Time Dilation

[Flying Dutchman]

Hi, I am very interested in the time dilation effects of DMT and ayahuasca and I would love to hear your stories of this phenomenon during your trips. Myself I have smoked DMT 10 or more times and during some trips I experienced what you could call eternity, but I've never actually felt like I had been there for longer than perhaps a day. I've heard of some people who have had experiences that felt like years or more. Can this really be achieved or are they exaggerating? Is the meaning of a time estimate lost in conveying an experience that is so absolute and indescribable as the DMT experience?

 

[paix]

I've had only a few experiences with spice, but some that I had seemed to be timeless. Not that I felt that the experience I was having felt like hours, days, years, etc. But more that time did not exist. That where I was existed, has always existed and will continue to exist in a place that time as we clock it just didn't translate.

 

[emptymind]

I agree with paix, Ive had experiences where it felt like time didnt exist, but I dont usually feel time dilation on spice that much. I feel it much more on mushrooms.

 

[hixidom]

Great responses so far.

I don't feel it as much on DMT either. More so I get it on longer lasting psychedelics like LSD and 25I. You may be confusing eternity and sempiternity. A sempiternal object exists for all time. An eternal object exists "outside" of time, as paix describes. I think it's good to distinguish between these two experiences. I can feel eternity now: If I imagine all of time as existing absolutely (eternalism), then I take a viewpoint from which I can see all of time at once. Then I exist in a realm without time (or in a higher dimension of time). When I say "I experienced eternity", this is usually what I mean. Have I ever experienced sempiternity? How to tell? You say yourself:

I experienced what you could call eternity, but I've never actually felt like I had been there for longer than perhaps a day.

If you mean sempiternity, then what does it mean to experience sempiternity for only a day? I think that the experience of sempiternity is possible in that sempiternity does not mean an infinite amount of time. There may be an end of time, and that is the boundary where sempiternity ends and eternity "begins". So, in a way, if you experience and endtime while tripping, that could be considered a sempiternal experience. Furthermore, time seems to end when consciousness stops, so any sense of ego death, or of being stuck in an infinite loop may seem sempiternal.

The bottom line is that eternity is a very abstract concept that the sober human mind cannot usually conceive of. In that sense, there's no harm in using it to describe what intuition tells you is eternity because the concept itself, and its implications, are not very well defined by human logic anyway. For that reason, your definition of eternity is ultimately a very personal one.

 

[Global]

I describe my experiences with time distortion in post #9 of this old thread [Most intense trip characteristic?]

 

[SpaceSeek]

Time Dilation seems to play a big factor whenever I've partaken in spice.

IE, Blasting off at the start of a "Shpongle - New way to say Hooray", by the time the track is over, it feels like I've been experiencing it for 30-60 minutes. In reality that song is only 7 minutes.

My .02 cents.

 

[anon_003]

I think what most people mean by eternity in regard to paychedelic experiences is more like travelling outside of time for a brief interval. A way that I think describes it best is to think of time like in music. Say you are playing a peice in standard 4/4 time at 160 bpm. When the spice peaks, the music is still being played in a (somewhat) linear fashion (sometimes), but the bpm is slowed down to say 20 bpm. There may even be a point where it slows down to 0 bpm. Subjectively, it FEELS like eternity, but in real time, this lasts for seconds. Then the bpm slowly rises back up to 160 as the substance wears off. The harder you are tripping, the lower the bpm, in my experience.

 

[osake]

I've never experienced major time dilation from DMT, though i've had it on salvia, shrooms and weed(i'm EXTREMELY sensitive to weed)so i think it's possible. Ultimately our perception of time isn't objective, it's something created by our brain so it's plausible that high doses of powerful psychedelics could alter the regions on your brain dealing with your perception of time so much, that a couple of minutes from your perspective seems to last for years or even for ever. Also i've noticed there different types of time dilation, you have types where your in a sense, outside of time, here time doesn't seem elongated or contracted, just non-existent(usually happens to me on salvia)then you have time dilation where the pace of time seems to increase or decrease(usually happens on weed or shrooms).

 

[Global]

I think what most people mean by eternity in regard to paychedelic experiences is more like travelling outside of time for a brief interval. A way that I think describes it best is to think of time like in music. Say you are playing a peice in standard 4/4 time at 160 bpm. When the spice peaks, the music is still being played in a (somewhat) linear fashion (sometimes), but the bpm is slowed down to say 20 bpm. There may even be a point where it slows down to 0 bpm. Subjectively, it FEELS like eternity, but in real time, this lasts for seconds. Then the bpm slowly rises back up to 160 as the substance wears off. The harder you are tripping, the lower the bpm, in my experience.

Something I've been thinking about is in regard to time's relativity to the observer. The two times I've experienced eternity have been during white light experiences. I start by soaring at incredible speeds, as numerous layers of reality rapidly superimpose themselves upon one another. It seems as if as all of the colors in the spectrum begin to overlay on top of each other, eventually white light starts ballooning out. It is at this point that time goes from being very fast to grinding to a screeching halt as I experience unity with the white light and the emergent godhead entity. So this makes me think of Einstein and his theory that traveling at the speed of light, time stands still from the perspective of the light. Perhaps through merging consciousness with the light, and experiencing reality as light would that one experiences the timeless state of eternity that light theoretically "experiences". But it's all relative so while my mind assumes "light consciousness" and perceives eternity, my physical body, and the rest of the physical world remain unaffected and proceed like business as usual.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

I think what most people mean by eternity in regard to paychedelic experiences is more like travelling outside of time for a brief interval. A way that I think describes it best is to think of time like in music. Say you are playing a peice in standard 4/4 time at 160 bpm. When the spice peaks, the music is still being played in a (somewhat) linear fashion (sometimes), but the bpm is slowed down to say 20 bpm. There may even be a point where it slows down to 0 bpm. Subjectively, it FEELS like eternity, but in real time, this lasts for seconds. Then the bpm slowly rises back up to 160 as the substance wears off. The harder you are tripping, the lower the bpm, in my experience.

I found this a very insightful answer, thank you. However, it isn't quite like that because the periods that the bpm is slowed to zero are still definitely experienced as much longer than the actual effects of the DMT.