I don't get it. DMT made you experience a reality that had the same immediateness and realness as this one here. This experience helped you realize that the mind is very powerful ( "it can create experiences that are perfectly and believably real in every way" ) and from this you concluded that "the world is in some sense an illusion, a play of shadows, a creation of mind"?

I think this is a too far-fetched conclusion. You can say "perhaps", but *entirely sure*, based on just such an experience?

OK, I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but seriously, this alone is not enough basis on which we can stand. If everything you experience under the influence of a psychedelic drug can be traced back to your five senses and your well-known mental faculties, then it can be rightly called a hallucination, and easily dismissed as such.

For me, the reason to believe in the reality of the "other side" is that there are experiences which lead me out of the known reality. Not in the sense that I see pink elephants when I know that pink elephants do not exist, but in the sense of "oh my God! I can see in 360 degrees! I have these new senses with which I can understand the secrets of the universe! There is something else beyond thinking! And as I'm coming aware of this, I have this strange feeling that I have already been to this place... omg this is the place where I come to between lives! (some time passes) omg, not just coming here, I am here all the way along! just sleeping or what until I'm awake down there. but wait... (hitherto unknown sense of understanding at hard work) phhhffsstt...."

The distinctive element is that there is something utterly, ontologically new. And this is that something which gives this experience that "breakthrough" feel and why this forum became the thing it became.