Entities encountered through DMT

[Ninshub]

Daily Grail had this article a few weeks ago:

Beyond Machine Elves: Cataloguing the variety of entities encountered during DMT trips

By Greg
July 13th, 2022

And now a new study of the various themes and content experienced during a DMT trip, published in Nature Scientific Reports (“Phenomenology and content of the inhaled N, N-dimethyltryptamine (N, N-DMT) experience“), has provided yet more data. Researchers in this study analysed DMT experiences posted to the r/DMT Reddit community in a ten-year window between 2009 and 2018. To be included, posts had to be firsthand descriptions of an inhaled N,N-DMT experience (ie. not injected DMT, nor related substances such as 5-MEO-DMT, nor any mixes with other drugs). (...)

One of the most common experiences, however, was that of contact with an entity: encounters were found in 45.5% of trip reports. Entity interactions were predominantly positive: around 35% of entity encounters were described as intrinsically ‘positive’ (welcoming, healing etc), 32% of interactions were of a ‘guide’ or teaching type, while just 11% were ‘negative or difficult’. Interestingly, 9% of DMT entity encounters described a ‘medical-type interaction’, including examinations, implantations of a device, surgery and probing. This will surely interest those who have considered a link between DMT entity encounters and the ‘alien abduction’ phenomenon.

Even more interesting perhaps were the descriptions of the entities themselves. Though Terence McKenna’s ‘machine elves’ have become the defacto term for DMT entities, and beyond that there has been much talk about alien or insectoid beings (perhaps on the basis of Dr Rick Strassman’s research, as presented in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule), the study found that the most predominant term describing DMT entities was “Feminine” (e.g. ‘Goddess’, ‘Mother Nature’, ‘feminine presence’), with almost one in every four accounts of entities containing this description. The next most common descriptions were “Deities/Divine Beings” at 17%, “Aliens, Celestial Beings and Extraterrestrials” at 16%, and “Animal or creature-based” entities at 9%.

Indeed, ‘machine elves’ as a specific description only featured in 2.9% of the reports, ‘insectoid/praying mantis/arachnoid’ in 2.3%, and ‘Grey alien’ in 1%. However, other previously reported archetypes were more common: a ‘Jester, joker or clown’ type entity was present in 6.5% of the accounts surveyed, and ‘Robot or machine entity’ in 6.7%.

The Nature study article can be read here.

Daily Grail had this article a few weeks ago:

Beyond Machine Elves: Cataloguing the variety of entities encountered during DMT trips

By Greg
July 13th, 2022


The Nature study article can be read here.

It seems to me that the great diversity of types or categories of DMT entities points to the likely or probable source: human imagination fueled by cultural/social expectations, desires, fears, etc. combined with distortions of consciousness caused by the drug.

[Ninshub]

Is it possible, though, that, if we use the filter model of the brain, as the filter gets affected, other spiritual entities are encountered that maybe take on certain forms partially mediated through our own stream of consciousness? Is there an analogy there with the initial stages of NDEs this way, with people encountering religious figures and so on?

Is it possible, though, that, if we use the filter model of the brain, as the filter gets affected, other spiritual entities are encountered that maybe take on certain forms partially mediated through our own stream of consciousness? Is there an analogy there with the initial stages of NDEs this way, with people encountering religious figures and so on?

Yes, I guess possibly so. Are there any DMT entity encounters with investigated veridical features to the accounts? If so, like with veridical NDEs, that would be strong evidence for the reality versus the illusory nature of these beings. In the absence of such evidence I am skeptical about the DMT "entities" being anything but drug-induced hallucinations. However, your analogy with the religious figures sometimes encountered by NDEers is telling.

[Ninshub]

The whole DMT thing seems quite an unfathomable mystery to me, hard both to accept or dismiss, and hard to "pin down" either way.

Weird things happen in NDEs, but it's probably so that there's a greater and wilder variety of entities in DMT experiences (?). And there's another thread that mentions veridicality in DMT experiences, but I don't think the study or the evidence is anything like what we have with NDE science.

Re: religious figures. You're right. I don't mean to say that any NDE encounter with a religious figure is necessarily a construction or fantasy-like phenomenon (like a hallucination outside the body). But on the other hand I'm not convinced of a necessarily literalist understanding of any and all NDEs. For example, I'm not sure that the spirit leaving the body doesn't sometimes manifest, in the early stages at least, its own reality, partially at least, or if other beings encountered don't take on a certain form for some purpose (reassurance? who knows). Then there's the whole question of somebody having an NDE interpreting the phenomena according to their culture, for example, interpreting a luminous being as "an angel" in a specific religious tradition. These all questions to me, with no answers, and I can only speculate.

The whole DMT thing seems quite an unfathomable mystery to me, hard both to accept or dismiss, and hard to "pin down" either way.

Weird things happen in NDEs, but it's probably so that there's a greater and wilder variety of entities in DMT experiences (?). And there's another thread that mentions veridicality in DMT experiences, but I don't think the study or the evidence is anything like what we have with NDE science.

Re: religious figures. You're right. I don't mean to say that any NDE encounter with a religious figure is necessarily a construction or fantasy-like phenomenon (like a hallucination outside the body). But on the other hand I'm not convinced of a necessarily literalist understanding of any and all NDEs. For example, I'm not sure that the spirit leaving the body doesn't sometimes manifest, in the early stages at least, its own reality, partially at least, or if other beings encountered don't take on a certain form for some purpose (reassurance? who knows). Then there's the whole question of somebody having an NDE interpreting the phenomena according to their culture, for example, interpreting a luminous being as "an angel" in a specific religious tradition. These all questions to me, with no answers, and I can only speculate.

This relates to the deceased loved ones encountered during NDEs and the nature of the afterlife and reincarnation. Somewhat evolved spirits after physical death supposedly shuck off the previous human personality in a process where their consciousness opens up progressively to knowing their true vastly greater depth and experience and knowledge, including their history of many previous incarnations, though mysteriously in this process never really losing their sense that "I am me". 

One big question remains then, how do NDEers sometimes report encountering and communicating with deceased loved ones in a realm of light and love. The NDEer apparently easily recognizes this soul as the former human being, even though now this departed spirit probably has been transformed into something vastly greater and supposedly alien from the person the NDEer remembers and loves, something that incorporates all the previous incarnations.

I have always felt that the explanation is that if the departed loved one has been so transformed, he/she (or it) essentially assumes the guise of the former human being, because the NDEer at this point in his life needs reassurance. 

This model also can explain why only some NDEers have such encounters, or for that matter have NDEs at all. Also, possibly, this model may explain how mediumistic communicators can contact formerly physically alive loved ones who are easily recognized by the sitter based on their characteristic mannerisms, etc. peculiar to their former personality. Despite the transformation they supposedly have undergone. And even more, this model may explain why only certain bereaved people have spontaneous after-death communications from their departed loved ones (ADCs); most don't. Maybe in the majority of these cases of no communication the departed soul has gone on to better things (or quickly reincarnated), and in the ADC cases they have responded to need for reassurance because the belief system was shallow and the need was great.

I think the challenge with DMT figures is the same with religious ones - how many people encounter something they never heard of?

If you've read up on the varied DMT expectations it colors your thoughts as much as expecting to meet a religious figure in an NDE. Of course the variation of religious figures/realms/etc in NDEs suggests this aspect is rather questionable. I would even question some of these NDEs as partially to totally made up as a way to proselytize - for example I am not sure every NDE claim supporting Pure Land Buddhism actually happened.

What makes NDEs serious is a combination of meeting dead loved ones that one had never met, or knew but didn't know they'd recently died + veridical reports of the here and now. 

Veridical reports in DMT seem quite limited, possibly to those with shamanic training using ayahuasca. There are some suggestive reports that certain drugs can boost/produce Psi functioning, but IIRC even this is unclear.

All that said I am sympathetic to at least some NDE reports of higher beings and some DMT reports of, say, the Jester figure. There's no way to be 100% sure these other places exist in the exact manner in which they are described, or that such entities are genuine...but I think there is *something* to these entities that isn't mere imagination...