Interesting article.......
http://www.tripzine.com/articles.asp?id=dmt_pickover (http://www.tripzine.com/articles.asp?id=dmt_pickover)
....... written by the publisher of tripzine no less
And while your down the rabbit hole,
http://www.tripzine.com/pit.asp?id=pit_toc (http://www.tripzine.com/pit.asp?id=pit_toc)
I read some of the article posted and couldn't make myself finish it. Not that I have a dog in this fight, but there is nothing but speculation on both sides.
Thanks for the link, though.lw
Well, I guess the article is not for everybody, but don't be discouraging now. :lol:
Just an interesting take on things...... IMO
who cares?
i think ppls' experiences "under the influence" are unique to themselves, as what you experience relies heavily upon all things you've experienced over the duration of your whole lifetime.
the only entity ive ever theoretically encountered after having partaken in such "naughties" was a business man in a suit/tie pacing back and forth w/a briefcase in his hand (while walking the one way) which would instantly turn into a basketball when he'd turn around and walk the other way.
figure that one out.
-c
Hey Camel!..... Good to see you posting. Seems like it's been a year or so. How you been doing? (this is the artist formerly known as Andy the Great Something BTW) Oh and well said........ is all intellectual blather and what not.
Still, interesting take. Yah got wonder about the bit about seeing familiar icongraphy all the time. or sense in the patterns.
I personally suspect a person could lean many directions on this subject and still be comfortable.
Whats that freud used to say?....... and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
//http://forums.ayahuasca.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=7251&start=75
This is more useful imo.
Not meaning to be discouraging, bro. It just reminds me alot of the arguments for and against life after death.
As far as the elves really existing... I guess I've never looked at it that way. My speculations would run more toward dmt being a substance that allows us to access a vast library of knowledge and the elves as visual icons programmed into the loop.
lw
Thats alwright LW, it's a natural reaction to ideas that may questions ones own personal and cherished notions. :D :wink:
The writer seems pretty sure of his conclusions, "Given all of this, in a nutshell, the case for autonomous disincarnate DMT entities is closed."
Good point TSTT. Your right, the writer seems pretty convinced he's got it all figured out....... and for himself, maybe he does....... which in itself would be kinda tragic. He's convinced himself theirs no magic to it. Nothing extraordinary.
....... a genuine jonny one note.
I have a few of Clifford Pickvoer's book (they're quite good if you're into aesthetic mathematics). Interesting that he's also into psychedelic theory...
With a few exceptions (such as "hidden meaning" and "Gaia consciousness"), I find his views expressed in the link to be eloquent and concise expressions of the prevailing scientific/rational world view. I don't happen to agree with some of his points, but I think they're well thought-out and worthy of consideration. I think he tends to over-generalize his own experiences into general trends and forms, but as personal experience is one of the main sources of data we have of these domains, this is an understandable mistake (and one I think we're all prone to).
Oh, and to answer Camel's question: I care. I like to read the opinion of intelligent and insightful people when it comes to psychedelic theory. I don't have to necessarily agree with them to enjoy their opinions. [McKenna, for example, is someone I love reading/hearing, despite the fact that I agree with almost nothing he says :) ]
I suspect if you were to take this discussion over to the ayahuasca forum they would somewhat agree with this article actually. They would say that DMT is mearly a amplifier, or a flashlight. That everything important, the guideing spirit is in the vine. They would I imagine sorta equate it as the vine being the tour guide and the admixtures being advanced transportation devices perhaps.
If you get blind in your adulthood you sometimes get certain problems. For once melatonin production can increase for some time. Also you sometimes see the "elfs" and "ufos". Both problems will go away although I do not remember how long it takes.
QuoteBut, like anything, when you do it many times the magic tends to wear off and reveal itself for what it is; an exotic aberration of the brain's perceptual mechanics
This guy seems to me like one of those people who have never questioned their own reality and thinks that their own reality is THE reality. All life is, is an exotic abberation of the brains perceptual mechanics, one reality is no more real than any other reality for it is all perceptualized.
Now, as far as elves and such, I think the only way to possibly find out is if we gave someone DMt which had no concept of elves or aliens (which would be hard to find, but Im sure they are out there) and find out if they see the same thing. Dr. Rick Strassmans work on DMT had many more findings and coincidences of a majority of his patients seeing reptilian/robotic type aliens which were usually trying to help them or experiment on them, than elves.
I personally believe there is a link between the release of DMT by the pinneal gland and Schitzophrenia. I have found no study done so far on this, and have only been able to make my theories based upon long conversations with a very schitzophrenic friend of mine and also observing him as he was in the depths of unmedicated "insanity". There were times when he knew events in the future, and I can honestly say that he made a believer out of me on the subject of seers. Once, he described with exact details what was going to occur over the next 12 hours of one day, which all were exactly the way he described them. Events that were beyond our control.
Even after reading this article, I still think DMT is a portal to a glimpse of another realm or an amplifier of universal consciousness at the individual level.
As far as I know the pineal gland and its secretion of DMT has nothing to do with schizophrenia. I believe Huxley pointed out that it had to do with the over abundance of a certain chemical called adrenochrome which is a byproduct of adrenaline breaking down.
What DMT does have to do with is far more interesting. For instance, why is it that 49 days after conception, a fetus gets a spike of endogenous DMT?
Now, as for the elf issue, I'll read the article in due course (too many things to read these days!), but for now I shall repost something here that I originally wrote for the T McK group on MySpace. Enjoy:
I think that the elves are something that is outside of our own personal psyches for two reasons:
..1. The fact that they convey information and knowledge outside of what we currently know (ie. Terrence McKenna's Time Wave Zero theory)
..2. The fact that they are a repeatable aspect of the DMT experience among a range of individuals. Everyone has their own mythologies and sets of symbols that have specific meanings to them. If the elves were a part of us, they would be subject to these individual mythologies and symbol sets and thus might not even appear as elves at all or have differing behavior from that which is reported. Hence something like similar elven recurrence with largely consistent behavior would suggest something beyond our psyche.
Now the real big question is why don't people encounter the elves all the time? Sometimes they get an NDE, sometimes reptilians or insectoids, sometimes aliens. We can tap into the signal but how do we control the channels?
well, i dont think anyone has pinpointed a cause for schitzophrenia, nor has any study been done on the possibility of a connection between the pineal gland and schitzophrenia. When I saw my friend, I instantly knew if he was in his schitzo haze, basically because he looked exactly like someone tripping; I always checked his eyes and every now and then performed a dialation test, which always acted the exact same as someone gone sideways on some LSD.
I wonder why so many of us have a desire to control psychedelic lessons? In the end, its really just turning the class room over to the students, no?
Gone are the days when
we stopped to decide where we
would go, we just ride..... - R Hunter -
lw
Have not others experienced the elves on laughing gas???? I met them there many times before anywhere else, then only again with salvia. I have not met them on DMT yet, but I'm sure it may happen.
I met the elves very often many years ago when I had a serious whipped cream habit. They hang out there too.
-TM
There are a number of oversights and blind assumptions made in that article...
FWIW I'm in the camp that believe the "elves" do exist outside of ourselve's.
i.e I believe that right now they're in that higher dimensional space doing their thing, living their lives, perhaps waiting eagerly for one of us to come play for awhile :P...
This is a question really about the nature of consciousness - if consciousness arises from our brains then maybe the "elves" are just a product of it... This view of consciousness BTW implies that death is the end of consciousness - when you die the game is over...
However if consciousness is a universal thing or "place" that our brains are tapped into, then very likely it's already been populated by sentient beings, and we're just now, at this point in evolution, realizing that it exists and that we can exist in multi-dimensional versions of it... This view of consciousness offers the possibility that at death our "soul" or "quantum body" or whatever you want to call it can continue to exist.
If this view turns out to be correct we may find we're pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole, the larva in the intelligent heirarchy of the cosmos...
LOL, humans are so egocentric - we're like "well, if I encounter something that is alive and intelligent, but doesn't have a body, it must be a creation of my own mind!"
In any case I think the implications of the DMT entities existing outside of our minds is vastly more fun, exciting and fascinating than the idea that they're just a creation of our minds...
What this would mean too is that as we evolve and explore higher dimensional space through entheogens, we'll have guides - friendly (I hope!) beings who can show us the ropes, how to navigate and utilize the space...
Must we forget dogma and expectation?...... you tell people enough times they are going to see dmt elves, they just might. I think the articles authors explanations made alot of sense, but I'd hate to say I 'believe' one way or another, the case is just too speculative to be open and shut .... at least for me. Still, you make a pretty good argument yourself nitrogen.
dudes... its just a WORD....
the elves thing doesent come from actual 'elves' but from 'entities' (all shapes and sises) that engage in the same activity.
an activity that has no precedent in human culture anywhere, let alone to a bunch of 'primitive' tribal people who have only recently been introduced to white man...
one dude sees them as self boundcing basketbals encrested with jewels,
others see a serpentine shape with a human face (naga)...
it is the activity that unifies them...
it doesent matter where they come from, it matters what they are trying to tell us.
any of u have a clue?
my new signature has a good quote on it regarding this subject, Neils Bohr is da man!
uhhh i dont get it... lol
my point is that it might make more sense to see what 'it' is rather then discussing where it might have come from...
DMT 'elves' as i am familiar with come in all shapes and sises but they have in commen that they do something to change audio in to visuals and ure the person to do the same.
so what are they trying to communicate?
that seems like a more interesting question then wether it is a creation of the mind or some outside factor is at play...
furthermore, understanding the message might be the only thing that might lead to a clue about where it comes from...
Quote from: "nitrogen"If this view turns out to be correct we may find we're pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole, the larva in the intelligent heirarchy of the cosmos...
LOL, humans are so egocentric - we're like "well, if I encounter something that is alive and intelligent, but doesn't have a body, it must be a creation of my own mind!"
Nah man, putting us at the bottom of the totem pole is human-centric, in a strange inverse way. :)
I think the Bonpo have a good way of looking at it. To them there are six realms (which also map to possibilities within our conscious experience:
The Realm of Gods
The Realm of Demigods
The Human Realm
The Animal Realm
The Realm of Hungry ghosts
The Realm of the Inhabitants of Hell.
And while this cosmology puts us sort-of-in-the-center, it isn't human-centric. We're just one of many classes of sentient beings.
Quote from: "Vertigo6911"any of u have a clue?
......... hardy har, yeh got us there Vertigo, we is all without clues......... except for you of course. Thanks for letting us know...... so helpfull.
drip, drip......
thats not what i ment and u know it :twisted:
Well then, I'm clueless, too. At least we know it.
lw
QuoteLOL, humans are so egocentric - we're like "well, if I encounter something that is alive and intelligent, but doesn't have a body, it must be a creation of my own mind!"
I don't consider it egocentricity; I consider it realistic. We don't need to come up with some kind of mysterious, magical, otherworldly scheme to explain what can be explained by science. If it was 2000 years ago we'd be asking "How could anyone be so egocentric to believe the stars in the sky could be anything other than the campfires of our ancestors?"
-TM
True dat, troutie.
However, science has been unable to answer many of lifes' little mysteries up to this point. Try as we might.
lw
So many replies going so many ways...
Avery, as far as dogma and expectation goes I think that, in this case at least, it can be ruled out. If you are told you will see 'this' or 'that', it doesn't necessarily mean you'll believe it going in. Not to mention that T McK has talked to Amazonian shamans about the matter (who are apart of cultures far removed from ours), and they see elves too (although despite their appearance they consider them ancestor spirits). If you want to take mythology into consideration, cultures that have been separated by thousands of years and miles all talk about 'little people' or 'elves' or what have you. I think that its a little more than chance that all these cultures make mention of these creatures.
As far as us humans go, we are egocentric, but I think our inability to consider that intelligent life could reside in another form stems from our ignorance. If all the life we encounter has a physical body living in three-dimensional space, and all the intelligent life we see utilizes all sorts of metal and plastic tools and technologies, then you're going to have a hard time making the argument that there are these hyperspacial entities that can sing multi-dimensional objects in existence.
Similarly you're going to have a difficult time convincing anyone involved in the current search for extraterrestrial life that it's pure idiocy to assume that intelligent life on another planet would have developed communication by radio waves.
Vertigo-- It would seem that these beings (if they are indeed are doing the same thing, I've only heard of elves singing) are trying to get us to evolve our language to the point that it directly affects reality. Native peoples of the Amazon who use ayahuasca are most likely at the forefront of this endeavor. However, singing objects into existence is a piece of cake in multi-dimensional hyperspace, but what of our 3-dimensional space? What is the goal of them teaching us this? Is it an attempt, as T McK says, to make our language so complex and dense that it overflows into another dimension? Or are they trying to show us how we can utilize language to affect the dimensions that we operate in?
Quote from: "laughingwillow"True dat, troutie.
However, science has been unable to answer many of lifes' little mysteries up to this point. Try as we might.
lw
The purpose of science has never been to give us complete answers, but to give us more and better questions.
Right on psilo. I agree 100%. Unfortunately, there are those out there who wish to use the current level of scientific knowledge to make make difinitive statements on events and entities (such as the article above,) as fact based on inconclusive results.
lw
It may seem that James Kent is a hard core scientific reductionist, but he left a LOT of doors wide open, for the mystery of it ALL
I do find his approach , at least for myself, kinda refreshing.......the analogy between computers and human brains is kind of obvious......but also usefull, these being high tech times. It will be interesting to see what responses the psychedelic community has to his new book.
Totally agree LW...
The best science in the world had the world believing that the earth was flat and revolved around the sun, and that the moon was made of cheese :) ...
I find it interesting that parallel to the current debate about consciousness, what's in vogue in theoretical physics right now is "String Theory"...
String theory postulates the existence of higher dimensions out of which our 3-dimensional world is created... This is a very exciting theory for a number of reasons...
Things which are impossible in 3 dimensions are easily achievable in 4,5 or 6 - similar to the way things which are impossible in 2 dimensions are easily possible in 3
Per the bit about us being lowest on the totem pole, what I mean is that, we're the only intelligent life on our planet (I know I know, but dolphins haven't created the internet).
When we enter psychedelic space, we're the ones being taught - you don't ever take mushrooms or DMT and spend time bestowing knowledge and wisdom on the entities who exist there - that's their job... Those beings are clearly smarter than we are, are likely groovier, and have created what we can plainly see is an incredible geometric universe for themselves to live in which is way way beyond the sort of stuff we've come up with here on earth....
So we are, for all practical purposes, the lowest "higher intelligence" around...
Quote from: "Aneurysm"..1. The fact that they convey information and knowledge outside of what we currently know (ie. Terrence McKenna's Time Wave Zero theory)
Whoa there! People figure out a lot of things on psychedelics without a single elf in sight, as well as without a psychedelic in sight.
However, they do have a brain (in sight?).
Has it never occured to you that what is "conveyed" is actually the formation (and communication) of concepts within the brain?
Psychedelics are excellent stuff for this! And people have been using them for millenia for exactly this purpose.
Psychedelics induce trance states and these are excellent for metaphor generation.
Ask the occultists. They've been using trance states to contact (imaginary) spirits in order to learn from them. This becomes especially true and interesting when they use spirits which are obviously imaginary i.e. borrowed from fiction or of their own making.
It works! You can achieve contact with these 'beings'. And you know what?
You don't even need drugs for this.
Quote..2. The fact that they are a repeatable aspect of the DMT experience among a range of individuals. Everyone has their own mythologies and sets of symbols that have specific meanings to them. If the elves were a part of us, they would be subject to these individual mythologies and symbol sets and thus might not even appear as elves at all or have differing behavior from that which is reported. Hence something like similar elven recurrence with largely consistent behavior would suggest something beyond our psyche.
Your line of logic would seem to imply that words have fixed meaning beyond our psyche, too.
If the elves were a part of us... are dream characters a part of you?
The mind is capable of running lots of simulations without any conscious locus of control.
Certain archetypes, symbols and concepts become active in trance states. I've spoken to people who have never heard of the supposed elves, who have reported to me experiencing transformation into a devilish character whilst under the influence. I've experienced it too. Ponder that and the existence of a devil outside of your brain.
IO Pan! :D
On a side note, while under the influence, I've been watching entities form and dissolve in and out of the hallucinatory matrix overimposed on my field of vision. They seem to be present only when my attention is fixed on them.
Evocation/invocation and banishment? Very well might be ;)
magnus
Quote from: "nitrogen"LOL, humans are so egocentric - we're like "well, if I encounter something that is alive and intelligent, but doesn't have a body, it must be a creation of my own mind!"
Oh... I do believe the majority of population now and throughout history holds the opposite belief:
"Well, if I encounter something that is alive and intelligent, but doesn't have a body, it must exists outside of my mind!"
Like that large gasous vertebrate usually refered to as God. A nice belief, fo sho...
QuoteIn any case I think the implications of the DMT entities existing outside of our minds is vastly more fun, exciting and fascinating than the idea that they're just a creation of our minds...
... which doesn't imply that a funnier, more exciting and fascinating theory/belief holds any more water than a simple one. In fact, it is usually quite the opposite.
You've just explained what your belief in elves feeds on bro...
Does it seem so incredulous that a brain, which generates a mind, which can generate multiple personalities, etc., is capable of generating other forms of intelligence?
peace
Good points, eigen.
lw
I don't have a formed opinion about the elves, though I first made similar acquaintances long ago on a massive dose of Lucy: they were like M&Ms with arms and legs, though this was prior to those commercials, and they quite cheerily offered to conduct me on a tour of my own consciousness. Nice guys, really.
Few points 'tho:
Contemporary physics, including string theory, describes our world as one of four dimensions (the space-time continuum) not three, and posits there may be thousands of other worlds where the "universal constants" are completely different: faster light, slower light, entropy-free states, etc.
The computer analogy is a crummy one for our consciousness. Our brains/minds are a group effort: not only do we have "two brains" (hemispheres), but multiple processors within each hemisphere. They communicate in nonverbal/preverbal ways. Perhaps they have independent consciousness that is usually synthesized into the "I" we experience as singular and indivisible--until and entheogen or some other extraordinary stimulus changes all that.
Folks who have had their hemispheric connections severed seem to develop separate consciousnesses to some degree with strange effects: one hemisphere can draw the apple but the other cannot name it: there have been instances where one hand has grabbed the other to stop an incorrect identification in these recognition tests. Based on these studies, we know the two hemispheres somehow communicate even when the corpus collosum is severed--how dey do dat!?
Maybe the elves are parts of us. Consider the cathedral/geometric visual patterning seen by so many trippers, esp. via tryptamines but with other entheogens as well, and, from looking at cathedrals and other sacred art, perhaps "seen" by architects with only auto-entheogenic (can I copyright that word?) experience, e.g., religious ectasy...
I have always felt those geometrics represent the infrastructure of my visual/perceptual apparatus.
Okay, enough sci-speak: I really just don't know. Besides, I am not prepared to agree that products of my mind are not real.
More fun: little peoples who can be mischievous, mean, instructive, playful, are found in myths and folk tales from around the world: real, parts of ourselves trying to communicate directly, or both? Maybe some lobe of the brain is just incredibly excited to have direct contact with the prefontal-identified "I"...maybe some part of the brain can communicate multidimensionally and has a hard time getting the "rest of us" to listen...we often know more than we think (and I mean that very explicity, not colloquially): from hunch to prescient vision is a smooth continuum.
The inexplicable knowledge aspect is fascinating. NDEs are relevant here, I think. Mainstream science has at last started looking at these, and is more than a little uncomfortable to encounter data it cannot explain away with oxygen starvation-prompted hallucinatons, etc. The bit that grabs me is that resuscitated folks sometimes recognize physicians who worked on them when they were dead.
Now, if they recognized a voice, you could argue that since the brain obviously was not dead, some auditory impulses still got through; but that's not the case: these recognitions are visual and occur often-- "That's the guy that put a tube in my nose!" And the testimony later almost always reports a "hovering above my own body" perspective on the resuscitation.
Anyhoo, great thread.
One question: Are the elves more real if they come from the Argyle Dimension than if they come from my tie-dyed brain? :idea:
...
QuoteThe bit that grabs me is that resuscitated folks sometimes recognize physicians who worked on them when they were dead.
IMO Death is final, legally or medically dead is not truly dead.
Quote from: "EA-1306"QuoteThe bit that grabs me is that resuscitated folks sometimes recognize physicians who worked on them when they were dead.
IMO Death is final, legally or medically dead is not truly dead.
I can appreciate the distinction, EA, but this particular phenomenon has been documented in folks who have neither pulse nor breath for quite some time: the semantic difference is large and real, but my sense of wonder remains.
If someone could later recognize a stranger who had entered their room while they slept deeply, I would also want to know just how they managed that, since it suggests some means of apprehension outside the physical senses.
I find awe in the NDE phenomena as well. Though I feel that the name is misleading.
I do indeed think that there is more to being than perceivable physicality.
OBE's are also an interesting aspect of experience that I find amazing. Though again perhaps the name is limiting.
Terence McKenna once said that the reason he believed that entites were outside himself (whether DMT elf or mushroom Logos), was 1) that they showed him things that he could not possibly see himself as imagining from a combination of what he already knew, 2) he experienced things he could not pour language over, that were in essence ineffable, and 3) the things he was shown utterly surprised him.
Granted that trips can help one think in ways that they would not otherwise be able to, but said thoughts or visions or what have you, came from within yourself, thus you can describe them. You can imagine what you know or suppose, not what you don't know or can't suppose.
As for all this reductionist talk about everything being within the brain, I think it is a viewpoint that overlooks the mind. To give an example, it is said that memory is stored in interconnected neurons. But, what determines the meaning of these neurons? Why does an arrangement of neurons mean one thing and not another? It would seem to me that neurons are physical links to a memory (but not the memory itself), like tying a string around your finger to remember something. And what gives that string meaning? You do. You consciously imbue it with meaning, hence one utilizes consciousness.
If they do exists it is also a bit worrying since we really can't say which agenda these entities have.
I agree, for even terms like entity and archetype are vague and ambiguous. An entity can be a spirit, a person, an organization, or even types of computer programs.
However, in general I found the article to be very anti-spiritual.
(//http://www.elfstarstudios.com/shroom-elf-s.JPG)
Shroom Elf
An entity from a shroom-huasca vision.