Healing the Terror

[Game]

Hi Nexus,

I had a series of what, at the time, felt like unbearably terrible experiences on DMT several months ago. The struggle to come to terms with them has certainly been the biggest spiritual challenge of my life so far, and has taught me more about myself than I knew there was to be learned. I thought members here might not mind if I used this thread to address and try to work through the current phase of this challenge. My aim is to find my way back to a loving relationship with DMT and the spiritual world.

At first I was inclined to fight the experiences. I went back several times hoping it would just be different, asking to be shown something else, and eventually resolving to stand down and attack the 'entities' I felt wouldn't leave me alone. Nothing worked. I didn't lose my rational perspective on normal life or feel persecuted in that sense, but there was this profound terror that came to infuse my whole psyche. Everything pointed back to DMT, that was where my spirit was interested in, and that was a place of what felt like hell.

My first few experiences with DMT were beautiful. I'd been needing to get out from the world. Just tired of and wanting something more than humanity. With a faith that I would find the way out, and speak to aliens or explore the greater cosmos. I came to it as a friend and it treated me that way. This dancing elven energy exploded into my room in the first experience, and actually merged with me. My hands moved faster than I've ever seen a human move, forming these hyperdimensoinal shapes in the air in front of me, whilst the consciousness wondered at itself and that it had found a way in. My next few experiences involved going to a place-- it was this very real place, just sideways of our dimension-- that a related kind of entity lived in. These triangular, staring-straight-at-you, hyper-transforming pyramidal structures formed out of their thousands of bodies that I fell down through the corridors of. They were all the same entity, in a way, although there was also a feel of kind of psychic union amongst multiples. Where the first trip involved entities coming into me and merging with me, these later ones involved me looking at them, talking to them. It felt weirdly like a power structure, or a court. I went over to this 'place' several times, and it often felt like it was the... Centre of the Show. The entities were very into themselves being what it was about, and where the game was run from.

When I came back from trips, there would always be this 'What the fuck?' feeling about the world I was coming back to for at least 20 minutes. Almost like I was the DMT coming back and being stunned at the strangeness of it. It would always gravitate to-- 'Wait, how does this work? Who runs this show? So this one guy is in charge, and...'. Basically revelation but it would gravitate to political thoughts.

As time went on I had the completely indescribable trips of cosmic ecstasy, and what felt like a knowledge that the universe was good an perfect and sublime. That suffering was an illusion, determined by spiritual closedness of the sufferers. That the ecstasy was so much more alive, the suffering nothing before it, and that somehow they would re-merge into it or learn it and the difficulty would become irrelevant before the cosmic play it allowed and was a product of. These trips didn't always involve the elven or triangle-staring entities. I had ecstatic sex on DMT, surfed through ecstasy for eternities, played and spoke with these coloured artistic patterns that were drawing themselves onto a 4-d canvas again and again in spiral patterns. In the midst of this, I'd sometimes get the entities from the first time rushing back into me. There was always this feel of 'WE'VE MADE IT', 'WE'LL RUN THE SHOW NOW', 'THIS IS OUR WORLD'.

I actually began to get into conspiracy stuff largely as a result of the impact DMT had on my consciousness (I intend to respect the rules on that here-- I assume it will be ok to note that I got into it, without discussing theory, for the purpose of the healing). I'd been vaguely aware of it before but never looked directly at it. I don't feel much affinity for any conspiracy culture, regardless of the factual conclusions I've come to about power structures now days. There's this smallness and fear that permeates the whole culture, finding just the vastness of the world threatening, lacking in love and acceptance and just brilliance. But, yes, my mind got deep into it and affected by it, and I actually started some trips with Music Videos to do with that playing. Stuff with Masonic checkerboards and symbolism in it. The lyrics were...

'Do you know what it's all about
Are you brave enough to figure out
Know that you could set your world on fire
If you are strong enough to leave your doubts

Feel it...
Breath it...
Believe it...
And you'll be walking on air
Go try...
Go fly...
So high..
And you'll be walking on air
Feel this...
Unless you kill this...
Go on...
And you're forgiven...
I knew that...
I could feel that...
I feel like...
I am walking on air...
'

Interesting lyrics. The video itself (Kerli - Walking on Air) is filled with very creepy puppetry type symbolism. I had some trips where I was convinced I knew what 'the illuminati' was or why it was irrelevant or something to with that, and trips which were about owning the world and 'WE RUN THE SHOW, THE SUFFERERS ARE FOOLS, COME WITH US, CONTROL IS THE WAY TO THIS ECSTASY'. At the time I thought this was the entities speaking.

I tended to be tense around people (perhaps still). But my girlfriend is somebody I love very deeply and feel is good. I tripped fine around her a few times, saw her body as a kind of pure energy structure. She tripped very happily with me in the room, often tripping on my face transforming through a thousand forms. I decided to explore Salvia a bit, had a bad panicky trip where I just flipped out and ended up staring out of a 15th story Window whilst my girlfriend held me back. And then--

Something just snapped. I went one time and I was just flung into prison. At first I was convinced somebody had come into the room and I was stuck in an utterly hellish mindstate of being on DMT whilst some police officer or mundane authority figure was interrogating me or processing me with all the lack of understanding they'd have. I thought life was going to be hell now. I flipped out completely, similar to how I did on Salvia. It was so horrible. Like every fear or experience of getting in trouble as a child, ever agony I'd had over a breaking relationship (I'd had a very bad breakup a year before) and all the cruelness of prison compounded into a psychedelic essence. There was a feeling that I was bad, I had done wrong, I was done for now.

Every time I tried to go back after that, panic kicked in on the come-up, and then everything would spiral. Everything would be dancing hellish elven prison or sirens or the triangle-entities boring into me, tripping themselves out on the essence of what 'horribleness' was and doing it to me. I waited for many weeks in between repeat attempts, and ended up trying to re-acclimatise myself by very low doses so I could figure out my psychological reactions and approach and what to correct. I had a few hints of wonder but I could always feel the fear just beyond. Always was flipping out, feeling like the rooms and sensations DMT was showing me were about to transform into rooms in hell, psychedelic flavoured torture.

I couldn't go back again. I spent many months searching for ways to heal myself, deal with the terror, and find a way back. Trying to figure it out. I got into some anti-drug spirituality, I looked into theories about hostile aliens and all that New Age Stuff, I thought a lot about Christianity. Immediately after the hard trips I'd often veer hard towards a Christian kind of perspective (I've never been Christian), intuitively thinking about the fallen nature of humanity and how love was really the only answer, the only intelligent way to approach life. I'd never thought much about love before that.

I carried on searching, I couldn't stick with any of those perspectives. They ended up seeming fear-based or limited or not accurately explanatory of my experiences about the world. I moved more and more to thinking about love and the best way to make it real. over time I began to realise there were very deep flaws in my own character which DMT had mirrored or played on. I came to realise how fearful parts of my personality (not the whole) had always been, how the 'entities' were really largely psychedelic-intensity elaborations on what I had allowed the structure of my own thoughts and mental patterns to become.

I read through everything on this forum I could about 'dark entities' or hard experiences, and ultimately came to the conclusion that any darkness was coming out of my own personality structure and spiritual place, even if 'real' entities were speaking to me because of that.

There's so much more to the story, I can't really fit it into this post. Separate posts from different angles would probably be more appropriate. I haven't tripped again yet, but I'm on the path back to it. This is a thread for me to work out how to correct those flaws in myself DMT showed me and become worthy of the good parts o fit again. I would greatly appreciate input. I truly love DMT and feel like it is somehow just very close to me, like I was always meant to go there many many times and almost had a home there. And for months there's been a feeling of terror and doom standing between me and that. It felt like being cosmically rejected, isolated, cut off from source. I want to fix that and what caused it.

Recently my mind has been in a very good place, really beginning to face its flaws, really beginning to take a hold of itself where it's always been quite impulsive before now. So I think that I may starting from the right place to overcome this...

 

[Game]

So...

I've always been pretty into occultism. When I was 17 or so I had this perspective of 'all is play, and all play is fair'. This kind of cosmic perspective where life was a game the world was playing with itself, and that humans could be at their highest when they realised the potential for that kind of perspective in themselves.

As time went on I got drawn into darker and darker stuff.

And this actually reflects some strangely deep structure in how the pattern of my thoughts always works.

I start out with an insight, excitement, ecstasy. I'm quite good at figuring things out, and it starts that way. But it will develop to rage at something. Whether the people seem to be creating a barren, materialistic society, or some other occult group, or just visions of really overthrowing the 'old order', whatever that is. I used to do that with groups of people-- I'd go in and play games, take on some personality, try to describe beautiful insights to them. And it would go well. And then it would develop towards Loki like troublemaking.

When I'm sitting alone, I've always had this strange trance I get into. It's probably what took me deep into the occult. I move my fingers in this way that begins to take me into a frenzied state of insight and ecstasy and vision. I function pretty well and do well in the practical world, but it's the insights and thoughts and plans that come to me in this state that have always been the guiding force of my life.

So over time I got into 'Black Magick' type groups. If you're not into the occult or don't believe in magick, you could just think of it as kind of forbidden ways of thinking about and working to alter the emotions and perspectives of others. By now I think that all of that (although it wasn't run of the mill LaVey stuff, was deep/dark stuff) was foolish and that the group didn't understand occult doctrines that well. But I did workings and my psyche got locked up into it. I would panic about it, I always kind of wanted out. Relationships were destroyed, things went bad, and it all culminated in very agonising experiences it took me a long time to heal from.

It was after a year or so of healing from that that I started looking into DMT. But, if I'm honest, I really hadn't left it behind. I was still quite good at manipulating people with it. And I felt like I was doing something esoteric and weaving some beautiful fateful tale when I was manipulating people, still. Like I was developing latent human faculties and at the forefront of evolution, or something. Nietzschean type stuff.

Anyway, actual encounter with what horribleness was kind of killed that trip, to say the least. I ceased to be able to separate myself from the horribleness thrown around in dark relationships or ways of relating to others or desires for power. I kind of just felt like pure consciousness experiencing that and doing that to itself. Although also the DMT entities felt very separate, very persecuting of me directly, very interested in attacking and imprisoning me in particular. My mind instantly shot out to Christian thoughts about love and how love is the only intelligent way for humanity to relate to one another, as it was my only reference point.

But I would still fight it, still thought of seeing the entities themselves as the problem. Still thought 'there's a lot of darkness around, I heard dark people take DMT, why should I suffer so much? I need to stop being a coward and stand up to the entities. The world is woven from all shades. And I had good times before, and there were even dark things in DMT, so why should I coming up from here be perfectly 'light?'. Didn't work. Would always just panic.

Which reminds me, I got into similar states as a very intense and close relationship broke down during the black magick phase. I flipped out, lost all self control, spiralled inwards in this feeling that the world was terrible. I was doing a lot of LSD back then and had some dark trips on that with that kind of feeling, and it came to kind of affect my whole life. I always felt terror was just over the horizon, and ultimately it was, and I lost all of my loved ones and closest friends, ended up wrecked, and lost the faith of people who'd thought I was brilliant and placed their trust in me before.

So you can see there's some deep mental structures here going back quite a way. Spiritual structures, perhaps. Please don't think that I'm still blind to them. I only recently have begun to really, really see how the continuity here, the thing which has been at the source of all this panic and darkness in my life, has been me. My mind. I've been able to ignore it whilst focusing on other intellectual pursuits, or even pursue it and justify it at times, or show other faces to people for years before it rears up from my unconscious and rips apart all that we have. I've been deeply sick, deeply out of control, deeply unpurified. I'd always thought complexly about this, like perhaps the darkness was a crucible for light, or part of a complex alchemy, or only dark because people didn't understand it, but nevertheless it was there. The will to harm, to break, to shatter, and this animalistic uncontrolled panic and inability to face my own actions and allegiances.

DMT showed me that. It took those structures and sent them into hyperdrive. Showed me where they ended up, what they actually were. What such allegiances meant. What horribleness and control by darkness was really like. What was in store for conscious life because of my actions, when I left the illusion that my individuality protected me behind. It showed me what that energy was, in comparison to actual love... even if I thought the love came from me in response to its horribleness.

 

[Game]

I'm probably sounded like a pretty ugly soul about now. In a sense that's been true, although there has always been artistic vision and this love of human potential alongside all that I've talked about. That's what drove me to DMT, and I'm very interested in forms of psychology that can help people and develop their potential, and although I have done bad by people (never physically harmed anyone or persecuted them long term, but have been ugly to people) I am always ready to help as well. I love it. And my current girlfriend is somebody I healed from a very bad place and showed how to love herself and engage with life happily.

I'm being completely open here about all the 'dark' things because I want to face this and work through it, and perhaps that might be interesting to some others to see that kind of process happening in relation to DMT. But please bear in mind there is a bit more balance than the posts might convey, with their focus on the badness. Apart from the period of breakdown mentioned in the 'Black Magick' period in the previous post, I've remained functional and productive, producing a lot of art and technology the whole time, and increasing my understanding of the world.

But the things unresolved mentioned above have been unresolved, and I haven't faced them until now. I haven't been able to face the trips, or take control of that part of me. There's always been this fear and darkness waiting in my subconscious, expressing itself in some part of my life. DMT forced me to look directly at that for months and not look away, and I'm so thankful to it for that...

 

[Game]

I've read from some other bad experience reports here that the feeling of eternity is what really makes it unbearable. That was so for me... along with the terror that that might be my destination after death, or my spiritual home. I felt like perhaps I'd come from that horrible place and was going back.

I don't think that's true, because I felt similar eternity about all the various states and emotions I had on DMT before it went bad. I think the eternity feeling is just an aspect of the realm DMT takes you to, being different than our slow, linear timeline here. But that terror did dominate my consciousness for a long time.

And I think, in a sense, what DMT shows you about your choices is to do with eternity. It, for me, stripped away the artificial protection of time and individuality which I used to shield myself from the results and actual nature of my actions or of the actions of those doctrines/groups I was interested in. It united me with the consequences, removing anything or any concept of justification I could use to separate myself from them. It stripped away the time that hid my subconscious terror, bringing into total reality, totally unconstrained, right now. I'd wanted demons before and it showed me them.

Spiritual sight seems to work like that. You see the ultimate nature of choices and affiliations. Whereas without it, even if you think you're doing spiritual stuff, you can stumble along blind to the ugliness and flaws in yourself, blind to your alcoholism or cruelty or whatever else, vaguely aware you have them but protected from facing what you've become by the low-volume and slowness of our material world here. On DMT everything is instant, eternal, absolutely itself. So you see what things really are, and it forces you to be what you really are.

 

[Vodsel]

Hello game,

thank you for your thoughtful posts. I appreciate well articulated reflections, more so if they come from someone who has put attention and effort, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I wanted to leave a reply to your thread, although I don't know how useful it will be. Personally I haven't gone through a similar process... I'm a curious rationalist who started to enjoy dipping my toes in the places where mind and matter become diffuse, and eventually started to swim a little now and then, but I haven't tried a complete, systematic immersion. Not taking psychedelics regularly, nor through any other techniques. Perhaps I've been held back by practicalities in life. I couldn't swim too far, too often because there has always been many issues, and important people, who needed me back in the shore.

The fear I've found has to do with disappearing for others; at least, it's the way I articulate it. Besides any pain coming from life situations, the only time I've experienced deep, overwhelming terror didn't happen using DMT or Salvia, but in night terrors I suffered as a child. Perhaps that's something I can dig some feedback from.

I had to keep growing up, I had to adapt. And fear was a big hurdle. Nowadays I can decide whether a belief or an attitude are negative or hampering me, and then simply remember knowledge is provisional, set the hindrance aside and aim further. It's more of a rational choice. When I was a child, of course, I couldn't do this. But I was receiving contradictory messages about my reality, dreams were grim and pointing at a sea of hopelessness, while waking life was of course volatile but contained light, laughs and magic. So I steered this way without thinking. Later on, when I made amends with dreams (and when I tried DMT for the first time) I was not scared, but I came out flooded with a huge relief - among other more complicated feelings :surprised

Maybe you need to go find your child inside. Letting go of constructs, preconceptions, decisions. I got the feeling that in some stages of your journey you got very close (dangerously close) to figuring things out, and that burns. You needed to integrate, to make sense out of a myriad perspectives about yourself, and that's a given... but perhaps along the way you hung on too tight to some of those constructions. I don't think hyperspace can be reasonably "figured out". You can, though, figure out who you've become to a certain extent. Remember your roots, go back to them if you can. Remove the "absolute" word from your dictionary. I don't think we cannot figure out any absolutes when we visit inner space, but they can be perceived as such, and some sort of short cut happens when we do because they leave us feeling powerless. And that is still an assumption.

I don't know if these ramblings can be helpful, but regardless, some thoughts about practical matters... I don't remember if you have mentioned your routes of administration in the past, but my feeling is you have basically smoked/vaporized DMT. If you intend to do some healing work, maybe you could consider aya/pharmahuasca. Some may think that a long experience can be a tough ride if you don't feel your feet steady, but it can give you new ways to modulate your experience. It can give you reaction time, and options to customize your brew with the harmalas. For someone who has given a lot of thought to the role intent, personal constructions and past experiences have played in previous psychedelic experiences, a slower vessel, easier to flow with, could be useful.

Be well and welcome to the Nexus.

 

[Game]

Thank you for your welcome and reply Vodsel,

Your points seem largely right to me. On changing the method of administering DMT, I have considered that and actually obtained the necessary materials with thoughts similar to yours in mind. On the one hand, I really don't want to be stuck in that place for too long, but on the other the speed of pure DMT can be really hard to deal with with the panic. Everything manifests so fast. Perhaps Changa or some other combination could help with that? I've also heard that Caapi adds an element of guidance, and feels as though it has its own Psychedelic character.

I do know that the darkness of the experience comes from me, not the individual psychedelic. I have had terrible trips on DMT, mushrooms, LSD, and Salvia. But DMT (and what I've heard of Aya) I have by far the most natural affinity with and has, although being by far the hardest, been the only one that has helped me to heal.

On figuring things out, and the inner child: I think what you say is important. I know hyperspace is far smarter, far more spiritual, than my mind can be here. That it is infinite, and uncontainable. At the same time, I know that I come to that infinity as myself, that it appears to me via the lens of my own heart and mind. It's in those, and they're never absolute or fully graspable themselves, that I expect the healing to happen. Early on I tried to fight or conquer the contents of my hyperspace journeys, because I was afraid, but now my focus is on accepting whatever I see and just changing my own reaction to it. Coming to reflect love and openess in my daily life and thoughts so that that is my natural reaction on DMT, and also treating whatever I see in hyperspace with openess and interest and surrender enough to just let it be and flow with it, no matter how dark it seems.

So I think whilst I can't figure things out, and concepts can't contain hyperspace or one's own life path, our own state kind of echoes through them all and can be felt and hopefully healed. I think you're right that that healing is perhaps a lot more childlike than my past attempts to figure out. A lot simpler but harder to face for that simplicity. I know I avoided it (wasn't even aware of it) by complex thinking and perspective shifts in the past.

Perhaps I am still not being childlike enough, I'm not sure. But I can at least work on being open and less reactive and assumptive and more loving, I think.

 

[Game]

A possibly interesting note on some technology I was trying to work on with DMT:

When I first found it, I knew it was really a key for me personally. That there's something dead and dull about my mind that is transformed into life by even small amounts of its influence. So I was trying to work out an automated way or dosage pattern that could keep a constant low level hyperspace influence happening throughout all of waking life.

I was working on some longer term things that would do it automatically, and ultimately wanted to use dosed intelligence to work out ways to alter the brain and body itself to remove obstacles, but I settled on just carefully mapping what level of dosage could be over time combined with functionality and what forms of administration, taken at exactly what time intervals, could be used to keep near-constant contact. What type of settings these forms could be used in etc. as well.

Clearly that goes very much against the advice many on this forum would give. The idea was actually to bring hyperspace here, or begin to merge functionality with it. To see what that kind of a human form could be achieved. I was really a different person when dosed, a lot smarter, with all of my creativity enhanced massively and instant insight into people and ability to make things happen. I was still setting the systems up when it went bad and had just settled on tripping quite regularly (smoked pure DMT) for the time being.

My girlfriend and I were living in what we called a starship... a room basically set up to be a DMT launch-temple type thing, covered with pictures of space, and with us modifying it to reflect trips we had. The only bad thing about it, which factored a lot into the prison-type feeling when it went bad, was that it was in a very busy and quite risky communal area that I always was worried about. It was our room with a locked door, but officious people who would react badly were a presence. Even in good trips I would constantly stare at the door, especially on the come down. It felt like the world had exploded an my first thought was to check that didn't mean someone official had come through the door. Clearly that's a setting I won't repeat when going back.

I've heard too far too fast is a common factor in things going bad, although I wonder whether what I considered is possible, and a viable way for a human to effectively function in Western society. If they can get their bearings and establish functionality in that state. They'd probably need to be a lot more purified than I was for stuff not to spiral out of control.

 

[Vodsel]

Perhaps Changa or some other combination could help with that? I've also heard that Caapi adds an element of guidance, and feels as though it has its own Psychedelic character.

You have several options here, all of them interesting. First and foremost is changa, and that's already a world of options in itself. Then you could also brew some rue or caapi and drink it a little before vaporizing DMT. I myself like to drink a small amount of harmine before smoking enhanced herb. And then, you have aya/ana/pharmahuasca.

The harmala alkaloids, besides allowing for oral DMT to be active, have a collection of effects on their own. They do have their own psychedelic quality and flavor, and they also decrease in general the breakdown of monoamines other than DMT in your system. Why don't you try and drink some caapi tea for a first meeting, and then decide how to incorporate harmalas to your experience?

I was trying to work out an automated way or dosage pattern that could keep a constant low level hyperspace influence happening throughout all of waking life.

I understand you talk above microdosing here, and you refer to something like snorkeling through the day staying at some hyperspace threshold.

This is only my own way to understand psychedelics use and please take it as such, but I wouldn't like to lose the moments of entering and leaving the experience. The change and the contrast are key to me, because it's in the conflict between the baseline and altered state of myself where I find the magic happens. Of course any responsible, healthy, informed adult can try to permanently change that baseline through any means, but... why leave baseline permanently? Is it too complicated? Difficult? Boring?

You may feel you found a 2.0 version of yourself when orbiting hyperspace, but I think the goal should be slowly upgrading your whole reality, not just moving to hyperspace. And for that I believe you need to travel back and forth [/opinion]

a room basically set up to be a DMT launch-temple type thing, covered with pictures of space, and with us modifying it to reflect trips we had. The only bad thing about it, which factored a lot into the prison-type feeling when it went bad, was that it was in a very busy and quite risky communal area that I always was worried about. It was our room with a locked door, but officious people who would react badly were a presence. Even in good trips I would constantly stare at the door, especially on the come down. It felt like the world had exploded an my first thought was to check that didn't mean someone official had come through the door. Clearly that's a setting I won't repeat when going back.

Yes. If you want good experiences, you may need to be more picky with that. Setting defines set to a large extent. Again my opinion, but the place should not be too stimulating (both in the sense of exciting, and in the sense of delivering stimuli with a strong personal meaning). It should be helping you to focus, or sheltering you. If you can find a calm natural environment where you feel safe and bring with you some changa, the odds of having a more healing experience will raise. A lot, I'd say.

 

[Game]

I'll follow your advice on both the Harmalas and the Setting. I certainly wouldn't consider anything not carefully prepared before going back. My current choice is somewhere rural (but not so rural I don't have a dwelling nearby), under the stars, near flowing but shallow water. I've heard that water can combine very well with the experience, and actually the DMT loved to kind of fly down the River Thames when I took it last. But a shallow stream should be safer if anything goes wrong.

I think I'll ritualise it and be very careful with setting until a relationship is (hopefully) re-established. I'd like to choose places that the DMT spirit mixes well with and, if you're inclined to look it it that way, likes.

On baseline... there's an interesting debate. Actually I have been modifying my 'baseline' in one way or another for a long time, through occult work. I would take on random characters and live them totally for weeks, for the experience and learning of it. I've also invoked 'forces' (perhaps this could be looked at as a psychological techniques) to alter this. And I use dual N-back, which has been proven to raise performance on IQ tests very significantly. I suppose that's all been because I think my baseline state is lacking. It doesn't bring out my creativity. It's somehow just wrong. And, in a sense, I think this is true of most people. I think we're incomplete, precursors to some more soulful, intelligent, transhuman state. Lots of DMT speakers talk about it in relation to approaching such states and insights, and my idea was that if you're serious about such talk, why not actually experiment with altering the human form to reflect that superiority?

Certainly we should upgrade the whole, but surely we can do that better with superior cognitive functioning with which to approach it?

 

[Vodsel]

I think we're incomplete, precursors to some more soulful, intelligent, transhuman state. Lots of DMT speakers talk about it in relation to approaching such states and insights, and my idea was that if you're serious about such talk, why not actually experiment with altering the human form to reflect that superiority?

Certainly we should upgrade the whole, but surely we can do that better with superior cognitive functioning with which to approach it?

Probably. I meant I find personally more beneficial the interaction between default mode and altered mode, in order to make progress. But maybe that's because I have no choice but to return to default.

The problem with drug-induced "superior cognitive functioning" may have something to do with that link to baseline, though. Many of the problems to solve in practical life appear minimized, or transcended, when in an alternative state. And that does not imply you figured them out upon returning.

There are many substances I find helpful to increase thinking and overall performance in everyday life, including micro-dosing of some psychedelics. But a clear tryptaminic state is more useful to me as a visit, not as a destination for settling.

Maybe for psychedelic states to be transhumanist tools we'd need to take them en masse, so the new relevant questions, the ones we do not transcend when partaking, become consensual.