The world of DMT is incredibly vast. What DMT opens in us is so profound that it is impossible to truly express. I have been making, using, and initiating people into DMT use, for around 40 years. I was the one who first discovered that the free-base could be smoked. It has never ceased to amaze me, nor have I ever felt that one could fairly arrive at any hard and fast conclusions about what was happening during a DMT trip. I do think that there are general rules for approaching the DMT journey such as diet, preparation, set and setting, and intention. But DMT is about the beyond. “Beyond what?” you may ask. Beyond the intellect, beyond the senses, beyond any devices and biological instruments for dealing with the external world. When you journey through the realms of the interior, the rules of the intellect and the values of the material world are not only irrelevant, but using them as yardsticks can create confusion. Tools of intellect are analytical, and as such are divisive. The processes of expression, communication, analysis, and intellect are tools for the ignorant. With these tools, we work our way out of the dark; but this ignorance is of the material world, not the spirit realm.

DMT is about unity and the healing of division, conflict, and the sickness brought about by compartmentalization. It is on a higher order of reality than the intellect, but it will weave message-laden images with any mental state or environmental input. The trick is seeing the pattern in the fabric and not getting hung up on the colors and threads. Thus, when I see someone trying to understand the DMT experience from a non-mystical, intellectual viewpoint—subsuming the whole by the parts—I am strongly motivated to share a critical viewpoint in the hope of extending our understanding of DMT and its use by traveling toward the beyond, which is its proper landscape.

World consciousness is changing and expanding very rapidly. The part that freaks everyone out is the idea that we will have to bid a fond farewell to the absolute authority of the intellect and the senses. These are the crutches of the material world. In the material world we fall down without them— we would remain as cripples. However, in the vast beyond, they are just distractions. These tools need to be dropped when you enter the ocean of consciousness, as they will only drag you down when you need to float.

When I read the excerpt in ER from DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Dr. Rick Strassman, I was struck by what I feel are a few fundamental misunderstandings that he made, and his failure to notice the crucial effect that the presence of he and his crew, as well as the overall environment, was having on his subjects. I wish to point these out and to put this type of research back into the vast perspective to which it belongs, lest this materialistic viewpoint create decades of misunderstanding.

First off, DMT is not a re-run of the X-Files. There are no aliens squiggling through psychospace to do experiments on us. That idea is just plain silly. It is fine to wonder how these perceptions occur, but it’s another matter to jump to conclusions. Wouldn’t it make sense to first examine the environmental design rather than look to alien origins? Over and over, Strassman’s subjects describe being examined by numerous strange beings in highly technical environments during the visual phase of their DMT experience. They are being examined, discussed, measured, probed, and observed. They are in high-tech nurseries and alien laboratories. There are 3–4 people moving around operating machinery according to some design or agenda.

Now lets look at what the physical surroundings are. These experiments are being done in a hospital room. There are a number of people in attendance, helping the one who is in charge, Dr. Strassman. He has an agenda and an experimental scientific viewpoint based on intellectual assumptions. There are people from NIDA, a government agency overseeing these experiments. They are labelled “Mr. V.” and “Mr. W. ” It seems clear to me that these individuals are the “aliens” represented in many of the experimental subjects’ trips. The elements of the experimental environment seem to be cropping up in the trip world that the subjects are experiencing. Why haven’t other environmental designs been considered?

One of my many memorable DMT trips (at about 0.9 mg per kg of body weight, intramuscular of the HCl) was sitting on a Persian carpet listening to a recording of Sharan Rani playing a love raga on a sarod. I had my two trip buddies with me. There were candles and incense. The room was setup as a temple space for tripping. As I arrived at my internal trip space, I was filled with overwhelming feelings of womanly love and sensuality. I looked down and was very surprised to see myself dressed in filmy harem pants and no shirt on. I had a beautiful copper-colored female body— breasts and all. I had many bangles on my arms, and ankle bells on my legs. I looked around and found that I was dancing a seductive love raga to the two musicians facing me playing sarod and tabla. We were performing in the courtyard of a beautiful Indian temple similar to Bubhaneshwar Temple, famed for its erotic sculpture and soaring towers. My dancing was an exact counterpart in rhythmic motion to the melodies and rhythms of the music. It was an exquisite act of love. It was so beautiful that when I came down, I declared that if I died right at that moment, I would regret nothing as I had experienced beauty more exquisite than I could ever imagine. Perfect love and unity. As I came down, I saw my beautiful breasts shimmer away and the bangles slide off my arms twinkling into nothing. There was a momentary ache in my heart as all of this love withdrew. As the room reappeared around me, I experienced a confusion; I could not remember if I was a sacred temple dancer dreaming I was a man, or if I was a man dreaming I was a female dancer. This was obviously a very touching and profound trip that infused my being with a new appreciation of love and harmony, something I carry as a memory and a perspective on life to this day. Obviously, I am not a woman, but I was so profoundly influenced by a woman playing a love raga that I created myself in accordance to what was entering into me from my environment. So it is apparent that set and setting are extremely influential in acting upon the DMT state, which is clearly a magnifying, creative, and sensitizing medium.

Now what would have happened if I had been injected with DMT in a clinical setting with two authorities from the National Institute on “Drug Abuse” watching me while little machines were beeping and orderlies and nurses were moving about? How different is this from the early CIA experiments with LSD? […]Theseare experiments being done by government agencies examining the use of these psychedelic substances in the pursuit of more power, money, and success (and based on the fallacious concepts of “drugs” and “abuse”). Remember, these are the same folks that rub elbows with the masters of disinformation that create absurd commercials like a frying egg in a pan saying, “This is your brain on drugs.”

The assumptions are all wrong. Dr. Strassman’s interpretation is about the recording of specific hallucinations, psychological modalities, and intellectual structuring. In actuality, the hallucinations are only visual by-products of a mystical state. What is important are the feelings and the hidden meanings you experience from entering into the vastness, and the new consciousness that can result; this is the glimpse that can open your soul to the sacred.

At the end of the excerpt, Strassman decides to “act as if the worlds volunteers visited and the inhabitants with whom they interacted were real,” so that he can show more “empathy.” It is difficult for me to interpret this “acting” as allowing true empathy. It seems more like psychological roleplaying to me. His concern that this approach might create a communal psychosis is valid, however.

The administration of DMT in these highly artificial and agenda-driven environments may very well create a warped impression of assumed importance and reality that does not allow DMT to function as it should. Let Strassman take his subjects into the forest or a temple, and turn on with them after he has mastered it himself, and I think he will find that the little alien doctors will disappear and be replaced by other mystic beings—beings that can tell you about yourself. Or you can go to a completely non-representative space of the rare “level three” state, where there is no light, no design, just the voice of God using your soul as a silent tuning fork. Alas, this is unlikely to happen, as Strassman would probably lose his job or grant, might very well be prosecuted and jailed, and worst of all, like Leary and Alpert, lose his scientific “objectivity” (another great myth).

Moving from this critical mode into a more expansive mode, I would like to address this topic from a mystical/religious point of view. The “objective” viewpoint was adopted by science as a more realistic way of describing reality than the “subjective” views filled with rigid dogma espoused by various organized religions. Actually, this understanding of objective (standing aloof from an experiment so as not to have one’s judgment distorted) and subjective (being so immersed in what one is observing that meaningful observations cannot be made) are really misnomers. Subjective consciousness can be thought of as the personal inward journey involving mystical experience and self-realization. Objectivity has to do with the outward application of the mind for the realization of materialistic goals and intellectual pursuits in the world of practical life applications—for communication and social survival.

I would like to consider this topic from the subjective point of view, to share a perspective that I feel can lead to a much richer appreciation of where one can go with the sacramental substances, should it be decided to use them in this manner.

One of the two “commandments” we had in the religious institution that we established in the ’60s called the League for Spiritual Discovery was “Thou shall not change the consciousness of another person without their consent.” On the surface, this means don’t dose anyone without their knowledge. Dosing someone without them knowing it is a mean-spirited form of violence. Our consciousness, limited as it may be, is ours. It is intensely personal. It is also our entry and connection with Divine consciousness. So to dose someone without their knowledge is to mess around with their connection with God. To do this for fun or revenge is nothing short of an abomination. It is disgusting and the height of unconsciousness. This is sin.

Now, let’s look at changing someone’s consciousness with their knowledge and permission. When one enters into the field of consciousness to explore or find God, unity, healing, inspiration, beauty, or love, one is making a commitment to meditate or work, or to take a psychedelic in a conscious or purposeful way to find one’s self or gain some hidden innerknowledge. This is one’s promise to one’s self. This is extremely personal. It is between one’s own heart and mind, and God’s. No one else’s.

When you take an inner voyage, you may be asking someone to assist you. This someone may know more about this journey than you do. This person has made the trip before. This person knows, perhaps, how to navigate his or her path without fear and stumbling. This person does not know your path. Nevertheless, a calm, loving presence while you are passing through the rough patches and sticky bits may be helpful to you, if you want it. This is your trip. Your mind. Your idea. Your freedom. You take the responsibility for your trip. This is not really social. Even if you are in a cuddle-puddle this is your personal connection with love. The other person is only a mirror, a friend, a companion, a helper.

So when someone sets up an experiment—a program with some “idea” behind it, some agenda—they are imposing a kind of mind-trip on the psychedelic experience. The environment may then have to accord with medical, psychological, or even governmental rules, precepts, and regulations. Even if the person running the program wants to demonstrate how useful and helpful these substances are, the very fact that there is an exterior organized program controlling the way in which the substance is administered interferes with the nature of the experience. Such a program in a clinical environment may produce some interesting results, but this is not the entheogenic or sacramental use of these substances. This applied program (curing, drug abuse, psychotomimetic model, or whatever) is a linear kind of thing—a control and concept modality that does not even begin touch on the true potential of what can be a very profound multilevelled experience. It is but one very small window, a tiny part of what is possible, and the part cannot subsume the whole. Holistic, deep spiritual research cannot be authorized by its very nature. Authority does not command God. If authority is an organized and limited temporary utilitarian structure, when its use is finished, it is disposable. God is not disposable. Neither are people.

Consciousness research and exploration must always be unauthorized to be authentic. Authorization is simply irrelevant. This does not mean we cast psychedelics hither and yon all over the landscape irresponsibly. It means that this is a deeply personal, tender, passionate search for self-realization. No one can tell you this. You must learn it for yourself. This is your love dance with yourself. For anyone to diddle with the controls in a gross or even subtle way, it distorts things (to put it “objectively”). To put it subjectively, it’s simply perversion.

Let’s look at it from another angle—a scientific angle. There is a concept sometimes referred to as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Put simply, it means that the act of observing something changes the nature of that which is being observed (in subatomic particles). The very act of just observing it. In our social life this happens all of the time.

For example, you walk into a room full of people. They look at you. You act very differently than you would if that room were empty. What might the fundamental effect of having substances administered by strangers (albeit possibly friendly strangers) who are taking notes, monitoring heart rate, respiration, video and audio taping, talking, whispering, or what-have you, in a technical, clinical environment? Obviously the nature of the journey will be profoundly influenced and changed from what it could be if the “subject” were in a natural, private, aesthetically pleasing environment. No one is going to be entirely comfortable in a clinical setting. There is an agenda here. This agenda is not up to the standard of a spiritual, friendly, and supportive environment. Strange smells, strange sounds, and the wrong kind of lighting, pervade. Past memories of doctor’s offices—pain, poking, injections, etc.—can arise. This has to change the nature of the experience. It is simply laboratory experiments with human beings being used as experimental lab animals.

The highest use of psychedelics and the empathogens is for finding love, beauty, joy, ecstasy, unity, and integration. This search for our essential inner perfection and Godliness is the spiritual search. When these substances are used this way, they are used for the highest good. Then they are sacraments, and we can call them entheogens. We must never forget, no matter how much disinformation is spread, that these substances are inert, innocent materials. It is we who interact with them and confer the variety of qualities that we attribute to them. It is we who have the choice to malign, terrorize, or scandalize them. It is also we who have the choice to treat them with the respect due to a gift from existence that can help in our search to find ourselves. And in doing so, to find the glory of love and illumination.

There may be some skeptics who say, “How did we get so deeply into spiritualism and God?” Yet, we have many accounts of elves, guardians, extra-terrestrials, and magicians that we see on DMT. What’s going on here? If we can accept imps, little monsters, and elves from this DMT spirit world, why cannot we accept God?

Let’s approach this topic from another neglected aspect. What is happening when we ingest DMT and reach this level of elves? Perhaps we are accessing the ultimate significant spirit of life when we apprehend these animated and symbolic representations. We may be intuiting the universal life code—the DNA molecule—which is found by the trillions all over the body. Perhaps the elves and imps are small subloops of information that we are accessing, which show how we can re-unify parts of our program that have gotten out of kilter. It has to come from somewhere, so why not look closer, rather than further? It seems that man’s search for knowledge started from the stars with the Greeks, and slowly worked its way closer and inward, until we are finally looking at the genetic engineering that is the basis of life. It is looking like the DNA molecule is possibly the origin of our spirituality also.

Let’s look at the feelings that occur during these visions, by examining them via a format for smoking DMT. I used to have a portable temple of very simple design—a beautiful handkerchief like a mandala, plus a candle. We’d sit around and smoke, one person assisting the smoker with matches and anything else he/she could do, like catching the pipe when the smoker went beyond physical coordination. We never passed the pipe around the circle, since that would mean you were already coming down by the time the pipe circulated again. The candle and mandala served as centering devices. As the DMT came on, the edges of the cloth would start moving, and so would the designs on the handkerchief. 2-dimensional surfaces would become 3-dimensional, independently moving in and out, up and down, relative to each other. The center would become a vast depth reaching away into infinity. The feelings that accompanied this were a sense of intense profundity, as though one had just arrived at the edge of the Grand Canyon. There was a sense of hidden inner meaning just about to be revealed. Everything seemed especially precious, and the real meaning of the word “sacred” resonated in my entire being. This is a feeling of coming into oneness with everything. It is the end of loneliness and emptiness, and the feeling of unity and completeness. It doesn’t get any better than that. In this space, anything can happen. Curing can happen. It can be accompanied by “agents,” little doctors working on you, signifying monsters, or even magicians teaching you lost knowledge. Worship and prayer suddenly have a whole new depth and meaning, because the sacred opens up the infinite.

One time many years ago in the penitentiary on McNeil Island we had managed to get a group of psychedelic prisoners living all together in one of the 8-man cells. Every Saturday night we would sit together in a circle around a little makeshift shrine, and take LSD, as well as smoke DMT. One of our cell mates, whom we could not dislodge from the cell, was an exception. He was a Mafia hitman. Sick as he was, he eventually gave it a try. The night he smoked DMT he came out of it with a look of astonishment and awe, and he said, “That’s the first time I’ve gone to church in 30 years.” Even this stone-cold killer could recognize the sacred. DMT creates a well-spring into a type of infinite space. You can feel and taste it, as it moves through your whole being like a cool refreshing breeze on a hot sticky day. Like a mother’s soothing touch on your fevered brow, but much deeper and more profound. You can feel the wind of the Divine blowing through your soul. Not every time—it is a trial and error process of finding the best moment, the best preparation, a moment when you are already in a great space. Then you can catapult into the vastness of Godliness, and this is the highest fulfillment in life.

So much time is wasted trying to find a rational excuse for using the psychedelics. A use that can open the door for government approval. Let’s cure some junkies of their habit. What for? The government-backed prosecution of drug users creates the problem. The problem is fictional. So we are going to use a sacrament to cure a non-existent problem? It has been said that the psychedelic voyage is a trip from wellness to even greater wellness. I agree. To use these sacraments only in a perverse application is to bring them down to a much lower level than their potential. What my experience indicates is that the most profound way to use psychedelics is to create ideal, healthy, high-energy environments with people who are in top form—then you will be able to approach the highest. Yes, the sacraments are curative and can be used that way, but it is all about curing, on any level.

Look at it as though consciousness were a set of stairs. Each stair represents a higher level of health, integration, and preparedness. At the bottom one can use the psychedelics with beer, opium, and cocaine to have a wilder party. One can use them to lose one’s self, have great sex, etc. Fine and good; nothing really wrong, if that’s what you want to do—it beats shooting people and raping the environment! This is, however, a low level of consciousness. Then you go up a few levels and you think that you can do some good with these compounds. Let’s use them for studying madness or curing addiction. Still a pretty low level of consciousness and no real commitment to personal development. This use is directed outward, not inward. Change comes from within—it can never be imposed from the outside. The next step up it occurs that maybe you could use psychedelics for finding answers to questions in your life, perhaps even for vision questing. Now we’re beginning to start on a more consciousness-oriented trip. But how are we doing it? Are we really arranging it so that we are creating an environment that unequivocally sets the stage for a leap into consciousness, or are we programming the trip with interruptions (telephone calls, visitors)? The purer our intention, the greater the possible results become. It can be quite subtle. You cannot plan it all out beyond a certain point or it becomes a control trip. You cannot program out spontaneity, but you can be intelligent and sensitive, and remember not to make the same mistake too many times in a row. Then you can use the psychedelics as an adjunct to tantra, meditation and/or yoga, devoting your entire trip to learning to go deep in thesedisciplines while continuing these practices on a long-term basis. This is the highest, most visionary, and most productive level. From whatever level you begin, the psychedelics will enhance, intensify, deepen, or broaden your experience, but they are working with the level of consciousness you provide them.

I have been using psychedelics for over 40 years productively and creatively. Of course, how I take them has changed over the years, otherwise it would be senseless repetition. Many people, especially youngsters, take them for a while, change from that experience a bit, and then turn away without discovering the staircase effect that is the practice of consciously choosing the highest level of existence possible at that time of your life, and launching your trip from that place. Even less known is that DMT, according to your readiness, will manifest on one of three levels: 1) the design and symbol level; 2) the messenger level; and 3) an ineffable level of total communion with the Mystery.

The saddest thing is to waste these potentials when experimenting with this truly great psychedelic. To hear of doctors dancing on government’s strings for carrots of money, power and prestige, while cringing from whips of criticism and disenfranchisement, during the very act of turning someone on and polluting their trip with this nonsense, strikes me as the height of unconsciousness. If this is not appropriate behavior for a curandero, how is this acceptable for a doctor in a modern society?

The proof of the pudding is that Strassman’s subjects have formed a support group because they thought that they might be losing their minds! What they need is an entirely supportive environment and free access to more DMT so that they can create their own sacred space away from government agents and all of that paranoid and polluting programming that occurs in “authorized” settings.

Unauthorized settings are free settings. Authority is slavery. Only in a free and supportive environment of grace and love, aesthetic and compassionate caring, can this sacrament be used to attain the highest. The freedom to practice this fundamental religious use of DMT must be found again.

Once there was a time when we could gather together lovingly, and peacefully take sacraments together. Hardly anyone remembers that time now. The ambience of government terrorism against psychedelics produces a very different set and setting. I was a guide at the Millbrook League for Spiritual Discovery. This was a legally-incorporated religion whose charter included the use of psychedelic sacraments. When one night the door was criminally kicked in by G. Gordon Liddy (now convicted burglar of Watergate infamy), that changed forever. Overnight the quality of magic that we had created was invested with fear. Although nothing illegal had been found and psychedelics had not yet been scheduled, the reign of terror had begun. The Inquisition had arrived. It is flourishing even more now. The negative effects of the government-supported substances of alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine are more than a hundred times worse than all illegal drugs together. (If you consider only the psychedelics, empathogens, and herbs such as Cannabis, these government supported drugs are thousands of times more harmful.) Yet we are criminals, and soon we may go to federal prison for only talking or writing about scheduled plants and compounds!

The Bill of Rights is dead. No religious freedom. No free speech. No right of association. No right of assembly. Thepeople who call us “druggies” are the true criminals. Explorers of consciousness are persecuted, jailed, and vilified by the people in charge of this inquisition—hypocrites, who are rarely called “druggies,” despite their frequent addictions to alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine (some of the most consciousness lowering drugs known to man). These “drug warriors” fear expanded consciousness because it exposes the lies and perversions of their loveless and violent lives. In desperate acts of self-serving stupidity, they blame others for the very sins of which they would rid themselves. Although the consciousness explorers are the victims of this reign of terror, it has nothing to do with us. It is just the mindless raging of the beast. It is important to remain transparent and cloudlike in the face of this. This incredibly vast wash of lies and cruelty must be ignored. This is their battle with themselves. Do not be washed away in the waves of disinformation and lies. Stay centered. Know thyself. Stay with that thread of truth and love that you have discovered within; even though it fades in and out, it is your inner truth and the doorway to your own authority.

I am a “criminal.” I am a fugitive. I have been for 40 years. But I have been true to myself and my friends. It has been hard. But I have a vision. Someday, somewhere, I will establish the University for Psychedelic Studies. There will be a department of psychedelic botany and chemistry. There will be a beautiful park and temple with lawns and ponds, peacocks, swans, and wildlife walking fearlessly. There will be pavilions for initiation. There will be a department of entheogenic worship. There will be a school of psychedelic medicine and curing. There will be acres of psychedelic herb gardens. There will be places to dance and places to meditate. There will be a school of yoga, tantra, and a “Mystery” school. A school for breathing, for art, music, for meditation, for ecological and planetary studies as well as applications. A school for love and one for beauty. There will be no government inspectors or police. They will not be necessary. There will be guides, friends, helpers, and lovers. On the new level of consciousness struggling to be born now, this will be how it is, for the old way of competition, murder, and exploitation is fast becoming an impossible situation. This planet must be lovingly cared for or we are all doomed. We are the guardians of life and planetary harmony. This is where we are going. That is what I have seen in my visions, and that is what I have been working for all of my life. That is what I will continue to do until my last breath.

Care to dance?

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Just a Wee Bit More About DMT, by Nick Sand

Consciousness is very flexible. Like a gas, it will fill any container in the form of that container. It is as ubiquitous as the universe, subsuming and interweaving with the fabric of nothingness, matter, and energy. This fabric is a naturally evolving pattern out of which we and the cosmos are woven. This for me is the level on which DMT functions. We can focus on any part of this pattern, minuscule or cosmic, depending on our orientation, environment, expectations, fears, and if we are dedicated to having a transcendent vision, our intention.

By and large, it strikes me that intention is the basic formative influence on the type of vision one will experience on DMT. Of all the psychedelics, DMT might be the most visionary one. I have many reasons for this declaration: DMT is produced by the body; it is found in hundreds of different plants and animals all over the planet; its tryptamine structure is woven into numerous important psychedelics (psilocybin/psilocin, LSD, ibogaine, the ß-carbolines, etc.); and it is one of the most purifying and curing of the psychedelics. It is also very close in structure to serotonin, possibly the most important nerve impulse facilitator. This is not to say that mescaline, LSD, psilocybin, et al., are not important; it just strikes me that DMT is the touchstone of the psychedelics. The body and consciousness recognize DMT and work with it almost instantaneously. The visions it produces are here and gone in a matter of minutes by clock time, but by our existential clock, time has been transformed—by the concentrated and incredible fullness of the experience—into eons. All this and only 15 minutes have passed? Wow!

We create our reality. We are all individually responsible to ourselves for the reality we create, whether we are miserable or joyous, this is our choice—our design. We are not alone; we exist as an integral part of all life, breathing, pulsating, vibrating, giving off plant food, absorbing animal food, in a multi-level fabric of incredibly beautiful designs and patterns. This is what DMT shows us—those patterns, as much as we can absorb at one time—to realign us to the sacred design of which we are a part. DMT works with the energy that surrounds and enters you. If you are an artist, you are likely to see an array of color and design that will fascinate and delight you. If you are a psychiatrist, you may interpret what is happening according to the psychological fashions or, perhaps, as a model of psychosis. Demons, doctors, elves, guardians, magicians, guides and Gods are the manner in which we sometimes manifest this paradigm-revealing substance. Is it we who are choosing the manifestation, or the DMT? Where do these creatures come from? Why do we see them? To what good effect can we put these visions? These are a few of the questions that I needed to answer for myself during the 40 years in which I made and used DMT. From the first time I made it and took it, I knew I had discovered something so deep, so magnificent, so profound, that it blew away everything I had ever experienced before. Period.

I have taken DMT thousands of times. I never had two trips that were the same. Mostly I had good trips—only a few were unpleasant. But I figured out why; it was always a mistake in preparation, set, or setting. I began to investigate and plan how to best use this divine sacrament to find my place in the Grand Design. The best trips always seemed to come when I was in the best place. If I had used...

It took some time to read this article, but it was worth going through all paragraphs. Very interesting and straight talk. Thanks for posting.

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If I had used Cannabis, alcohol, or amphetamine in the day preceding a DMT journey, I usually had the more unpleasant type of trip. Once after an intramuscular injection of 60 mg of DMT, following a bit of Cannabis use, overeating junk food, and an inappropriate setting, I had a stressful period building up to the trip’s peak.

It put me right into a field of pretty cartoon flowers, with little faces waving their petals and leaves in unison, singing together, “You know that this is not the way to use DMT.” I looked up and saw the monolith from 2001 hovering above me, massive and dark; then instantly it came crashing down on me again and again, beating me down and spasming my whole body with cramps. I crawled to the toilet to puke huge amounts of vomit. The toilet bowl was crawling with mysterious interlocking hieroglyphs that seemed to be the keys to the universe. This was a clear message to enter into the DMT space with my system clean and no hectic social scene going on around me.

Another time I had been traveling in México, and wound up on a deserted beach in Zihuatanejo, leaning against a huge rock. I was tired, and I had just had a fight with my wife. I went for a walk and sat down against this rock at the end of the beach to smoke some DMT. It was a dark night, and a distant street light cast a wan light over the sand, as soft sounds of the jungle surrounded me. I lit up my DMT pipe and took 3 or 4 tokes. Suddenly, I shot upwards and was at an upscale cocktail party. The colors were rich and enchantingly beautiful. The men were very big and handsome, dressed in well-cut suits. The women were gorgeous in gowns and cocktail dresses. They were gathered in groups of 4 or 5, discussing very arcane, deep, and interesting topics. I couldn’t quite hear and my head barely reached up to their shoulders. I felt like a juvenile trying to crash an adult party. I was standing on my tip-toes, looking into one of these groups, trying to hear, when an intelligent-looking large fellow in a light grey suit turned to look at me. He regarded me with a benign expression of friendly sympathy and said, “You know you are too tired to be here.” With a wave of his hand, he threw a lightning bolt at my feet. There was a flash of light, an explosion under me, and I was falling into a black void at whose depth I settled slowly, finding myself seated cross-legged on the beach with the pipe in my hands. I was clear. I was completely unintoxicated, as though I had not smoked any DMT. I understood one of the many lessons that these guardians were to teach me over the years about the proper and most enlightened way to use the sacrament. Who are these creatures? Where do they come from? I don’t know, but I have my ideas.

What is most important is that I recognize that I have touched a really beautiful place, the source of all creation and healing, and that the projections I see are beneficent beings spun out of consciousness—as everything is, but just on a higher plane of realization. On this plane, there is no “other,” no subjective/objective—no duality at all; just convenient structures for teaching ourselves those sacred lessons that we have known, but forgotten. These guardians are a reminder of this knowledge, whose pattern is that of which we are also composed.

Perhaps you are finding this a little hard to follow, but at the same time it seems like common sense? I feel the same way. But some things just have to remain mysteries—we cannot analyze and dissect everything. At some point we have to put it back together. Humpty-Dumpty wants to be whole again. When we constantly pull everything apart trying to see how it works, we may end up with only an understanding of how to destroy something. We can have piles of spokes, rims and axles, but the beauty only happens when we see the wheel rolling. The guardians are our inner Gods, teaching us from the well-springs of unity. That’s my conclusion anyway. I have learned to listen to them and come to them clean and pure, and let the nectar of their approval bless my soul. This is what I have found with DMT through the experiences of myself and those of fellow psychonauts, in environments of support and love. The environment makes a big difference, as it does with all psychedelics.

DMT is the weaver. Whatever you give DMT, it weaves this into patterns. If you are a doctor sitting in a hospital room filled with people watching a “subject” and injecting said subject with DMT while people are acting out their roles of nurse, doctor, researcher, government representative, etc., and your subjects have little alien robots, insects, reptiles or what have you, crawling all over them, probing and examining, is this really so strange? You are just seeing a DMT woven projection of the very environment you have created. What would happen if you changed the environment?

Suppose now, that instead of a hospital room with beepers and weird electromagnetic currents in the subliminal environment and medical personnel with odd motivations and curiosities, you were in a beautiful wooden house in the woods with a stream outside making gurgling and tinkling sounds. Inside there are friends in casual clothing—soft, tastefully-colored robes. Men and women dressed for a celebration, seated on velvet cushions on oriental carpets with candles and flowers, and beautiful music. Flowers in vases, mandalas, and wondrous paintings on the walls, aesthetically lit by natural and traditional lights, not fluorescents. A fire glowing in the hearth, multicolored fish swimming in an aquarium. Before you is a teacher who has decades of personal DMT experiences who is serving as your travel facilitator. You’ve prepared for days with yoga, meditation, and pure food. What kinds of trips do you think happen in this type of environment?

Instead of reptiles, aliens, and robot doctors, you have Gods, magicians, celestial and magical beings—intimating, winking, indicating, and even speaking to your inner being with lessons of love, healing, inspiration, and creation. You enter into the temple of the source of creation. Everything is ensconced with magical, crystalline beauty. Your heart and mind fuse in loving understanding that heals the rifts in your heart. Tears of gratitude stream down your face, joy lights in your being. Everyone around you understands your bliss— you don’t need a support group of fellow “subjects,” so that you won’t think that you are losing your mind. Perhaps this is the difference between unauthorized research and “authorized” research. What I wonder about is, what authority has the nerve to dictate to God? But before I get lost in a rant…

There is no danger of descending into some communal psychosis. We are already there! (Obviously, in case you hadn’t noticed.)

Below the surface levels of subliminal advertising and purposeful disinformation, we can move toward truth. Below the level of our contradictory morals and values, and the walled labyrinths in our minds that keep them from explosive collision, we can move deeper towards the truth. Below our myths, below our method of splintered and fragmented communication called language, we can move still deeper towards truth. Below our culture and the conditioning embedded in our minds and egos, we can move deeper toward truth. Passing beyond all this, we penetrate the limits of perception and ride on the electric-energy-impulse highways at the center of our hard-wired biological construction; moving further towards truth, until we move past even this, and find ourselves joining ourselves in the cosmic hard-drive.

We have arrived at truth, and now we find truth is a mystery—a play of joy, creation, and energy. This is Source. This is the mystic touchstone that heals and renews. This is the beginning again. This is entheogenic.

Once I was chatting with Jonathan Ott when I had dropped in on an Entheobotany conference at Palenque. At the time I had been underground for about 30 years, and a fugitive for about 20. No one knew who I was. We were discussing sacraments, and I used the word “psychedelic.” Jonathan responded, “We prefer to use the word entheogen.” I replied, “When it is used sacramentally, then it is an entheogen. Until then, it is just a psychedelic, or perhaps only just a drug.”

Intention is everything. The more care and love and consciousness that you put into your preparation, the better the results, of course. But, if you knew completely what to do before the experience, you might not even need the experience. So this is an adventure into the unknown, an experiment or series of explorations in which there is a great deal of trial and error. We are moving into our own unique inner terrain, and it is difficult to find a set of instructions that will fit everyone perfectly. This is your uniqueness, your inner journey, your own quest for truth or answers that you have hidden away inside you. Everyone has those answers inside, but only those truly seeking self realization will have the courage to go beyond the veils to the center. Having made this journey many times, and mostly failing and wasting a lot of time, I would like to relate what I have found in the hope that this will help others to access the cosmic hard-drive and find some answers.

We live in a maze of conditioned responses and conflicting directives, our programmed biocomputer functions to produce a distracting nonstop wash of unconscious noise. Waves of voices, fears, thoughts, plans, ambitions, etc., wash over us constantly. We follow these directives of our mind like robots. We don’t think; we are thought by our minds. We are in a swamp of impulses and thoughts that never let us rest, and prevent self-realization (whatever that is).

This quest then, is about re-emerging from the swamp of forgetfulness and distraction in which we live, and being reborn in consciousness. Here there are no landmarks, no limits, no boundaries, no road signs. We progress in this nether landscape, this cosmic interiority, by accessing intuition, by observing carefully all that happens, and by following penetrating vision. And above all, by following the heart. Intently, we listen for the single true voice that sings out from a unified heart and mind, beyond the infernal chorus of conditioned commands and conflicting directives. Let me backtrack a bit now.

Having set up one’s space as aesthetically as possible (eliminating the possibility of any interruptions), one readies one’s self for a DMT trip. Having followed the previous indications of peaceful set and setting, sensible diet, and totally supportive companions, one sits down and ingests the DMT. Here is what I have found: DMT can be used to find answers.

You can enter into the trip with a strong desire to find an answer to something that is bothering you, something you need to know, either in your practical life or to find a direction or vision to carry you forward on your spiritual quest. You can draw answers from the Akashic record in this DMT space. However, there are some problems and difficulties that have to be overcome. Let us consider some of these.

The contradictory programming and natural impulses that course through us are not just ideas. We are a unity, and the body, the heart, and the mind are all together on the most basic level. If there are any contradictions in you, it will manifest physically, emotionally, and mentally. You will be a little sick from this. Most disease is psychosomatic. This means that faulty programming manifests itself in sickness. This can happen by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or by eating incorrectly, or being unmotivated to properly exercise and care for your body. This can cause an effect on your immune system (which normally protects you from invasion of foreign organisms).

DMT is a healer. It is a curing drug. DMT purifies your systems by quickly eliminating the toxins that have built up from unconscious living. If your gut is filled with junk food, you may spend your trip vomiting. DMT will clean you out. If you are coming down from too much smoking, drinking, eating, drugs, etc., you may have to go through some unpleasantness, as DMT cleans your house with awesome efficiency. Even having mental conflicts and worries will produce toxins that need to be cleaned out. This can take some time, and since DMT is of fairly short duration, you may be down by the time this is over. So DMT can be used for curing and it can be used for getting answers. If you want the big answers, then you do not want to waste your DMT trips on junk food habits or whatever negative conditioning you want to escape from. I have found that pretreatment with LSD and subsequent ingestion of DMT works very well in this regard and produces an impressive synergistic effect. For example, 200 ug of LSD followed by 60 mg DMT HCl or 80 mg DMT fumarate IM in the tenth hour works very well. Or simply smoke the DMT base until you disappear. No Cannabis.

All of the psychedelics are curing and purifying agents. What happens with this combination is that by the time you reach the tenth hour of an LSD trip, most of the pushing through the envelope and inner cleansing has happened. LSD is not as acutely dramatic as DMT is. It lasts so long though, that the inner cleansing can happen. When this stage is reached, then you can approach the DMT experience more efficiently and access deeper levels of understanding and realization without wasting valuable DMT clock time on gross cleanouts. IM injection need not be the only route; smoking the DMT can work quite well also. Three or four good tokes will usually do the trick. If you do it in the eighth or tenth hour of your acid trip, you can move right into the DMT levels as I have experienced them. My experience has shown me three distinct levels. The first level is the region of incredible design. Multi-colored grids flexing and slowly twisting, carnivals of colorful patterns, and little people peering through fences; hieroglyphs of arcane and hauntingly familiar aspects, but not quite decipherable. Floating spheres of lambent iridescence descending through diaphanous veils of woven infinity and passing away leaving a poignant feeling of missing, of not quite understanding, and aching to find the meaning behind it all. Although something is definitely indicating a deeper level, this region is incredibly beautiful and worth the trip just for this.

For a variety of reasons, probably youth, psychological readiness, and spiritual naïveté, I stayed on the level described above for hundreds of trips. Part of it was probably that there was no one who could teach me how to use this sacrament or had any idea how deep you could go with it. I had to blaze my own trails through my jungles of ignorance, conflict, and confusion. There was much I was not ready to accept, especially about myself. So I had to let DMT seduce me along the path of the vision quest, through beauty and mystery, until my rigid psychological structures and boundaries had relaxed enough and I had gathered enough courage to look beyond the veils of these incredible designs.

At some point I had gotten sated with all of these beautiful patterns and designs, and I understood that there was a much deeper level of knowledge that I could access. I had also gathered my courage and was ready to look at myself in a deeper way and see how I was the only obstacle in my path. I became aware that self-realization meant going deeper, and all I had to do was give up this exquisite layer of beauty. I began to realize that these beautiful patterns and designs were disguises that protected my limited mind from seeing a deeper reality that would be disturbing until I had reached a stage of readiness. Of course, this understanding cued the arrival of that stage of readiness. I began to realize that all the designs were symbols of psychological states that were in this form because I didn’t want to see that truth about myself yet.

Inside I said, “Let all these pretty baubles be gone, and let me see beyond,” and immediately the beyond opened as the pretty designs disappeared. Suddenly, I was walking up a steep road carved into the side of a sheer, jagged wall of grey rock. On my right was the mountain, on my left a cliff that dropped straight down into a huge canyon whose other side was a range of these jagged mountains. I was hiking up this steep mountain to a higher place of knowledge. I had penetrated the veil of superficial distractions of the lower mind, and I was approaching the region of the higher mind—a land of magic and realization. As I trudged along this road I saw a gate—a huge ornate rusty portcullis beside which stood a small but very nasty looking beast with piercing red eyes, no neck, large fangs, and an obviously very bad temper. This demon or demigod was without doubt the guardian to the gate of higher knowledge. Humbly, I begged permission, “May I please pass?” The guardian choked and snarled, then fixing me with a penetrating stare, nodded unpleasantly while he hauled laboriously on a chain that slowly lifted the gate. As I passed through, everything faded away and I was back sitting with the pipe in my hand. I was totally disappointed that I had gotten through the gate but had not made it to the magic land just beyond.

In my ignorance I did not realize that I had passed from level one to level two, and the gatekeeper was my initiation. This was the first of many encounters with various teachers who were all symbolic representations of an imminent state of realization of a higher order of understanding and interpretation.

Another time, I smoked and found myself in a beautiful wood-panelled and crystal-windowed room with easy chairs and couches all around. Next to me was an incredibly beautiful white-haired old woman crocheting doilies. The designs on the doilies were all symbols of the world’s religions. I looked at her and said (without speaking), “Where is this place? What are we doing here?” It seemed like a very beautiful waiting room. She peered at me over her spectacles with her piercing blue eyes, and smiled at me kindly, patiently, while she indicated with a flicker. Suddenly it dawned on me—I was in God’s waiting room! All I had to do was wait to be called, and I could step through the door.

The beings and creatures I’ve seen have been curious and various, but they have never looked like anyone I’ve ever seen, nor any mythical creature from history. Nor did I ever feel that these creatures were extra-terrestrial. Although they were totally original and amazing, never did I feel that they were strangers. I recognized them immediately. They had a bizarre but faintly and curiously familiar feeling to them. I think that this is significant, in that the lesson is one of personal responsibility. These are our creatures created by the infinitely capable creative force to teach us about ourselves. They are mirrors that help us to do the difficult job of looking at ourselves, and remembering who we are. In the overworld and underworld of shamanic journeying to the beat of the shaman’s horse—the drum—we also experience passageways, guardians, and guides. The denizens of these netherworlds, although symbolic, do not resemble those of the DMT worlds—they differ. This mind we wear has infinite creative abilities.

Getting back to the ascent from level one DMT experiences to level two for a moment, I remember coming down from that trip thinking, “Boy, that was really a bit disappointing. Here I’ve found the gate, and been grudgingly passed through by some terrifyingly ferocious curmudgeon who I had best pass by humbly with folded hands because I inherently knew he could slap me down with a flick of a finger, and then I am on this same road and everything fades. DMT is too short— that’s the problem with it.” And so on, my mind went. That’s the way the mind is; it is always thinking more is better. So why didn’t I arrive at the promised land, and have all of my questions answered? The point I was missing was that I had gone through that gate. I had moved from a series of colorful hallucinations to a completely different place—going up to a higher place—and I had found the gate. And by an act of sincere humility, I had been permitted to go past this gate to a new level of consciousness, to which I had not had access before. This was a great thing, but the mind is such that it is always rushing hither and yonder, looking for a new distraction out there, that it misses the simple profundity that comes from looking inward. I had passed through the gate. Not only had I passed through the gate, I had found the gate in the first place! Such simplicity. The road was the same rocky road through a dangerous mountain, defiled on either side of the gate, so what was so great? This precious entry into a place so fascinating was the entry into the inner world of spiritual messengers, the land of teachers. And I had figured out how to get there, all by myself. At the time I didn’t realize that. I just thought, “Here I am on that same rough piece of road.” It was the same road, but my attitude and intention had almost totally undergone some subtle and unconscious change (underneath that trite chattering mind that never shuts the fuck up), and on that road I had my first touch of the whisper of creation that underlies all things. This is to me the point about DMT. It can be a doorway to the Divine.

Used with the intention of contacting our inner creativity, we meet our higher selves. The higher the intention, the more devout the sincere supplication will be. While crying for a vision, the higher will be that aspect of self we meet. Properly prepared, we enter into a fluid multi-dimensional field of interpenetrating realities, which are all things to all people. On this path, when we are ready, we meet the Gods that live deep within all of us. In that meeting we experience intense recognition of the oneness of all things. We receive true and simple instructions. We experience such poignant realizations that we are swept away by the exquisite beauty and truth of this inner knowing, which is utterly undeniable.

Dimethyltryptamine is unique and extremely powerful. If I were asked what its most important attribute was, I would have to say that it is the doorway to the intensely personal temple of our own sacredness. It opens the doorway to the vastness of the soul; this is at once our own personal soul, and its intrinsic connection to the universal soul. When the underlying unity of this fictional duality is seen and felt, one experiences a completeness and interconnection with all things. This experience, when we attain it, is extremely beautiful and good. It is a song that rings and reverberates through the lens of God. Now we know why we were born; to have this intense experience of the sacred, the joyous, the beauty, and the blessing of just being alive in the arms of God.

So there it is. And it is there. The mystery. Beyond the known, beyond logic, there is the experience. Each one is a unique journey. There are way-markers, however, and signposts at every turn. And if we are but intelligent enough, we understand that the language of mystery is written on water. Fleetingly, we glimpse the ordinary, and in that momentary flash—if we are quick enough—we see the doorway. When we see it, we must knock. Remember though, that there are no guarantees for the explorer; only the frontiers of consciousness and the blazing of new trails.

-Nick Sand

Yeah, his couple articles on DMT are among my favorite. His thoughts on usage have always jived with how I feel about it. Not to say that there's some specific 'way' to use DMT, though his writings on it are some of the best imo.

His couple reads should be a pre-requisite for any psychonaut wanting to delve into DMT.