Strangeitude by Harry Pack @harrypackart

by The Archaic Revival

Most people read a travel guide before they go somewhere new.

But what if the place you’re going to features inter-dimensional travel, hyper-intelligent design, and a variety of sentient entities?

Here’s how to prepare for travel to DMT hyperspace:

Create a Comfortable Setting

Make sure you are in a comfortable, private setting.

Bonus points if it is also aesthetically pleasing. You want this space to feel grounded and safe.

If you’re using a room in your house, clean it. Light a candle or incense if you please, do anything that makes the setting feel warm and inviting. The spot you choose should allow you to go from sitting to lying down immediately, make sure you have something soft to lay on and a pillow. Optionally you can use a reclining chair.

Have Someone With You

This step is optional but recommended: have a trusted friend or loved one with you.

You can journey alone, but having someone by your side can help you stay grounded and reassure you of your safety. If you talk aloud during the experience, your sitter can help you navigate your experience or record what you said to tell you afterward.

Get Comfortable Physically

Wear loose-fitting clothes. The last thing you want while traveling through different dimensions is to be bothered by physical distractions.

Another optional, but helpful step is having a blanket over you during the experience. I find it adds comfort and a feeling of safety. A weighted blanket can also be used, the extra pressure puts your nervous system into “rest” mode which may reduce some symptoms of anxiety as you lift off.

Choose a Quality Vaporization Method

The last thing you want while reality is being ripped away from you is to have a coughing fit or to taste burnt DMT in your mouth.

My personal favorite vaporization methods are glass vapes(I use Eclipse) that are water-filtered & homemade vape pens, but everyone has different preferences.

Use whatever method seems best for you, but be aware that the “sub-quality methods” are significantly less efficient and often waste DMT.

Vapor Genie – DMT Vaporization Pipe

Top methods:

• Homemade vape pen or mod (propylene glycol+DMT)
• E-mesh vapes
• Dry herb vapes with changa or enhanced herb
• Glass Vapes (Eclipse, Vapor Genie)
• Dab Rig with electric nail (controlled heat)

Sub-quality methods:

• The ‘Machine’ (small glass bottle with hole in bottom & steel wool in the neck)
• Oil Burner (the thin glass makes DMT easy to burn)
• Sandwich method (DMT sandwiched between cannabis)
• Dab Rig with Torch (hard to control heat)
• Burning enhanced herb in a joint (not as efficient as vaping)

Avoid at all costs:

• Lightbulb
• Foil and a plastic bottle

Set a Simple Intention

An intention does not need to be complicated: “I hope I meet an important entity”, or “I want to learn something new”.

You can write down your intention or simply say it aloud. By setting an intention, you are acknowledging your role in the future experience and helping anchor your psyche before hyperspace.

Practice Breathing

Practice your breathing.

Counting in your head, breath in for 5 seconds, hold for 10, breath out for 5.

Repeat at least 3x.

Use this time breathing to clear your head & mentally prepare for the journey.

Measure Your Dose

The doses and descriptions below are general descriptions.

The doses below are based on a moderate tolerance, pure DMT, and a 100% efficient vaping method. If you’re using a less efficient vaping method, you may need a slightly higher dose for the same effects.

Personal tolerances vary widely, and these doses may be too low for some or too high for others.

~5mg [Threshold]

At this stage your vision is enhanced and your setting feels much more important and aesthetically pleasing. You feel slightly stoned- but with a feeling of great significance.

5-10mg [The Chrysanthemum]

DMT HD by Symbolika @symbolika_art

Mandalic closed-eye visuals, intense colors, complex geometric overlay, visual morphing during open-eyed visuals. A body high that is euphoric but out of body, quickly growing in intensity. An organic humming/buzzing noise.

10-15mg [The Transitition]

Increasingly complex visuals, accelerated out-of-body movement, an intense body high & a feeling of being sucked towards *something*.

As the visuals increase, so does the sound. As the humming reaches a crescendo, there is a sudden switch. The humming stops. A new world is created out of the previous scene flawlessly.

Butterfly Morph by Symbolika @symbolika_art

15-20mg [The Waiting Room]

The final space before a full breakthrough, the waiting room feels like a liminal, hyper dimensional version of ‘The Backrooms’.

At this point, if you open your eyes, your scene will not change. You are fully immersed in hyperspace.

Waiting rooms vary in style immensely and entities may be present at this stage.

Cosmic Corridors by AyJay @ayjayart

20-25mg [Breakthrough]

Hyperspace feels “more real than real”.

There is a feeling of intense familiarity combined with absolute amazement. The body transforms into intense euphoria. You will be thrust into an otherworldly environment and likely will be approached by entities of some kind.

Guardian 2 by Harry Pack @harrypackart

+35mg [Approaching OD]

Taking too much DMT typically results in full dissociation and being unable to remember the experience. Overdosing on DMT isn’t dangerous to your physical body and rarely has any lasting effects on the mind.

• A Thread on What a DMT overdose is like

Begin Smoking

No matter your method, be careful not to burn the DMT as you heat it.

Famously, it is supposed to take 3 hits to break through. Ignore this.

Mimic the breathing practice as you take your hits- holding the vapor for 10 seconds or more with each hit. It may take 1 hit, it may take 10. Keep inhaling DMT until no vapor remains or it is no longer possible to smoke.

Don’t Panic

Spirit Molecule by AyJay @ayjayart

DMT is intensely disorienting, particularly when you first enter into hyperspace.

“What you resist, persists” – struggling or fighting against the effects won’t bring you back to reality. You signed up for the ride, time to buckle your seatbelt & look out the window.

Remind yourself: no one has ever died from smoking DMT and the experience will be over in about 10 minutes.

Interact With DMT Entities

About 95% of entities are benevolent and often approach you with curiosity, surprise, and love. They often say “welcome back, where have you been?” and can speak telepathically or verbally.

This is your chance to be curious- ask them questions, interact with them, who knows what you’ll find out!

Smoking DMT is like waking up as an alien, to a room full of other aliens who are throwing you a surprise birthday party.

'It's so great to see you again!"
"Look at my gift for you!"
"We've been waiting so long for you!"
"We love you so much, you're doing great!"

— The Archaic Revival (@FatherMcKennaa) May 10, 2022

Different Entities

Hieroglyph by Harry Pack @harrypackart

There are a huge variety of entities, and essentially no limit to the different forms they take.

There are a few common types like Machine Elves, Fairies, or Jesters. Mythological and archetypal creatures from various cultures are another common type of entity. Entities vary in not only appearance but also motivations and power.

Some have the ability to create objects with their voice while others simply want to help you learn about yourself.

• A Thread on DMT entities

Dark Entities

Aya by Symbolika @symbolika_art

While rare, simply thinking about dark entities makes them more likely to appear.

They appear more often when you don’t treat DMT with respect. Seasoned travelers call these uncomfortable experiences (not always related to dark entities) being ‘hyperslapped’. If you do end up running into an entity with dark energy, focus on feelings of hope, love, and light.

Explore & Learn

Celestial Stairway by AyJay @ayjayart

Every DMT trip is different, though some people have traveled to the same places and met the same entities.

Approach each trip with curiosity, entities often have something to show or teach you. Sometimes what they show you is so complex that it can’t be explained with conventional language. You can also try to learn things on your own by traveling through different environments and not interacting with the entities.

Record Your Experience

Just like a dream, a DMT trip begins to be forgotten the moment you wake up.

Use a journal, voice recorder, digital method, or create art to begin recounting your experience. This can be valuable information for personal development or for other travelers.

Share Your Experiences

If someone had the key to alien communication, wouldn’t you want to know about it?

Share your journeys on online forums (Erowid/Reddit/DMT Nexus) and with people that you trust. The entities try so hard to communicate and have important things to share, the least you can do is to help them out a little!

My sources were personal experience and “Hyperspace Lexicon” on DMT Nexus.

Best wishes

Thanks for reading. I hope this guide helps you explore hyperspace in a safe, fun, and efficient way. DMT is a challenging yet incredibly rewarding entheogen. If you enjoyed this article, please follow me on Twitter @FatherMcKennaa

I discuss drugs, psychedelic culture, and will hopefully have another article out soon.

Also a huge thanks to the artists Harry Pack, Ayjay, & Symbolika who graciously allowed us to use their art and do a great service through their visionary artworks. Finally, thanks to John Robertson who inspired and assisted me on this article!

• Check out: How to Integrate a Difficult-to-Remember DMT Experience

Credits

The Archaic Revival 

I write about the history, culture, and use of psychedelics and other drugs. My goal is to educate others, promote safe entheogenic use & advocate for drug decriminalization and related policies.

Twitter @FatherMcKennaa

Harry Pack

My work encourages the viewer to turn their mind from the fragility of the material world and towards a contemplation of something more stable and infinite. The kaleidoscopic paintings depict a visual realm at once fantastical, foreign and strangely familiar. Three-dimensional, dream-like landscapes composed of fractal shapes and ordered geometric patterns are populated by extra-terrestrial forms: strange humanoids, anthropomorphic machines, animals and plant-life moving purposefully throughout spaces that operate as portals into the personal and psychological.

Symbolika

Fabian, the creator of Symbolika, is a graphic designer who has turned his passion for psychedelics into a unique clothing brand. As a “psychonaut”, he has explored the depths of the mind through the use of psychedelics and has drawn inspiration from his experiences to create bold and vibrant designs. He has combined his skills as a graphic designer with his love for psychedelics to create a brand that is both visually striking and spiritually meaningful. Symbolika’s clothing is a reflection of Fabian‘s personal journey and his desire to share the transformative power of psychedelics with others through his designs.

Ayjay

Ayjay is an Australian digital artist known for incorporating his psychedelic experiences into his art. His work stands out for its vivid and precise representation of the DMT experience. His art showcases the bright colors, strange entities, alien machines, and patterned surfaces characteristic of the DMT world.

The post The DMT Hyperspace Travel Guide appeared first on Maps of the Mind.

One of the most common features (and frustrations) associated with the DMT experience is that despite being profound, it can also be very difficult to recall. DMT has a dream-like quality to it, in that you quickly lose your memory of the DMT trip as you return to normal waking consciousness. Terence McKenna drew attention to this quality of the experience when he said: “the way a dream melts away is the way a DMT trip melts away,” adding that “[t]here is a self-erasing mechanism in it”.

Image by Pretty Drug Things

Many people who experience DMT, especially at the breakthrough levels, will find that they simply can’t remember the bulk of what they experienced. This is something quite unique to the DMT flash and I think part of it comes down to the extremely ineffable nature of the DMT experience, which you could even call hyper-ineffable, with certain aspects not only being indescribable but also unrememberable.

Some people might accept this is a DMT quirk and think nothing of it, whereas others might feel that a lot of important knowledge and insight was lost when the amnesia set in. Whatever your attitude may be about DMT and memory loss, one challenge remains: how can you integrate a DMT experience that is difficult to remember?

In this article, I’d like to share my own experiences of DMT and memory loss, relating to one experience, in particular, that took place six years ago, but which I still mull over sometimes. This has been my most profound psychedelic experience to date, yet it has also been the most difficult to remember, with essentially most of the trip (apparently) erased from my memory. However, over the years, I have still been able to integrate the experience by way of helpful discussions, enlightening books, and productive introspection. First, here’s a brief description of what my experience was like.

My Mystical DMT Experience

One day, I decided to go on a solo psychedelic journey and took 430mg of mescaline HCL. This experience was highly profound in itself, with emotional and life-affirming insights. It felt like the negativity bias had been flushed out of me, replaced instead by existential joy. At the peak of the experience or perhaps just after, however, I had the thought of smoking DMT. I wanted to aim for a breakthrough.

I got everything ready and, for the first time, I had zero anticipatory fear or anxiety, something that was usually quite prominent any previous time before blasting off. I think the lack of pre-trip jitters (and the mescaline, no doubt) helped me to go deeper into the experience than I otherwise might have.

I was ‘congratulated’ for taking the last hit by some presence or presences, to my amusement. After that, I began to lay down and remember a tsunami of colour and patterns enveloping me. I’m not sure I even remember feeling my body completely lay down; my sense of self and body was snuffed out in an instant.

From this point on, the memories are hazy and sparse. My clearest memory was having what felt to be universal knowledge. Every question was answered. There were no mysteries left to be solved. These insights felt as clear as the understanding that follows when you finally solve a problem you’ve been working on for a long time: the immediate relief of clear understanding. There came a point though where I had to leave this realm of universal knowledge and I was told (or knew) that as I was leaving, I wouldn’t be able to bring this knowledge back with me. The cosmic secrets had to remain in this realm and this realm only. A pity, I thought.

I do have a snapshot memory of then travelling through a psychedelic wormhole or tunnel, ending up in a realm with ever-shifting activity. This activity was going on for what felt like an eternity – I definitely had the sense of being away for aeons and certainly could not imagine that there would be a time or place in which this experience was not happening.

But eventually, I gained some perception of my body, feeling the pressure of the floor against my back. At this point, though, my ‘body’ felt nothing more than pulsating, pleasurable energy – everything about me seemed to have melted into the totality of the experience. As I regained more bodily awareness, at a certain point I opened my eyes, as if in shock. I saw multi-layered DMT-like patterns above me, so I was half in my room, half in this heavenly realm. I closed my eyes again and I was still somewhat back in hyperspace. There were entities engaged in all sorts of frenzied, zany activities.

After opening my eyes a second time, I went into the fetal position and began sobbing, feeling like pure consciousness. I had felt the presence of the divine: this titanic, loving, and merciful force. I had the feeling of being shot out of some cosmic womb, reborn, and given a second chance at life. I was utterly stunned and in disbelief about the whole experience. Slowly, piece-by-piece, I regained my sense of identity and my memories, realising I had a life here on Earth and had returned to it.

After the Experience

I have thought about this experience a lot since it happened six years ago, but one of my personal frustrations has been how little I remember and whether my thoughts about the experience or what I wrote down some time after the experience even approaches what actually occurred.

There are many things, nonetheless, that have helped me to integrate this experience (and other DMT experiences), despite the gaps in memory. Before describing these techniques, I’d first like to touch on why integration has helped me and how it might benefit you, as well.

The Benefits of Integration

Integrating this particular experience has helped me to sort through some of the confusion, such as endless questions and doubts about what certain elements mean. You want to remain mindful after such an intense experience, as there is often a difference between healthy introspection and unhealthy obsessive thinking.

Integration, for me, has been a process of creating a clear and meaningful narrative that benefits my attitudes, beliefs, and actions, rather than forget about the experience as something ineffectual and inconsequential. If you are struggling with memory gaps and confusion about a DMT experience, you may find peace of mind by accepting that the experience is likely to remain deeply mysterious to some degree and will always be open to re-interpretation.

Integration has also motivated me to explore different ideas and belief systems, especially those relating to transpersonal, humanistic, and Jungian psychology, spirituality, mysticism, world religions, and wisdom traditions. In these explorations, I found connections to my DMT experience, which helped to add new meaning to the experience, by providing frameworks in which to interpret it and use it to benefit myself and others.

As an atheist confronted with ‘the divine’, I also felt a need to reconcile my atheistic worldview with this undeniable experience. This is not a process that has finished (which is true of integration, in general), but so far viewing this divine quality and experience as something human and interior (rather than necessarily exterior) has been productive. You may likewise discover that integration will allow you to find more wholeness, through the reconciliation of different aspects of yourself, as well as the expression of unrealised aspects.

6 Ways to Integrate a Difficult-to-Remember Experience

1. Let Integration Happen Organically

 What I’ve found is that the process of integrating a DMT experience will happen organically when I stop trying to force interpretations onto it and when I give up obsessing about what I might or might not remember. Often, more memories may arise further down the line or existing memories can become clarified or take on a new meaning.

Integrating a DMT experience that is hard to remember might just require patience, time, and being mindful of any new ways in which the experience seems to influence your thoughts, beliefs, opinions, choices, behaviour, and lifestyle. Integration can be organically going on without you even being aware of it.

2. Read Widely

For me personally, there have also been spontaneous moments of integration or clarity when reading a book, article, or someone else’s trip report. A word, phrase, or sentence can seem to bring a memory into focus, create an emotional reaction that feels meaningful, or elicit some sort of constructive thought or insight.

I can give a few examples of books that seemed to help with the process of integration. One was the sci-fi novel Star Maker (1937) by Olaf Stapledon. It tells the story of a nameless narrator who travels through the cosmos, eventually coming into contact with the ‘Star Maker’, the divine creator of everything. The description of this meeting with the Star Maker helped to clarify my own contact with ‘the divine’ during my DMT experience.

Another book was the novel Narcissus and Goldmund (1930), written by Hermann Hesse. There were just a couple of phrases that reignited my memory of the DMT experience:

“At any rate, Goldmund had shown him that a man destined for high things can dip into the lowest depths of the bloody, drunken chaos of life, and soil himself with much dust and blood, without becoming small and common, without killing the divine spark within himself, that he can err through the thickest darkness without extinguishing the divine light and the creative force inside the shrine of his soul.”

The phrases ‘divine spark’ and ‘divine light’ helped me to recall how, coming out of my DMT experience, I felt that ‘the divine’ was something in me. The reason these phrases stood out to me, pregnant with meaning, might have been because this aspect of ‘divinity’ in the self held some importance that I should pay attention to. While I am still unsure and sceptical about what this inner ‘divine’ quality actually is, I do believe it is a positive quality and that if I can focus on that feeling of the divine, it will lead to greater well-being and more positive experiences and actions.

One more book that I’ve come across that benefited the process of integration was The Idea of the Holy (1917), written by the philosopher and theologian Rudolf Otto. In this book, Otto introduces the concept of the numinous, which stands for ‘the holy’ or ‘the divine’, which Otto conceives in a particular way.

He argued, firstly, that this experience of the divine, the “wholly other”, was at the basis of all religions, something that I understood, based on my experience with DMT. I came out of the experience thinking that my encounter with this powerful force, this divine ‘other’, reminded me of descriptions of prophets or Biblical characters being overwhelmed by the presence of God, such as Moses’ vision of the burning bush and Saul’s Road to Damascus experience, when Jesus appears to him, an experience that was so overwhelmingly powerful it caused Saul to fall to his knees.

Otto describes the experience of the numinous as involving fear, mystery, and fascination. This mixture of fear and fascination towards the power of the divine was very relatable and Otto’s elaboration on the numinous helped me to further clarify my experience, although it still remains shrouded in mystery, which, after all, seems to be an essential quality of this divine presence. 

So, if you are struggling to both remember and integrate a DMT experience, I would recommend searching for books, articles, and trip reports that relate to the particular themes of your own experience. Reading fiction, non-fiction, and anecdotes can, when you least expect it, trigger some recall or allow you to look at your experience from a different light, helping you to make sense of it. While you may not remember much of your experience, what you do remember can, as it turns out, contain a great deal of potential for meaning and growth.

3. Talk Openly About It

One of the most effective ways to aid integration, when your experience is difficult to remember, is to talk about it openly with someone else. You can turn around an experience in your head for years and wonder about what it means, but sometimes the perspective of someone else can lead you to conclusions you might not have reached on your own. This is especially true when the person you’re talking to has had similar experiences, is aware of such experiences, or is knowledgeable about areas of psychology – such as transpersonal psychology – which deal with altered states of consciousness.

When I was seeking a therapist one time during a bout of depression, I found someone who specialised in transpersonal psychology and remember thinking this person could help me examine my DMT experiences in more depth. I believed the positive nature of the experience could help me in my depressive state. When I first met the therapist, however, and voiced this intention of mine, the reaction was not what I had hoped for. Rather than view these experiences as meaningful material that could benefit me, she stressed that because I had depression I should not have used psychedelics, that I put myself at risk of harm, and that if I were to continue therapy, I would have to avoid all drug use.

Not only was this response surprising, given her training as a transpersonal psychologist, but it was also anathema to the integration I needed, as it cast the experience in a negative light, with ‘wrongness’ attached to it. I did not see this therapist again. If you are trying to integrate a DMT experience, it is crucial to be selective of who you speak to and to avoid talking about it further if you are met with any judgement. Integration is a highly personal and vulnerable process and so, if other people are to help you in this process, they will need to be open, empathetic, and non-judgemental.

Fortunately, I have seen two other therapists whose attitudes about my DMT experiences were completely different. And I am grateful that I was able to discuss these experiences so openly, especially considering that these therapists were not specifically trained (as far as I’m aware) in psychedelic integration. I talked about some elements of my mystical experience with DMT and my frustration with being unable to remember much of it.

Interestingly, both therapists had similar responses to this frustration of mine. They said something to the effect of “you will remember what is most important about the experience”, with one therapist saying that I was lucky to have had it, as it is a rare experience. I think this helped to make the process of integration much smoother, as it made me realise I didn’t have to obsess about what I do and don’t remember, or regret not being able to remember more, as the most meaningful aspects are still there, and that the experience is something to be immensely grateful for.

Again, even if an experience is hard to remember, this doesn’t mean integration isn’t going on unconsciously, affecting the way you view yourself, others, and the world at large. However, because a lot of this process is unconscious, you may find it beneficial to seek out a therapist who can work with you in becoming aware of this material and processing it, which can be conducive to personal growth.

Others find that psychedelic integration circles offer the ideal environment in which to discuss and make sense of their psychedelic experiences.

4. Write About the Experience

Writing about DMT experiences that are difficult to remember is another great way of trying to integrate them. Fleshing out ideas in writing is a different process than speaking about those ideas. You can write in a stream of consciousness sort of way, writing down whatever thoughts about the experience arise moment-to-moment. You can write in a divergent, creative way, producing as many new and interesting avenues of interpretation as you can and seeing which interpretation for you, subjectively, holds the most meaning and significance.

For me personally, writing – whether that’s privately or publicly in the form of articles – has allowed me to make a lot more sense of my DMT experiences than I think I could achieve through just introspection and conversations with others. For example, when I get some moments of clarity – moments where memories of DMT experiences start flooding into conscious awareness – I have made sure to make a note of that memory, usually as notes on my phone, or in a notepad if I have one nearby. These moments of clarity are fleeting, but trying to capture them in written form can help you create a clearer picture of the DMT experience, even if what you write down seems harder to relate to once the memory fades again.

5. Recreate the Context of the Experience

Context-dependent memory refers to the phenomenon whereby it is easier to retrieve certain memories when the context in which the memory was formed is replicated. For example, if you are struggling to remember what a DMT experience felt like, but you were listening to particular music during the trip, re-listening to that music could help you to retrieve memories of the visual, emotional, and conceptual components of the experience. The more you can do to try to recall the experience, the easier it will be to integrate.

Another aspect of context-dependent memory is state-dependent memory: the phenomenon in which it is easier to recall a memory if you are in the same state – or a similar state – in which the memory was formed. One possible reason DMT experiences can be so hard to remember is that the memories relating to such experiences (or at least some aspects of them, anyway) are state-dependent. So, if you can put yourself in the same physical or mental state in which the memory was formed, or a similar state, you may find it easier to retrieve the memories of the experience in question, which may provide you with valuable information.

You can access state-dependent memories in a variety of ways. One way would be to use DMT again, as this would mentally and physically put you in the same state in which the memory was formed relating to a previous experience. You may not even need to take a high dose, as even a light DMT experience may be similar enough in its quality to trigger the retrieval of memories.

I have not used DMT since my experience six years ago, so I can’t personally speak on the effectiveness of using DMT again to retrieve memories. However, when I occasionally used cannabis in the past, I would have vivid memories – like snapshots of hyperspace, imbued with emotions – of previous DMT experiences (although it’s hard to say which particular experiences they relate to).

Of course, if you don’t use cannabis or don’t want to, this doesn’t mean you can’t retrieve the memories in other ways. I have also remembered DMT experiences under the influence of different psychedelics, as well as experienced short moments of remembering during meditation. It seems that the ‘similar’ state you need to be in to remember a DMT experience can encompass a range of altered states.

6. Prioritise the Emotional Dimension

While many aspects of the DMT experience can be difficult to remember (e.g. the sequence of events and various details), usually one of the strongest impressions of the experience is its emotional quality. It can be easier to question and interpret how the entities and hyperspace appeared to look than how one felt entering hyperspace, traversing hyperspace, and then coming out of hyperspace.

Many strong emotions and feelings may be involved in the DMT experience, such as awe, bliss, euphoria, joy, unconditional love, gratitude, fear, panic, and the feeling of being overwhelmed. By taking the time to really feel into the emotional aspect of these experiences, you can let your mind freely engage with them, seeing what meaning arises.

Emotionally-charged memories may be connected to important insights and lessons. For instance, you might recall how you felt when experiencing love and comfort from the entities during the experience. You may realise that this was connected to greater well-being and so decide for yourself that in order to experience this greater sense of well-being in daily life, it is wise to try to treat yourself just as the entities did. Part of integrating this lesson may involve more attention placed on self-care and self-compassion. This is just one possible interpretation, of course. Integrating the emotional aspect of the DMT experience will always be highly personal.

By prioritising the emotional dimension, you may find you can remember more details of your DMT experience, as well as make more sense of it, offering you some nuggets of wisdom when you least expect it.

A DMT experience might be brief and hard to remember, but it can also be extremely powerful and rich. With patience, self-awareness, and conscious effort, you can unearth meaning and benefits from a single experience over the course of many years.

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Sam Woolfe is a freelance writer based in London. His main areas of interest include mental health, mystical experiences, the history of psychedelics, and the philosophy of psychedelics. You can follow him on Twitter and find more of his work at www.samwoolfe.com.

The post How to Integrate a Difficult-to-Remember DMT Experience appeared first on Maps of the Mind.

This is a guest post from my friend Patrick about his recent experience smoking 5-MeO-DMT (also known as bufo, toad, or 5). Thanks to Patrick for sharing his experience here.

September 13th, 2018

Four days ago I had my second journey with Bufo Alvarius / 5-MeO-DMT. Like the first time, it was incredibly profound and there are no words to adequately describe what I experienced. But, I’ll try anyway.

Preparation

This happened on a weekend retreat with a group of around 20 others. As part of the retreat, many activities were supposed to prepare us for the experience. There were yoga classes, energy work, a Kambo treatment and excellent vegan food. All of this contributed to me being in an incredibly relaxed state when it was my turn for taking five. In particular, the Kambo experience seemed to have an incredibly grounding effect on me. I probably was more relaxed than when I smoked weed for the first time. This is undeniably the best possible scenario to be in when doing the strongest psychedelic substance on earth.

The retreat took place in mainland Europe

So, on Sunday afternoon I met with the practitioner and an assistant in a nice spot outside the house. After a short round of breathing exercises, I inhaled the vapour of the toad secretion and even before completely finishing the pipe, the medicine started to kick in strongly.

The Experience

My perception and sense of self began to dissolve. It seemed that I merged with my surroundings until there was nothing left of “me”. There was no fighting or struggling with what was happening. I remember on my first encounter with this medicine, at this point an incredible amount energy surged through my body and briefly I got somewhat panicky. This time it was more gentle – more like a soft melting together of everything that I thought of as me and the world, inside and outside, self and other (I initially had my eyes open). The last memory I have of that stage is that everything was shining with an ever increasing white light until I was completely gone.

I don’t really have tangible memories of that stage, but what was very clear was that it was an experience of utter peace. Maybe it could be described as a state of pure consciousness without contents. The words “emptiness” and “void” come to mind, but the fact that I remember the feeling of peace suggests that some part of me-ness was still there. I can’t really say much more about this part. I think it maybe lasted for about 10 minutes, during which I was calmly laying on my back (reconstructed from the observations of others).

My True Nature

This is where it gets really interesting. At this point, some form of identity and mind came back online, and at the same time a huge download of information hit me, maybe not huge but more like all-encompassing. It felt like direct access to ultimate truth. This lead to the recognition, or rather, the remembering, of my true nature. What I thought I kinda of understood after sitting meditation retreats and reading books about non-duality was experienced directly now: I am not my body or my mind or some fragment of reality, I am the totality of it all. It’s all me. There exists nothing else beside me: pure Being, the Self, Brahman, God. If you haven’t experienced this, it sounds silly. If you have, it changes everything. For a brief moment I was struggling to accept this (“Wow, there is only God, that means it’s me, but … wow, does that mean, uh.. whoa!”), but eventually I did and it was like something snapped.

Art by Marcelo Dalla

Embodiment of this understanding: This moment was an experience of endless joy, absolute satisfaction and pure perfection. It was like I was in a big arena and there was cheering from all directions. Later I was told that I repeatedly shouted “Yes! YES! YES! YEEEES…”. It felt like the most complex math equation in existence was finally solved and the result was the simplest thing one could imagine: 1.

Everything made sense now. It felt like my heart exploded into a feeling of almost unbearable love (for myself) and joy (of being). It was very clear that this is IT. This is what it’s all about. This is the highest truth. There were no doubts about this. It was self-evident, as obvious as the fact that it hurts when you pinch your arm. It’s so simple. Just accept yourself as what you truly are, and you become one with it. That’s all that’s needed, saying YES to life, to God, to yourself. I was sure that this state was permanent, and that I would never come back into dualistic reality again. I was home now, and I had no plans to leave.

At some point, I regained the feeling of my body. I heard birds chirping and felt the warmth of the sun on my skin. I opened my eyes and saw the sky and the people guiding me through the experience. This didn’t feel like coming back from a trip into reality but more like the exact opposite: I was entering this virtual reality again, the reality I’ve chosen to be part of. My ego instantly started to do its thing: Thoughts like “Wow, I must have been going through something very special here!”, “I hope I didn’t do anything embarrassing!”, “I should do something now, shouldn’t I?”. The joy I’d felt was still with me though. The simplicity and perfection of it were still tangibly close. I felt I could leave this dream world anytime I wished. But at the same time I noticed feelings of lack, struggle, doubts and desires coming back. Right! The suffering! I totally forgot about that.

Reentry Of Ego

Over the next few minutes I watched my ego reassemble part by part. This happened so quickly and spontaneously that it was a little shocking to witness. It felt almost mechanical. Like a software that is being reinstalled on an operating system. Within 15 minutes or so “I” felt almost completely “normal” again and was on my way to get lunch in the kitchen. Only later did I find some time for myself to contemplate the experience.

A few days later what has happened is still very much with me. The most important insight for me right now is what I felt during this enlightening phase: that pure perfection, infinite love and joy is already our true nature. It’s right here, right now, only veiled by illusion.

For some reason this moment just before I was ready to accept this and say YES to it comes back again and again. Every night since it happened I wake up (usually around 3 in the morning) and it seems I’m in this position again where I can freely choose to identify with my true being. Sometimes I’m in there for a few (timeless) seconds, most of the time though I feel a strong fear and resistance and chicken out. But in any case, I’m filled with a deep feeling of contentment afterwards because I remember what I experienced and know that in the end there is nothing to worry about.

I can’t put into words the gratitude I feel for having experienced this.

Art by Krystleyez

“I searched for God and found only myself.
I searched for myself and found only God.”
– Rumi

The post Welcome Home: My 5-MeO-DMT Experience appeared first on Maps of the Mind.

To summarize, it was:

• Overwhelming – Monumental scale
• Utterly bizarre – As I said during the trip – ‘just fucking absolutely insane’
• Unimaginably complex – Mind. Blown.
• Interdimensional travel – I didn’t get ‘high’, ‘fucked up’, or ‘wasted’. It was as if I was zapped through a wormhole to a different universe.

Preparation

I approached the experience with great curiosity and respect. I wanted a full breakthrough experience and did my homework on the technique. I had a friend sit for me in a quiet, empty apartment and spoke with him about my expectations beforehand. I meditated directly before. And I filmed the whole thing, so I could get a sense of timeline, see myself through the experience, and so I could start talking about the experience as soon as possible and have my thoughts captured – it is well known that the experience slips away very quickly and becomes hard to recall, like a dream. It worked, so I’ve written this with the aid of notes and the video footage.

Smoking

I took the first huge hit, things started feeling wobbly. I took the second and my vision started becoming warped and I could tell it was really kicking off. I handed the bong to my friend because I could tell it would be difficult to hold for much longer. McKenna’s advice ran through my mind, that even though it really doesn’t feel like you need anymore, you need to push for the third hit to fully break through. My friend held the bong and lit for the third hit while I inhaled. I lay back and closed my eyes.

Blank

At this point I can’t remember what happened. Total blank. Here there is a period of 3 minutes that are unaccounted for and missing from my memory. The video shows me lying with my eyes closed and still breathing just as if I were asleep. The next thing I became aware of was an uncomfortable sensation. I wasn’t sure what it was or where it came from and it took me an eternity to think of what I needed, and then as I opened my eyes, the word that I was looking for came to me. With much struggle I faintly mumbled the word ‘water’ – my throat was dry as hell. My friend jumped up and handed me a glass of squash, at which point I threw up into my mouth, but I was still on another plane – brilliant streams of luminous colour shot out like lightning as I vomited. My buddy grabbed a bowl and held it in front of me while I spewed. It was quick and I lay back again. It was from this point that I again became aware that I had taken DMT. As I lay back and closed my eyes, I entered another universe.

Weird, Intense, Beyond Comprehension

Completely insane. Utterly alien. Wholly bizarre. So far removed from any other type of experience I’ve ever had. Next level freaky. This was interdimensional travel to a parallel universe, another tunnel of reality. Everything was of colours I’ve never seen before and at an unfathomable level of complexity and detail. I was entirely overwhelmed by the scale of what I was experiencing. It was information overload and then some. This wasn’t a human experience, humans aren’t capable of perceiving this much information.

I’ll try to explain it by way of analogy. Imagine your brain is plugged in to a machine that feeds you every single living person’s experience of the world, at the same time. So you are plugged in to 7 billion pairs of eyes and ears, every thought, emotion and feeling – receiving all that information as it is happening in real time. As well, you get a live feed of every single computer that is running, plus a direct download of the entire contents of the internet- every page, video, photo- every last piece and byte of information. You then make connections between all of this information and how it all relates to build a real time, continually shifting picture of reality in an immersive experience. DMT is on that level in the informational sense, and more bizarre than I can think of a way to describe.

Getting past the initial shock I began to come to terms with the experience and drew long deep breaths. I lay there and admired the DMTverse in awe.

The DMTverse

It was a grand expansive space – dark but shot through with brilliant colours. The fabric of everything was made up of incredible and perfectly mathematical patterns. I had a panoramic view of some kind of organic factory, I saw massive cogs made of an earth-like substance churning. The whole scene was forever subtly shifting, metamorphosing and with absolute synergy between all things – everything moved in accordance with everything else and energy seemed to be flowing symbiotically between all things. Everything was overflowing with life and energy. I saw inscriptions of letters from an alien alphabet that seemed to have been made by intelligent life. And then I was in a…

City Of The Future

Everything was so advanced. I’m not talking flying cars or impressive gadgetry or any technology that we might imagine humanity might ever possess. I’m not even talking how it might be if we were to time travel and show a smartphone to a caveman. The jump in the level of complexity was like the gap between the first formations of atoms in the earliest stages of the formation of the universe, through the birth of stars and the formation of solar systems, to when molecules combined to create living organisms. Entropy over 9 billion years, then. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could even experience this, but that’s the mystery of DMT.

“It may be that DMT makes us able to perceive what physicists call “dark matter” – the 95 per cent of the universe’s mass that is known to exist but that at present remains invisible to our senses and instruments.”
– Graham Hancock

Somehow Sober

What’s interesting is that I maintained a sober cognition and consciousness throughout the experience. It was unique to other drugs in this regard. For example, when I drink alchohol I get inebriated and my cognition gets sloppy, with MDMA I feel euphoria and more loved up, when I smoke weed I get stoned or high and sometimes anxious, with salvia I’ll get confusion. However, with DMT, there was no ‘druggy’ effect, not dazed, confused, fucked up – it was just like I had been zapped through a portal into a parallel universe. Like my consciousness had just been picked up by a cosmic deity and thrown out into a world that was wholly other. Whereas other drugs enhance our existing reality – dulling it, numbing us to certain sensations, or amplifying it, making colours more vivid or lines more wavy – this was just transition to a different reality.

If you’ve ever seen the 90’s movie Contact, that’s a great analogy. You really do go through the wormhole on that inter-dimensional journey that Jodie Foster goes on. In fact I felt so much that that part of the movie was the perfect analogy for the experience that I googled it after to see if anyone else had made the same connection, and sure enough, loads of other people had commented the exact same thing.

Real?

Is the experience real? I don’t think anyone can really answer that question but I can say how it felt. It felt absolutely real. It felt more real than anything else I’ve ever experienced – including my experience of typing this at my computer right now. This is where you start to go down the rabbit hole. I’ve had hallucinations from other drugs, like mind-movies, but this was nothing like that. Like I said before, it was as if I were just in another place. It wasn’t as if I was observing pictures or patterns, but that I was IN another universe, which is actually a deeper level of reality – deeper in the sense that it’s truer than the one we normally inhabit.

Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave

If it really is a deeper level of reality, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is the perfect analogy. The world as we understand it in a normal waking consciousness is the cave, a normal person is the prisoner, and DMT is what drags the prisoner upwards and out of of the cave. I see the part of my trip which is blank in my memory as the part in which the prisoner is blinded by the radiant light of the sun and is unable to see even one of the things now said to be true.

This fits in with the DMT experience being far richer and more detailed than our everyday experience.

No Contact

People often report contact with other entities and beings. To be clear, nothing like that happened to me. Everything seemed to be teeming with life and energy but I didn’t have any communication or contact with beings of any kind.

Ineffable, Unimaginable

DMT is the definition of ineffable. Trying to describe it seems akin to trying to describe colours to a blind person. That’s why I’ve used so many analogies and said things that don’t totally make sense here. That’s DMT for you. There is simply no imagining what it’s like. If you want a peek behind the cosmic curtain you’ll just have to go see for yourself.

Had your DMT trip, but can’t remember shit?
Read more: How to Integrate a Difficult-to-Remember DMT Experience

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The post My Breakthrough DMT Trip (And Thoughts On It) appeared first on Maps of the Mind.

With the sun overhead Pedro exhales a lungful of smoke, passes the pipe on, and goes back to checking the group’s food supplies in his bag. “I’m so high” Molly says amused as she gazes around at the empty village street we’re sat on the side of. I take the pipe on its way through, the sweet taste of Mexican ganja fills my lungs and I get excited about our imminent adventure; we’re heading into the desert in search of peyote – the small, spineless mescaline containing cactus that grows in this part of Mexico.

Sketch by ‘Lily’ (Lucy Porter) depicting the changa trip round the fire.

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