DMT Dialogues: Encounters with the Spirit Molecule

Man, I wish I had been able to attend in person the gathering that gave rise to this book. Instead I was visiting and participating in San Pedro ceremonies at Chavin in central Peru which inspired me to write my book 'Long Road to Chavin' (Amazon 2018). Short of actually attending the gathering it is gratifying to be able to read this account of talks and dialogues between some of the world's leading researchers in the field of plant spirit medicine. I enjoyed every chapter and recommend this work to all interested in questions of ultimate reality, disincarnate spiritual beings, shamanism and natural healing.Really fascinating reading!Martin StevensTarapoto, Peru

if you are a druggie then stop reading. I bought this book to see what all the fuss is about. It pretty much confirms my suspicions that this is chemical divination, and what waits for you at the other side are demons and the powers of hell. the book is written ok overall. this drug is very scary and I bought the book to bring myself up to speed about it being a medical doctor. this book satisfied my curiosity.

Very interesting compilation of talks on the subject of DMT. I was especially intrigued by a discussion around the thought that our brains are just as capable of creating a DMT consensus reality as the one we currently experience as "real. While I personally have not encountered other beings after taking mushrooms or LSD, I have always felt that the reality I experienced especially while on LSD was something more and different than my normal state. Not just a hallucination, but more of an altered perception or a look into another world. I recommend reading the dialogues as they are so thought-provoking giving philosophical, theological and scientific rationale for the validity of the psychedelic experience.

I had read this amazing book before but lent it to someone who suddenly picked up and moved without telling no one taking my book with her... DMT is an extremely powerful natural hallucinogen that is not for the faint of heart... The main question... Why do people who find themselves in the presence of beings while under the influence of DMT meet the same beings... Simple enough question...

The subject matter is presented so well. The concept of this strange brain chemical is explained clearly and in a wonderful manner.

full of novel information

In pineal pop culture, when deciding whether the so called discarnate entities one encounters in the DMT space are terrestrial or extra-terrestrial in origination and form, like a confused college freshman, one can go both ways.In the book DMT Dialogues: Encounters with the Spirit Molecule, Dr. David Luke and Mr. Rory Spowers have entertainingly edited together an informative sutra of modern science meets mysterium tremendum.Moderating deep DMT round table discussions, these authors play Arthur to psychedelic knights who relegate adventurous tales of research and experience, sharing a seized treasure trove of theoretical, empirical, personal, anecdotal and cultural evidence.And frankly, any book that begins with a contributor’s visionary recollection of a leathery red mean spirited demon spouting a four part mean analogy, as colorful as a devilish Day-Glo Coop poster print, it draws me in to explore more. Get the book. Trust me.Sprung from a 2014 gathering in the UK of like minded researchers and explorers, the Entheogenic Plant Sentience Symposium was a conference I wish I’d attended. Now thanks to Luke and Sprowers, we can all bend space time and join the party via the written pages.The publication features a lengthy list of luminaries including Dr Rick Strassman, the researcher behind the popular film DMT: The Spirit Molecule, culture hawk Erik Davis, chemist Dennis McKenna, the great Graham Hancock, Amazonian anthropology expert Jeremy Narby, the renowned Rupert Sheldrake and many more.Plant teachers have been with us for eons. Biblically speaking, Mose’s burning bush showed that while undergoing chemical change, a plant can produce an atmosphere in which communication and teaching can transmit. Perhaps this shrub of destiny was a cousin of Acacia nilotica, the foliage Graham Hancock refers Dennis McKenna to as a contender for The Egyptian Tree of Life in an early chapter.McKenna talks about the visualization and innovation tool the chemical dimethyltryptamine is, describing a common theme “the messenger molecule” shares; intel that includes innovative information in select categories, including structure, architecture and engineering. I’m reminded immediately of the stories about Francis Crick discovering the Double helix structure of DNA thanks to his use the visionary compound LSD.Furthering the framework of DMT with cultural context, Jeremy Narby shared a story about the Ashaninka tribe and their relationship to“maninkari”, a word in their language referring “those who are hidden”. Going further, Narby says that these hidden ones, revealed through the use of tobacco or ayahuasca (DMT being the elixir’s driving ingredient), are also called “Ashaninka” by the people, as the hidden are also a part of the tribe; Essentially, a part of their very selves.Questions of cultural appropriation often arise in these psychoactive discussions. Narby puts psychedelic entities in perspective with the rest of the panel, pointing out while people of the Amazon animism perspective seem to have a jungle hotline to plant entities of all sorts, the experience of “other” crosses invisible boundaries drawn on maps.Skillfully surfing the enchanted waters of outer and inner space, Erik Davis serves up the chemical’s questions in a cup of modern integration, examining its place in the world, whether Western or Eastern in ontology. For the initiate, Davis’ take on the realms of religion, ritual and rite are more than rational observations. Erik is not afraid of the edge and believes Science should share his proximity to the abyss.In a resulting discussion post Erik’s presentation, Davis and McKenna swap stories about the Invisible Landscape and Dennis’ brother Terence McKenna. It was in fact Terence who entranced this author, via voice mixed with EDM. I first heard TMK on an electronica album being played at a party in the early 90s. His unusual timbre and vocal rhythm drew me close to the stereo, speaking about a schedule one substance humans possess, sampled into a song. Interesting that beyond the space and time, the molecule also communicates thru song at 144bpm.This book continues with biologist Rupert Sheldrake sharing his ideas on systems, organization and morphic resonance, reminding us the East remembers more than the West. He reviews molecular mechanisms of DMT, as well as compounds both shamanically born and those midwifed in the lab, recounting a conversation at Esalen with the famed Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin (godfather of MDMA and hundreds of other psychoactive compounds). David Luke’s follow up discussion mentions Dr. Albert Hofmann’s ( discoverer of LSD ) anecdote about folks dosing with certain alkaloids. Unaware of the cultural implications, they unknowingly had similar visionary experiences correlating to the relative cultures. This confirms both McKenna and Narby’s statements on similarities across cultural boundaries.Graham Hancock presents next. Hancock, like Sheldrake is a victim of TED talk blackballing, the ban born of their respective viewpoints on nonlocal consciousness, which TED reduces to pseudoscience. He regales a tale of trippy proportions, and takes us the on a journey through mythology and mysticism, and expertly weaves the threads of commonality like a psychedelic Joseph Campbell. The domains of UFOs, faeries and the fantastic rival those Terence McKenna, whose spirit is once again raised by this speaker. I’m synchronistically delighted when his conversation then turns to the Francis Crick DNA story mentioned earlier in this piece.While all the presentations from the symposium are well organized and on point, even more entertaining and enlightening are conversations between these beautiful minds, post lecture. The opportunity for these folks to foster discussion with each other bears value for us readers, who have entrained many of these thoughts.Are you one who wonders about DMT and its effects?Do Terence’s machine elves exist? Have these entities been guiding us from the get go? Are they E.T.s with the D.T.s, dosing on our hosting spiritual vibe and taking a metaphysical ride? Are we the droids we’re looking for? This book may just blow your mind with a new theory or two. Or maybe an old one that missed your space time coordinates.In the book, Dennis McKenna says“True science should be about the search for truth, a way to uncover true knowledge about the world.”I don’t know if McKenna is a fan of the X files-I’m arguably more Mulder than Scully.While this book leaves me pondering, I do know one thing.The truth is out there.

There are two main classes of psychoactive substances: tryptamines (structurally similar to serotonin, eg. DMT, psilocybin and LSD; and phenethylamines (structurally similar to dopamine) which includes mescaline and MDMA. According to Dr David Luke DMT is a “simple organic molecule naturally occurring in humans, a wide range of animals and probably all plants.. which no doubt is 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 non-human beings await to greet them.”Dr Luke is a foremost researcher into mind-bending experiences based at The University of Greenwich. Incidentally, he is also responsible for putting on the biennial Breaking Convention on psychedelic consciousness (next one is in August this year). I would highly recommend checking out his introductory lectures online which are confected in an easy informative style that nicely sets the scene for this book if you are a newbie. He wryly jokes at the start of his presentations how he went into psychology because he was a messed up young man - now he understands why he is still messed up...DMT Dialogues contains the transcripts of the first private Tyringham Hall initiative (2015), a symposium on the subject of Entheogenic Plant Sentience hosted by Anton J G Bilton and moderated by David Luke. Attending were a stellar cast of writers and researchers in the subject area, amongst them Dr Dennis McKenna, Dr Jeremy Narby, Dr Rupert Sheldrake and Dr Rick Strassman. There is a distinct air of humility running throughout the discussions which I found engaging (and refreshing) as many of the speakers position themselves as agnostic. Therefore, the conclusions raised are highly speculative since the anomalous exceptional experiences which have contributed to them do "not fit in to the kind of gaining knowledge process accepted in western thinking."Dr Ede Frecska, a psychiatrist who presents a paper about The Second Foundation of Knowledge explores this dichotomy in an up-down as opposed to left-right brain fashion. He compares the reasoning of induction derived from local senses of space time constraints as ordinary states of consciousness which through the neuro-axonal networks of the body filter the outside world (culture). Whereas, the intake of information by deduction is at the sub cellular level and consists of the micro-tubular cytoskeleton network including the rather academic sounding ‘quantum array antennae network’. This array receives nonlocal holographic representations of the environment, i.e. it touches with the inside world of the universal akashic field.It is into this nonlocal realm of the senses (if the word ‘senses’ can be applied) that endogenous DMT - often referred to as the messenger or spirit molecule - plunges the experient and is the source of contemplative and shamanic traditions as well as the prophetic state. The evidence is rich enough to suggest that for 25 percent of those taking psychoactive plant substances the effect is to induce a mystical experience aimed at psychological growth rather than or intended as solely recreational. As such DMT fits into the category of an entheogen and the information reported back can often seem “nebulous and unreplicable...ineffable, non-transferrable” not having being learnt by outside observation (objective) using perceptual-cognitive (reductionist) processes.As one might expect from a heavily charged body of intellectuals who have taken psychoactive compounds, such as the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) a lot of fumbling about for technical terms, some invented, some borrowed from related disciplines like theology and anthropology are bandied about in a brow-furrowed attempt at creating new cartographies derived from inside observation (subjective). However, even accounting for using direct-intuitive (visionary) ways of knowing the book could lend itself to having a glossary In My Honest Opinion.If you are at all disenchanted with literal materialism and would like a broad and eclectic introduction into the further outer most reaches of consciousness courtesy of some esoteric counter narratives then this is an excellent place to start regardless of whether psychedelics is your thing or like me you find your lungs are the preferred source of flooding the brain with DMT. To immerse oneself in a ‘Mystery School for the New Renaissance’ and learn from the findings of a number of distinguished psychonauts who have managed to fuse academic research together with direct personal experience of the ‘weird world of appearances’ is not for appearances sake. What an utterly fantastic read.

This book gives a great insight of theories and experiences of number of knowledgeable and respected individuals in the psychedelic community. A very interesting read that will open your mind to how DMT could be a way in which we can change our consciousness and perception. I found the in depth discussions at the end of each chapter brought many new perspectives and insights that have not been previously detailed in similar books. Highly recommend.

Fascinating book. Very informative. Quite remarkable how such brilliant explorers can sit down with each other and have a serious discussion about close encounters with the little people. Begorra! Life is full of surprises. Thanks for getting this marvelous book out.

after reading all of mckenna and strassman's books and research this one is a must have! increeeedibly interesting ideas and super intelligent people that id never heard of before but now am a huge fan of! get this book asap!