Seeing What Lies Beyond
DMT & Blue Lotus
Citation: Elrod. "Seeing What Lies Beyond: An Experience with DMT & Blue Lotus (exp86830)". Erowid.org. Aug 19, 2010. erowid.org/exp/86830
DOSE: |
50 mg | smoked | DMT | (powder / crystals) |
1 g | smoked | Lotus/Lily - Nymphaea nouchali var caerulea | (plant material) |
BODY WEIGHT: | 290 lb |
Blue Lotus (unknown amount, about a gram)
Body Weight: 290 lbs
I have to preface this by saying that after having done DMT and going back and reading the “Experience Vaults” talking about the experience, I realize how lame those experience reports actually are. Not because people can’t write or because they’re lying (though maybe some are) but because the actual experience of taking DMT was so much more intense than anyone’s been able to write about.
That being said, here’s my lame attempt.
My friend and I had been talking for a while about doing DMT and he’d previously dosed at least once with a Mimosa extraction combined with Blue Lotus (more as a screen than anything else). He tried to tell me about it (and it was fascinating) but after doing it I can say that his best attempts were akin to trying to describe the most incredible flavor you’ve ever tasted. You can compare it to something else, but as far as communicating the essence of it...well, there’s nothing but experience that comes close.
Anyhow, he came to my house with 50 micrograms that’d be extracted by a friend from mimosa tenuiflora. It was slightly brown in appearance, though crystalline as well. From what I’d read, it still had a bit of plant alkaloids/oils in it. But that was OK. He loaded up a glass pipe with a thumbhole shotgun on the side by first putting down a layer of Lotus, sprinkling on the DMT, and then topping it off with more of the Lotus. We sat on facing couches, my wife snuggled up against my shoulder (thank God) and I lit the pipe with a Bic Lighter.
“Let it vaporize,” my friend told me. So I did. I held the flame until smoke began to form in the pipe and I drew heavily. I immediately tasted plastic and...something else. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant but it wasn’t exactly smooth. I drew in. With the first draw I began to see small sparkles appear in the room. “Breathe out,” my friend told me, so I did. “Now take another hit.” I did. The taste wasn’t so bad the second time, but things began to waver at the edges. It’s the only way to describe it: reality started to fade away. I remembered reading a report that said that it’s important to get to the third hit in order to break through. So I did.
I exhaled the smoke and inhaled the final toke. All of a sudden things began vibrating. I heard a thrum in the air. I looked over at my friend and the only way I can describe what I saw was that it was like one of those video “ripple” dissolves: waves danced through the air centered on him and his essence rippled along with those waves. My wife held on to me and I began to feel her presence less and less.
I’d read reports before talking about closing one’s eyes or keeping one’s eyes open. I had no choice: my eyes closed without my conscious thought. And when they closed, things exploded. But not in a scary way. I saw bright geometric lines flowing all around me. The lines seemed to include symbols, but they weren’t symbols I recognized and it didn’t matter. Space opened up all around me and I felt that I had completely left my body. Again, not in a scary way but I knew I was somewhere else.
The lines kept running down the light lines in front of me in a very rectangular, geometric pattern. I “stared” (my eyes were closed) in amazement, and just let it flow over me. Eventually the lines began to coalesce into a shape and as time went on (it felt like minutes or forever) the lines began to contract into the shape of a woman’s head. To me it looked like the Madonna. Serene. Peaceful. Non-threatening. Not that it looked like a Madonna I’d seen before but the curvy shape of a woman wearing a shawl was very clear. Her face formed (out of the lines...not like a “real” face), she smiled at me, and she swept out of the way to the “left,” welcoming me “in.”
I flew in, with no sense of my body. All around me was light...pulsing, moving, defining geometric structures in a way that seemed very mechanical but not cold. It was a vast expanse of moving light, light made of more colors than I can remember. In some ways calling it “light” does it an injustice...as if it was neon or some other mundane artifact. It wasn’t. It was light moving against light with planes stretching out into infinity, though without making me feel lost and small against it.
Interestingly, however, I did feel small. Not “small” as in a small scared rabbit staring the the face of a vastness I couldn’t comprehend, but “small” as if I’d shrunk down to the point of being able to see even beyond the micro level. I felt that I was “behind the scenes,” behind reality but not outside of it. I felt like I was seeing things as they really were if we could only open ourselves up to see beyond what our senses told us.
I flew further, completely unaware of my body. This is the only point at which I ever got scared: all of a sudden I realized that I couldn’t feel or hear the subtle rhythms or sounds that I hear all the time that tell me that my body is working, that my heart is pumping and my lungs are breathing in air. This kinda freaked me out -- I have slightly elevated blood pressure (surprise! look at my weight!)-- and the cardiac effects of DMT (or my imagined effects) worried me. I placed my hand on my chest and felt nothing. Until my wife squeezed my hand. Then I knew I was going to be all right. I then was able to open myself up to the experience.
I had been floating in this immense space of light, but it wasn’t that “bright white light” of NDE’s, but rather a busy, flowing, information-rich space that seemed to be holding everything in the universe together, busily transmitting the information that made it all happen. I began to fly forward in this space and soon I was amazed: I was entering “The Waiting Room” that so many reports have talked about. But this “Waiting Room” wasn’t static. It was a room that was perfectly square, bounded by walls of light and flowing information. I began to fly towards it with no apprehension at all -- after all, this was a common touch-point I could relate to from what I’d read. But as I grew closer, the room became more amazing than I’d anticipated: its walls began to unfold outward, not in three dimensions but in four, maybe more.
I was inside a tesseract...or maybe something with more dimensions. And it wasn’t scary. On the one hand it was a room with information flowing everywhere in glowing bright symbols much like -- I hate to admit it-- “the Matrix.” On the other hand, the walls were unfolding before me into new dimensions and I suddenly understood...at least for that moment....that everything exists in so many more dimensions than we could possibly imagine or even begin to picture in our 3D reality. It was again amazing, incomprehensible, illuminating, but also comforting. I entered the room, looked around, and decided to leave. That was OK...there was nothing for me there to look at and it just seemed like another stop on the journey.
I don’t remember much of the transition, but finally I arrived at the penultimate vision of my journey. I was in a space, hanging in place, perfectly calm, and looking out at what appeared to be two glowing, information-rich counter-rotating cones. I was in the middle of them but I was also off to the side: I could see all of it but felt like I was part of it. Both extended upwards and downwards as far as I could see and I was in the middle of them. The rotated around me, geometric yet organic, glowing and...I guess there’s no other way to describe it...happy. There was nothing scary about it: I was seeing the gears of the Universe turning and everything was OK.
I hung there for a while as if I was weightless and then something told me (an instinct, really...not a “message” outside of myself) that it was time to return. I drew back in my vision, the cones receded, and I opened my eyes.
Honestly, opening my eyes was the most profound moment of the experience. I looked across at the other couch to see my friend and I found that I could shift my vision (the way you do when you decide you want to “blur” your eyes or not) between seeing “reality” (my friend, my couch, my living room) and seeing the Other Side that lay just beyond that reality. I looked at my wife, smiling at me on my shoulder, and I saw her face turn to crystal, stars explode in her eyes, and then I could shift my vision back to see just “them.” My wife. My friend. My house. My reality.
This effect went on for what felt like minutes, though I understand from them that it was just seconds. The most amazing thing is that when I “chose” to blend the DMT “hyperspace” and “reality,” I saw my friend’s head surrounded by what can only be described as a crystalline headdress. I know this sounds stupid and cliched, but he had the headdress and the aura of a shaman. He was my guide. He was the one that brought me here. Everything was OK. Stars exploded in my wife’s eyes as she kissed me lightly on the lips.
The final revelation of the trip was when they saw me coming out of where ever I had been and spoke to me. My friend’s voice came to me not as his voice but as my own...in the same tone and pitch that I hear when I hear myself speak. His words were his own, but at that point his words were not spoken out loud (though I know they were) but inside my head like telepathy. My wife spoke to me and her voice filled my world and helped me gently land back in my body and on the couch.
Amazingly, they told me later that only about 5 minutes had passed. They said that I was serene the entire time, though I started laughing at the end...something I remember because my dog started barking as I left hyperspace and its song and the dog’s bark formed a hilarious bass line to the song in my head. I came back, had a few moments of disorientation (again, not unpleasant...just an adjustment) and I was fine.
Total trip: maybe 7 minutes; And when it was over, it was over. I didn’t feel hung over, didn’t feel that “wrung out” feeling I get from LSD or cocaine, didn’t feel any lingering anxiety. We talked about the whole experience for a few minutes, I tried to describe it, and my friend said to me one of the most important parts of the whole experience:
“It’s like a dream, man. If you don’t talk about it, you’ll lose it. It’ll go away.”
He was right. We spoke some more. I tried to assimilate the experience and realized that what I believe that I saw was the quantum foam, the underworkings of everything, the gears that turn our reality and make it happen. This wasn’t (for me, at least) a scary notion...in fact, it was somewhat matter of fact. But I couldn’t help but marvel (and continue to marvel) that I was able to get a glimpse beyond what we all perceive as “reality” so I could see what (possibly) were the great workings beyond that reality. Maybe they were. Maybe it was just a drug. But either way, having the ability to consciously switch in between “reality” and what lies beyond...that’s what’s going to stay with me forever.
Exp Year: 2010 | ExpID: 86830 |
Gender: Female | |
Age at time of experience: 42 | |
Published: Aug 19, 2010 | Views: 28,111 |
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DMT (18) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Guides / Sitters (39), Mystical Experiences (9), Glowing Experiences (4), General (1) |
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