David Luke - DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule with Ralph Metzner, Chris Bache, Jeffrey Kripal, Whitley Strieber, Angela Voss, and Others

Contents

FOREWORD

About the Exploring Entheogenic Entity Encounters Symposium

Rory Spowers and David Luke

In the early summer of 2017, eleven of the worlds leading luminaries noted for exploring the mysteries of encounter experiences such as those arising spontaneously or through spiritual practice, or from potent psychedelic compounds such as dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), gathered, along with a number of multidisciplinary discussants, in the United Kingdom at Tyringham Hall, the spectacular home of Anton Bilton, patron of consciousness research projects. Over four days, these open-minded explorers discussed the notion of encounters with apparently discarnate entities.

DMT Entity Encounters, the follow-up book to DMT Dialogues, which covered the first meeting on this subject, The Entheogenic Plant Sentience Symposium at Tyringham Hall in 2015, continues to give a potent distillation of the exchange of ideas among these leading thinkers from around the worldexperts in anthropology, clinical psychology, psychedelic psychotherapy, neuroscience, physics, cosmology, theology, philosophy, the study of religions and esotericism, and personal encounters with seemingly otherworldly beings. Presenters included Luis Luna, Michael Winkelman, Ralph Metzner, Chris Timmermann, William Richards, Whitley Strieber, Angela Voss, Bernard Carr, Chris Bache, Jeffrey Kripal, and Daniel Pinchbeck. Giancarlo Canavesio, John A. Chavez, Anton Bilton, Rory Spowers, David Luke, Carina Cooper, Vimal Darpan, Ede Frecska, Guy Harriman, Dennis McKenna, Linda Patchen, Jerry Patchen, Judith Way, and Patrick Vernon participated in discussions alongside the invited speakers.

This edited collection of presentations and discussions describes a wide spectrum of perspectives that have arisen within this field, ranging from indigenous Amazonian wisdom regarding such entity encounters alongside that of alien abductees and the Neoplatonists, to theories around innate mental modules and the incorporation of insights from neurobiological research and DMT brain-imaging studies. What has emerged from this second extraordinary meeting of minds is no less seismic in its implications than that of the first meeting; these encounter experiences have accompanied humans for millennia and continue to ruffle the edges of what we assume to be reality, and despite our expertise from so many domains of intellectual pursuit, their true identity remains mysterious. Indeed, we are reminded once again of the inscription in the theosophical Temple of Music in the garden at Tyringham Hall, In Quest of Truthseek truth, but remember that behind all the new knowledge the fundamental issues of life will remain veiled.

Through staging the initial symposium in 2015, the Tyringham Initiative was born, a world-class think tank or Modern Mystery School that believes the synthesis of science and spirit, and even direct experience of the divine, to be fundamental to reshaping our worldview. At a time when multiple scientific disciplines, from quantum physics to neuroscience, are converging on the core truth and mystic vision of the perennial philosophythat consciousness may indeed be primary and not secondary to matterthe role played by a compound such as DMT seems ever more crucial to explore.

We would like to thank the following individuals for their help with the symposium: Max Baring, Thomas Wirthensohn, and Giancarlo Canavesio for documenting it all on film; Lisa Laffague for helping smooth the way; Maya Bracknell Watson, Pascal Michael, and Aimee Tollan for the transcription of the talks and discussions; and all the staff of the Tyringham Initiative for looking after us.

PREFACE

Symposium Objectives

David Luke

DMT is a simple organic molecule present in an extremely wide range of animals and probably all plants, though curiously not fungus, which in true mycelial style has its own version: 4-HO-DMT. That DMT is also naturally occurring in humans is no doubt part of why it is so often experientially considered to be the strongest and strangest of all psychedelics, delivering half of all high-dose users to new, yet curiously familiar, alien worlds where sentient nonhuman beings await to greet them: Welcome back, we missed you. Few experiencing these phenomena report anything less than a world seeming more real than this one.

Science explores, charts, navigates, discovers, and increasingly comprehends the physical world both macro and micro. It pushes the limits of outer space, yet is asleep at the wheel of our outward-thrusting vehicle, giving scant regard to mapping inner space, which is both within the universe and our personal container of it. And yet what could be a more important scientific research question in a materialistic world than locating, verifying, and communicating with beings apparently far more intelligent and knowledgeable than we are? Given that $100 million was recently provided to boost the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research Project, also known as SETI, wouldnt we expect any project that already has half its researchers reporting positive communications equally if not more worthy of investigation? But where are all the research grants, the scientific papers, the scientists and experts? Ah, there you are! All ten of you. Welcome back, we missed you!

The question of DMT beings, of plant sentience, of interspecies communication, of discarnate consciousness, of perhaps even dialoguing with the divinethese are surely some of the most important of all research questions. They cut to the heart of the nature of reality itself. The precise tool for this research has been available for more than fifty years, but the academy has left it in the pencil jar in the secretarys office, hiding in plain sight.

So what steps should be made on our road to discovery? What is the role of DMT in plant-human coevolution, and what is its origin? Can we verify this other world and these other beings? Is the DMT world just delusional? Is our imagination more tricksy and infinite than we give it credit for... or are these beings somehow real? If real, then what are their intentions, and what is our relationship to them? Is it time to establish an interdimensional embassy or to barricade our minds against the other? Or are we just finding a new way to dialogue with our (higher?) self? In any case, what can be learned from the beings and from DMT and our study of it, anthropologically, culturally, psychologically, linguistically, pharmacologically, medically, evolutionarily, heuristically, and epistemologically? Or does all this exploration just generate more questions than answers, a chimeric rabbit hole more labyrinthine than our crenulated brain will allow us to fathom and more obscure than dark matter? Maybe we will find out.

INTRODUCTION

The Marrying of Science and Spirituality

Anton Bilton

Today we have the psychedelic keys and the associated laboratory technology to better examine the arena of communion with spirit and to better explore the notion that mind may well have come before matter.

We have rediscovered substances that allow conscious access to other realms and simultaneously we have technology and scientific methodology that can investigate these experiences and test whether these realities truly exist.