I always wondered what would happen if someone had a natural trip exactly like DMT or 5MEO DMT, well I found an example, this may be old news to some, but Eckart Tolle.

In his book “The Power of Now,” in his first chapter he explains how he became a spiritual teacher and how he connected to the Divine, the Universe, and to the realization of the Now.

He says

"I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. "Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real." I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts.
Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words "resist nothing," as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.
I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind."

Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now, Chapter 1



Whether or not he did some DMT and doesn’t admit it, or whether or not he knows about DMT or its similarities to his personal experience, his description matches that, to me, exactly like a DMT experience.
Actually, listening to his audiobook, Found here:
***(Has since been removed from Youtube, just Google it and find it elsewhere)

I understand every word of what he is talking about from my own personal DMT experiences, so much so that I cannot understand how his book has become a #1 bestseller, in other words I can’t imagine how so many people who have not had mystical experiences can relate. Someone told me that they really do not understand, that Oprah recommended him and shot him up to the #1 selling guru of all time, making people buy his books. But listening to his books he goes to very high levels, I am glad that he has put that out into the world and that so many have read it.

As for myself I have had mystical experiences no different than Jesus or Buddha, but in every case I knew that I had taken something external to get there. I often thought that if someone had a mystical experience of those proportions naturally, they would write books about it, re-write Revelations, and travel the world preaching the Divine news. Well, it seems as though I have recently found at least one case.

(I have had at least 1 natural trip exactly like DMT, but in bed half-way asleep, and the content of it was just a series of lectures telling me to get my shit together like to stop drinking. I also have had them before in a handful in dreams, where I dreamt that I hit a pipe and blasted off into hyperspace, the experience seemed exactly the same).

Lots of folks here seem to have had experiences that are often described as being like a kind of endogenous tryptamine and/or harmala experience, by degrees, whether awake or dreaming. For me it's not usually like straight DMT on its own though- it's more like a mix of things, though we have no way to validate the biochemical basis to any of this yet. Very similar sounding experiences to Tolle's can also found all over the web in regards to yoga, meditation, dreaming, dark rooming, sensory deprivation tanks, near death experiences, and so on. And of course in ancient times (ie Upanishads).

One time when presenting side by side reports from erowid in front of a class, no one could tell which experience reports were about deep meditation and which ones were psychedelics. Though that's not to say there isn't usually major differences between the two, obviously.

Most actually keep silent and go about their business.

I have had lots of experiences like that without taking psychedelics.

I resonate well with what Eckhart describes, here. Although, that doesn't imply it had anything to do with tryptamines. Beautifully written, nonetheless. Sobriety and psychedelics both have authentic aspects.

The mystical is a bundle of experiences-- physical sensations of loss and 'energy', intellectual revelation and recognition of the scale of the universe, and visions/sounds that embody these things.
Individuals can be brought to a mystical state through any of these experiential doorways. Some get to the same place through physical exhaustion. Eckart was led into the experience through a koan.

Once in the realm of the mystical the full spectrum of the experience hit him with such force that he could rewire his own consciousness. It is striking how similar Eckart's experience is to mystical experiences triggered by DMT.

It is remarkable how universal this kind of experience is-- I believe it is a human need on par with deep companionship, and is just as natural. Great find!

So "being a person", having a "sense of self" is just an artificial construct and there are many ways whereby it can be broken down, both temporarily and permanently, accidently or using some substance/method.

Thinking you're a person is a pretty crappy paradigm to live by but it's the one we nearly all love and protect.

I'm aiming for the permanent dissolution of self but it's that gateless gate problem - how can an artificial construct break down the artificial construct, the dream character wake itself up from the dream?

All answers on a postcard please

By tracing its path back to its origin where seeing the construct happens. The origin of the construct is the feeling "I am". That is where the construct dissolves as well through persistent attention on the feeling "I am". The proverbial journey out of paradise and back.

So the artificial construct has to constantly strive to overcome its natural tendency to get caught up in the automatic thought process and apply attention only to the sense of "I am"?

Yes.

It's not so much to try and "overcome" the artificial construct, but to accept it, it is, and you are, both yourself, and the construct itself. There is nothing to overcome, which means there is no gate to pass through to on the way to enlightenment, other than the ones you construct for yourself. That doesn't make the path of passing through barriers on the way wrong, but it does make it longer.

Accepting that "I am" a free agent operating in an artificial construct is what gives you the ability to play with the variables of said construct free of worry. If you have placed "I am" in the construct, then while your here play with it and have fun, and take it seriously, and feel pain, and forget that it's a construct, then remember, etc, etc.. Because that's what gives this reality it's flavor and it seems to be the only reason to enter into in the first place.

-Paulo

I wrestle with this. I think/feel that "I am" is just as false as "there is no I am"

The universe is unified but also differentiated. To deny all sense of self and other is to deny the vast amazing diversity that appears so evident.

The trouble I usually face is stripping down the *meaning* I ascribe to 'I,' breaking down the map I make as a representation of reality to ease living in it.

Meh, Paulo said it better.

I had some spiritual delegates tell me:
"You actually don't need those plants, all theses states are accessible right away as you are."
I loved that and I see logic between some doubt.
Yet I know these dudes still doing the plants

Yes. Take a scientific approach and put it to the test.

P.S. For this to happen with the necessary intensity, a certain degree of dispassion, or "fatigue" of and disinterest in worldly (sensual) experiences, is needed. Otherwise the mind will not have the fortitude to proceed with this inquiry. It will also come up with various justifications why this is not the right thing to do.

Be assured, I have spent a lifetime putting it to the test. And 30 years on I'm intellectually capable of describing it - so well in fact I could easily join the ranks of so-called teachers. I've had many "experiences" of the non-dual condition through meditation, a range of practices and through plants. But what on earth is an experience? Something that happens to an imaginary person in an imaginary life in imaginary time?

Accept everything? Yes, of course! But a little observation (try 15 years working on mindfulness exercises with a Gurdjieff group) will show you that you're basically an automaton. The attention is lost nearly all the time in cycles of internal dialog/self considering - just try being aware for 60 seconds and chances are you'll fail. So where does this acceptance come from when the ship has a monkey as its captain all but a few seconds of the day?

Beingness is just beingness and the constructed ego and monkey mind and all the rest is included in that beingness - no need to change anything. But ... except in those rare moments of simply being, I'm that dualistic me shut out (seemingly) from the reality of WHAT IS. Always the gateless gate. Help!

As already mentioned, so many peoples awakenings can read like endogenously induced psychedelic experiences, to the point they become indistinguishable. There’s actually been a few different studies that when put together show changes in the brain during meditation that are very similar to states induced by psychedelics.

Questioning whether endogenous DMT is involved in these naturally occurring states is always interesting, especially considering that our brains don’t seem to develop much tolerance to DMT.



Yeah, if someone was self-proclaiming themselves to be awakened whilst plugging their new book I’d have some reservations. I do like Eckhart Tolle™ though, one of the early chapters in 'Power of Now' blew me away when I first read it years ago.

The only person I’ve come across who I’d consider awakened was so ordinary and down to earth, totally natural, not looking to travel, write books, or even speak... yet they had an undeniably powerful effect on thousands of minds.


Using a substance for spirituality is such a paradox, but then that’s everything for you…



Quite a few people would say yes, Nisargadatta Maharaj & Ramana Maharshi both advocated continuous awareness of 'I' until it's true nature is realized as the direct path. I love that self-awareness approach, as we effortlessly and reliably have the sense ‘I’ through it all, if there's a gateway to what is always present, it is ‘I’.

'I' find it's also good to question the commonly held beliefs, that personhood, duality, or that anything, has to be transcended.

There is no disagreement here with anything all of you have expressed. At different times I have expressed similar views. But these views are nothing but that, views. They spontaneously occur, as does the urge and the act of expressing them. And they change and disappear. In dreamless sleep none of them are, yet "something" is. That "something" is ever present and, to resort to the classic metaphor, the relationship between that "something" or "no thing" and the constructs that appear is like that of water and ripples on its surface. So yes, like ripples being water, so are the shifting constructs or nameforms made up of the everpresent real.

But to declare so from the viewpoint of a construct is to put the cart before the horse. Simply, in that moment of declaration, the view is that of the construct and not the real. It is a recitation from memory, a record of truth but not living truth. Yet, the construct being simply a ripple in the real, it is also real!

Whether it is possible to completely bring to an end the forgetfulness of the real when moving through the viewpoints and unify the absolute and the relative, everyone (viewpoint) must discover for themselves. It has been declared that it is possible.

NotTwo, I am aware of your familiarity with the subject matter (your moniker itself more than hints at that) so please do not perceive my responses to you as an attempt to instruct you. The best way to understand them is as self-talk.

So after all this verbiage, the urge it there to remain silent. Let's see, who is this urge appearing to?

Don't take this in anyway as being an intellectual discussion on my part. Nor trying to put forward or argue a point of view even. A desperation to get to the truth would be a better description. An obsession that never goes away!

I guess my point is, when I'm present, when the mind is in rest, then "that which is" simply is; "I don't know" but IT IS, its nature is awareness and boundlessness, nothing can express it. But those moments of being present are moments in subjective, me-based time, wholly dualistic. And those moments are subject to the vagaries of monkey mind that seemingly syphons away all the natural awareness in nonsense thought processes for the vast majority of the time.

So you can try to stop monkey mind or practise mindfulness or set reminders but that's all coming from the wrong place [excuse phraseology]. It's the dream character doing that and the dream character is the issue here - it thinks itself to be real. So faced with that, many teachers or non-teachers (Tony Parsons, David Carse, Krishnamurti) have expressed the pointlessness of trying to do anything. That doesn't take away the desperation to know/be the truth once it has bitten though

It is the dream character saying the above as well. Why listen to it?