headphoneperson
Rising Star
Several days ago, after 20 mg sublingual harmine and a single inhalation of 25 mg vaporized DMT in my quiet backyard studio, I witnessed a particularly bizarre and (in the words of an esteemed fellow nexian) 'self-evidently real' entity. It seemed worthy of some sort of note, so here it is.
As I exhaled, I found myself in a vaguely familiar but typically lurid and garish room. Before I even had time to settle in, however, there was suddenly a giant entity trapped inside this room with me, and it began flailing about in absolute dumb animal terror -- flailing and thrashing itself against the walls and ceiling and floors all around me in a desperate and frenzied panic to get out. It was like a giant butterfly trapped in a tiny killing jar, raging against some arbitrary and only dimly-understood doom.
Strangely, I myself (or what was left of me) was not at all terrified. In fact, I felt distinctly calm and relaxed. As I watched this wild display all around me I was filled only with infinite pity and sadness for this entity's blind terror, trapped in this room with me. And this entity was so distinctly and absolutely "Other", so completely alien, that I began to marvel at its unique and seemingly impossible existence, even as I contemplated how I might assist, help it escape, or calm it down.
And then this extraordinary realization began to emerge. A realization that this entity had been trapped by the very act of my smoking. A realization that my eyes were still open and this entity had emerged from some totally alien place into the room with me, in my room, by my actions, only to be suddenly and permanently trapped here against its will.
As an aside, I often smoke DMT with my eyes open. Not that it usually matters much. In fact, it usually quickly becomes impossible to tell whether my eyes are open or closed, with endless massive fractal frame-stacking trails of everything I see with eyes closed tumbling over into everything I see with eyes open and back again until I am utterly displaced. Although I do love going in with eyes closed too, I am particularly fond of watching the world about me suddenly blossom into the chaotic circus of fractal whirligigs and cuckoo-clock madness as though the very gears and springs of reality itself have ricocheted into the room like an exploding pocket watch.
And I have regularly had telepathic discourse on all manner of wonder with chairs, guitars, lamps, extension cords, table legs, tree branches -- all of them so electrically and vastly brimming with life and intelligence and individual consciousness that I now consider many of them to be good friends and relations of a sort.
But the extraordinary aspect of this particular entity now flapping about in the room with me was the fact that it was not an actual everyday inanimate object suddenly unveiled to be some sort of self-transforming machine elf. This seemed somehow entirely and self-evidently...different.
...
Then, more clearly, as I slowly began to return, I realized that the entity and my gaze were moving exactly in tandem. And then the question: exactly who was leading whom here in this hectic dance? Were my eyes, darting wildly about the room, one-and-the same with the entity's own crazed desperation? And here, suddenly, came the full realization that the entity was in fact the crashing about of the room itself on my retina. My eye movements WERE the entity -- with various appendages and wings randomly stitched together out of a bookshelf here, a ceiling rafter there, doorjambs and table legs co-opted as arms and antennae in this manic tumble. I found it startling that my brain could so seamlessly string together this random parade of retinal fire into a corporeal being and coherent consciousness, and then simultaneously perceive it as so absolutely distinct from myself that I was moved to pity its apparent desperate alien terror.
Or perhaps it was not so extraordinary? To be sure, I was speechless after this spectacle, even as all this naked craziness was safely tucked back into the starched collar and black tie of daily reality. And I did indeed sit scratching my head for many hours afterward. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make a certain sort of sense…
I got to thinking how everyday I watch my two-year-old daughter see intelligence and intention in everything from stuffed animals to dinner forks. The world for her is full of life, teeming with entities everywhere -- some well-intentioned, some benign, a few malevolent. It is a matter of course to her that the family car might have as many desires and needs and intentions as she does.
In fact, she seems predisposed -- wired even -- to see intent in everything about her. Entire tracts and regions in her developing 2-year-old brain (e.g., her temporo-parietal junction, her temporopolar region, her anterior medial prefrontal cortex, etc.) are being recruited and wired for perceiving and anticipating and predicting perspective and intent in others. And I think that neither she, nor the rest of us, can help it. Theory of mind. This is the very thing that allowed us to negotiate the tenuous communities of the Pleistocene. This is the thing of outwitting predators, enemies, and the competition. This is the thing of cooperation. This is the thing of love, of comprehending someone else's soul.
And, perhaps for some of us at least, it is the thing of seeing the face of Jesus in the scorch marks on a grilled-cheese sandwich. Perhaps we all are a bit too good at this relentless animism? We project intent and intelligence into all manner of places it doesn't belong. We over-interpret just so we don't miss the subtle and possibly important cues and intents of the "Other," whoever it may be. Perhaps that made very good evolutionary sense, given the subtlety and complexity of the all-important social milieu. But therein too is the origin of our magical thinking, of sensing the presence of the "Other", whistling in the dark to appease the ghosts, the spirits, the god(s), the entities emerging into our rooms. Add DMT into that mix and I, for one, begin seeing entities even in something as intangible as the movement of my eyes across a room. I can't seem to help it.
Anyway, I can think of no better evidence for the aptness of the term 'psychedelic' -- 'mind made manifest' -- than this experience. For me, DMT is indeed a mirror, no matter how abstract or powerful, alien, or even self-evidently 'real' it might seem.
As I exhaled, I found myself in a vaguely familiar but typically lurid and garish room. Before I even had time to settle in, however, there was suddenly a giant entity trapped inside this room with me, and it began flailing about in absolute dumb animal terror -- flailing and thrashing itself against the walls and ceiling and floors all around me in a desperate and frenzied panic to get out. It was like a giant butterfly trapped in a tiny killing jar, raging against some arbitrary and only dimly-understood doom.
Strangely, I myself (or what was left of me) was not at all terrified. In fact, I felt distinctly calm and relaxed. As I watched this wild display all around me I was filled only with infinite pity and sadness for this entity's blind terror, trapped in this room with me. And this entity was so distinctly and absolutely "Other", so completely alien, that I began to marvel at its unique and seemingly impossible existence, even as I contemplated how I might assist, help it escape, or calm it down.
And then this extraordinary realization began to emerge. A realization that this entity had been trapped by the very act of my smoking. A realization that my eyes were still open and this entity had emerged from some totally alien place into the room with me, in my room, by my actions, only to be suddenly and permanently trapped here against its will.
As an aside, I often smoke DMT with my eyes open. Not that it usually matters much. In fact, it usually quickly becomes impossible to tell whether my eyes are open or closed, with endless massive fractal frame-stacking trails of everything I see with eyes closed tumbling over into everything I see with eyes open and back again until I am utterly displaced. Although I do love going in with eyes closed too, I am particularly fond of watching the world about me suddenly blossom into the chaotic circus of fractal whirligigs and cuckoo-clock madness as though the very gears and springs of reality itself have ricocheted into the room like an exploding pocket watch.
And I have regularly had telepathic discourse on all manner of wonder with chairs, guitars, lamps, extension cords, table legs, tree branches -- all of them so electrically and vastly brimming with life and intelligence and individual consciousness that I now consider many of them to be good friends and relations of a sort.
But the extraordinary aspect of this particular entity now flapping about in the room with me was the fact that it was not an actual everyday inanimate object suddenly unveiled to be some sort of self-transforming machine elf. This seemed somehow entirely and self-evidently...different.
...
Then, more clearly, as I slowly began to return, I realized that the entity and my gaze were moving exactly in tandem. And then the question: exactly who was leading whom here in this hectic dance? Were my eyes, darting wildly about the room, one-and-the same with the entity's own crazed desperation? And here, suddenly, came the full realization that the entity was in fact the crashing about of the room itself on my retina. My eye movements WERE the entity -- with various appendages and wings randomly stitched together out of a bookshelf here, a ceiling rafter there, doorjambs and table legs co-opted as arms and antennae in this manic tumble. I found it startling that my brain could so seamlessly string together this random parade of retinal fire into a corporeal being and coherent consciousness, and then simultaneously perceive it as so absolutely distinct from myself that I was moved to pity its apparent desperate alien terror.
Or perhaps it was not so extraordinary? To be sure, I was speechless after this spectacle, even as all this naked craziness was safely tucked back into the starched collar and black tie of daily reality. And I did indeed sit scratching my head for many hours afterward. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make a certain sort of sense…
I got to thinking how everyday I watch my two-year-old daughter see intelligence and intention in everything from stuffed animals to dinner forks. The world for her is full of life, teeming with entities everywhere -- some well-intentioned, some benign, a few malevolent. It is a matter of course to her that the family car might have as many desires and needs and intentions as she does.
In fact, she seems predisposed -- wired even -- to see intent in everything about her. Entire tracts and regions in her developing 2-year-old brain (e.g., her temporo-parietal junction, her temporopolar region, her anterior medial prefrontal cortex, etc.) are being recruited and wired for perceiving and anticipating and predicting perspective and intent in others. And I think that neither she, nor the rest of us, can help it. Theory of mind. This is the very thing that allowed us to negotiate the tenuous communities of the Pleistocene. This is the thing of outwitting predators, enemies, and the competition. This is the thing of cooperation. This is the thing of love, of comprehending someone else's soul.
And, perhaps for some of us at least, it is the thing of seeing the face of Jesus in the scorch marks on a grilled-cheese sandwich. Perhaps we all are a bit too good at this relentless animism? We project intent and intelligence into all manner of places it doesn't belong. We over-interpret just so we don't miss the subtle and possibly important cues and intents of the "Other," whoever it may be. Perhaps that made very good evolutionary sense, given the subtlety and complexity of the all-important social milieu. But therein too is the origin of our magical thinking, of sensing the presence of the "Other", whistling in the dark to appease the ghosts, the spirits, the god(s), the entities emerging into our rooms. Add DMT into that mix and I, for one, begin seeing entities even in something as intangible as the movement of my eyes across a room. I can't seem to help it.
Anyway, I can think of no better evidence for the aptness of the term 'psychedelic' -- 'mind made manifest' -- than this experience. For me, DMT is indeed a mirror, no matter how abstract or powerful, alien, or even self-evidently 'real' it might seem.
