Your brain on DMT! I believe that it would be hard to disprove the connection between all those words above, in bold print, and the chemical DMT produced within each of our brains as the mysterious link at the center of so many misunderstood moments in human history! Simply stated, our brains function differently in reaction to any chemical. There is no doubt that your reaction to any external form of DMT (either smoked or injected for a shorter but extremely effective result, or drank as a simple but serendipitous concoction in the form of an ancient Amazonian brew known as Ayahuasca) allows for your brain to explode into other realms of consciousness while your heart beats and your body stays piled in its seat. There is also no doubt that our bodies produce the chemical dimethyltryptamine: DMT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine. Dr. Rick Strassman's almost exclusive, yet extensive work has shown the effects of a DMT “trip” to be most likened to reports of near-death experiences, alien abductions, encounters with spiritual beings, or feeling wide awake in the most incredible of dreams. Indeed, our bodies take a required, daily physical and mental break from our reality that we accept as sleep. During which, I believe there is a mechanism that releases the appropriate amount of DMT required for your mind to peacefully enjoy whatever hallucination it can conjure—dreaming in REM. (Does the pineal gland produce or simply regulate the chemical? This seems to be the final wrangling point for science. http://disinfo.com/2013/05/breakthrough-dmt-found-in-the-pineal-gland-of-live-rats/)
With the acceptance that there is no other reasonable definition for what a dream is—save a hallucination while your body lies incapacitated—it should be noted that this is the exact state induced by a DMT or Ayahuasca “trip.” One is left to realize that while we not only don't understand the reasons humans are born equipped to access a naturally available, nightly neuro, carpet ride, we seem to be ignoring the answer as to how we sail uninhibited in dreamscapes un-mappable, all from the comfort of our down pillow. Recently, I've been afforded the opportunity to listen in on firsthand, graphic retellings of more than a handful of hallucinations, a few rare cases of “bipolar 1 with psychotic features” patients have had to endure. More importantly, they were retellings of these brave souls trying to survive within the midst of the never-ending wake of confusion and fear these prolonged parallels of perception leave behind. It was during one of these sessions that I truly had that aha moment, in which I was flooded with the obvious connections in all of their stories and the work Graham Hancock clearly laid out in “Elves Aliens, Angels, and Ayahuasca” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qgMFO0KU-I.
There was one fact that every story shared, but every patient would naturally gloss over, that struck me as most important. These were altered realities that would uncannily occur at night, during a period of high anxiety or manic-induced insomnia, or during an unusually difficult night of sleep and were nonetheless eerily similar to the narratives in the relatively recent flux of “alien abductions” and the equally unexplainable “breaks from reality” that medicine currently classifies as “schizophrenia.” The resulting altered realities share strikingly similar reports of geometric shapes, animals, or creatures that have humanoid features that usually share animal features or have “otherworldly” characteristics, knowledge, and settings that are far more powerful and/or frightening than that moment of confusion right before you wake—when you can't quite put your finger on the fact that you're still dreaming. Let's not forget the peculiar pasttime as old as man itself, for those rare individuals with a “more close relationship with God.” Why have they been able to have face-to-face, seemingly flesh encounters with Angels, have conversations with God Himself, or put into words divinely inspired wisdom? The vast majority of these people have, indeed, induced altered states of consciousness through meditation; fasting by deprivation of sleep, food, or water; severe stress or trauma; eating or drinking “spiritual sustenance”; or otherwise been deemed to be “special” or “touched.”
What makes these human beings enter into states that they perceive to be “not our shared reality”? I purpose it to be quite simple. It is the altering or malfunctioning of the natural mechanisms we all use to dream while asleep—and for our soul to escape the body upon its demise. I won't go into my thoughts as to why we are intended and readily equipped to enter into a dream state every single night—or why DMT is released at the moment the brain believes the body is dying—here. What I want to get across is that indeed, things that cannot currently be explained have a remarkable way of being connected! Whatever the trigger—be it REM sleep, lack of sleep, extreme anxiety, a malfunctioning of our brain's internal regulator, lack of food and water, purposeful deprivation and meditation, or the introduction of external DMT or psilocybin—the result is the same. Our brains use all their naturally equipped physical pathways necessary for DMT to produce alternate states of perceived realities. How can we begin to understand our true purpose here on this planet, with a dualism as perverse as a fleeting mortal body, carrying within it a super computer of soft membrane encased in fluid, firing on electricity and chemicals in ways we'd rather ignore than embrace?
If every culture openly partook in spiritual rituals (freely and religiously practiced in the Americas from antiquity until the bloody Spanish conquests of the 16th century, and surely the lost key used by the ancient Middle Eastern, Indian, and Far Eastern religious originators) of using either plants or chemicals, or fasting and meditation methods for encountering spiritual realms currently either feared or deemed to be worthy of only prophets or sick minds, would anything on this earth be the same? I don't know, but I presume such a worldwide movement to be the awakening, rebirth, revival, or revelation so many have feared or foreseen.
As the ever-churning motor of science's boat keeps us moving forward, in an unfathomable ocean of physics and chemistry, mysticism and magnetism, and the light of life and the dark of matter, the only things changing are the make and model of the engine and the perception of the brain instantly analyzing the images taken in by the eye peering into the scope placed firmly on “our reality” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UwvaSLbIgc. That is to say, wake up! The future is arriving at an exponentially escalating rate. The shift in understanding necessary to realize that we have the keys to answer spiritual, religious, esoteric, theosophic, and all other philosophical questions and ideas with scientific proofs will be as mute in its infancy as Christ's death on a cross. Just as it took some three hundred years for one man's death in the desert to show its value in the manifestation of His messianic, cult-based following becoming His executioner's mandated orthodox, it will take time to relearn what has been oppressed and forgotten to the point of near spiritual extinction. While they don't draw fish in the sand, perhaps there are enough brave souls making rifts in the newly (re)constructed and ever-evolving web of consciousness that can bring whoever you are now and whoever I was when I wrote this together to enjoy a fulfilling reality in which we embrace each other for what we are. Star-crossed souls, blessed with the chance to experience everything our brain and soul, have the ability to access here—knowing love, pain, gain, loss, sharing, and caring in the miraculous manipulation of matter that is our only chance at this physical life. One with a transparent ceiling. Don't fear the images on the other side—simply looking through it won't crack the glass!
Watch DMT: The Spirit Molecule, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4FaDMak-TQ; and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMOC44vby9g
Terence McKenna rapping about DMT, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZAMKn2xr9E
Watch Rupert Sheldrake, get banned from TED here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TerTgDEgUE
Watch Graham Hancock, get banned from TED here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIjYA_X4ivg&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLAFA58CE2C884BBCC
Graham Hancock Interview on Consciousness, Ayahuasca and more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1Ne6rTo_5U&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL4E62628231F3DD64