Shamanic abilities are generally brought on by a personal crisis, such as illness or sudden shock. Where this is not naturally forthcoming, initiations designed to produce the effects of such a state are used to bring about re-birth as a shaman. The shaman sees through everything, dies and is reborn, suffers the pangs of the world, and sees into its darkest corners. The near-death of initiation is common to shamans the world over and a metaphor for their experiences. Afterwards, they are never the same; everything has changed for them. They have known total knowledge and, to a degree according to their skills and strengths, have permanent access to it from that moment on.
( -shamanism bible ; Mathews )

*note: the dose range in this report is highly inflated, there is no reason to ever dose this high*

the first time I used N,N-dimethyltryptamine I smoked 200mgs of translucent yellow crystals on top of a small amount of high-grade cannabis, I consumed it in a single inhalation. I held the hit in less than 5 seconds when the rush began, "I don't believe it!" I kept repeating in my head, "this is impossible".... my surroundings began to quiver and slither apart, faster than anything I had ever seen everything began moving away from everything else in a mash of brilliant color geometric form, and speed, before fully shattering the "reality" in my visual and mental field, it came on like a freight train, I remember thinking "oh fuck! Get this stuff out of me!" And frantically trying to exhale. It was pure terror, I thought "now you have done it! You killed yourself!" After brief mourning at the life I had just departed from I began to pay attention to the present, I remember feeling like I was at the bottom of a foggy mountain with dirt roads, the clouds felt like a domed ceiling, everything was wet, misty, cloudy and rainy, I was overcome with an intense feeling of panic and deja-vu, I felt like a lost child, everything I knew about who I was or my life or earth seemed like a distant dream, like I dissolved out of existence, I interpreted this as dying, I knew that I was dead, and I was emotionally overwhelmed while confronting the event of my death, just like sand slipping through finger cracks I tried to hold onto this all as my entire identity as a human was dissolved, I remembered my name, the earth, my family, who I was, being a human, and life, but like grabbing at smoke, it was futile, all of this slipped away and nearly faded entirely out of my memory, impossible to cling to all this, I had to let it go...I kept thinking "what the fuck was life?" ...I could not tell if I was breathing or not, I would take air in, but couldn't feel it, I began taking in panicked deep breaths, thinking that none of the oxygen was entering my system, then noticed a pain in my chest, a giant mantis like being had its claws in my chest! It proceeded to tear open my chest and stomach removing all my organs and insides, I was about to go into shock when I saw a bright green light flash over my shoulder, it nearly hit me, it then became a beautiful fractal-geometric object, morphing and color changing, at times it was metallic at other times it was a beautiful jewel, and all the while to look into it was to view endless geometric fractal patterns, moving, morphing, and changing color. The mantis then put this object in my torn up body, he began to make billions of these objects, each one unique and radiating beautiful colored light, and the mantoid filled my body with them, billions of them, becoming small as atoms to construct the new insides of my mangled corpse, then I was sealed up and propelled into an orange light where I was resurrected, my conscious-being (soul) was becoming reunited with the physical world ...then I felt as if I was being pushed head first through a thick gelatinous membrane, violent gesticulations of the membrane surrounding me were forcing me through this thing...I was being born...slowly I began to recognize my surroundings, my face still covered in tears, I looked up and saw the branches of a tree in the yard all slither in sinister fashion in from all directions to take place and solidify as the tree in the distance, the world began to slither back into place, most things moved in an elegant liquid serpentine slithering motion, or like the dancing movements of a flame, as the world constructed itself back into the familiar, so did my conscious state and memory, I was still disoriented, and fairly traumatized, I thought I had been gone for millennia, "how long was I gone I asked?"...."about 20 minutes" was the answer ....those who were there said in reality I curled up into a ball and began to cry for 20 minutes, I was wondering why my face was wet, because it felt like I had actually just been through being born, I was still covered in tears...any way the immense deep spiritual and psychological implications of this experience left me for ever transformed, reborn as a new person entirely, it was the single most meaningful thing that has ever happened to me, and changed me in many significant ways, all for the better.
-eg