DMT DIALOGUES
DMT Dialogues represents an important step in the scholarly conversation about the DMT world and the entities which inhabit it. By presenting insightful contributions from experts in psychology, anthropology, religious studies, and neuroscience, as well as the interdisciplinary discussions that followed, the editors have provided the theoretical tools needed to start interpreting and understanding the DMT experience. As part of the Beckley/Imperial Research Programme we are currently investigating how DMT has its effect in the brain in a pioneering study using EEG and fMRI.
AMANDA FEILDING, FOUNDER OF THE BECKLEY FOUNDATION
DMT is famous in the world of psychedelic research for inducing experiences that are short, a matter of minutes, but with effects that are profoundly dazzling and lead to lengthy essays that try to explicate the puzzle. It clearly affects the language centers of the brain! It has led to the recognition of DMT entities, which may or may not be a new class of weird beings, neither animal nor plant, molecular nor metaphysical. This book is a fascinating series of explorations of the paradigm-busting and mind-blowing experiences triggered by this substance. Just reading about them is mind-blowing!
RALPH METZNER, PH.D., COAUTHOR OF THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE WITH TIMOTHY LEARY AND RICHARD ALPERT AND AUTHOR OF SEARCHING FOR THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE
DMT Dialogues is a courageous attempt in the best tradition of the scientific process to wrestle with the meaning of anomalous DMT experiences, reported by a substantial number of people, involving the sense of being in touch with alien intelligences. Like all great mysteries, there is no single interpretation that everybody who participated in the DMT Dialogues arrived at by consensus. Reading DMT Dialogues will not bring you certainty but rather will bring you in direct contact with profound minds struggling to plumb the depths of consciousness.
RICK DOBLIN, PH.D., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES (MAPS)
Preserved in the pages of this book are some of the most extraordinary presentations I have ever had the pleasure to read. It was my privilege to attend the 2017 Tyringham Initiative DMT Symposium and to learn firsthand from the assembled scientists and scholars about their research into DMT. This substance opens doors into a hidden world, and to listen toand readthese presentations is to discover that powerful advances are being made into understanding its meaning and potential.
WHITLEY STRIEBER, AUTHOR OF COMMUNION ANDTHE SUPER NATURAL AND HOST OF DREAMLAND PODCAST
DMT Dialogues showcases the incredible, groundbreaking work of the Tyringham Initiative, which convenes cutting-edge thinkers and scientists exploring the edge-realms of the psyche, with the intention of furthering humanitys understanding of what lies beyond the edge of the known.
DANIEL PINCHBECK, AUTHOR OF BREAKING OPEN THE HEAD AND COFOUNDER OF REALITY SANDWICH AND EVOLVER.NET
DMT has a rich cultural history, a radically vibrant contemporary social context, complex biological mechanisms, theological and philosophical implications, and far-reaching implications for the science of consciousness. In DMT Dialogues, David Luke and Rory Spowers have curated an accessible anthology that sparks off in many of these directions and then kindles them together into a Promethean fire for our times. Where do we go as a species with all this rising knowledge of the extraordinary farther reaches of the mind? Only time will tell, and Im sure this book will help us find the way.
OLIVER ROBINSON, PH.D., AUTHOR OF PATHS BETWEEN HEAD AND HEART: EXPLORING THE HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY
In Quest of Truthseek truth, but remember that behind all the new knowledge the fundamental issues of life will remain veiled!
FROM THE TEMPLE OF MUSIC AT TYRINGHAM HALL
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the following individuals for their help with the symposium: Max Baring for documenting it all on film; Lisa Laffague for helping smooth the way; Nikki Wyrd for the transcription of the talks and discussions; and all the staff of the Tyringham Initiative for looking after us.
FOREWORD
About the Entheogenic Plant Sentience Symposium
RORY SPOWERS
In September 2015, ten of the worlds leading luminaries noted for exploring the mysterious compound dimethyltryptamine (DMT) gathered, along with a number of multidisciplinary discussants, in the United Kingdom at Tyringham Hall, the spectacular home of Anton Bilton, property developer and patron of consciousness research projects. Over three days, these open-minded explorers discussed the notion of entheogenic plant sentience and the role of DMT as a possible conduit between Spirit and Matter.
DMT Dialogues gives a potent distillation of the exchange of ideas among these leading thinkers from around the worldexperts in archaeology, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, neuroscience, chemistry, and psychopharmacology. Presenters included Graham St. John, Dennis McKenna, Jeremy Narby, Peter Meyer, Erik Davis, Ede Frecska, Andrew Gallimore, Rupert Sheldrake, Graham Hancock, and Rick Strassman. Symposium attendees included Luis Eduardo Luna, Bernard Carr, Robin Carhart-Harris, David Luke, Jill Purce, Tony Wright, Will Rowlandson, Anton Bilton, Rory Spowers, Vimal Darpan, Santha Faiia, Cosmo Feilding Mellen, Anna Hope, and Amanda Feilding.
This edited collection of presentations and discussions describes a wide spectrum of theories that have arisen within this field, ranging from the Simulation Hypothesis and the Multidimensional Universe to the possibility that DMT had ancient extraterrestrial origins. Others suggest that the chemical has played a prominent role in our cultural and religious evolution, from Paleolithic rock art, the Aboriginal Dreamtime, and the prophetic vision of the Old Testament through to the futuristic worlds of modern science-fiction films. What has emerged from this seminal meeting of minds is overwhelming evidence that DMT is somehow integral to the mediation between different states of consciousness, possibly even between life and death itself and, as a result, is worthy of rigorous investigation.
Through staging this event, 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.
Could this next Copernican Shift in our understanding of Consciousness be the pivotal factor in helping humanity to reenvision its role in the universe and thereby take the necessary steps to make our political, social, technological, and economic systems synergistic with ecological parameters? And could our understanding of the role played by DMT prove to be the key to unlocking the great mystery of Consciousness itself? Perhaps the pages that follow will prove to be the start of us finding out.