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DMT and Hyperspace
by Peter MeyerIn this section and the following one I shall present a view which elaborates on interpretations 2, 6 and 7. This is speculation but nevertheless provides a preliminary framework for steps toward an understanding of what the use of DMT reveals to us.
The world of ordinary, common, experience has three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension, forming a place and time for the apparent persistence of solid objects. Since this is a world of experience it belongs more to experience than to being. The being, or ontological nature, of this world may be quite different from what we experience it as.
Psychedelic experience strongly suggests that (as William James hypothesized) ordinary experience is an island in a sea of possible modes of consciousness. Under the influence of substances such as LSD and psilocybin we venture outside of the world as commonly viewed and enter spaces which may be very strange indeed. This happens as a result of changing our brain chemistry. Why then should we not regard ordinary experience too as a result of a particular mode of brain chemstry? Perhaps the world of ordinary experience is not a faithful representation of physical reality but rather is physical reality represented in the manner of ordinary brain functioning. By taking this idea seriously we may free our understanding of physical reality from the limitatons imposed by the unthinking assumption that ordinary experience represents physical reality as it is. In fact physical reality may be totally bizarre and quite unlike anything we have thought it to be.
In his special theory of relativity, Albert Einstein demonstrated that the physical world (the world that can be measured by physical instruments, but is assumed to exist independently) is best understood as a four-dimensional space whch may be separated into three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension in various ways, the particular separation depending on the motion of a hypothetical observer. It seems that DMT releases one's consciousness from the ordinary experience of space and time and catapults one into direct experience of a four-dimensional world. This explains the feeling of incredulity which first-time users frequently report.
The DMT realm is described by some as "incredible," "bizarre," "unbelievable," and even "impossible," and for many who have experienced it these terms are not an exaggeration. These terms make sense if the world experienced under DMT is a four-dimensional world experienced by a mind which is trying to make sense of it in terms of its usual categories of three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time. In the DMT state these categories no longer apply to whatever it is that is being experienced.
Some persons report that it seems that in the DMT experience there is information transfer of some sort. If so, and if this information is quite unlike anything that we are used to dealing with (at least at a conscious level), then is may be that the bizarre quality of the experience results from attempting to impose categories of thought which are quite inapplicable.
The space that one breaks through under the influence of a large dose of DMT has been called "hyperspace" by Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham and by Gracie & Zarkov. I suggest that hyperspace is an experience of physical reality which is "closer" to it (or less mediated) than is our ordinary experience. In hyperspace one has direct experience of the four-dimensionality of physical reality.
Parenthetically we may note a mildly interesting case of historical anticipation. In 1897 one H.C. Geppinger published a book entitled DMT: Dimensional Motion Times, Development and Application (reprinted Wiiley, 1955), an appropriate title for our current subject. However, he was, of course, quite unaware of what the initials "DMT" would later come to mean.
When reflecting upon his mescaline experiences Aldous Huxley suggested that there was something, which he called "Mind-at-Large," which was filtered by the ordinary functioning of the human brain to produce ordinary experience. One may view the human body and the human nervous system as a cybernetic system for constructing a stable representation of a world of enduring objects which are able to interact in ways that we are familiar with from our ordinary experience. This is analogous to a computer's production of a stable video display -- for even a simple blinking cursor requires complicated coordination of underlyng physical processes to make it happen. In a sense we are (or at least may be thought of as) biological computers whose typical output is the world of everyday reality (as we experience it). When our biocomputational processes are modified by strange chemicals we have the opportunity to view the reality underlying ordinary experience in an entirely new way.
Einstein's four-dimensional space-time may thus turn out to be not merely a flux of energetic point-events but to be (or to be contained in a higher-dimensional space which is) at least as organized as our ordinary world and which contains intelligent, communcating beings capable of interacting wth us. As Hamlet remarked to his Aristotelian tutor, following an encounter with a dead soul (his deceased father), "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Should we be surprised to find that there are more intelligent, communicating, beings in the higher-dimensional reality underlying our ordinary experience than we find within that experience?
The "elves"
Hyperspace, as it is revealed by DMT (revealed to some, anyway) appears to be full of personal entities. They are non-physical in the sense that they are not objects in the three-dimensional space to which we are accustomed. Some of the beings encountered in the DMT state may once have been living humans, but perhaps such "dead souls" are in the minority among the intelligent beings in that realm.
In his classic The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, W.Y. Evans-Wentz recorded many tales provided to him by local people of encounters with beings, variously called fairies, elves, the wee folk, the good people, the gentry, the Sidhe, the Tuatha De Danann, etc., who inhabit a realm normally beyond our ken. The belief in this order of beings was firm among the Celtic peoples of Britain and France at the time Evans-Wentz conducted his studies (c. 1900), but has since been largely supplanted by the beliefs instilled in the public by the rise of materialistic science and technology. Evans-Wentz collected numerous reports of elf-sigting, such as the following (which is part of an account given by a member of the Lower House of the Manx Parliament):
...I looked across the river and saw a circle of supernatural light, which I have now come to regard as the "astral light" or the light of Nature, as it is called by mystics, and in which spirits become visible... [I]nto this space, and the circle of light, from the surrounding sides apparently, I saw come in twos and threes a great crowd of little beings smaller than Tom Thumb and his wife. All of them, who appeared like soldiers, were dressed in red. They moved back and forth amid the circle of light, as they formed into order like troops drilling (pg.113)Reviewing his data, Evans-Wentz writes:We seem, in fact, to have arrived at a point in our long investigations where we can postulate scientifically, on the showing of the data of psychical research, the existence of such invisible intelligences as gods, genii, daemons, all kinds of true fairies, and disembodied [i.e., deceased] men. (pg.481)He then goes on to quote an earlier researcher:Either it is we who produce these phenomena [which, says Evans-Wentz, is unreasonable] or it is spirits. But mark this well: these spirits are not necessarily the souls of the dead; for other kinds of spiritual beings may exist, and space may be full of them without our ever knowing anything about it, except under unusual circumstances [such as a sudden change in brain chemistry]. Do we not find in the different ancient literatures, demons, angels, gnomes, goblins, sprites, spectres, elementals, etc? Perhaps these legends are not without some foundation in fact. (Flammarion, quoted at Pg.481)Evans-Wentz concludes (pg.490) that a realm of discarnate, intelligent forces known as fairies, elves, etc., exists "as a supernormal state of consciousness into which men and women may enter temporarily in dreams, trances, or in various ecstatic conditions," such as, we may add, the condition produced by smoking DMT.I suggest that the fairie world studied by Evans-Wentz and the objective space into which one may enter under the influence of DMT are the same.
From Psychedelic Monographs and Essays #6, p50
