Playing with Spiritual Dynamite
DMT
Citation: KermitFosterWallace. "Playing with Spiritual Dynamite: An Experience with DMT (exp111847)". Erowid.org. Apr 24, 2018. erowid.org/exp/111847
https://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=111847
Even though my throat was sore from the DMT smoke, I knew I had to take another hit if I was going to cross over. I inhaled the third and final hit. My eyes reflexively closed shut.
T+ 0:00:00
‘HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!’ I screamed internally. The instant my eyes closed I was no longer sitting in Morgan’s apartment. From reading the Spirit Molecule I was under the impression that it was going to be like a roller coaster. Wait in line. Get strapped in. Slowly see the cart move up the tracks. Clink. Clink. Clink. Until finally the coaster drops down that first big hill and the ride begins. But no. This was absolutely instantaneous. Absolutely. Instantaneous. It was as if the bottom fell out of the room and I was suddenly plunged into a free fall.
It was as if the bottom fell out of the room and I was suddenly plunged into a free fall.
At least generally when something unexpected happens in life, let’s say if you’re getting mugged for instance, the mugger might have the decency to scream, “GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING WALLET!” before they blow your brains out. My entry into the DMT Dimension was less cordial.
My entire body clenched. I was startled, confused and felt a familiar feeling of all the chemicals in my brain firing at once. My circuit board was getting fried. It felt like I got blasted in the chest with a spiritual shotgun. My eyes burst open before I had even a second to decipher what I was seeing.
T+ 0:00:00.5
“Please hold my hand.” I begged like a child clinging to its mother. Morgan obliged.
“This is all happening inside your brain. You’ll be fine.” That helped. I closed my eyes again.
T+ 0:00:03
Nothing could have prepared me for what I was witnessing. I had broken through the veil so instantaneously that my mind was reeling to catch up. I wasn’t just in a different room but a different dimension: albeit a familiar one that was somehow realer than real. What I had previously called “reality” seemed muted by comparison.
In this realm I had no body. I was simply a silent watcher of the unbelievable. There was a luminous “ball” of energy directly before me. I use quotation marks on the word “ball” because although it was round-ish in shape it was somehow also amorphous, constantly changing. It radiated incomprehensible, totally impossible patterns and colors beyond the visible spectrum of light - new colors I had never seen before.
For a split second the amorphous sphere seemed like visual gibberish until the next moment when I could make out that it was comprised of several “beings.” These Beings were reaching out towards me then retracting back into the sphere. Sometimes they would stick their faces inches from where my face would be if I still had one. They were constantly moving and impossibly fast. An arm here. A face there. Over and over. Without words I got the impression that they wanted me to follow them. It was as though they were saying, “Come with us! We have the most important thing to show you!”
And I have to stress, this all happened the instant I shut my eyes. “Overwhelming” doesn’t begin to describe the sensation.
The Beings were ecstatic that I could join them. It was a celebration. They were wearing childish masks and laughing and making silly, contorted, dumb faces. The Being that stood out to me the most was wearing a cat-like mask. It would lean in extremely close to my line of sight and pucker its lips revealing buck teeth and shaking its head. It was the opposite of profound. It was utterly stupid. But I was in awe of it. It was as if the Cat Masked Being was telling me to ‘stop taking everything so seriously. Your life is just an elaborate, ridiculous game. Enjoy it! There’s nothing to worry about. When you die you will come back to this again.’ One expects the profound to be revealed by someone like an elderly monk who has been meditating solemnly in a cave for decades. But these Beings acted like spastic maniacs. They were literally bouncing off the walls.
The room itself seemed to stretch infinitely down a long black and white tiled hallway. And the Beings reflected this infinite tunnel as if they were made of liquid metal. It appeared like the hallway was constantly in motion while my feet (if I had any) and the amorphous sphere remained in place.
The Beings continued celebrating and motioning to me for what seemed like a very long time. It turns out it was only about two minutes. I’ve read that DMT can feel like an eternity but for me the time dilation was more akin to cannabis. The first intense couple of minutes felt way too long, but in the same way that a good song can seem really long when high on weed. After a while of watching this spectacle I calmed myself and decided to follow them.
T+ 0:02:30
As soon as I made the decision to follow, I was transported to the place they were trying to show me. The Beings were no longer visible but I could still sense their presence - as if they were watching over me. This new place was a series of slowly shifting reds and blues covered in complex geometry. It was less intense than the previous experience but somehow more awe-inspiring and serene. For a good visual reference it was kind of like the DMT sequence in the movie Enter the Void. Although I would say the film’s sequence is like a crayon drawing by comparison.
This new place was what all the commotion was about. It was incredibly familiar. I felt like I had been there many, many times before. It felt like possibly the inside of my mother’s womb. I believed I was being told that this was the place you go when you die and wait to be born again. Could this have been the Supersoul that everyone and everything is supposedly a part of? Or Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita? Or what Schopenhauer called the Insatiable Will to Life? It didn’t feel like I was learning something new but instead remembering something forgotten.
It was so beautiful that tears started streaming down my face. I had been a staunch atheist when I sat down on Morgan’s couch. But when my trip was over I was converted to at least an agnostic. Before, I felt certain I had a solid grasp of what an experience could be. I knew that I would probably never go into space in my lifetime. But at least I had a notion of what stars look like in the night sky. I had never climbed a mountain. But, I knew what a summit looked like in photographs. Even though I couldn’t replicate the exact feeling these things my imagination can fill the gaps. But there was no experience on Earth or in space or of this dimension that could have prepared me for the impossibility I witnessed on DMT. The limits of experience had been transcended.
T+ 0:08:30
Eventually, it faded. I was left staring at the darkness of my closed eyelids. When I opened my eyes, Morgan advised me to look out at the clouds. They looked a weirder than usual. Kinda cool. But it was nothing compared to what I had just experienced. I had returned to the “real” world. And it seemed duller than when I left it.
Back to Earth.
When Morgan asked me about my trip I tried to explain it to him. But I fell short. What had just happened to me? As soon as it was over, it started to fade.
Instead, I started rambling about Jack. It had been a year since his death. The initial shock of the DMT taking hold felt so similar to how I felt on that day in Oregon that it must have triggered the memory. I started crying. Not because I was sad. But because I was overwhelmed - by the DMT Dimension, by the past trauma, by the weight of existence. I hadn’t cried over Jack since the moment he died. Even at his funeral I found it difficult to show emotion. For a while I had pushed it into a dark corner of my mind. But the floodgates were now open.
Some believe the DMT Dimension is a genuine place. Others think it’s just chemicals generated in the brain. I can’t say for certain. But I do know that all experience - love, fear, anguish, etc. - is also generated by chemicals in the brain. I’ve personally witnessed the emotional weight of a legitimate life-or-death situation. I’ve also personally witnessed the mysterious and incomprehensible realm generated by smoking DMT. I would be hard pressed to differentiate which felt more real.