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Is the DMT / Aya experience real?

autumnsphere

autumnsphere

Rising Star
I would like this to be a serious philosophic discussion. This means using concepts of the Real, i.e. Truth, by philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Christ 😉 , Kant, Hegel, Lacan, Deleuze, Derrida, Zizek, etc... I will add my comment as well, once I write it - it will be long and sweet. Thank you.
 
By all rational descriptions the experience is a form chemical induced insanity. Those sort of rationalisations lose all meaning in the depth of a DMT experience though, while it's happening it can seem more realistic than normal waking life.

I know my reply doesn't exactly fit your brief but to me there are some parallels to Plato's cave. People that have never tried DMT are in some ways stuck staring at the wall, if they'd just turn around (ingest some DMT) they'd realise that there is an entire new world of light that they never could have imagined.

I have seen the light and it had a profound impact on me, if what I experienced wasn't real it still made some permanent changes that will stay with me ever.
 
Oh, it most definitely has to do with Plato's cave! Perfect allegory, yes.

However, for Hegel and Zizek for example the Real is the purely immaterial, the purely fantastic and virtual. It is the only concept which by not being itself actualises itself. And this is the rational explanation which they have developed in like 40 books. :)
 
This has been discussed before and seems to be a widely contested topic on the Nexus, with no final answers. Here are some pertinent links:


With that out of the way, I will say that I think it really depends on what you personally consider as "real." As an epistemological solipsist, I think it is an unresolvable question, at least at this time, if anything at all even exists outside of our own minds. I'm not saying that it's not there, just that it's truly impossible to know anything for sure other than the fact that your being exists.

However, if you believe in the shared consciousness ideal that so, so many Nexians and psychedelic users abide by, then you can start to make headway with the idea of objective reality or objects outside of anyone's mind. For even if I can only know my true consciousness, if my awareness and your awareness are actually one-and-the-same, then something that we can both sense becomes real in a way that's more objective than the general unified subjectivity that we seem to share on a day-to-day basis.

So for the rest of this post, let's assume that we do derive our beings from the same ultimate source. If this is the case, then confronting the idea of hyperspace poses even more questions. If we all exist as a collective consciousness, can there be anything else? Does this collectivity create the universe, or the other way around, or do they just happen to exist simultaneously?

Is there an origin of consciousness, or is it something that has always been around? Do extraterrestrials, or even animals and bacteria, share in the same source as humans? When we travel to hyperspace, are we simply accessing a higher realm of our shared being, or a new plane entirely?

Since we cannot really be sure of objective existence outside of our minds at this time, it is very hard if not impossible to answer these questions. The best thing I can recommend is to explore more and push deeper and deeper into hyperspace. Maybe you will find answers, but probably not. There is a drive for understanding that is innate to human beings, which in my opinion is what motivates a lot of what is on this forum. "The need for more information, the 'truth,'" and so on.

My prediction is that there is an objective reality, but it is a reality that can be perceived radically different by different beings. There is a place for beings to exist, but this may be the far-point of the conjecture or final theory. "We have a place." For you cannot predict how an alien, 3 dimensional or otherwise, will interpret what you interpret as reality.

I theorize that the multiverse exists along with a huge consciousness. How these things interact depends on your own theories and explorations. Are they the same thing exactly? Honestly I doubt it, but you will undoubtedly get those acid-heads who will tell you that we are the universe observing itself. I take that to be a very materialist view; I tend to think there is something more behind consciousness being unique and existing outside material objects.

But as always, theorizing and answering only brings more questions. Is our shared consciousness the only one? Even if the multiverse, if it is real, exists, are there even other multiverses outside of the realm of this one, just as the same theory suggests there are universes outside of our own that we don't necessarily have direct contact with yet?

And the most important question, does it even matter?
 
Truth and objective have been defined by many philosophers before us... It is not something that is just in our heads, nor something which cannot be reached (Kant thought so, but Hegel proved him wrong). Also, truth is something you know after building a logical ladder to it ex nihilo, without presupposing or believing or hypothesising.
 
How could you ever prove that an apple exists the same way to you as it does to me?

We cannot merge our consciousnesses so we cannot know for sure. Our words only take it so far, and even what we perceive of the apple is not perfect (you see the front, but can never see the behind nor the inside). Anything could be on the inside of the apple, or behind it.

It appears that we can define it in the same way, or even imagine the same thing. This is how humans can even communicate - the unified subjectivity of which I speak. But full territory can never be defined through imperfect words, maps, and symbols. And even if one could know full territory, relaying it to another and "being sure they knew/were real too" is an impossibility.

At least at this time.
 
The most important philosophical question for me is: What is Subjectivity?
Again, Hegel brilliantly answered this question and today Zizek is trying to explain it to the world... :)

We cannot see the same apple, because sensual certainty is not real. Anything that senses receive is transient, finite. We enter the sphere of the infinite when we start thinking about our thinking. Senses give you data only because you think about what they sense. You would not see, taste or touch the apple if it were not for thought and the language signifiers you give to different senses. Language is the first affirmation of something but also the first negation - by saying THIS you are simultaneously saying everything which is NOT-THIS.

We cannot have the same sensual certainty about anything because sensual certainty is composed of three elements: THIS, HERE, NOW. However, those are still empty vessels, so to say, which could mean anything. What I mean I can never say, because by saying THIS, HERE, NOW I am saying anything that could fit the words. By saying apple I cannot possibly say THIS APPLE and only this no other apple in the whole world, because then I would need to describe it to the point of infinity - every spot and scratch and taste difference - this is the bad infinity of matter. Matter is always dissolving into countless words. What does not dissolve into words? Thought. We can come to an agreement what an apple is in general by grasping how each apple becomes. By having an idea of its growth, its structure, its unique quality that makes it an apple and nothing else. This would be the philosophical approach to the Real which is immaterial and the only way truth can be communicated between subjects.
 
So if I understand what you are saying correctly, we need to lower, or at least drastically change, our standards for what is "real." The "agreement what an apple is in general" that you speak of is what I called above "unified subjectivity." We can discuss what the apple is now because we have agreed as a society on what an apple is, and we have been taught what it is. But by simply traveling to another country with a different language you would find that they have completely different descriptors for what an apple is, but still the same idea in their head of how it affects our senses (or so one would hope/think).

If we consider this unified subjectivity that we share with relative certainty as "real," or at least "the most real we can get," then yes, I would say that hyperspace is a very, very real place. Just surfing the Nexus would show you report after report of travels to this wild realm, after doing the exact same thing - smoking DMT!!

There is a cause that leads to a repeatable effect. The realm to which we travel during a breakthrough is hardly similar, but similarly alien. Some breakthrough reports are very similar, but many are unique, which is partly what makes DMT so special. But even the fact that we have a word for this realm gives an indication that we are describing a real-enough place.
 
Yes, you are correct! It has one common quality - total weirdness.

Again: the apple is an apple in every country. It is not a peach, not a banana, and so on... It will taste like an apple, and no matter what the colour, have the shape of an apple that makes it unique. How we DESCRIBE it is not its truth. It is its appearance. How it becomes what it is - being a fruit, growing from a seed, being sour and sweet, and how these qualities are unified in a single object - this will be valid in every country, no matter what the language and the apple appearance is.

So... coming back to hyperspace, we need to know how its complete alienness comes to be, what its logical becoming is, in order to deduce its truth.
 
Well there may be some out there who know the real REAL truth.. Haha.. That's what they want you to think..

But here are some theories about hyperspace that I consider:

1. It's all in our heads and we are a bunch of drug addicts with wild imaginations.

2. It is a realm manufactured by an advanced extraterrestrial/extrauniversal race that mastered extremely advanced technology. (We have Google Glass that can be controlled by our brainwaves already; imagine when we integrate this into a brain chip and wireless power. We will have a cosmic Internet at our fingertips, a hyperspace of our own on our little blue planet!) The race mastered it and projected this intergalactic communication network across many galaxies and universes so that any consciousness that exits the physical plane has a funnel/connection to a new plane.

3. It is a spiritual space that exists inherently as part of the universe/multiverse or is just part of the whole collective consciousness ideal I described before. It has always been around and may have always been inhabited by beings, but we have no way of knowing now (unless you go there and ask the entities, but they might give conflicting answers).

4. It is the first mutually accessible dream state that humans have reached, and more will be found as we create better chemicals and master our higher circuits.

The DMT Nexus - FAQ - scroll to the bottom for a GREAT overview of the different most popular theories. I could expand on any with my own opinions too.
 
Great, great! Well, the only condition from a philosophical perspective is that you do not form a theory that needs to be proven but form a concept of how 1, 2, 3 or 4 have come to be without presupposing anything - consciousness, spirit, aliens, ideas separate from reality, etc...
 
We cannot see the same apple because sensual certainty is not real.
Click to expand...

I don't follow this.

Lets say we are at a table looking at an apple. And unbeknownst to us the apple is in fact there.

But, neither you nor I are certain that an apple is there. We scratch our heads and furrow our brows concerned we might be dreaming. The following statement seems compatible with all this:

we are seeing the same apple.

in other words, the causal relationship between our seeing of an apple and the presence of this apple is not affected by epistemological concerns about certainty.
 
autumnsphere said:
Great, great! Well, the only condition from a philosophical perspective is that you do not form a theory that needs to be proven but form a concept of how 1, 2, 3 or 4 have come to be without presupposing anything - consciousness, spirit, aliens, ideas separate from reality, etc...
Click to expand...

Well the problem comes from the multitude of different things that must be assumed to even make a statement about something so powerful as a trip to hyperspace and what it actually seems to/could be.

Also we could sit and theorize about aliens, but that's a whole discussion on its own. How big is the universe? Is there more than the observable universe? If so what are the chances of life forming? Intelligent life? Life that would care to expand across the universe? Life that wouldn't create a matrix and just live happily ever after in that? Why would any advanced species even feel the need to interact with us, or even allow us to interact with them in such a realm?

Then for consciousness, what is consciousness? Awareness? Being? Self-awareness? Do animals and plants have consciousness? What about self-awareness? How would the answers to those questions affect how we view consciousness, existence, the afterlife, multiple states, etc.?

Are spirits and ghosts real? Are people's stories of alien abductions and UFOs real? Do they happen externally, internally, or both? Do the instances arise from different sources/causes in different cases? How much of what were told is for entertainment value only?

And the age old questions, do we have all the information we need to make a decision and come to a conclusion? How would we know? It's like the case of the unknown unknown - stuff we don't know we don't know. Imperfect perception. Something we are famous for.

So to even conjecture about what hyperspace could be, I think we do have to take some liberties with what we presuppose. Any doubt can be cleared up along the way I suppose.
 
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