My first real breakthrough I do not remember at all, It was beyond intense, But yeah its interesting how some people don't remember some breakthroughs.

Metaphorically, DMT is like an intellectual black hole in that once one knows about it, it is very hard for others to understand what one is talking about. One cannot be heard. The more one is able to articulate what it is, the less others are able to understand. This is why I think people who attain enlightenment, if we may for a moment comap these two, are silent. They are silent because we cannot understand them. Why the phenomenon of tryptamine ecstasy has not been looked at by scientists, thrill seekers, or anyone else, I am not sure, but I recommend it to your attention.

~ Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelics, Mushrooms, the Amazon,
Virtual Reality, UFO’s, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, & the End of History. (1991).

I have met with entities from other dimensions, and it has not impelled me to take a strong position. I’ve paid very close attention when these experiences were happening to me, and there always seems to be loose ends that argue against whatever hypotheses seems currently most attractive, and though Jacques didn’t mention it today I recall in his book The Invisible College he stressed the absurdity that seems to attend the contact experience. That if the contactee will truly tell the unvarnished truth then there will be elements in the story which will make the contactee look like a moron, in other words, the invalidation of the experience is an inimical part of its structure, almost as though the entities were saying, well you may tell this story if you wish, but if you’ll tell it truthfully you’ll be taken for a fool. Well there’s nothing wrong with being taken for a fool except that it does peal the phenomenon rather nicely away from the very sober ladies and gentleman who are making there careers in some branch of science. They are not interested in investigating the kinky, the anecdotal, the possibly pathological. -terence mckenna

Yeah. This is so bizzare.

Is it common to feel at the time that you've been there before, whether or not it's your first blast or thousandth?

Every breakthrough I get this intense feeling of dejavu, the space, while alien and nothing like what you would be used to in physical life, seems familiar, it feels like I have been there many times before, it's always very clear where I am, and it's always clear that have been there enough times where there's almost a nostalgia like feeling associated with this area...

Though this is just my experience...

-eg

Yeah. This is so bizzare.

Is it common to feel at the time that you've been there before, whether or not it's your first blast or thousandth?

The more one is able to articulate what it is, the less others are able to understand. This is why I think people who attain enlightenment, if we may for a moment comap these two, are silent. They are silent because we cannot understand them.

The dose that lead me up to my breakthrough was a very very high one, So when the actual breakthrough came on I was begging for it stop, I clearly was not ready, I think that may be the reason why I don't remember any of it, Basically everything just went pitch black, Something let me know that, I didn't quite pass the test, but everything would be alright, The comedown was absolutely mind bending, I purged numerous times.

*note: the dose range in this report is highly inflated, there is no reason to ever dose this high*

the first time I consumed N,N-dimethyltryptamine I smoked 200mgs of translucent yellow crystals of DMT free-base on top of a small amount of high-grade cannabis (about 0.35g cannabis). I consumed the entire contents of the smoking utensil in a single inhalation. I held my breath, in less than 5 seconds an intense rush began, first I felt more intoxicated than I had ever been, then, pure awe, "I don't believe it!" I kept repeating in my head, "this is impossible".... my surroundings began to quiver and slither apart, faster than anything I had ever seen before, everything began moving away from everything else in a mash of brilliant color and geometric form, with blinding speed and intensity, before fully shattering the "reality" in my visual and mental field...

It came on like a freight train, completely unstoppable, I remember thinking "oh fuck! Get this stuff out of me!" And frantically trying to exhale, keep in mind that I still had not had the chance to even count to 10, or even fully exhale. It was pure terror, I thought "now you have done it! You killed yourself!" After brief mourning at the life I had just departed from I began to pay attention to the present, I remember feeling like I was at the bottom of a foggy mountain with dirt roads, the clouds felt like a domed ceiling, everything was wet, misty, cloudy and rainy, I was overcome with an intense feeling of panic and deja-vu, I felt like a lost child, everything I knew about who I was or my life or earth seemed like a distant dream, like I dissolved out of existence, I knew that I had died, I knew that I was dead, and I was certain that I had been here before, the dejavu was as intense as the terror and awe and I was emotionally overwhelmed while confronting the event of my death.

Just like sand slipping through finger cracks I tried to hold onto this all as my entire identity as a human was dissolved, I remembered my name, the earth, my family, who I was, being a human, and life, but like grabbing at smoke, it was futile, everything slipped away and nearly faded entirely out of my memory, impossible to cling to all this, I had to let it go...
I kept thinking "what the fuck was life?"

...I could not tell if I was breathing or not, I would take air in, but couldn't feel it, I began taking in rapid, deep, panicked deep breaths, thinking that none of the oxygen was entering my system or reaching my lungs, then noticed a pain in my chest...

A giant mantis like being had its claws in my chest! It proceeded to tear open my chest and stomach removing all my organs and insides, I was about to go into shock when I saw a bright green light flash over my shoulder, it nearly hit me, it then became a beautiful fractal-geometric object, morphing and color changing, at times it was metallic at other times it was a beautiful jewel, and all the while to look into it was to view endless geometric fractal patterns, moving, morphing, and changing color.

The mantis then put this object in my torn up body, he began to make billions of these objects, each one unique and radiating beautiful colored light, and the mantoid filled my body with them, billions of them, becoming small as atoms to construct the new insides and organs of my mangled corpse, then I was sealed up and propelled into an orange light where I was resurrected, my conscious-being (soul) was becoming reunited with the physical world...

...then I felt as if I was being pushed head first through a thick gelatinous membrane, violent gesticulations of the membrane surrounding me were forcing me through this thing...I was being born!...

...slowly I began to recognize my surroundings, my face still covered in tears, I looked up and saw the branches of a tree in the yard all slither in sinister fashion in from all directions to take place and solidify as the tree in the distance, the world began to slither back into place, most things moved in an elegant liquid serpentine slithering motion, or like the dancing movements of a flame, I was deeply reminded of psilocybin.

As the world constructed itself back into the familiar, so did my conscious state and memory, I was still disoriented, and fairly traumatized, I thought I had been gone for millennia, "how long was I gone I asked?"....
"about 20 minutes" was the answer

...those who were there said in reality I curled up into a ball and began to cry for 20 minutes.
I was wondering why my face was wet, because it felt like I had actually just been through being born, I was still covered in tears and shaken, I felt like I had been "turned inside out", then that I had died, been dismembered, rebuilt, and resurrected, everything was in a state of complete restructuring, I was a entirely new person, truly reborn, seeing the world through new eyes...

The immense deep spiritual and psychological implications of this experience left me for ever transformed, reborn as a new person entirely, it was the single most meaningful thing that has ever happened to me, and changed me in many significant ways, all for the better.

( I was not looking for enlightenment, awakening, or answers, I was not looking for transformation, and I really did not expect much, I was simply curious...most people expect a good deal and have set goals or specific reasons for ingesting the compound, and while this is fine, it's entirely unnecessary. )

-eg

“It is of the first order of importance to remember this, that the shaman is more than merely a sick man, or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself, who is cured, and who must shamanize in order to remain cured.” -terence McKenna

A shaman may be initiated via a serious illness, by being struck by lightning, or by a near-death experience (e.g. the shaman Black Elk), and there usually is a set of cultural imagery expected to be experienced during shamanic initiation regardless of method.
According to Mircea Eliade, such imagery often includes being transported to the spirit world and interacting with beings inhabiting it, meeting a spiritual guide, being devoured by some being and emerging transformed, and/or being "dismantled" and "reassembled" again, often with implanted amulets such as magical crystals. The imagery of initiation generally speaks of transformation and granting powers, and often entails themes of death and rebirth.
http://www.crystalinks.com/shamanism.html

The initiation is understood as a process of death and rebirth: “first, torture at the hands of demons or spirits, who play the role of masters of initiation; second, ritual death, experienced by the patient as a descent to hill or an ascent to heaven; third, resurrection to a new mode of being – the mode of ‘consecrated man,’ that is, a man who can personally communicate with gods, demons and spirits. For initiatory death is always followed by a resurrection; that is, in terms of psychopathological experience, the crisis is resolved and the sickness cured. The shaman’s integration of a new personality is in large part dependent on his being cured

-Written by Mircea Eliade, the entry for Shamanism in vol. 19 of Man, Myth and magic

The actual initiation can be equally excruciating. Most initiations in most cultures involve a symbolic death and rebirth: the candidate 'dies' to his old identity and is reborn to a new one. Shamanic initiates often experience this resurrection in gruesome ways. When the rai (spirits) make a shaman in western australia, they take him to their home.
'There they cut him up and hang up his insides...his body is dead, but his soul remains there, and on the order of the rai to look steadily at the part hanging up, he recognizes [his organs]. His body is put over a hot earth-oven, with magic cooking stones in it, and covered with paper-bark. The perspiration streams down. The rai replace his insides and close up the flesh. He is told that he can henceforth travel in the air like a bird or under the ground like a goanna...
....

Stories of disembowelment, dismemberment, and reassembly ( usually with magic stones or crystals inserted into the shamans frame) are best understood in this light.

-Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions
By Richard Smoley, Jay Kinney; page 161

*in reference to Siberian shamanic initiation*
Often these initiations by either another shaman or the spirits involved a traumatic visionary death and rebirth experience. Sometimes this included a journey to the underworld, meetings with deities and the would-be shaman’s body being dismembered and then put together again
https://www.anoniem.org/...ts-of-siberian-shamanism

Welcome, heechawaem! I'm also new here


~ Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelics, Mushrooms, the Amazon,
Virtual Reality, UFO’s, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, & the End of History. (1991).


Although SWIM has never had the experiences you are talking about, he is able to gather great understanding from all of your descriptions. He is consolidating personal knowledge and intuition with people's stories and the resulting ideas about existence are new ideas, greater than all before, but yet simple pieces of a The Puzzle that slide into place - be it an infinite puzzle.

In a way, this Forum is itself psychedelic - to the extent that current personal knowledge and understanding allows it.

SWIM has the feeling that once he goes through these experiences he will impart all the knowledge he can in great detail to his friends, to you.

Have you experience with these entheogens?

Or is it that you have yet to go through a "peak experience" with them?

-eg

would you recommend just taking in as much as you can from a high dose to break through instantly (so your ego doesn't get a chance to fight it and you don't chicken out), or ease your way through, taking smaller tokes until you blast off?