Then (1993), True Hallucinations
DMT Entities: The Consistency Problem
McKenna described 'machine elves', self-transforming fractal entities, as consistent features of DMT hyperspace. He wondered whether their consistency across users indicated something objective about the territory being accessed.
contested
Strassman's clinical DMT study at UNM (1990-1995, 60 volunteers) found entity contact in a substantial minority of high-dose sessions. A 2020 Johns Hopkins online survey (Davis et al., J. Psychopharmacol. 34(9):1008-1020) of 2,561 people who had had a DMT entity encounter found humanoid forms most common. A 2023 Imperial College EEG-fMRI study (Timmermann et al., PNAS 120(13)) mapped DMT's global brain effects but did not isolate entity contact, so no neural signature specific to it has been published. The survey reports no prevalence rate, and the 97% figure often attached to it is in no published paper. Similar entity reports are well documented in self-selected samples. Whether entities are projections of the human unconscious, hallucinations, or something else is still open.
Sources
- Strassman, DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2001)
- Sexton et al., J. Psychopharmacol. 33(9) (2019) [Source not found; under review]
- Timmermann et al., PNAS 120(13) (2023)
- Davis et al., J. Psychopharmacol. 34(9):1008-1020 (2020)