Psychoactives and the Chronicles

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

From the GI for July 2006:

Since I haven't seen this in the GI, I have to assume that it has been asked, and that you chose not to answer.... But I'll ask anyway, because I'm nosey:

Have you had any experiences with "psychedelic" drugs in your lifetime?

No. I prefer to live life straight. No distortions. No excuses. (To the extent that such ideals are humanly possible. <sigh>)

I was pretty surprised to read this. I was possibly even more surprised by the following description of a psychedelic episode resulting from N,N-dimethyltryptamine (hereafter "DMT"):

So you burst into this space. It's lit, sofeted lighting, some kind of indirect lighting you can't quite locate it. But what is astonishing and immediately riveting is that in this place there are entities - there are these things, which I call 'self transforming machine elves', I also call them self-dribbling basketballs. [laughter] They are, but they are none of these things. I mean you have to understand: these are metaphors in the truest sense, meaning they're lies! Uh, it's a jeweled self-transforming basketball, a machine elf. I name them 'Tykes' because tyke is a word that means to me a small child, and I was fascinated by the 54th fragment of Heraclitis, where he says: "The Aeon is a child at play with colored balls" ... and when you burst into the DMT space this is the Aeon - it's a child, and it's at play with colored balls, and I am in eternity, apparently, in the presence of this thing. (www.erowid.org/chemicals/dmt/dmt_writings3.shtml)

And in the same article:

[laughter] And I said to myself, where have I had, before, this feeling that I'm having now. It's a feeling of being with people that I can't trust, but who want to help me, and who seem to be trying to, uh, cut a deal. That was the word that gave me the clue: "deal".

Based also on extensive perusal of others' reports of high-level DMT use, I would argue that the experience of the Elohim in TOT corresponds almost one-to-one with the content of standard DMT trips. For example, when Linden and her companions are teleported out of the Elohim-space, the Haruchai say that nearly no time has passed; similar compression-and-dilation of time has been said to accompany DMT use.

Next, consider the blood-unity ceremony of the Demondim-spawn as described for Covenant in TWL and for Linden in FR. My personal experiences with Adderall remind me strongly of the sense of energy and focus that SRD writes into the relevant scenes.

So here are some possible explanations for what seems to me a discrepancy between SRD's disavowal of drug use and his ability to describe altered states of mind with exceptional clarity:

• 1. SRD is outright lying and often (enough) has tried psychoactives.
  
  2. SRD tried DMT once, but extra-strong coffee or some peculiarity of self-motivation accounts for his insights into the experience of stimulants.
  
  3. SRD has an extremely, extremely powerful imagination and can simulate purely of himself what others usually only get to do by doing drugs.
  
  4. Something else.
  
  5. ???
  
  6. Profit!

(1) I doubt because I don't very much question SRD's integrity. (I question it in the abstract, because trusting anyone, even oneself, without a willingness to hesitate is, as far as I know, unreasonable.) Now since thinbuddha's original question was couched in all-or-nothing terms, (2) would still conflict, technically, with SRD's answer to his interlocutor. However, I have read some reports of DMT use that conclude with the user alleging a complete loss of desire for psychoactives in the aftermath, not due to the negativity but the completeness of the experience. Perhaps SRD tried DMT at one point and was similarly "completed."

(3) has a lot going for it, actually. If any of you have ever read Dante's Paradiso, you hopefully remember the Mystic Rose in the Empyrean. Actually, hopefully you remember the river of light that transforms into the Rose, too. Now one time I was on MDMA, the only time it really "worked" for me in fact, and at the apex I was listening to a song that no matter whether I'm high or not inspires me with feelings of absolute transcendence. At that point, I had my eyes closed and felt like I was falling into the music, and as I fell I saw something very much like this:



DMT users stereotypically perceive a "chrysanthemum" before transitioning to DMT "hyperspace." John Ciardi's translation of the Paradiso includes a diagram of the Mystic Rose, which has it look roughly like this:



Of course, an actual rose looks significantly different from these structures. Now did Dante trip out on DMT while in exile? Is his account of drinking the Empyreal river of light through his eyes some convoluted metaphor for DMT smoke hitting his face as he was translated to the presence of God? I don't know. Was the MDMA I had mixed in the tabs with DMT? Possibly, although by all indications it is not possible to trip out by ingesting DMT unless taking an MAOI of some kind simultaneously.

McKenna and others frequently claim a sort of objectivity for the entities they encounter in DMT "hyperspace." If there is some natural source for recurring perceptions of structures like the "chrysanthemum" or the "machine elves," then conceivably a natural process within humanity can lead to those perceptions. (Now The Spirit Molecule is a book/documentary that deals very nicely with the question by suggesting natural DMT synthesis on a massive scale inside all of humankind.) When Dante envisioned the Mystic Rose and while I was entranced by my favorite song that one night, the imagination of the person involved was intentionally dedicated to processing transcendent concepts.



For whatever reason, it seems as if certain geometrical patterns (or clusters of isomorphic patterns) might be archetypal for the human mind. If that is the case, then profound access to the constructive powers of the imagination might yield spiritual experiences more or less identical to DMT use. I can easily see SRD meditating at some point in his life to where he triggered archetypes that inspired some of his descriptions of the Elohim.

However, SRD also claims not to be a "visual person," if I remember some other section of the GI correctly, so if true, that claim might tell against (3).

As for (4)... I'll leave evaluation of that option to any replies to this post.

EDIT:

More anecdotal evidence for (3): one other night while listening to my favorite song, at a concert this time, and without any drugs affecting me, I had a very short "vision" of my mind transforming into a shining Calabi-Yau manifold. I was for peculiar reasons very emotionally distraught, so if the whole "near-death experience triggered by human DMT release" theory is correct, arguably my mind perceived me as on the edge of a suicidal breakdown and released DMT to help me deal with my emotional state.

Also, I have recurring dreams of a place that, no matter what it looks like on a particular occasion, in general I always know to be the same, and when I perceive it in my dreams, my perception is infinite (I know I could travel throughout the city forever finding new locations within it). I always have a strange sense of knowing where I am, too, as if the city I'm in is part of the absolute truth of the world and not just part of my sleep. So the people there, I also feel as if I know; and all around I feel a peace that is almost incomparable. To the extent that dreaming and imagination may be linked, this is evidence for me that it is possible, by sheer willpower, to imagine something congruent to a DMT trip.

EDIT 2:

Some research this morning indicated to me that MDMA and MAOIs are a dangerous combo, so unless MDMA can somehow trigger ingested DMT the way MAOIs are said to, I'm assuming there was no DMT in the tabs I took.