How to Travel to Alternate Dimensions

[Rolci]

Humans have a number of involuntary bodily functions, like heartbeat, digestion and so on. Some (or all?) of these can be consciously influenced - sped up, slowed down or stopped - to different degrees. The most obvious example is breathing, which can easily be held in excess of 5 minutes or with a bit of practice for 10 minutes or more, although we have stories of yogis being able to suspend their breathing while being submerged in a pool of water in a meditative/trance state (as if they were hibernating) for hours and days. Then we have seen a number of tests successfully carried out on Tibetan monks who can indeed vary their body temperatures utilizing various meditation techniques (obviously ones that anyone can learn). I remember reading Jon Peniel's book in which he says:

"I've seen monks in the Himalayas, sit in the snow, in conditions that were so cold that as they were wrapped in wet blankets, the blankets froze around them. After many layers of blankets were applied, the monks would visualize heat within themselves, radiating out. The blankets would defrost, and a circle of melted snowwould appear around them. Their degree of mental accomplishment was measured by the size of the circle around them."

Then there are these shamans in Africa that will bury their head in the ground, go into a trance and have their heart stop beating for minutes and hours.

This topic is not meant to be a debate about which ones of the above stories might be true and which might not. They are listed here as examples to illustrate the fact that certain bodily functions can be influenced consciously with the power of the mind, some easily, others with more or less practice.

So what have these got to do with travelling to alternate dimensions, you might ask? Well, if there were no possibility of there being a connection I wouldn't have mentioned them now would I? (Just trying to create suspension ;D)

OK, here it is, it will be a wild ride but bear with me. Now, all of the changes in bodily functions I mentioned above can be achieved more easily with the use of chemical substances or drugs. I won't do a search right now but I'm sure it's medically possible to administer a certain drug in the appropriate amount to stop the heart beating for, say, 1 minute. Likewise, people use DMT to have a 5-minute trip, which is essentially a change in perception. The unusual thing with DMT is that it does not alter your consciousness - it doesn't make you drowsy or anything, you stay conscious and focused, you remain aware of who you are and where you are, except that 30 seconds into the trip the whole world around you gets swapped out in a matter of a few seconds, leaving you astonished at what just happened. DMT is a natural psychoactive compound, a neuro-transmitter that is natively present in the human brain. Why? No one knows. Just like no one knows why we have receptors in our brain for many transmitters from psychoactive chemical compounds found in certain plants to work on. We know SOME are for other compounds in the brain - we have opiates (morphine and heroine are derivatives of opium), adrenaline in the body (which is a stimulant that's as strong as any crack or amphetamine) and a few more. But as for the majority of the compounds, it is unknown why the brain has receptors for them. And it is of an equally large or possibly even larger mystery why these plants would even produce and sequester compounds that have no apparent role in their own metabolism.

Either way, the fact is that we have DMT naturally occurring in the brain. The only question remaining is, how do we activate it? There must be a way to self-induce hallucinations in a similar way to self-hypnosis or going into a trance by wild dancing and/or head-spinning, maybe with the assistance of the monotonous sound of drums.

What has a hallucination got to do with alternate dimensions? We can't be sure, opinions differ. Some psychonauts insist that the "other side" is an autonomous reality. Which is not at all impossible. Just like a radio telescope translates information emanating from portions of reality that we are not naturally equipped to sense into signals (visible light) that our brain can interpret, a psychoactive substance may be such a medium that opens a window to a portion of reality we are not ordinarily equipped to detect. Whether what we experience as hallucination is actually an autonomous reality (which ordinarily shows on our instruments as dark matter or dark energy) or just a mental phenomenon matters not. At the end of the day, what you define as reality is nothing more than electrical signals interpreted by our brain. That's all it is.

Anybody seen Peaceful Warrior (7.3 on imdb)? Remember how Socrates is trying to teach Dan towards the end of the movie? He says it's time to show him the big secret. So Socrates decides to take Dan on a hike. On the way up the mountain, Dan is excited and really loving the hike, anticipating what Socrates is going to show him. When at the top, Socrates says, "This is it." Day says, "What, the view?" Socrates points to a rock. Dan is then disappointed and says, “This is it? This is what you wanted to show me??” Socrates then walk away, while Dan realizes the powerful lesson of “It’s the journey, not the destination.” The relevance of this story is not so much the lesson but to show that happiness is not because of "what is" or what will be, but because of what's in your mind. If expectations not coming true is a source of disappointment and unhappiness then isn't the solution giving up expectations and living in the moment? That's what members of tribal societies have that westerners don't - the FELT presence of immediate experience. Not worrying about tomorrow. They don't have all the mental disorders we do. No schizophrenia, no suicide, no ADHD, none of that cr@p.

Another example I remember from book 4 of the CWG series. It goes like this:

"Can’t I simply choose to be happy?

Yes.

How? How do I do that?

Don’t do it. Simply be it. Do not try to “do” happy. Simply choose to “be” happy, and everything you do will spring from that. It will be given birth by that. What you are being gives birth to what you are doing. Always remember that.

But how can I choose to be happy? Isn’t happiness something that happens? I mean, isn’t it something that I just am because of something that is happening, or going to happen?

No! It is something that you choose to be because of what is happening, or going to happen. You are choosing to be happy. Haven’t you ever seen two people reacting entirely differently to the same outer set of circumstances?

Of course. But that’s because the circumstances meant something different to each one of them.

You determine what something means! You give it its meaning. Until you decide what something means, it has no meaning at all. Remember that. Nothing means anything at all. Out of your state of beingness will meaning spring. It is you who are choosing, in any moment, to be happy. Or choosing to be sad. Or choosing to be angry, or mollified, or forgiving, or enlightened, or whatever. You are choosing. You. Not something outside of yourself. And you are choosing quite arbitrarily."

Anyway, the point is, regardless of "what is", regardless of external circumstances, regardless of what you call reality, what matters is what's in your head, because that's what you ultimately experience - it's all dependent on belief, attitude, what you choose to notice in any given situation, and so on. If a sensory input reaches your brain and it makes you happy, what does it matter where the input came from? If eating a cake gives you satisfaction, stimulating the taste-centre of the brain with the appropriate signal will have the same effect. If an NDE gives the experiencer a feeling of utter bliss and feeling loved,and when they come back they are a totally different people, not materialistic any more but realizing the importance of love, what does it matter whether they were on the other side or it was just chemicals in the brain? They've become better persons.

Similarly, if you can somehow activate the DMT in your brain (it's there for a reason, right?) then the experience will be as real as it can get, and the effects as solid as the effects of any "real life" experience. Unfortunately there will always be people who will fail to see the point in things like lucid dreaming, throwing around scornful comments like "I prefer living in the real world", and then they go and watch TV, soap operas that never actually happen, news programmes about events that will never affect their lives, or documentaries about places they'll never go and about people doing things they'll never do. Or watch a football match that they wouldn't notice if it were a recording.

I've always thought this was funny, the way they scream and shout supporting their team, when it's not even shown real-time on TV but with a bit of a delay. When you see a goal scored, it's already history. Even if you're in the stadium it takes time for light to reach your eyes and then for the electric impusle to reach your brain, and then to cognize and interpret the event. If the match had taken place secretly a day before and they broadcast it as live, would that make the match less enjoyable? No. You'd still be hoping for your team to score, even though it'd all taken place already. It doesn't matter, what matters is what you BELIEVE. If they broadcast a match from 2 years ago you can still enjoy it with the same extasy as you would enjoy a live match, if you believe the recording to be live. So why don't people watch old recordings of matches? They don't know what the end result is if they haven't seen it and haven't checked it. If you want to watch a live football match you'd been anticipating and after the end they announce that they (mistakenly or deliberately) broadcast a past match (that you hadn't seen) you'd be upset because you'd see how stupid you were shouting, telling them to score and celebrating when they did, and wondering as to the final outcome, while maybe others that'd seen that match noticed and knew who'd score and when. How would this be different from a match they shot one day before and broadcast it as live? How is it different from a football match watched in virtual reality? Nohow, that's how. It's not the match, it's what you BELIEVE. If the TV lag were a whole minute would that disturb you? You're wondering if a team are going to score and your friend calls you from the loctation that they already have, but it hasn't reached your telly yet. After you hang up, will you be able to enjoy the match knowing that others will know the result while you're still being excited with wonder, guessing and anticipation? How would this be different from watching a recording from, say, 10 years ago? How much lag is acceptable?

What's the lesson? If you believe it's real, then for you, for that moment, it is. As you can see, from this point it's only a small step to know when something is not real but treat it as if it were. As long as it can make you excited, happy, or whatever. By not allowing something to excite you just because you happen to be aware of it being more or less different from "reality", you are CHOOSING not to be excited about it. But then you could choose to consider ANY tv broadcast as something of the past, other than reality. Or any "real life" event for that matter, as the speed of sound and light are not infinite. You're ALWAYS observing the past. It's all history. None of it is real. The stars in the sky, many of them are not even there any more, and people 100 or 1000 years from now will see them as exploding supernovae, even though they've already exploded, it's just that their light hasn't reached us yet. Even the light from the Sun takes 499 seconds to reach us. When you watch a solar flare, it's already gone. So what is reality? Who cares? If it were really that important, half the world would't be playing computer games every day. All they really do is re-arrange 1s and 0s in a microchip that a computer tells them means they've won a car race or something.

So my take on it, if you learn to unleash the power of DMT in your brain, practically you will be experiencing an alternate universe. Whether that univerrse is actual or imagined, I will leave for those that choose to get caught up on the details to decide. Meanwhile you enjoy your travels and experiences while they miss out and watch what others put before them on TV. How do you learn this? I'm not aware of anyone knowing, but if there is a way I'd like to know. DMT activating in the brain is probably what causes experiences of rapture in accounts of some saints and spiritual seekers. It might have something to do with the sensation of "the rising of the kundalini". Maybe it's what is experienced as enlightenment. I don't know. I've heard of people who allegedly learned levitation using magickal practises. D. D. Home was certainly never debunked, even though he always insisted that people vigorously search and look for any sign of trickery. He had bunches of people hanging onto his feet while he lifted several metres into the air without ropes or anything. Jesus is said to have walked on water. A key here is realizing the illusional nature of "reality". That it's a holographic universe, as Leonard Susskind explains. So things can be learned. Once you do learn, it's like holding your breath. Easy. As for methods to activate the DMT in our brain, this topic is meant as a place for brainstorming. Any and all ideas are welcome.

Sources for information I used for this topic:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/5368989/Edgar-Cayce-the-children-of-the-law-of-one-and-the-lost-teachings-of-atlantis

http://www.scribd.com/doc/63212819/Neale-Donald-Walsch-Friendship-With-God

a BBC series of interviews featuring Susan Greenfield, a pharmachologist from Oxford University, ethno-pharmocologist Christian Ratsch, anthropologist Richard Rudgley, ethnobotanist Terence Mckenna, and many more like Andrew Weil, Ronald K. Siegel etc.:

And most importantly a talk by Terence Mckenna on DMT:

Edited January 13, 2014 by Rolci

[uuner]

Nice topic and interesting theories, sadly I don't have the brain capacity to comment anything mind blowing. I mean I'm not exactly the type that knows about this stuff but this really gave me some perspective. You might be interested in this topic too: http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=254979

[Mikethefox]

I didn't read all the text, but I intend to do it later, but I'll just say this anyway:

As am taking my degree in human biology I can say that what extrinsic DMT does is simply mess up with your brain activity. And then you get all that "distorted-perception" thing.

I found it interesting though, and will read it all later when I find the time.

[Rolci]

Thanks for the comments. About that "distorted perception thing", first of all, what I would expect from a substance that "messes us your brain chemistry" would be something incoherent, flashing lights, colours, MAYBE geometrical shapes. Certainly not a coherent unfolding of events observed in intricate details, which makes sense in its entirety. Especially not when the contents exceed the limits of the experiencer's imagination, stuff you KNOW you'd never be able to come up with. As McKenna says, "It’s the thing that is impossible, but which actually exists, where the hallucinations are beyond anything you could possibly imagine."

Some background you need to know about DMT before making and argument for or against the reality of the contents of the experience:

Secondly, you need to consider the research done by academics like Dr. Rick Strassman, as explained here:

An most importantly, you must consider all the accounts you have from the users themselves who share their experiences on forums. For example, I liked the way this user described the phenomenon:

"I used to be more or less of a militant atheist and not one to believe in anything that seems on the surface outlandish (other dimensions, God, etc). DMT, and all the other major psychedelics changed all of that - because it's something I have experienced personally, and I find that many people have, do, and presumably will experience the same things - and down to remarkably similar details; and I find that many times their interpretation or conclusion about it is very close to what I have come up with myself. I have always tried to leave preconceptions and conditioned thinking at the door when I go 'in'. I (or as much of myself as I'm aware of 'normally' :winkSmile am not imaginative enough to come up with what I experience on DMT, plain and simple. Everything happens so suddenly after you smoke it...complete thoughtless immersion into something of unprecedented fascination and novelty. And everywhere you look it's already there...it's not like things begin to morph or breath upon looking at them...it's like being somewhere else. IMO the visuals are just the icing on the cake; it's the raw experience, the everythingness of it, that is truly mindblowing and ego shattering. For me it's exponentially more 'real' than baseline reality. It's like waking up from a dream Wink. The experience speaks for itself. I don't think that DMT can be understood academically. This may sound absurd but you almost have to lose your mind, in a sense, to understand it. There is something very real and also very significant about the DMT experience...undeniably so IMO. It just can't be an accident that it has this effect on our mind. To call it's effects merely hallucinations is outright ignorant and presumptuous. DMT is (among other things) a medicine; if nothing else is real about it than the healing effects are."

source: https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=603

[Xynoplas]

Our conscious brains and our senses are really more of a filter than anything else.

Your eyes, for instance, are restricted to certain wavelengths, focus specific images, and point only in one (or actually two) directions.

If you were open to all the information in the universe, you would (as a conscious living human) go nuts, it would be too much.

The information is still there, however, and some of these drugs that apparently "make you go crazy" are simply opening your perceptions into more information than you are accustomed to.

[Rolci]

Our conscious brains and our senses are really more of a filter than anything else.

Your eyes, for instance, are restricted to certain wavelengths, focus specific images, and point only in one (or actually two) directions.

If you were open to all the information in the universe, you would (as a conscious living human) go nuts, it would be too much.

The information is still there, however, and some of these drugs that apparently "make you go crazy" are simply opening your perceptions into more information than you are accustomed to.

I agree with all of that, except I wouldn't call DMT a drug. Unless you mean it as a synonym for medicine. But if you would put it next to LSD and the rest categorically, I wouldn't agree. First of all it is a naturally occurring neuro-transmitter that can be found not only in humans but in a variety of plants and animals as well. Yes, it can be extracted and used as a psychedelic substance, does that make the chemical itself a drug? Besides, it metabolizes so quickly, 10-15 minutes after you've smoked it it's like you never did. That's because the body knows exactly what to do with it, being a familiar substance. As McKenna said, if you took a drug and 48 hours later you're still not ready to receive phone calls, you probably shouldn't have taken it. DMT gets broken down and absorbed into the body in minutes. Plus, it doesn't have all the side-effects all your "medicines" you buy from pharmacies do. It has none.

I wouldn't even call it a psychedelic. A psychedelic substance is something that gives you a vision of colours and sounds, spinning geometrical shapes and that sort of stuff. Yes, you still get those on DMT between 15 and 45 seconds into the trip, but what follows after the "rupturing of the membrane" for the next 5 minutes is out of this world. Call it a drug if you want, but that is not only a gross simplification, it can be very misleading to people unfamiliar with what it is or what it can do. What would I call it? I don't know. Maybe a shamanic chemical compound. It's hard to put it into any category, it's one of a kind. Call it a neuro-transmitter if you want to avoid unnecessary negative connotations.

[Rlyeh]

I wouldn't even call it a psychedelic. A psychedelic substance is something that gives you a vision of colours and sounds, spinning geometrical shapes and that sort of stuff. Yes, you still get those on DMT between 15 and 45 seconds into the trip, but what follows after the "rupturing of the membrane" for the next 5 minutes is out of this world. Call it a drug if you want, but that is not only a gross simplification, it can be very misleading to people unfamiliar with what it is or what it can do. What would I call it? I don't know. Maybe a shamanic chemical compound. It's hard to put it into any category, it's one of a kind. Call it a neuro-transmitter if you want to avoid unnecessary negative connotations.

No it's not misleading at all, a drug is exactly what DMT is. This new age pseudo-science nonsense is what's misleading.

[Rolci]

No it's not misleading at all, a drug is exactly what DMT is. This new age pseudo-science nonsense is what's misleading.

You're right, it is a drug after all, I've found it. Here:

Although, it is what it is, and it does exactly what it does, and when somebody has experienced it, it will be ABSOLUTELY irrelevant what label you or anyone else might want to stick on it. Cause that's all it is. A meaningless label. If I say to you "Ununseptium" and say it's a chemical element, that means next to nothing. Before you deal with it, whatever it is, you want to know if it's solid or liquid or something else, whether it's poisonous, whether it's radioactive, and so on. Compared to all the essential attributes you need to know about it to use it for what you need it, a label or even a category is meaningless.

It's what it DOES that you can do something with. Not with the name people have agreed to call it or how different individuals arbitrarily choose to categorize it. It's the FACTS you need. Does it metabolize quickly? Yes, extremely. Does it have side-effects? No. Does it shift your mind, does it blur your self-perception? Absolutely not. Is the experience enjoyable? No. It's life-transforming. Well then.

[Rlyeh]

Really you're just a user defending your choice of drug. The FACT is as a hallucinogen, it distorts perception.

[Rolci]

Really you're just a user defending your choice of drug. The FACT is as a hallucinogen, it distorts perception.

Not sure what you mean by "your choice of a drug". At all. First of all I don't use drugs, and that includes the ones with the long lists of side-effects that treat symptoms rather than root causes. Secondly I don't have a choice from any particular point of view, and that includes the exploration of the human psyche, expanding consciousness, etc. I believe psilocybin and a few other psychedelics would do just fine as well. And lastly, how can they distort perception? Perception of what? There's not much you perceive when you sit in a quiet dark room with your eyes closed. So what do you mean by perception?

[Rlyeh]

Not sure what you mean by "your choice of a drug". At all. First of all I don't use drugs, and that includes the ones with the long lists of side-effects that treat symptoms rather than root causes. Secondly I don't have a choice from any particular point of view, and that includes the exploration of the human psyche, expanding consciousness, etc. I believe psilocybin and a few other psychedelics would do just fine as well. And lastly, how can they distort perception? Perception of what? There's not much you perceive when you sit in a quiet dark room with your eyes closed. So what do you mean by perception?

Perception as in the brain's interpretation of external stimulus. Unless you're unconscious or dead, you're going to have some degree of perception even in a dark room.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

There is a theory that the really vivid dreams, the ones that seem to ape real life (not the "naked in a meeting" style ones) are actually you getting a glimpse into another you's life.

I kind of like the idea, the dream of me with Her means at least one of us got a happy ending.

[NightScreams]

At first I thought I was reading an instruction manual on how to take psychedelic drugs but realized instead that someone just re-discovered...yet again, the age old hippy mentality of 1960's approach to the drug once called "the business man's lunch" *now with 30% more 4th dimensional travel*

Psychedelics are psychedelic, imagine that but don't take a hallucinogen's hallucinations that seriously, that's why they call it "tripping". The only traveling you'll be doing is into your own imagination as you sit there staring at patterns on your wall while giggling like a crazed Justin Bieber fan.

[Nightmaker47]

I actually made a DMT thread similar to this months ago, but unfortunately one of the moderators deleted it because of the mention of hallucinogen drugs. It was an interesting thread though.

[Frank Merton]

This thread set me off to thinking just what is a dimension? It is not an altered mental state. It is a physical thing -- the three space dimensions form a "corner" when they intersect at a given point, each perpendicular to the other two -- so additional dimensions would do the same thing and also be perpendicular to the other three or more.

If such exists and one could find a way to shift into another such dimension, I fear the consequences would be destructive to every cell in the body.

[Nightmaker47]

One of the things that fascinates me about DMT is the fact that you can experience hyperspace: a dimension where time seems to stop and seeing impossible geometry. Most of the DMT users also claim to talk to entities (similar to those of alien abductions/afterlife) that seem supernatural and out of this world. Users usually describe them as aliens or supernatural creatures that are beyond this dimension. They say that those supposed creatures are intelligent and seem to have a mind on their own. The reason why I find it interesting is because I never hear of any hallucinogen taking the user that far. DMT experiences sounds a lot like a spiritual experience if I'm not mistaken. Interesting talk though.

Edited February 1, 2014 by Nightmaker47

[The Exodia]

interesting