INTRO

[algebraic]

Hello fellow travelers. A friend with whom I frequently shared mushrooms introduced me to DMT about a year ago. When he first described it to me, I was thinking "ok whatever man".

Shortly thereafter, he brought some beautiful white crystals over, loaded the pipe, and explained how to light it. In about 20 seconds, during the most relaxing body high I had ever experienced, I was greeted by a female hindu-esque entity made of pulsating bright blue and silver waves, occupying my entire range of vision and feeding me a lightning stream of affirmations and unconditional love.

A few months later, I extracted my own, following the Nature Boy STB tek. I was successful enough to have many more hyperspace experiences and introduce several friends to spice.

As a result of my experience with this molecule, I am no longer a "materialist" in the philosophical sense. While I still have tremendous respect for the physical sciences and mathematical explanations of the nature of existence, I now believe them to be inherently limited in any attempt to answer The Big Questions.

Having access to higher dimensions has instilled in me a renewed sense of wonder and curiosity in my day to day life. I am also better able to manage fear, anxiety, and any other manifestation of the mind.

Well that's about it. I'll be happy to provide more detail for those interested.

 

[willnotcannot]

Hi algebraic, nice intro.

On the topic of the 'higher dimension', do you really think that it's truly another dimension or is it just our minds playing with us to the extreme? After all, when we trip, we're not actually manifesting in the physical sense. It's just a bunch of chemicals flowing through our brain.

While I'm new to all this and admittedly I haven't had my first real trip yet (this would probably explain everything), there's still this rational side to me that seems quite stubborn. Perhaps that the visuals are nothing more than that - visuals.

Another issue is that while we may experience these amazing things, it has very little affect on us in a material sense. It may be enlightening, however what does it actually change within ourselves, if you catch the drift. The chemicals in our brain die off and we're back to square one.

After all, we dream every night, yet nothing really succumbs of it. Of course, some people say that you can learn a lot from studying your dreams and that they're events that may come true, although I haven't studied that far into it.

Just my two cents

 

[Enoon]

welcome to the nexus algebraic and thanks for the introduction. It's great that you've extracted your own spice and have been able to benefit from our experiences.

Similar to willnotcannot I stumbled upon the phrase containing the "higher dimensions" and wondered in what sense you meant this.

Now in general there is an ever ongoing debate about the ontology of the experiences - if the entities and whatnot are real or not etc. I don't really want to pick up there but rather go into some of the questions willnotcannot posed without arguing for or against this.

First of all, all of our thoughts could be reduced to the flow of chemicals in our brains, and with that the entire experience of being alive, but this is overlooking something important. The interactions of chemicals may be the cause for the phenomenon of consciousness, but they are not the same thing. For example, the operating system that you are using on your computer could be reduced to a bunch of ones and zeroes, capacitor and coild and the likes... however the operating system does quite a lot of cool things that a capacitor alone can't do. We could say that the operating system is based on a higher order of interactions of simple capacitors.

The same thing on a more complex level goes for our minds. What and who we are and what we feel, what we experience, the are linked to chemical reactions but cannot be explained by explaining each reaction in itself. The interesting thing is that when we disrupt the natural flow of these chemicals by introducing certain other chemicals, what and who we are, what we feel and what we experience drastically changes. It is not that we just have visuals. Our whole insides are altered for a while.

Once these substances ware off we return to our normal self, but as with every experience or thing we have learned, we have changed a little bit. The experiences affect us by teaching us things about ourselves, by offering us differnet view points, by allowing us to understand things we couldn't before, etc.

Materially there is no change. You will not turn your VW Golf into a Porsche by taking acid... However by expanding your horizons internally you may find yourself taking different descisions that you would have without these experiences.

 

[Pandora]

Hello agebraic,

Welcome to the Nexus. I enjoyed reading your Introductory Essay. I suspect that your experience reflects that of many folks here also.

The initial skepticism, the initial experience, the astonishment, the thoughts and integration and possibly changes, insight and growth that result . . . even feeling less orientation towards materialism (or at least opening the mind to other options) or even higher dimensions.

Enoon gives a University level lecture that reminds me of something I took close to 30 years ago called "Philosophy of Mind." I'm decades removed from that mileau so it's a lot more just everyday life down to earth here for me . . .and yet I like you I try to interpret using the meager tools I have at hand, the wonders of the DMT experience. I kind of got the sense from your essay that currently you are riding or balancing between these two different approaches . . .

Regardless, I really enjoyed it and look forward to your presence here on the Nexus. Please take a look around - from the links in the upper right hand corner of the forums to all the rich subfora. I think you will like it here very very much.

Again, a very warm welcome to you.

 

[willnotcannot]

What and who we are and what we feel, what we experience, the are linked to chemical reactions but cannot be explained by explaining each reaction in itself.

I seem to disagree with this statement. While the human anatomy is an extremely complex organism, just because something can't be explained, doesn't mean that it isn't inherently rational.

I'm not suggesting that everything is 1 to 1 in terms of reaction = function, however there should be some sort of order and flow within our body, if not for basic function.

If you look at something like diet and exercise, the body is extremely versatile with what it can do with the foods we eat, regardless of quality, yet the end outcome is very similar. We grow at a certain age and we usually die at a certain age, of course with different extremes on both ends.

Of course, these are all just arguments. Philosophy transcends rationality.

 

[algebraic]

Thanks for the responses. I'll take a shot at answering your great questions.

willnotcannot:

A first-hand experience with spice will give you a better answer to your questions than I can. Prior to my first experiences, I was an acolyte of Richard Dawkins, and so I was dismissive of anything one might characterize as "mystic" or "spiritual". (Side note, Dawkins has said publicly that he is interested in having a spice experience!). Though admittedly I had recently developed an interest in the Hindu tradition of Advaita, meaning non-duality, which proposes that your true self exists independent of the mind/body. So in that sense I was primed to open up to the idea that consciousness is more than a physical phenomenon.

The visuals are maybe just 10% of the experience. It goes far beyond that.

It's true, the spice can not make you do anything to change yourself or improve your life. But check this out: I believe the two biggest obstacles to an individual's realization of their full potential are (1) irrational fear and (2) laziness. In my experience, the spice has a way of rewarding you for (and helping you with) overcoming those two obstacles, if your intentions are there. I hope you will be able to see this for yourself.

On the topic of dreams: Dreams are, like spice, another phenomenon that we don't yet fully understand. Therefore, I find it fascinating. In fact, I recently started looking into lucid dreaming and astral projection. You spend a third of your life asleep, why not make the most of it?

Enoon:

"Higher dimensions" is just a term that I use because it resonates with me. It might be more accurate to call it "lower dimensions". After all, the physical laws that govern all matter start to break down and lose relevance when we try to apply them to particles at the quantum level, or when particles are moving at a high enough velocity. We already have evidence of matter defying the physical laws that we appear to be bound by, so perhaps this flexibility is related to the seemingly impossible experiences we can have with the spice.

As for the chemical explanation of consciousness, the best answer I can muster is: correlation does not equal causation. Everything in our normal dimension is comprised of a limited number of physical elements. We are no exception. But if our consciousness can exist independent of those physical elements (I'm not saying you accept that premise) then we can explore parts of the universe that we otherwise wouldn't be able to, learn from those experiences and apply the new knowledge to improve our physical lives.

I hope that addresses your question somewhat. We're getting way out of my pay-grade here. This is quite the brain workout.

Pandora:

Thanks for you warm welcome. I can tell there are many folks who have spent more time than I have pondering these difficult questions, and I'm very open to hear new perspectives. I fully believe this molecule has the potential to improve society and our planet as a whole, and I want to help make that happen.