It was part of me, not separate. It was a reassurance that this wouldn’t go away, that it was mine, that a connection had been made. The whole thing was really crucial to my spiritual development. It’s what I tried to do with LSD, a sort of self-initiation. With LSD, it worked in some ways and didn’t in others.
Stranger yet are stories of procedures, more or less intrusive, performed by the life-forms of these nonmaterial worlds upon our volunteers during their DMT intoxication.
Jim, a thirty-seven-year-old schoolteacher, was a volunteer who didn’t like to talk much about his experiences. During his tolerance study, we talked about going further through the bright colors, which he admitted were distracting him. He felt there might be “beings” behind the colors, and I encouraged him to see if there were. After emerging from his last dose, he said almost offhandedly, and with little emotion,
I went with them as you suggested. There were clinical researchers probing into my mind. There were sort of long fiber-optic things that they were putting into my pupils.
This was years after we had stopped using the pupil measuring card, so it had nothing to do with what was happening in Room 531. I asked Jim what that was like for him.
It was pretty weird, but I figured it was just the drug.
Jeremiah, at fifty years of age, was one of our oldest volunteers. He had recently retired from decades of service in the armed forces and was beginning a new phase of his professional life by obtaining training in clinical counseling. He was also starting his third family, and he underwent a face-lift halfway through the dose-response study. He was a busy man.
During the first few minutes of his non-blind high dose of DMT, Jeremiah burst out in several exclamations: “Whoa!” “Wow!” “Incredible!” He began beaming, a huge smile across his face. He seemed to be having a great time.
It was a nursery. A high-tech nursery with a single Gumby, three feet tall, attending me.3 I felt like an infant. Not a human infant, but an infant relative to the intelligences represented by the Gumby. It was aware of me, but not particularly concerned. Sort of a detached concern, like a parent would feel looking into a playpen at his one-year-old lying there. As I went into it, I heard a sound: hmmm. Then I heard two to three male voices talking. I heard one of them say, “He’s arrived.”
I felt evolution occurring. These intelligences are looking over us. There is hope beyond the mess we are making for ourselves.
I couldn’t change the experience at all. I couldn’t have anticipated it or even imagined it. It was a total surprise! I tried to open to love but that was silly. All I could do was observe it.
I found this last comment especially interesting because it challenged my assumption that what Jeremiah encountered was a product of his mind, rather than a “true” perception. “Opening to love” is shorthand for an effort to change the anxiety caused by an unexpected or unpleasant experience into love. If what Jeremiah had just encountered was only a product of his own imagination, he may have been able to alter his reactions. The fact that his attempt felt “silly” reminded me of the futility of trying to “open to love” to a oncoming truck. “Opening to love” as he found himself instantly dropped into an alien nursery was such an ineffectual and inappropriate response that it seemed laughable.
Several months later Jeremiah received his double-blind 0.4 mg/kg DMT dose.
At 5 minutes he began,
That was much more intense than the first major dose. It’s a different world. Amazing instruments. Machine-type things. There was one person operating some of this stuff. I was in a big room; he was in another part of it.
I feel a little shaky . . . a little hypersensitive . . . there are little tremors going through my body.
“Maybe closing your eyes might help. Here, let’s put a blanket on you, too.”
There was one big machine in the center, with round conduits, almost writhing—not like a snake, more in a technical manner. The conduits were not open at the end. They were solid blue-gray tubes, made of plastic? The machine felt as if it was rewiring me, reprogramming me. There was a human, as far as I could tell, standing at some type of console, taking readings or manipulating things. He was busy, at work, on the job. I observed some of the results on that machine, maybe from my brain. It was a little frightening, almost unbearably intense. It all began with a whining, whirring sound.
Jeremiah’s last double-blind session was the less overwhelming but definitely psychedelic 0.2 mg/kg dose. At this session he was surrounded by the orthopedic traction cage, but he denied that it bothered him. Josette was filling in for Cindy that morning, as our nurse.
At 10 minutes, he began,
There were four distinct beings looking down on me, like I was on an operating-room table. I opened my eyes to see if it was you and Josette, but it wasn’t. They had done something and were observing the results. They are vastly advanced scientifically and technologically. They were looking just over the traction bar in front of me. I guess they were saying, “Goodbye. Don’t be a stranger.”
Josette said that some of what Jeremiah described reminded her of some of her own “weird” dreams, and she went on to tell us about one of them.
Jeremiah replied,
That was a dream you described. This is real. It’s totally unexpected, quite constant and objective. One could interpret your looking at my pupils as being observed, and the tubes in my body as the tubes I’m seeing. But that is a metaphor, and this is not at all a metaphor. It’s an independent, constant reality.
Josette collected the last blood sample and left the room, closing the door behind her. Jeremiah and I relaxed quietly together.
DMT has shown me the reality that there is infinite variation on reality. There is the real possibility of adjacent dimensions. It may not be so simple as that there’s alien planets with their own societies. This is too proximal. It’s not like some kind of drug. It’s more like an experience of a new technology than a drug.
You can choose to attend to this or not. It will continue to progress without you paying attention. You return not to where you left off, but to where things have gone since you left. It’s not a hallucination, but an observation. When I’m there, I’m not intoxicated. I’m lucid and sober.
Dmitri’s sessions continue to fill out themes of testing and experimentation upon volunteers once the spirit molecule brought them into nonmaterial realms.
Twenty-six years old when he started in the DMT research, Dmitri was of Greek extraction. He lived with Heather, whose experience of unseen worlds we read about in chapter 12. He was a writer and editor and was a seasoned and steady explorer of inner space. He had smoked DMT about sixty times and had taken LSD “hundreds of times,” ketamine fifty to a hundred times, and MDMA about thirty times.
When I arrived in his room, Dmitri was casual about the day’s schedule:
“I’m not too excited about this. I know it’s just a low dose.”
“Wait until tomorrow,” I replied.
Ten minutes after I injected this low dose, Dmitri said,
It was pretty psychedelic, more so than I thought it would be.
The next day, Dr. V. and his assistant, Mr. W., joined us as guests. Dr. V. worked for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the agency funding my research. He was developing a project that might treat drug abusers with the African hallucinogen ibogaine. He wanted to see the effects of a powerful psychedelic drug given in a research setting.
Mr. W. had been one of the most helpful people during my search through the regulatory labyrinth for human-grade DMT. I was happy to share with him the results of his assistance.
Dmitri’s partner, Heather, was with us that day, too. Add Dmitri, Laura, and me, and there were six in all. It was a crowd in Room 531.
Almost immediately after the injection was complete, Dmitri began breathing deeply and rapidly. He repeatedly sighed and yawned as if to dispel physical tension. At about 9 minutes, he asked for some water, and thanked us when we gave him a few sip
s. After wetting his mouth, he began,
I feel like I’m in a mild state of shock. I feel really shaky.
“Here’s a blanket.”
Okay.
“Don’t forget to breathe. There’s a lot of energy being released.”
I asked Laura to go out into the hall and turn off some beeping equipment outside. Dmitri wasn’t quite sure what we were doing. He decided to ignore the fuss.
The first thing I noticed was a burning in the back of my neck. Then there was this loud intense hum. It was like the fan at first, but separate. It began engulfing me. I let go into it and then . . . WHAM!
I felt like I was in an alien laboratory, in a hospital bed like this, but it was over there. A sort of landing bay, or recovery area. There were beings. I was trying to get a handle on what was going on. I was being carted around. It didn’t look alien, but their sense of purpose was. It was a three-dimensional space. I expected cartoonlike creatures, like a commercial for LSD, but this was “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” It was unlike any other DMT experience I’ve had.
They had a space ready for me. They weren’t as surprised as I was. It was incredibly un-psychedelic. I was able to pay attention to detail. There was one main creature, and he seemed to be behind it all, overseeing everything. The others were orderlies, or dis-orderlies.
They activated a sexual circuit, and I was flushed with an amazing orgasmic energy. A goofy chart popped up like an X-ray in a cartoon, and a yellow illumination indicated that the corresponding system, or series of systems, were fine. They were checking my instruments, testing things. When I was coming out, I couldn’t help but think “aliens.”
I am so disappointed I didn’t talk to them. I was confused and in awe. I knew that they were preparing me for something. Somehow we had a mission. They had things to show me. But they were waiting for me to acquaint myself with the environment and movement and language of this space.
The atmosphere in the room was surreal. It was bursting with people and a very strange story. I hoped Dr. V. and Mr. W. were all right. I also wondered if I might lose my funding the next week. Or see it doubled.
It was not like any UFO abduction I’ve heard about. These beings were friendly. I had a bond with one of them. It was about to say something to me or me to it, but we couldn’t quite connect. It was almost a sexual bond, but not sex like intercourse, but a total body communication. I was filled with feelings of love for them. Their work definitely had something to do with my presence. Exactly what remains a mystery.
Let’s close this chapter with one of the most striking interventions performed on a volunteer by these otherworld beings. In Ben’s experience, they not only tested and probed him, but also implanted something into his body.
Ben was twenty-nine years of age and had recently relocated from Seattle. He was a drifter, having held thirty jobs in just ten years. He was an old friend of Chris, about whose entity-contact encounter we just read. During one of his longest stints of employment, Ben had served as a military policeman for two years.
Ben was an intense fellow—short-cropped, nearly shaven head, a muscular build, and a very direct manner. He actively sought novelty and change, so it’s not surprising that in his written statement about why he wanted to participate in the New Mexico research, he replied: “I am an explorer, and I expect this will be an interesting experience.”
As with Dmitri, Ben’s non-blind, low-dose DMT session was relatively powerful. His high sensitivity to DMT warned us that the next day probably would be one of the biggest psychedelic experiences of his life. I told him to be ready.
While a little nervous the next day, Ben was eager for his non-blind high dose to begin. I spent a little more time than usual getting him ready, advising him to try and take some big deep breaths as the DMT went in.
“You may take in a breath and have that be the last thing you remember; you may not even notice the out-breath. That means you’re there.”
Ben tried to breathe deeply as the drug was going in. Then his breathing settled down as he obviously fell under the influence of the drug. His heart beat visibly in his chest. At about 3 minutes, his neck showed some hives, something that had also happened to several other volunteers who had truly astonishing stories to tell us later.
At 8 minutes, several total body spasms occurred, and he cleared his throat.
It was time to try and ground him. “We’re going to put a blanket on you. Try to breathe into that tension if you can.”
He slowed his breathing and starting calming down, a big smile on his face. He stayed silent for 36 minutes, longer than most of our volunteers, before I felt the urge to rouse him.
It started with a sound. It was high-pitched like a tightly taut wire.
There were four or five of them. They were on me fast. As crazy as this sounds, they looked like saguaro cactus, very Peruvian in color. They were flexible, fluid, geometrical cacti. Not solid. They weren’t benevolent but they weren’t non-benevolent. They probed, they really probed. They seemed to know time was limited. They wanted to know what I, this being who had shown up, was doing. I didn’t answer. They knew. Once they decided I was okay, they went about their business.
His eyes were open, glazed, staring at the ceiling. He seemed unable to grasp what he had just undergone.
“I know. It sounds incredible to you. To us, too, but it happens.”
Haltingly, as if he weren’t really sure he wanted to tell us:
I felt like something was inserted into my left forearm, right here, about three inches below this chain-link tattoo on my wrist. It was long. There were no reassurances with the probe. Simply business.
Laura asked “Was there any fear?”
Maybe at the onset, at just having my ego brushed aside. When they were on me, there was a little bit more confusion than fear. Kind of like, “Hey! What’s this?!” And then there they were. There was no time for me to say, “Who the hell are you guys? Let’s see some ID!”
There are surprising and remarkable consistencies among volunteers’ reports of contact with nonmaterial beings. Sound and vibration build until the scene almost explosively shifts to an “alien” realm. Volunteers find themselves on a bed or in a landing bay, research environment, or high-technology room. The highly intelligent beings of this “other” world are interested in the subject, seemingly ready for his or her arrival and wasting no time in “getting to work.” There might be one particular being clearly in charge, directing the others. Volunteers frequently comment about the emotional quality of the relationships: loving, caring, or professionally detached.
Their “business” appeared to be testing, examining, probing, and even modifying the volunteer’s mind and body. Sometimes testing came first, and after results were satisfactory, further interactions took place. They also communicated with the volunteers, attempting to convey information by gestures, telepathy, or visual imagery. The purpose of contact was uncertain, but several subjects felt a benevolent attempt on the beings’ part to improve us individually or as a race.
I was baffled and nonplussed by the sheer volume and bizarre nature of these reports. My crude and minimal responses to volunteers’ tales in this chapter clearly reflect my quandary. At first I tried to avoid the pitfalls attendant to developing any explanatory model, either for my benefit or for that of the subjects. After a while, however, we all needed to make sense of these types of sessions.
As a clinical research psychiatrist, I entertained the idea that the regularity and consistency of these reports, and the strength of the sense of reality behind them, supported a biological explanation. We were activating certain hard-wired sites in the brain that elicit a display of visions and feelings in the mind. How else could so many people report similar experiences: insect-like, reptilian creatures?
I believed that these experiences were hallucinations, albeit rather complicated ones—simply products of brain chemistry brought on by a “hallucinogenic” drug, like a waking dream. Several volunteers’
eyeballs did rotate in their sockets during high-dose DMT sessions, reminding me of rapid-eye-movement sleep, when dreaming occurs. Maybe DMT was inducing a wakeful dream state.
However, research subjects tenaciously resisted biological explanations because such explanations reduced the enormity, consistency, and undeniability of their encounters. How could anyone believe there were chunks of brain tissue that, when activated, flashed encounters with beings, experimentation, and reprogramming? Neither did suggesting that it was a waking dream satisfy volunteers’ need for a model that made sense and fit with their experience. Many even prefaced their reports by saying, “This was not a dream,” or, “I couldn’t have made it up if I wanted to.”
At a slightly more abstract level, I tried a psychological explanation. That is, these experiences were symbolic of something else: wishes, fears, or unresolved conflicts. However, these “symbolic” explanations weren’t any more successful. Even gently persistent interpretations fell flat. How could these experiences reflect unconscious psychological issues like aggressive or dependent wishes?
In some volunteers the need to make sense of the strangest sessions was almost academic: “It was just the drug.”
For others, however, this need took on a pressing urgency. How could they have possibly undergone the experience they just did? Was it their imagination? How could their imagination generate a scenario that felt more real than waking consciousness? If it were “real,” how does one now live his or her life, knowing that existing right now are multiple invisible realms inhabited by intelligent life-forms? Who are those beings? What is the nature of their relationship to the volunteers now that they had made “contact”?
At a certain point I decided to suspend my reductionistic, materialistic, “I know what this is” approach. Not that doing so helped me feel any more comfortable with what I was hearing. But at least I no longer would risk making things worse by explaining away people’s experiences as something else. Interpreting, explaining, or otherwise reducing their reports usually caused volunteers to shut down, and I knew I would be missing valuable and important pieces of the entire story if I couldn’t encourage them to talk.
DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences Page 21