How does the DMT world provide the personal conviction for an afterlife?

[n0thing]

I see that it is a shared and common opinion in a lot of trip reports that DMT has now given them more of a belief in an afterlife if not that the DMT world will be the afterlife or form some part of it.

What if though we are all just finite beings and the DMT experience is just convincing us there is an afterlife but... ultimately at death, we just go to sleep and never wake up.

I guess this might be akin to asking a christian "what if there is no God?" as post-breakthrough users may be likely to flat out deny this a possibility before they can even think through it, probably because they can't get over how convincing it still is to them.

Just a thought.

 

[RUAware]

Some people smoke DMT, have a powerful experience, and believe the effects are purely chemical, and are just like any other substance.

Some people smoke DMT, have a powerful experience, and think it's too much to only be a chemically induced experience. And from that they may think there is some type of afterlife, or a true reality type of scenario.

 

[tseuq]

Some people smoke DMT, have a powerful experience, and believe the effects are purely chemical, and are just like any other substance.

Some people smoke DMT, have a powerful experience, and think it's too much to only be a chemically induced experience. And from that they may think there is some type of afterlife, or a true reality type of scenario.

Some people smoke DMT, have a powerful experience and just the f*** don't know anything.

It is all ... possible...

tseuq

 

[PsyDuckmonkey]

Just a thought.

So... what exactly was the question?

This is a community of self-experimenters and psychedelic explorers, not a cult. There are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, and even material reductionists here. Nobody is going to try to convert you (or if someone does try, feel free to tell them off), nor is anyone obliged to defend their views in response to "just a thought".

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

I accept that my experiance was chemically induced, however it confirmed conscious-being after death, it confirmed that the physical body and your "conscious-being" are in fact two separate entities.

Look at lichen, lichens are two organisms, an algae and/or cyanobacteria living among filaments of a fungus, they were thought to be a single organism until microscopy advanced enough to determine that lichen was in fact two separate organisms, this is a perfect metaphor for the body and conscious-being, they are so closely intertwined that they appear to be a single being, when in fact they are two separate entities, DMT was the microscope in this metaphor, it allowed us to see that consciousness and the physical body are not one and the same...



One of the most common themes of the DMT flash I have heard is "I thought I was dead".

At death your physical body and conscious-being separate, now, when one smokes DMT this occurs as well, only with the DMT there's a cosmic "cord" which keeps you connected to the body from which you departed.

To think that all the consciousness you will ever experiance will occur in a single physical body in a single physical place at a single time is absurd...


The "bardo thodol" (Tibetan book of the dead) describes death in great detail, and by coincidence it describes states identical to the DMT flash, and can even be used as a guide to the DMT flash as well as death.

At death, the thing that caststhe shadow withdraws, and metabolism ceases. Material form breaks down; it ceases to be a dissipative structure in a very localized area, sustained against entropy by cycling material in, extracting energy, and expelling waste. But the form that ordered it is not affected. These declarative statements are made from the point of view of the shamanic tradition, which touches all higher religions. Both the psychedelic dream state and the waking psychedelic state acquire great import because they reveal to life a task: to become familiar with this dimension that is causing being, in order to be familiar with it at the moment of passing from life.
The metaphor of a vehicle--an after-death vehicle, an astral body--is used by several traditions. Shamanism and certain yogas, including Taoist yoga, claim very clearly that the purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche. One will recognize what is happening. One will know what to do and one will make a clean break. Yet there does seem to be the possibility of a problem in dying. It is not the case that one is condemned to eternal life. One can muff it through ignorance. Apparently at the moment of death there is a kind of separation, like birth--the metaphor is trivial, but perfect. There is a possibility of damage or of incorrect activity. The English poet-mystic William Blake said that as one starts into the spiral there is the possibility of falling from the golden track into eternal death. Yet it is only a crisis of a moment--a crisis of passage--and the whole purpose of shamanism and of life correctly lived is to strengthen the soul and to strengthen the ego's relationship to the soul so that this passage can be cleanly made. This is the traditional position...
What psychedelics encourage, and where I hope attention will focus once hallucinogens are culturally integrated to the point where large groups of people can plan research programs without fear of persecution, is the modeling of the after-death state. Psychedelics may do more than model this state; they may reveal the nature of it. -terence McKenna

Dr. Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon, who developed a severe case of bacterial meningitis, he fell into a coma and lost ALL brain function, there's no way that his physical brain would be capable of generating consciousness, yet when he recovered, he describes an amazing DMT like journey into consciousness...

So it doesn't always have to be chemical...

-eg

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

When consciousness is finally understood, it will mean that the absence of consciousness will be understood. The study of consciousness leads, inevitably, to the study of death. Death is both a historical and an individual phenomenon about which we, as monkeys, have great anxiety. But what the psychedelic experience seems to be pointing out is that actually the reductionist view of death has missed the point and that there is something more. Death isn't simple extinction. The universe does not build up such complex forms as ourselves without conserving them in some astonishing and surprising way that relates to the intuitions that we have from the psychedelic experience." Terence McKenna

As the esoteric traditions say, life is an opportunity to prepare for death

ND: You have said that an important part of the mystical quest is to face up to death and recognize it as a rhythm of life. Would you like to enlarge on your view on the implications of the dying process?

TM: I take seriously the notion that these psychedelic states are an anticipation of the dying process-or, as the Tibetans refer to it, the Bardo level beyond physical death. It seems likely that our physical lives are a type of launching pad for the soul. As the esoteric traditions say, life is an opportunity to prepare for death, and we should learn to recognize the signposts along the way, so that when death comes, we can make the transition smoothly. I think the psychedelics show you the transcendental nature of reality. It would be hard to die gracefully as an atheist or existentialist. Why should you? Why not rage against the dying of the light? But if in fact this is not the dying of the light but the Dawning of the Great Light, then one should certainly not rage against that. There's a tendency in the New Age to deny death. We have people pursuing physical immortality and freezing their heads until the fifth millennium, when they can be thawed out. All of this indicates a lack of balance or equilibrium. The Tao flows through the realms of life and nonlife with equal ease.

ND: Do you personally regard the death process as a journey into one's own belief system?

TM: Like the psychedelic experience, death must be poured into the vessel of language. But dying is essentially physiological. It may be that there are certain compounds in the brain that are only released when it is impossible to reverse the dying process. And yet the near-death experience has a curious affinity to the shamanic voyage and the psychedelic experience.

I believe that the best map we have of consciousness is the shamanic map. According to this viewpoint, the world has a "center," and when you go to the center-which is inside yourself-there is a vertical axis that allows you to travel up or down. There are celestial worlds, there are infernal worlds, there are paradisiacal worlds. These are the worlds that open up to us on our shamanic journeys, and I feel we have an obligation to explore these domains and pass on that inforrnation to others interested in mapping the psyche. At this time in our history, it's perhaps the most awe-inspiring journey anyone could hope to make.

From an interview with Nevill Drury from the autumn 1990, vol. 11, no. 1, issue of the Australian magazine Nature and Health, and chapter 17 of The Archaic Revival by Terence McKenna.

Seeing into after-death existence before death

In discussing the ordinarily invisible spiritual world of the after-death state, called menog existence in the Avestan religion, Flattery says this:

The consumption of sauma [Soma] may have been the only means recognized in Iranian religion of seeing into menog existence before death; at all events, it is the only means acknowledged in Zoroastrian literature . . . . and, as we have seen, is the means used by Ohrmazd when he wishes to make the menog existence visible to living persons. In ancient Iranian religion there is little evidence of concern with meditative practice which might foster development of alternative, non-pharmacological means to such vision. In Iran, vision into the spirit world was not thought to come about simply by divine grace or as a reward for saintliness. From the apparent role of sauma in initiation rites, experience of the effects of sauma, which is to say vision of menog existence, must have at one time been required of all priests (or the shamans antecedent to them).10
10. David Flattery and Martin Schwartz, Haoma and Harmaline, Near Eastern Studies, vol. 21 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)

-eg

 

[n0thing]

Some people smoke DMT, have a powerful experience, and believe the effects are purely chemical, and are just like any other substance.

Some people smoke DMT, have a powerful experience, and think it's too much to only be a chemically induced experience. And from that they may think there is some type of afterlife, or a true reality type of scenario.

Thanks, that is already a given and didn't really needed to be stated again. My question was How does the DMT world provide the personal conviction for an afterlife? So stating that some people do some people don't isn't really expanding on to anything new it just states what is a known fact that gave rise to the topic at hand. Can you think of how the DMT world provides a personal conviction of the afterlife? Because if you can, we can then analyze whether or not that processes is genuine or fallible.

Maybe it has something to do with this:

For me the difference between how real a dream feels and how real concensus reality feels is the same as the difference between a deep DMT space and consensus reality, the DMT space feels orders of magnitude realer than normal life.

But then again my comment still stands that this could be just a really believable impression of realness when no such realness actually exists.

 

[n0thing]

Just a thought.

So... what exactly was the question?

This is a community of self-experimenters and psychedelic explorers, not a cult. There are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, and even material reductionists here. Nobody is going to try to convert you (or if someone does try, feel free to tell them off), nor is anyone obliged to defend their views in response to "just a thought".

The question is in the title in case you couldn't read it "How does the DMT world provide the personal conviction for an afterlife?"

Never did I say DMT-nexus was a cult or infer it was a cult. You seem to draw unfounded correlations between things that I never even said or suggested.

Let me spell this out for you so you know not to do it again. When I say "I guess this might be akin to asking a christian "what if there is no God?" as post-breakthrough users may be likely to flat out deny this a possibility before they can even think through it, probably because they can't get over how convincing it still is to them." It does not mean that DMT-users are Christians or are alike a cult in any way. It simply means that the process by which some dmt-users (has nothing to do with the dmt-nexus as a whole) understand and analyze their experience and think about the afterlife is in a similar manner to how Christians (or any other religious folk for that matter) reason about their beliefs. This is not a generalized statement about nexians at all, it is a statement about psychological processes in the minds of human beings so don't make it out to seem otherwise. It is widely known that humans have a tendency to make irrational opinions and beliefs and this thread was an exact attempt to try and explore this further within the context of DMT users.

Likewise, you also said that I suggested people were obliged to answer me or convert me in some way on here. I ask you, how did you come to this realization? Did I say anything of the sort in my post? No.

It seems that either you have a confrontational attitude, or something I said in the OP struck a nerve with you and thereby you retaliated by posting an attack on my OP in ways that clearly are not justified, by which I have proven above. If you want to argue, do it correctly and without attitude.

Peace Love Unity Respect PsyDuckmonkey, keep that in mind. :thumb_up:

 

[n0thing]

I accept that my experiance was chemically induced, however it confirmed conscious-being after death, it confirmed that the physical body and your "conscious-being" are in fact two separate entities.

Look at lichen, lichens are two organisms, an algae and/or cyanobacteria living among filaments of a fungus, they were thought to be a single organism until microscopy advanced enough to determine that lichen was in fact two separate organisms, this is a perfect metaphor for the body and conscious-being, they are so closely intertwined that they appear to be a single being, when in fact they are two separate entities, DMT was the microscope in this metaphor, it allowed us to see that consciousness and the physical body are not one and the same...

One of the most common themes of the DMT flash I have heard is "I thought I was dead".

At death your physical body and conscious-being separate, now, when one smokes DMT this occurs as well, only with the DMT there's a cosmic "cord" which keeps you connected to the body from which you departed.

To think that all the consciousness you will ever experiance will occur in a single physical body in a single physical place at a single time is absurd...


The "bardo thodol" (Tibetan book of the dead) describes death in great detail, and by coincidence it describes states identical to the DMT flash, and can even be used as a guide to the DMT flash as well as death.

I'm glad you feel that way but what if that is just a personal conviction and nothing more? Is there not some possibility that you are believing something that actually is false? How would you know?

Well you say it is absurd to just die for ever but you didn't go in to why, that might be a means to know whether it is false or not.

There is a thing known as confirmation bias and we as primates all fear death. Therefore any single piece of information in favor of the afterlife may confirm to us what we want to believe rather than what is.

P.S. Thank you for posting all of the quotes, it emphasizes the correlation between psychedelics and a belief in the afterlife.

 

[DmnStr8]

Afterlife? Death? I don't know. I will find out some day, but will be unable to write up that trip report.

“Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: -- either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again.”

 

[Baktun14]

Thanks, that is already a given and didn't really needed to be stated again. My question was How does the DMT world provide the personal conviction for an afterlife? So stating that some people do some people don't isn't really expanding on to anything new it just states what is a known fact the gave rise to the topic at hand.

I accept that my experiance was chemically induced, however it confirmed conscious-being after death, it confirmed that the physical body and your "conscious-being" are in fact two separate entities.

Look at lichen, lichens are two organisms, an algae and/or cyanobacteria living among filaments of a fungus, they were thought to be a single organism until microscopy advanced enough to determine that lichen was in fact two separate organisms, this is a perfect metaphor for the body and conscious-being, they are so closely intertwined that they appear to be a single being, when in fact they are two separate entities, DMT was the microscope in this metaphor, it allowed us to see that consciousness and the physical body are not one and the same...

In my eyes, entheogenic-gnosis, did answer the question at-hand, along with some examples to provide perspective.

This is an incredibly slippery subject, at best all most of us can do is attach metaphors to in hope for a re-traceable thought, of how it comes around as a feeling or a thought in their mind. This may leave you without the clear conviction of others that you seek, but being my opinion here, I find what some have exclaimed here on this thread does show their validation towards this conviction.

 

[n0thing]

Afterlife? Death? I don't know. I will find out some day, but will be unable to write up that trip report.

maybe when you were say "I don't know" you were actually providing the most valid form of response one can give. In a way a kind of agnosticism. A suspension of belief no matter how convincing the DMT experience may be.

The DMT-world may seem very very believably real but yet could actually just be incredibly false. You know like a magician? He makes you think he is not doing a trick when he actually is. How are we to tell? Should we just flat out believe that there is an afterlife because the DMT-world gives us the impression that that is so? Or should we subscribe to what you say, simply "i don't know"?

 

[n0thing]

In my eyes, entheogenic-gnosis, did answer the question at-hand, along with some examples to provide perspective.

Ok, you say that but you don't provide any indication as to how that took place. EG just gave a definition of how consciousness may be non-local or not arise from physical matter, which is still a matter of debate worldwide. This therefor does bring insight as to whether we should believe what impressions DMT gives us.

This is an incredibly slippery subject, as the best most of us can do is attach metaphors to in hope for a re-traceable thought, of how it comes around as a feeling or a thought in their mind. This may leave you without the clear conviction of others that you seek, but being my opinion here, I find what some have exclaimed here on this thread does show their validation towards this conviction.

Yes, but how can we find whether their validation is justified? How do we know which religion is worth believing in or whether believing in anything is truthful at all? Why believe in an afterlife after DMT if there is no way to be certain? Perhaps personal opinion is enough for some people right? Perhaps they don't need rationalized reasons to believe such things. Doesn't that sound like what a christian would say though? That he doesn't need evidence for god, his own belief is enough for him.

All I am trying to promote is freedom from our own deceptive belief systems, that is all.

 

[Baktun14]

Ok, you say that but you don't provide any indication as to how that took place. EG just gave a definition of how consciousness may be non-local or not arise from physical matter, which is still a matter of debate worldwide. This therefor does bring insight as to whether we should believe what impressions DMT gives us.

First of all, we shouldn't believe what ever impressions DMT gives us, let alone put much if any trust into one, one can let one's mind be entertained by the subject, but as soon as the mind is getting consumed by the subject(s) put forth it turns unhealthy and is no longer a subject of growth.

Yes, but how can we find whether their validation is justified? How do we know which religion is worth believing in or whether believing in anything is truthful at all? Why believe in an afterlife after DMT if there is no way to be certain? Perhaps personal opinion is enough for some people right? Perhaps they don't need rationalized reasons to believe such things. Doesn't that sound like what a christian would say though? That he doesn't need evidence for god, his own belief is enough for him.

All I am trying to promote is freedom from our own deceptive belief systems, that is all.

Finding whether validation is justified is a question of very personal opinion and doubt you will find any satisfying and/or solid answers in that respect.

As for believing in anything, what about the contrary situation? I understand Terence McKenna has thought over this, I can't directly quote him @tm, but it goes along the the lines of "don't believe anything as it immediately precludes you from accepting/believing the opposite, therefore you have given up freedom, and freedom is the dearest thing we've got".

Yes for some personal opinion is enough, but others have stated as much of a rationalization about the aspect(s) of it in relation of similarities towards knowledge in the scientific domain.

 

[slewb]

To think that all the consciousness you will ever experiance will occur in a single physical body in a single physical place at a single time is absurd...

Why is that absurd?

As far as we know, a DMT flash (or other OBE) is experienced by the brain. It requires a pretty ballsy leap of faith to say that once the brain is gone, the experience is the same.

Personally, I suspect the afterlife is the same as this life - I just won't be part of it anymore.

 

[Valmar]

As far as we know, a DMT flash (or other OBE) is experienced by the brain.

Who is "we"? Who are you, with seeming arrogance, speaking for?

This is just as massive an assumption, because you are heavily influenced by your beliefs.

The DMT flash may or may not, equally, be experienced by a physical brain, or non-physical consciousness.

It just so happens that your experiences cause you to lean to the former assumption, and my own, to the latter.

Which side of the debate is closer to the truth? Both? Neither? One side? Who knows...

Each individual certainly feels they have the truth, to whatever degree. Only true death will provide answers, but we can't bring them back... and even if we could, people probably wouldn't change in the way they examine our individual opinions.

Actually, children sometimes claim to have memories of past lives, with details that they couldn't have possibly have known. This was the thing that made me start to realize that there is far more to existence than the physical.

 

[Valmar]

I accept that my experiance was chemically induced, however it confirmed conscious-being after death, it confirmed that the physical body and your "conscious-being" are in fact two separate entities.

After consideration... why should "chemically induced" mean that the experience boils down to chemicals sloshing around in the brain? I suspect that DMT, the chemical, acts as a key, a trigger, that somehow releases the ego froms its usual limits. The sheerness of the DMT realms do seem to suggest that they are a higher plane than this one. The fluidity of them...

I've never taken DMT, except in low doses with mostly Caapi vine, yet I felt exposed to a realm that was more than this physical one. Like I was blinded by the blinkers of my limited senses, and had awoken to something I had seemingly long forgotten, because it had an odd familiarness to it.

I heavily agree with your perspective, and McKenna's, on the nature of Mind and Soul, that it is more than just blind chemical reactions... because that's essentially meaningless. Hell, as far as I know, we humans don't even know how atoms, let alone subatomic particles, work... what gives them their qualities? Something I've noticed the materialist camp never really seems to answer, except with MORE particles! Turtles all the way down...? Can't be.

There must be an "afterlife" that provides for the continued existence of this condensed, energetic dimension.

 

[Valmar]

What if though we are all just finite beings and the DMT experience is just convincing us there is an afterlife but... ultimately at death, we just go to sleep and never wake up.

What if we just wake up in another life, and memories of this one fade as if they were a dream?

I've had that happen when I dream ~ seems like the real world, no matter how weird things get, it always seems logical. Then I wake up, and the dream just fades away, with me clutching vainly at it.

 

[slewb]

As far as we know, a DMT flash (or other OBE) is experienced by the brain.

Who is "we"? Who are you, with seeming arrogance, speaking for?

This is just as massive an assumption, because you are heavily influenced by your beliefs.

The DMT flash may or may not, equally, be experienced by a physical brain, or non-physical consciousness.

It just so happens that your experiences cause you to lean to the former assumption, and my own, to the latter.

Which side of the debate is closer to the truth? Both? Neither? One side? Who knows...

Each individual certainly feels they have the truth, to whatever degree. Only true death will provide answers, but we can't bring them back... and even if we could, people probably wouldn't change in the way they examine our individual opinions.

Actually, children sometimes claim to have memories of past lives, with details that they couldn't have possibly have known. This was the thing that made me start to realize that there is far more to existence than the physical.

Actually my experiences, like yours, point to consciousness being separate from the body. But if all we are talking about is belief and experience, we are no longer having rational conversation.

All I mean to say is that we, collectively, can agree that the brain is responsible for at least some experience. If I damage or remove certain parts of your brain, you are no longer able to have certain experiences. There's hard evidence for that. No such evidence exists to show that a person can have experiences without a brain. That doesn't mean its not possible.

Just as a thought experiment, if someone was to have pieces of his brain slowly removed, at what point would he move into the "afterlife experience?" If everything was removed except the necessary bits for breathing, heartbeat, etc., would he already be in the afterlife? Or would he idle until even those died, and then experience comes flooding back?

The past lives thing is fascinating. I myself get bouts of telepathy where I pick up weirdly specific thoughts and memories from other people. But I don't understand the assumption that there can be no physical explanation for this. I have an idea involving simulation theory and access to shared memory/memory that hasn't yet been reallocated, but that's not for this thread.

 

[MissDMT]

Dr. Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon, who developed a severe case of bacterial meningitis, he fell into a coma and lost ALL brain function, there's no way that his physical brain would be capable of generating consciousness, yet when he recovered, he describes an amazing DMT like journey into consciousness...

So it doesn't always have to be chemical...

Can someone explain above to me in more detail? Can I get copy of the article or study that was done on the above. When they say lost ALL brain function was there no brain senses going off on the monitor, not even in the slightest? What test do they preform on someone to confirm they are brain dead? Was the patient body staying alive due to medical machines the DR's attached?

I still believe what I experience with DMT is chemical reaction. I have had extremely visual dreams and DMT feels like a dream but more intense. I have had dreams were I have thought I was awake, got up, got ready for work and than realised "oh shit I'm dreaming, wake up or I will be late"

With the above, maybe the person had DMT trip, it was the last thing they remember before brain switched off, maybe they experienced it while brain was still activity, but our brain has amazing ability to remember that because I'm sure they remembered their name as well when they came through