floor.

The time between remembering that I exist and then reentering my body is terrifyingly quick and very disorientating, and I think that this specific period is often what people remember from their own experiences. This is especially the case on the first time, and/or if they have smoked too much (which can be easy to do). There is a razor-fine line between smoking enough 5-MeO-DMT to fully experience its out-of-body wonders, and smoking too much, which results in the participant remembering little or nothing of the experience: an often bizarrely terrifying ‘white hole’.

And to further complicate the issue, every person will have his or her own ideal dosage, which takes some experimentation to determine. (This will require owning a gem scale capable of measuring within plus/minus 2 mg to do so accurately.) If you are one of the rare breeds who have the desire to smoke 5-MeO-DMT regularly, then I recommend that you consistently reduce your dosage until you find the minimum required for release, as this is where you will have the best chance of remembering the largest amount of the experience. I believe that too much happens in too short of a time to really have a chance of remembering it all, but some people do emerge with remarkably coherent accounts of their experiences.

7. Now I am fully back in this reality and over-awed by the sheer POWER that I have just experienced, the remnants of which still pulsate through my trembling body. For the following ten or fifteen minutes I am technically still feeling the effects of the 5-MeO-DMT, but my descent back to ground zero is quick. I am usually fairly ecstatic during this period, my eyes filled with wildfire, and I can laugh great whooping belly laughs, deeper than I have ever laughed before. It’s a cosmic laughter at this on-going humor we call life and the unbelievable joke that I have been let in on. Although these days I prefer to smoke 5-MeO-DMT alone, this period is a good time for witnesses to ask what I have seen and experienced. I will respond with great authority on a variety of subjects—as if channeling from some higher force—only to have no memory of my statements thirty to sixty minutes later. The overwhelming sensation that accompanies this phase, even now after years, is that I still have no clue of the depth and breadth of the power of the substance I am so blindly imbibing, and that I should strive to treat the 5MDE with sacred respect.
Forty-five minutes to an hour later, I am completely “straight” (and usually looking for ice cream). All chemical traces of the tryptamine have disappeared from my brain and I am physically free of its influence. Except now, having experienced a full out-of-body mystical experience, my world and my paradigm can never be the same again.

5-Meo-DMT and James Oroc's first experienceAt this point let me recap my interpretation of the series of events that generally occur when I smoke 5-MeO-DMT:

1. Dissolution into fractals of light upon exhalation of the 5-MeO-DMT.

2. Transportation via rapid acceleration into the coherent white light.

3. The subsequent recognition of the unity of All, and that Love is the principle that organizes the universe.

4. Complete dissolution from ego/identity and any concept of time, as I dissolve into resonance with the One; with G/d. (William James “Absolute consciousness”).

5. Fear from disorientation caused by transitioning back into a restricted consciousness, caused by the return of “my” ego.

6. An abrupt repossession of my physical body as the last effects of the 5-MeO-DMT fade away.

7. A period of fading resonance between physical consciousness (consciousness with a small letter “c”) and G/d consciousness (Mind with a capital “M”), as I return completely my normal “baseline” state.

It is important to state once again that within the rudimentary framework that I have provided there is the possibility of an infinite variety of experiences for any given individual. The scenario I have described here is purely from my own voyages and the experience is completely open to other interpretations. It is possible that the order in which I have catalogued these events occurring is completely incorrect, since no linear passage of time is evident within the experience. Rather, it is more like being “hard-wired” into another dimension, where you are somehow able to experience everything simultaneously while being channeled towards the “Core.”

~ James Oroc, Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad. (2009).

Mightily clever Oroc will reveal to our spiritually broken lives what the messiahs and the prophets throughout history have all failed to convey. Oroc tackles questions such as; is there a God? Yes there is! Do we survive our bodily death? We sure do! etc. This is what we've all been waiting for and so we must thank G/d for James Oroc, because he's uncovered the truth and lifted the veil off her rusty hinges.

What is conveyed in our world, Oroc points out, is only illusion for the production-line people. Oroc invites us awakened ones to all soar free from this world. He's uncovered the secret you see, and, in so doing, he's only managed to untangle the world knot of existence. roc is also good at knocking holes in our consumer culture and pointing out the poverty of our present economic situation.

Ayahuasca caused flattening and stretching of vascular smooth muscle cells and changes in the arrangement and distribution of collagen and elastic fibers. Chronic treatment with the higher dose significantly increased media thickness and the ratio of media thickness to lumen diameter.

He (Oroc) quickly dismisses its far less potent cousin, n-n DMT as a poor substitute for the real thing, placing him in a very difficult to understand and practically peerless position. While this may be true, not once does he mention any curiosity to try the two IN COMBINATION with each other as in Yopo, and a few other traditional mixtures.

LSD: 5ht1a = 3.73, DMT: = 0.00, psilocin = 2.88, mescaline = 3.61, 5-meo-DMT: = 4.00 (make up >80% of brain 5-ht)
LSD: 5ht1b = 4.00, DMT: = 0.00, psilocin = 2.19, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 2.41
LSD: 5ht1d = 3.70, DMT: = 3.91, psilocin = 3.40, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 3.48
LSD: 5ht1e = 2.62, DMT: = 3.28, psilocin = 3.03, mescaline = 3.16, 5-meo-DMT: = 1.72
LSD: 5ht2a = 3.54, DMT: = 2.58, psilocin = 2.14, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 0.98
LSD: 5ht2b = 3.11, DMT: = 3.91, psilocin = 4.00, mescaline = 3.97, 5-meo-DMT: = 0.69
LSD: 5ht2c = 3.11, DMT: = 3.42, psilocin = 2.52, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 1.55
LSD: 5ht5a = 3.64, DMT: = 3.16, psilocin = 2.83, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 1.84
LSD: -5ht6 = 3.75, DMT: = 3.35, psilocin = 2.82, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 2.73
LSD: -5ht7 = 3.77, DMT: = 4.00, psilocin = 2.82, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 3.69
LSD: ---D1 = 2.34, DMT: = 3.51, psilocin = 3.37, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 2.38
LSD: -A-2A = 2.93, DMT: = 2.75, psilocin = 1.36, mescaline = 2.92, 5-meo-DMT: = 0.00
LSD: -A-2B = 0.00, DMT: = 3.53, psilocin = 1.57, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 0.86
LSD: -A-2C = 0.00, DMT: = 3.53, psilocin = 1.03, mescaline = 4.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 1.57

Stan Grof about his LSD experienceGrof’s first experience with LSD (and a strobe light) as a volunteer in 1956 would set his life-course as a researcher – he was considered the world’s leading authority on LSD research until that became impossible due to the changes in the law in the early 1970’s – and his account of that experience is considered one of the classics in psychedelic literature, and the bench-mark by which many future entheogenic experiences would be compared. However, in the following account where the sixty-something year old Grof takes a whopping 25 mg dose of 5-MeO-DMT, Grof states that that his 5-MeO-DMT experience actually exceeded his original LSD experience in effect and intensity. Since few writers in history have the skill or experience in describing the psychedelic experience that Stanislav Grof has, this remarkable description of the 5-MeO-DMT experience is perhaps the most important one we have.

The beginning of the experience was very sudden and dramatic. I was hit by a thunderbolt of immense power that instantly shattered and dissolved my everyday reality. I lost all contact with the surrounding world, which completely disappeared as if by magic. In the past, whenever I had taken a high-dose of psychedelics, I liked to lie down and make myself comfortable. This time, any such concerns were irrelevant because I lost awareness of my body, as well as of the environment. After the session, I was told that after taking a couple of drags, I sat there for several minutes like a sculpture, holding the pipe near my mouth. Cristina and Paul had to take the pipe from my hand and put my body in a reclining position on the couch.

In all my previous sessions, I had always maintained basic orientation. I knew who I was, where I was, and why I was having unusual experiences. This time all this dissolved in a matter of seconds. The awareness of my everyday existence, my name, my whereabouts, and my life disappeared as if by magic. Stan Grof … California … United States … planet Earth … these concepts faintly echoed for a few moments like dreamlike images on the far periphery of my consciousness and then faded away altogether. I tried hard to remember myself of all the existence of the realities I used to know, but they suddenly did not make any sense.

In all my previous psychedelic sessions there always had been some rich specific content. The experiences related to my present lifetime – the story of my childhood, infancy, birth, and embryonal life – or to various themes from the transpersonal domain – my past life experiences, images from human history, archetypal visions of deities or demons, or visits to various mythological domains. This time, none of these dimensions seemed to exist, let alone manifest. My only reality was a mass of radiant swirling energy of immense proportions that seemed to contain all of existence in a condensed and entirely abstract form. I became Consciousness facing the Absolute.

Grof's Most Powerful Experience: It had the brightness of myriad suns, yet it was not the same continuum with any light I knew from everyday life. It seemed to be pure consciousness, intelligence, and creative energy transcending all polarities. It was infinite and finite, divine and demonic, terrifying and ecstatic, creative and destructive - all that and much more. I had no concept, no categories for what I was witnessing. I could not maintain a sense of separate existence in the face of such a force. My ordinary identity was shattered and dissolved; I became one with the Source. In retrospect, I believe I must have experienced the Dharmakaya, the Primary Clear Light, which according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thödol, appears at the moment of our death. It bore some resemblance to what I encountered in my first LSD session, but it was much more over whelming and completely extinguished any sense of my separate identity.

My encounter with the Absolute lasted approximately 20 minutes of clock time, as measured by external observers. As far as I was concerned, during the entire duration of my experience, time ceased to exist and lost any meaning whatsoever. After what seemed like an eternity, concrete dreamlike images and concepts began to form in my experiential field. I started intuiting fleeting images of a cosmos with galaxies, stars, and planets, Later, I gradually visualized a solar system, and within it the Earth, with large continents.

Stanislav Grof's "When The Impossible Happens"Initially, these images were very distant and unreal, but as the experience continued, I started to feel that these realities might actually have objective existence. Gradually, this crystallized further into the images of the United States and California. The last to emerge was the sense of my everyday identity and the awareness of my present life. At first, the contact with the ordinary reality was extremely faint. I recognized where I was and what the circumstances were. But I was sure that I had taken a dose that was excessive and that I was actually dying. For some time, I believed I was experiencing the bardo, the intermediate state between my present life and my birth in the next incarnation, as it is described in the Tibetan texts.

As I was regaining more solid contact with reality, I reached a point where I knew that I was coming down from a psychedelic session and that I would survive this experiment. I was lying there, still experiencing myself as dying, but now without the sense that my present life was threatened. My dying seemed to be related to scenes from my previous incarnations. I found myself in many dramatic situations happening in different parts of the world throughout the centuries, all of them dangerous and painful. Various groups of muscles in my body were twitching and shaking, as my body was hurting and dying in these different contexts. However, as my karmic history played out in my body, I was in a state of profound bliss, completely detached from all these dramas, which persisted even after all the specific content disappeared from my experience.

As an experiment (and in a foreign land) I smoked the last of the Bufo alvarius venom (the story of whose collection is described within the pages of Tryptamine Palace) with some ‘regular’ DMT (extracted from Jurema Preta.). In the vast majority of my early nigerine (DMT) experiences, I encountered visual fields of ‘dots’ that would come together to form images, much like the pointillism style of painting developed by Georges Seurat or the Australian Aboriginal song-line paintings. With the addition of the 5-MeO-DMT containing toad-venom to the DMT however, the visual characteristic was completely different and totally unique to my experiences so far. On this occasion there was a complete lack of ‘dots’ or ‘points’ of any kind, the fine lines of the constantly changing imagery were like those painted with a single-hair brush on Tibetan thangkas and due to the overwhelming artistry of what I was seeing, I could only think of the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in comparison.

Sistene Chapel: This was without a doubt the most ‘visionary’ experience I have ever been fortunate enough to encounter and I lay there with my eyes shut watching the most fantastic parade of the Collective Unconsciousness imaginable, wishing that it would never end, and as I sit here now I can not even describe one tiny corner of it, since every image in the multitude of imagery was in such constant motion that they defied all but a glimpse. And then moments later, like a tent collapsing when its ropes are cut, the vision is gone. Leaving only a struggle of words to explain it, since nothing before or after has come close to this experiences visual majesty.

This experience leads to the interesting question of selectively combining DMT and 5-MeO-DMT for a more visionary and somewhat less overwhelmingly transcendental experience. (Or for the other way around). This combining of the two endogenous entheogens is being tested in changa blends (reportedly at a 90% DMT to 10% 5-MeO-DMT ratio), while many Pharmahuasca urban-shamans are also adding 5-MeO-DMT to their ayahuasca-analogues to transform and deepen that experience. It seems likely to me that the combining of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT in various ratios and manners will only become more popular as the exponentially increasing number of psychonauts search for new psychological terrain to explore.

LSD: 5ht1a = 3.73, DMT: = 0.00, psilocin = 2.88, mescaline = 3.61, 5-meo-DMT: = 4.00 (make up >80% of brain 5-ht)
LSD: 5ht1b = 4.00, DMT: = 0.00, psilocin = 2.19, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 2.41
LSD: 5ht1d = 3.70, DMT: = 3.91, psilocin = 3.40, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 3.48
LSD: 5ht1e = 2.62, DMT: = 3.28, psilocin = 3.03, mescaline = 3.16, 5-meo-DMT: = 1.72
LSD: 5ht2a = 3.54, DMT: = 2.58, psilocin = 2.14, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 0.98
LSD: 5ht2b = 3.11, DMT: = 3.91, psilocin = 4.00, mescaline = 3.97, 5-meo-DMT: = 0.69
LSD: 5ht2c = 3.11, DMT: = 3.42, psilocin = 2.52, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 1.55
LSD: 5ht5a = 3.64, DMT: = 3.16, psilocin = 2.83, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 1.84
LSD: -5ht6 = 3.75, DMT: = 3.35, psilocin = 2.82, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 2.73
LSD: -5ht7 = 3.77, DMT: = 4.00, psilocin = 2.82, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 3.69
LSD: ---D1 = 2.34, DMT: = 3.51, psilocin = 3.37, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 2.38
LSD: -A-2A = 2.93, DMT: = 2.75, psilocin = 1.36, mescaline = 2.92, 5-meo-DMT: = 0.00
LSD: -A-2B = 0.00, DMT: = 3.53, psilocin = 1.57, mescaline = 0.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 0.86
LSD: -A-2C = 0.00, DMT: = 3.53, psilocin = 1.03, mescaline = 4.00, 5-meo-DMT: = 1.57