First of all, thank you for sharing the lectures. No one said before that the presentation graphics were really neat as well

Reading your observations and the thread so far, I wanted to leave a couple thoughts about this:



One way I like to think about the psychedelic dimensions, about hyperspace, is as a manifestation of one possible nature of reality - not as matter/energy, but as information. Information that flows between dimensions, and DMT might be the most simple technology we have available to take a look at the cogs and wheels of the process.

Whether archetypes and mythological figures, facts of the mind, are completely initiated in outer dimensions or colonize them from our dimension instead is probably an egg/chicken type of question and it might have no definitive answer. But nevertheless there are many examples of how the cultural setting of the traveler permeates hyperspace. Just look beyond the DMT flash in our culture and think of the ayahuasca experiences in the amazonian people. Or even all the reports from salvia-space (and most likely from DMT-space as well) that talk about cartoons.

We might think that describing androids that look like a cross between crash test dummies and stormtroopers from the Star Wars saga, or and endless row of Felix-the-Cats, actually accounts for our own human decoding of alien images, in an attempt to relate them to our cultural patterns, be it in the very moment of the trip or in the attempt of translating the experience into symbols we can communicate once the experience is finished. But in either case, and since the DMT experience is known for obliterating the border between object and subject, makes sense to think about hyperspace as a synthesis of both. We modulate the experience itself, or our self's reading of it, with information from our consensus reality; at the same time, the fabric of hyperspace is older than and beyond our culture.

So my take on this, at the moment, is that hyperspace is not just an alien reality, but also a place where human culture and non-human information converge.

Vodsel I think you make some highly cogent points - I suppose that any information from an 'alien reality' must somehow be parsed by our neural machinery and rendered as a percept (i.e. the world that is seen). Certainly, cultural mythologies and memes are likely to influence this. However, I think it important we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and end up taking the position of James Kent (i.e. that DMT visions are nothing more than interpretations of chaotic data generated entirely by his frame-stacking model). I think it highly significant that, whatever the nature of the information being received/generated, the brain tends to render the percept so often as "alien intelligence". Yes aliens are a common and popular idea, but they are by no means the dominant one in western society and I don't see why this idea ought to appear so often in trip reports unless the data received has that quality.

I agree with you that DMT seems to represent a convergence of human and non-human information, yet, as humans, I guess our brains must render this information in a human form so that we can perceive it. Really, it is quite remarkable if the brain is capable of receiving non-human data as, presumably, it was designed to receive data from the consensus world. This is why I suggest that DMT and the brain, together with the brain's interaction with extradimensional data sources goes back a long long time.....

As an addendum to my last comment, I remember back in the 80s as a child loading cassette-tape computer games onto my Spectrum... if you tried to listen to the audio you got a characteristic eeeeeeeeeeeekkkkk eeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkk noise, which I guess is what happens when the tape player renders the computer program data in an audio form... what I think it remarkable about any "alien data" is that the brain is capable of rendering the data in a form that is perceivable as a clear percept rather than unintelligible chaos... my position is that this suggests the brain has learned/evolved to carry out this function, hence the parallel neural evolution model....

Very good post. I learned a lot and enjoyed the lecture. Thanks

there should be some video archive or something, for great gems such as this

Thank you laughingcat, for your lecture of this same topic at the Breaking Convention 2013. It was interesting for sure.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I shall be sure to post the complete paper, which goes into far more detail than I could fit into 25 mins, as soon as it is published - September 15th...

Perfect! I'm looking forward to it.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

I watched both. Very informative and easy to follow.

I really love this lecture . I like the fact that's its so
Clear and concise and basically uncluttered by new age
Or religious themes . More of this .

Speaking from the point of view of a superstitious type person like myself who believes that Gods, Aliens, Spirits and all that sort of "nonsense" I found this lecture to be refreshingly open minded compared to other lectures I have seen about DMT.

Thanks for posting this.....very interesting indeed.