No substances, No dreaming and No meditation is needed in order to have a DMT (kind of, I guess) experience.

[ArgonPrime]

Nothing is needed in order to have a DMT-affiliated (kind of, I guess) experience. No single particle of no substance needs to be added to your system (other than maybe THC, but I doubt it's mandatory) and no change of internal state to either a sleeping/REM mode or any kind of meditative state is needed. It's a bold claim but my experience may be the proof of it.

I try to keep this down to telling what happended for it is up to you to decide wheter you believe in the truthfulness of my descr or not and what to do with it.
I have no experience with any substance other than a habit of smoking weed on a daily bases for more than 15 years. I got into the rabbit hole of psychedelics via Terence Mc Kenna and Joe Rogan (as most) on youtube a few years ago and was quite intrigued by their stories, hence reserved myself the notion of going there, but kept it to "some day" (as most).

I grow my own weed most of times. Suddenly over days I noticed a decline of mid to long term vision in my eyes which I thought was due to me being stupidly reckless with those strong grow lights which I always had on while feeding the plants under it with no glasses. However, at the time I was also having a quite severe episode of neck pain resulting in tinitus and a type of migrane which may have been the true source of the vision blurring due to an oversensitivity to light which is a common symptom and was just very strong in my case because the migrane was quite severe, maybe a pinched nerve or something.
Nonetheless since I never had migrane this strong or any effect to my vision, I was not thinking about the migrane as a source and was primed on me stupidly bombarding my eyes with photons somehow damaging my retina or the lense or whatever. That seemed the most probable and logic cause to me at the time. I thought "maybe the retina is burned in a way people sometimes burn it on hot summer days". I figured that the hospitals put these eye-sun-burned people in dark rooms for a couple days and wait for them to recover before they further elaborate on surgery. I then made the decision to give my eyes a healing time of about two days @home before I visit the hospital in order to do the same thing (wait in a dark room) but with no weed to smoke and all noisy people around.

So I did freaking duct tape close-shut all the windows in the living room to a degree where I was seeing just enough to navigate myself. The entire room down to mere moonlight levels and since I felt like it was still too much compared to hospital dark room levels, I put two eye patches on (pirate type) of which I lifted just one at a time slightly to navigate the moonlight room or to roll joints which I was chain smoking listening to political pod casts. I don't recall the exact time spent, but after like at least a couple of hours sitting there more or less blindfolded, the black screen of my internal vision started to become increasingly populated, by light!

Part1
Where does the light come from?!

The light kept on bursting into the black screen from all angles as sort of cone shaped beams that ran across just like the light cone a car in the night makes from some distance which is driving pass you. When I say "light" I'm not talking fancy esoteric stuff here, no "holy shine" but usual white photons, same light a 3500K warm white bulbe makes. Needless to say I was quite baffled and disturbed by it. Where does it come from, how does such intense light get into my retina while sitting in a darkened room blindfolded. The only explanation I had at the time was that this was coming from the lighters light which I had to use to light my joints through the means of two sun glasses. I was aware that I was pushing my luck with the bright flame in a "healing darkroom" with a supposedly burned retina, but I had to get the freaking time to pass, so I kept on smoking/lighting but used a layer of blackening foil between the flame and my eyes. As I almost burned down the house, it did not keep the light cones from reappearing any time I stayed blindfolded for prolonged times. Whenever I felt the light got too strong, I bailed out by lifting the eye patches returning to the moonlight level room.

After about a day sitting there listening to podcasts, smoking joints, fighting the light cones by lifting the eye patches over and over giving myself brief pauses from the full darkness, I was somehow able to get to sleep despite having to deal with the cones and despite the tinitus. I had a pretty normal sleep with no remembered dreams and I was thrilled to find out that the light cones where gone after wake up. Full black screen, total darkness. Thankfully, my retinas are healing I thought. So I gave myself another day of the same routine. Breakfast, joints, pod casts.. and after sitting there for about 2-3 hours, the light cones reappear, the darkness gets ruptured. Oh no, not again.

Part2
The inside-outside confusion

After some time passed that second day I got fed up with the constant lifting, so I stayed in this "light show" and kept watching it. As I kept watching it, it faded and fuzzy little dots appeared, like little smeared planets and all sorts of strange texture shapes almost like tissue. At one point I had the impression that my vision has flipped, that I was looking from the outside into the inside of my eye. I saw something resembling an organic net structure as if I was literally seeing into my retina. I thought, I must be going a little crazy here due to the prelonged blindfolding. Still I was not even thinking about DMT related stuff, I was assuming that this is a somehow normal state of a brain playing creatively with itself due to boredom.

Part3
The three concentric rings

Suddenly I see total black again but three concentric rings emerging, each of different radius, but within one another. The rings are made of small dots that come in all colors which are neither square nor round but kind of both, resembling small gem stones with rounded corners layered out as three rings. I'm baffled. WTF?! I lift my eye patches returning to moonlight levels gazing around my room. WHAT THE?! I'm still seeing those three rings! I'm still seeing them while seeing the interior of my moonshadow room. I'm seeing two realities at the same time. The one from the interior of my eye and the one from the exterior at the same freaking time. Like a TV channel to which you put another TV channel as a pic-in-pic to keep watching the cooking show while seeing the news. I freak out, I turn on the dimable lamp to minimum levels brightening up the room, hurting my eyes slightly, but it works, the rings fade out.

Part4
The unmistakeable symbols

As much as I was disturbed and unsettled, I started to get intrigued as I was starting to elaborate the possibility of these strange pictures actually not just be random brain noise due to visual deprivation, but my third eye somehow opening a form of gate. So I went back to blindfolding and waited for the light cones to show up again and the process repeated but this time I stayed until I came to a screen of a sort of greenish shivering energetic matrix type curtain flowfield. Behind the greenish matrix curtain the image of a sort of postcard nature landscape (some generic trees with some generic meadow fields) slowly starts to fade in and just as it is fading in all over sudden a big fat symbol in form of a shadow figure appears in the top right corner. By the term shadow figure symbol I'm talking something resembling the old egyptian hyroglyphs, but with a different style, not as slim and fragile looking as those, but bold and fat and unmistakeable in it's symbolic shape, form and meaning. It is the symbol of a specific animal of which type I will not disclose for I do not know if I'm allowed to. The mere process of questioning allowance may be reason enough to keep it secret. Shortly after a second symbol appears in the lower left corner. It is of the same unmistakeable kind and in the shape and form of something vaguely resembling a specific form of state plants are in. After seeing those two symbols on the postcard landscape matrix I bailed out again in WTFness by lifting the fold and tuning up the light. I went to the doctor the next morning. My eyes rated a 100% on their tests.

 

[blig-blug]

Hi @ArgonPrime , welcome to the Nexus!

That's an interesting experience. I agree that no substance in particular is needed for a psychedelic-type experience. IMO psychedelics are just reliable activators of states that our brains are already capable of.

I would say, however, that THC can be quite psychedelic on its own. At high doses, it can be very visual and colorful, in its own way.

 

[Mr˚Joie]

It's pretty well known in the Tibetan buddhist community. They call it dark retreat, you'll find a lot of testimony on the internet !
Im not really sure about what I'm gonna say, but I think it's part of one the Dzogchen tradition, others go sky gazing and it should do the same kind of things.

 

[taita]

Some daoist methods also use darkness retreats for visioning, and I believe there may be one (or more) that even frames it in terms of endogenous DMT release

Yes, the mind itself is surely psychedelic

 

[Mr˚Joie]

When I was a kid, and maybe to very early teenaghood, I used to drift into sleep with my eyes open, looking at the space in front of me. In the dark I was always seeing those little dots, red and purple, drifting like rivers in my vision field. Then it was turning to little flowers after sometimes, spinning on themselves, and changing colors. And then it was always forming a 3 dimensional and wide tunnel, and It felt like I was going through it.
Always the same pattern.
It was very transparent visio ns though, unlike dmt !
Then it stopped, I guess that at some point you don't have time to get absorb into the little dots. The mind starts to think about social life, interaction, girls, the future, the past and so on.
Or maybe the explanation is not that, but I've lost the capacity to see those little dots, flowery and tunnel patterns anyways !

Edit : THC can bring them back sometimes !!

 

[northape]

Yeah, it's a well-known practice, but without some meaningful context, it's just a light show. What is the end goal here?
If it's to see that the so-called sober state is actually quite psychedelic, it is. A dark retreat is a high-level approach, and one needs a well-developed presence of mind (or mindfulness) to reap substantial benefits. It's a good way to explore your inner world without any substances and is similar to a sensory deprivation tank in that way.

I guess all these techniques have a place when one knows what they are doing. Still, they are all different and give you a unique angle on the nature of mind.
No need to overcomplicate things. Psychedelics have their place, especially in a modern chaotic world. I'd do a dark retreat if given the opportunity, but plant medicines give a sure result and are easier to organize for most.

I had one strong psychedelic journey from a cannabis joint many years ago, and I have never questioned the plant's strength since then. Basically, I was transported into a black-green world of Santa Maria for like half an hour. I had a distant feeling that I had a body and was sitting, but otherwise body consciousness was nonexistent.

Even foods have an impact on the mind. If you want a clean experiment and fast, you'll find yourself in another altered state. Once again, it all depends on a person's sensitivity and presence. That's the highest esoteric teaching actually - you're already free, and this concrete reality is more like a dream. So, what state is normal? Does it even exist?
Who's asking?

 

[ArgonPrime]

Yeah, it's a well-known practice, but without some meaningful context, it's just a light show. What is the end goal here?

Well, I would agree in terms of "just a lightshow" if I wouldn't have been shown these two symbolic shadow figures.

A symbol is not just some trivial gimmick, actually quite the contrary. A symbol is a condensed state of information. It is actually a sort of a Matroska, a package, a container. We attribute deep meaning to symbols. Do I have to refer to the link between symbolism and religion, it is quite obvious isn't it?

So why do I get to see "containered meaning"? To do what with it? Discard it as a mere lightshow? If you get delivered a package you are meant to open it, aren't you? If I get to see things other people found religions on, how can this not be profound? I have literally been in Platons cave.

However, Terence Mc Kenna attributed a sort of distingued godlike entity to each of the psychedelic drugs. For example the mushrooms once told him they're a female goddess that wants to be called "Dorothy". I wonder if there is an entitiy to Cannabis too, maybe a green goddess type of figure. Maybe she wanted to meet me after so many years of smoking her stuff.

I had one strong psychedelic journey from a cannabis joint many years ago, and I have never questioned the plant's strength since then.

That's very interesting to me because I never had anything similar despite being one of the top rollers in terms of weed for decades. Small time hallucinations such as the walls growing a little bigger and smaller, those are the maximum psychedelic effects I ever got of it. The weed I had at the time was particularily potent, probably the most potent I ever grew. Yet I believe the primary factor was the prolongued blindfolding, not the weed. If I were to repeat it without weed, I'm quite certain I could get there again just by being patient.

This is the main lesson I get from this. Patience is key. You cannot force it as you cannot force anything in life, it has to flow to you and you have to be open to the world in order not to miss it when it happens. Being open to the world means being less around yourself, for you cannot be both at the same time.

 

[universecannon]

The reports out there of prolonged darkness retreats are quite interesting, and as others have said cannabis is very underrated as a psychedelic to, depending on how it's used and individual sensitivity. It makes sense that potentially the most potent weed you ever grew combined well with a bit of darkness.

It can be interesting to try and decode the imagery but I would just be careful to avoid any solid conclusions. I don't say any of this to diminish your experience, I've just had countless psychedelic experiences from cannabis and would drive myself crazy trying to decipher all the weird experiences that precipitated from its use, especially when combined with other potent methods

 

[northape]

Well, I would agree in terms of "just a lightshow" if I wouldn't have been shown these two symbolic shadow figures.

A symbol is not just some trivial gimmick, actually quite the contrary. A symbol is a condensed state of information. It is actually a sort of a Matroska, a package, a container. We attribute deep meaning to symbols. Do I have to refer to the link between symbolism and religion, it is quite obvious isn't it?

So why do I get to see "containered meaning"? To do what with it? Discard it as a mere lightshow? If you get delivered a package you are meant to open it, aren't you? If I get to see things other people found religions on, how can this not be profound? I have literally been in Platons cave.

However, Terence Mc Kenna attributed a sort of distingued godlike entity to each of the psychedelic drugs. For example the mushrooms once told him they're a female goddess that wants to be called "Dorothy". I wonder if there is an entitiy to Cannabis too, maybe a green goddess type of figure. Maybe she wanted to meet me after so many years of smoking her stuff.

That's what I was aiming at, actually. When it becomes something more than a light show for you and you try to find the meaning behind it, it marks the beginning of inner exploration. Your intent behind the work may still be developing, but you're seeking answers and introspect. My question was there just to point in that direction.

That's very interesting to me because I never had anything similar despite being one of the top rollers in terms of weed for decades. Small time hallucinations such as the walls growing a little bigger and smaller, those are the maximum psychedelic effects I ever got of it. The weed I had at the time was particularily potent, probably the most potent I ever grew. Yet I believe the primary factor was the prolongued blindfolding, not the weed. If I were to repeat it without weed, I'm quite certain I could get there again just by being patient.

I'd say it's not about potency, but readiness. Sometimes medicine just takes you, and I've no answers as to how it works. It can come even in a sober state or through a dream.

This is the main lesson I get from this. Patience is key. You cannot force it as you cannot force anything in life, it has to flow to you and you have to be open to the world in order not to miss it when it happens. Being open to the world means being less around yourself, for you cannot be both at the same time.

That's the way, and I could not say it better. This rabbit hole has no bottom. Dare to explore?

 

[Astronauticos]

Part1
Where does the light come from?!

The light kept on bursting into the black screen from all angles as sort of cone shaped beams that ran across just like the light cone a car in the night makes from some distance which is driving pass you. When I say "light" I'm not talking fancy esoteric stuff here, no "holy shine" but usual white photons, same light a 3500K warm white bulbe makes. Needless to say I was quite baffled and disturbed by it. Where does it come from, how does such intense light get into my retina while sitting in a darkened room blindfolded. The only explanation I had at the time was that this was coming from the lighters light which I had to use to light my joints through the means of two sun glasses. I was aware that I was pushing my luck with the bright flame in a "healing darkroom" with a supposedly burned retina, but I had to get the freaking time to pass, so I kept on smoking/lighting but used a layer of blackening foil between the flame and my eyes. As I almost burned down the house, it did not keep the light cones from reappearing any time I stayed blindfolded for prolonged times. Whenever I felt the light got too strong, I bailed out by lifting the eye patches returning to the moonlight level room.

After about a day sitting there listening to podcasts, smoking joints, fighting the light cones by lifting the eye patches over and over giving myself brief pauses from the full darkness, I was somehow able to get to sleep despite having to deal with the cones and despite the tinitus. I had a pretty normal sleep with no remembered dreams and I was thrilled to find out that the light cones where gone after wake up. Full black screen, total darkness. Thankfully, my retinas are healing I thought. So I gave myself another day of the same routine. Breakfast, joints, pod casts.. and after sitting there for about 2-3 hours, the light cones reappear, the darkness gets ruptured. Oh no, not again.

Part2
The inside-outside confusion

After some time passed that second day I got fed up with the constant lifting, so I stayed in this "light show" and kept watching it. As I kept watching it, it faded and fuzzy little dots appeared, like little smeared planets and all sorts of strange texture shapes almost like tissue. At one point I had the impression that my vision has flipped, that I was looking from the outside into the inside of my eye. I saw something resembling an organic net structure as if I was literally seeing into my retina. I thought, I must be going a little crazy here due to the prelonged blindfolding. Still I was not even thinking about DMT related stuff, I was assuming that this is a somehow normal state of a brain playing creatively with itself due to boredom.

Part3
The three concentric rings

Suddenly I see total black again but three concentric rings emerging, each of different radius, but within one another. The rings are made of small dots that come in all colors which are neither square nor round but kind of both, resembling small gem stones with rounded corners layered out as three rings. I'm baffled. WTF?! I lift my eye patches returning to moonlight levels gazing around my room. WHAT THE?! I'm still seeing those three rings! I'm still seeing them while seeing the interior of my moonshadow room. I'm seeing two realities at the same time. The one from the interior of my eye and the one from the exterior at the same freaking time. Like a TV channel to which you put another TV channel as a pic-in-pic to keep watching the cooking show while seeing the news. I freak out, I turn on the dimable lamp to minimum levels brightening up the room, hurting my eyes slightly, but it works, the rings fade out.

Part4
The unmistakeable symbols

As much as I was disturbed and unsettled, I started to get intrigued as I was starting to elaborate the possibility of these strange pictures actually not just be random brain noise due to visual deprivation, but my third eye somehow opening a form of gate. So I went back to blindfolding and waited for the light cones to show up again and the process repeated but this time I stayed until I came to a screen of a sort of greenish shivering energetic matrix type curtain flowfield. Behind the greenish matrix curtain the image of a sort of postcard nature landscape (some generic trees with some generic meadow fields) slowly starts to fade in and just as it is fading in all over sudden a big fat symbol in form of a shadow figure appears in the top right corner. By the term shadow figure symbol I'm talking something resembling the old egyptian hyroglyphs, but with a different style, not as slim and fragile looking as those, but bold and fat and unmistakeable in it's symbolic shape, form and meaning. It is the symbol of a specific animal of which type I will not disclose for I do not know if I'm allowed to. The mere process of questioning allowance may be reason enough to keep it secret. Shortly after a second symbol appears in the lower left corner. It is of the same unmistakeable kind and in the shape and form of something vaguely resembling a specific form of state plants are in. After seeing those two symbols on the postcard landscape matrix I bailed out again in WTFness by lifting the fold and tuning up the light. I went to the doctor the next morning. My eyes rated a 100% on their tests.

That's what I was aiming at, actually. When it becomes something more than a light show for you and you try to find the meaning behind it, it marks the beginning of inner exploration. Your intent behind the work may still be developing, but you're seeking answers and introspect. My question was there just to point in that direction.

I'd say it's not about potency, but readiness. Sometimes medicine just takes you, and I've no answers as to how it works. It can come even in a sober state or through a dream.

That's the way, and I could not say it better. This rabbit hole has no bottom. Dare to explore?

Hello everyone. Yes, of course this method can also open the pineal gland and consequently, a smaller or larger release of DMT into the brain can occur. This is based on scientific consensus which mainstream science, for some unknown reason has been trying to forcefully change recently.
I'll explain that after centuries of human experience, scientists have suddenly concluded that the pineal gland our third eye has little to do with this condition.
The pineal gland, lumped together doesn't often produce it because it's closed so they assumed it shouldn't produce enough DMT for anyone to get high.
But how can I determine how much naturally produced DMT the body needs to get high?

There are many factors involved. But getting back to this experience it is indeed possible. I know from experience that during meditation in the dark you can direct a beam of light or hold a lit candle at forehead level. In my opinion this is a very good method. But when it comes to colors I experience them every day without taking any substances, as a synesthete with my eyes closed or open. If there's too much noise, I got vizualizations. As for the lamps, they can actually be quite strong. I remember having good fluorescent lights and after a few minutes, a signature remains with my eyes closed, and in the dark, it's even stronger.

So if I understand correctly it's more of a visual journey. And as for THC I've never been a grower but I smoked daily for about 20 years and I think that research into such psychedelic like trips could talk something about whether the growers positive energy toward the plants could explain it how much is important or something. In my opinion, the first more psychedelic experiences were the classic white widow in the 90s. Thanks to that it became a hit. I remember it to this day in Amsterdam, it was a "must have" in every good coffee shop. These plants had a different profile of action back then, but after white widow, it was something different.

 

[ArgonPrime]

It can be interesting to try and decode the imagery but I would just be careful to avoid any solid conclusions.

I'm intrigued, but totally agnostic about it. The closest approach to conciousness I have so far is that it has very much in common with fire. Fire is a state that can manifest itself anywhere as long as there is matter ready to be burned. In order for matter to be ready to be burned, it has to fulfill three requirements. 1.There has to be oxygen. 2. There has to be sufficient warmth, if it's too cold it will not show. Warmth = entropy. So fire actually need entropy as a second requirement. 3. It needs a material (a vessel) of whos energy it can transform into flame. Those three requirements are not just familiar to the requirements of conciousness manifesting, but I believe them to be identical. (Oxygen, Entropy, Vessel). This is known by firefighters as the fire-triangle. The pineal as the center of the brain and the two eyes up front also form a triangle.

Now what's interesting about the fire analogy, is the idea that fire is eternal. It consumes matter and "lives" through the consumption briefly in a tiny window of time. Life itself is not different. It consumes itself to create itself in an epic circle to allow its creatures to have brief windows, some more some less. The creatures that get consumed by conciousness change (rapidly) just as the matter changes that gets consumed by fire (even more rapidly), but neither conciousness, nor fire get changed by the things they burn.

That's what I was aiming at, actually. When it becomes something more than a light show for you and you try to find the meaning behind it, it marks the beginning of inner exploration. Your intent behind the work may still be developing, but you're seeking answers and introspect. My question was there just to point in that direction.

True, but I think what really makes this experience stand out amongst others is that it happend "by accident" not by choice. I was not in a meditative state in any form, neither at the beginning of the "trip" nor at the climax of it. I was in a everyday-state, high as a kite, but this is my everyday-state. Really the primary factor was just shutting my eyes off and staying awake and aware. Sleeping/dreaming seems very different to me. In a dream you get thrown into a full blown whole body type simulation ( a fuzzy one), but I wasn't thrown into anything or pulled into anything. I watched a film on a screen (or got shown one), just like some dude in a cinema. I even said this to myself in wonder at one point, I said: "This is like cinema".

As much as I understand, since I have never taken those really potent psychedelics, the DMT/Ayahuasca experience is not of the cinema type I had, but much more akin to the dreaming state.

that during meditation

As I said, I wasn't remotely. My mind was racing the entire time. Total opposite of a meditative state I was in. Imagine thinking about practical things, which of my smartphone adapters I pack for tomorrow, in case I need to stay at the hospital for longer or what cheese I put on my sandwich. In the meantime: cinema running.