DoseNation 06: DMT Fact and Fiction

When I found out the Spirit Molecule movie was going to be narrated by Joe Rogan I knew it was going to be a letdown. It's sad that the one movie on psychedelic science on Netflix is one that I have to tell people to steer clear of...

At one point in your discussion you guys wondered whether the psychedelic experience could be considered an "authentic " spiritual experience. What is an "authentic" spiritual experience? and in your paradigm James, is their such a thing given your statement that all human experience can be reduced to wires and circuitry? Your model does not seem to include anything like soul or spirit. Would you agree, or do you have an alternate definition for spirit or spiritual?

Greetings all,
Continuing the ongoing discussion on what Davey called the "hard problem" of consciousness, I'd like to point out the internal significance of these experiences. I just finished reading Hobson's Dream Drug Store, and while his neurobiology was implacable and well articulated, I found his discussion of the inner subjective realm rather shallow and actually quite useless in real life. To lump dreams, psychosis, psychedelics, and the mystical sate as a mere aberration of neuro-chemicals (true enough) and therefore the same, seems quite ignorant. As a psychotherpist I have worked with lots of psychosis, and in no way does their disintegrated mind resemble the psychedelic experience my friends and I have on the weekends, and those don't resemble the mediation master's samadhi. Yes, all these states are non-ordinary, but as Stan Groff painstakingly demonstrates in his seventy years of research, many of these states have healing, transformative, and identy-shifting potentials. Consciousness has depth, it has layers, and reveals aspects of reality that are inaccessible from the "outside." Whether DMT elves are objectively real seems like a pointless question; they have an inner vadility that can be quite constructive if one learns how to work with them; like in dreams. And as all content from the subconscious is symbolic, one must work with the symbols as they resonate with the individual. The inner universe is a participatory and a co-created realm, and therefore has as much significance and meaning as the individual is willing to give it.

Hi James, very interesting podcast, from my personal experiences with psychedelics like DMT I fully agreed with what you said about the DMT experience.

However you didn't talk about the subject of endogenous biosynthesis of DMT in humans and other organisms that much. Lately people say to me that the "DMT: The Spirit molecule"-thesis is true because of new studies etc. Here is a recent study that someone sent me in a discussion:
[link]

I remain skeptical but optimistic, just as psychedelic frontier states it. And after reading PIT and doing own research as well as keeping myself updated with MAPS, I'm really starting to un-subscribe to Risk Strassmans theories more and more. Note that the DMT, Pineal gland, Sleep & Meditation correlations was part of my initial interest in psychedelics. It feels like they are only looking for their own speculations as their anwser.

I really want to hear your thoughts of this study and on this subject.

Thanks!

This podcast really opened up my mind on DMT. Through personal experimentation I came to the conclusion that the dmt experience is the most bizarre 5 min you can ever have and that's it really. Keep an open mind while doing it and you'll be fine.
The only thing I'm sure is that I feel refreshed and clear headed for weeks after a trip.

I've found a simple and fundamental mechanism at work in my own consciousness. Nothing new: the relationship of ying and Yang, affirming and denying, body and mind, indica and sativa even;), or in my preferred terms, the imaginal and somato-sensory faculties. It is the relationship of these, their real contact and comingleing into something like a dialectical synthesis, that is the real motivator behind maybe everything in my life, (maybe not). Its the holy grail and it opens up an experience of real life, although i mostly seek it in mediated form.
So... from your explanation of dmt, I got the sense that it turns both these faculties up to 11, (the imaginal and somatic). This would likely force just such a synthesis. Perhaps this is the reason this substance has such a unique and earthshattering experiential profile for those who use it (I would not be included in that group). Mostly I find that my organism shifts between imaginal and somatic modes. It is only when random experience or intention brings them into a higher level of self modeling (in the nervous system) that I find myself in touch with a living reality inseparable from myself. Maybe dmt creates a crisis in which this shunting from one mode to another is swamped and overwhelmed by the simultaneous intensification of both.
Your thoughts anyone?
I have experienced lucid dreams (briefly) that seem to have this quality of a kind of asymptotic positive feedback occurring in the contact of these two faculties. Also, new study on dying rats published this week finds a remarkable and apparently general increase of neural activity for a brief time at time of death. Maybe this substance does give a felicitous simulation of the last big hurraw of the dying organism.
Happy dreams,
Davey

Hi guys,
I've been catching up on archived podcast episodes since I discovered you this summer. Over the course of my listening, I've had any number of thoughts and potential inputs. Let me first ask: If I comment on past shows, do you receive notice of comments to older 'shows' or just the most recent ones? Further, do you want to bother with comments on older shows? I'd like to know about these things before I make further input...

But while I have you, let me just suggest a few show ideas for the future, (as per James invitations), in no particular order...
* search: Todd Murphy EEG. That should get you to info on an interesting guy who works under Micheal Persinger, the guy at Laurentian University who has invented the "God Helmet". This guy straddles the reductive and 'grokking' approaches that you two so well personify.

* This one's more for Jake: There's no example of the western gnostic tradition more interesting to me than what is called "The Gurdjieff Work". I wish I could tell you who to talk to there. I was involved for a few years and know a bunch of people, but I'd guess many would balk at involvement with a pro-psychedelic show. A guy I've never met named Ravi Ravindra has a reputation for being open to people from divergent backgrounds... My best contact is a no nonsense lady I respect who lives in Seattle.

* I think James does the psychonauts who tune in a real service by slicing mercilessly with Occam's Razor at every opportunity in asserting the lack of a compelling reason to posit or believe in a separate and internally coherent, self supporting and separate spiritual reality. But I feel a deeper issue has been left unaddressed in all this. It's what the philosopher of consciousness David Chalmers calls "The hard problem", or more endearingly, "The zombie question". That is: many of the features of the qualia of experience are explicable or at least approachable through mechanistic models, however, the bare fact of our presence to these phenomena can not be reductively explained. There's a show in there somewhere.

* Again for Jake: The most interesting writing I've encountered in the christian tradition (by far) is that of Bernadette Roberts. Although again, I'd be very surprised if she was interested in an interview. She was a Carmelite Nun. In any case, please read her if you haven't already. I predict you will be glad you did. Another interesting perspective on christianity that I am personally convinced is true is presented in "The Jesus Mysteries" by Freke and Gandy. Freke is out to make a buck as a guru type and author, so he'd be more likely to want to talk to you about their theory that Jesus never existed but was more of the nature of an instructive character ala Krishna.

Finally, the most interesting ideas I've encountered relating consciousness and quantum mechanics were left out of your show on that subject. I'd steer you to look into Stewart Hoffman and Henry Stapp. They don't agree with eachother, but both have theories that tie quantum effects to neuroscience in a way that doesn't invoke much of the handwaving and conflation that James was at lengths to dismiss.

There's much more I could run on about but...

I've overextended your attention already for a first message...
Make the most of your day! And thanks for all you are doing.
I'm going to be reading PIT after I finish something else I'm working on now. Really looking forward to that.
Davey