Greetings!

[Blundering_Novice]

Hello good people! I have known about this subject for a few years, done LOTS of reading, and SWIM might be preparing for his first voyage in a few weeks. The components are being assembled as SWIM types.... SWIM is no stranger to 'stepping sideways' via other molecules.

What I want to say first is how utterly impressed I am with the denizens of this site. I have done quite a bit of browsing today and I am overwhelmed by the maturity, thoughtfulness, and intelligent approach assumed by the posters here. It's so reassuring and self-affirming to find like-minded people out in internetland. I was going to bemoan the current state of affairs in regards to an individual's ability to legally explore his/her own CNS as they see fit, but that's preaching to the choir. However, I am pretty curious to how the DEA rationalizes the prohibition of something that we are all carrying around in our bodies anyway.

Anyhow, I've been interested in this topic for a while, done lots of reading here and there, but discovering this site has really been an encouraging find. I look forward to contributing more in the future.....



[edit] SWIM would also like to add that he is about a 6.7 on Richard Dawkins' 7 point Atheist scale! So SWIM is quite curious to see if the upcoming journeys slide it back a ways.

 

[Entropymancer]

Greetings, and welcome

In regards to the way the DEA rationalizes their control over a chemical within all of our bodies, I've come to the impression that it's not something they seem to think about in a moral/rational way. That's simply not how they think about these things. The DEA mindset is more like a guard-dog mentality: they are very territorial about these things, and are threatened by a perceived lack of control. But if you look at the supreme court decision upholding the UDV church's right to use ayahuasca, as soon as it was determined that this was legal, the DEA immediately became very helpful in making sure the church understood the guidelines for importation and storage... much like a guard-dog becoming accustomed to a new yard. Their objection to DMT doesn't seem to be ideologically grounded at all! It's a very strange mentality.

About the athiesm thing, I think you'll find that the DMT experience will only slide it back a ways if that's something that you're looking for out of the experience. It's surely an awe-inspiring experience, and one that contains great personal relevance and benefits.... but it is not an experience incompatible with atheism at all. It's only if you accept subjective experience as literally reflecting objective reality that its likely to change your views on the subject. I find it's all a matter of interpretation. The benefits of the experience are undeniable, but the source of the experience is currently unknowable (and I've not yet encountered any objective evidence that supports the interpretation that it has an external source). If you're seeking theism, it can provide a foundation for that. If you're seeking to improve yourself, it can provide that too. But neither of those two objectives is contingent upon the other (in my experience).

[For myself, I guess I'd say I'm a 6 on Dawkin's scale... what keeps me from being a 7 is the variability of the definition of God. I'm entirely comfortable with the pantheist definition of God.... I hold the sheer tremendous wonder of nature in the same reverence as a pantheist, though I personally am not inclined to define it as God simply due to the anthropomorphic connotations that "God" has in the common parlance]

 

[Blundering_Novice]

Thank you for the warm welcome.


Now I must add that I have never discounted the possibility (a likelihood, in my estimation) that there are greater intelligences than man in the universe. Stories of machine elves, green Shivas, preying/(praying?!) mantises, other dimensions, and so on, are probably the most compelling element (though not the sole elements) about this whole DMT thing to me personally.

I saw a youtube video of Dennis McKenna talking about Junk DNA, Panspermia, and so on. Maybe you have seen this....but he speculates that perhaps this relatively simple molecule was left behind by these beings for us to establish communication when we became 'smart enough' to do so.

I am prone to such wild speculation myself, and hearing him talk about that really presses my imaginative buttons. No, I don't *believe* this, but I don't NOT *believe* it either! Its a very interesting notion. And in a way, it makes a LOT of sense....

I look at this as, at least, an experiment in consciousness, and at most as a possibility to tap into objective locations and intelligences that lie outside our normal reality tunnels. I had a very brief but encouraging email exchange with Marko Rodriguez, the fellow who postulates the Prime Number experiment with the entities. This is the kind of stuff that sets my imagination on fire!

Needless to say, the S.H.E.s talked about on this site are also of great interest to me!

 

[Blundering_Novice]

Being that I find the goals and 'attitude' of this forum quite in line with my own, let me hereby express my intent to become a full member as soon as the overlords see fit to allow me the honor!