Perennial Philosophy

[Moralnihilist]

I have to assume that you, in fact, did not read the OP based on this response. I'm not arguing for the existence for a "God." If that's what you got out of reading the OP, then you've entirely missed the point.

Put down the bong and work on your reading comprehension.

Also care to address the rest of the post? Or are you just going to insist that people read your stoner retard dribble? I read it retard, as I CLEARLY stated in the part of the post that you conveniently ignored to make it look as if your retarded ass had a fucking point.
Heres the facts you have presented so far:




Here is the facts I have presented so far:
1. A "good argument" does not make for proof any more than a good argument for god means one exists(hence the last portion of the post).
2. You have provided ZERO actual proof. All you have provided are accounts from people who have admitted being fucked out of their minds and came up with "something".
3. Your reading comprehension is lacking.


=edit=
My apologies to the mods here. The attempts to pass off the ramblings of someone who is high as a kite as academia is a sore spot for me.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

The FOS thread..

[Hakurei Reimu]

It's a very powerful speculation because high concentrations are found in cerebral spinal fluid. The speculation is as the dying brain is reaching for its last gasp for oxygen, it draws from oxygen stored in cerebral spinal fluid where you've been storing DMT throughout your life, and so the neat-death experience becomes this colossal DMT experience.

Bullshit. It's not like the influx of oxygen is going to sweep along DMT along with it. Diffusion doesn't work that way. The diffusion rate of a chemical through a membrane is more or less independent of the diffusion flow of any other chemical. That oxygen would diffuse from the CSF into the brain tissues at an increased rate does not imply that DMT would come along with it in any increased amount.

Also, oxygen is a gas. DMT is a complex organic compound that is many times the molecular weight of oxygen. Their diffusion coefficients are going to be way different, and DMT's is going to be much lower.

Furthermore, diffusion occurs when there is a difference in concentration, so if DMT is diffusing from the CSF into the brain tissues, that would mean that the DMT concentration in the brain tissues would be LOWER than that of normal (because supposedly the diffusion doesn't occur in healthy individuals). And because the brain tissues are larger in both mass and volume, such a diffusion would still result in a DMT crash.

So, yeah, this is nonsense from a physics standpoint.

So, I would NOT say that the notion of DMT being produced in the human body is an unsupported assumption. The constituents necessary to make DMT all are found in the pineal gland. DMT is two enzymatic steps away from trytophan.

As they say in pharmacology, dosage is everything. So what if DMT is found in trace amounts in the brain? Pyruvic acid is found in trace amounts too, due to the Krebs cycle, yet we are not pickled where we stand because pyruvic acid concentration never gets high enough to seriously damage us. Yes, DMT is a metabolate of tryptophan. The question is whether it ever gets high enough to cause this hallucinogenic effects without intervention.

Quite frankly, this notion that DMT is somehow solely responsible for the near-death experience, or any other natural woo experience, is silly. DMT is but one of a whole host of neurotransmitters, and in extreme conditions all of them would get disrupted from various factors. Neurons being starved of oxygen causes the misregulation of a host of nasty chemicals, leading to erratic function. Neurons that are behaving erratically are not going to result in a consciousness that is in any way grounded in reality.

[Kafei]

Put down the bong and work on your reading comprehension.

Also care to address the rest of the post? Or are you just going to insist that people read your stoner retard dribble? I read it retard, as I CLEARLY stated in the part of the post that you conveniently ignored to make it look as if your retarded ass had a fucking point.
Heres the facts you have presented so far:

1. A "good argument" does not make for proof any more than a good argument for god means one exists(hence the last portion of the post)

It's a good argument for a reason, and I do provide the best evidence that has been produced thus far, and I'm willing to bet that it will continue to pile on.

2. You have provided ZERO actual proof. All you have provided are accounts from people who have admitted being fucked out of their minds and came up with "something".

I gave the account of Richard M. Bucke who claims a natural experience, not being "fucked up on something," and he also in his book "Cosmic Consciousness" goes over the experiences of others who've had this phenomenon occur naturally. Alan Watts has written extensively on what he referred to as a "natural satori." There's no denying that DMT is a part of our natural neurochemistry, and while it hasn't been proven (yet) that it may play a central role in these type of experiences, it's simply because the work hasn't been done.

This "something" that you're condescending isn't simply the ravings of the fanciful imagination out of the "fucked up mind," as you'd like to think. It's instead a universal phenomenon. It's more akin to a collective unconscious in that we all have the potential to have this experience, we all have the potential to undergo the "ego death" phenomenon.

I've also mentioned the very plausible psychedelic scenarios that may have went on in these ancient religions such as "soma" in Hinduism which many scholars believe to have been some type of psychedelic mushroom, whether it was Amanita muscaria or a species of Psilocybe, it's not quite clear. There's also no denying that ancient shamanic cultures worshipped an entire entheogenic cornucopia of plants and fungi. The Aztecs referred to psilocybin mushrooms as "teonanácatl" which is translated "divine mushroom."

I believe it's quite obvious if you examine eastern religions closely, the entire goal is to produce an effect in consciousness, i.e. the samadhi or moksha of Hinduism, 'nirvana' in Buddhism, 'satori' in Zen, 'tao' in Taoism, etc. It's quite obvious that these religions emphasized this phenomenon in consciousness, it was what these religions were obviously all about. I believe any fool can see that.

Christian mysticism contains the phenomenon of 'quietism,' a techinque that is used to induce the "Beatific vision" quite similar to the Buddhist meditation of Japan that's involved in undergoing 'satori' in Zen Buddhism, the Shekhina in Judaism was also a term used by Kabbalist mystics in the description of witnessing the divine, Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, shivering in his cave then receives a divine vision which is quite akin to a classical shamanic experience, St. Paul on the Damascus Road encounters a blinding light which completely alters the direction of his life, the Egyptians used a entire complex of visionary plants such the hallucinogenic blue water lily and the ancient Egyptian "tree of life" has been recently identified as the Acacia nilotica, a tree which is rich in DMT alkaloids, and so forth and so on if you go back to the source of any of the great religions, you are going to find shamanic experiences. So, please, do not try and accuse me of making such speculations unfoundedly, because if you're paying attention at all, it's quite clear that altered states of consciousness are key in these so-called "mystical experiences."

3. Your reading comprehension is lacking.
To the contrary, it's your reading comprehension that is lacking, otherwise you'd realize that I made all these points in the OP.

=edit=
My apologies to the mods here. The attempts to pass off the ramblings of someone who is high as a kite as academia is a sore spot for me.

[Kafei]

As they say in pharmacology, dosage is everything. So what if DMT is found in trace amounts in the brain? Pyruvic acid is found in trace amounts too, due to the Krebs cycle, yet we are not pickled where we stand because pyruvic acid concentration never gets high enough to seriously damage us. Yes, DMT is a metabolate of tryptophan. The question is whether it ever gets high enough to cause this hallucinogenic effects without intervention.

Due to the legality status of DMT, studies on it have been halted. Perhaps if we could have an untrammeled research to properly address these questions, we'd maybe have some answers. DMT is also speculated to be associated with the REM stage of sleep which is when the heavy dream states are taking place. Obviously, if you consider the dream to be an intense hallucination, the brain is very capable of immersing you into intense altered states of consciousness on its own. I don't believe it's a stretch to say that DMT can also effect one's consciousness in a wakened state as in meditation, for instance.

The precise mechanism for these type of experiences have yet to be neurologically explained, but they nevertheless do exist. And as I've mentioned before, the "natural path" is one of many to induce this mystical state of consciousness.

Quite frankly, this notion that DMT is somehow solely responsible for the near-death experience, or any other natural woo experience, is silly. DMT is but one of a whole host of neurotransmitters, and in extreme conditions all of them would get disrupted from various factors. Neurons being starved of oxygen causes the misregulation of a host of nasty chemicals, leading to erratic function. Neurons that are behaving erratically are not going to result in a consciousness that is in any way grounded in reality.

When you say reality, I'm assuming you're referring to a "consensus reality." If you question a person who's had a near-death experience closely what they describe is quite akin to what people describe at the height of a DMT flash when they inhale the vaporized fumes. Coincidence? I don't think so. Taking psychedelics, in a way, is a kind of on-demand near-death experience, only you live to tell the tale.

When you say "neurons are behaving erratically" and this is "not going to result in an experience that is any way grounded in 'reality'," I think you miss the point here. I'm not sure if you've read through the entire post, but I give an analogy to explain this using the example of a television set which I'll re-iterate here.

The TV is a good example, too, just as your TV is capable of projecting so many patterns by turning off signals here and leaving them on there, it then portrays the moving image on the screen, but what happens when all possible signals are turned on? You get a "white light." Now, I'm not saying that perhaps this is what people are talking about in the near-death experience, but it's an interesting way of looking at it. This is very similar to what happens when someone takes a "heroic dose" of psychedelics, it's almost as though you're turning on all the neural pathways of the brain, and what you are left with is the challenge of trying to describe an experience that, in some sense, contains the entire gamut of experience all happening at once. This overwhelming impression that you've "done everything, and been everywhere over and over infinite of times." This is probably more referenced as the "feeling of oneness" or "unity with the universe." It is a kind of panesthesia, but the point is not whether this is "grounded in reality," you see, and I'll explain why.

The profundity of this experience has the sheer power to leave one in complete astonishment, awe, confusion, terror, etc. all wrapped up and rolling together, some people at that point may believe they have just died, but nevertheless, it's a colossally profound altered state that has the potential to revealing something about consciousness most people can scarcely describe. I quoted Terence McKenna earlier, but I think it's worth quoting him again:

I don’t think you could discover consciousness if you didn’t perturb it, because as Marshall McClune said, “whoever discovered water, it certainly wasn’t a fish”. Well, we are fish swimming in consciousness; and yet we know it’s there. Well, the reason we know it’s there is because if you perturb it, then you see it; and you perturb it by perturbing the engine which generates it, which is the mind/brain system resting behind your eyebrows. If you swap out the ordinary chemicals that are running that system in an invisible fashion, then you see: it’s like dropping ink into a bowl of clear water â€" suddenly the convection currents operating in the clear water become visible, because you see the particles of ink tracing out the previously invisible dynamics of the standing water. The mind is precisely like that, and the psychedelic is like a dye-marker being dropped into this aqueous system. And then you say, “Oh, I see â€" it works like this… and like this.”

So, it may be the mind, but the mind, as I said in the OP, lit up to such a degree that the experiential content becomes seemingly incomprehensible, and it's this seeming incomprehensibility that people throughout millennia have interpreted as "God," "Allah," "Brahman," "satori," "samadhi," "moksha," "nirvana," etc. And more contemporarily as "peak experience," "Cosmic consciousness," and probably the most up-to-date term "ego death." So, you see, it's not a question of whether this state of mind is "merely a hallucination," that's not the argument. It's instead that "God" has always been a metaphor to describe a kind of "ultimate state of consciousness" or "higher consciousness" or "ego death" or whatever simile you'd like.

[Moralnihilist]

Look bong boy, the best you have are unsupported claims. There is ZERO actual evidence behind it. Again you failed to answer the simple question, whats your fucking point? Its simple, either you have a fucking point(unlikely or you would have presented it) or you are here to push your stoner philosophy(most likely).

Allow me to show you how things work in academia:
1. a claim is made by somebody.
2. evidence is presented supporting said claim.
3. the evidence is offered for interpretation/repeating.

So far you have failed on 2 and 3. Showing that some asshat makes a claim that makes your burned little brain happy does not amount to actual evidence. You admit that there is no evidence and are here only to make a case. In the case of someone who actually has an education(in this case me) you have failed to present a persuading argument. You only offer what if's, maybe's, and possibly.

Oddly enough this is the same level of "evidence" pushed forward by the theotards who come here trying to convert us. And guess what burn boy, they too have a moron claiming shit in a book with zero evidence. You argument for the supposed "ego death" is nothing more than you being high enough to believe some, as of yet, unproven bullshit.

Now on to your "evidence"
Richard M. Bucke:
Bucke did not record the details and interpretation of his experience at that time. This was not done till years later, and only after he had researched much of the world's literature on mysticism and enlightenment and had corresponded with many others about this subject.
So in this case it was a guy who clearly believed in woo and couldn't be bothered to write down a supposed "cosmic awakening" when it happened? He had to consult people and try to remember "facts" from years before? Yea thats a good source....

The rest of your "sources" include religions and being fucked up? Wow thats amazing evidence there...
Seriously you might want to put the bong down for several weeks there junior.

Now on to point 3, I believe that not only have I proven that I have read your sanctimonious drivel of a mind that has clearly been smoked to the point of mental retardation but I(as well as many others on this forum) countered every argument brought forth in your precious OP.

Now burn boy what else you got?

[Icarus]

No, the paper itself considers an endogenously produced experienced. I was referring to the 2014 9-page report, the very same study that you're referring to. It mentions the metabolism of DMT when ingested or in a endogenously produced. I thought you read the paper. Furthermore and obviously, the only reason I wouldn't have concrete data on the so-called "mystical experience" is because it simply hasn't been done. That's why I mentioned earlier that even peer-review studies have to follow a certain politics, and because DMT is a highly illegal substance in most countries, there's not much funding towards asking these very interesting questions and getting the permission to pursue the very likely possibility of evidence that may be available if we could just but study these things properly.

So, I admit, a lot of what I offer here is speculation and my own opinion, but it's not unfounded speculation. Just like Strassman's speculatory reasoning that DMT may be produced in the pineal gland because the pineal gland, as we know, contains tryptophan and the necessary enzymatic constituents to synthesize DMT . Now, that we've found its presence in the rodent's pineal gland, this is a very likely possibility. There's other such things that may not convince you, but I find interesting. For instance, people who claimed themselves "atheist," but after a major psychedelic experience converted to Buddhism. To give a few famous examples, I'd say Richard Alpert, Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts, and Allen Ginsberg. I'm not sure if you've ever read Dr. Rick Strassman's book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule," but there are overlapping descriptions in the states of eastern mysticism and psychedelic experiences. I don't think this is a coincidence. I don't have the patience to wait around for tests to finally be done. We have minds, we have the ability to extrapolate, and this is all I've done. If you're going to wait around for the peer-reviewed article before you give yourself permission to let such notions ricochet in your mind, then you may never see it. This stuff may not be properly studied til well after the curtain comes down on this cosmic drama. But so far, Strassman hasn't been necessarily "incorrect." So far, the light that is being shed on these matters are pointing towards the fact that he seems to be on the right track.

I was not talking about the amount produced, I'm talking about the threshold dose, do you not know the difference? This is why it's dangerous for people like you and others to speculate about things you don't understand. You often proclaim your findings as fact (something you did here several times) and sometimes people believe you. This creates a broad range of scientific misunderstandings that plague the population to the core, your ignorance is dangerous to yourself and other.

It's not difficult for scientists to get large amount of illegal drugs provided they're willing to do the paperwork. My organic chemistry professor, when I was an undergrad, got 1 kg of laboratory grade pseudo-ephedrine. This was after the meth scare and the amount of paperwork increased dramatically. He needed to use it as a catalyst to prevent his reaction from becoming racemic and the only condition was he had to use all of it.

Regardless, you wouldn't actually need permission to study endogenous levels of DMT and their effect on the human body as they are already present and don't have to be administered. How do you not see that?

[Kafei]

Allow me to show you how things work in academia:
1. a claim is made by somebody.
I do start off saying that a lot of what I say arise out of speculation and opinion. If there was any claim to be made, I suppose one I can make is that psychedelics are capable of inducing this so-called "ego death" phenomenon.

2. evidence is presented supporting said claim.
Well, the experience in and of itself. The extraordinary evidence is this extraordinary experience. This theory fits with the scientific evidence that entheogenic drugs trigger mystical/religious type experiences when they are administered in an appropriately conducive setting (the recent Johns Hopkins psilocybin study concluded this). There's also the work of Dr. Rick Strassman who intravenously dosed dozens of volunteers with pure N,N-DMT. Lo and behold, when the threshold dose was met, all experienced transpersonal phenomena that weren't necessarily projections of the personal pscyhe, but rather seem to be universal motifs within the experience.

3. the evidence is offered for interpretation/repeating.

So far you have failed on 2 and 3. Showing that some asshat makes a claim that makes your burned little brain happy does not amount to actual evidence. You admit that there is no evidence and are here only to make a case. In the case of someone who actually has an education(in this case me) you have failed to present a persuading argument. You only offer what if's, maybe's, and possibly.

So far, what ifs, maybes, and possibly is all we have, but they're not unfounded what ifs and maybes. And that's my point. I am extrapolating from the scientific data gathered thus far. If academia education is all you're basing this on, then what you may need is psychedelic education. Do you have any experience with these substances whatsoever? Y'ever vaporized something like N,N-DMT? I'd wager not based on a lot of your retort.

Oddly enough this is the same level of "evidence" pushed forward by the theotards who come here trying to convert us. And guess what burn boy, they too have a moron claiming shit in a book with zero evidence. You argument for the supposed "ego death" is nothing more than you being high enough to believe some, as of yet, unproven bullshit.

It's not a supposed "ego death," this is rather a tried-and-true phenomenon that, as far as I can discern, most, if not all, people have the potential for. Including yourself. I wouldn't equate this to a "high," the word "high" is usually associated with the use of cannabis. The experience which psychedelics are capable of producing are described by some as a "higher consciousness" or "mystical experience." We're talking about titanic, colossal altered states of consciousness of the sort that if you're religious, you might believe you've met "God" at the height of the experience; if you're a UFO nut, you might be inclined to believe that you've fused consciousness with the extraterrestrial; if you're an atheist, you might reach for a more mathematical diction as in, "I glimpsed a higher dimension." In either case, something profound, transcendental, and interconnected is intuit by the individual.

Take a listen, if you will

Now on to your "evidence"
Richard M. Bucke:
Bucke did not record the details and interpretation of his experience at that time. This was not done till years later, and only after he had researched much of the world's literature on mysticism and enlightenment and had corresponded with many others about this subject.
So in this case it was a guy who clearly believed in woo and couldn't be bothered to write down a supposed "cosmic awakening" when it happened? He had to consult people and try to remember "facts" from years before? Yea thats a good source....

The rest of your "sources" include religions and being fucked up? Wow thats amazing evidence there...
Seriously you might want to put the bong down for several weeks there junior.

Bucke is not engaging in "woo," but rather acknowledging a phenomenon in consciousness. That's all. By the way, I don't use cannabis, so your condescending, "Oh, you're just high on the bong" comments come off as imbecilic. I'm not talking about "being fucked up," I'm talking about a particular altered state that has nothing to do with the "high" of cannabis use or the "being fucked up" as with any other drug.

Now on to point 3, I believe that not only have I proven that I have read your sanctimonious drivel of a mind that has clearly been smoked to the point of mental retardation but I(as well as many others on this forum) countered every argument brought forth in your precious OP.
Actually, you haven't. You have made an attempt to imply that there is ZERO evidence, when that's not necessarily the case. Just because we don't have evidence for what the original founders of the major religions may have experienced, doesn't mean we don't know anything about these experiences. Like I said, I believe any fool can see that eastern religion has surrounded itself around the idea of an "altered state" as means to insight. Christianity is a bit different case, because it's thought by most Christians that only Christ is vouchsafe this God-hood, but if you consider that Christ may have been just another human being, like you and I, then it's quite plausible that he may have undergone this experience of "ego death" sometime in his lifetime. Likewise, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, also could have had this very type of experience that I'm talking about. The entire religion was spun off a vision that the so-called "Book of Mormon" claims he had.

Now burn boy what else you got?
The greatest evidence, and you're going to disagree with this, is the "ego death" phenomenon itself. Why? For a very simple reason, most people don't realize that such experience exists. We're, as I said in the OP, intellectually set-up to doubt it. If I hadn't had it for myself, I'd probably argue with the same fervor you have against it. So, if you don't have the idea that such a phenomenon could occur in consciousness in the first place, then of course you're going to doubt it. No explanation can help. I'm sure when I use the word "panesthesia," no one knows what the fuck I'm talking about. It's like trying to describe an orgasm to someone who's never experienced one. What would you say? "Oh, it just feels like your genitals are sneezing." This pays no justice to the splendor of the experience, with the "ego death" phenomenon, this problem is present ever more so, because at least it's quite easy to have an orgasm, it's not as easy to engage in this altered state.

So, in a way, everyone is like Sigmund Freud when Romain Rolland attempted to make Freud aware of this phenomenon. Romain called it the "oceanic feeling," but of course, because Freud could not find it within himself (like most people, theists and atheists alike), he dismissed it and it only appeared as a footnote in a couple of his books.

I was not talking about the amount produced, I'm talking about the threshold dose, do you not know the difference? This is why it's dangerous for people like you and others to speculate about things you don't understand. You often proclaim your findings as fact (something you did here several times) and sometimes people believe you. This creates a broad range of scientific misunderstandings that plague the population to the core, your ignorance is dangerous to yourself and other.

It's not difficult for scientists to get large amount of illegal drugs provided they're willing to do the paperwork. My organic chemistry professor, when I was an undergrad, got 1 kg of laboratory grade pseudo-ephedrine. This was after the meth scare and the amount of paperwork increased dramatically. He needed to use it as a catalyst to prevent his reaction from becoming racemic and the only condition was he had to use all of it.

Regardless, you wouldn't actually need permission to study endogenous levels of DMT and their effect on the human body as they are already present and don't have to be administered. How do you not see that?

It's not as easy as you might imagine. You'd have to measure endogenous DMT spikes at the moment of death, and that of course, brings up ethical issues. The so-called "natural satori" that Alan Watts spoke about isn't something that people on average just simply undergo. Sure, you can measure endogenous DMT, but the trick is to do it while someone is undergoing the so-called "natural satori," that's a little more tricky. There has been studies done with an EEG measuring the brain waves of Tibetan Buddhist monks entering these various states of deep meditation. Lo and behold, when these monks would engage in this meditation, the EEG would record gamma waves. Gamma waves aren't a part of ordinary consciousness, they seem to be exclusive to these deep meditative states.

Now, if we could measure the DMT spikes during these states, then maybe we could come up with something useful. Terence once gave a monk DMT, and responded that there was no difference between that state and the so-called "bardo" of eastern mysticism. Richard Alpert also tells a tale of giving a monk LSD. The monk was absolutely unfazed by a mega hit of LSD. Of course, I know you don't accept anecdotal evidence, but isn't it interesting?

If your argument is that no such amount of DMT is in the body to produced in the body to reach a threshold dose in the first place, I don't think we necessarily have scientific evidence of that. The anecdotal evidence seems to suggest there is. However, that report you keep referring to is not saying that there's not enough DMT to produce such an experience. Why else would the study consider an endogenously produced experience? It means they leave the possibility open that maybe such a threshold dose exists.

[Icarus]

It's not as easy as you might imagine. You'd have to measure endogenous DMT spikes at the moment of death, and that of course, brings up ethical issues. The so-called "natural satori" that Alan Watts spoke about isn't something that people on average just simply undergo. Sure, you can measure endogenous DMT, but the trick is to do it while someone is undergoing the so-called "natural satori," that's a little more tricky. There has been studies done with an EEG measuring the brain waves of Tibetan Buddhist monks entering these various states of deep meditation. Lo and behold, when these monks would engage in this meditation, the EEG would record gamma waves. Gamma waves aren't a part of ordinary consciousness, they seem to be exclusive to these deep meditative states.

Now, if we could measure the DMT spikes during these states, then maybe we could come up with something useful. Terence once gave a monk DMT, and responded that there was no difference between that state and the so-called "bardo" of eastern mysticism. Richard Alpert also tells a tale of giving a monk LSD. The monk was absolutely unfazed by a mega hit of LSD. Of course, I know you don't accept anecdotal evidence, but isn't it interesting?

If your argument is that no such amount of DMT is in the body to produced in the body to reach a threshold dose in the first place, I don't think we necessarily have scientific evidence of that. The anecdotal evidence seems to suggest there is. However, that report you keep referring to is not saying that there's not enough DMT to produce such an experience. Why else would the study consider an endogenously produced experience? It means they leave the possibility open that maybe such a threshold dose exists.

I don't have to prove a negative, that's just silly. I didn't say it was easy, I said it wasn't illegal. That's the fifth time you've strawmaned my argument, I'm done with you.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Due to the legality status of DMT, studies on it have been halted. Perhaps if we could have an untrammeled research to properly address these questions, we'd maybe have some answers.

What a flimsy excuse! Being a controlled substance does not preclude study, you moron. Studies can still be very easily performed on rats and dogs with little legal hang-ups for a reputable university. That at least allows you to get in the ballpark of threshold dosages. You can also more easily study pharmacological mechanisms through animal models, anyway.

Also, that legality issue is a problem for you, because being illegal, there is an incentive for the law and society to detect drug use in people. If DMT is illegal, yet produced in quanity naturally in the body, surely there's a fucking baseline to reference.

In short, you have a big fat zero in evidence.

When you say reality, I'm assuming you're referring to a "consensus reality." If you question a person who's had a near-death experience closely what they describe is quite akin to what people describe at the height of a DMT flash when they inhale the vaporized fumes. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Like your uneducated opinion has any weight whatsoever. "Coincidence? I don't think so," is a classic woo line, for good reason. Coincidence ≠ causation. While the effects of a near-death experience may seem to parallel a DMT flash, that is not indicative of a causal relationship. You have a complete absence of a credible mechanism, as the only mechanism you propose runs right up against the laws of physics.

The TV is a good example, too, just as your TV is capable of projecting so many patterns by turning off signals here and leaving them on there, it then portrays the moving image on the screen, but what happens when all possible signals are turned on? You get a "white light." Now, I'm not saying that perhaps this is what people are talking about in the near-death experience, but it's an interesting way of looking at it. This is very similar to what happens when someone takes a "heroic dose" of psychedelics, it's almost as though you're turning on all the neural pathways of the brain, and what you are left with is the challenge of trying to describe an experience that, in some sense, contains the entire gamut of experience all happening at once. This overwhelming impression that you've "done everything, and been everywhere over and over infinite of times." This is probably more referenced as the "feeling of oneness" or "unity with the universe."

If it's a "heroic dose," then we should be able to detect it. This offers an obvious avenue for research. The tunnel full of white light described in near-death experiences is a symptom of hypoxia, a condition that has been extensively studied by the militaries of the world, because fighter pilots suffer from it when they pull high-G maneuvers. If there were anything to this DMT thing corellated to hypoxia, it would have been detected long ago.

Also, a "white light" here indicates all of the neurons are too stimulated to actually process anything. Your "white light" condition means that the brain wouldn't be working anymore â€"the neurons are no longer responding to signals from other neurons and all signals are unmodulatedâ€" and is not experiencing a damn thing, even a hallucination. No, we know the origin of that "feeling of oneness" with the world â€" it comes from the deactivation of a region located in the left temporal lobe.

There's no insight here. It's just wrong.

[Kafei]

What a flimsy excuse! Being a controlled substance does not preclude study, you moron. Studies can still be very easily performed on rats and dogs with little legal hang-ups for a reputable university. That at least allows you to get in the ballpark of threshold dosages. You can also more easily study pharmacological mechanisms through animal models, anyway.

There's no scientific proof as of yet that shows whether there is, in fact, an endogenously produced threshold dose or not. You'd need to measure a DMT spike which is not easy as it's quickly metabolized, and the speculation surrounding where these spikes may occur are in these very specific altered states whether it be REM, the near-death experience, and these deep states of meditation. Are you going to get a rat to give you a demonstration of samadhi? There seems to be more studies done on DMT metabolism than any other aspect of ADME itself. Where's the study on the "AD" portion of ADME? If these studies are so easily done, why isn't there information regarding DMT and its relationship to the human pineal gland? Michael Hoffman espouses a similar concept to Perennial Philosophy at his website "EgoDeath.com," only he believes that there is no natural induction. According to his take, the original route always lay in the use of entheogenic substances, and he's gathered plenty of archaeological evidence of the shamanic use of psychedelics dating back thousands of years. The natural path isn't the only path to this experience. I happen to believe that this experience can be naturally induced. Terence once spoke of a dream he had where in he was given a pipe filled with DMT, and lo and behold, when he smoked it (within the dream), he had a complete, re-vivified experience of the DMT experience. If you accept that he didn't lie about this dream, then obviously this means it's quite possible for the brain to bring about this experience on-the-natch.

Also, that legality issue is a problem for you, because being illegal, there is an incentive for the law and society to detect drug use in people. If DMT is illegal, yet produced in quanity naturally in the body, surely there's a fucking baseline to reference. In short, you have a big fat zero in evidence.

I don't think so. Like I said, DMT is not like serotonin which does regulate ordinary consciousness and you could probably attribute a baseline to it. DMT, on the other hand, is a different case, because if the speculation is correct, then those individuals who have an ability to induce it on command would be the culprits when it came to some kind of legal argument. Should we go around arresting Tibetan monks engaging in "satori"?

Like your uneducated opinion has any weight whatsoever. "Coincidence? I don't think so," is a classic woo line, for good reason. Coincidence ≠ causation. While the effects of a near-death experience may seem to parallel a DMT flash, that is not indicative of a causal relationship. You have a complete absence of a credible mechanism, as the only mechanism you propose runs right up against the laws of physics.

How does it run up against the laws of physics? Neuroscience hasn't established yet if it's possible to undergo a DMT experience solely by endogenously produced DMT. As far as neuroscience goes, it's still up in the air.

If it's a "heroic dose," then we should be able to detect it. This offers an obvious avenue for research. The tunnel full of white light described in near-death experiences is a symptom of hypoxia, a condition that has been extensively studied by the militaries of the world, because fighter pilots suffer from it when they pull high-G maneuvers. If there were anything to this DMT thing corellated to hypoxia, it would have been detected long ago.

This is not always true. There are other instances, as in Alan Watts' description of a "natural satori," where in one may experience an impending death, not an impending physical death where the body is shutting down, but when you're physically intact, but you're an extreme situation that could potentially lead to death. Most people think of near-death experiences of the flat-lining sort. That's not the only type of near-death experience. In other words, the "hypoxia" explanation of the "white light" is obviously insufficient, because it's possible for people to experience such phenomena when their physical bodies are intact of any physical damage. Stress from such an extreme situation alone could be possibly a moment when DMT spikes.

As far as I know, there's never been any study on whether DMT spikes during any of these types of NDEs. It may be that it simply hasn't been done as the case with most psychedelic research.

Also, a "white light" here indicates all of the neurons are too stimulated to actually process anything. Your "white light" condition means that the brain wouldn't be working anymore â€"the neurons are no longer responding to signals from other neurons and all signals are unmodulatedâ€" and is not experiencing a damn thing, even a hallucination. No, we know the origin of that "feeling of oneness" with the world â€" it comes from the deactivation of a region located in the left temporal lobe.
There's no insight here. It's just wrong.

This is a very reductionist explanation. I'd also add that it may be the opposite to what you've described here. It may be the stimulation of the temporal lobe as in the "The God spot" speculation.

[Kafei]

I don't have to prove a negative, that's just silly. I didn't say it was easy, I said it wasn't illegal. That's the fifth time you've strawmaned my argument, I'm done with you.

The phenomenon of "ego death" exists. It's a tried-and-true experience we all have the potential of experiencing. This is no straw man. Of course, you may not have the patience for meditation, but if you really want to deny it, why don't you try ayahuasca? I doubt you'd come back talking about straw men.

[Solitary]

I was taught by a guru to experience God by meditating which took me three years to accomplish. If you think anything you experience meditating is anything more than a product of your brain and body and an illusion, you are deluding yourself. neurology has shown the parts of the brain that cause hallucinations contrary to what you posted. Ever hear of the prefrontal cortex?  You are either ignorant of modern neurological experiments, reading pseudo science opinions, or being disingenuous. Give it a rest!  Solitary 

[Kafei]

I was taught by a guru to experience God by meditating which took me three years to accomplish. If you think anything you experience meditating is anything more than a product of your brain and body and an illusion, you are deluding yourself. neurology has shown the parts of the brain that cause hallucinations contrary to what you posted. Ever hear of the prefrontal cortex?  You are either ignorant of modern neurological experiments, reading pseudo science opinions, or being disingenuous. Give it a rest!  Solitary

I never denied that this experience is a product of the brain. To the contrary, I'm saying it is a product of the brain. That's why I tried to make it clear in the very first paragraph of the OP that I'm not trying to argue for some kind of "LSD God." People seem to always misinterpret it that way, and I think it's because the lack of brevity. A lot of people don't like the chore of reading a long wall of text, and so they'll skim through, and then completely misinterpret what I'm really trying to say.

[Hakurei Reimu]

There's no scientific proof as of yet that shows whether there is, in fact, an endogenously produced threshold dose or not. You'd need to measure a DMT spike which is not easy as it's quickly metabolized, and the speculation surrounding where these spikes may occur are in these very specific altered states whether it be REM, the near-death experience, and these deep states of meditation. Are you going to get a rat to give you a demonstration of samadhi? There seems to be more studies done on DMT metabolism than any other aspect of ADME itself. Where's the study on the "AD" portion of ADME? If these studies are so easily done, why isn't there information regarding DMT and its relationship to the human pineal gland?

Because they haven't found anything of interest. Your DMT spike doesn't exist. The half-life of DMT is 15 minutes in serum, which while pretty quick, is easily caught if you know what you're looking for. You can't be arrested for studying the endogenous version of any controlled substance, and if hypoxia produces these effects, the military would have caught on to the connection.

Simply put, to establish the connection between DMT and your natural highs, you need to catch DMT in the act. Until then, it's just bullshit.

How does it run up against the laws of physics? Neuroscience hasn't established yet if it's possible to undergo a DMT experience solely by endogenously produced DMT. As far as neuroscience goes, it's still up in the air.

Physiologically, its settled, from the lack of any DMT reservoirs to produce your sudden spikes. DMT takes time to synthesize, and it needs to be synthesized from its precursors. Significant reservoirs are lacking.

Again, DMT has never been caught in the act mediating your meditation shit. Until it has, your words are bullshit.

This is not always true. There are other instances, as in Alan Watts' description of a "natural satori," where in one may experience an impending death, not an impending physical death where the body is shutting down, but when you're physically intact, but you're an extreme situation that could potentially lead to death. Most people think of near-death experiences of the flat-lining sort.

Bullshit, bullshit and more bullshit. Near-death does in fact mean the flat-lining sort by definition. You want me to believe your DMT spike? Catch one.