The Case Against DMT Elves

[drugo]

Does it really matter if they're "real" or not???

....................

DOes it not make more sense to eat fruit from a tree than dig its roots up trying to discover its "reality"?

[drgibbon]

I suppose it does to people who like to think about those sorts of things I've had no experience with them myself though.

[drugo]

I suppose it does to people who like to think about those sorts of things I've had no experience with them myself though.

 

that is just my point. they are much much more interesting in what they can "do" than what they "are".

Philosophers have been masturbating their cognitive faculties for centuries over questions such as 'is the chair a chair...as how can I trust sense perception... does the chair reflect an idea or does the idea reflect the chair'. As a result of such meditation, solipsism plagues western thought flushing comprehension into a nihilistic black-hole, at the expense of other (more detail, connective, and richer) epistemologies, such as those occasioned with entheogens.

I'm personally much more interested in how comfortable the chair is, what material it is made from, does it spin, can it be raised higher, that is, its functionality, what it "does" rather than "is" or apparently "isn't".

Conflate meaning and function, do away with the notion of representation (real/ideal), embrace your experiences as "real" and start feeling around the edges of alterity with all your phenomenological faculties (including sight, smell, touch, hearing, affect, memory, linguistic thought, non-linguistic thought -- ie, "imagination"... the mental interface and landscape of images -- intuition, dreams.

[drgibbon]

that is just my point. they are much much more interesting in what they can "do" than what they "are".

Philosophers have been masturbating their cognitive faculties for centuries over questions such as 'is the chair a chair...as how can I trust sense perception... does the chair reflect an idea or does the idea reflect the chair'. As a result of such meditation, solipsism plagues western thought flushing comprehension into a nihilistic black-hole, at the expense of other (more detail, connective, and richer) epistemologies, such as those occasioned with entheogens.

For myself, I see both questions as valid (what they do and what they are). I mean for example I found the Philip K Dick stuff surrounding his whole reality meltdown to be really interesting and thought provoking (Flow My Tears.. the "how to build a universe" article he wrote about that, and VALIS).

I'm personally much more interested in how comfortable the chair is, what material it is made from, does it spin, can it be raised higher, that is, its functionality, what it "does" rather than "is" or apparently "isn't".

Conflate meaning and function, do away with the notion of representation (real/ideal), embrace your experiences as "real" and start feeling around the edges of alterity with all your phenomenological faculties (including sight, smell, touch, hearing, affect, memory, linguistic thought, non-linguistic thought -- ie, "imagination"... the mental interface and landscape of images -- intuition, dreams.

 

I appreciate what you're saying. I do think it's of some value to talk about these things though (ontological stuff, where spirituality stands in light of science etc), not only because I find it interesting, but I think it really matters for people. But I agree with you, they can totally be experienced without fussing about the reality of it. Although it seems what they do often cannot be translated into language (very well), so in that realm, direct experience is the only way to find out!

[drugo]

For myself, I see both questions as valid

 

No discord lay between my post at this statement. Yes, both are valid questions, but 'elves'

are much much more interesting in what they can "do" than what they "are".

Conceptions of the latter are simply stepping stones onto the continent of the former. Shamanism and the discarnate is not a system of knowledge or facts known, but rather a dynamic system of techniques for knowing - dynamic relative to mythological templates, moral compasses, and broader energetic rhizomes that immerse agentive devices in sharing and intimacy (creation/destruction). In other words, shamanism and hte discarnate is not a constituted discourse but a way of constituting one. Less an object than an event, less a transcended representative figure than signs of an immanent background (much like the standardised human plane). Hence the limits of Cartesian doctrines of immanence-transcedence, real-representation, and a solipsistic infatuation with 'correct representation' (thanks to Plato! for western based contrast see Heidegger on "alethia").

Language (as a vehicle of meaning) is highly ephemeral and dynamic, forever hybridising, shifting, becoming and fading. We do not have our precious faculty of linguistic thought for the function of labelling absolutes, discovering "realities" in their completeness, building some deluded concrete encyclopaedia of objectified static things known. But rather, thinking is our gift, a neat little device, for modestly reflecting on the process of being purely for the sake of the process of being/becoming.

Emotions and morals are the wiser and much more intelligent forces that we are here to learn.

ideas about what things 'are' merely support what one wants to 'do'. There seems to be a tendency for scientists to get tripped up in the former at the expense of the more dynamic, shifting and engaging sides of consciousness or life.

Dreamings or realities (science, myth, story, word) are here to inspire, inflect and charge our journeys - much like in hyper space (though our psychedelic folk religion does appear to seriously lack techniques for journeying in hyperspace compared to the high high majority of entheogenically savvy cultural enterprises on earth!). But we are doing the best we can

[drgibbon]

Interesting post, I don't quite understand shamanism not being a system of knowledge or facts, but a dynamic system of knowing?? If it's not knowledge, then what are you knowing? You mean it's a personal endeavour?

Also not sure who is building the deluded encyclopaedia of things known (are you talking about me, or people in general??) That was kind of my original point.. that encyclopaedia is not possible (as far as I know)

Conceptions of the latter are simply stepping stones onto the continent of the former.

 

That's cool, but my original point was just that finding out how the brain works physically need not lead people to discarding spiritual experiences as 'unreal', or rejecting the idea of spirituality because it is 'just a experience of the brain with no ultimate reality behind it'.

[drugo]

double post

Edited September 15, 2010 by telepathogen

[drugo]

Interesting post, I don't quite understand shamanism not being a system of knowledge or facts, but a dynamic system of knowing?? If it's not knowledge, then what are you knowing? You mean it's a personal endeavour?

 

a way of seeing, rather than things seen.

Also not sure who is building the deluded encyclopaedia of things known (are you talking about me, or people in general??) That was kind of my original point.. that encyclopaedia is not possible (as far as I know)

 

the high majority of western sciences (across the disciplines, inc. social sciences).

the soul, subjectivity, consciousness, intentionality (which trees, animals, and spirits tend to be imbued with) is treated as if it is an unstable point of view, for many pre-modern 'hunters and gatherers'. It is more like a form of reflexivity than a concrete thing found and known. It is dynamic, shifting, between becoming animals, spirits, and other people. What ethnographers have tended to call 'people' (us, we-people) for Amerindian socieities seems to be experienced locally as more like our understanding of 'persons' (and in such cases 'persons' refers also to other-than-human persons: animals, trees, discarnate entities).

"tribes" used to generally not have "a" name but instead were locally constellated and organised around a non-permanent, dynamic, shifting, notion of we-ness, us persons, (which included certain plant, animal, and spirit persons). Colonial missionaries and ethnographers mapped out the "names" of tribes largely with names that neighbouring tribes used to organise their neighbours, rather than from the tribe for whom the name is associated with. As when asking the actual society, "what is your name, who are you" they would reply in confusion, "us-we-persons" (which of course includes non-human persons).

Not objectified names or nouns, but more like enunciative markers or pronouns (like he, she, they) and therefore much more relational and dynamic and closer to the "now" than rationally constructing, and distancing into a re-flect-ive apparatus. Traditionally, amazoninan locals very rarely talk to each using "names" for each other, rather than, "john, bob, mike, and jim, come lets go explore the river and perve on girls". It would be "you, you, you... us go perve on the fountain of our sexuality" (metaphor is common, "fountain" signifying river, "sexuality", girls. and the link is implied in the context and poem.

For a small exercise to begin experiencing something like such ontologies, play with perceiving (not thinking about but through your organs of perception) "objects" (like trees, rivers, the sun) as "subjects" and pronouns (she, he, they) and feel how the energy in your body changes, chakras open up, emotional systems light up, ethics shift, greater connectivity begins).

Reflection is our gift, but be careful to not fall into the Cartesian trap, "I think, therefore I am" -- I tend to operate instead, with, "I am, and therefore I can think when I choose to". or even, "i relate, therefore I am, and therefore I have things to think about if I choose to"

Many interdimensional species and beings do not have "names". They interact, differentiate and be in the world without the need of cognitive labelling (bagging and tagging, building a "god-like" "fixed" encyclopaedia, as is the clunky epistemology that science rests on and our language and worldview is intoxicated with).

Edited September 15, 2010 by telepathogen

[drgibbon]

I'll have a try at thinking about objects as subjects.

In terms of the fixed encyclopaedia, what do you think about things like physical laws? They seem to hold up pretty well and let us do many interesting things (like build a network of computers to talk about stuff ) From a practical point of view, that fixed knowledge has been pretty useful, no?

As for "bagging and tagging", I think it's just a matter of how language works. We agree that the label for this certain fruit (in English) is "apple", and we all learn and accept that label. If we didn't use labels, we couldn't communicate via language.. it's an inherent property of it. Sure the collectivist/group culture might use language very differently (and have a totally different worldview), but it's still a system of labels for things, concepts, or whatever, and we use those labels to express ourselves.

[drugo]

I'll have a try at thinking about objects as subjects.

In terms of the fixed encyclopaedia, what do you think about things like physical laws? They seem to hold up pretty well and let us do many interesting things (like build a network of computers to talk about stuff ) From a practical point of view, that fixed knowledge has been pretty useful, no?

As for "bagging and tagging", I think it's just a matter of how language works. We agree that the label for this certain fruit (in English) is "apple", and we all learn and accept that label. If we didn't use labels, we couldn't communicate via language.. it's an inherent property of it. Sure the collectivist/group culture might use language very differently (and have a totally different worldview), but it's still a system of labels for things, concepts, or whatever, and we use those labels to express ourselves.

 

u r not understanding the posts, and I got other thing to do... but for one, i explicitly suggest to NOT think about objects as subjective pronouns, but BE towards them as such vai perception and more subtle feelings... a huge difference.

[Yeti101]

I'll have a try at thinking about objects as subjects.

 

Try thinking about objects (and everything else) as relationships.

[drgibbon]

u r not understanding the posts, and I got other thing to do... but for one, i explicitly suggest to NOT think about objects as subjective pronouns, but BE towards them as such vai perception and more subtle feelings... a huge difference.

 

I think we're just talking about different things. But no worries!

[drugo]

Try thinking about objects (and everything else) as relationships.

 

I like this I notice that your profile states that you\re keen on philosophy.

what do u mean by relationships>?

HAve you stumbled upon any Deleuzian concepts of self, by chance? he suggests the self doesn't really exist however instead we are but bundles of affects, capacities and dispositions that emerge as and only in relations with other bundles or assemblages. We are these relationships, not just dependent on 'connecting' with them, but they are the activation of each particular existence, like light holographicly becoming in a room of cosmic stain-glass mirrors. Like we are made up of billions of particles (inc non material) that are activated into being through and as a collective evocation. I've enjoyed finding parallels with such thought and indigenous 'shamanic' thought, occult, mysticism, and conceptions of 'elves' or discarnate entities - i feel that much is to be said about cross-pollinating such fields.

Strathern's anthropological conceptions of the 'dividual' as opposed to the 'individual' is another idea that you may be familiar with or interested in? It plays on a more relational ontology. See also Ingold, Bird-David, Wallis for contemporary animistic conceptions of relationality.

thinking and being in 'relationship' seems to make more sense and be less alienating in my opinion.

Edited September 16, 2010 by telepathogen

[The Dude]

Awesome thread this one!

Edited January 5, 2011 by The Dude

[drgibbon]

he suggests the self doesn't really exist however instead we are but bundles of affects, capacities and dispositions that emerge as and only in relations with other bundles or assemblages. We are these relationships, not just dependent on 'connecting' with them, but they are the activation of each particular existence, like light holographicly becoming in a room of cosmic stain-glass mirrors. Like we are made up of billions of particles (inc non material) that are activated into being through and as a collective evocation.

A guy in a pub was telling me that if you blew up the nucleus of an atom to the size of a tennis ball, then the distance to the next electron would be something like 2 kilometers! Apparently Rutherford likened it to "a few flies buzzing in a cathedral". So that either means there's stuff in between they don't see yet... or that physical matter paradoxically consists of mostly emptiness.

[paradox]

or that physical matter paradoxically consists of mostly emptiness.

 

have you read much about the Buddhist concept of emptiness?

the deeper you go, the bigger it gets

[drgibbon]

have you read much about the Buddhist concept of emptiness?

the deeper you go, the bigger it gets

 

A little bit, I read a book by the Dalai Lama called "The Universe In A Single Atom", which was really interesting. He sees science merging with religion, I'm inclined to agree with him.

[Arrowsmith]

Repeating the point brought up by many a philosopher but either DMT triggers a mechanism in human DNA which causes people to experience a particular hallucination independent of any knowledge of each other's experiences which is significant, or it triggers a mechanism that provides a genuine interaction with machine elves, which is significant, either way it warrants further real world study.

As the article points out there are plenty of things that can trigger similar experiences but subjects have reported very specific similarities. I'm not convinced that they're a by-product of natural psychology.

[mutant]

Does it really matter if they're "real" or not???

What do you think? I say it does. I claim I can prove it that it does matter. Want proof?

For people who experience it anyway, it would be meaningless to argue about these shit. But they do. The Dude seems to have been doing that with naysayers for more than a couple of years. So it means something to him. He has said how meaniningless the discussion is, but it obviously matters to him.

People might be doing this because this is the appropriate place to do so, so they propose and advance ideas like the external being/god/presence [even though all evidence shows the god/entities/presence resides inside our brains]. But if living and experienceing it is the point, why bother speak logically about something that is not logical nor it submits to logical laws? It certainly won't resist the sceptics that naturally [and rightfully so] dismiss the idea of these experiences being 'real' real.

Because it does matter what other people think, right? And some times people are getting messiah shit from psychs. Some are OK with them [great apocalyptic ideas I mean] but some could have psychotic/manic/skizoid tendencies and should better watch out...

Likewise, for the non-believers or naysayers, it also seems to matter: either they regard all kinds of such experience as products of the god-module on psychs, or they even saw the presence, but don't consider it 'real' real or external. Despite communities related with psychedelic education are indeed the place to promote psychedelic theistic spiritulaity , logic can in no way be missing from the equation. So, it's quite natural for the sceptic to distinguish the dellusion: the products of a well studied drug being presented as real data. I say it's real phenomena, real experiences.

But yeah it does matter if it's real or not, if you present it like it's real.

Arrowsmith

subjects have reported very specific similarities.

I reckon most subjects are affected from McKenna preachings and similar wishful gurus of psychedelia, psychedelic theism promoting the fact that entities are real and external are a common belief in psych forums, and so is [sometimes] preaching a la McKenna style.

[Yeti101]

Does it really matter if they're "real" or not???

....................

DOes it not make more sense to eat fruit from a tree than dig its roots up trying to discover its "reality"?

 

There are two ways in which it matters and these apply equally well a lot of religious/spiritual/supernatural experiences and knowledge. The first is that the existence or not of the DMT elves is significant in and of itself, from a metaphysical viewpoint if nothing else. Elves vs no elves is a distinctly different state of affairs, and I think that's interesting.

The second reason it matters is to do with consequences of the belief. If your belief in elves changes your behaviour, then are you not interested in whether your actions are being influenced by multi-dimensional beings or subconscious suggestion? Normally, in the case of DMT elves, this doesn't cause much trouble for society at large. But other people have believed other things of equally epistemic inaccessibility (ie the bulk of religion) and these beliefs have caused some strange and disruptive behaviour. I resent that people will tell me that I should not do something when this is based on the supposed values of a being that no-one can say for sure actually exists.

I like this I notice that your profile states that you\re keen on philosophy.

what do u mean by relationships>?

HAve you stumbled upon any Deleuzian concepts of self, by chance? he suggests the self doesn't really exist however instead we are but bundles of affects, capacities and dispositions that emerge as and only in relations with other bundles or assemblages. We are these relationships, not just dependent on 'connecting' with them, but they are the activation of each particular existence, like light holographicly becoming in a room of cosmic stain-glass mirrors. Like we are made up of billions of particles (inc non material) that are activated into being through and as a collective evocation. I've enjoyed finding parallels with such thought and indigenous 'shamanic' thought, occult, mysticism, and conceptions of 'elves' or discarnate entities - i feel that much is to be said about cross-pollinating such fields.

Strathern's anthropological conceptions of the 'dividual' as opposed to the 'individual' is another idea that you may be familiar with or interested in? It plays on a more relational ontology. See also Ingold, Bird-David, Wallis for contemporary animistic conceptions of relationality.

thinking and being in 'relationship' seems to make more sense and be less alienating in my opinion.

 

Some food for thought there! I'm not as familiar with Deluze as I'd like (no matter how much I read, someone always suggests a philosopher I know bugger-all about!). My conception of things as relationsships emerges from my brush with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and that some language structures see objects as relationships rather than the way that we think about them. Throw in trying to learn Lojban, studying Foucault, a bit of scepticisim & nominalism and I ended up with the idea that things, as well as concept are best defined by their relationships with other things, even though we don't always have much of a clue what other things are. You (for example) are not your atoms, nor are you even the non-physical stuff that constitutes your non-physical 'soul' (if you believe in that sort of thing ), but you are the relationship/pattern between these atoms/photons/whatever etc. Maybe. This made more sense before I wrote it down

Anyway, I'm not sure that we can talk about the elves existing or not due to how we interact with them. I wouldn't commit to saying that they are there, but nor would I commit to saying that they aren't.

[The Dude]

Mutant.. I though I was repeating myself.

It only matters if you feel that it matters. If you need to know the truth then the mystery will be scary and unacceptable. That truth is uncertainty, is the real mystery ;). The only validation is your personal experience and that's not something to argue or prove.

Of course discussing said experiences provides some perspective and is worthwhile, it is pointless trying to prove the phenomenon. It would be like proving alien contact or miracles or spiritual revelations, science can never explain such things, yet many will attest to the reality of their experience.

...anyway I don't feel like getting on the merry go round again, circular conversations get boring.

[drgibbon]

Well my fortune quote of the day was "I'd rather just believe that it's done by little elves running around."

[rogdog]

for what its worth, I've dipped my foot in the pond a [<50] of times, and never seen elves, nor fealt thier precense. This topic is of a lot of interest to me, because I feel there is something in that land, but I cant put my finger on it

[drugo]

There are two ways in which it matters and these apply equally well a lot of religious/spiritual/supernatural experiences and knowledge. The first is that the existence or not of the DMT elves is significant in and of itself, from a metaphysical viewpoint if nothing else. Elves vs no elves is a distinctly different state of affairs, and I think that's interesting.

The second reason it matters is to do with consequences of the belief. If your belief in elves changes your behaviour, then are you not interested in whether your actions are being influenced by multi-dimensional beings or subconscious suggestion? Normally, in the case of DMT elves, this doesn't cause much trouble for society at large. But other people have believed other things of equally epistemic inaccessibility (ie the bulk of religion) and these beliefs have caused some strange and disruptive behaviour. I resent that people will tell me that I should not do something when this is based on the supposed values of a being that no-one can say for sure actually exists.

 

I guess what I trying to say is, imagination, dreams, 'delusions' are all really a part of life. They are a "real" experience that we often find ourselves in as due to the fact that we are really having the experience, regardless of how important the experience may be. The value which one places on different 'fringe' experiences seems to be the deciding factor -- and when people say, "the experience I had was REAL" it seems what they mean is, 'the experience I had is of great importance and value'.

so rather than working with dichotomies of 'real' and 'fake', truth/falsity, I prefer to suspend the 'on' 'off' dogma and conceive all experiences along a spectrum of value and

ethics. Rather than, is this thing 'real' or 'not-real', I ask, what is it doing to me, how does it interact with my (and the collective) journey, dynamic values and ethics, that is, what does it "DO"? Can it help me/us???

conflate meaning with function.

I understand that we tend to question and think in binary... is this thing "real" (as opposed to not-real). But, everything consciousness touches and is touched by is REALLY having some sort of affect on that part of consciousness, sometimes more affect than others... and of course, be aware of the manifold shades of grey between the spectrum of 'real' and 'fake'. All things that are 'false' do indeed embody kinds of insight, truths, and perspectives of being human (some of more value than others). Consciousness ( the perspective of truths) adapts and evolves as do meteorological phenomena. Not only do the things we look at change and evolve, but so does the point of view. Truth is like a flag that is stabbed and declared onto islands of value, ethics, moral... so be careful of those people that profess a 'truth' that is harbouring a selfish agenda and is secretly feeding off the expense of your soul (for example, many religious nodes, egotistical maniacs, self-possessed manipulators).

Truth, with a capital T, is like a party, make sure that it welcomes you, provides good tunes, room to dance, good entheogens (not just booze), and most importantly, love and respect. Many cultures, subcultures and people capitalise on the understanding of truth as binary -- we are true they are false, we are sacred, they profane! -- and of course many work to rob you from blooming into yourself and do not offer much space for your soul to become, as by nailing you to certain limits it opens their agendas up. But, by perceiving truth as a spectrum of value that is trying to negotiate and cope within a collective enterprise or organism ( such as a family, community, culture, government, planet) there is an emphasis on the collectivity that is geometrically more powerful and vibrant when balanced, that is, egalitarian, equal, less dominating with manipulative top-heavy truths.

Knowledge is about adaptation, surviving, right? If so, then Truth is the force that fuels such an attempt.

one last idea... trying to grasp some sort of objective static 'reality' of things may be a result of our insecure reflexivity that is born from a metaphysical paradox within our attempts at proving our own 'real' existence. Who cares whether we are 'real' or not... conceptions of subjectivity, volition, consciousness, are all for grabs... they seem to be value points that an observer opens within her consciousness. Is the rock alive and conscious? do the clouds feel the land to be thirsty? are animals persons? are spirits persons? are persons persons? what is a person? perhaps a point of reference, a value laden spark of existence that has some sort of meaning for another within processes of adaptation and survival.

contemplating and reflecting is great, but careful to not bunjee jump into it without a chord (grasping for 'real'), as you'll simply get eaten by a nihilistic black-hole.

Elves are 'real' in the sense that people experience them. However, different people tap different things from the beings and also value what they get from them in varying ways. Science will eventually start asking the 'does' as opposed to 'are' questions... The naysayers of western truth begin to ask... "so, what can they do?? why do so many cultures around the world see value in these light-filled 'images'??? ... ohhh shit, they can do that!!?!! maaaayyyyybbbbeee theeeeeey arrrrrre real"

Edited September 22, 2010 by telepathogen

[drugo]

with a dash of synchronicity, the following idea popped up in an article that I just put down:

see in particular the area in bold in relation to truth, real/not-real dichotomies.

To this day, EuroAmerican science has no definitive answer (but it does have

some partial answers) (Targ 2004; Schroll 2008b) regarding whether or not psi/

spirit/transpersonal experience possess any social or psychological benefits.

Krippner, Tart, Turner, Walsh, Winkelman, and others involved in the investigation

of psi/spirit and transpersonal psychology have provided us with

some glimpses into the variety of anomalous experience and their potential

benefits (Schroll 2001, 2008). But the jury of scientific inquiry as a whole is still

deliberating the ‘‘thing-in-itself,’’ and as a consequence continues to be restrained

by the straightjacket of a dualistic paradigm that refuses to

acknowledge the existence of psi/spirit. This restraint has kept us from achieving

the necessary paradigm shift whose conceptual transformation would allow

EuroAmerican science to envision a comprehensive theoretical understanding

of psi/spirit/transpersonal experience. Thus we still have further to go. Nevertheless,

with individuals in the fields of humanistic, transpersonal psychology,

and the anthropology of consciousness working together, we are coming closer

to envisioning a new kind of science and its methods of inquiry. (pp.21)

Schroll, M. (2010) "The Future of a Discipline: Considering the ontological/methodological future of the anthropology of consciousness" Anthropology of Consciousness. Vol. 21 (1)

Edited September 22, 2010 by telepathogen