DMT is a powerful, naturally occurring psychedelic found in plants and in trace amounts in humans. It is the primary psychoactive in Ayahuasca, a brew of vines and DMT-containing leaves first concocted in South America. Some users of Ayahuasca report highly intense experiences, including the perception of alternate dimensions. Recently, speculative hypotheses have been proposed stating that naturally occurring DMT in the human brain may play a role in neurological and psychological processes, and even in regulating our normal conscious state:
"A biochemical mechanism for this was proposed by the medical researcher J.C. Callaway, who suggested in 1988 that DMT might be connected with visual dream phenomena: brain DMT levels would be periodically elevated to induce visual dreaming and possibly other natural states of mind.[97] A new hypothesis proposed is that in addition to being involved in altered states of consciousness, endogenous DMT may be involved in the creation of normal waking states of consciousness. It is proposed that DMT and other endogenous hallucinogens mediate their neurological abilities by acting as neurotransmitters at a sub class of the trace amine receptors; a group of receptors found in the CNS where DMT and other hallucinogens have been shown to have activity. Wallach further proposes that in this way waking consciousness can be thought of as a controlled psychedelic experience. It is when the control of these systems becomes loosened and their behavior no longer correlates with the external world that the altered states arise." - Wikipedia "DMT"
This calls into question the "meaning" of reality. Is what we experience normally just another form of being high?
whether it is or it isn't, there's no reason we can't treat the 'normal state of consciousness' as a very high state of perception. after all, one thing these psychedelics can show us is that it is whatever you perceive it as, and only that.
ReplyDeletethe nature of reality appears to be quite different if you think of it this way:
rather than needing to see it to believe it, you actually need to believe it to see it. we're just under the illusion that the seeing is a process which comes before any possibility of the process of believing occurring. ..is that idea really as far-fetched as it initially appears to the average human mind?