Non-duality and 5meo-DMT
A couple of months ago, I embarked on an expanded-states journey with some dear friends and a few strangers. We met in the Mission district in San Francisco to experience the most powerful psychedelic known to man: 5-Methoxy-N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT), colloquially called “The God Molecule.”
The promise of 5-MeO-DMT, particularly at higher dosages, is to bring the user to a state of non-duality.. The 5-MeO-DMT experience has been likened to the deepest yogic samadhi state and is sometimes described as a dress rehearsal for when the body dies. Non-duality, which means "not two" or "one without a second," refers to the idea that all things are interconnected at the most fundamental level and part of a unified reality. This concept is central to most spiritual traditions and is the ultimate goal of many meditators. While it may be ontologically true, it is not concordant with our usual way of experiencing the world. If you truly did not have a sense of separation of yourself from the rest of creation, you would not be able to bring the fork to your mouth to take a mouthful of food.
I meditate sporadically and am surely in the 99.9th percentile for having experiences with non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelics, both in terms of the number of experiences I have had and certainly the intensity of several of those experiences. I mention this not to brag but simply to say that I thought I might be somewhat prepared for the experience, that it might be more of the same. However, in retrospect, nothing could have prepared me for the 5-MeO-DMT journey.
For example, I am extremely familiar and quite comfortable with the typical experience of ego loss, where the boundary between our sense of self and the rest of existence dissolves. This experience of ego loss with psychedelics is similar in many ways to the ego loss that can be achieved with decades of hard work through meditation. What I learned in the 5-MeO-DMT experience is that ego loss has levels. 5-MeO-DMT results in near immediate and total ego death, in other words, the total and complete loss of self. Even space and time cease to be relevant- only awareness remains.
As I recounted my journey to others, several asked me if I was scared, and the answer was, “There was no me to be scared.” Truthfully, there was no idea of “me,” i.e., literally, “I” was "no-where." That said, there was still pure, uninterrupted awareness throughout the entire experience. The only way I can describe it, fully knowing that this explanation carries little meaning to anyone who hasn't tried it, is as a profound sense of the entirety of all of existence happening at once.
Wrap your head around that!
In the span of what was only about 15 minutes to the observers in the room, I couldn't tell you if I was under for 15 minutes or 1,000 years. I am not being hyperbolic here. If I had woken up in another reality or another timeline, I would not have been surprised. Thankfully, this was not the case! Awareness was completely untethered from the concept of time or space or anything related to “my story” – name, age, loved ones, memories, hopes, dreams... absolutely nothing that separated the idea of me from the totality of reality was left.
As I started rushing back to myself, i.e., to the perspective that I recognized as me, I felt that in that experience of everything, the answer to any question I could ever have was available. As I continued to come more and more back into existence, there was a profound recognition that “You can't take all of this back with you, or you won't be able to live your life as you are meant to.”
Bummer…
Towards the tail end of the journey, I was in pure, white light. The room and the sense of my body literally pixilated back into existence. Overwhelming bliss and joy filled me at the realization of seeing my friends, knowing that somewhere out there, my kids were living their lives, my mom was a few miles away doing her thing, and I’d soon be seeing my partner. What a life! So much overwhelming gratitude!
I was left with a lot to contemplate, and frankly, it was challenging to integrate back into this world for a few days after the experience. Reality is so much deeper than what we normally perceive. I have since tried to make sense of it and articulate it in a way that makes sense to me.
One of the things I have tried to articulate is what it is like to experience non-duality. I came up with an overly simple analogy. Imagine that the totality of reality—meaning the entirety of creation, from its beginning to the present moment, with no separation of time, space, or self—is an RGB color space, similar to what you might see in a color wheel or color picker in an editing program like Photoshop.
In a basic color picker, any color can be described by three numbers corresponding to Red, Green, and Blue. These numbers represent the brightness of red, green, and blue pixels on the monitor to generate a specific color. In this analogy, the entire color space, with all the available colors displayed on the monitor, represents all of reality.
Now, imagine yourself as a specific color in that color space at this moment. For example, if you are Red 255, Green 0, Blue 0, your experience is of pure red. This color is meant to represent the totality of the experience at that unique and fleeting perspective of the present moment, including your thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences both from within and outside your body.
A friend in the same room as you, sharing many similar experiences, would have a color close to yours but not exactly the same as yours. Let's say their color is represented as Red 255, Green 3, Blue 1, a slightly different shade of red. This slight difference reflects their unique perspective of the present moment, including their thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences both from within and outside their body.
Now consider a Roman soldier on a battlefield in the distant past. His experience would be vastly different from the shared experience you and your friend are having in the same room. Different times, different geographic areas, different tasks—so, by way of example, let’s say his color is Red 128, Green 64, Blue 255- far, far away from the colors of you and your friend.
Again, the totality of every possible experience, experienced by every experiencer at every single moment of every life, is represented by a unique color in the total color space of all colors. In this analogy, the experience of a singular color at a time is how we usually experience our regular, lived experience of reality. In our everyday experience, we feel as if we are a separate entity, moving through different colors on this vast color space, witnessing our unique individual perspectives and experiences as we march forward through time and space with all the related thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc.
Well, what happens when we erase that sense of separation? What happens when you experience the totality of the color space simultaneously? You realize that the idea that you are only one color at a time (i.e., are separate from the rest of existence) is purely an illusion resulting from the separation of ego and that it is only because of this sense of separation that you only see one color at a time. This bit about separation being an illusion is what spiritual teachers have pointed out for millennia. This wisdom about the illusion of separation can also be independently arrived at through a purely analytical approach (e.g. Analytical Idealism as articulated by Bernardo Kastrup) or arrived at independently through years of meditation or working with expanded states using the classic psychedelics.
However, these approaches are just a tiny taste of what the full embrace of non-duality is like. When you have completely lost the boundary of self and thus access the full experience of the color wheel at once (i.e. the full experience of all of reality at once), you naturally can not have an experience of space, time, or any particular perspective because the totality of reality has no spatial, temporal or perspectival reference to look from or to. Space, time, and perspective are all within the totality, i.e. space, time, and perspective are a small part of the whole.
In color theory, what happens when you get all of the color space, all of reality, at once? You get a complete absence of color, or what the Buddhists refer to as the void (FYI, In the RBG color space, the “average” color is represented as Red 128, Green 128, Blue 128, which is medium grey, i.e. no color). The void is really the experience of everything simultaneously, which ironically feels like an experience of nothingness. My teacher calls the void “the fullness” because it is actually the fullness of everything at once, although it is experienced as nothing or as void.
In this void, there is no distinction between self and other, no separation of time or space, just a pure, undifferentiated awareness of everything. This state is beyond any possible intellectual understanding of what the void may feel like. It is not a fleeting glimpse but a profound, immersive experience that transcends the ordinary boundaries of perception and existence. It is a realization that the separation we perceive in our daily lives is an illusion, and at the most fundamental level, we are always and have always been one with the entirety of reality, albeit looking at it from different perspectives.
From my “God Molecule” experience, I came back with much more than just this analogy for non-duality. Perhaps most importantly, I returned with a deep, unwavering faith in the eternal continuity of awareness. A friend of mine, who had a 5-MeO-DMT experience a few months before me, told me that for him, “Suicide is off the table now. There is no escape,” which makes a lot of sense in this context.
Would I recommend 5-MeO-DMT to others? The short answer is maybe. This molecule is not for everyone, and perhaps more so than any other psychedelic experience, it is critical that your guide be of the very highest caliber. I had waited for over three years for the opportunity that felt right for me. If you are called to experience 5MeO, don’t just jump at the first available opportunity; really do your homework on who is serving. Although extremely rare, and unlike every other psychedelic we are aware of, this is the one molecule that truly has the potential to untether a person, even if all precautions are in place. The experience can shatter the ontological footing most of us have lived with our entire lives, challenging our very concept of what is real at the deepest level. Frankly, I’m not certain I was ready for the experience, or if it is even possible to be ready, or if “ready” is even a concept that has any bearing here at all.
In conclusion, the journey with 5-MeO-DMT is a profound exploration of the self and the nature of reality. It can challenge our fundamental perceptions and offer a glimpse into a state of existence that certainly defies ordinary experience. While the experience can be transformative, it is not to be undertaken lightly. The depths of non-duality and the void are not just concepts to be understood but profound states to be experienced, with all the accompanying challenges and revelations. For those who venture into this realm, it can provide a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of all things and the eternal continuity of awareness. However, such a journey requires careful consideration and a readiness to face the profound and sometimes unsettling truths that lie within the fabric of existence.