Tummo, DMT, sound and vibratory patterns

There is an ongoing research about DMT, the dreamstate and spirituality.
DMT seems to be an endogen drug that naturally opens the gates during death (DMT level increases during death), induces dreams (fe look how easy it is to forget what just happened when you awake from the most amazing dreams or DMTexperiences).

In the DMT experience one will have contact to other "spiritual beeings". Everybody says one can not discribe them but they look astonishing like this patterns:

There seems also to be a close and important relation between the unenlightened normal state and the dream state managed by this substance.

There will be a study published this year that shows the increase of DMT levels in the brain during execises of breath retention (fe tummo), which fits into Ramana Maharshis saying that the retention of breath leads to the death of Ego.

Just wanted to share and know if somebody here has experience with this sound-pattern-visions in meditation.

Only vaguely - two or three times I had sleep-paralysis type nightmares from which I woke up to discover myself hallucinating. There appeared to be a flowing curtain of blooming geometric shapes of all colors in the air, even with my eyes open. It was similar to hallucinations I had had many years before when a few times I took mushrooms or LSD in college. It went away after five minutes or so. It never happened besides those few times, which were in a period of a month or so sometime after 1st path but before 3rd. I was also having a lot of intense visual activity (mystical visions, imagery) and energetic phenomena during meditation at that time.

The only other vaguely similar thing is the "blue pearl" - a single pulsing violet sphere that shifts and swells, looking a bit like an amoebic supernova or some stellar gas cloud. It appears to be located somewhere out in front of me (eyes closed). This happens sporadically for no apparent reason and is accompanied by bliss. It occasionally happens during sleep (wakes me up in that case) and occasionally during meditation. It never happened before awakening.

All of these phenomena have a "slowness" to them which that video does not. A pulsing, tidal quality, not a rapid buzzing or vibration.

Hey There Loco,

I experience the flower of life type patterns while sitting with eyes open, I think they are the concentric circles pattern mentioned in the strata of mind map, that occur during the pureland jhanas. I can access these quickly and easily, and also just cycle through them if I just sit and do nothing.

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/20+Major+Strata+of+Mind

looks like this to me:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tube-Torus_Se...f-Life_Ratcheted.svg

which is also coincidentally the pattern that many associate with the crown chakra ( more complex version ie 1000 petal lotus, and the heart chakra, simpler version )

EDIT: nicer versions:

rdlabs.org/~tsunami/files/pix/sahasrara_mandala.jpg & rdlabs.org/~tsunami/files/pix/buddha.dhammapada.jpg

metta!

Justin

That's very interesting. I never experienced much in the way of visual effects during tummo. I wonder if it corresponds to advanced practice, or is just a very low-dose mechanism.

Does anyone have thoughts about how tummo-style enlightenment relates to developmental vs. sudden enlightenment? Is there a permanent shift that happens at some point or is it a use-it-or-lose-it propostion?

Both my sleeping and awake experiences have become gradually more psychedelic over the last number of months. Pretty much every time I close my eyes I can find some dots of bright colors that I become interested in and just grow in vividness and interestingness.

My wild guess is that consistently high seratonin levels due to meditation are allowing this to show up. I also think that I continue to drop resistance towards chaotic experiences and require reality to make less sense, allowing a relaxing into whatever is appearing

"My wild guess is that consistently high seratonin levels due to meditation are allowing this to show up. "

Okay, this is something I'm not aware of: the effect of meditation on serotonin. I take 5-HTP and it's something a person has to be careful with, because you can overdo it. So, how does this work? At what point does serotonin increase? Is there any science on this? Thanks.

My vote on this issue is that it's not really due to anything more than being far more aware of what's happening, eyes open or closed. Over the course of my practice I have become more likely to notice all manner of visual effects, those like Orasis reports but others, too, like no longer being able to see the smoothly blurred version of objects as I pan my vision. What appears now is not blurred smoothness but a staccato series of still images. I think we just get really tuned in to the smaller details, notice things we never did before because we weren't really attuned to them before.

This opinion to be taken with a grain of salt, of course...

Strassmann PhD, says that every night we experience this complete other dimension filled with "aliens", but because of the chemical properties of DMT we can not remember it, when we awake. Strange hu?

Even if I am pretty aware of my dreams it is impossible for me to enter that roam (that Joe Rogan and Terence McKenna describe in the Audios), but that we all seem to enter every night. Would be interested if its possible to trigger it with meditation?

Joe rogan on DMT:

Terence Mckenna:

Strassman:

Is it not more likely that certain chemicals (both native to the body and introduced via consumption) trigger patterns of visual effects and sensory effects which we happily form into images that suit our culture/needs? Anyone who has meditated for a while becomes aware of this tendency of sensations to interact with thoughts and imagery and the ease with which the mind provides concepts to classify the raw data of the senses.

Not that the experiences that people have in sleep, meditation, trance, or under the influence of drugs are in any way "false" - but they are just more dancing mind stuff, and not more or less special than any other sort of experiences, are they? If you think they are, why?

Thanks for posting that McKenna clip Loco have never heard it in its totality except as sampled in a song of one of my all time favorite music projects. Shpongle

The gnomes have learned a new way to say hooray. Put on earphones and float away.



Is forever grateful for what DMT in the form of ayahuasca have done for me. Never smoked the stuff but I will when it comes my way. Exited to hear if any advanced yogi is able to enter this through meditation.

An interesting experience came to me laying in bed yesterday. Completely out of the blue I started having closed eyes visuals of morphing geometric patterns in a slight blueish, greyish color. They where of the same kind I've experienced while drinking my own brewed ayahuasca a few times. Never got the brew very strong but definitely working. This lasted for about 2 min along with intense throbbing in the third eye. Got too interested I believe and it faded and I had a hard time sleeping afterwards. This magic is in your brain

"
Not that the experiences that people have in sleep, meditation, trance, or under the influence of drugs are in any way "false" - but they are just more dancing mind stuff, and not more or less special than any other sort of experiences, are they? If you think they are, why?"

I guess its all dancing minds: awakening, jhanas, neurosis, mindstates of children, animals, plants, ecstasy and sorrow, psychological disorders.

and no matter what with every mindstate comes the feeling of having the truth, even when a girl with an eating disorder is starving to death she will feel too fat and the guy in paranoia is sure to be more right with his conspiracy than the psychiatrist.

What seems to be special about DMT is that
1. we are all on physiological DMT-Trip every night between REM and deep sleep and can not remember it, enlightened or not. that is not the case with lsd, mdma,etc. where are we, when we are not here?
2. experienced people describe it as something different than a hallucinogenic experience, it's more a concrete multidimensional place not an abstract experience like hallucinogens
3. it could be that this beeings who seem to live there, be what the shamans say, ancestors, it could be than related to the bardos like McKenna brilliantly suggests:


tummo is famous for beeing the technique that enables one to enter the roams of beeing like the animal kingdom and plants, hells, gods and halfgods, bardos, etc.

now science tells us that it increases the DMT level, a substance that if taken as ayahuasca is well known for understanding the roam of plants and animals or if smoked for these roams of beeings who sing things into existence (angel choirs in heaven ?) it is also interesting that everybody experiences more or less the same there other than with other substances.

so it could be that it is not a mindgame but a "real" place, as they are described in the buddhist texts as "roams of beeing". in the sense of something that will really happen to everybody after death.

who can say in the face of these experiences that the texts are to be taken metaphorically, just because we can not enter those places via meditation? probably the guys who wrote the texts could.

I think there is more to the real enlightenment than having no thoughts, no ego, live in peace, happy and harmless or whatever definitions modern guys come up with.

my definition of enlightenment is tibetan and from the 16th karmapa: "knowing all things that happen in all universes at all times" ) thats why i find these things always fascinating.

even if they have nothing to do with what we define as "enlightenment" and means basically the end of thoughts.

I have a pretty solid experience with tummo but I haven't approached the roam the guys describe, even if it sounds all very, very familiar to me. It seems to me that I could have been there decades ago when I was a child and seriously ill, in a hot, feverish dream or something. an here comes bodily heat/tummo into the game again.

"who can say in the face of these experiences that the texts are to be taken metaphorically, just because we can not enter those places via meditation? probably the guys who wrote the texts could.

"

I've wondered about that a lot. I understand why people doubt these things, but rebirth seems pretty explicit in the Pali Canon at least:

"When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished... I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two... five, ten... fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand... 'There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I reappeared there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I reappeared here.' Thus I remembered my manifold past lives in their modes & details.

'These beings '” who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech, & mind... *with the breakup of the body, after death*, have re-appeared in a plane of deprivation, a bad destination, a lower realm, hell. But these beings '” who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech, & mind...'

Bikkhu Bodhi sheds light on the controversy: www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/bps-essay_06.html

"Viewed in their totality, the Buddha's discourses show us that far from being a mere concession to the outlook prevalent in his time or an Asiatic cultural contrivance, the doctrine of rebirth has tremendous implications for the entire course of Dhamma practice, affecting both the aim with which the practice is taken up and the motivation with which it is followed through to completion."

What's this a metaphor for?

Ven. Ānanda: Venerable sir, does the Blessed One have direct experience of going to the Brahmā world by means of supranormal power with a mind-made body?

The Buddha: Yes, Ānanda...

Ven. Ānanda: But does the Blessed One also have direct experience of going to the Brahmā world by means of supranormal power with this very physical body, composed of the four great elements?

The Buddha: Yes...

(From Thanissaro Bikkhu's book Wings to Awakening, which is actually very practical and useful. www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/than...s/part2.html#part2-d )