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DMT in Plants

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Ethnochemist

Ethnochemist

Rising Star
Has anyone ever read any articles about how/why DMT is in plants?

What evolutionary advantage is DMT in plants? The only thing that swim can think of is that animals would use the plant and spread the plants' seeds somehow...but swim doesn't think that animals that cultivate DMT-plants have been around long enough for this adaptation to develop.

Does it provide any benefits the plants themselves?

E.C.
 
i always kinda saw it in a plant metabolisism light - my theory only seems to work with plants that contain both dmt and an maoi tho.
or it could be that as we have evolved side by side with plants we have created a portion of them and them of us. We farm and spread their seeds if they give us some thing in return be it fruit or spice. perhaps we did cultivate them but the knowledge was lost between era's. idk?
 
The elves left it here as a doorway into hyperspace...

& or

Maybe its a defense mechanism to keep more harmful animals away(poison)??
& us tripping =P
 
Do you not think that plants use DMT the same way we do? to access other dimensions, to dream and travel in the astral and hyperspacial realms.
 
Most plants produce secondary metabolites (like dmt) for defense or communication with other plants and or organisms that are involved in pollination or seed dispersal. DMT is no different. DMT is found in many plants because its a simple molecule for plants to make. Tryptophan its amino acid precursor is everywhere and its very easy biosynthetically to make dmt from it. There is evidence that dmt negatively effects certain grazing animals in grasses but I am not sure if other compounds are involved. It could also do who knows what to fungi microorganisms and certain insects. DMT has been around long before humans and we have nothing to do with why its in plants (at least in an evolutionary sense).
 
often whilst under the fungal guidance or in hyperspace i see the entities i come into contact with as manifestations of plants, as in there physical body is in the same physical world as us but their mental body or conciousness is there, we just visit there and by learing from those entities we are learning directly from the plant.
 
Linga Sarira said:
Do you not think that plants use DMT the same way we do? to access other dimensions, to dream and travel in the astral and hyperspacial realms.
Click to expand...

I often think that.
I mean they are conscouisness just like us, so it could be that they are constatnly in hyperspace. Thats why they never move :d
 
Why all the supernatural explanations? DMT is a perfectly normal compound. Plants make it to deter most organisms away. Humans just happen to like the effect it has on their central nervous system. There is no indication that this alkaloid nor any other alkaloid present in plants makes them conscious in the sense that we are. While plants use chemical signals to respond to environmental stress's or cues and this can be seen as a form of intelligence it certainly is much much different then the way a nervous system works and is not really comparable.

To say that dmt is involved in plant consiousness you are going to have to think about all the other types of secondary metabolites that plants make and then wonder are they also involved. What about an outright toxin that kills cells? Are they also conscious making molecules? Its not fair to just pick DMT because our brains happen to respond strongly to it and think that the plant makes it for us. That is a very humancentric view point. The plant could care less if this compound blew your brains out and left you to rot nearby so it can suck up your nutrients.
 
often in life there is more to things than just maths and standard science - perhaps thats just romanticizing the situation tho. Shot for the wet blanket dude :)
 
Agreed with Burnt just because DMT has profound effects on our consciousness does not mean it is magical. It just shows us that it acts on areas of our brain involved in consciousness. There are millions of other plant alkaloids they are all inactive without an organism to ingest them. There is no reason to believe in plant consciousness, nor any reason why DMT would be involved.
 
bufoman said:
Agreed with Burnt just because DMT has profound effects on our consciousness does not mean it is magical. It just shows us that it acts on areas of our brain involved in consciousness. There are millions of other plant alkaloids they are all inactive without an organism to ingest them. There is no reason to believe in plant consciousness, nor any reason why DMT would be involved.
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well there is no reason NOT to believe in plant consciousness either, though I dont mean an intellect like ours or consciously making alkaloids for us.

I see all life as conscious in the sense that they are present in each moment as a live being. the spark is consciousness.

the idea that consciousness is created by the brain is nothing but a supposition, arising from mistakingly concluding a cause and effect from what is merely positive relationship (i.e. the brain for sure affects consciousness or how we experience it, but saying its the cause or generator of consciousness is a rushed inference). If one changes the screen of the computer and sees things changing or breaks it and stop seeing the images, does this prove the screen made the images? no, you could even attach another screen and see the same images, they are well stored elsewhere.

experiences with psychedelics have helped showing me that there is a more basic consciousness, a primal awareness that is before the brain functions. in this way, even single celled organism has this 'right of life'. this also makes one acquire respect for every life form.

though again I must note that I do not subscribe to the general romantic view of plant consciousness or mckenna-style suppositions of plants making alkaloids for us or so on
 
Ok we can get into a philosophical discussion about what conscious is and is it ubiquitus but that is unrelated to the point I am making. If we take this world for how it is and not worry about metaphysical explanations plants make secondary metabolites for defense and communication. There is no other explanation that has ANY backing.

But lets make this clear. Plants do not think period. Mammals and various other organisms think. I mean thought they do not have thought not that they do not have consciousness because that kind of discussion belongs in the realm of philosophy and metaphysics. If you think plants think you really need to back that up because its an almost outrageous claim to make. I don't care how many times you think you encountered plant spirits while high on the plant that you ate. SWIM has seen them too but that does not make them real.

This is not meant to insult anyones beliefs but I think people who take plant compounds should know why they are there. At least what science has to say. You don't have to listen to science or really care what science sais but these are pretty well established theories.
 
While the brain doesn't necessarily create consciousness, it is certainly intricately involved in the specific state of the mind which we call consciousness. (self awareness). I did assume that this is what you meant. Consciousness may be a true part of reality independent of matter but our unique forms called experience depend on the matter of the brain. Check out the reality thread, where there was a great discussion. Of course if all is consciousness, (everything not just life) then so are chemicals and everything else. It does all depend on your def on consciousness i considered self awareness for this conversation. We are gonna have to start defining our terms befre we start a thread.... I just think that DMT in plants has nothing to do with any form of awareness consciousness or other forms. It seems much more logical that it plays an evolutionary role in the survival of the plant. I am not claiming to know what but it may be protection from insects, (tryptamines kill insects) or for some other reason.
 
yes I agree with you both.. btw burnt, when someone meets plant entities, maybe it's a sort of.. ahmm... talk with our own plant selves, if that makes any sense. I think of it in a sort of jungian way, where plants spirits are archetypes that we may encounter, but are part of us also. I also think that, just like we have 'older brains' together with the recent cortex, we also have even earlier 'life forms' inside of us, and maybe we can connect to those crystallized early experiences. I mean, a universally accepted theory of memory is still up for grabs. Maybe it is possible. Maybe not, but in any case I still see the symbolic and practical validity of one having a 'plant spirit' experience and transforming that into action, into being more respectful and friendly towards other life forms such as plants

as for the 'what are the alkaloids for', I think that the 'insect protection' explanation might be true but not the whole truth. Alkaloids might have a variety of purpouses. Whether one of them is to form symbiotic relationship with other lifeforms through the high they provide or if thats 'accidental', I dont know, but definitely it gives them some sort of evolutionary advantage due to it, now with us humans cultivating them.
 
I agree with you burnt. I have seen these entities too but that doesn't mean they exist outside of SWIM's mind. There is no reason to believe such a thing. The brain can do amazing things, look at dreams all that is created with out any sensory input.
Regarding the role of DMT:
True I guess it is also possible that there is not a reason yet and now it is co-existence with humans. Sometimes random mutations (phenotypes) are present and lack a reason until one is found which then favors the evolution. If it is a neutral mutation and doesn't hurt the plant then there doesn't have to be a reason it may just be there and if it benefits or damages the plants fitness then evolution will give it a reason. I don't now. i don't think we fully understand evolution yet, either, 99% of our DNA does not code for proteins. Much of it is for regulation and structure but a large portion is still unaccounted for. There could be some logic to the madness(?).
 
True, since humans got interested in certain alkaloids from certain plants, a given plant's the alkaloid(s) indeed assumed another role, an evolutionary role.

But re to the opinions that plant alkaloids are used in forming a "plant consciousness" or whatever, is sounds a bit like the guy who lost his keys in the night and he's looking for them around the lamp-post, because this is where he can see. But his keys might have been lost in a totally different place, miles away.

That is to say that people have experienced all this consciousness expanding thing with dmt; this is their lamp-post illuminated area. They try to find what dmt does in the plants under this lamp-post. This is way assumptive to ever be correct.

If dmt had been isolated before the psychedelic revolution and had been used as a fungicide or a plant hormone, then people might have been in retrospect trying to ascribe a role for dmt in humans under the lamp-post's light that it may be used as a fungicide or a hormone. Not as a psychedelic
 
re to bufo:

We dont even know what exactly mind is, also depends on definitions and such, so saying its 'inside or outside the mind' doesnt make too much sense. Werent you the one saying that reality is always an interpretation of our mind, or 'created' by our mind, and that information may be in a totally different 'medium' ?

about 'junk' dna, I wonder if it could be some sort of memory from 'ancient lives', from the evolutionary past.
 
Nature has some randomness to its methods. And evolution is a relative thing. it depends on the environment and the times. There may be a reason there may not be, sometimes things may be present as a precursor to an evolutionary benefit. It has to be this way, DNA can not predict (with 100% certainty) if a specific thing will be beneficial, negative or neutral. It all depends on the environment and situation something negative in one may be positive in another and visa versa. DNA has to change it has to take risks to adapt and evolve. So the reason may not exist yet, but it also may. I think it has something to do with a pesticide,although we don't know and we may not be able to. What if it was a pesticide and was so effective it wiped out the entire predatory species. (they couldn't adapt) so they aren't around anymore so what favored the evolution is now gone, but it still remains, weather it finds another purpose or not depends.
 
endlessness said:
re to bufo:

We dont even know what exactly mind is, also depends on definitions and such, so saying its 'inside or outside the mind' doesnt make too much sense. Werent you the one saying that reality is always an interpretation of our mind, or 'created' by our mind, and that information may be in a totally different 'medium' ?

about 'junk' dna, I wonder if it could be some sort of memory from 'ancient lives', from the evolutionary past.
Click to expand...

The mind is created by the brain. It is based off of patterns of electrical input received from the sense organs. What I was saying is that there may not be a true external euclidian reality but there is some external information source. Our mind is an interpretation of this information, but it would be naive to think it is a perfect little model. We can never imagine true reality because the very act of imagining (seeing, smelling, tasting, touching,) are all things of the mind, they have no true existence. The properties of the mind are very different from the properties of the external reality.
There is something outside of the mind, this is for certain. You can make these distinctions. This is how chemicals electricity and matter are able to alter the state of the mind, it alters the machinery that creates the mind. Of course though the mind exists within this reality so is it really separate? yes and no but you understand what I mean. it is different, you can never see true reality, this is impossible, there is a separation both physical and logical.
Check out the reality thread if you wanna get into this topic.
I thin junk DNA could have information regarding ancestry information. This is a very likely possibility. Now how does the DNA read this information and use it to drive evolution?
 
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