#beings

The Mouth of Oukra

If the God of the southern winds says another should must be sacrificed, then the Mouth becomes his conduit…

“Respondents reported the primary senses involved in the encounter were visual and extrasensory (e.g. telepathic). The most common descriptive labels for the entity were being, guide, spirit, alien, and helper. Although 41% of respondents reported fear during the encounter, the most prominent emotions both in the respondent and attributed to the entity were love, kindness, and joy. Most respondents endorsed that the entity had the attributes of being conscious, intelligent, and benevolent, existed in some real but different dimension of reality, and continued to exist after the encounter. Respondents endorsed receiving a message (69%) or a prediction about the future (19%) from the experience. More than half of those who identified as atheist before the experience no longer identified as atheist afterwards. The experiences were rated as among the most meaningful, spiritual, and psychologically insightful lifetime experiences, with persisting positive changes in life satisfaction, purpose, and meaning attributed to the experiences.

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N,N-dimethyltryptamine-occasioned entity encounter experiences have many similarities to non-drug entity encounter experiences such as those described in religious, alien abduction, and near-death contexts. Aspects of the experience and its interpretation produced profound and enduring ontological changes in worldview.

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Among the most vivid, intriguing, memorable, and sometimes disconcerting experiences that people report after taking a high dose of inhaled or intravenous DMT are those of encountering seemingly autonomous entities or beings (Luke, 2011; Luke and Spowers, 2018; Meyer, 2006; Strassman 2001, 2008). Although description of the nature of the entities, details of the experiences, and meaning attributed to the experiences vary widely, such experiences are apparently not infrequent. Strassman (2008) estimated that at least half of the participants in his studies of high doses of intravenous DMT reported experiences of journeys to invisible or alternative worlds, and that contact with alien beings or entities were a variant of this category.

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Table 3 also shows that respondents selected a variety of descriptive labels for the entity. The most commonly endorsed were “being,” (60%) “guide,” (43%) “spirit,” (39%) “alien,” (39%) or “helper” (34%). Other labels selected by small proportions of respondents (range 10–16%), included the terms “angel,” “elf,” “religious personage,” or “plant spirit,” and very few (range 1–5%) reporting the terms “gnome,” “monster,” or a “deceased” person. Most respondents reported having had an emotional response to the experience (99%). Respondents reported experiencing joy (65%), trust (63%), surprise (61%), love (59%), kindness (56%), friendship (48%), and fear (41%) during the encounter experience, with smaller proportions reporting emotions such as sadness (13%), distrust (10%), disgust (4%), or anger (3%). In another question, respondents reported that love (21%) was the single most prominent emotion experienced during the encounter. Over one-half (58%) reported that the entity also had an emotional reaction to the encounter. The single most prominent emotion that the entity appeared to have was love (17%), kindness (11%), or joy (10%), with low rates (⩽2%) of emotions with a negative valence (e.g. anger, fear, distrust, disgust, sadness).

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Additional details about the interpretation of the encounter experience are shown in Table 4. The low mean respondent rating of familiarity of the experience (1.2) indicates that the average experience was quite unfamiliar (0=“None; Not at all”; 1=“So slight I cannot decide”; 2=“Slight”). Yet, the mean rating of clarity of memories of the experience (59.9) indicated that these memories were between “clear” and “very clear.” Respondent ratings also indicated that the entity encounter seemed more real than normal reality during (81%) and after (65%) the encounter. From their current perspective, three-quarters of respondents reported that the entity existed in some real but different dimension or reality (49%) or in a combination of some real but different dimension or reality and in normal everyday physical reality (26%). A minority of respondents (9%) reported that the entity existed “completely within myself,” or that the entity existed only in normal reality (1%). Most respondents (72%) endorsed believing that the entity continued to exist after their encounter, and that the experience altered the respondent’s fundamental conception of reality (80%). Sixty percent of the whole sample indicated that the experience produced a desirable alteration in their conception of reality whereas only 1% indicated an undesirable alteration in their conception of reality.

When asked about the attributes of the entity, a majority of the sample reported that the entity was conscious (96%), intelligent (96%), benevolent (78%), sacred (70%), had agency in the world (54%), and was positively judgmental (52%). Fewer reported that the entity was petitionable (23%), negatively judgmental (16%), or malicious (11%).

Approximately one-quarter of the sample reported that they were atheist (28%) and one-quarter reported they were agnostic (27%) before the entity encounter, but significantly smaller proportions reported they were atheist (10%) or agnostic (16%) after the encounter (pre-post change p values <0.001). Additionally, approximately one-third (36%) of respondents reported that before the encounter their belief system included a belief in ultimate reality, higher power, God, or universal divinity, but a significantly larger percentage (58%) of respondents reported this belief system after the encounter (p<0.001).

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Over one-half (range 54–65%) of the sample reported that the entity encounter was one of the top five or single most personally meaningful, spiritually significant, or psychologically insightful experiences of their lives (Table 5). Approximately one-third (32%) reported that the encounter was one of the top five or single most psychologically challenging lifetime experiences. Table 5 also shows that most respondents reported persisting positive and desirable changes that they attributed to the encounter experience, including well-being and life satisfaction (89%), life’s purpose (82%), life’s meaning (81%), social relationships (70%), attitudes about life (88%) and self (84%), mood (67%), and behavior (71%). In contrast, only 1–5% of the sample reported any negative and undesirable changes in the above domains of functioning.

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Previous descriptions of entity encounter experiences occasioned by DMT (Strassman, 2001, 2008), as well as nondrug alien encounter and abduction experiences, near-death experiences (Hernandez et al., 2018; Jacobs, 2000; Mack, 2000; Ring, 1992; Winkelman, 2018), religious prophecy experiences (Strassman, 2014), and naturally occurring God encounter experiences (Griffiths et al., 2019), suggest that such experiences often result in changes in world view including the belief in the reality of such entities. The current survey provides strong evidence of such changes. More specifically, even after the experience, 65% of respondents rated the experience as more real than everyday waking consciousness, 96% believed the entity was conscious and intelligent, 75% thought that from their current perspective the entity existed, at least in part, in a different dimension or realty, 72% endorsed that they believed the entity continued to exist after the experience, and 80% indicated that the experience altered their fundamental conception of reality. Less than 10% endorsed that the experience occurred completely within themselves. The percentage of the group that identified as being atheist or agnostic before the encounter (55%) dropped significantly (to 26%) after the encounter, whereas identification of belief in ultimate reality, higher power, God, or universal divinity increased significantly from 36% to 58%. Significant decreases in identification as atheist have also been reported for both non-drug and psychedelic (psilocybin, Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and ayahuasca) associated God encounter experiences (Griffiths et al., 2019).

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Recent research suggests that psychedelic-occasioned increases in psychological flexibility are associated with decreases in symptoms of depression and anxiety (Davis et al., 2020), and that the psychological flexibility model may be a mechanism for therapeutic changes in mental health in clinical trials with psychedelics (Watts and Luoma, 2020). Although psychological flexibility was not directly assessed in the current study, it is plausible that the previously discussed abrupt ontological shift (i.e. “ontological shock”) associated with DMT-occasioned entity encounter experiences also increase psy-chological flexibility which, in turn, mediate high rates of attribution of enduring positive desirable changes in attitudes, moods and behavior.

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The present survey study is the largest to date to provide detailed information about the subjective phenomena, interpretation, and persisting changes attributed to experiences people report about having an encounter with a seemingly autonomous entity after inhaling DMT. Aspects of the experience and its interpretation had metaphysical implications for most (80%) of the respondents about their fundamental understanding of the nature of reality. For example, most respondents indicated that the entity had the attributes of being conscious, intelligent, and benevolent, existed in some real but different dimension of reality, and continued to exist after the encounter. These experiences were also rated as among the most meaningful, spiritual, and psychologically insightful lifetime experiences, with persisting positive changes in life satisfaction, purpose and meaning attributed to the experiences. More than half of those who identified as atheist before the experience no longer identified as atheist afterwards. Although further research is needed to provide more information about causality and mechanisms (Winkelman, 2018), it is possible that the “ontological shock” occasioned by these vivid unusual experiences may play an important role in the enduring positive life changes in attitudes, moods, and behavior attributed to these experiences. As such, it is possible that, under appropriate supportive set and setting conditions, DMT could show promise as an adjunct to therapy for people with mood and behavioral problems (e.g. depression and addiction). However, regardless of whether or not DMT will be shown to have therapeutic efficacy, future double-blind human laboratory studies investigating dose-effects and correlated brain activity may provide a unique window into the psychological and biological nature of such anomalous subjective experiences of encounters with nonhuman entities that date back to the beginnings of recorded human history.”