The book A Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark by Carl Sagan goes in depth as to the origin of peoples propensity to believe that they have indeed encountered such creatures. I would highly recommend reading it.
I love Carl Sagan and especially love when he branched out into topics like this. But I also wonder if he ended up being on the right track - does anyone happen to know if contemporary research backs up many of his speculations about human evolution in books like Dragons of Eden or Demon-Haunted World?
I saw them a few days after taking DMT. I was sitting on a sofa, reality paused, some tube-limbed harlequins stepped out sideways into it, cut a few things up, looked inside them then put them back together, then they fucked off and reality restarted.
Having met a person who started having regular psychotic episodes after a dmt trip, I’ve removed this from all of my todo lists.
She would start hissing, cursing in gibberish, clawing etc. and is the most horrific thing I’ve witnessed to date. If there’s demonic possession, this must be what it looks like.
It sounds like some wires got crossed up on the way back down; it might be fixable, though probably not through conventional means. (Stuff like tantra or properly taking part in Ayahuasca with a trained shaman comes to mind). But then again, when I hear about those God-drunken yogis wandering around in India, sometimes with followers, I wonder too if this was her destiny.
Blasting out on a whim without preparation is like getting launched into outer space without a spacesuit. (And the things we think we are preparing for are usually the very things that create a lot of turbulence in the journey). Lots of people are lucky, have guides watching over them, the way little kids gets watched over by parents on the playground. ("Ok, come away from the busy street -- oh look, would you like to play with this?") Sometimes, people are not so lucky. There is a vast knowledge and wisdom in the old traditions about this, and scientific knowledge is ill-equipped to understand or even handle the misadventures.
I wouldn't say never though. DMT is an endogenous neurotransmitter produced by the pineal gland, so under rare circumstances, dosages of DMT can be released naturally and directly into your brain.
Strassman is certainly more trustworthy than McKenna =) I should have been more targeted in my question. I was wondering more about the pineal gland as the source of production than if endogenous DMT exists. According to the link below, they have Rick on their podcast saying that DMT is produced by the lungs and then transported to the brain, maybe stored in the pineal gland? I’m gonna have to give this a listen.
"Dr. Barker: The only studies conducted on lung tissue were not specific to lung anatomy. My comments were based on an assumption that, if DMT is primarily produced in the lung (where, at that time, the highest enzyme activity had been described) and DMT played any role in schizophrenia, it would, thus, be considered a lung disease. However, I think DMT may primarily be synthesized in the lung during specific physiological states; controlled breathing, such as occurs in many meditative practices, extreme physical exertion, hyperventilation, near-death changes in respiration rates, hypoxia, etc. DMT synthesized in the lung would go directly to the brain, by-passing the metabolic destruction that would occur from liver metabolism. There is some evidence that DMT is neuroprotective and may play a role in neuronal survival in extreme physiological states (either intentional of unintentional) that also alter lung function. Similarly, DMT can have a dissociative quality (OBE) that is also protective in extreme events (trauma, etc.). While DMT produced in the lung may have many other “normal” biochemical functions, it may be one of the hormones that responds to extreme stress (physical and mental) and the role of the lung in such events is well understood."
Good find! That would provide a mechanism to support the mind-altering claims of holotropic breath work, which I have never tried but understand to be a close cousin of hyperventilation.
Re: wires getting crossed - If our energy systems aren't flowing properly then our own magnetic field and energetic defences are prone, weak. Part of how Ayahuasca/DMT functions is breaking down/limiting the ego mind's control, so if someone's maintaining normal appearances using ego mind's control - then who knows what's underneath once ego has lost its grasp. This is in part why yoga styles like Kundalini and Laughter Yoga are contraindicated for people with schizophrenia, as these practices purpose is to let go/challenge the ego, and therefore it seems that a person prone to a schizophrenic state uses ego control to gain function.
How I despise quantitative commentary via downvotes instead of qualitative conversation.
Edit: It's been a wild ride so far watching the votes go from the initial 1 down to -2, back up to 0, back down to -3, back up to 0, back down to -1 and so on.. Looks like this comment got zinged now too with a downvote. Thanks for the entertainment all. And yes, I'm aware it's in the HN rules to not make comments like this - consider it as peaceful protest for change.
The problem with discussion around any "woo woo" topics is that they don't get anywhere, which is probably the reason for the downvotes.
Yes, there are studies that show acupuncture could help someone give up smoking.
But when you try to parse the reasons why, you end up saying things like "energy work", and "contemplative healing methodologies", which don't mean anything... or more precisely, they mean something to you, but every Alternative Medicine practitioner can redefine. So the words and language lose all meaning, its impossible to transfer knowledge or have a meaningful conversation without shared understanding of agreement on terms.
I might only be saying this because my aura is blocked, and my Chi isn't flowing correctly. But should I fix that with the Kundali method, Ayahusca, a copper bracelet, healing crystals, aromatherapy, or traditional cognitive therapy?
I think we get too caught up in the terms and appearances of the discussion. If you don’t know whether there is any depth behind a statement, why not probe rather than reject out of hand? As it is, you’re literally saying “I don’t know what you’re actually trying to say but it is superficially reminiscent of something I find disagreeable.” Just because someone is using terms and abstractions outside of your background does not mean they’re meaningless. The fact that scam artists and charlatans peddling pseudoscience try to co-opt scientific terms and outward appearances does not mean that science itself is nonsense, though someone with no background in science might be unable or unwilling to distinguish between them. And likewise the fact that many scientific models and abstractions that were popular in the past were later shown to be inaccurate or to be carrying fallacious baggage along with them does not mean that they weren’t useful steps toward a more refined model and a deeper understanding. Instead of rejecting discussion on the basis of superficial differences, why not look for the similarities between your abstractions and try to use that to build understanding? You may be surprised at how well your models map to each other, and in what you can learn (or teach) from the places where they don’t. Eastern traditions had thoroughly developed the basis for a safe and effective method for coping with mental disorders (which we now refer to as mindfulness) long before psychologists in the West were jamming ice picks into people’s eye sockets and calling it treatment. Just because someone’s terms and abstractions don’t easily mesh with your own does not mean that they cannot describe the same reality with varying levels of fidelity, and just because some parts of a tradition are found to amount to spurious (or even actively harmful) nonsense does not mean there’s no value to be found in it (early psychologists produced a huge amount of unscientific drivel and ruined a lot of people’s lives, but the application of rigor to understanding human behavior was a virtue in itself that ultimately led us to deeper understanding).
I'm not rejecting the "woo woo" actually. Just explaining the downvotes.
As u/hosh 's comment showed, the amount of work required to get to an agreed definition of terms, just means that these conversations are not ideal for this type of discussion board.
It is totally possible to do, but the length of each response means that these conversations are better served off line. Or with specific online communities who have already cut through a lot of the mess, to come to a shared understanding on some topics.
Sorry this is just a semantic argument, when you are trying to have a deeper one. But my only real issue with your last comment is that it is very difficult to read, and would benefit from some paragraph breaks.
That really depends. Some of those methods work well for some people and not for others.
Since we're laying it out on the table, I'll comment on here about those different methods.
You won't be using the "Kundali" method (which I take it to mean "Kundalini"). That is a phenomena that is initiates a drastic transformation on the person's body and mind, and has its own way with the person. It may be induced and people can spontaneously have it kicked off.
People usually come for treatments for side-effects from that sort of spiritual emergence, and those side-effects are often knots of resistance in the mind or body.
Aura usually refers to a layer of subtle energy closer to the surface, and as such, something that as deeply transformative as Kundalini is overkill.
I can say the same about Ayahuasca. She is going to have her way with you.
Now, let's look at "chi isn't flowing correctly" and "it appears in the aura" -- which in the TCM modality would be the wei-qi, the guardian qi. The modern TCM practitioners will look at different physical symptoms and try to adjust things through acupuncture, acupressure, etc.
However, there is a smaller subset of TCM practitioners who can directly sense the flows of the qi. For those people, Metal qi feels like Metal, and it is distinct from Earth qi or Fire qi. Meridians for these people can be directly sensed within one's body and in others, and they more or less follow the pathways already documented. Through a combination of learned knowledge and intuition, there are some adjustments that can be made there.
That's not the only way. Specific qigong movements can affect specific meridians, and a specific set of qigong can be prescribed for someone to bring that person back to health.
Copper bracelet and healing crystals can have some effect. For people who can sense how those energies flow, they can tell what kind of effects that might have. (Note that not everyone is going to be able to sense in the same "spectrum"). It isn't just copper -- metal in general will change flows, and different types of metal will change them in different ways. The same with crystals. Someone who can sense these things and extract information can note the different "flavor" or "personality" of individual crystals of the same material, and that can affect someone.
I have not experimented much with aromatherapy.
Traditional cognitive therapy is interesting, and they can have an effect on people at the subtle energy level as well. That shouldn't be surprising as memory and cognition will take place in the subtle as well as the physical. It is possible that experiencing an insight in cognitive therapy will also unlock a knot in the subtle -- but it could happen the other way as well, where the loosening of the the subtle and physical body loosens up the mind enough for an insight (and attitude and behavioral changes) to emerge.
You know, I've once had a encounter with a good friend of mine, whom I considered to be relatively wise (she was a nice person to speak to). So I was telling her this story, where me and my friend got into an argument, after he could not walk through the town without us using a GPS navigator (him getting nervous due to not knowing where we were going); she simply replied that "he probably can't sense the magnetic field of our planet".
Now I have to admit, that without any scientific knowledge this could sound quite plausible - but even if I, being a software engineer can't for sure reason why this is relatively impossible; I can definitely tell you that when I try to orient myself in a foreign town - I mainly pay attention to the sun, buildings and my memory, rather than general intuition (although that works too).
Before you go on an another Indian retreat - you should definitely watch "Wild Wild Country".
Likewise I don't know if we all have the potential for sense of direction based on magnetic fields or that only some of us that could tap into consciously it, or if it's there subconsciously. Homing pigeons use magnetoreception (just Googled for proper term - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoreception) - so it's possible it's somewhere in our DNA; it seems dolphins too have the ability to sense magnetic fields.
Because the brain works as "use it or lose it" - most of us in modern societies will never need to tap into this sense nor would it be reenforced by its use, if it is a thing for humans.
To me, it sounds like that friend didn't trust himself or his memory for whatever reason, so learned a dependance on a GPS navigator as a coping mechanism.
Re: General intuition - It could be that general intuition is simply trusting yourself, trusting that you're already paying attention to your surroundings (and being relaxed enough to take it all in), fully in the present moment - so in the case you reference, you subconsciously are aware of the sun's location, buildings, memory, etc.
I've never been to India - all yoga has been practiced locally, and ceremonies I've attended were within a few hours drive - sounds like an interesting documentary.
> Human cryptochrome exhibits light-dependent magnetosensitivity
> "Humans are not believed to have a magnetic sense, even though many animals use the Earth's magnetic field for orientation and navigation. One model of magnetosensing in animals proposes that geomagnetic fields are perceived by light-sensitive chemical reactions involving the flavoprotein cryptochrome (CRY). Here we show using a transgenic approach that human CRY2, which is heavily expressed in the retina, can function as a magnetosensor in the magnetoreception system of Drosophila and that it does so in a light-dependent manner. The results show that human CRY2 has the molecular capability to function as a light-sensitive magnetosensor and reopen an area of sensory biology that is ready for further exploration in humans."
And I have heard of studies getting some effect by looking at people's orientation when lost, with and without big magnets strapped to their head, though I don't seem to be able to find it just now.
I have also directly experienced stuff that is not so easily explainable, and work with it regularly. No, I can't sense the magnetic fields like that so directly, though I know roughly how to develop skills like that.
I don't think whole area of consciousness and subtle energy is ever going to be scientifically valid. I think they touch on things that are replicable, but not objectively verifiable. There are very real lived experiences of those, and sometimes we can find foot prints left behind by people who walked that way. Generally, you won't know until you walk that way too.
I'm from the Chicago area, and around here everyone navigates by the lake. For whatever reason, you tend to always know which direction Lake Michigan is in, and therefore you know which way is East (this happens even when you are dozens of miles from the lake).
I don't know if it is because of the general contours of the land, or what, but I've heard this from a number of people around here. But no one can explain (or even show scientifically) that they can always find the Lake.
Ha! Some of my comments have elicited a roller-coaster ride like that too :-)
Yes, I have heard of teachers that would contra-indicate on people with schizophrenia as well. It's kinda hard to tell though. I was once in a Ayahuasca ceremony where many of the people were convinced someone was having a psychotic break ... but the person in question didn't seem to me to be acting in a way that I hadn't experienced. (That is, I was that person, playing that role before, having a rough ride). The person's inner experience was totally different than what everyone else was experiencing, and was expressing a lot of gratitude.
There are a lot of dark stuff buried in individuals and in the collective. Even just meditating will surface those things up. (Then again, something Adyashanti said in a podcast ... you go looking for content, you will find it. It's endless).
However, I also think that our modern notions of schizophrenia does not serve us well:
(There was a followup article interviewing the father of the young man in question, but I don't remember enough keywords to find it easily).
And no, I won't discount the magnetic field thing. I've got too many encounters with subtle energy and their effects, and work with them myself. I don't know if those subtle energies can necessarily be modeled mechanistically (I think the whole modern take on TCM and meridians a fool's errand since the body meridians lay in the etheric, whereever that is, and not really where the tangible flesh lay).
Thing is, until a large portion of the collective directly experiences it, the consensus algorithm in which our collective consciousness converges upon what is "real" will reject it. That's fine though.
I had a couple friends encountered the time stop during Ayahuasca. There were beings that showed up to intervene in some things. One of my friends noticed that these beings noticed he was present and were mildly surprised. Good times.
I have seen them doing an ultra marathon on the second night of no sleep. It's weird how you brain fills so much detail in. The creatures I could see were like gollum from LoTR but with reptilian skin..they were either smoking pipes or playing elaborate music on instruments I have never seen before..
The non-fiction book "Why people believe weird things" begins with the author's recounting of his own meeting with aliens, during a coast-to-coast cycle race where he had gone without sleep.
In reality it was his crew trying to get him off his bike before he fell asleep and fell off
I've done DMT quite a few times and I can totally see why religious people make this a religious experience. Or as in this case use aliens or other 'mythical' creatures instead of God figures.
There is this very strong feeling of being connected to more and just being able to get a short glance to a different world that is always there but hidden from you.
Most people will explain it like this, but everybody also ads 'graphics' or concepts based on their own believes in order to even comprehend the experience.
I love DMT but I also highly believe that we are seeing some kind of natural process in our brains here and not some kind of deeper connection.
In other news I saw genesha dancing for me on a rainbow of thousands of never seen colors and I had a fox helping me getting back from something I can only describe as lost in my own head. Dmt is strange but beautiful
If I had to hypothesize, I'd say that most hallucinogens generally stimulate lower-levels of the neocortex's sensory perception hierarchy, resulting in a distorted and more vivid experience of basic things like colors, textures, etc. But DMT is somehow particularly able to stimulate a higher-level representation that corresponds with the perception of a fellow intelligent creature. This is combined semi-randomly with one or more high-level representation of animals and objects to create the perception of intelligent "aliens" with a bizarre form.
Every few years I get stuck for a few moments in the state between sleep and waking up. Always manifested the same way. In the middle of a dream environment a gateway with a totally alien, totally inexplicable intelligence would appear. I'd be paralyzed by it for a few seconds. As I got older a realized the terrifying alien world/intelligence was waking consciousness intruding into the dream state. Always interesting after I wake but true Lovecraftian horror as it happens.
It seems like an anonymous internet survey won't solicit very high quality data... I suppose even a rough idea of how common these experiences are is a start.
Can you elaborate? I see to be one of those rare people who is genuinely fascinated by peoples' DMT experiences (and dreams!).
Speaking personally, I've done DMT twice but never at the doses necessary to break through. I've experienced ego death from psilocybin but it seems as if the DMT experience is different in terms of the vividness and visual complexity.
That was fantastic, thanks for posting it! It would make for a great story to be read aloud too, if one could find a way around the several-dozen-digit number...
