Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
8bitagent wrote:LOL! What mid 80's looking movie is that from?
Interestingly, the government and people of Iceland take little elves VERY seriously:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/inter ... elves.html
8bitagent wrote:You can't be a reader of Jeff's illustrious blogs and not at least entertain such a notion as AJ posits.
The Case Against DMT Elves
James Kent
I do not believe DMT is a gateway to an alternate dimension, nor does it induce contact with autonomous elves and alien entities. Yes, DMT produces a vivid other-worldly landscape when ingested, often including elves, aliens, insects, snakes, jaguars, etc. This is true for the majority of people who try it. Some people do not have such vivid responses, but many do. Although this may appear at first glance to be "shocking," it is actually no more shocking then the fact that most people dream at night, or that most people see geometric patterns (pressure phosphenes) when they close their eyes and press against their eyeballs. But the difference between pressure phosphenes and DMT is that DMT is illegal and very hard to come by, so most people never have the opportunity to experience it. If we could all hold our breath for a minute and produce vivid hallucinations of alien landscapes it would seem quite mundane, no more than a mere curiosity of the human condition. However, since this particular alien landscape is produced by a specific rare substance (DMT), people seem to think it is akin to unlocking the mysteries of the universe when they actually get their hands on it.
Now don't get me wrong, DMT is stunning in its effect, no doubt. But, like anything, when you do it many times the magic tends to wear off and reveal itself for what it is; an exotic aberration of the brain's perceptual mechanics. To illustrate this point I would like to offer the following observations:
1. DMT acts primarily at the 5-HT2A receptor, which is where the hallucinogenic tryptamines work their visual magic. Without going into all the details here, let's just assume for a moment that a molecule with the proper shape acting at 5-HT2A site can significantly disrupt and/or enhance visual sensory processing, depending on dosage. If this is the case, then dumping DMT into the perceptual wetworks is akin to messing with the logic that produces the display on the computer screen you are looking at right now. Any programmer can tell you that a single line of code consisting of only a few characters can drastically alter the way your screen presents the data coming from your video card. It can make the screen flicker, blink, warp, twist, or fall into infinitely recursive fractalline chaos. When this happens is your monitor now displaying an "alternate reality" or "parallel dimension"? No, it is not. It is simply taking the same old data and processing it with a new factor in the base algorithm (disruption/excitement at the 5HT2A receptor). Even a very small tweak could produce dramatic results. Since the sensory processing system is so delicate, any abrupt chemical perturbation can cause it to become excited, unstable, or fall into chaos. When the visual system is disrupted for any reason we get phosphene activity, which is the visual system's version of a "ringing in the ears." Phosphene activity is chaotic, but as we all know chaos does not produce random noise, it is familiar and predictable, and produces some damn trippy patterns.
2. The sensation of seeing aliens, elves, or being in the presence of God(s) is not unique to DMT users. Otherwise sane people who have never tried DMT report these sensations all the time, and it is generally treated as a sign of psychosis (see separate topic on Charles Bonnet Syndrome CBS). However, recent research has shown that by stimulating parts of the temporal lobe you can reliably reproduce the feeling of being in the presence of God (also known as "seeing the light," "feeling enlightened," or having a "religious epiphany"). It is an innate human sensation -- just like the feeling that "I'm being watched right now" is an innate human sensation -- we just don't catalog it as such because it is relatively rare, happening perhaps only once in a lifetime to those who do not artificially stimulate themselves, perhaps never in a lifetime. Some people have very dramatic religious epiphanies with angels and demons and all form of cherubim marching through with horns and such with no drugs whatsoever, and though it is a common event we generally treat it today as a psychological aberration; though back in the day it was the stuff prophets were made of. Since this kind of religious epiphany is something our brains can already do, the fact that a substance like DMT can reliably reproduce this single phenomena (in concert with other effects, of course) is not much of a stretch.
3. The archetypal DMT "entities" are pretty well categorized, with most people seeing elves or aliens or fairies or angels or some kind of loopy little spirits that dance about and tell riddles. Sometimes it is a spirit-animal like a jaguar or a snake, sometimes it is none of the above and goes totally off the map. But getting back to the elf thing (which is what many people find to be the most curious aspect), I initially found it very surprising to be confronted by elves in my DMT experiences, and on psilocybe mushrooms as well, and did indeed perceive them as externalized, morphing, disincarnate beings. I even managed to carry on rudimentary conversations of sorts. However, the more I experimented with DMT the more I found that the "elves" were merely machinations of my own mind. While under the influence I found I could think them into existence, and then think them right out of existence simply by willing it so. Sometimes I could not produce elves, and my mind would wander through all sorts of magnificent and amazing creations, but the times that I did see elves I tried very hard to press them into giving up some non-transient feature that would confirm at least a rudimentary "autonomous existence" beyond my own imagination. Of course, I could not. Whenever I tried to pull any information out of the entities regarding themselves, the data that was given up was always relevant only to me. The elves could not give me any piece of data I did not already know, nor could their existence be sustained under any kind of prolonged scrutiny. Like a dream, once you realize you are dreaming you are actually slipping into wakefulness and the dream fades. So it is with the elves as well. When you try to shine a light of reason on them they dissolve like shadows.
4. Which brings me to my last point. Psychedelics in general have an amazing capacity to activate the mind's eye, or what I call the imaginal workspace. In our day-to-day lives we have two active areas that are processing our perception of reality. The first is the primary workspace where all our sense data is compiled in our pre-frontal cortex to give us our waking picture of reality. The second is the imaginal workspace, where we can think about abstract thoughts or visualize the contents of our cupboards from memory (or whatever). The imaginal workspace is generally running in the background, helping us plan our actions by visualizing them in advance -- like driving to the grocery store for instance. We visualize the store, plan a route, and then go. All the while our primary workspace is taking up most of our attention. This balance flips, however, when we are caught in deep abstract thinking, like daydreaming or trying to solve a difficult problem. And when we sleep the primary workspace is actually taken-over by the imaginal workspace to process all the backlogged data that was set aside during the waking day. When this happens we dream, and our primary workspace is filled with imaginal data (memory compressed by the hippocampus), and suddenly we are immersed in an imaginal reality that looks and feels just as solid as waking reality. Since it is being processed in the primary workspace, the same high-end gear that we use to processes our waking reality, we can't tell the difference. The only difference between being awake and dreaming is the origin of the data that is being processed in the primary workspace. When you are awake you are processing external sense data in the primary workspace. When you are dreaming you are processing internal (imaginal/memory) data in the primary workspace.
I have done many experiments with lucid dreaming and self-induced visionary and hypnogogic states and I can tell you that the switch from external to internal data sources feeding into the primary workspace (and vice-versa) happens in a split second. It is too quick to notice unless you are waiting and watching very carefully for the neural hand-off. But it is there. It is a physical, mechanical thing. One second you are awake and listening to the faucet drip, the next second you are wandering through a dream parking lot listening to the sound of your keys jingling, searching for your car. If you catch yourself and wake back up again you are back to the drip-drip-drip of the faucet. Close your eyes and you are back in the parking lot (or wherever). So, knowing that there's this kind of murky area in between waking and dreaming where imagination feeds into working memory, it is not much of a stretch to assume that psychedelics can interact with the chemical signals which manage that hand-off between external sensory data and imaginal data flowing into our primary workspace. It may very well be that in the psychedelic state our selective sensory inputs are totally opened up so that everything is crashing in at once, making it impossible to parse the data and distinguish what is real from what is imaginal until the drug actually wears off. In short, concrete psychedelic visuals may be nothing more than chaotic visual patterns overlapped with images created from waking dreams.
So, within the framework of this equation one question remains: Why is the alien/elf archetype so common to the DMT experience? The only answer I have is that we humans must have innate evolutionary wetware that forces our senses to latch onto any piece of anthropomorphic data that pops into otherwise randomly uniform data -- like spotting the face of another human or a jaguar peering out from behind the bushes, or seeing another human moving through tall grass. The evolutionary advantage of such a trait is obvious, and in standard Rorschach tests even the most amorphous blobs are found to look like faces and/or people no matter what culture the observer is from. Now, given the amazing swirling kaleidoscopic imagery produced in the typical DMT trip, it is inevitable that anthropomorphic shapes will emerge and then express themselves in even greater detail as the mind latches onto them and "dreams" them into focus. With the imaginal workflow kicked into high gear, it is not surprising that these emergent anthropomorphic entities can then speak to us, revealing shocking details from our own subconscious in a conversational stream of visual theater. Given all of this, in a nutshell, the case for autonomous disincarnate DMT entities is closed. All that is needed to produce them is our own over-excited visual system and imagination, and thus Occam's razor wipes them right off the table and into the fairy-dust bin.
In conclusion I would just like to mention a couple more things. The visions produced by DMT are not solely elves and alien entities. A wide variety of archetypes and just plain-old whacked-out stoner shit creeps into the mix. It is highly individual and in many cases is heavily dependent on set and setting. This fact alone (more than anything else) leads me to believe that the DMT entities are mere figments. If, for example, everyone always saw talking penguins and only talking penguins while high on DMT, that would be much harder to explain and much more mysterious. The fact that DMT "consciousness" reveals itself in so many forms tells me that the "messenger" -- be it elf, alien, jaguar, or whatever -- is basically arbitrary within the context of the patterns and archetypes our minds tend to pick out of random noise. However (and this is the good part), the really interesting thing about DMT experiences is not the elves (messengers) themselves, but what it is they are saying (the message). And when you get to the heart of what the typical DMT message is, it is usually something about the environment or living systems or the vast plant consciousness that penetrates our world. The "Gaia consciousness" that infuses the experience is undeniable, and what to make of that I don't know, other than to entertain the possibility that this ancient plant consciousness actually exists and is attempting to make itself known through the DMT-enlightened mammal brain. If so, then this is the real discovery of the DMT experience, and this is the topic that should be looked at more closely. In the context of DMT being a two-way radio for plant-human communication, the "elves" themselves are nothing more than a cartoon interface for the exchange of information.
"google-plex squared by the power of trectigelian, past infinity in a multi layered 12 dimentional over driving paradigm that loops in upon itself"
barracuda wrote:8bitagent wrote:You can't be a reader of Jeff's illustrious blogs and not at least entertain such a notion as AJ posits.
Agree with this - it's the presentation that's disturbing, and the context. My first thought was that Jones had gotten a hold of Jeff's book and decided to twist some of the ideas within it into his own ragged möbius reality.
Here's an interesting take on DMT as a very nearly purely perceptual experience
eyeno wrote:In a small way I see the AJ bashers as the snobs of the conspiracy world. Alex is brash, abrasive, an asshole much of the time, so the people that consider themselves the cultured upper echelon of the conspiracy world won't be caught dead wearing an Alex hat. Frankly, i'm a bit put off being seen wearing an Alex hat myself so I guess that makes me a snob too. But, nobody puts it out there like AJ does. He has put his ass on the line in a way nobody else has, and he does not back off, and the people that do not respect that don't 'get it' in my opinion. He has a lot of flaws, like we all do, but he puts those and all else into the wind without caution. It is fashionable to bash AJ but he is putting it all on the line like few other people.
Wombaticus Rex wrote:http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/UFOs/Gorightly.htmStill following the lead of ECCO, Dr. Lilly continued his ever-escalating injections of K in order to remain in contact with the "space brothers". Soon, though, his sources started to dry up due to concerns by his connections that Lilly had gone too far of the deep end. Consequently this led Lilly in search of other long acting chemicals that would provide him with the same effects as K, but for a greater duration of time.
In the face of courageous proletarian mass-uprisings in ‘05, Jones penned a piece entitled French Riots: Plan Engineered by Globalists[4], a racist tirade which claimed that “the mainly Algerian Muslims causing the chaos hate the country that has afforded them a greater living standard than their birthplace ever could”, and that “the melting pot of multiculturalism does not work, it has never worked and it was never intended to work. The Algerians in France do not want to be part of the Western fabric because they fundamentally hate it to its very core. This is not helped by promotion of decadent and hedonistic lifestyles pumped out from every cultural and media orifice.”
Time after time, Alex Jones has pushed the white nationalist line on U.S.-Mexican immigration, siding with the Minutemen over anti-fascists, featuring Lou Dobbs[5] and other “MSM” anti-immigrant gate-keepers on his website, claiming that “the elite are using the enraged Mexican mobs as a weapon of conquest to slit America’s throat and sacrifice its sovereignty on the altar of globalism” as well as implement a “blueprint for race-based genocide directed against blacks and whites in America” in order to turn the U.S. into “a third world cesspit”[6], falsely claiming in order to generate white supremacist angst and terror that the sell-outs and bureaucrats at La Raza are “reconquista” radicals[7], updating his website with headlines such as “Illegals targeted South Carolina sheriff as gang-initiation”[8], and so on.
Alex Jones charges $1500 a month for advertising on his various websites. Among his past clientele include “Scriptures for America”,[9] an organization headed by notorious “Christian Identity” pastor Pete Peters, who once asked, rhetorically: “Is there a Jewish conspiracy against America? Do Jews control America’s media? Do Jews have a death grip on America’s government? [...] Do Jews prevent a free press in America? Are Jews against freedom in America? Do Jews want total people control? Are Jews liars? Do Jews want to put America under tyranny? Must Jews leave America if America is to survive?”[10] Book titles available on the Scriptures for America online catalog include Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Dream, Our Nightmare, Death Penalty for Homosexuals is Prescribed in the Bible, Interracial Marriage — Right or Wrong?, My Personal Experience with Jewish Power, and Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel’s The Six Million Holocaust.
On one episode of his radio show, a caller stated “It it is incorrect to call a modern day Jew an Israelite. They are not Israelites, they are ‘Israe-Lies’. [...] The ‘true Israel’ is ‘ the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Germanic and kindred people, commonly called the white race, which has been demonized.” Alex concurred, explaining that it’s “true that about 80-85[%] [...] of Jewish people are Khazarian”, and that “80% of Jews are a mix of Germanic and Asian, whereas your mainline Semitic Arabs are a mix of Negro, Caucasian, and Asian”, going on to explain that ” you have the Caucasoids, the Negroids, the Asians, and those are your three major groups”.[11]
Other featured on Jones’ various websites include “6-Year-Old Boy Raised By Homosexuals Wants to Kill Himself”,[12] “Playboy and the (Homo) Sexual Revolution”,[13] and “Unmentionable Vice [referring to homosexuality] Goes Mainstream”.[14]
Jones has professional relationships with Holocaust denier Mike “whatreallyhappened.com” Rivero and anti-Semitic fascist pastor Texe Marrs[15]
Jones is able to afford to live in an affluent Austin suburb[16] due to his sale of overpriced Infowars and Prison Planet DVDs, T-shirts, baseball caps, bracelets, and other mass-produced merchandise. (As the blog we stole this from put it, “there’s a war on...for your wallet!”)
Jones co-operated with an FBI subpoena for a list of InfoWars readers’ IP addresses after a Roanoke man used his site to threaten police officers. Jones explained that he’s “not [...] happily handing over peoples’ IP addresses” but that threatening law enforcement “isn’t a joke”.[17]
Footnotes
[4]^ http://www.infowars.com/articles/world/ ... alists.htm
[5]^ http://www.infowars.com/lou-dobbs-free- ... on-debate/
[6]^ http://www.infowars.com/articles/immigr ... agenda.htm
[7]^ http://www.infowars.com/articles/immigr ... artone.htm
[8]^ http://www.infowars.com/illegals-target ... nitiation/
[9]^ http://web.archive.org/web/200805261144 ... group.html
[10]^ http://web.archive.org/web/200701031711 ... d=2&item=8
[11]^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0anicc7Pd3Q
[12]^ http://web.archive.org/web/200708261854 ... _kill.html
[13]^ http://web.archive.org/web/200708261854 ... ution.html
[14]^ http://web.archive.org/web/200708261854 ... tream.html
[15]^ http://www.therefinersfire.org/challeng ... _marrs.htm
[16]^ http://www.freedomhaters.org/content/al ... l-way-bank
[17]^ http://signalfire.org/?p=471
elfismiles wrote:Terence McKenna on Who's In Control
Terence describes conspiracy theories as "amateur historiography". He then goes on to reveal the secret of who's really in control.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubDnEWHkjBc
Terence McKenna - Conspiracy Theory
Excerpt from Terence McKenna's lecture Appreciating The Imagination
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec2OG5Kowys
Terence Mckenna on government conspiracy
In this excerpt of a Terence Mckenna lecture, Terence talks about having an optimistic view on institutions and social change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9WcsYvxd-M
Terence McKenna On the Global Conspiracy
I believe that this is the ultimate reality of the Illuminati, and the reason we are able to defeat them. They want to own what only God can own. ALL OF CREATION. Most of us just want to live in harmony with it (however misguided some of us may be).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2cVhmV2Ap0
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