DMT

A few days ago, I was working on a blog entry, the nut of which was this: Individuality is a pernicious illusion. As in, there is no you and there is no me. Frankly, I’ve forgotten where I was going with that.

Anyway, a friend sent me a link to a documentary about DMT (dimethyltriptamine) yesterday. It’s one of those shamanic hallucinogens, similar to psilocybin (mushrooms) and peyote. I first heard about DMT at the 2009 X-Conference in Gaithersburg, MD. UK writer Graham Hancock suggested during his presentation there that the human brain has evolved to filter out most of what’s real. It’s done this, he said, because only a small portion of what’s real has any practical bearing on our day-to-day lives. Hallucinogens like DMT remove the filters, allowing us to experience things like – and here’s the X-Conference tie-in – alien abductions.

Hancock’s validation of the abduction phenomenon doesn’t interest me so much, but his theory that DMT might be mind-expansive rather than mind-implosive is another matter. I’m intrigued.

Which brings me back to the idea that individuality is a pernicious illusion. And no, I still don’t know where I’m going with that.