I am not a full member and have limited posting ability, so I will ask this question here:

Preface:

Many things in life are rather obvious whereas others you have to make a decision based on a limited amount of data (which is the majority of the time). I am currently writing a book that offers a simple, logical process for evaluating a limited amount of data in order to discover the truth. Obviously spirituality, god and the concept of an afterlife are some of those things in life where we have extremely limited data. Based on the experiences claimed by many users, DMT has the potential to offer us more information in this regard. ...But in what way?

I have never experimented with DMT, but I have heard many stories regarding the abstract spiritual effects of DMT. I have extensive experience with LSD, mushrooms and other psychotropics and have experienced many extremely intense internal moments. Many of the people experimenting with DMT speak of similar spiritual breakthroughs, "Waahoo Moments" and the "opening of doors" afterward which I can relate to based on my experiences with LSD.

My question regarding DMT is in regard to this video clip: https://youtu.be/i2nbnJzervs

At the 11:42 point in the video, there are three subjects (in order) who allude to the idea that they either "felt like they were back home" or "had a sense of deja voo" or "felt like they had been here before" when referencing their moment of breakthrough.

While at the "peak time" during an LSD experience (where you totally lose your sense of physical being) the sense of "spirituality" is overwhelming! In my youth I considered this tantamount to a first-hand encounter with god. As I got older (and smarter), I began to question if this was an actual spiritual experience... or just a disruptive chemical effect on my brain that caused dramatic perceptual distortions and an altered consciousness leading me to believe this was a "spiritual awakening."

But when these people say they "feel like they have been here before" or they "felt like they were back home" ...this brings up a few possibilities:

(1) They have tapped into the nature of what we call an "eternal spirit." This is easily recognizable to them, because it IS really them existing in their most basic spiritual form (without their body). This would be similar to secretly unwrapping a birthday present before your birthday and then re-wrapping it so that you can open it on your birthday. When your birthday finally comes, you already know what the present is, it is very familiar to you and no longer a surprise. In other words, their "present" is their soul and the "wrapping paper" is their body. They've sneaked a peak inside the package... which is their soul.

(2) It is merely a chemical process that is altering their perception in a way that their brain cannot adequately process. Since they are feeling a exponentially heightened sense of joy from an overload of DMT (similar to what the pineal gland would produce during death) then they are mistakenly connecting this sense of joy along with the abstract visuals and reaching a determination that this must be a gateway to the afterlife. They think that they are "back home" because it is something their body naturally produces and is designed to produce this feeling during death. They are confusing the function of their own body's natural response to death as being "home" ...which may all be by design once we die to placate us?

(3) (Another explanation that maybe you can provide?)

Summary:

Even though the effects seem to be overwhelmingly spiritual, couldn't this just be our body's way of protecting us during death? The existence of an afterlife has been debated since the beginning of mankind. On one hand we have a universe that is seemingly self-existing with no need for god to be factored in. At the same time, we are fully aware of our own existence and the idea that we will one day "cease to exist" after a lifetime of learning and experiences seems maliciously cruel and in many ways illogical.

Could it be that our bodies produce this DMT overload upon death as an evolutionary protocol to compensate for the fact that we know we will no longer exist? This is a non-god universe and Evolution is merely orchestrating a "spirit like" effect during our last moments of life... and since there is no time after death, we stay in this chemically-manufactured moment forever even though we no longer exist?

Could our "souls" be merely the result of a chemical reaction secreted by the brain in order to give us the illusion of an eternal spirit when really we are no longer anything at all? Could it be that our last moment of existence is "frozen in time" for us (like when your computer screen locks up) and this is what we hold onto for eternity - even though in actuality it less than a second of time?

-Birdman

Hi BirdmanDMT.
My theory in regard to death (and i have read other posts here alluding to it) is similar to what you have written in that at the point of death the brain shuts down and with it our concepts of self and time, it is the moment before complete awareness shuts down and that moment has no end . That would give rise to some kind of eternal consciousness if you like.

I cannot see any evolutionary reason for DMT being released at death. Isn't evolution to do with natural selection? If you are in the process of dying arn't you being naturally deselected?

Also, in relation to dmt world being like home, when i take it after a break a familiarity
comes back to me, but i would never call it like being home. It just feels completely weird
and alien. I like it there but i am not sure that staying there for eternity really appeals to me.

Thank you for your input!



The problem with my "locked computer screen" version of death is that people on DMT are reporting long periods of complex experiences along with personal interaction with "entities" or objects that they encounter. It would be difficult for me to reconcile that our brain secreting a substance that simulates an "eternal afterlife" would somehow be able to also provide ongoing interactivity after the brain ceases to function.

If there was no consciousness or existence after death, then I would think the pineal gland's dumping DMT during death as leaving the person with a single 'eternal feeling" and not a continuation of ongoing experiences.

For example: Consider your life as a high definition digital video. Take a scene in your life where you experienced unbelievable joy. If you could somehow slice out a single frame of that intense moment and simply exist in that 1/32 of a second for all eternity, that would be what I would consider a "simulated afterlife" and something that makes sense after the brain ceases to function.

However, if the release of DMT is a natural segue into an eternal consciousness to where there are many new experiences, then this would indicate life goes on after death (and not just represent a frozen moment of joy).



Evolution is the mechanics of life. Your sense of sight, smell, taste, etc. are all a byproducts of evolution. If they are not, then what is responsible? If we credit evolution for the existence of life, then its dominion would also include our consciousness and our ability to reason and think logically. Again, if evolution does not facilitate these as well, then what else does?

Evolution facilitates the mechanics of "pain" as to let an organism know that it shouldn't be doing whatever it is currently doing. It also facilitates "pleasure" when the organism is doing something beneficial. This is why sex is "pleasurable." ...It helps to propagate the species.

If this is indeed the case, then evolution might also facilitate a "compensation mechanism" for our ability to envision our own non-existence (which is a byproduct of evolution) and provide for us a simulated afterlife. Evolution might facilitate our deeply held sense of "purpose and meaning" within us as a way to keep us alive? Evolution might also use a "simulated afterlife" to compensate for the negative side effects of our being able to contemplate our ceasing to exist?




I was thinking these "felt like I was home" comments were not related to just taking the drug multiple times and developing a "familiarity" with the drug's experience. I was thinking this was expressing an inherent internal knowledge of the experience that had been with them all along. - Thus the "Deja voo" comment.

I was thinking someone who used DMT for the very first time might equally claim, "I felt like I was back home" because they have an internal awareness (or familiarity) of the experience embedded within them.

...Am I wormg?

-Birdman

I understand how evolution can facilitate purpose/meaning and how the concept of an afterlife could be beneficial in that respect. I think that it is similar to thinking that we have freewill in that it helps to avert possible existential crises that may come about
from the development of self awareness. But as far as the dmt thing at death goes how is it passed on in an evolutionary way? If it is something that happens at the point of death how does it favour one person over another that may not have a flood dose when dying? When they are dead how are they able to pass that particular trait over to the next generation? How can it compensate when one is dead?

Also i cannot see how something that happens at the point of death can help to propagate a species. The only way i can see this working is if someone who is more likely to have a dmt transition stage at death has it as a by product from some other evolutionary beneficial trait.



It is difficult to say. There are many people that report that they feel back at home. It's just that i am not one of them. Take the plunge and decide for yourself.

I would comment that in my experience, pleasant mental states are "selfish". Even such 'pedestrian' substances as adderall, marijuana, or alcohol can shift you to a more positive mental state and cause you to think "this is what life is for", "this is the key, this is what I've been looking for all along" or "finally, I'm back home", "I can't believe I've forgotten this flavor of existence". Mental states even come with their own associated memories. For whatever mental state you're in now, you'll be more prone to experience memories acquired during similar states and less so during different states and some memories are effectively inaccessible seemingly because your mind never happens upon cues that prompt them.

Speculating on the psycho-evolutionary utility of entheogenic peak ecsatasis is fascinating. What is interesting is that the capacity for having the "mystic" experience is "hard wired" into the species. A catalyst, often psychedelics, triggers a latent experience.

For clarity, it is useful to recognize that the extended, archetypal journey will be bypassed using extremely rapid ROA ie, vaped/smoked/iv/im, DMT extract OR smoked Salvia extract enhanced leaf. With this approach, the transpersonal realm is often accessed with such immediacy, the journey like nature of the experience is truncated.

When the enteral(oral) route is chosen(LSD, mushrooms, aya/anahuasca, cacti...). The archetypal, mytho-religious journey unfolds. As is typically denoted in art, myth, and religious lore, the initiate travels from EGOIC to TRANSCENDENT mental reference frames, and back. Often, even on a person's INITIAL experience, the sensibility that one is, "going home", "remembering", "returning to" the place they came from or have always been, is DEEPLY palpable!

There is truth in the ubiquity of this mystic experience, often psychedelically catalyzed. There is truth in the reality that this experiencing is an ancient aspect, intentionally sought, of the human endeavor across cultures. Is there TRUTH in the "revelations" and "insight" so gained?? Does the intense mystic state, with its depersonalization, ego-dissolution, unitary merging with the Source, reintegration and journey back to the egoic, describe some FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH??

Birdman, artists, as youself, give us beautiful snapshots of varoius aspects of the journey. Please share more! The dgree of TRUTH that an individual assigns to this archetype is intensely personal. I find deep wisdom in it.

Peace

There's the theory that feedback loops play an important role in how the brain processes information, and that psychedelic substances interact with the brainmechanisms that regulate these feedback loops so that the processes that would normally inhibit this looping, are being deactivated.

If that theory is true, then the feelings of familiarity are not that hard to explain.

After my first, self-transformational initiation with 5meoDMT, the first words from my mouth were in elation and gratitude at finally "being home".

What that meant for me is that my place and position were identified and solidified. I knew from a experiential perspective, that is, not as an article of faith, that although "me" is insignificant, that "I" play an intrinsic part in the nature of being. This is tantamount to finding homme, as never before did I have any degree of comfort in my own skin.

I had heretofore always and only been a burden to escape. Now, even in the years after that experience in which I rolled my sleeping bag out on the sidewalk night after night to sleep,house-less, I was nonetheless at home.

Still suffering and in severe pain for many years, but home, and free
. It just took me a long time to find my way into a brick box. But even if the great cascadia subduction zone displacement occurs tonight and flattens it and I'm back outside, I'm always home.

Experientially, thought looping during a strong psychedelic trip can be intense, frightful and seemingly endless. Intriguingly, entire lifetimes may be apperceived, over and over again! This looping may indeed be materially(physically) related to neuro-anatomic architecture. Metaphysically, it seems associated with the, near peak aspect of the archetypal journey, where the ego is actively depersonalizing, not yet dissoluted, and vacillates rapidly, repetitively betwixt EGOIC and TRANSCENDENT mind frames.

The, "deja vu" phenom is typically felt earlier in the trip as the mundane nature of consensus consciousness state looses it's hold and one slips into the mystic reference frame. This phase reveals the remembered, quickly forgotten, "real" nature of reality which is non-linear, atemporal and aspatial. The strong sensibility is that reality is an ever recreated, moment to moment matrix in which all experiencing unfolds and is embedded, here and now. Past and future meld, space compactifies, time and space become unified. The "block universe" is revealed, whence we came and whence we'll return...Pachamama. The REMEMBERING is had!

Peace