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It doesn't seem far fetched to me that your own mind could've manufactured such a reaction - especially if the shamans all tried to convince you that the spirits are real, and you felt "guilty" that you didn't believe them. Your mind could simulate the reaction you'd have feared you'd get if you shared your thoughts with the shamans, perhaps?

I am personally very skeptical of the "realness" of anything that happens during a hallucination.

Guilt is definitely a central theme of DMT trips for many people.

I am beyond skeptical to be honest. True I've never done this specifically, but I've done few intense mushrooms trips lying on the bed with eyes closed, where my mind dissolved, I lost connection to my whole body and all senses, danced as a mist of atoms to (real) background shamanic music and then very, very slowly coming down from all this, joining atom by atom, sense by sense, limb by limb.

Felt very spiritual and almost religious at the end, interesting to experience as an agnostic (but this changed nothing, in fact just reinforced this opinion).

It just tells us how little we understand our brains, how creative it gets when receptors who provided 100% feed all life give suddenly only a garbled mess. And maybe that all of us have inside some innate desire for good, beauty, connection with all living, nature, universe. I mean, isn't that enough to marvel? Especially when such experiences often permanently change participants for the better.

Which is all fine but none of this needs aliens from other dimensions to explain. But in same vein some folks see conspiracies everywhere, ufos flying and monitoring us etc. while rest of us just see world as usual go by.

"I am personally very skeptical of the "realness" of anything that happens during a hallucination."

Is it a hallucination, though? That's an open question in the scientific study of these substances and experiences.

> That's an open question in the scientific study of these substances and experiences.

I sincerely doubt that there are scientists questioning whether clockwork elves are real or not.

Hallucinations are considered hallucinations because they are seen only by the person who ingested the hallucinogens, and none of the other people who might be present but didn't ingest the hallucinogens. Consistence is crucial to the very definition of reality - hallucinations are not consistent, therefore they aren't real.

Or that's just the way I see it.

There is a consistency in people’s experiences with these rituals and places they go to.

Sure, there's some consistency. But compared to the consistency of experience of the real world, it is lacking and full of holes. Not enough to be called "real", in my opinion.

If you define real as "things that can be seen and confirmed by others" then I agree, I think the only useful argument is whether these hallucinations are any more or less "real" than what we perceive during sober states. When we're sober sobriety feels more real, when we're tripping the trip feels more real, there's no reason to believe either one over the other except that it's easy to justify the realness of sobriety by getting confirmation from other people, but with our utter lack of ability to comprehend the true nature of reality there's no reason to believe that this shared sober reality is completely "real" or that it's the only "real" reality. I think any skeptic should be skeptical in both directions

> I think any skeptic should be skeptical in both directions

I agree.

However, I think skepticism should not stop at "we can't know nothing". Once we've established that, the purpose of skepticism is to figure out which reality has a higher probability to be true. In which case, the sober reality has the advantage of being the first (we are born sober and intoxicate ourselves later) and always being there at the end of every trip. Trips are relatively short compared to our sober state.

Of course, an individual might be intoxicated more than he is sober, in which case, from his perspective, sober life wouldn't be "real". But that might also be the case for alien lifeforms that perceive the world with something other than 5 human senses.

Our world only exists in our minds, but our ability to communicate with others allows us to describe the world to them and hear their descriptions, which gives us a lot of confirmation about reality - which we define to be same for everyone.

By that definition a recurring dream would be reality - consistence it has, no hallucinogens involved.

> By that definition a recurring dream would be reality

And indeed, if I had a dream recurring with 100% regularity and consistency, I'd be very freaked out and question which reality is reality :)

Well, no, as you fail the other condition - nobody else observing it.

To play the devil's advocate, what if you met people in your recurring dreams that could communicate to you that they're observing the dreamworld the same as you, how would you know the difference between dreams and reality?

Why? Everything already happens in your mind.

> I am personally very skeptical of the "realness" of anything that happens during a hallucination.

If you interpret "realness" as do they exist in the real world, then of course no.

But perhaps the subconscious mind is manifesting these "entities" so that some communication with it is possible. In that sense they are a real part of you, and you could perhaps gleam benefits from such an interaction.

I’ve had similar experiences on large doses of mush. I think it’s in your head, but it’s something that your subconscious self really wanted your conscious self to acknowledge. For you, perhaps you are in the habit of “rationalizing” away profound experiences which serves to protect you from being overwhelmed by life. But sometimes you need to be swept away by life and give in to your senses. There’s truth in our subconscious reactions, truth beyond what our conscious selves can reason about.

I believe psychedelics make it easier to become religious, because they teach you how to have faith in a higher power than your conscious self. I now have a deeper trust in the universe, which is another word for God, which is another word for my subconscious.

Psychedelics also give the experience of something very unusual, if not extraordinary, which also pushes people towards religion. Because humans have this habit of labeling everything they don't understand as "magic", just everything. Come on humans, really???

I think it's the same thing as what we call the unconscious/subconscious (e.g. the place where dreams come from), which I think is more accurate to call a "different" reality as opposed to not real or a sub-reality. From Jung and Freud we know how much of what we usually call reality is just projection from this unconscious world, as well as just how real and autonomous, and likely sentient, the beings that exist in this unconscious world are

I’ve had dreams where I carry on actual conversations with people in my own life and or strangers.

Realizing that I’m dreaming, I ask questions and to my surprise their answers and reactions are not of my doing. I ask in the manner of only listening immediately (clear minded with no thinking) so as to not influence their response. The brain is truly mysterious.

I wonder if hidden personas are created and stored and revealed in our dreams?

Or that our brain is connected to a plane that actually exists outside of our reality.

Maybe one day I’ll experience what you have.

Thanks for sharing.

"internal family systems" gives a useful framework for this ability of the brain to take on multiple more or less independent perspectives, almost personalities. our brain can hide different memories in them and getting free access and interaction and integration of them is seen as part of personal development by the IFS approach to the phenomenon. They leverage it without psychedelics, btw.

Yeah I think empathy under the hood is just a very good modeling engine that models other people's brains without our conscious awareness.

IFS, DMT, and other experiences can surface those models to the conscious layer and allow us to introspect them more directly.

In that vein I think sympathy is our intelligent/conscious level modeling of other people's emotional states, which is a higher level process that happens with conscious awareness. In some ways I think sympathy is actually harder, and I respect it more because it shows conscious effort put into modeling experiences you haven't already had / can't intuitively relate to without effort.

> Realizing that I’m dreaming, I ask questions and to my surprise their answers and reactions are not of my doing

The way I see it dreams are unconcious imagination running wild. Lucid dreaming is your lucid brain being put in reality created by your unconscious mind, so there is no real way for the lucid part to "know" the info beforehand, just like there is no way to predict what you will dream about this night

Next time record your outer shell while doing this. You might discover that all of this is in your head.

All arguments made about god like things are true here too.

Things like: why would anyone care about us humans specifically.

Why would they be 'elves'.

Plenty of 'normal' people believe in very stupid things like loch Ness etc.

We know no one who just changed physical laws.

Also you do sound like you prepare yourself, guess who aligns himself to those types of stories? Exactly you do.

You prepare yourself by traveling there and doing it with some old dude in some jungle.

You could just do Aya in your lifing room tbh.

I personally would try to avoid assuming this is more than it is. This might become a dangerous brain and reality killing self journey instead of something crazy to experience.

For me personally LSD told me not that there is something else out there but allowed me to feel and realize how fragile my brain can be. It helps me to have more empathy for brain illnesses.

It also stabiled my life by knowing the normal boring world is just what it is: real. I still need to work and earn money and fees myself even after a trip etc.

There's been scientific studies on whether people can get "machine elves" to tell them some actual factual information that they didn't already know.

In all of the studied cases the things that were told by the "machine elves" was either something that got verified as false/made up or something the user already knew.

I think machine elves a BS but if you're gonna claim they verified it with a study you'd better link it. Idk how they could verify the elves were created by trippers' imaginations, sounds like disproving Jesus.

The conclusion of the study was that the machine elves was simply created by the trippers' imagination as they couldn't get any knowledge out of them. Like they tried asking questions that the users didn't know the answer to to see if they could get the machine elves to tell them. Of course it doesn't really prove that machine elves aren't real either, just that they didn't answer any questions with information that trippers didn't know.

It was something I read many years ago. Didn't find it from a quick search now.

Que Scott Alexander's cute short story on the topic.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th...

That was delightful. Thanks

As in other threads about psychoactive substances I wonder how much the result of the trip is influenced by the psychonaut's predisposition towards spirituality and magical thinking.

There is a thing such “rules of engagement.” Perhaps these beings operate on a harm none protocol which requires not introducing new information. Only rehashing prior.

> I prepare for months before partaking in them

And here is why it is one of the most profound things in your life. Not saying that ayahuesca and other psychedelics do not provide you with a different outlook on life, but by sacralizing this ritual, making your life focused on it and therefore massively overemphasising its importance.

You could have the exact same feelings with LSD if you hyped yourself up for months and the whole thing was a ritual with scientists disguised as aliens from outer space.

Even without any preparation, many people still have some of the most profound experiences of their life on psychedelics, comparable in significance (in their words) to the birth of a child or the death of a parent.

This has been shown in research time and time again.

The mind is the source of all senses. Is an Ayahuasca trip hallucination any different in reality than say schizophrenia hallucinations?

If there truly are beings of other advanced "planes", and they are communicating, why are they only doing it in vague ways that mimic dreams? And why is that information never something novel? If they're beings more advanced than us then we should be able to ask and get answers.

Same problem with ghosts. If there is evidence for their existence, then we can collect that. But every time the evidence is never there when it's no longer he said/she said. Even if ghosts were real and sentient they have to mess up eventually.

Sounds a lot like a limited intelligence human mind undergoing a bombardment of chemicals that change how the senses input/output information.

> why are they only doing it in vague ways that mimic dreams? And why is that information never something novel?

I would say: why not? I've never done Ayahuasca or taken drugs to hallucinate, so I have no idea about what people experience, but if what they experience is not only a product of their mind, why would we be so surprised of the hidden structure of the universe (if any)? We literally know very little about everything, so "our way" is probably not the "only way".

Measuring and evaluating factual claims these entities make is only one way of approaching them.

Some people can forgive themselves or their parents on psychedelics, can completely come out a different person, can have their cripplingly severe depression cured..

Can these be fairly described as "hallucinations"? A better word is needed.

I've never done Ayahuasca and I am still leaning more to the side that these beings are NOT created by your mind. These experiences are too structured and follow simmilar spiritual themes. If these substances would simply fire random neurons in a brain you would expect more of a delirious/deluded and dream-like state. Also, I think there was some study that showed that psychedelics acutally reduce brain activity instead of amplifying it as you would expect from a materialist perspective.

That entity actually asked you a very valid question. Why do you need to explain it away? Is it because of fear that it might be real? Why would you be afraid of that?

I think it was McKenna who said he believes that because people hear about elves before their trips, they experience them and the experience is fairly similar. Even the name, an elf, is suggestive of the appearance of the creatures.

No one, to my knowledge, talked about "DMT elves" before McKenna. The people who talked about them afterwards were very likely directly or indirectly primed by him to expect to see them, and we all know that expectations can strongly influence what one experiences on psychedelics.

>If these substances would simply fire random neurons in a brain you would expect more of a delirious/deluded and dream-like state.

They don't fire completely random neurons. All drugs have some consistent(ish) effects. Among other things MDMA is more likely to activate empathy-related mechanisms, (some) cannabis is more likely to activate tiredness-related mechanisms and DMT is more likely to affect entity recognition and related mechanisms.

>That entity actually asked you a very valid question. Why do you need to explain it away?

Because generally it's a good habit to have true beliefs. In this case asking yourself might've been better after the experience but the habit itself is good to have and deluding yourself even after the fact is bad.

I'm agnostic on the "reality" of the existence of machine elves and the like, but as someone who once got heavily into lucid dreaming, it's actually very common for people in dreams to argue with you convincingly that you're not in a dream. It's well known in the lucid dreaming community.

They exist. Shamans work with different spirits and even have names for ones they work with.

I was skeptical in the beginning but it's a different reality. Just because we can't normally see them doesn't mean they don't exist.

I don't see spirits most times I drink, but I once had a gecko-like plant spirit climbing all over me... I often see beautiful patterns and landscapes.

It's an amazing medicine. It cured my depression and my daily panic attacks. It wasn't easy, and I even packed my bags a few times to leave, but if it wasn't for ayahuasca I wouldn't be alive.

    “We are completely unaware of the magical world of the shaman. It is quite simply stranger than we can suppose.“ 
    — Terrence McKenna

You seeing something when on strong drugs that you can't see when not is not strong evidence for its existence.

Depends on how you define "existence".

In general, we define existence in context of consistence of stimulus with everyday experience, including other people's reports of experience. Dreams are very rarely consistent with each other, so we know they're dreams. But imagine if every time you went to sleep, you woke up in a "dreamworld" with all the experience sequentially consistent with your previous dreams. How would you know that the "dream" is the dream, and that the real world is the real world?

I'm not saying that hallucinations are real - I strongly believe the opposite. But I can see such how powerful and consistent hallucinations could make the person believe in their existence, especially if combined with low life satisfaction/self-esteem and strong desire to feel special in some sort of way, to know something that the "unenlightened" don't, or to be a part of something. It's a similar mechanism to one that makes people join religions - psychedelic experiences have a lot in common with religious experiences. One could also hypothesize that religion was invented when humans found psychedelics, and couldn't explain their effects.

"You seeing something when on strong drugs that you can't see when not is not strong evidence for its existence."

This assumes that the sober state of mind takes precedence over the altered state of mind. But there's no evidence that the one is superior to the other.

One could equally claim that things that one experiences when sober does not exist, and only things that one experiences while altered does.

Which is the more real? There's no "objective" standpoint one could take to evaluate the two and compare them to the "real real" to judge which is closer.

>This assumes that the sober state of mind takes precedence over the altered state of mind. But there's no evidence that the one is superior to the other.

First, define "superior".

Second, if you have 20 sober people looking at thing and reporting it looks the same, then you drug them and every one of them reports someone else, I'm giving that to the "sober mind", even when some tiny minority might be reporting in "sober" state what others would classify as "drugged"

This assumes we all share the same reality, and further assumes that the criteria sober people use to judge reality must be the right one.

Ask people in a different state of mind and they can give you plenty of other criteria... such as that what they are experiencing is to them "more real than real", or that they're able to commune with their god in that state while they're unable to in a sober state, or that they're able to communicate with their dead relatives in the altered state, or that it's more spiritual, etc...

Why should some sober people's consensus trump the criteria of people in altered states of consciousness?

> Why should some sober people's consensus trump the criteria of people in altered states of consciousness?

Because hallucinating people usually aren't in consensus about what is real, while sober people are. Consensus is the only criteria for reality we have, don't we?

Not saying that consensus makes it a reality, but it's the best indicator of whatever we're calling reality.

In the Amazon rainforest, the consensus is that spirits are real.

Why would they be hallucinating? Most people don't drink ayahuasca.

As I said, consensus doesn't make reality, only indicates it. Sometimes the consensus is wrong - in the middle age, consensus was that the Earth is in the center of the universe.

But it's still the best indicator we have. And consensus is measured by numbers, so Amazon rainforest guys aren't really more meaningful than flat earthers, alien abductees and scientologists. Of course, number is only a shorthand - in the age of modern science, all knowledge about reality must fit into the general framework that explains and predicts reality in order to be worthy of being considered true, regardless of how many people believe it. But that boils down to consistency again.

> But there's no evidence that the one is superior to the other.

I believe the fact that people cannot drive a car properly while hallucinating seems to be a bit of evidence of "superiority" of the sober mind over the intoxicated, at least in the real world.

Why did you pick car driving as the measure of reality?

Why not pick love making, or singing, appreciating or making music, laughing, communing with spirits or gods, feeling empathy for others, or making art?

Because when you hit someone with a car, they die. When you have bad sex, it's just bad sex. In other words, driving a car requires much better connection with reality in order to make sure you're doing it right, and doing it wrong has much harder consequences than the things you've listed.

Sure, all those things are pleasant to people, but that doesn't have anything to do with them being "real". When you watch a good movie, the scenes feel real, but they are very much not.

Driving a car is just conditioning yourself thru repetition to operate one particularly dangerous mechanical device thru dynamic environments. No biggie.

Making love is just thrusting your penis into vagina until you finish. No biggie.

Singing/making music is just making random sounds until they sound good. No biggie.

Speaking to god is just saying whatever comes out of your mind until you feel better. No biggie.

---

Everything can be made to sound silly when you oversimplify it. Such arguments don't have anything to do with activity "being real" at all.

Comparing sexual relations, musicmaking, and speaking to God to... driving a car ?

Color me dubious.

People have reported achieving identical experiences solely through meditation, though it takes much more work.

Believe it or not, most people who toy with DMT are aware of what hallucinations are, and wouldn't conflate them with reality without a good reason. You're being quite reductive and inconsiderate of your audience - this isn't /r/trees.

Most people I know in the Amazon have never had ayahuasca, or consume any psychoactive substances except alcohol. Everyone will tell you it's real. I think if you just spend enough time in the jungle you're gonna start noticing things. It's very strange.

One time, a girl I know came crying because she had been chased by duendes. The men went out in the forest to blow tobacco smoke to keep them away.

>Some trips have felt like mystical, blissful experiences. Others have felt like an eternity in hell. You never know what you're going to get and you have to be ready for it.

I wonder if the variability in experience isn't partially because it is a plant concoction allowing some substitutes:

> Ayahuasca[1] is commonly made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, the Psychotria viridis shrub or a substitute, and other ingredients including Justicia pectoralis,[5] one of the Brugmansia (especially Brugmansia insignis and Brugmansia versicolor, or a hybrid breed) or Datura species,[6] and mapacho (Nicotiana rustica).

It seems to me that it would be hard to get a repeatable dosage and combination of the active ingredients this way.

"It seems to me that it would be hard to get a repeatable dosage and combination of the active ingredients this way."

Not only that, different ayahuasca "shamen" tend to have different recipes for making it. There are no standardized dosages and no quality control beyond what the individual brewing it chooses (or not) to do.

>Ayahuasca ceremonies are among the most profound, cherished experiences of my life. I prepare for months before partaking in them to make sure my emotional, physical, and spiritual health is in a good place.

If set and setting are so important, what does that say about it being an aid for negative ailments like anxiety and depression.

It, like a lot of psychedelica, sound like a great thing for people who are otherwise in great emotional shape, and want to find themselves or take it to the next level.

Do you actually see 3d beings and other worlds?

Almost every time Ive done DMT Ive communicated with some kind of voice. I only see them as vague shapes though if i even see them. Actually they almost always looks like Egyptian gods. Bird like faces, but its always floating lines. Except one time, i saw an owl, it was 2d and didn't communicate with me.

But based on the way people describe their trips, idk if I need to do more or something and I never got the real and full experience. Ive taken between 25-35mg.

Genuinely curious how the ceremonies have materially changed your life.

"I think about this often." woah...