Dr Christopher Timmermann: DMT & the nature of reality

Christopher Timmermann (Imperial’s DMT Research Group) is one of the world's leading researchers on DMT and 5-MeO-DMT. These are amongst the most powerful psychedelics we know. DMT is famous for catapulting people into hyper-real alternate worlds populated by seemingly autonomous beings.

5-MeO-DMT evokes experiences of “pure consciousness” featuring a complete loss of ego, self and time. 

For anyone interested in the nature of reality and mind, these experiences deserve consideration. 

Christopher presents his work on human neuroimaging studies on DMT, mapping what happens in the brain in these "more real than real” spaces. His latest work includes a study with a meditation lama comparing advanced meditation and psychedelic states.

He discusses with Bernardo his influential research showing that psychedelic experiences can shift people’s most basic metaphysical beliefs away from hard physicalism.

In turn, Bernardo presents his philosophy and how he interprets psychedelic experiences such as the ones Christopher researches.

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Time Stamps

Courtesy of Rita Conde

00:00:10 - This week’s topic: DMT, pure consciousness, and entities
00:01:35 - Introduction to Christopher’s work
00:02:30 - Introduction to Bernardo’s work
00:04:10 - Chris presents his research: how psychedelics can advance the study of consciousness
00:06:50 - The 'alchemy' between brain and mind
00:10:22 - Experience vs. biology: what psychedelics actually do
00:12:29 - Neurophenomenology: experience is not merely an epiphenomenon of the brain
00:14:38 - Psychedelics as phenomenological tools
00:15:40 - Psychedelics and the (de)construction of experience
00:17:00 - Book reference: The Toad and the Jaguar by Ralph Metzner
00:17:45 - Mapping psychedelic experiences
00:19:00 - Brain imaging during psychedelic states
00:22:00 - Between chaos and meaning
00:23:23 - Case study: an expert meditation practitioner takes DMT
00:26:37 - Deconstructing our 'naive realism'
00:27:40 - Reconstruction of meaning with DMT
00:28:58 - Encounters with beings and “entities”
00:29:00 - Taking DMT in a single shot vs. slow intravenous administration
00:30:00 - Entity encounters and their corresponding brain images
00:32:00 - The dynamics between chaos and meaning
00:32:30 - Reconstruction of belief systems: moving away from physicalism toward panpsychism and animism
00:34:14 - Conclusions of Chris’s research
00:34:54 - Noetic feelings and insights
00:36:46 - Bernardo asks about one of the entropy images Chris presented
00:38:38 - Chris gives further details about the experiment with the Lama meditator (the award-winning study)
00:42:58 - Bernardo explains Analytical Idealism
00:52:00 - Bernardo’s personal experiences with psychedelics
00:54:20 - Dissolution of boundaries in psychedelic states
01:00:00 - Philosophy must follow empirical science
01:01:37 - What can we know about other minds beyond our own?
01:03:26 - Bernardo explains Mind at Large
01:05:20 - Language and self-reflection
01:07:07 - Psychedelics and less representational states
01:07:50 - Pure awareness with DMT
01:08:12 - Contact with non-biological minds 
01:10:00 - Our inner narratives obfuscate the primordial qualities of Mind at Large
01:12:40 - Autopoiesis: the continuity between mind and life
01:14:38 - What is life?
01:16:50 - Everything is an excitation of the fundamental fields of subjectivity
01:20:00 - How brain images are interpreted under Analytical Idealism
01:25:25 - Chris explains why he is a metaphysical agnostic and a pragmatic physicalist
01:27:45 - The physicalist bias limits certain scientific experiments
01:28:40 - The prevalence of geometry in psychedelic states
01:35:00 - Nature is geometric at its core
01:39:27 - Cases where high doses of psychedelics produce little or no effect
01:44:30 - Death by Astonishment by Christopher Bache — the question: Are the entities real?
01:45:42 - Bernardo’s experiences with psychedelics
01:49:40 - Psychedelics induce dualist metaphysics
01:53:09 - Bernardo: phenomenological dualism vs ontological idealism
02:03:45 - DMT insight: Time & Space are cognitive mechanisms
02:08:10 - Now contains past and future
02:10:50 - Chris’s upcoming course: Unlocking The Psychedelic Mind

Closing the session

Recording