Monday, May 18, 2009

DMT Part 1

In the interest of getting all the info out there, I am mostly copying and pasting stuff from various sources. Please excuse me for not typing more original stuff, but I want to get this all out there as fast as possible.
This article is from the Gralien Report.

The Gralien Report
24 Feb
What Hails From Beyond: Shamanic Drugs, or Pathways to Other Dimensions?


The notion that something from within our bodies could be considered an
illegal substance seems rather odd to me. However, this is very much the
case with the powerful drug /Dimethyltryptamine/ (DMT), active
ingredient in the mysterious shamanic /ayahuasca /tea used by native
cultures around the world for vision quests, which also happens to be
found in the human body.

The catch is that we don’t know exactly where the DMT is created, though
pioneering psychedelics researcher Dr. Rick Strassman has suggested
that, in theory, the stuff could be produced within the human pineal
gland, which Renee Descartes famously proposed “was the point of
mediation between the material body and the immaterial soul.” In the
realms of both fact and fiction, the pineal gland has occasionally
played an important role with regard to man’s supposed innate abilities
to “unlock” psychic powers from within, allowing us to perceive distant
worlds which, to the naked senses in our typical day-to-day state of
mind, remain hidden. H.P. Lovecraft’s maniacal character Crawford
Tillinghast from the short story /From Beyond/ described it as such:

/You have heard of the pineal gland? I laugh at the shallow
endocrinologist, fellow-dupe and fellow-parvenu of the Freudian. That
gland is the great sense organ of organs - I have found out. It is like
sight in the end, and transmits visual pictures to the brain. If you are
normal, that is the way you ought to get most of it… I mean get most of
the evidence from beyond./

What poor old Crawford was rambling about, in Lovecraft’s story that is,
was that the pineal gland would allow a “normal” person to perceive
“evidence from beyond” through the use of a resonating device he had
built. This contraption allowed the pineal gland to function in such a
way that alien realms became visible when one stood near it. Funny
enough, if researchers like Dr. Rick Strassman are correct about DMT
production in the brain, Lovecraft may have been closer to home than he
could ever have imagined with his notions that the pineal gland might
act as a medium for strange phenomenon. (Keep in mind that Lovecraft is
often suspected by researchers of the bizarre for having been capable of
“tapping into” ancient rites and other realms with some strange mental
prowess he possessed, which translated into his fiction).

In fact, recent studies by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers
found that DMT regulates a mysterious protein that is abundant
throughout the body called the sigma-1 receptor. Experiments with
laboratory mice that had had this receptor genetically removed yielded
the strange effect of /nothing/, whereas “normal” mice that had been
injected with DMT yielded expected increases in hyperactivity until the
effects of the drug had worn off. Indeed, it seems that a receptor for
the hallucinogenic effects of DMT may have been discovered.

But perhaps of even more interest is the fact that, in addition to small
amounts found throughout the body of sane healthy humans, elevated
levels of DMT have also been found in the urine of schizophrenics. This
brings to mind a few interesting questions; for instance, could finding
ways to inhibit or otherwise appease sigma-1 receptors in schizophrenic
patients result in a new treatment for the disease? On the other hand,
many of the shamanic cultures around the world who use DMT-rich snuffs
and teas in their rituals describe /entities/ they meet while taking the
stuff. Similarly, test subjects in various DMT studies (including those
of Rick Strassman) report meeting similar “beings”, and common to both
groups are haunting consistencies between descriptions of these
entities. In fact, some believe these beings could even be
“interdimensional ambassadors” which come to meet psychonauts in the
sub-space realm that lingers between reality and wherever people
experiencing a DMT trip tend to end up visiting.

If indeed there is a link between DMT and diseases like schizophrenia,
could this in any way mean that a person afflicted with such a condition
may have some limited ability to perceive elements of worlds beyond the
five senses? We are left with the curious, even frightening questions as
to how exactly drugs like DMT work, why it exists in the human body, and
how, under the right conditions, substances like this might bear strange
abilities that allow us some limited perception of those things which
exist in places /from beyond/.
* * * * * *

Here is some info from Dr Rick Strassman

“I had taken about 1000 pages of notes by the beside of the volunteers – 400 DMT sessions that we gave them over the space of about 5 years – and in reviewing people’s accounts of their experiences, probably half, maybe more, reported having the experience of being in some sort of contact, some sort of relationship, more or less passive, more or less active, with these free standing, discretely demarcated, sentient sort of beings. I ended up calling them "beings" rather than "entities" or "aliens" or any of that sort of thing because it seemed like the most neutral term to use, but they were described in various shapes and forms and guises. Sometimes they were humanoid, sometimes they were insectoid, sometimes they were reptilian, and sometimes plant-like. They were more or less aware of the volunteers. Oftentimes they seemed to be expecting the volunteers and were glad to see them, and then began interacting with them.
Other times they seemed surprised and angry that the volunteers’ consciousness, at the very least, had intruded upon the sphere of activity of that particular being. Sometimes the volunteers were treated or experimented on. Sometimes they experienced some type of sexual intercourse with the beings. Some were told scenarios of the future. Others were marked somehow or another for future reference in a way. Others showered light and love onto them. Others were guides to lead them to some other place, like through a tunnel leading to a typical near death or mystical experience. So it was the whole gamut of what you might expect.

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