Machine Elves

wwkirk

Divine
Are Machine Elves real or hallucinatory?
Machine Elf

Machine elves (also known as fractal elves, self-transforming elf machines or"Jenny") is a term coined by the late ethnobotanist, writer and philosopher Terence McKenna to describe the apparent entities that are often reported by individuals using tryptamine-based psychedelic drugs, especially DMT

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Overview

References to such encounters can be found in many cultures ranging from shamanic traditions of Native Americans to indigenous Australians and African tribes, as well as among Western users of these substances.

At about minute one or two of a DMT trip, according to McKenna, one may burst through a chrysanthemum-like mandala, and find: There's a whole bunch of entities waiting on the other side, saying "How wonderful that you're here! You come so rarely! We're so delighted to see you!" They're like jewelled self-dribbling basketballs and there are many of them and they come pounding toward you and they will stop in front of you and vibrate, but then they do a very disconcerting thing, which is they jump into your body and then they jump back out again and the whole thing is going on in a high-speed mode where you're being presented with thousands of details per second and you can't get ahold on [them ...] and these things are saying "Don't give in to astonishment", which is exactly what you want to do. You want to go nuts with how crazy this is, and they say "Don't do that. Pay attention to what we're doing". What they're doing is making objects with their voices, singing structures into existence. They offer things to you, saying "Look at this! Look at this!" and as your attention goes towards these objects you realise that what you're being shown is impossible. It's not simply intricate, beautiful and hard to manufacture, it's impossible to make these things. The nearest analogy would be the Fabergé eggs, but these things are like the toys that are scattered around the nursery inside a U.F.O., celestial toys, and the toys themselves appear to be somehow alive and can sing other objects into existence, so what's happening is this proliferation of elf gifts, which are moving around singing, and they are saying "Do what we are doing" and they are very insistent, and they say "Do it! Do it! Do it!" and you feel like a bubble inside your body beginning to move up toward your mouth, and when it comes out it isn't sound, it's vision. You discover that you can pump "stuff" out of your mouth by singing, and they're urging you to do this. They say "That's it! That's it! Keep doing it!". We're now at minute 4.5 [of the trip] and you speak in a kind of glossolalia. There is a spontaneous outpouring of syntax unaccompanied by what is normally called "meaning". After a minute or so of this the whole thing begins to collapse in on itself and they begin to physically move away from you. Usually their final shot is that they wave goodbye and say "Deja vu! Deja vu!". This concept may be related to a tendency for the brain to imagine living entities during certain altered states. The best example of this is the extremely common feeling of a living presence during sleep paralysis (which has been theorized as the origin of the succubus, as well as a common theme in many alien abduction stories). However, Terence McKenna and Dr. Rick Strassman have both asserted the sense of reality of the experience is distinct from ordinary hallucinatory experiences, leading both researchers to speculate that perhaps the physics of many worlds is involved. Jacques Vallee has proposed that the entities met may be of an interdimensional nature in his interdimensional hypothesis.

James Kent has put forth a different explanation for machine elves. Kent postulates that the DMT landscape is simply disrupting or "editing" our processing of visual information and causing a chaotic interpretation of it inspired by hyperactive phosphene activity. The brain may fill in the blanks and since we all have an affinity for anthropomorphic things, a humanoid entity may appear out of all this chaos. Our "imaginal workplace" will take the center stage in brain activity, allowing internal data to be interpreted as external stimuli.

When reflecting upon his experiences Aldous Huxley suggested that there was something, which he called Mind at Large, which was filtered by the ordinary functioning of the human brain to produce ordinary experience.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
One theory could be that the drug is distorting the visual perception of what the user of the drug sees because the drug is forcing his or her consciousness to see in to a place unnaturally instead of them performing this feat on their own naturally without drug use...

...
 

wwkirk

Divine
DMT, Aliens, and Reality—Part 1

Strassman (2001) reported that “about half” of the 60 volunteers entered what he described as “freestanding, independent levels of existence” of a highly unusual nature. These places were inhabited by what volunteers described as intelligent “beings”, “entities”, “aliens”, “guides”, and “helpers”. These appeared in a variety of forms, such as “clowns, reptiles, mantises, bees, spiders, cacti, and stick figures.” These beings have been reported by other investigators, including Terrence McKenna, who described them as “self-transforming machine elves,” as well as in more sober case reports from research on people with schizophrenia conducted in the 1950s. Strangely enough, reports of these kinds of beings seem to be unique to DMT, as Strassman was unable to find anything similar in the research literature on other psychedelic drugs.


There were some consistent themes in experiences of entity contact. Participants frequently reported that the beings seemed to be waiting for them. Volunteers were subjected to an examination by these beings in what appeared to be a technologically advanced setting. Volunteers felt like their mind and body was probed and tested, or even modified in some unexplained way. The beings communicated with the user through gestures, telepathy, or visual imagery. Sometimes the entities seemed loving and caring, other times emotionally detached. Strassman noted the striking parallels between these entity contact experiences and accounts of alien abduction. He considered that “alien abduction” experiences might occur due to the spontaneous release of naturally occurring DMT in the human brain, although this theory has never been tested.


Intriguingly, many volunteers refused to believe that these experiences were hallucinations or dreams, as they seemed too real. Strassman reported being initially quite baffled by and unprepared for the frequency of these entity experiences among his volunteers. In his book he even entertains the idea that these entities are genuine inhabitants of some sort of normally invisible alternative reality, perhaps of a parallel universe.


From a hard-nosed scientific perspective, such claims are hard to believe, to say the least. The idea that there are invisible realities inhabited by intelligent entities that cannot be detected by any empirical means but can be perceived only by people who are in altered states of brain chemistry is difficult to reconcile with a modern scientific worldview. Strassman expresses a more general belief in what I would call psychedelic mysticism. This is the belief that psychedelic drugs including LSD and psilocybin, as well as DMT, can provide true insights into the deeper nature of reality. For example, after using these drugs, people may become convinced that there are realities beyond the everyday one, that there is life after death, and that there is an objective spiritual presence in the universe.

DMT, Aliens, and Reality—Part 2


 

wwkirk

Divine
One theory could be that the drug is distorting the visual perception of what the user of the drug sees because the drug is forcing his or her consciousness to see in to a place unnaturally instead of them performing this feat on their own naturally without drug use...

...
A drug might enable one to perceive objectively real entities if it were somehow enhancing perception. But as far as I know, psychedelic drugs distort perception rather than enhancing it. They induce hallucinations.

I've never used DMT, but many, many years ago I would take LSD from time to time. Nothing I experienced through it was objectively real.
 

spacecase0

earth human
I tend to think the idea of assemblage point is a good one, I have played with it quite a bit and it appears to work quite well.
I suspect the chemicals just move it forcibly
 

spacecase0

earth human

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
I would favor a subconsciously created experience...unless one can prove that the soul momentarily leaves the body during the experience as with astral projection.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
“The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

I don't completely trust myself when under the influence of anything, even a couple of beers. Drugs lower inhibitions and alter perception but don't actually add anything. This is why mean drunks are so difficult to contend with - nothing comes out under the influence that isn't there already so the daylight apologies ring a bit hollow.

Like @wwkirk I experimented with various hallucinogens years ago and never found them to be anything other than entertainment. Quite involved entertainment at some points. No idea how we never got arrested.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
I would favor a subconsciously created experience...unless one can prove that the soul momentarily leaves the body during the experience as with astral projection.

The soul doesn't need to leave the body, the mind body could have created this distorted reality using the drugs...

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