DMT research consensus: Cook excerpt #24

Nick Cook writes: ‘DMT (Dimethyltryptamine ) voyagers’ I spoke to agreed with this assessment – that there is a high degree of consensus amongst voyagers with regard the key aspects of the experience; and that the experiences appear to bear a striking resemblance to NDEs and SDEs.

Some of the common, recurring themes and characteristics of the DMT experience include:

*A subjective feeling of traveling outside or beyond the human body and human identity, which is often described as a process of ego-dissolution;

*An experience that often begins with traveling through a tunnel or portal before ‘breaking through’ to the DMT realm;

*A sense of sacredness pervading the experience;

*A sense of timelessness and a transcendence of time and space;

*Perceiving and interacting with sentient beings ranging from those with dull, almost machine-like attributes to ET-like figures and angelic divine beings;

*A noetic quality, yielding profound intuitive insights and knowledge;

*A sense of oneness, interconnection and unity with all things;

(Entering into a reality that is felt to be ultimate, absolute and infinite – accompanied by a subjective feeling that this reality is objectively ‘real’ and more fundamental than the human experience;

(The paradoxical nature of what is perceived and experienced;

*An ineffable quality to the experience that is fundamentally beyond the capacity of language or human mental concepts to describe.

A DMT voyager I interviewed at length maintained that the high levels of consensus amongst voyagers to the DMT realms crossed over appreciably with experiences reported by NDE’ers. “In my perspective,” he explained, “DMT, NDEs and mystical experiences all seem to represent direct encounters with the same ultimate truth, the same infinite source/ultimate reality out of which all has emerged” – what he called a “cross-cultural consensus”. Indeed, a recent study led by Imperial College, London, revealed ‘an intriguingly strong overlap’ between the phenomenology of NDEs and those associated with DMT⁷².

One of the most intriguing aspects of DMT and other psychedelic experiences are the beings that are routinely encountered. “Whoever these beings are,” the same DMT voyager maintained, “they exist in a way that is in not constrained by our laws of physics; nor, too, by space or time or by any system of logic or rational thought.”

A central characteristic of the DMT realms and the beings therein, he went on to say, is that they are completely paradoxical, non-linear and non-physical - and only when we recognise that this paradoxical, multidimensional aspect of existence, and the forms of ‘life’ within it, play to a different set of rules will mainstream science come to the understanding that there is a bigger, more expansive ‘theory of everything’ within which existing scientific frameworks are embedded: “A more expansive theory of everything may include alternate realms or dimensions of existence beyond the physical universe, where our laws of physics and logic seemingly break down.”

That ‘beings’ – including, potentially, our souls - exist as independent functioning entities in these alternate realms/dimensions of existence is one view. Another, expressed by Ede Frecska PhD, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, is that all entities are ‘quasi-autonomous structures’ whose identity is ‘informed’ – literally – by our conscious belief-systems⁷³.

This offers a persuasive explanation for entities that appear to cross into our 3D/4D world with what Frecska describes as ‘veridical potencies’ – the energy to impact it physically. These range from poltergeists and angels to cryptids and mythical beasts. “Our expectations have a morphing-plastering effect on them,” Frecska says, “and not only ours – for people from the past and future who had or will get into contact with them, their expectation shapes them because they are in a non-local realm.”

In short, any ‘thing’ that can exist in this version of the universe can, does and very likely will – and, as is attested to by paranormal hotspots where ‘high strangeness’ witnessed by many people occurs frequently, it has energy to perform ‘work’ here.

72 DMT Models the Near-Death Experience, Christopher Timmermann, Leor Roseman, Luke Williams, David Erritzoe, Charlotte Martial, Helena Cassol, Steven Laureys, David Nutt and Robert Carhart-Harris. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30174629/

73 From Chapter 6, ‘Why May DMT Occasion Veridical Hallucinations and Informative Experiences’, by Ede Frecska, from DMT Dialogues: Encounters with the Spirit Molecule. Edited by David Luke and Rory Spowers, Park Street Press, Vermont, USA, 2018.

Nick Cook is an author of 20 fiction and non-fiction book titles in the US and the UK. A former technology journalist, he is well-known for his ground-breaking, best-selling non-fiction book, The Hunt for Zero Point. He has also written, produced, and presented two feature-length documentaries for the History and Discovery channels. In 2021, Cook was amongst 29 prize winners in the BICS institute’s essay competition on consciousness. His essay is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.