I hate to resort to quoting myself, but...
Uncle Knucles said:
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The epistemology of DMT: experience reports
- Thread starter Ripheus23
- Start date
VIII
Rising Star
Words are not experience. Reading words is an experience of reading words. The reader overlays their personal outlook/experience/etc to create a picture of what is being read. This mental image is made of more than simply the words that were read. Our brains fill in gaps for us, it is automatic and prone to inaccuracies. If the reader is asked to recall what they read it will differ based on their perspective when reading. Some important aspects for you could be things like, how engaged were they? DMT demands my complete attention. I have never surrendered to a book reading as I do a DMT experience. The reader's entire life (thats an overwhelming amount of stuff) is influencing what they read and you need to overcome that to communicate purely your experience. I suppose more than overcome, but entirely replace everything they know with something else and then smack them in the face with it. If it can be done with words, I will gladly purchase the first copy!
Something comes back with you from a DMT trip. A little memory maybe. Maybe more. I don't know. Certainly not the capability to express the entirety of the experience. I believe one is, at minimum, very hard pressed to properly articulate even a single sense's moment of the experience, through standard word especially but also art forms. What does come back is a lot of feeling. Feelings that can change you imo. Feelings that can be expressed as well as one can express feelings. Here lies another limitation of language for describing experiences. The inability to accurately identify, recall, and convey feeling.
Edit: A note on DMT requiring my full attention. I feel that the level of attention required in a DMT experience if able to be reproduced via the reading of written word, would immediately bring the reader back to focus seeing it as ink on paper, etc. There is no room for silly mental images and ideas in a DMT experience. If anything these things directly affect the experience.
I feel any more I say simply screams "you have to extract it yourself." So that is my advice if you wish to attempt comprehending.
Something comes back with you from a DMT trip. A little memory maybe. Maybe more. I don't know. Certainly not the capability to express the entirety of the experience. I believe one is, at minimum, very hard pressed to properly articulate even a single sense's moment of the experience, through standard word especially but also art forms. What does come back is a lot of feeling. Feelings that can change you imo. Feelings that can be expressed as well as one can express feelings. Here lies another limitation of language for describing experiences. The inability to accurately identify, recall, and convey feeling.
Edit: A note on DMT requiring my full attention. I feel that the level of attention required in a DMT experience if able to be reproduced via the reading of written word, would immediately bring the reader back to focus seeing it as ink on paper, etc. There is no room for silly mental images and ideas in a DMT experience. If anything these things directly affect the experience.
I feel any more I say simply screams "you have to extract it yourself." So that is my advice if you wish to attempt comprehending.
Personally I have found DMT can be important precisely because it shows what "important" means. DMT laughs at words but is a master of expression. Words don't matter, they are simply a vehicle. Words are still a squared wheel compared to what DMT can offer. DMT shows how rich of a message can be hidden behind words. Words are like a highlight and overlay on this message. The words direct you towards the message, but the message is also obscured by the overlaying words.Ripheus23 said:
Ripheus23
Rising Star
Okay, I'll go with this idea for now:
Some users of DMT believe the experience can be more or less rationally reconstructed (again, I'll cite Kent). All of you advising me right now think it can't be. Having no direct way, more or less, to decide the question for myself (I don't know what to make of claims that Kent never broke through all the way, seeing as I don't know the man personally and only have read his "The Case Against Machine Elves"), I offer my theories about the nature of the content of DMT hyperspace only to those who believe in reconstructing it using philosophical and religious reasoning. Those who regard this as a doomed endeavor might be right, but I'm not in a position to know that they are. However, they are more than justified in disregarding my theory as it is presented on this website. My theory is convoluted, not ironed out, refers heavily to obscure or what are to many uninteresting or trivial topics. And worst of all, when I think about the number of disparate phenomena that I have tried to link together in this context, the idea even sounds a little TimeCube-crazy.
Some users of DMT believe the experience can be more or less rationally reconstructed (again, I'll cite Kent). All of you advising me right now think it can't be. Having no direct way, more or less, to decide the question for myself (I don't know what to make of claims that Kent never broke through all the way, seeing as I don't know the man personally and only have read his "The Case Against Machine Elves"), I offer my theories about the nature of the content of DMT hyperspace only to those who believe in reconstructing it using philosophical and religious reasoning. Those who regard this as a doomed endeavor might be right, but I'm not in a position to know that they are. However, they are more than justified in disregarding my theory as it is presented on this website. My theory is convoluted, not ironed out, refers heavily to obscure or what are to many uninteresting or trivial topics. And worst of all, when I think about the number of disparate phenomena that I have tried to link together in this context, the idea even sounds a little TimeCube-crazy.
Parshvik Chintan
Rising Star
awesome, DMT theories for people who have little to no experience with or knowledge of DMT.Ripheus23 said:
perfect.
With all due respect, you don't get to have a theory until you've had the experience - at least, you don't get to offer one in here without danger of being mocked.
Understand that no one is trying to pick on you, Ripheus23, but you are making it increasingly difficult not to. You are clearly bright and clearly invested in demonstrating this at length. But once again, with all due respect (I feel honor bound for some strange reason to keep including that disclaimer), you haven't a clue what you're talking about. Your insistence on arguing points for which you have no possible frames of reference betrays your age, lack of common sense and reasonable social decorum.
Understand that no one is trying to pick on you, Ripheus23, but you are making it increasingly difficult not to. You are clearly bright and clearly invested in demonstrating this at length. But once again, with all due respect (I feel honor bound for some strange reason to keep including that disclaimer), you haven't a clue what you're talking about. Your insistence on arguing points for which you have no possible frames of reference betrays your age, lack of common sense and reasonable social decorum.
Ripheus23
Rising Star
Parshvik Chintan said:
I don't know what every, or even a majority, of DMT users would answer the question about reasoning and DMT with. Am I supposed to blindly trust Kent or blindly trust someone who tells me that Kent is wrong? But it should be clear enough that I shouldn't blindly trust *anyone*.
So far in this thread, all respondents have told me that my approach is wrong. However, people often gravitate towards threads in which someone says something they disagree with (so they can "shoot down" the disagreed-with point of view). So of course the sample of DMT users in this thread is overwhelmingly weighted with those who think reason and DMT don't exactly mix. Until I do a university-quality survey of DMT users and have +50% of them tell me that extreme DMT breakthroughs do not admit of rational reconstruction virtually at all, I'm confident that offering my theories on this website is not a waste of time.
Kent gets to have an opinion worth examining if for no other reason than he actually did smoke DMT (even if it's allegedly misleading). We have no problem with debates here and we're all on opposite sides of the fence on practically every issue here. However, we've all smoked DMT. We have some form of experience to base our theories on. These matters are extremely subjective and should be framed as such.
Wanna talk about about objective proof?Ripheus23 said:
You have not done DMT, yet you are talking about understanding/reconstructing/getting to the bottom of the experience.
Now take this statement:
"If you guys are right, then from your point of view, I'm a deaf man claiming to know the secrets of music."
and compare it to this one:
"You have not done DMT, therefore, you have no firsthand experience with DMT on which to comment."
Now, go back to the first sentence:
"
We don't have to be "right"...it doesn't have to be "our point of view"...you are a man commenting on an experience you have not had.
Our take on what you have to say is superfluous to the "objective" fact that you have not experienced DMT, yet claim to be able to talk about it.
Ripheus23
Rising Star
Global said:
Okay, but this is what I'm trying to do: see if the world I've encountered through non-DMT psychedelics/dreams/mystical episodes/religion/literature/philosophy is the same as the DMT world. So I mean to offer my description of the world I've envisioned, have DMT users compare the description to their personal accounts of DMT hyperspace, and then either confirm or deny overlap. If you don't think that place can be described, though, no worries.
Ripheus23
Rising Star
SnozzleBerry said:Wanna talk about about objective proof?Ripheus23 said:
You have not done DMT, yet you are talking about understanding/reconstructing/getting to the bottom of the experience.
Now take this statement:
"If you guys are right, then from your point of view, I'm a deaf man claiming to know the secrets of music."
and compare it to this one:
"You have not done DMT, therefore, you have no firsthand experience with DMT on which to comment."
Now, go back to the first sentence:
"If you guys are right,then from your point of view, I'm a deaf man claiming to know the secrets of music."
We don't have to be "right"...it doesn't have to be "our point of view"...you are a man commenting on an experience you have not had.
Our take on what you have to say is superfluous to the "objective" fact that you have not experienced DMT, yet claim to be able to talk about it.
I'm starting from the assumption that DMT is just a handy tool to reaching a real plane of existence. I don't have DMT experience, but I think I have experience of the related plane of existence. So I'm claiming to be not a deaf man, but a man with something besides ears but that can still allow me to hear music.
Ripheus23
Rising Star
I don't mean to sound like I would tell DMT users that their descriptions of trips are mistaken, if those descriptions (up to and including the word "indescribable") didn't match up to my theory. If there was such a mismatch, I would assume that the DMT world was different from the one I'm familiar with.
It would be more apt to say that you are a man without ears who, using something else, claims to be hearing exactly what people with ears are hearing, despite never actually having had ears with which to compare what you are hearing. Even if you think you might possibly be hearing the same thing, you have no reasonable foundation from which to make that assertion.Ripheus23 said:
No matter how you put it, you have not done DMT. Anything you may think about DMT is implicitly distanced from the experience. You have no way of commenting on the experience, as you have not tried DMT. Even if you think you've been there some other way, you have never had the experience with which you seek to compare it, and therefore cannot comment on how similar or dissimilar the experiences are.
Therefore, you have nothing to say on the DMT experience, even though you think you do. How could you? In order to comment on the DMT experience, you would have to have that experience; everything else is assumption. Assumption is not valid here, especially when talking to a community of people who have had that experience.
This is my last post in this thread, running in circles is wearisome.
Ripheus23 said:
It would be like Buddha trying to explain 'Enlightenment'...
He would probably say 'Sit and be still'...
Let's see the theory... you just never know what will happen...life is a mystery like that.
Ripheus23
Rising Star
SnozzleBerry said:
Hold on a second. I hope I never said that I had exactly the same experience. If I did, I have to disavow that. However, I don't think the standard of "reasonable" in, "Even if you think you might possibly be hearing the same thing, you have no reasonable foundation from which to make that assertion," is correct. We can achieve significant insights into 4D space (e.g. tesseract representations) without actually having 4D sight, for instance.
Ah, but I plan on leaving most of the comparison to those who *have* done DMT. I'll write my story down, and if they say, "Yeah, we read the same story in hyperspace," or, "No, this is something else," then that'll be that.
I think I might, might be a better way to put it.
"I offer my theories about the nature of the content of DMT hyperspace only to those who believe in reconstructing it using philosophical and religious reasoning"
This is how things like religion come about. Good luck with that.
This is how things like religion come about. Good luck with that.
Ripheus23 said:
You can feel free to self engage in your philosophical endeavors, do some research, do whatever you have to do. Just realize the limitations of your endeavors and understand that the Nexus isn't really the appropriate outlet for this particular discourse.
i dont know why people put so much stock into what james kent says...i mean for starters, he said dmt is no more amazing than the fact that we can see some faint visuals if we close our eyes and rub them hard enough...he has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to dmt, imo
Chaoman
Rising Star
Heard this all from SWIM:
Look the DMT breakthrough experience is unlike any form of consciousness that you have previously experienced. why is this? Simply because there is nothing like DMT!
Kent is an idiot and I highly doubt he has experienced dmt to a point where he can claim to be experienced with the sacrament. This is due to his trivializing the experience when anyone who has truly been there would not have that view.
A breakthrough experience is POWERFUL. You are a drop of water caught up in a river of beauty and knowledge. You're trying to grab and hold onto the epiphanies and remember the sheer landscapes of beauty and infinite patterns. However, all of it is of such a different ontological order than what we are accustomed to that it is hard to remember. In fact I feel that a way to determine if someone has really "been" there or not is if they describe difficulty in recollection of the experience.
It is not like Platos heaven. The forms in that realm resemble nothing in our reality. If so it would be due to our minds trying to quantify and categorize what it is seeing. For example, I "remember" one hallucination from DMT and it is like a photo rather than a video, a slice of time. I see a tree and under it a couch, but they are violet, dark, shadowy, geometric, all at the same time. The waves of a DMT experience, the ones which override your entire perceptual functions, you cant even tell if your eyes are opened or closed, these cannot be described by any form of mathematics known to humans. They look nothing like shapes from higher geometry and who can say that we can even perceive the shape in its entirety much less understand it.
In theory this is similar to what Kant referred to as the noumenal realm. The question is whether or not these realms which our consciousness can visit under the right conditions have any sort of concrete existence outside of our visitation. Are these entities and places always there? Or do they spring into existence a split second before the DMT (two almost insignificant steps away from tryptophan, an amino acid) is absorbed into the brain?
Regardless if they have objective existence or not, the felt experience of the occurrence is powerful enough justify its study and in an existential sense, its existence. In fact it could be seen as a real source of knowledge due to the frequency of revelations and feelings brought out of it.
Look the DMT breakthrough experience is unlike any form of consciousness that you have previously experienced. why is this? Simply because there is nothing like DMT!
Kent is an idiot and I highly doubt he has experienced dmt to a point where he can claim to be experienced with the sacrament. This is due to his trivializing the experience when anyone who has truly been there would not have that view.
A breakthrough experience is POWERFUL. You are a drop of water caught up in a river of beauty and knowledge. You're trying to grab and hold onto the epiphanies and remember the sheer landscapes of beauty and infinite patterns. However, all of it is of such a different ontological order than what we are accustomed to that it is hard to remember. In fact I feel that a way to determine if someone has really "been" there or not is if they describe difficulty in recollection of the experience.
It is not like Platos heaven. The forms in that realm resemble nothing in our reality. If so it would be due to our minds trying to quantify and categorize what it is seeing. For example, I "remember" one hallucination from DMT and it is like a photo rather than a video, a slice of time. I see a tree and under it a couch, but they are violet, dark, shadowy, geometric, all at the same time. The waves of a DMT experience, the ones which override your entire perceptual functions, you cant even tell if your eyes are opened or closed, these cannot be described by any form of mathematics known to humans. They look nothing like shapes from higher geometry and who can say that we can even perceive the shape in its entirety much less understand it.
In theory this is similar to what Kant referred to as the noumenal realm. The question is whether or not these realms which our consciousness can visit under the right conditions have any sort of concrete existence outside of our visitation. Are these entities and places always there? Or do they spring into existence a split second before the DMT (two almost insignificant steps away from tryptophan, an amino acid) is absorbed into the brain?
Regardless if they have objective existence or not, the felt experience of the occurrence is powerful enough justify its study and in an existential sense, its existence. In fact it could be seen as a real source of knowledge due to the frequency of revelations and feelings brought out of it.