First I'm going to quote myself from some other relevant thread
Global said:
In the famous TV analogy where the TV represents your consciousness, one would be incorrect to assume that the TV is generating the content/program on the television. It is merely receiving the signal non-locally. As with fMRI scans of the brain, if one were to scan and analyze the electrical activity of the various circuits and modules in the television, one would find clear correlations between the audio and video being created along with the electrical activity in the hardware. Now if one were to slash, or damage one of the circuits for example (or modify it in any number of ways), one would expect to see distortions and abnormalities in the television...and yet one would still be incorrect to assume that just because the physical intervention can create this effect, that it is the television set that is generating the content. Similarly just because we can alter our neurochemistry with neurotransmitters or affect the electrical activity with TMS or things like that, does not fully indicate that consciousness is generated by the brain.
pechenek said:
Good post. So to those DMT users who are convinced this experience is "real", does DMT enable us to bypass the brains normal filters and allow us to see things as they actually are? Is this "hyperspace" synonymous with the "afterlife" reported in NDE's? Why is the presence of Mantis-like beings a common trait among DMT experiences? Why is this experience so hard to put into words? Lots of questions but I'm unsatisfied with most of the answers.
I'll try and answer your questions to the best of my abilities. Hyperspace is a very frequency-based phenomenon. The notion of frequency ties into the experience at every step along the way. There are visual colors of light, there are audio frequencies (often high in pitch), there are tactile frequencies in the form of buzzing, and at the end of the day, all of these frequencies often are well-interconnected. Perhaps it is the case that we are dialing into a different frequency. We for example have radio waves and ultraviolet rays bombarding us and passing through us constantly, yet we remain perpetually unaware of them. Had we not developed devices to detect them, we would have no way of knowing that they exist. DMT may be thought of as a biological frequency detector.
Part of the problem is that these experiences appear to be non-consensual. That is that we cannot verify them with others in consensual reality, however if it is the case that the entities are real and autonomous, then it is consensual with them. For all the entities present at the experience, everyone involved can all sense each other, so the "consensuality" (if I may make up a word) can be dependent on perspective. Because of the quick metabolization of DMT via MAO, we naturally and quickly revert back to baseline brain chemistry. If through evolution we were to have produced more DMT than serotonin, our view of with whom consensual refers to might be quite altered.
I can't say that hyperspace is synonymous with the NDE's as I've never had one, but I have had DMT experiences that were NDE-like with the bright white light, in a seemingly timeless state. Though not particularly common (for me) it remains a possibility that there is overlap of the spaces. In Ebin Alexander's famous recent book on his NDE, I found many similarities with my DMT experiences. Of particular note was describing going to different "heavens" or something to that extent, accentuating his particular like of the beautifully adorned "Egyptian heaven". That is quite congruent with my numerous Egyptian experiences which do in fact carry a superb element of beauty, superseding much other hyperspatial imagery in my opinion.
There's a lot of overlap in people's experiences other than just mantises. Personally I see all types of animals from lions to gorillas to anacondas to insects to horses, and others I'm probably forgetting. A lot of these animals carry strong and consistent cross-cultural mythological symbolism, and this symbolism is sometimes consistent within the experience. When it is, it reifies at least in part the possible external nature of the experience.
Lastly it's so hard to put into words because the vast majority of things that one encounters there can tend to have no reference point to anything from consensual reality. There are simply many things which have no consensual reality analogues. Because it is for practicality's sake non-consensual, developing any kind of new working language around these new kinds of objects and details which is a communal task can be quite challenging. What good are words anyway? If we take a cheesy example like a Star Wars movie, and try to describe the movie or a particular scene to someone who has not only never seen a Star Wars movie, but has never seen any sci-fi movie of any kind, what that scene was like, the chance that the person would actually be able to accurately recreate that scene in his head is close to nil.
Even for those who are well familiar with the movie or a particular scene, the simple act of remembering is hindered by memory being based primarily in expectation and not genuine recollection. If for example, you try to remember your last visit to the grocery store, and you try and picture the items on the shelves, the only reason you can really do that is because you have a decent amount of experience with grocery shopping (and probably the particular store) and so you'd expect to find soda cans, and soup and this and that on the shelves, and you have word labels for all of these things so they are easily accessible by the dominant language-driven left hemisphere. When you attempt the memory, you are visualizing more of what you expect to see, and less of what you actually saw. In the case of DMT, there are vastly fewer labels, expectations are lower, and memory of the experience is shattered even moments after it's over. With repeated experience, expectations become more accurate and reliable and thus memory of the experience can be enhanced even if worded labels are still a bit lacking.
