"any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C Clarke

A deep statement with a lot of meaning.
The word technology could be substituted with science, knowledge, or understanding. All leading to the same impact. Ignorance has often constructed wild, unsubstantiated theories throughout history to cope with the reality of reality. Cuz reality is heavy and needs explanation to sate the burning curiosity that has defined us as a species.

While I have no doubt we are quite naive in the realm of grasping the true nature of things, I am dubious of the alleged 'mystical' quality of DMT as a key to understanding the actual, perceivable, non descartes, non-subjective-imaginary accretion, universe.

More likely than a divine guiding hand reaching out of the abyssal spiral, it is a neurological process that we have yet to understand. Of course it drastically alters conscious perception, immensely so in fact, and many have achieved a diverse spectra of enlightenment from it, but that does not entail anything tangible. Although, its wonderful to attain inner peace, and creativity and innovation can easily sprout from a introspective psychedelic trip into the mind.

And rather than ride off the brain as a black box of quantifiablely impossible interactions, its obvious we just haven't yet developed the technique or hypothesis regarding DMT's neurological implications.

while I have not delved extensively into DMT's realm (imbibed less than 10 times but I've encountered entities and passed through the seemingly endlessly complex spirals)- yet I highly doubt those 'magical' visions actually have anything to do with reality-

IMO DMT is a riddle in a currently unknown language.
not magic..

anyway, sry for the long post...

I understand this materialist perspective. I wrestle with this constantly in talking with my friends and even in my own mind. Things that could take it out of just being JUST in the head if they are true are. (I don't know first hand haven't experience these)

-Sharing the Same visions with friends or in group environments. (eyes open and shut)
-Shamans being able to diagnose your ailments by seeing your energy patterns differ in certain area when they are on Ayahausca
-Accessing Past lives (this would be near impossible to prove, unless you got specific incite you could go verify)
-Shamans being guided to use plants/animals for specific healing properties by The Vine of the Soul (aya). (A pure materialist would say this is from trail and error over the years)


There could be more, but these above topics tend to surface in experience reports and reports from Shamanic Ayahausca sessions. This is exactly why more research needs to be done on this on a grand scale.

DMT at its different intensities may as well be different drugs because the effects are so insanely different at mild sub-breakthrough, deep sub-breakthrough, mild breakthrough, deep breakthrough, and so on...It sounds like you haven't really given it much of a chance before jumping to conclusions. It would be like checking out Earth for two days and thinking you've got it all figured out.

The way I see it is that we experience this "present" world through our minds, right? We depend on our brain chemistry to keep working in order to keep a consistent reality. Well if DMT really does bring you to a "higher dimension" or a place that is "more real" than reality. Then we would need a brain to experience it, because we are human. Our experience is dependent on some physical aspect.

Very true that there are many layers of experience .

Lately my experiences feel as though I,m not travelling at all.
It's more like a wider frequency range of perception is opened up. Perhaps Hyperspace is actually very close all the time. It triggers an inate ability already within us to percieve a wider spectrum of reality.

I do not deny mystical possibilities yet I also believe there are tangeble
Explanations yet to be discovered.
It is not at all random in its effects.

The big question is will we be ready for the answers when they eventually come.

It's quite possible that inner space is as vast and potentially infinite as our outer universe. We just aren't advanced enough to understand it yet.

No doubt a truly fascinating substance, and I really wish it was more open and available for hard research (maybe its enlightening characteristics are the root of its negative color in the short wavelength of light with which the law casts its superior gaze..like the standard power tool, better to be reliable and predictable in the modalities of action in society i suppose...)

and I would love to do a thesis on its metabolic and biochemical implications.

but its this reoccurring dichotomy of real and unreal, materialism and spiritualism, determinism and rationalism, matter and energy, that often clouds our understanding.

perhaps its like Fritjof Capra postulated, that there is a oneness( singularity..?) within all things that gets mistaken with infinity, and that perhaps gen relativity/cosmology and quantum physics are looking at the same picture but dont yet realize it.

maybe magic is reality and reality is magic. perhaps its all merely semantics, which is one of the beautiful aspects of DMT= to take away the words, and leave only the experience.

I think there's probably a lot of truth in this post, Phat Platypus. Sometimes I've thought too that we get too much caught up in the semantics of everything instead of concentrating on just living experientially in the moment. Processing reality outside of our dominant language centers just isn't something we (especially as Westerners) are accustomed to and have difficulty processing in a visual, emotional, symbolic, holistic manner.

If DMT isn't magic then I don't know what is.

^ this.

The DMT experience (and also particularly the salvia experience, as far as I can tell) seems to happen in a level where you meet the ultimate proto-language. Concepts and ideas are infused, perceived in a primordial stage where definitions and semantics are too narrow to be fitted. Specially if we use languages that have been developed in cultural frames that have long diverged from that primordial understanding of reality.

More than to language, I think the enthoegenic experience is akin to art. And art is more akin to magic than language will ever be.

Must it be magic vs reality?

IMO, magic is in between the real and the non-real, which is a category rarely recognized these days... it is the non-real that still affects the real.

This is a purely semantical argument. Magic is a label for that which is beyond words or explanation. Once we understand it, it is no longer magic.