DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is a powerful, naturally occurring psychedelic compound known for creating immersive visual and auditory hallucinations. It is present in various plant species and even in trace amounts in the human body. Many people claim that their experiences with DMT are not “hallucinations” but visits to another reality – one that is more real than reality.
Conversations around DMT
YouTube podcaster Sean Ryan recently interview This interview with independent researcher Danny Gohler is one of the most interesting interviews I’ve listened to in a long time. A pioneer of 21st-century DMT, Gohler has explored many philosophical topics, including the nature of reality, the human mind, religion, and spiritualityand how to take DMT informs all of this.
Goler said he has taken DMT thousands of times and through his experience gained a new understanding of this reality, which compared to DMT, allows users to see. There are a lot of “revelations” in the conversation that can seem silly out of context. They include: 1) Thousands of people have seen “code” (such as computer code or a mysterious and ancient language) on walls using lasers during DMT, and a project is underway to create the Rosetta Stone from such symbols; and 2) what we think of as “reality” is made computationally, and the physical world as we know it is an illusion.
DMT has long been known in clinical settings as well, through pioneers such as Terence McKenna and Rick Strassman, both of whom studied the compound’s psychedelic effects in the second half of the 20th century.
For someone interested in the nature of the human mind, DMT is interesting because it is naturally produced in the human brain (and other living systems), while LSD, psilocybin, and other psychedelics are. ketamine it’s not. This fact can help us understand the DMT journey and realize that it is indeed showing us a new reality, or simply a new way of experiencing human reality.
DMT research suggests some fundamental philosophical questions
Although research on DMT is not new, its current resurgence is due to the increasing acceptance of mental health care in society. therapy. But before accepting the sometimes outrageous claims of users as genuine, some basic questions need to be considered. For example:
1. Another reality? There is a strong trust Among DMT users, this compound gives them access to another reality, or at least another dimension of reality. But I wonder if this belief is founded. Is it possible to access another (true) reality by inserting something into our human system? Don’t we still have to experience human reality with our special human apparatus, even if it seems wilder than what we’re used to?
To make a video game analogy: does our intake of DMT and temporary experience of reality have Pac-Man’s short-lived ability to eat the ravenous ghosts that always haunt him after consuming a power pellet? Is this really another reality or just a brief excursion into another way of experiencing reality?
2. Encoding subjective experience? Goler mentions the ongoing Rosetta Stone project to use lasers to identify and code the various symbols DMT trippers see on walls. This project poses other mental challenges than modern ones philosophy: How do we know that what you call a “squiggle” instead of a “scratch” appears the same way in my brain, meaning that we are actually seeing the same shape or having the same experience at all?
Philosopher John Locke argued that objects give rise to secondary qualities (such as color, smell, and taste) that can vary from person to person, so even though we both call the same thing “pink,” you may be experiencing green and I may be experiencing pink. There is no denying it. So, since we cannot make the epistemological leap of shared experience even under normal circumstances, how can we make reliable inferences when the experiencers are under the influence of a compound that produces hallucinations?
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It would also be interesting to conduct DMT studies with placebo. Now there’s so much in the media about people seeing code on the walls during DMT tours that I’m worried that people might be experimenting with pre-made tropes. Although such a study design was such that some participants received DMT and others a placebo Still facing the other problem of consciousness (ie, there’s no way to prove exactly what someone is experiencing with a placebo!), this approach may help researchers find the correspondence between seeing “something unusual” and seeing “something unusual.”
3. Evidence for the simulation hypothesis? Some DMT researchers, including Golen, have argued that identifying the code on the walls seen by DMT users on their journeys is evidence that we live in a computational world; or in other words, what we perceive as reality is actually a computer simulation. While I recognize that there are many empirical and philosophical paths that lead to serious consideration of the simulation hypothesis, I do not think that hallucinogenically seeing code on walls is one of them. Why not?
It seems far-fetched to believe that if we were living in a computer simulation, we would literally be see Computer code in the substrate around us, because what is created by the code and the coding behind it, are always on two different levels. The Pac-Man maze we see is not the line of programming code behind it. I think it’s highly likely that DMT hacks into something in the human brain that transmits symbols and codes, perhaps a mechanism or neural system related to language and communication, which when triggered causes users to “see” code everywhere.
