Qualitativly Describing Psychedelic 'Hallucinations'

[Nathanial.Dread]

Is it possible to, or has anyone tried, to qualitatively describe what exactly what one sees (or experiences) while on DMT (or other psychedelic drugs)?

A lot of the experience reports focus on things like ineffable understanding and spiritual revelations, and while that makes perfect sense in the head of the author, it really does very little for anyone reading.

A little pet project of mind is to try and find ways to accurately describe the experience of psychedelics to those who might never have taken them, mostly by relating them to things we might experience while sober.

Eg: the breathing-walls phenomena is actually very similar to the waterfall effect. If anyone has ever sat and looked at rushing water for a long time, and then suddenly looked up, you perceive motion where there isn't any. Not perfect, but a lot more accurate then 'the walls melt.'

Another example would be when certain things turn into other things, it's very similar to when you look at one thing and think "this looks like that."
Eg: a cliff looks like a face. When you are in the altered state, those interpretations become more more 'real.'

 

[universecannon]

...The thing is though, stuff like that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what you can see in hyperspace

And its not just what you 'see'....The other important aspect that is impossible to download into such a lower dimensional thing as english is the psychological/sensory synesthesia that everything can be experienced in. It can be experienced, but not really explained in a way that conveys it well enough for anyone to understand... unless they've been there. Its just impossible to wrestle down into our clumsy/arbitrary labels

We may very well elucidate the nature of the mind/matter interface, the holy grail of neuroscience, and attain a general understanding of just where we are going when we enter the hyperspatial state and how it works on a rough nuts & bolts level... But even this says almost nothing about the experience as it is for the experiencer. Its like explaining color to a blind man. He may understand intellectually the how and why of its wokings, but he can't even begin to fucking imagine what its like to experience! You just can't convey that to him via language. Its too multi-dimensional and far removed from our normal metabolization of space/time to even fathom unless you've been there (and even then it can be quite hard to imagine)

A lot of people want to explain what it is like to experience hyperspace in rational/logical terms..but is that even possible? hyperspace, psychic experiences, synchronicities, ect, just tell me otherwise. Why should it be downloadable into that framework of thinking? Logic tells us nothing of abilities that are beyond logic. Just talk to autistic savants who have impossibly genius abilities/synesthesia that are beyond ordinary left-brain logic. Rational thinking in some sense at least is extremely limited compared to other ways of thinking, in the same way that speech is in some ways a dumbed down version of singing



that said...it sure can be fun to try :d

 

[Global]

I guess something of an analogy would be like if you were unfamiliar with the Star Wars movies for example, and you read the script and thought, wow this is a great script...but then seeing the movie is a completely different experience. In this analogy, in the movie, the only stimuli presented to us are audio and visual. In the DMT experience, it can be all the senses (often synesthetically criss-crossed). Without having the experience directly, the reader can come up with any number of poor and inaccurate mental representations. Additionally, even after having seen the "movies", recalling them doesn't bring nearly as much satisfaction or clarity or accuracy in recall as being present in the experience of watching/experiencing.

In terms of the lighter side of things like "melting walls", these things are astronomically easier to describe taking into account adjectives like "wavering", "fluid", "oscillating", "squirming", etc...For those unwilling to take psychedelics, this wavering matter effect is easily induced by staring into the center of those swirling patterns on youtube for around 3-10 seconds.

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

The problem is one of transmitting information.

When say "The dog is red," the information began as a collection of electrical impulses, was translated into kinesthetic motion in my fingers, and then into electrical information. That information traveled wirelessly in yet another form before returning to the electrical form on your computer screen, and then light, and finally it was back to being electrical impulses in a totally new brain.

If I have a specific visualization of the dog (say, in my head it's a lapdog), you can't get that from "The dog is red."

I could be more specific, and use more words to encode information, but there will always be some information loss. This is the problem of data compression, for any of you computer science geeks out there.

And so my question is: when I think about a psychedelic experience I had, all of that is encoded into information in my brain. I wouldn't be able to think it if it wasn't. When I try to explain that to someone, some information (the ineffable parts) are lost.

But does it have to be that way?

I know that language is a massively inefficient method of transmitting information, but the information should be transmittable, right?
Or is there something about these experiences that actually defies information transfer?

If so, what is it?

Is it a problem with our hardware (we can't process it), or is the information itself somehow unencodable beyond electrical impulses and arranged neurons?

 

[cyb]

I believe in the future...wet wiring and recording of the full sensorium along with the resultant playback, will answer many of these questions.

Watch 'Strange Days' and wrap your spice mind round that little thought.

Strange Days (1995) ⭐ 7.2 | Crime, Drama, Sci-Fi

2h 25m | 16

www.imdb.com

Closer than you may think...

 

[Global]

A major part of the problem is that we're not even entirely sure what these experiences really are or what they're really "made of" so to speak. We have no instruments that can detect the contents of hyperspace, and thus other than turning the experience into a language-based one (which is what happens with trip reports and the like), then I see no logical way to encode this information. The problem becomes more complex when you take into account that even with the "dog is red" example, seeing a picture of a dog doesn't substitute for holding the dog, interacting with the dog, smelling the dog, feeling its fur, etc...While this may not be so striking a dilemma with the dog example, due to DMT's full modality of interdependent sensory information, just seeing the images would be a really "cheap knockoff" of the real deal. Sometimes in experiences for example, I can somehow become disconnected from the experience and the energy of the experience such that hyperspace and the entities are still there, sometimes they're even still active, but I just don't feel the connection to them, and it seems rather pointless. Sure it's beautiful, but without that full connection to everything going on, it can seem somewhat pointless and boring.

 

[Elemotion]

I think that part of the beauty of DMT and related substances is their ability to transcend explanation, at least through language. I remember trying to explain my experience shortly after returning to baseline from my last blast-off; I could describe some very basic aspects of the journey but much it of was indescribable.

What it ultimately comes down to, for me, is that part of the experience is all mine. It is unique to me and no matter how I try, I can't give it to someone else. I think of it as my best kept secrets!