Observations placeholder

Timothy Leary – High Priest

The percentage of successful, sessions ran high - over 90 percent. The set-setting hypothesis clearly held for DMT in regard to positive experiences. But there were certain definite characteristics of the DMT experience which were markedly different from the standard psychedelics - LSD, psilocybin, mescaline.

First of all, the duration. The eight-hour trip was reduced to around thirty minutes. The intensity was greater as well. This is to say, the shattering of learned-form-perception, the collapse of the learned structure was much more pronounced.

Eyes closed produced a soft, silent, lightning-fast, whirling dance of incredible cellular forms - acre upon acre of softly spinning organic forms. A swirling, tumbling, soft rocket-ride through factories of tissue. The variety and irreality of the precise exquisite feathery clockwork organic machinery. Many LSD subjects report endless odysseys through the network of circulatory tunnels. But with DMT a sub-cellular cloud-ride into a world of ordered, moving beauty which defies external metaphor.

Eyes open produced a similar collapse of external objects. Faces and things no longer had form but were seen as a shimmering play of vibrations. Perception of solid structures was seen to be a function of visual nets, mosaics, cobwebs of light-energy.

The transcendence of ego-space-time was most often noticed. Subjects frequently complained that they became so lost in the lovely flow, of timeless existences that the experience ended too soon and was so smooth that landmarks were lacking to make memory very detailed. The usual milestones for perception and memory were lacking. There could be no memory of the sequence of visions because there was no time and no memory of structure because space was converted into flowing process.