DMT and the Beauty of Delirium

Dimethyltryptamine, or “DMT,” is a chemical produced in the pineal gland (between the two hemispheres of your brain) that is released in great quantities when you are born and when you die. DMT is also the active ingredient of many traditional psychedelics used for spiritual purposes by indigenous groups around the world. From what I understand, DMT is also somewhat responsible for regulating our perception of reality.

What I find so fascinating about DMT is that it seems to be a chemical produced by the brain in order to soften the transition in to, and out of, living. DMT is known to be perhaps the most extreme mind altering substance—a substance that is so much a part of us, we cannot distinguish it from our minds.

DMT seems to break down the barriers between different states of consciousness—to take you beyond that which is “yourself” and show you that which is all.

But is this experience unique to taking DMT, dying, or being born? It does not seem so. We are always experiencing different filters of reality, and to assume that our waking, physical, sense-based state is the only “true” state seems illogical. If there were no significance to many different ways we perceive things, then why do different perceptions exist at all?

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Throughout the past month or so, I have felt more or less exhausted. I suspect I have mono, though I am not sure. It is frustrating to be so debilitated. But there is another side to this mess. There is a certain beauty to the feeling when you are sick, tired, or helpless. There is a part of yourself that becomes present, calm, and contemplative. And though I may not have the physical energy to venture out, it gives me the opportunity to journey far into the depths of my mind.

I call this the beauty of delirium.

We all know what it feels like to have to catch an early plane. You wake up at 3 AM, trying to remember everything you need. You most likely stayed up late packing, reassuring yourself that you can “sleep on the plane” to make up for lost hours.

And when, after maybe waiting for a delay, or eating some snack completely unsuited for 5:30 AM, you board the plane and settle into your seat. You cannot sleep. The plane is silent, save the buzzing of the motor or the wheels of the beverage cart rolling slowly down the aisle.

At this point, it is probably different for everyone. But out there, gliding over everything I know, everything that normally fills our eyes and minds, I float deeper than my thoughts normally take me—I fall not to sleep, but into a state perhaps just as dreamlike.

There is also just general late-night tiredness—when you are alone in the dark and the silence and your thoughts turn faster and faster until the sun rises and you seem to sink into the morning light and only then do you feel tired. It was in this state that I began to write.

This state comes with sickness as well, which is what I have been feeling this past month. Once, when I was very young, I was riding in the car to the doctor’s office. My parents were worried about my high fever, but I didn’t feel sick. I felt like I was floating. I remember sitting in the back seat, tracing the clouds with my finger. I wondered if I found a cloud small enough, could I squeeze it into water and drink it from my own hands?

But perhaps the most common state of delirium (not induced by intoxicants) is dreaming. Some people do not remember their dreams, some can even control their dreams (lucid dreaming), and some are simply perplexed by their dreams. I would put myself in the third category.

My dreams are so vivid that sometimes, I cannot remember if I dreamt something or if it really happened. I have heard many things about dreaming—that if you die in your dream, you die in real life. False. I have died in my dream so many times. I have died and come back to watch my own funeral, or wander the world as a ghost, trying to help people find their way.

The Talmud says that sleep is 1/60th of death, and dreaming is 1/60th of prophesy. But what does this all mean? What is the significance of these states when your mind is not totally present in your body?

It seems that the boundaries between these states—sleep, dreaming, waking, morning, night, hallucination—are not so clear. Now, the question seems to be—what can we learn from all of these states of consciousness? How can we truly live in harmony with the many ways to perceive reality?