Well, my theories are fairly limited so far, in part because of my limited experience and in part because I know that as soon as I accept something as truth it closes me off to other observations. What I've learned so far is that psychedelic experiences generally fall into two categories: those that are ego heavy and those that are ego shattering. Because ego heavy trips have soooo much to do with the individual and is entirely subjective, it becomes difficult to pull out information between such vastly different experiences. Experiences that go beyond the ego however often share similar themes, the most prominent of which is a feeling of connectedness. My experience with mushrooms provides anecdotal evidence for this. But how do we move beyond something as vague as feeling more connected? I'm not terribly satisfied with the existing theories. The notion of a "shared universal database/network/thing" that some claim DMT gives them insight to seems interesting but unlikely. It would be relatively easy to test this and non-scientific attempts like the S.H.E. project here haven't given any indicators that they're on to something. I've also recently finished reading Jeremy Narby's "The Cosmic Serpent" which, while an interesting read for the evidence he uses, I think goes too far when he suggests that ayahuasca allows shaman to communicate with the consciousness of DNA. What it seems like to me is that psychedelics shift our perspective but that even when the ego is subsided we are intrinsically still creatures that thrive on pattern finding. I think this explains why so many drugs make music sound amazing: what is music but auditory patterns, repetitions of pleasing frequencies and oscillations? DMTs frequent connection with fractal patterning is the visual equivalent of this same theme. The cognitive version of this is the sense that we are all one being, that we are all connected in some way. The problem, of course, is that numerous psychological studies prove that we find patterns even when there aren't any so in a sense this brings us back to the question of noise vs signal. Still, I think there is something to it. Evolution and genetics has proven how intricately we're tied to the rest of the natural world. Physics and chemistry has shown us that we are literally made of star dust. There are plenty of reasons to feel connected to the universe.

Thank you!