ATTN: Oneironaut

I have been following your posts, especially the ones on religion. I have noticed that you are without a doubt the most logical person on this board. I admire your ability to dissect anyoneâ??s responses and break them down logically with such skill.

Now I can see that you are completely against religion, and personally I cannot blame you as I do not know your background and upbringings which to me is the main factor in ones religious views. I have only experienced this through the use of psilocybin mushrooms, which seems to be the traditional example of entheogens. These experiences are of the utmost mystical and spiritual kind.

In the most recent book I have read, it goes into detail about the similarities of near death experiences and experiences while under the influence of DMT. There seems to be some extremely bizarre relationship between the DMT experience and NDE. People see cities of light that are more beautiful than anything they could have every imagined, and far superior to anything on earth at this moment. Some people claim to see what the bible describes as the New Jerusalem in the book of revelation. The shit gets deeper....

It just so happens that DMT visions closely parallel the palaces in religious text describing the afterlife or heaven. For example the Jews say heaven comprises nested rooms with ceilings of silver, transparent crystal, gold precious stone and brilliant lights. These are almost exactly the same things that a majority of DMTnaughts experience. They feel a sense of otherworldliness, parallel reality. Feelings of enchantment, sanctity, beauty. Sense of gaining privileged access to knowledge and intelligence (Which I personally encounter in almost every psilocybin trip). The world around them seems to be constructed, composed with delicate care like a work of art. Most users feel as if a veil has been lifted, letting them see things that have been continuously transpiring in the DMT space. Some even claim it seems to be more real than our own world. It seems as if this DMT space exists independently of our ordinary reality.

Along with almost any psychedelic, DMT being the most profound, the users return from DMT space with a calming certainty that consciousness continues after death. They are reassured that their soul will exist beyond the body and is imbedded in the fabric of reality. Many claim that through the use of DMT they have made peace with the reality of death. There are even studies going on with terminally ill patients using psilocybin to learn that it is ok to let go of life, to help them cope with this limited lifespan time table that doctors present them with.

Personally through the use of psychedelics, primarily psilocybin, I feel as if I have already experienced death enough to where I will know what is going on during my death and will be able to handle it. I was raised as a God fearing Christian, it made me afraid of death and judgment, only until I had these profound spiritual psychedelic experiences have I let go of any fear or worry related to death and the afterlife. I am at peace with it finally, and I wish I could share it with all of you.

I want to point out that peoples DMT visions are often very similar and occur in people from various walks of life, ranging from the indigenous people in the Amazon to a big city dweller. Unlike dreams which repeat themes and objects with which the dreamer is typically accustomed, the DMT space presents you with things that are not common to your average ordinary world.

Hereâ??s a quote from my current book:

"If the commonalties in the ayahuasca(DMT brew) experience cannot be accounted for in ordinary psychological terms, then perhaps we have no choice but to shift from the internal domain to the external one and consider the possibility that these commonalties reflect patterns exhibited on another, extra-human realm"


Biblical imagery is extremely common in the DMT space, including Hebrew letters, serpents, and torahs. Some people see mathematical formulas, which appear to them as conveying basic laws or the mathematical fabric of the universe. Humans seem engineered to seek the transcendent and ponder God. Benny Shannon suggests that human beings are also constructed to develop art and worship the holy. If DMT tells us how our minds are architected, perhaps homo sapiens were engineered to create palaces and temples and be delighted by gold and sparkling jewels, as it is so extremely common in DMT space. Thus, our long history of ornate, inspiring temple building arises because out minds are tuned to create these artifacts.

I cannot comprehend how someone could be an atheist after even just one psychedelic experience. I do not see how to logically break down these profound experiences. This is why I am turning to you, I respect your opinions and I would really appreciate hearing your opinions on subjects such as this. Like I said I was brought up as a God fearing Christian which later lead to me denying God and anything God related, until my first experience with psilocybin. It took 17 years of Christianity, 2 years of atheism, and shattered them into understanding and compassion towards peopleâ??s religious/spiritual views.

I have to go give a buddy a ride so Ill end this right here, so I can hear your responses before continuing on.

Thanks buddy :)

I can't really comment authoritatively on that kind of thing, seeing as how I've unfortunately never been able to get my hands on psychedelics. But I would suggest that what one sees during a psychedelic trip might very well be influenced by what one expects to see during such trips, the same way that the scrawny black-eyed big-headed gray aliens became common hypnagogic hallucinations after popular movies starting depicting aliens that way, and Satan-esque demon spirits were common hypnagogic hallucinations during the Middle Ages.

As a lucid dreaming enthusiast, I know that what you expect to see has a big role to play in what actually happens during a dream. Even when you realize that you're in a dream, your expectations still exert a huge influence on what goes on. Gaining control of the dream isn't simply a matter of wishing something to happen; you have to actually learn how to control your expectations and teach yourself to expect that what you want to happen will happen. If you don't, your pre-existing expectations of how the world works will kick in and you won't be able to control your environment. Most of the time, when I jump out of a window to fly, I simply crash into the ground, because overcoming the expectation of gravity is hard.

Similarly, I could see how somebody who expects the afterlife to have "nested rooms with ceilings of silver, transparent crystal, gold precious stone and brilliant lights" might end up seeing such things if they are tripping and expect to go on a spiritual voyage to the afterlife. Somebody who expects the spirit world to be filled with Hebrew letters, serpents and Torahs might see such things when they think they're going to the spirit world. In subjective experiences like dreams and trips, what you experience is not based on objective reality, but what is already inside your head. If an indigenous Amazonian came back from a trip and could write down the Hebrew alphabet and verses from the Torah, and we were sure he didn't cheat, that would be something different.

"Gaining control of the dream isn't simply a matter of wishing something to happen; you have to actually learn how to control your expectations and teach yourself to expect that what you want to happen will happen. If you don't, your pre-existing expectations of how the world works will kick in and you won't be able to control your environment."

A skill most useful in the realm of the wide awake too, eh?