A recent survey in the Journal of Psychopharmacology records encounters with beings after smoking or vaporizing DMT. Participants included 2,561 adults, most of whom used DMT, or Dimethyltryptamine, around a dozen times in their life. The researchers noted that DMT encounters shared much in common with alien-abduction and near-death experiences.
Virtually all animals and plants on Earth naturally have trace levels of DMT, a powerful psychedelic. Potentially, it’s involved in near-death experiences and popularly attributed to the pineal gland, represented by the third eye and the eye of the sky god Horus in ancient Egypt.
During the 60s, research into DMT and psychedelic drug use was abandoned. It appears multiple factors hindered further research, including Richard Nixon’s ‘War on Drugs,’ tighter regulations, failed clinical trials, and the pharmaceutical industry’s lack of interest. Wonder why?
However, reports from those who have used DMT and natural fungal psychedelics such as psilocybin indicate incredible potential. In the latter case, users have reported losing the fear of death and feeling connected with all of life and the universe. Not a bad side-effect, really.
Note: Illicit use of DMT or other drugs can be extremely dangerous. According to Ranker: “The most common extractors used for street DMT include muriatic acid, which is commonly found in pool cleaner, as well as lighter fluid and lye.”
Mostly Positive Encounters While on DMT
Likewise, according to the recent survey, participants reported overwhelmingly positive experiences with DMT. As many as 65% reported “joy” as their response to the encounters, while fewer than 13% reported sad or negative emotions. Amazingly, 58% said the being or beings they encountered had a positive emotional experience with them. On the other hand, around 11% said they encountered a “malicious” being.
Moreover, they report meaningful life-changing encounters with beings, described in many different ways. Overall, the words “being” and “guides” were most common. Lesser used descriptions like “elf” and “angel” were reported.
Beings, Guides, and Other Entities
According to BigThink (which curiously chose the word ‘elves’ for their title):
“The most commonly chosen labels “were “being,” (60%) “guide,” (43%) “spirit,” (39%) “alien,” (39%) or “helper” (34%). Other labels selected by small proportions of respondents (range 10–16%), included the terms “elf,” “angel,” “religious personage,” or “plant spirit,” and very few (range 1–5%) reporting the terms “gnome,” “monster,” or a “deceased” person.”
According to self-proclaimed psychonaut Terence McKenna, he encountered “machine elves” while taking DMT. Perhaps, he hypothesized, they were humans from the distant future.
On the other hand, Joe Rogan saw what he described as “jesters” giving him the finger.
“Reality dissolves, and you’re there. The last [DMT trip] that I had was very strange,” Rogan said. “There was these jesters that were giving me the finger – they kept giving me the finger. […] I think it’s their way of telling you not to take yourself seriously.
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The Actual Reality?
Now, this part is trippy: Most people said their experience seemed more “real” than our reality. Even so, three-quarters believed the being was in some kind of different dimension or reality. Thus, it seems to allude to the concept that we live in some sort of Matrix or simulation where perhaps the beings are behind the curtain.
“There was an indescribably powerful notion that this dimension in which the entity and I convened was infinitely more “real” than the consensus reality I usually inhabit. It felt truer than anything else I’d ever experienced,” said one person.
As with psilocybin studies, people reported losing the fear of death and feeling connected with the universe. Many had shifts in beliefs, while 89% said the experience led to “lasting improvements in well-being or life satisfaction.” Likewise, near-death and alien-abduction experiences also tend to “produce long-lasting changes in personal beliefs” according to the article.
As to the nature of the beings, descriptions vary. The debate will continue as the whether they are hallucinations, products of imagination, or real entities. Fortunately, the overall data seem to show most have a positive experience after ontological shock –forcing them to challenge their worldview.
You can check out the Journal of Psychopharmacology for more about what the survey showed. Below, I explore a couple more accounts from well-known beings of the human variety.
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John Lilly, Dolphins, and Guardians
Neurophysiologist and consciousness pioneer Dr. John C. Lilly, inventor of the sensory deprivation tank in the 50s and a researcher into dolphin intelligence, passed away at 86 in 2001.
To him, bottlenose dolphins were the “humans of the sea,” only smarter and more humane.
While in an isolation tank and taking psychedelics over a pool of dolphins, Lilly believed he was able to converse with them. However, they communicated faster than he could keep up with.
“The belief that man is the preeminent thinker, doer and feeler on this planet is denied by the investigations,” Lilly wrote.
Often, Lilly’s work has been credited with helping to change public perception of marine mammals. In 1972, he helped with efforts to enact the Marine Mammal Protection Act to protect cetaceans. However, the wild excesses and unorthodox experiments he participated in also discredited research into dolphin communication for decades.
Extraterrestrial Guardian Beings
In the early 60s, Lilly began experiments with LSD and almost died while taking ketamine in a hot tub in his Malibu home. However, the experience led him to a belief in extraterrestrial guardians.
“The near-death experience, however, only confirmed to Lilly “that his life was guarded by higher powers in the extraterrestrial reality, a hierarchy of entities operating through the control of coincidence on a global scale,” wrote the LA Times.
According to another account, Lilly had a religious vision while taking LSD for the first time:
“I saw God on a tall throne as a giant, wise, ancient Man. He was surrounded by angel choruses, cherubim, and seraphim, the saints were moving by his throne in a stately procession. I was there in Heaven, worshiping God, worshiping the angels, worshiping the saints in full and complete transport of religious ecstasy.”
However, later, the researcher believed he contacted beings who were his guardians, revealing the true nature of the universe.
“In my own far-out experiences in the isolation tank with LSD and in my close brushes with death I have come upon the two guides. These two guides may be two aspects of my own functioning at the supraself level. They may be entities in other spaces, other universes than our consensus reality,” Lilly wrote in his book, The Center of the Cyclone.
Related: Report of Fairy-Like Aliens ‘Who Won’t Let Us Destroy This Planet’
An Advanced Civilization
Going further, he elaborated on an advanced, esoteric, hidden school.
“They may be helpful constructs, helpful concepts that I use for my own future evolution. They may be representatives of an esoteric, hidden school. They may be concepts functioning in my own human biocomputer at the supraspecies level. They may be members of a civilization a hundred thousand years or so ahead of ours. They may be a tuning in on two networks of communication of a civilization way beyond ours, which is radiating information throughout the galaxy.”
Beings Out of Consciousness
Furthermore, Lilly said he believed the beings were connected to consciousness. When asked why some people don’t see beings while taking ketamine, he answered:
“You don’t have to have any concept of Beings. When you take the drug you enter into their consciousness. You don’t have to see them or know them as Beings. They engage your mind. Before matter, energy, there was consciousness without an object. Out of that came Beings.”
Related: Reimagining Flying Saucers to Navigate Realms of Consciousness
See more about Dr. John C. Lilly in the video by Atrocity Guide below:
William Blake and Cherubim
In a much older case, we have more visions involving cherubic beings, although not associated with drug use. William Blake, the English poet and painter (1757-1827), was largely unrecognized during his lifetime but today considered a visionary by many.
Over his lifetime, Blake continued to have visions throughout his life, since age four, when he believed that he saw God in his window. At age nine, he saw “a tree full of angels,” “bespangling every bough like stars.”
One of the artist’s subjects included the Cherubim, which he also saw in visions. However, he was not an adherent to conventional religion, believing in Unitarian philosophy. It is said he was the Chosen Chief of the Ancient Druid Order from 1799 to his death, but there is no proof.
During a 1955 lecture by Aldous Huxley at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, he described Blake’s visions:
“Giving a straightforward prose description of what he used to see in his spontaneous visions, William Blake reports that he frequently saw beings, to whom he gave the name of Cherubim. These beings were a hundred and twenty feet high and were engaged (this is characteristic of the personages seen in vision) in doing nothing that could be thought of as being symbolic or dramatic. In this respect, the inhabitants of the mind’s Antipodes differ from the figures inhabiting Jung’s archetypal world, for they have nothing to do either with the personal history of the visionary or even with the age-old problems of the human race. Quite literally, they are the inhabitants of ‘the Other World.'”
More about William Blake from Several Circles below:
Featured: Art by KELLEPICS via Pixabay, Pixabay License