2008_-_ER_-_Disembodied_Eyes-libre.pdf

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VOLUME XVII, NUMBER I VERNAL EQUINOX 2008

1THE ENTHEOGEN REVIEW, POB 19820, SACRAMENTO, CA 95819-0820, USA

Disembodied Eyes Revisited:

An Investigation into the Ontology of

Entheogenic Entity Encountersby David Luke

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan(1816)

All that glitters is not gold.Such a maximmight well serve any psychic voyager on a journeyinto the weirder realms that psychedelics can serveup. After all, out here on the edges there is seldomfirm evidence that the beatific or hellish visions

beheld whilst chemically neurohacking yourwetware have any basis in consensus reality. In-deed these visions are often so extravagantlystrange and terrifyingly ineffable that remindingyourself they are notreal can serve to keep yoursanity on a short leash when madness looms. Nev-ertheless, as John Lilly put it, how does one recog-nize ones in-sanity from ones out-sanity? And inany case, how would one even begin to try andprove the ontological credibility of the psychedelicexperience of visiting some other world or meet-ing some alien entity? No one has yet put forward

a solid method for testing these supposed realitieswithin the domain of science, despite some admi-rable attempts recently (e.g., Rodriguez 2007)1, soall we have left to rely on is anecdote and phe-nomenology. This story lies somewhere betweenthe two, but it also takes on a new dimension thathas urged me to depart momentarily from the fruitsof science into the foamy custard of folkloreand myth, cultural studies and related disciplines.2

Yet it seemingly has enough semblance of objec-tivity to warrant a whisper of truthwhatever thatmay be.

Id taken a full DMT dose (~50 mg smoked) aboutforty or fifty times, but always with some trepida-tion and reverence for its power. True to form, Imet a variety of extraordinary entities on theseexcursions. (As Terence McKenna3once said, Youget elves, everybody does.) Sometimes I saw un-known god-like beings, sometimes shape-shifting

Virus025

NaotoHattori

www.naotohattori.com


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2 THE ENTHEOGEN REVIEW, POB 19820, SACRAMENTO, CA 95819-0820, USA

mischievous impsbut increasingly I kept gettingthe feeling I was intruding upon a cosmic gather-ing to which I wasnt invited. Occasionally theeffects failed to go any further than an ego-disso-lution and a swim through a fractal explosion ofpulsing light with the usual wild array of colors.

Yet I often felt as though I was being blocked fromwhatever lurked beyond these multiple geometricdimensions, as well as not being allowed to revisitplaces to which I had been previously. A couple oftimes I felt so uninvited and intimidated by theentities I met that I did not wish to return, regard-less of my curiosity.

On my last DMT session I was determined to re-turn to the mystic bliss I had once known. I trav-elled to a secluded beach on the banks of the River

Ganges. I prepared myself with an improvisedritual, hoping to gird against whatever lay beyond,and I inhaled a pipe-full of vapors from the foulplastic-tasting resin. Sucked into the space betweenthe pipe and my brain, I found myself breakingthrough the veil like a gatecrasher into a party ofswirling, smiling eyeballs all attached to snake bod-ies, which were as startled to see me as I was to bethere. The whole ordered assortment of eyes andsnakes acted as one being. In the brief moment

before it reacted to my arrival, I managed to catcha glimpse over what might loosely be described as

the shoulder of this strange entity and instantlyrealized that I had seen something I should nothavea brief glance at the truly forbidden.

Afterwards I could not remember what this wasexactly, having somehow blocked it out. I only re-call that it was a scene that seemed both ineffableand highly illegal for mortal minds. Then the mul-titudinous eyes of the being before me suddenlyand quite deliberately blocked my curiousconsciousnesss further explorations by mesmeriz-

ing me with its squirming, rhythmic eyeball hyp-nosis. I mean, this thing really scared me! It hadacted with utter surprise at my being there; andthen, alarmed, the ominous numinous proceededto let me know that I should notbe there and thatI should certainly not be peering into the hallowedspace beyond it, which it clearly guarded. I optedagainst defying this terrifying entity and attemptedto remain as passive as possible while it pulsed and

gyrated intimidatingly at me for the next ten min-utes (though it seemed like an aeon). I finally cameout of it alla bit shell-shockedand decided thatthis would be my last DMT experience for a longtime, at least.

Like many of my psychedelic encounters withseemingly discarnate beings, I didnt know quitewhat to make of this experience, which had rockedme to the core. Yet some time later, after a few yearshad passed, I began to piece it together with someother visionary fragments. In a dream once, quitenaively, I had a mind-blowing encounter with

Azraelthe Islamic angel of death. The angel toldme its name (which I hadnt heard before), but un-fortunately it never showed itself. Among Muslimsthe archangel Azrael is considered to have ten thou-

sand eyes and it is the holy psychopomp who ush-ers souls into the realm of the dead. A similar char-acter, Azrailthe god of deathbelongs to theHuasa people of western Africa (Besmer 1983). Ialso stumbled across Ezekials vision of the cheru-

bim guarding a throne in the bible (Ezekial 10:12).They, too, were covered in a multitude of eyes, allover their hands, backs, wings, etc., much like themulti-eyed beasts guarding the throne of God inheaven mentioned in Revelations (4:6). These de-scriptions struck a cord of recognition, althoughthe being I had met on DMT had not seemed quite

so angelic.

It wasnt until several years later that I made a sur-prising discovery when I accidentally came acrossa reference in a book on Tibetan magic to an an-cient deity, by the name of Za (or gza), who isknown to appear with half the body of a snake, noless, and is covered in a thousand eyes. Interest-ingly, like the cherubim guarding the throne, theTibetan Za functions as a protector of the law andis a guardian deity belonging to a class of demon-

gods called Lu or Lhamayin (associated with theIndian nagas), who appear with snake bodies. Theauthor, Beyer (1978), wrote: These lu areundisputedly the spirits of the [underworld], foundin those places where their realm impinges uponours, such as in springs, wells, and rivers Thisstruck an even greater chord when I realized thaton the last occasion I had smoked DMT, I was onthe banks of the River Ganges near the Tibetan


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border, which in retrospect would seem like a sureway to meet this Tibetan deity.

The idea that I had been interloping into the sa-cred realm of the dead, the underworld, and was

blocked by a powerful guardian spirit sat well withmy experience, which had me wishing I hadntturned up unexpected and obviously not on the

guest list. Knowing I shouldnt be there, I clearlyrecall spending the duration of the trip trying tokeep my tryptamined mind inconspicuous. And soI focused on the mesmeric rhythmic eyes and noth-ing more, realizing that Id stolen a glance at someholy grail when I had burst through the veil. Theentity responded quickly and I couldnt have beenmore compelled to not mess with it. This feelingwas further corroborated by Beyer (1978) whowrote that, in relation to Za and the other fierceprotector gods, they:

are the powerful deities who symbolize cur-rents of cosmic force to be tampered with onlyat ones peril. They constitute the monastic cult[of the Nyingma yoginthe oldest Tibetansect] because they are best left to the ritualexperts. It is not that their cult is particularlysecret, just as there is nothing esoteric aboutthe workings of a television set; but in bothinstances the forces involved are too potentto be played with by a layman, and in bothinstances the same warning applies.

The ancient protector Za.From an iconographic sketch by Tendzin yongd (Beyer 1978).

A peaceful luand a fierce lu.From a sketch by Tendzin yongd (Beyer 1978).

Tibetan image of Za (Rahu).From the collection of Mike Crowley.


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The same sentiment was echoed by the notedscholar of Tibetan demons, Nebesky-Wojkowitz(1956) who offered that the Nyingmapa considerthe planetary god Za (Rahu) to belong in the high-est trinity of deities and that he guards the reli-gious teachings, and his thousand eyes watch the

happenings in the three worlds. Worryingly,Nebesky-Wojkowitz indicates that the elaboratepropitiatory cake (gtor ma) made to honor Rahu(Za) is constructed of a large red serpentine pyra-mid dotted geometrically with numerous eyes and

bearing stakes arranged around the base of thegtor ma on which dough effigies of men and ani-mals have been impaled as offerings. (Strangely,this eyed-pyramid bears some resemblance to the

be-tentacled pyramidal monster of Robert AntonWilson and Robert Sheas Illuminatus! Trilogy, theLeviathan). Beyer (1978) even submits that a lama

led him to believe that Nebesky-Wojkowitz diedaccidentally before his time because of his carelessinterest in these fierce protector deities.

Reading Beyers account made me feel particularlyalarmed that there had been some objective realityto my encounter and that, seemingly, I had actu-ally run into this Tibetan underworld guardian.

But these few coincidences barely constituteenough to convince most folks of the objective re-ality of DMT entities or Tibetan deities. Nor shouldthey, particularly those folks like James Kent(2004), who argue that these entities are merelythe imaginary output of our neurochemical

meddlings. Others have suggested that these enti-ties cannot be considered either real or fictitious

but are better thought of as just a part of ourselves(Turner 1995). It might have ended there but, soonafter, I discovered that my unique experience wasnot so unique after all. And this discovery threat-ened to bolster the tentative argument that ourparticular DMT entity, who we could call Za, mighthave some objective realityand then so too mightall those other beings we encounter along the wayto Chapel Perilous, be they mischievous dwarves,

machine elves, ancient gods, or praying mantis aliens.

Only a few days after reading about Za, I chancedacross an article by Meyer (1994) titled ApparentCommunication with Discarnate Entities Induced

by Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), in which thefollowing account appeared:

I noticed what seemed to be an opening into alarge space, like looking through a cave open-ing to a starry sky. As I approached this I sawthat resting in the opening was a large crea-

ture, with many arms, somewhat like an octo-pus, and all over the arms were eyes, mostly closed,as if the creature were asleep or slumbering. AsI approached it the eyes opened, and it/they

became aware of me. It did not seem especiallywell-disposed towards me, as if it did not wishto be bothered by a mere human, and I had theimpression I wasnt going to get past it, so I didnot try. [Emphasis added.]

That this creature was also quite intimidating andappeared to be guarding the way to something be-yond matched my own experience; but it doesntend there. I was conducting a web survey of para-normal psychedelic experiences at the time (Luke& Kittenis 2005) and found that one of my respon-dents also had a similar experience, but with psilo-cybin rather than DMT:

Sketch of red-colored gtor mapropitiatory dough cakededicated to Za (Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1956).


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I was convinced I was [dying], I saw anotherdimension, one filled with eyes in a fibonaccivortex/dome Ive explained this to so manypeople and regardless of how many things I see,

be it in art or biblical references, they all sayIm nuts.

Encouraged by finding these chance reports, I be-gan searching through psychedelic journals andon the Internet for similar stories and found afew more corresponding accounts. This first oneoccurred with psilocybin-containing mushroomsand appeared in The Entheogen Review(Owl 1995):

I began seeing a peculiar phenomenon duringlow dose mushroom sessions: a pattern ofthreatening eyeballs. I intuited that the mush-room was trying to scare me, and I marveled at

the workings of the mind, feeling humoredrather than frightened. In spite of my scien-tifically-orientated worldview, I was being vis-ited by a spirit which seemed to be anticipat-ing a deeper encounter.

I took about five grams This is when I feltthe strange spirit enter me: the many-eyed ap-parition that had already been haunting myconsciousness. The difference was that this timethe creature seemed to be inside of me. Iinstinctively began questioning its intentionswho was it, what did it want, and was it a de-

mon? I received no answer, and so, not beingcertain it belonged in my head, [I] forcefullycommanded it to leave, which it apparently did.I had the creepy feeling that I was either go-ing crazy or was infected with a spooky deni-zen of hyperspace. Perhaps, like an insect un-der a magnifying lens, I have difficultyfathoming this mysterious being of a thousandeyes. Interestingly enough, one of my compan-ions later commented that at one point he per-ceived my forehead to be covered with eyes.

This next one, posted to Erowid.org, occurred onLSD (Trip333 2007):

Countless numbers of eyeballs were looking atme. They were the most evil things I have everseen. They were all on these snakelike bodiesthat were weaving back and forth. I reopenedmy eyes and saw the eyes and the worms allover me and on the ground.

Although I only found these three isolated reportson LSD and psilocybin, I found numerous DMTreports that mentioned eyeball-riddled snakeentities in variously weird or disturbing sequences.I neednt quote them all, as this last one offers somekind of radical empirical4mystical triangulation

of my own experience and a tentative interpreta-tion of it (Pup 2006):

I remember the veil, like rubber, or the surfaceof jelly stretched in front of me. I leaned for-ward to touch the surface of the membrane andthen what happened next I swear nearly killedme from its sheer bizzarity. A creatureemerged. It was not a happy, smiley elf. It had[innumerable] tentacles, like a cross betweensome weird octopus or jellyfishand the EYES!OH MY GOD THE EYES!!!

I froze on the spot thinking shit thats it. Ivegone and done it now. Im fucking toast. I never

believed. I should have believed. And now. NowI am at the mercy of [something] much, much,

bigger and complex, and clever and definitely[more] malevolent than myself.

I asked it [its] name. I wish I had not asked.[Its] voice utterly destroyed me. It was like be-ing caught in a storm of [psychic] noiseawhirlwind of deadly electrical shrapnel. Withits innumerable eyes, It gazed at me steady and

extended a tendril. At the same moment it fireda beam of light directly between and above myeyes. The alien laser was pinkish-green. It hurt.I begged it to stop. I whimpered. please stop.youre hurting me. Im fragile. Please be care-fulI am sentient and mean you no harm

It seemed to consider this; the laser was with-drawn but the tendrils (there were more now)still held me in place. I was trying to make outdetails of its shape or structure but the closer Ilooked, the more it slipped away from me. Itseemed to tell me in some weird non-verbal

fashion not to struggle and to stop making noisewith my eyes. I took this to mean be calm. donot struggle. clear your head. See but dont look.

Then it became a little clearer. It seemed to becloaked in some waysome sort of organichood and covering was wrapped around itsome sort of armour or protection. The tentacleshad no substance as we know it and the eyes


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were the most awe-inspiring/terrifying thing Ihave ever beheld. They defied counting. Theydefied reason. The whole thing was [too] muchand I felt myself losing my mind.

IJUSTLOSTITgoooooooooonnnnnne

I guess this account really did it for me. Thereseemed to be at least a degree of objective realityto all these reports (including mine), because theyhad historical precedent, shared experience, andmost importantlysome apparent meaning. On alevel playing field of explanation, where all theo-retical perspectives hold equally convincingorperhaps equally unconvincingpositions, the no-tion of meaningcan provide the greatest intuitiveappeal to ones understanding. For instance, aphysiological or neurotheological explanation

might suggest that the highly similar visions aredue to similar neurochemical reactions; but thiswill be seen by some to devalue the complexity andcultural significance of the experience, and italso extends itself much further than the current

explanatory power of neuroscience. Alternatively,a parapsychological explanation might suggest thatthese similar visions all belong to a particular mor-phogenetic field (a field of consciousness that con-tains imprints of past experiences which can beaccessed by others) activated by chemically-induced

near-death-type experiences. Yet there is little un-derstanding of or evidence for morphogenetic fieldsof this kind, even if they may be possible in prin-ciple (Sheldrake 1988). Any number of other theo-ries might be put forward. But with all such expla-nations appearing as equally uncompelling, thepossibility of this entity somehow being real as anindependently sentient discarnate beingwhat-ever that may behas comparable explanatorypower. However, beyond other ontological specu-lations this level of explanationan acceptance of

the experience at face valuealso has esoteric andcultural meaning because it fits with a mysticalunderstanding of the universe in which the exist-ence of supernatural beings is accepted.

That said, I have little problem, then, assuming thatentitiesbe they dream angels, DMT encounters,or mythical beingshave at least thepossibilityofindependent sentience or some kind of objectivereality, because I ultimately dont confine myselfto any one ontological perspective. So, as clearly asI can make sense of it, it seems that smoking DMT

can lead temporarily to some kind of death realman idea championed by Rick Strassman (2001) andsupported by shamanic concepts of ayahuascastatesand in such a place the traveler might en-counter one of the (archetypal) guardian deities ofthe underworld. One such guardian is the angel ofdeath, who appears with thousands of eyes, muchlike Alex Greys painting called Dying.5Yet it seemsthat sometimes this multi-eyed being also assumesthe tentacled or snake-bodied appearance of Za.

And like a guardian of the underworld no doubt

should be, this being is not to be trifled with. Itholds those who encounter it in the grip of utterfear, compelled to obey its hypnotic glareto justsee but dont lookbecause it seemingly guardsthe sacred way on after death.

On reflection, my encounters with both Za andAzrael have resonance with each other and possi-bly represent the same psychic atavism or JungianDyingby Alex Grey, 1990; www.alexgrey.com.


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archetype (albeit an archetype that may have in-dependent sentience), which may become activated

by tryptamines such as DMT, or by dreaming orother altered states. This entity is the archetype ofthe guardian of the realm of death and the door-way to occult knowledge. In considering this, I was

lucky enough to find a book by two occultists (Jack-son & Howard 2000) who offer an argument thatthe Islamic Azrael, the angel of death, is synony-mous with the Hebrew Azazel, the fallen angel oflight and the serpent of the Tree of Knowledge(who, as the Promethean prototype, stole the Gnos-tic fire from God and gave it to manin much thesame way that psychedelics can). They also associ-ate the Persian fallen angel Azza, or Shemyaza withthe Luciferian Azazel, who in similar Prometheanstyle swapped the name of God for sexual favors

with the mortal Ishtahar, thereby making her im-mortal.

Jackson and Howard likewise associate Azazel, thegreat watcher, with the Persian dragon serpent

Azhadaha, the black serpent of light and leader ofthe Inri, the fallen angels knownappropriatelyas the watchers. Interestingly, they link the ety-mology of the common root azwith the Hebrew

letters ayin (or ain in Arabic) meaning eye, andzayin(zainin Arabic) meaning sword, which rep-resent the all-seeing eye, and the flaming sword ofinitiation (the guardian of the Garden of Eden in

biblical and cabalistic tradition). Jackson andHoward (2000) suggest that, The secret signifi-

cance of the Zayin Sword is typified by Azazel asMaster of Metals and Lord of the Forge becausesmithcraft and fireworking were the crafts firsttaught to humans by the watchers, much like themyth of Prometheus. They note that:

The Hebrew letter-form of Zayin, z, the swordblade, is the supracosmic fire that, like a shin-ing lightning flash or thunderbolt, cutsthrough the veil of material nescience.

Assembling all these links, it didnt take a hugecognitive leap to also associate the Tibetaneyeballed serpent of my DMT encounter, Za, withthese anarchic archangels of other cultures. With-out making any great claims to the exclusive re-semblance of any of these myths to each otherfor these legends have both similarities and differ-encesfurther comparisons to Za and Azrael fromelsewhere can also be made, such as the PersianZahhak, also known in Iranian mythology as A ziDahaka the serpent or dragon, who was struckdown by the divine Fredon and snakes issued forth

from the wounds (Boyce 1975). Like Prometheushe was condemned to be chained to the side of amountain for eternity. The likely etymological linkhere between the interchanged ayin (a) and zayin(z) ofzaand azis itself compelling, especially inthe case of the Zahhak/Azi Dahaka, but the mythstory of Za himself has further resonance with theother fallen archangel and Promethean myths.

In Tibetan mythology, Za (known as Rahu in theIndian tradition) features in the Dri Med Zhel Phrengversion of the Buddhist churning of the oceans

story about the origins of the original entheogenicambrosia par excellence, amrita, or soma (Crowley1996). Having been left in charge of the Buddhasnewly made water of life (the amrita) before itssupposed dissemination to humanity, Vajrapani (as-sociated with the great soma-fiend Indra) carelesslyleft the sacred amrita unguarded and returned tofind the demon Za, the Lhamayin, had drunk it. In

Azazel appearing with numerous eyes,from The Sandman(Gaiman et al. 1991).


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further offence to the gods, Za urinated what re-mained of the processed amrita back into the ves-sel. As penance, Vajrapani was made to drink whathad now become poisonous, permanently turning

blue as a consequence. The similarities here be-tween the methods of enjoying amrita and psyche-

delicAmanitamushrooms have not gone unnoticed(Crowley 1996), and furthermore the link here

between the psychedelic and the Promethean fea-tures of the myth is clear.

As just punishment, Vajrapani finally caught upwith Za, wounded him many times, and then slicedhim in two with his vajra, the lightning bolt. But

because Za had drunk the amrita, the water of life,he survived; amrita translates from Sanskrit asdeathlessness, and it seems appropriate that this

guardian of the underworld himself should becomedeathless. As further punishment, the Buddhareplaced Zas severed legs with the tail of a serpentor dragon (much like the Iranian Azi Dahakaabove) and fixed eyeballs upon his numerouswounds, giving him his unique appearance.

Its here that I saw a further transcultural mythemerging with the legend of the Greek Lamia, theserpentine daimon and prophetess. The Lamia issomewhat similar in character to the Lhamayin,the class of Tibetan serpent spirits to which Za be-

longs. However there is some contention, not leastfrom the Tibetan scholar, psychedelicist, and ety-mologist, Mike Crowley (2005), that the Tibetanlanguage has no roots in Middle-Eastern and Medi-terranean languages because it is uniquely relatedto Mongolian. Nevertheless, in the same vein withwhich Robert Graves (who tipped off Wasson toentheogenic mushrooms) makes more poetic thanprecise associations between cultural myths, thereis a resonance between the legend of Zathe Ti-

betan serpentine Lhamayinand the Greek ser-

pentine Lamia, whom we may also associate withPython, the serpentine prophetess of Delphi.

Accordingly, Python was responsible for maintain-ing the secret of prophecy and the wisdom of theunderworld (similarly to Za), was struck down bythe sun god Apollo, heralding what Graves (1961)describes as the usurpation of the goddess for therights over divinatory power, and henceforth

recasting Python in the role of demon. Somethingsimilar also resounds in the Greek myth of theMedusa and Perseus, and perhaps with theLuciferian Norse Loki and the Assyrian-BabylonianZu (or Azu) tooZu was struck down by a light-ning bolt for stealing the tablets of destiny from

Tiamat the dragon queen (but thats another story).With the dawning of the age of patriarchal theismthat occurred two to three thousand years ago, thePromethean-type tale of Python retells the samestory of the divine maverick: a chthonic being

betwixt this world and the underworld, the all-seeing serpent divinity holding the key to mansenlightenment, who steals that wisdom or sharesit with mankind and then becomes re-branded asa demon, a fallen angel, a trickster or a deceiver,much like Za, Azazel, and the rest. The Aryan de-

mon Rahu (Za) had once been a Dravidian god andits clear that an old cultures gods often become adominating cultures demons, and the archaic toolswith which the old culture accessed their divine,

be they psychedelic or otherwise, become heretical.

Subsequently, the old chthonic sacramentals, suchas amrita, or henbanecalled pythonian by theancient Greeks in honor of Python (Rudgley2000)fell out of grace as easily as Lucifer fell fromheaven, or Adam and Eve fell from the Garden ofEden. But like poor old Frank Olsen,6did they fall,

or were they pushed? The identity of amrita wascompletely lost, and remains a matter of debate.

Although few soma hunter s have proposedtryptamines as the culpritsave perhaps McKenna(1992), who championed psilocybin-containingchampignonswhat the Tibetan lama ChgyamTrungpa says about it fits happily with the varioustryptamine visions mentioned above:

amrita is the principle of intoxicating extremebeliefs, belief in ego, and dissolving the bound-ary between confusion and sanity so that co-

emergence can be realized.

Perhaps a report of a multi-eyeballed Za-like en-tity being induced byAmanita muscariamight saysomething more for the favored identity of amrita;and yet, even though theres some certainty thatthe ancients of the East never smoked DMT,perhaps any old entheogen will do.


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But is there anything that can be found in thiswayward meandering through myth and visionthat offers a case for the genuine reification of theother encountered in psychedelic spaces on thefar side of the psyche? Knowing that speculationis the vice of the precise and the virtue of the po-

etic, I have no doubt that those wearing their leftbrain today will already have departed companywith me somewhere along the line here. As a sci-entist myself, I have deeply questioned this tem-porary departure from so-called rational thought.But as an explorer of the weirder realms of themind, I have also been forced occasionally to leapthe fence at the edge of my field of expertise andtraverse unknown territory. I dont offer any of thisas fact beyond the phenomenological, but merelyas possibility in a psychic landscape as off the

map as that provided by DMT. Indeed, here bedragons. And yes, beware that among the dragonstreasure, all that glitters is not gold. Yet who canresist occasionally inspecting a few gems in casethey are of any real value?

FOOTNOTES1. Grossly simplified, Rodriguez proposes obtaining from theentities solutions to complex mathematics puzzles that theDMT experient does not know. Regrettably, this ingeniousmethod for testing the reality of DMT entity encounters issubject to a number of flaws, such as the huge assumptions

involved in expecting our supposed entities to be hyper-intel-ligent and/or have the desire to cooperate. The most cripplingproblem for his test, however, is what is known as the super-psi hypothesisan issue long-proven difficult to surmountin parapsychological attempts to validate the existence ofdiscarnate entities considered to be spirits of the dead (e.g.those apparently communicating via trance mediums). Theproblem is that, because clairvoyance, telepathy, and precog-nition (collectively called psi) have no theoretical (or evenapparent) limits, it always remains a possibility that any in-formation provided by ostensibly discarnate entities may ac-tually be due to the super-psi of the person (e.g., the medium)receiving the information (see Braude 2002 for a comprehen-sive discussion). However, such an issue doesnt carry quite as

much currency with my perspective on investigating entitiesin this manuscript.

2. Acronym (folklore and mythology, cultural studies andrelated disciplines) courtesy of foamy custard chef, BobTrubshaw. For information, see www.indigogroup.co.uk/foamycustard.

3. You get elves, everybody does. Audio remix at Trip Recep-tacles, www.nvo.com/cd/trip.

4. By radical empirical I refer to the term as championed byWilliam James (2003/1912), which posits that standard sci-

entific empiricism tries to reduce experience to bare sensa-tions at the expense of prior reasoning, intuition, revelation,or meaning. James argued that we see the world in terms ofmeaning and the actual connections made between phenom-ena, so introspection of experience is as legitimate a scientificenterprise for studying ones experience and the contents ofones own mind as is the mere observation of the sensation ofexperience (i.e., empiricism).

5. Incidentally, when Alex Grey was asked about the preva-lence of disembodied eyes in psychedelic visions he merelysaid that they represent infinite awareness. However, he re-called that a woman who had seen his Dyingpainting hadreported once traveling down a tunnel of eyes during a near-

death experience (Hanna 1998).

6. Frank Olsen was a U.S. Army officer who was unwittinglydosed with LSD by the CIA in 1953. A few days laterunderCIA supervisionhe plummeted to his death from a hotelwindow. It was alleged that he jumped, and the druggingincident was covered up for over twenty years as part of thesecret MKULTRA operation. Forensic evidence from 1994added a new twist, strongly suggesting that Olsen was pushed:a murder, rather than a suicide.

Many-eyed dragon drawn by a psilocybin subject in Paris.(Note the similarity to the depiction of Azazel on page 7.)

Image taken from Heim & Wassons 19651966 bookLes Champignons Hallucinognes du Mexique.

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2008_-_ER_-_Disembodied_Eyes-libre.pdf