excerpts from book _DMT: The Spirit Molecule_ by Rick Strassman, M.D.

• interview on Laura Lee - _Rick Strassman - _Pineal Gland Chemistry & Mystical Experience_ MP3 (18k) (truncated 96:58)
• ambient track _The Spirit Molecule_ MP3 (160k) by Anomalous Disturbances off of _The Spirit Molecule_ promoCD (2002)

Karl: There were spirals of what looked like DNA, red and green.

Philip: The visuals were dropping back into tubes, like protozoa, like the inside of a cell, seeing the DNA twirling and spiraling.  They looked gelatinlike, like tubes, inside which were cellular activiites.  It was like a microscropic view of them.

Cleo: There was a spiral DNA-type thing made out of incredibly bright cubes. I "felt" the boxes at the same time that my consciousness shifted.

Sara: I felt the DMT release my soul's energy and push it through the DNA.  It's what happened when I lost my body.  There were spirals that reminded me of things I've seen at Chaco Canyon.  Maybe that was DNA.  Maybe the ancients knew that.  The DNA is backed into the universe like space travel.  One needs to travel without one's body.  It's ridiculous to think about space travel in little ships.

Vladan: There were visuals at the peak, soft and geometric.  They were 3-D circles and cones with shading.  They moved a lot.  It was almost like looking at an alphabet, but it wasn't English.  It was like a fantasy alphabet, a cross between runes and Russian or Arabic writing.  It felt like there was some information in it, like it was data.  It wasn't just random.  Like seeing panels with a cut-out shape, rounded edges, hieroglyphics of some sort.  They weren't painted on but more cut out, through which I saw the colors.

Heather: There was a woman speaking Spanish all the time throughout the trip.  She had quite a unique accent.  Maybe it wasn't Spanish, but it sounded like it.  At one point she said, "Regular."  She threw a white blanket over the scene and then pulled it back repeatedly.  It was really weird.  There were numbers.  It was like numerology and language.  There were all these colors and then there were all these numbers, Roman numerals.  The numbers became words.  Where do words come from? The Woman would cover them with her blanket - the words and the numbers.

It started out typically as DMT but then I went past it, beyond where I've been on DMT.  There is that ringing sound as you're getting up there, and then I went to the language or number thing.  It was totally inexplicable.  Maybe it was trying to teach me something.  The first number I saw was a 2 and I looked around and there were numbers all around.  They were separate in their little boxes, and then the boxes would melt and the numbers would all merge together to make long numbers.

Eli: What's interesting is that I began experiencing sets of hallucinations, and then I said to myself, "Ah, this is the Logos."  There's the blue-yellow core of meaning and semantics, basically. [...]  It's like threads of words or DNA or something.  They're all around there, they're everywhere.  After the blue amoebic shapes, there were several pulsating places.  I thought, "There are lots of these." It's a good feeling.  Then it breaks into a ruffled reality.  When I looked around, it seemed like the meaning or symbols were there.  Some kind of core of reality where all meaning is stored.  I burst into its main chamber. [...]  I dont know if it's because of my interest in computers or not, but it seems like it's the raw bits of reality.  It's a lot more than only ones and zeros.  It's a higher level, very potent bits.

I was in a white room, experiencing certain emotions and feelings that gave me an intense feeling of being a co-reality.  LIke a dream I had of bumping into some Hispanic kids with my car, into their car.  They were really mad at me.  I said to them "If you hate me, you hate yourself.  Our cultures are merged, so there's no defending against that." Their culture, our culture, they were co-real, existing simultaneously.  The white room consisted mostly of light and space.  There were cubes stacked with icons on the surfaces, like a Logos of consciousness.  It was light but there was a lot of other information coming in.

Gabe: There were some scenes or forms like in a nursery.  No babies, but there were cribs and different animals, vibrant.  I went to a childhood scene, or feeling.  It was like I was in a stroller, kid images.  It was sort of scary.  I can't describe it.  I would draw it maybe.  It was like being in a room, as a child, with a stroller.  There were cartoonlike people in the room, but they weren't what I wanted to see.

Aaron: There are no doors, there's nothing to go through.  It's either over here - it's dark; or over there - there are images.  You just can't do anything with them.  It was Mayan hieroglyphics.  It was interesting.  The hieroglyphics turned into a room, like I was a child.  There were toys there, like I was a kid.  It was like that. It was cute.

Tyrone: It was a scene of apartments from the future!  Like living quarters, they were gorgeous.  Pink, orange, those kinds of colors, yellow, real bright. [...] The places to sit, do things, the counters, they were molded out of the walls, I've never seen anything like it.  It was really modern looking.  The almost organic nature of the apartment was beautiful.  It wasn't just funcitonal.  There was life in the furniture, like it was molded out of something alive, an animal, a living being.  I felt in awe of the apartments.  An artistic appreciation, like looking at a beautiful painting and getting lost in it, lost in the happiness.  At the end I went past, beyond the apartments.  I entered into a space, a crack in the earth.  It wasn't horizontal, it was vertical.  A crack in space.

Aaron: There was no turning back.  After a moment or two I became aware of something happening to my left.  I saw a psychedelic, Day-Glo-colored space that approximated a room whose walls and floor had no clear separations or edges.  It was throbbing and pulsing electrically.  Rising in front of "me" was a podium-like table.  It seemed that some presence was dealing/serving something to me.  I wanted to know where I was and "sensed" the reply that I had no business there.  The presence was not hostile, just somewhat annoyed and brusque.

Phillip: The relentless scratchy, crackling visuals didn't last long.  Then I was above a strange landscape, like Earth, but very unearthly.  Mountains of some sort.  It was very friendly and inviting.  It was so real I had to open my eyes.  When I did the scene was overlaid on top of the room.  I closed my eyes, and that removed the interference with what I had been seeing.  It was like a super-bright Day-Glo poster, but much more complex.  I was hovering miles above it.  I had the very distinct sense of doing this, not just the visual perception.  There were some telescopes, or microwave dishes, or water-tower things with antennae on them.  I wish I could take you by the hand and show you.  A vast expanse of horizon.  The sun was different, different colors and hues than our sun.

Sean: Oh yeah, there were people and guides.  I was with a Mexican family, on a porch of a house in the desert.  There was a garden scene outside.  There were kids and stuff.  I was playing with the kids.  I was part of the family.  I had a sense of an old man standing behind me or around me someplace.  I wanted to talk with him, but he let me know somehow that it was more important to visit with the young girl.  It was pretty laid-back, benign.  It seemed so natural and complete as it was happening.  It wasn't a dream at all.  I thought, "It seems like a pretty common day," and then I stopped and thought, "No, I'm tripping."  There were some black people, too, sort of pulling at me.  There was a curious feeling of being extracted.  It was a jarring feeling.  I was being called away.

Chapter 13: Contact - Through The Veil 1

Karl: That was real strange.  There were a lot of elves.  They were prankish, ornery, maybe four of them appeared at the side of a stretch of interstate highway I travel regularly.  They commanded the scene, it was their terrain! They were about my height.  They held up placards, showing me these incredibly beautiful, complex, swirling geometric scenes in them.  One of them made it impossible for me to move.  There was no issue of control; they were totally in control.  They wanted me to look! I heard a giggling sound - the elves laughing or talking at high-speed volume, chattering, twittering.

Aaron: First there was a mandala-like series of visuals, fleurs-de-lis-type visions.  Then an insectlike thing got right into my face, hovering over me as the drug was going in.  This thing sucked me out of my head into outer space.  It was clearly outer space, a black sky with millions of stars.  I was in a very large waiting room, or something.  It was very long.  I felt observed by the insect-thing and others like it. Then they lost interest.  I was taken into space and looked at.

• track _Insect Priest_ MP3 (160k) by The Hafler Trio

There is a sinister backdrop, an alien-type, insectoid, not-quite-pleasant side of this, isn't there?  It's not a "We're going go get you motherfucker."  It's more like being possessed.  During the experience there is sense of someone, or something else, there taking control.  It's like you have to defend yourself against them, whoever they are, but they certainly are there.  I'm aware of them and they're aware of me.  It's like they have an agenda.  It's like walking into a different neighborhood.  You're really not quite sure what the culture is.  It's got such a distinct flavor, the reptilian being or beings that are present.

[...]

That's what it's about.  It's the sense of the possibility that's so strange.

Lucas:  There is nothing that can prepare you for this.  There is a sound, a bzzzz.  It started off and got louder and louder and faster and faster.  I was coming on and coming on and then POW!  Ther was a space station below me and to my right.  There were at least two presences, one on either side of me, guiding me to a platform.  I was also aware of many entities inside the space station - automatons, androidlike creatures that looked like a cross between crash dummies and the Empire troops from _Star Wars_ (1977) except that they were living beings, not robots.  They seemed to have checkerboard patterns on parts of their bodies, especially their upper arms.  They were doing some kind of routine technological work and paid no attention to me.  In a state of overwhelmed confusion, I opened my eyes.

Carlos:  There's this whole different world with architecture and landscape.  I saw one or two beings there.  The beings even have gender.  The skin was not flesh-colored.  I communicated with them but there wasn't enough time.  I was so strung out, excited, agitated when I arrived there.  They wanted to try and reduce my anxiety so we could relate.

Gabe: There was an initial sense of panic.  Then the most beautiful colors coalesced into beings.  There were lots of beings.  They were talking to me but they weren't making a sound.  It was more as if they were blessing me, the spirits of life were blessing me.  They were saying that life was good.  At first it felt like I was going through a cave or a tunnelor into space, at a fast rate, definitely.  I felt like a ball hurtling down to wherever it was.

Chris: There was a set of many hands.  They were feeling my eyes and face.  It was a little bit confusing.  There wre more individuals.  They were recognizing and identifying me.  It was more intimate.  At first I thought it was the eyeshades on my face, but it definitely was not!

To get to that space I had to get through some sort of a non-benevolent space. It felt like there were talons and claws there trying to guard it in a way.

Dismemberment is part of the shamanic initiation, isn't it?  I felt a dragonlike presence.  And, there were the same colors - red, golden yellows.

[...]

It was wild.  There were no colors.  There was the usual sound: pleasant, a roar, a sort of an internal hum.  Then there were three beings, three physical forms.  There were rays coming out of their bodies and then back to their bodies.  They were reptilian and humanoid, trying to make me understand, not with words, but with gestures.  They wanted me to look into their bodies.  I saw inside them and understood reproduction, what it's like before birth, the passage into the body.  Once I established what they were communicating, they didn't just fade away.  They stayed there for quite a while.  Their presence was very solid.

I try and program it and I go in with an idea of what to see, but I just can't.  I thought I was developing tolerance, but then, Bang! There were these three guys or three things.

[...]

They were trying to show me as much as possible.  They were communicating with words.  They were like clowns or jokers or jesters or imps.  There were just so many of them doing their funny little thing.  I settled into it.  I was incredibly still and I felt like I was in an incredibly peaceful place.  Then there was a message telling me that I had been given a gift, that this space was mine and I could go there anytime.  I should feel blessed to have form, to live.  It went on forever.  There were blue hands, fluttering things, then thousands of things flew out of these blue hands.  I thought "What a show!"  It was really healing.

It was part of me, not separate.  It was a reassurance that this wouldn't go away, that it was mine, that a connection had been made.  The whole thing was really crucial to my spiritual development.  It's what I tried to do with LSD, a sort of self-initiation.  With LSD, it worked in some ways and didn't in others.

Jeremiah: It was a nursery.  A high-tech nursery with a single Gumby, three feet tall, attending me.  I felt like an infant.  Not a human infant, but an infant relative to the intelligences represented by the Gumby.  It was aware of me, but not particularly concerned.  Sort of a detached concern, like a parent would feel looking into a playpen at his one-year-old lying there.  As I went into it, I heard a sound: hmmm.  Then I heard two or three male voices talking.  I heard one of them say, "He's arrived."

I felt evolution occurring.  These intelligences are looking over us.  There is hope beyond the mess we are making for ourselves.

I couldn't change the experinece at all.  I couldn't have anticipated it or even imagined it.  It was a total surprise!  I tried to open to love but that was silly.  All I could do was observe it.

[...]

That was much more intense than the first major dose.  It's a different world.  Amazing instruments.  Machine-type things.  There was one person operating some of this stuff.  I was in a big room; he was in another part of it.

• hip hop breakbeat instrumental track _Intensely Saturated Phats_ MP3 (192k) by DJ Slip off of _The Machines Will Know Who You Are_ 12"x2 on Kanzleramt #043 (2000)

I feel a little shaky... a little hypersensitive... there are little tremors going through my body.

There was one big machine in the center, with round conduits, almost writhing - not like a snake, more in a technical manner.  The conduits were not open at the end.  They were solid-blue-gray tubes, made of plastic?  The machine felt as if it was rewiring me, reprogramming me.  There was a human, as far as I could tell, standing at some type of console, taking readings or manipulating things.  He was busy, at work, on the job.  I observed some of the results on that machine, maybe from my brain.  It was a little frightening, almost unbearably intense.  It all began with a whining, whirring sound.

[...]

There were four distinct beings looking down on me, like I was on an operating-room table.  I opened my eyes to see if it was you and Josette, but it wasn't.  They had done something and were observing the results.  They are vastly advanced scientifically and technologically.  They were looking just over the traction bar in front of me.  I guess they were saying, "Goodbye.  Don't be a stranger."

[...]

This is real.  It's totally unexpected, quite constant and objective.  One could interpret your looking at my pupils as being observed, and the tubes in my body as the tubes I'm seeing.  But that is a metaphor, and this is not at all a metaphor.  It's an independent, constant reality.

DMT was shown me the reality that there is infinitevariation on reality.  There is the real possibility of adjacent dimensions.  It may not be so simple as that there's alien planets with their own societies.  This is too proximal.  It's not like some kind of drug.  It's more like an experience of a new technology than a drug.  You can choose to attend to this or not.  It will continue to progress without you paying attention.  You return not to where you left off, but to where things have gone since you left.  It's not a hallucination, but an observation.  When I'm there, I'm not intoxicated.  I'm lucid and sober.

Dmitri: The first thing I noticed was a burning in the back of my neck.  Then there was this loud intense hum.  It was like the fan at first, but separate.  It began engulfing me.  I let go into it and then... WHAM!

I felt like I was in an alien laboratory, in a hospital bed like this, but it was over there.  A sort of landing bay, or recovery area.  There were beings.  I was trying to get a handle on what was going on.  I was being carted around.  It didn't look alien, but their sense of purpose was.  It was a three-dimensional space.  I expected cartoonlike creatures, like a commerical for LSD, but this was "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!" It was unlike any other DMT experience I've had.

They had a space ready for me.  They weren't as surprised as I was.  It was incredibly un-psychedelic.  I was able to pay attention to detail.  There was one main creature, and he seemed to be behind it all, overseeing everything.  The others were orderlies, or dis-orderlies.

They activated a sexual circuit, and I was flushed with an amazing orgasmic energy.  A goofy chart popped up like an X-ray in a cartoon, and a yellow illumination indicated that the corresponding system, or series of systems, were fine.  They were checking my instruments, testing things.  When I was coming out, I couldn't help but think "aliens."

I am so disappointed I didn't talk to them. I was confused and in awe.  I knew that they were preparing me for something.  Somehow we had a mission.  They had things to show me.  But they were waiting for me to acquaint myself with the environment and movement and language of this space.

[...]

It was not like any UFO abduction I've heard about.  These beings were friendly.  I had a bond with one of them.  It was about to say something to me or me to it, but we couldn't quite connect.  It was almost a sexual bond, but not sex like intercourse, but a total body communication.  I was filled with feelings of love for them.  Their work definitely had something to do with my presence.  Exactly what remains a mystery.

Ben: It started with a sound.  It was high-pitched like a tightly taut wire.

There were four or five of them.  They were on me fast.  As crazy as this sounds, they looked like saguaro cactus, very Peruvian in color.  They were flexible, fluid, geometrical cacti.  Not solid.  They weren't benevolent but they weren't non-benevolent.  They probed, they really probed.  They seemed to know time was limited.  They wanted to know what I, this being who had shown up, was doing.  I didn't answer.  They knew.  Once they decided I was okay, they went about their business.

I felt like something was inserted into my left forearm, right here, about three inches below this chain-link tattoo on my wrist.  It was long.  There were no reassurances with the probe.  Simply business.

Chapter 14: Contact - Through The Veil 2

• glitch track _We Have Always Been Here_ MP3 by ELpH vs. Coil off of _Worship The Glitch_ 10"x2 on Eskaton #006 (1995)

Rex: I realize the intense pulsating-buzzing sound and vibration are an attempt by the DMT entities to communicate with me.  The beings were there and they were doing something to me, experimenting on me.  I saw a sinister face, but then one of them somehow tried to begin reassuring me.  Then the space opened up around me.  There were creatures and machinery.  It looked like it was in a field of black space.  There were brilliant psychedelic colors outlining the creatures and the machinery.  The field went on forever.  They were sharing this with me, letting me see all this.  There was a female.  I felt like I was dying, then she appeared and reassured me.  She accompanied me during the viewing of the machinery and the creatures.  When I was with her I had a deep feeling of relaxation and tranquility.

[...]

They were pouring communication into me but it was just so intense.  I couldn't bear it.  There were rays of psychedelic yellow light coming out of the face of the reassuring entity.  She was trying to communicate with me.  She seemed very concerned for me, and the effects I was experiencing due to her attempts at communcating.

There was something outlined in green, right in front of me and above me here.  It was rotating and doing things.  She was showing me, it seemed like, how to use this thing.  It resembled a computer terminal.  I believe she wanted me to try to communicate with her through that device.  But I couldn't figure it out.

[...]

Things about the room look funny.  It came on real strong.  I thought it would last and last and never go away.  It was the same place, neon lights defined everything.  I was in a huge infinite hive.  There were insectlike intelligences everywhere.  They were in a hypertechnological space.

At one point I felt wet stuff hitting me all over my body. They were dripping stuff on me.  Everything in there was friendly.  I don't think I lost consciousness but I can't bring it all back.

There was one that was with me by my side.  There was the same pulsating vibration.  They wanted me to join them, to stay with them.  I was tempted.

I was looking down a corridor that was stretching out forever.  That may be where I lost it.  The buzzing and kaleidoscopic shifting was intense and went on for a long time.  Then it let up and I was in that hive.  There was another one helping me, different from the one I saw earlier this morning.

It was very intelligent.  It wasn't at all humanoid.  It wasn't a bee but it seemed like one.  It was showing me around the hive.  It was extremeley friendly, and I felt a warm sensual energy radiating throughout the hive.  I decided it must be a wonderful thing to live in a loving and sensual environment such as that.  It said to me that this was where our future lay.  I don't know why it said that or what it meant or if that's a good thing or not.  I recall telling myself as I was coming down, "I want to remember.  I want to remember," but I can't.

Sara: There was a sound, like a hum that turned into a whoosh, and then I was blasted out of my body at such speed, with such force, as if it were the speed of light.  The colors were aggressive, terrifying; I felt as if they would consume me, as if I were on a warp-speed conveyer belt heading straight into the cosmic psychedelic buzzsaw.  I was terrified.  I felt abandoned.  I'm completely and totally lost.  I have never been so alone.  How can you describe what it feels like to be the only entity in the universe?

There are sounds: high-pitched singing, like angel voices.  But they aren't comforting.  They are very impersonal and don't care about me.  They are simply part of the background noise of blasting through the void of the universe.  It felt like going backward from life in a physical body to life as simply an energy form with no body.  The essence of who I am was alone in the void, back in the staging area for life where souls wait to incarnate.  I was in a place where there are no  physical life-forms, only colors and sounds.  The singing angels were there only to observe me, not to comfort me.  But even though they didn't comfort me, I did bring back an incredible sense of Love.

A male presence tries to communicate with me, but I don't understand.  I use my mind to ask, "What?" The reply is garbled.  It (he) is trying to tell me I will see something.  But what? I try to ask, "Will I know it when I see it?"  The presence tells me I will see something.  Is it by the horizon's light I see in the vast darkness?  There is a great roaring sound.  It interferes with the voice because I know it is a jet "out there." I'm coming back.  The Voice is gone.

[...]

The first trip was lots of spinning colors.  I was scared, but I kept telling myself, "Relax, surrender, embrace."  Then I saw what i can only describe as a Las Vegas - casino type of scene, all flashing and whirling lights. I was rather disappointed.  Here I'm expecting this profound spiritual experience and I get Las Vegas!  But then, before I had much time to be disappointed, I "flew" on and saw clowns performing.  They were like toys, or animated clowns.  I had the overwhelming urge to laugh.  I was kind of self-conscious about it at first, but I couldn't contain myself and I laughed out loud watching those clowns.

[...]

This time the aggressive spinning colors were almost familiar.  Suddenly, a pulsating "entity" appeared in the patterns.  It sounds weird to describe it as "Tinkerbell-like." It was trying to coax me to go with it.  At first I was reluctant, because i didn'tknow about finding my way back.  By the time I made up my mind that I did want to go with it, I could tell the drug was starting to wear off, and I wasn't "high" enough to follow it.  I told it, "I can't go with you now.  See, they want me back."  It didn't seem to be offended and, in fact, "followed" me back until I sensed it had reached its boundary.  I felt like it was saying goody-bye.  Reentry was slow, and I was reluctant to take off the eyeshades.  Everyone's eyes were so sparkling when I took off my eyeshades!

[...]

I realized what Rick said was true, that the most intense part of each trip was spent tangled up in these colors.  This time, I quickly blasted through to the "other side." I was in a void of darkness.  Suddenly, beings appeared.  They were cloaked, like silhouettes.  They were glad to see me.  They indicated that they had had contact with me as an individual before.  They seemed pleased that we had discovered this technology.  I felt like a spiritual seeker who had gotten too far off course and, instead of encountering the spirit world, overshot my destination and ended up on another planet.

They wanted to learn more about our physical bodies.  They told me humans exist on many levels.  I needed to reconnect with my body in time for the blood pressure check and blood sampling.  It was as if they, rather than Laura, were collecting the information, and they appreciated my doing it for them.  Somehow we had something in common.  They told me to "embrace peace."

I could feel myself begin to slip away from tehm as the drug wore off.  As I started to come down, I saw these things from their world that I really can't describe.  I thought of how the South Pacific natives could see only Captain Cook's small boats, and not his big ships, until they actually climbed on board and touched them.

[...]

I went directly into deep space.  They knew I was coming back and they were ready for me.  They told me there were many things they could share with us when we learn how to make more extended contact.  Again, they wanted something from me, not just physical information.  They were interested in emotions and feelings.  I told them, "We have something we can give you: spirituality."  I guess what I really meant was Love.  I tried to figure out how to do this.  I felt a tremendous energy, brilliant pink light with white edges, building on my left side.  I knew it was spiritual energy and Love.  They were on my right, so I reached out my hands across the universe and prepared to be a bridge.  I let this energy pass through me to them.  I said something like, "See, there I did it for you.  You have it."  They were grateful.  I was coming down off the DMT, losing altitude.  I would have to go back.

I was a little disappointed that experience was spent "giving" when what I wanted was spiritual enlightenment.  Should I have asked for something to take back first?  I guess I don't feel comfortable in my role as an earthly spiritual emissary.  But I did my best.  I always knew we weren't alone in the universe.  I thought that the only way to encounter them is with bright lights and flying saucers in outer space.  It never occurred to me to actually encounter them in our own inner space.  I thought the only things we could encounter were things in our own personal sphere of archetypes and mythology.  I expected spirit guides and angels, not alien life-forms.

Chapter 15: Death And Dying

Elena: More than once, the DMT sessions gave me the gift of truly subjectively knowing the phenomenon described in "Introductions To The dead" in _The Tibetan Book Of The Dead_.  Even greater is the gift of knowing that I have had practice dying and returning.

Sean: It's so far out, so weird, so out of control, you have to learn something.  I think I've learned what it's like to die, to be completely helpless in the throes of something.  That's been helpful.

Eli: Stunned, I felt myself holding back.  I relaxed and the environment began to change noticeably.  I knew I was going through the first bardo of death, that I had been here many times before, and it was okay.  "This is just like the last time," I thought.  Enough continuity with my waking consciousness gave me this thought next: "But this is my first time crossing over." I concluded I had broken out of time and space and either was experiencing my "normal" pattern of dying or was connected to a time in the future when, once again, I will know "this is the time I was in, back then, now."

[...]

I no longer fear death.  It's like you're there one minute and then you're somewhere else, and that's just how it is.  So I think it had that effect.  These experiments are helping me in my reading of the _Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying_.  I know what it's like to be totally free.

Willow: Good.  It's a very enchanting place.  I almost don't want to leave it.  Transitions are completions.  How I am.  Who I am.

First I saw a tunnel or channel of light off to the right.  I had to turn to go into it.  Then the whole process repeated on the left.  It was intentional that way.  It was as if it had a source, further away.  It got bigger farther away, like a funnel.  It was bright and pulsating.  There was a sound like music, like a score, but unfamiliar to me, supporting the emotional tone of the events and drawing me in.  I was very small.  It was very large.  There were large beings in the tunnel, on the right side, next to me.  I had a sense of great speed.  Everything was unimportant relative to this.  Things were flashing, flashing by, as if from a different perspective.  It was so much more real than life.

The left and right tunnels joined in front of me  There were gremlins, small, faces mostly.  They had wings and tails and stuff.  I paid them little attention.  The larger beings were there to sustain and support me.  That was their realm.  A sort of good and evil thing: the gremlins versus the tall beings.  The tall beings were loving, smiling and serene.

Something rushed through me, out of me.  I remember thinking at some point, "Here comes the separation."  I felt my body only when I swallowed or breathed, and that really wasn't a physical feeling as much as a way of setting ripples through the experience.  I felt strongly, "This is dying and this is okay."

I had heard of the bright light tunnel, but I didn't expect it to be the way it was here today.  I thought it would be primarily in front of me, but this took turns on both sides and then joined in front.  Nor was it as bright as I thought it might be.

I'm amazed DMT is in the body.  It's there for a reason.  It's there for dying today.  I had a sense of dying, letting go and separating, after the beings in the tunnel helped me along.

[...]

The other side is very, very different.  There are no words, body, or sounds there to limit things.  I first saw deep space, white with stars.  Then there was this multidimensional experience starting.  It was alive.  It was the aliveness that I heard.  My body was trying to say, "Remember the body" as I was going into that place.  It wasn't a desperate cry, but an attempt to keep it real, make the experience real from the point of view of the senses.  The body wanted me back.

I thought I could see light down below, the world's light.  It was like a little flap was lifted, like a simultaneous alternate reality.

[...]

It's like a cosmic joke.  If we all knew what was waiting for us, we'd all kill ourselves.  That's why we stay in this form for so long, to figure that out.  That's also why it's so hard to remember the immediacyof it.

[...]

Everyone should try a high dose of DMT once.  I don't know if the beings today were saying "Try death once" or "Try life once." That place is so full and so complete that the idea of this place is to try and be as complete as possible.  Yet when I came back into my body it was so heavy and so confining.  Also, time here seems so strange. Eternity is an attriibute of the place.  It would have to be.

Carlos: There was the sound of the entire universe, more like a hum.  It was pervasive, overwhelming.  I thought, "Holy moly, how did I get into this?" Things weren't right and were getting more wrong all the time.  Then my ability to perceive as a human being winked out.  There were no more emotions, because emotions work only up to a certain point.

[...]

I saw a man lying in a hospital room.  He was naked with a person on either side of him, one female and one male.  At first they didn't look like anybody I knew.  They were perfect generic human beings.  I recognized, in context, that they were me, you, and Laura.  The way of knowing was totally different from this reality.  I didn't know I was in a study of any kind.

There was something wrong with him.  He was there to get better.  The hospital was a healing center.  What was wrong with him was death.  The naked person was dead.  What killed the person was the stress from the DMT.  None of my guardians or protectors made an appearance.  They were out of the loop.

He was healed, more than healed.  He was reborn.  He got cured from death, healed from death.  And then he became the creator of the whole universe.

I gradually became more and more solid and moved toward my everyday presence.  I watched the universe's creation down from fundamental mental energy to a vibratory rate to material things.  I realized I was recreating the hospital and the room.  As the world jelled more and more, I wanted to see it and asked to have the eyeshades taken off.  I became fascinated with my fingers, like a newborn.

I've taught classes on how the universe is a construct of your own mind.  And here it was happening.  My attitude was different when I knew you were my creations.  I felt as close to you as to my own son and daughter.

I would have to say my experience was a classical death/rebirth experience.  I had done it before, but never in the same way as with DMT.  It was spectacular in imagery, texture, and atmosphere and had incredible lighting and effects.  Boil it down and it's very, very classic.

The 0.2 was harrowing - this was way beyond.  I knew the boundary beyond life existed.  I never thought I'd be there, though, at such an early age.  It's one of those things that old men talk about, like "once I got there." it's just the wrong place and time.  I expect these sorts of things in the mountains with my friends in a more ceremonial setting.  A true surprise.

Chapter 16: Mystical States

Elena: Before you spoke the words, "Okay, we're done," there arose in me an energy so forceful that no words could describe it.  It drove my heart.  The swirl of color reminded me of the visual experience the day before, but multiplied a millionfold.  I could only hold on, remembering not to fall of into the distracting light show.  Then everything stopped! The darkness opened to light, and on the other side of space all was utterly still.  Then the words "just because it is possible" emerged out of nothingness and filled me.

The great power sought to fill all possibilities.  It was "amoral," but it was love, and it just was.  There was no benevolent god, only this primordial power.  All of my ideas and beliefs seemed absurdly ridiculous.  I never wanted to forget this.  I was aware I could open my eyes and relate to those around me. But first I had to wait for all this to solidify, to allow the fullness of the experience to congeal, so I could bring it back to the others.

I wondered, "Why come back?" I was reluctant to open my eyes.  When I did, the room seemed very bright, but otherwise quite as I had left it.

[...]

It came on fast and big, and an incredible pressure arose in my head, pushing me back.  It blasted me into the realm in which pure living energy begins to take form.  As it began to slow down, I saw the process of separated awareness.  This slowing down creates form and consciousness.  Before the slowing down, it's not there.  It's not unconscious, but not conscious.  It's real, of its own substance, not fragmented.  It's amazing how slowly things move here on Earth!

Going out and slowing down into the periphery, to the fringes of it, into form.  There is the endless outflow of creation, effortless, and then this vast process takes it back in.  My little piece of energy goes in and out, too, not more or less than any other piece.  You can't die.  You can't go away.  You can neither add nor subtract.  There is a continual outflow that is immortality.  The "I am" notion goes around and around.  I have the certainty of that.

There were loads of paradoxes.  I was not disoriented but there was no orientation.  I didn't know where or who I was, but there was nothing to know who or where it was.  I didn't have to wonder what to do next.  There are no empty spaces, they were all filled up.

Sean: The first session was a lot of fun.  I felt myself lifting off the bed three or four feet.  The visions rapidly developed into an almost sparkling electric blue-green light pattern.  I asked, "Are you here again?"  No answer, so I watched a low-lying city on a flat plane on the far horizon mutate through a variety of colors and hues, with many ill-defined "things" floating in the "air" above the city.

Then I noticed a middle-aged female, with a pointed nose and light greenish skin, sitting off to my right, watching this changing city with me.  She had her right hand on a dial that seemed to control the panorama we were watching.  She turned slightly toward me and asked, "What else would you like?" I answered telepathically, "Well, what else have you got? I have no idea what you can do."

Then she stood up, walked up to my right forehead, touched it and warmed it up, and then used a sharp object to open up a panel in my right temple, releasing a tremendous amount of pressure.  This made me feel much better than I'd felt before, even though I realized I'd felt fine in the first place.

[...]

For the first time ever, I went into a blank state before the DMT injection.  I had no thought, no hopes, no fears, no expectations.

The trip started with an electric tingling in my body, and quickly the visual hallucinations arrived.  Then I noticed five or six figures walking rapidly alongside me.  They felt like helpers, fellow travelers.  A humanoid male figure turned toward me, threw his right arm up toward the patchwork of bright colors, and asked, "How about this?" The kaleidoscopic patterns immediately became brighter and moved more rapidly.  A second and then a third asked and did the same thing.  At that point, I decided to go further, deeper.

I immediately saw a bright yellow-white light directly in front of me.  I chose to open to it.  I was consumed by it and became part of it.  There were no distinctions - no figures or lines, shadows or outlines.  There was no body or anything inside or outside.  I was devoid of self, of thought, of time, of space, of a sense of separateness or ego, or of anything but the white light.  There are no symbols in my language that can begin to describe that sense of pure being, oneness, and ecstasy.  there was a great sense of stillness and ecstasy.

I have no idea how long I was in this confluence of pure energy, or whatever/however I might describe it.  Finally I felt myself tumbling gently and sliding backward away from this Light, sliding down a ramp.  I could see myself doing this, a naked, thin, luminescent childlike being that glowed with a warm, yellow light.  My head was enlarged, and my body was that of a four-year-old child. Waves of the Light touched me as my body receded from it.  I was almost dizzy with happiness as the slide down the ramp finally ended.

[...]

There were wire people everywhere riding bicycles, like programmed people, like video-game people having fun.  I watched them. They were blue-green, running all around me.  Like being in a parking tower.  I forget what happened at the end.  They did it for along time! I kept wondering if anything else would happen.  Slowly the trip ended, but I can't remember how.

Epilogue

Saul: The empty space in the room began sparkling.  Large crystalline prisms appeared, a wild display of lights shooting off into all directions.  More complicated and beautiful geometric patterns overlaid my visual field.  My body felt cool and light.  Was I about to faint?  I closed my eyes, sighing, and thought, "my god!"

I heard absolutely nothing, but my mind was completely full of some sort of sound, like the aftereffects of a large ringing bell.  I didn't know if I was breathing.  I trusted things would be fine and let go of that thought before panic could set in.

The ecstasy was so great that my body could not contain it.  Almost out of necessity, I felt my awareness rush out, leaving its physical container behind.

Out of the raging colossal waterfall of flaming color expanding into my visual field, the roaring silence, and an unspeakable joy, they stepped, or rather, emerged.  Welcoming, curious, they almost sang, "Now do you see?" I felt their question pour into and fill every possible corner of my awareness: "Now do you see? Now do you see?" Trilling, sing-song voices, exerting enormous pressure on my mind.

There was no need to answer.  It was as if someone had asked me, on a blazing cloudless midsummer afternoon in the New Mexico desert, "Is it bright? Is it bright?" The question and the answer are identical.  Added to my "Yes!" was a deeper "Of course!" And finally, an intensely poignant "At last!"

I "stared" with my inner eyes, and we appraised each other.  As they disappeared back into the torrent of color, now beginning to fade, I could hear some sounds in the room.  I knew I was coming down.  I felt my breathing, my face, my fingers, and I was dimly aware of an encroaching darkness.  Were there flames, smoke, dust, battling troops, enormous suffering?  I opened my eyes.

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