The Case Against DMT Elves

[psilocyberin]

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.

[laughingwillow]

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

[Jupe]

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.

[nitrogen]

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...

[eigenstate]

..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.

..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!

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

[eigenstate]

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...

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...  

... 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

[laughingwillow]

Good points, eigen.

lw

[space]

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:

[rhodopsin]

...

[EA-1306]

The 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.

[space]

The 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.

[EA-1306]

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.

[Aneurysm]

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.

[Green2Herman]

If they do exists it is also a bit worrying since we really can't say which agenda these entities have.

[DrYRHead]

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.



Shroom Elf
An entity from a shroom-huasca vision.