If You Blink You'll Miss It: Accelerating Insight Practice with 5-MeO-DMT

Meditators, mathematicians, and athletes often talk about the difference between intellectually knowing something and then really, deeply, knowing it for oneself. Meditators will tell you that meditation transforms intellectual insight into direct experience. Mathematicians will say that going over a proof with the right mindfulness can bring about an “aha!” moment, which is a flash of deep intuitive understanding. Athletes will add that only when you practice intently and with presence you are able to deeply embody the careful dance of movements that allow you to compete at a high level.

I mention this to illustrate the notion that there are “levels” and “depths” of understanding, and that we sometimes blend them together unintentionally. There’s an interesting distinction between students who excel in class through diligent test preparation, and those who also achieve top marks but do so through a more exploratory process of learning for personal growth. The former approach may lead to more consistent academic results, but the latter often results in deeper, more lasting knowledge that becomes an integral part of one’s worldview. This difference creates a valence gradient, where the exploratory approach tends to yield a more positive and fulfilling learning experience. Similarly, many profound truths about reality can be approached in a more structured, exam-oriented manner, so to speak. We might occasionally present our understanding as deeper than it truly is (and indeed, don’t we all engage in this dynamic to some extent as we navigate society?). Alternatively, we can embark on a journey of genuine discovery, driven by a love of knowledge and an insatiable curiosity. This path often leads to a steeper positive valence gradient, resulting in a more enriching and transformative educational experience that extends far beyond the classroom.

Learning might potentially follow a long-tail distribution: across people, learning sessions, learning styles, etc. the top learning experiences are orders of magnitude more educational than the median ones. Paying attention to the conditions for optimal learning might really pay off, especially if there are things worth learning at a deeper level than how they are usually taught.

I would go as far as to speculate that a lot of meditation practice is simply building up mental muscles that will allow you to learn really efficiently down the line when you are experiencing key insights. Many meditation teachers talk about the potential for Jhanas to really accelerate Insight practice (though please note the “threefold nature” of wholesome practice). This is the distinction between “dry Vipassana” and “wet Vipassana”, where it is argued that doing insight practices like “noting” while on normal everyday states of consciousness can be quite irritating and unpleasant, whereas doing the same in refined, sublime, post-Jhanic states tends to feel really good and healing (it is technically not possible to do examination during a Jhana without breaking absorption). On numerous occasions I’ve had meditation teachers tell me that Jhanas as a base practice to then do insight practice is a game changer and they wonder why this isn’t discussed more often.

We also know of the 7 Factors of Awakening, which are ideal conditions of the mind to do useful Buddhist practice and recognize the “true nature of the mind”. In addition, I know of personal testimony for meditation that emphasizes the importance of meditating “at your peak” rather than (only) when you are tired or otherwise don’t feel that good. It is in fact desirable to think of at least some of your meditation practices as a kind of workout, so that you learn to do it in optimal states of mind.

A Periodic Table of Things to Learn Deeply

One of the key take-aways of the retreat for me was this idea that there might be a few key insights worth really learning quite deeply. The reason being that they may accelerate irreversible shifts leading to desired valence, cognitive, and perceptual effects.This was pointed out in the context of discussions that hinted at the possibility of experiencing cessations on 5-MeO-DMT. Whether this was possible for everyone was controversial, but some people claim it is entirely possible. In our speculations, grounded in direct experience, I hypothesized that “cessation objects” are configurations of the field with no singularities. There could, therefore, be many such “objects” even though from within them they all feel equally empty of any attributes. We can still infer they have different “objective” shapes by the process of exit and entry as described in The Three Doors (by Daniel Ingram, now available as audiobook). More so, they could be of different “sizes” to the extent that (within a Buddhist and qualia formalist frame) they “make right” different “amounts of the field”. In other words, how “large” your feeling of “liberation” is (in the sense of shifts yielding specific perceptual and valence benefits) actually depends on how much of the field you were able to put into a perfect positive valence configuration (where in particular the trajectories of the “flow” don’t intersect).

At this point we posited that the “learning” that you get from a cessation experience might be quite dependent on exactly what “shape” you actually converged on at the point your singularities finally vanished. This is a moment where the content is “seen perfectly all at once and from every possible point of view within it” and thus “comprehended” at a depth one would think impossible otherwise.

Thus, we hypothesized that the reason the Three Doors are so important in Buddhism is because they are cessation objects that capture very completely the insights that come from understanding one of the Three Characteristics (for context, the Three Doors are three different types of entries and exits to a cessation, a moment that is reported as entirely lacking in any conscious content at all – each of the doors corresponds to a different “characteristic”, which refer to “impermanence”, “dissatisfaction”, and “no self” – see Roger Thisdell’s visualizations of the shape of sensations right before them).

But you see, those are important “gems” in the state-space of consciousness, as it were, but not the only ones that have positive long-term effects. One example we discussed that is much more neutral in terms of stances towards reality (because let’s admit it, Buddhism is kind of heavy at times) is the perfect superposition of expansion and contraction. This can be the way to a cessation, where all that you are doing is mixing doing and non-doing to carefully balance expansion and contraction until you can finally let go and have them self-harmonize. The “Insight into Simultaneous Expansion and Contraction” is, according to Roger (and Wystan, and arguably Shinzen), a real thing that is very worthwhile. In other words, there is a real and very important attractor that collapses reality and leads to a cessation-like moment involving the careful balancing of contraction and expansion¹. And that this is especially desirable to experience this way, because that changes you somehow at a deep level.

In other words, having the factors of the mind needed to experience moments of eternity cleanly and doing so in a pointed fashion that forges a perfect balance between expansion and contraction has, somehow, a kind of deep curative power for the organism. I understand people might be skeptical, naturally. This is a very weird claim. But I think there is something true about it. In particular, achieving these very careful balances creates a new invariant in the experience that provides a sense of constant perfect symmetry along a hidden axis of the experience and that cushions a lot of negative valence otherwise present in the experience.

Roger says that he now experiences a sort of constant 6th Jhana state², and that this was the result of his big awakening. So there is this very clear and precise cessation-like event that he had that, together with all of the buildup from his meditation career, caused a long-term transformation to his attention and awareness that he reports as drastically reducing negative valence in his everyday life. Again, here we can get the sense that an optimal learning state together with a very skillful use of attention and awareness can catalyze (topological?) transformations with enduring positive valence effects (or negative, as the case may be).

We are of course interested in figuring out which of these precise moments of clear experience that lead to cessation-like events can lead to enduring positive transformations (note that building towards these insights might itself be part of the benefit, rather than just the peak moment itself). Drawing from various sources and our many conversations, we can provide the following tentative list:

Top Insights:

• Impermanence
• No Self
• Unsatisfactoriness
• Expansion and Contraction
• Equanimity at a Deep Level
• Don’t Know Mind

Powerful Insights

• Emptiness of solidity
• Brahmaviharas
• Zero Ontology
• Types of Binding
• Optical Nature of the Mind
• Pure seeing, hearing, and feeling (where you experience these fields of experience crisply separated from each other)

Nice to Have

• Hot and Cold at the Same Time
• Present and Past Equalize
• Movement and Stillness

(Just examples – the categories could be entirely wrong – tentative for now)

5-MeO-DMT vs. Classic Psychedelics as a Learning Enhancer

Classic psychedelics have been talked about as possible learning accelerators since the 60s if not the 50s. I’m not talking only about Timothy Leary, but really a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists of the time. I think that this is very promising. Even if we still lack studies that adhere to current standards to back it up, to me the large number of credible anecdotes of intellectual breakthroughs on psychedelics makes me really excited to pursue this line of research.

I think that both the kind of learning as well as the depth of such learning is bound to be drastically different on 5-MeO-DMT than on classic psychedelics. In particular, the reasons why psychedelics can enhance certain forms of learning and discovery might be quite different from those that take place on 5-MeO.

Harman & Fadiman (1970) list the following characteristics of the psychedelic state as either supporting or hindering creativity:

Within an algorithmic reduction framework, perhaps we could try to break this down into a few effects like:

• Increased Intensity
• Increased Associative Horizon
• Widening of Attention and Awareness
• Fast Flickering Frequencies (10-25 Hz) – can create highly realistic geometric hallucinations
• Expanded phenomenal space

And these effects then lend themselves to be used (or hinder!) the process of problem solving. Now, based on our experience in the retreat, here are some key difference between classic psychedelics and 5-MeO-DMT:

1. 5-MeO is much more effective at interrupting linear thought.
2. 5-MeO is much more extreme in the “fewer number of buckets” axis (other psychedelics also reduce the number of buckets while increasing their intensity – except for perhaps DMT – see discussion here).
3. 5-MeO is distinctly capable of creating deep and strong peace that takes over.
4. Expansion on 5-MeO-DMT is way faster and higher-voltage than on other psychedelics
5. The “flicker frequency” of sensations is higher (closer to 35-50 Hz than to 10-25 Hz).
6. One can experience depths of surrender and acceptance that are at a higher level than with classic psychedelics.
7. When you have a deep, calm, peaceful, mystical union experience you get to see what the landscape looks like near a global peak of positive valence. This is unusual for us: we’ve only experienced valence gradients that have a non-zero curvature. Rather than maxima we’ve experienced mostly saddle extrema. But then 5-MeO-DMT in this setting shows you clear peaks of valence. Meaning, states that do not seem “improvable” from a valence point of view.
8. The valence can easily flip between quite negative and quite positive as a function of the degree of embodied resistance. In higher doses this can create an extreme contrast that highlights the very nature of valence.
9. Classic psychedelics can “process” more complex information because you can partition your experience into tentacles/noodles and qualia compute information in semi-compartmentalized ways. On 5-MeO the processing has to be much more of an “all at once” kind, where global holistic behavior is the main computational horsepower of what is going on.

Now, when we talk about “depths of knowledge” we can be pointing at how practical knowledge, muscle memory, and deep intellectual understanding are complementary with each other, and ultimately paint a larger picture. I reckon that given these characteristic differences, 5-MeO-DMT will be generally better suited for internalizing very deeply a very simple fact or observation to which we are usually resistant. An especially good fit for 5-MeO-DMT is a learning task that requires a lot of energy, relaxation, and intuitive intelligence all at once be applied to learning an extremely simple but universal principle³.

Here is an example: while most of the typical content of thought vanishes on a “Soul Travel” dose of 5-MeO-DMT (2.5 mg to 5 mg range), there is however a strong intuitive understanding of how various attitudes lead to different effects on consciousness. It’s almost as if the speed of the feedback between one’s thoughts and the effects of those thoughts dropped to almost zero. So there is a sense in which you realize how anger leads to more anger, and how sadness leads to more sadness, and so on. And how these are traps, because they are configurations of the field that are internally frustrated. But you also realize that the flow of life/energy/qualia is inevitable and that in many circumstances it simply leads to those states. Hence, in this state, there is a really strong yet intuitive understanding of (a) how to avoid getting looped into various unwholesome mental states, while also (b) the fact that in nature all around you other beings easily get trapped in those loops, and yet (c) the beautiful awareness of the gift of knowing a way out that might help everyone else.

So these three things are going on at a very deep intuitive level in that state (for me at least). And as the centers of attention and awareness start to synchronize through the 5-MeO-DMT annealing process (which perhaps peaks at the two and a half minutes?) these “truths” converge into a coherent gestalt that is perceived very clearly and is, to a large extent, self-explanatory and self-referential, yet complete and whole.

The thing I’m trying to convey here is how the “ambient insights” on 5-MeO-DMT are not only experienced more intensely but also can often be experienced in a coordinated fashion with each other. That is, even though the nominal content of the experience is rather low, the size of the buckets are very large and when content does get to appear in a coherent way it will do so in a deeply impactful way too.

Along with the unity of attention at the peak, the possible lack of resistance and the overall intensity level, are all conducive to creating gestalts that the entire organism experiences at once. In an important way, a lot of a 5-MeO-DMT experience is about negotiating the way in which one gestalt or another could consume all of your experience and allowing the ones you align with to do so. The unity and lack of resistance makes it possible for every part of your being to be in sync with the same simple quality (whether a curvature or a color) and achieving coherence that way is breathtaking.

The kind of deep knowing (and indeed deep learning) that I think one is exposed to in meditation and in 5-MeO-DMT is the following:

• Centers of attention synchronize (so there are fewer “scenes” playing at the same time)
• Centers of awareness synchronize
• Attention and Awareness can collapse into one another

On many of these occasions, what the experience felt like to me had the flavor of… how to put it?

Imagine that you are a seeker, and you have been on a quest to answer the deep mysteries of reality for centuries. You’ve reincarnated many times on this quest, and even very far-away past lives had an inkling that you would someday go deep in a quest for the Truth.

As you take a medium to strong dose of 5-MeO it becomes apparent that you are this character. That all of the training in life involving real spirituality was a preparation for this moment. Even, you sometimes might get a feeling that past lives were waiting for this very moment. “Ah, finally! I’m not going to miss it this time!” – you hear, from deep in the unconscious. But that is not all. In fact, it sometimes feels that all of humanity, life itself, perhaps even the universe, were all waiting for a realization like this. And then on top of it, that this is an ancient realization. “Ramanujan and Einstein also had it” (I overheard in the middle of a ceremony). “Yes, you are Ramanujan too, and he is waiting for the answer just as much as I am and you are”.

Indeed! When personal identity is so thin (or rather, when one’s internal representations of the boundaries of the self are so malleable in the state), thinking about a person and merging with them are in a way one and the same thing. Again, remember you only have a certain number of attentional buckets, and on 5-MeO-DMT those are few buckets indeed. So you may end up having a bucket that has to represent both you and whoever you want to think about.

Back to the narrative: the phenomenology of a “Soul Travel” dose of 5-MeO-DMT is quite compatible with mystic hero narratives where you have other-worldly entities that encourage you to get enlightened and also there are temptations along the way that keep you bound to the cycle of death and rebirth. All of that Jazz. The reason, I think, is that one intuitively understands the way in which grasping leads to discomfort down the line, and in fact the most sublime aspects of a 5-MeO-DMT experience, in the moment, are experienced free from attachment (!). So there is a genuine taste for how the right Insight applied to the present moment actually delivers really positive hedonic returns. The speed of the feedback drastically increases (the delay between mental move and effect is dramatically smaller) and this might therefore be a really good learning environment.

Another thing that makes this experience feel so monumental is that the annealing process at such doses leads to really intense feelings of synchronization (Frank Yang’s “reality syncs up to itself” descriptions ring a bell, very loudly, in those states). It’s like you get to anneal in such a way that close to a cessation you have two competing clusters at different frequencies, and then through some frequency modulation magic you slowly align them and synchronize your parts. And when things “snap” it feels that something deep was “made symmetrical” and is “finally aligned”.

Now, again, the point might not be to have these events per se, but rather, to use them for learning. Therefore, any kind of research program building on this theme should both figure out how to induce these annealing events in very wholesome and healthy ways, while also figuring out the insights that are well suited to be learned in those states. And then of course a lot of research must be done to figure out how to match people to insights in an ethical, healthy, consensual, and beneficial way.

That said, leaving insight and learning aside, I reckon that having clean and pure and content-free versions of the cessation events induced by e.g. 5-MeO-DMT is likely to be really healing regardless. I simply think that just basic rebooting and annealing from base harmonics devoid of conditioning is something that keeps the organism youthful. I could, of course, be entirely wrong. But at the end of the day, maybe just focusing on fully empty annealing could be a fruitful path all of its own. The don’t-know-mind-cessation way. :-)

Potential Side-Effect: Overlearning

A possible side-effect of 5-MeO-DMT that we should be on the lookout for would be overlearning in a detrimental way. For example, I worry that the God Realm (interchangeably, Heavenly Realms, see “Opening the Heart of Compassion” by Lar Short and Martin Lowenthal for a secular discussion of the Heavenly Realms as a frame of mind) can feed addictive tendencies and behaviors.

Roger, in conversation, pointed out how the road to enlightenment in the Heavenly Realms is really, really, really long. That as long as you are having fun, or in fact, “Super Fun”, or whatever over-the-top-variant of bliss one encounters in exotic states of consciousness, you will not be motivated to work hard for your own liberation and that of others.

At the retreat we saw one example of someone who could be said to, at times, “be lost in the God Realm”. The person in question was simply so excited about some of the visions they experienced with the medicine that they would burst out laughing quite often for a period of a few days. The group thought that the visions of this person were centered around a narrative that was very personalized and wasn’t mindful of those around. In other words, sometimes excitement for a Heavenly Realm kind of state can cut us from our connection with one’s surroundings. The person in question was very receptive to feedback, and was able to reconnect with the group after a few days. It was a reminder of how God Realm fascination can in some cases disconnect you from others.

Roger also pointed out that the God Realm has a tendency to not want to look at itself carefully. It has a general tendency to want to look at itself slightly out of focus, as it were, so as to not notice the way in which the Heavenly sensations are still, nonetheless, dissatisfactory, lacking in self, and impermanent (as the Buddhists emphasize).

Synergy Between Heavenly and Buddhist Realms?

Now, on the night before the last day of the retreat, when I did the last set of experiments on myself, I experienced remarkable synergy between the Heavenly Realms and the more Buddhist-oriented Realms. Why? Because it became clear that pleasure could be used for liberation, if experienced with equanimity. The thing that became apparent was also how intense pleasure requires a topological asymmetry to exist, and thus how it actually “deeply wants to cancel out” with its (topological) complement.

It’s as if… when desire for pleasure is really clearly seen, one concludes that it wants to cancel out with its complement. And when pleasure arises it’s the feeling of this cancellation happening. Of course the systematizer in me wonders if there are ways to maximize this process either for intrinsic benefits or for healing purposes. I’m pretty sure it can. But then at a deep Insight level, these experiences also make me feel that this pleasure is in fact kind of agitating, and that the deeper peace of equanimity is a natural next step in my journey. Oh, but one more time! I’d love to look at the pleasure very carefully once again!

Now, here is the thing. Towards the end of the retreat I experienced a lot of really intense Heavenly Realm qualia that bordered on ecstatic for the body, mind, and spirit. And one fascinating thing that happened the last night before the last day of the retreat was that I experienced a bizarre but really nice “amodal ball of pleasure” that I could move around from one part of my field of experience to another. This would take place in unassisted meditation, but the buildup from a couple weeks of experimentation with 5-MeO-DMT was doing a lot of the work. This “ball of pleasure” in my tummy was like a pleasant and relaxing buzz. In my arms it was a sense of warmth. In my thoughts it was a sense of anticipation and wonder. In my ears it was a beautiful harmonic chord. And in my mouth it was the sense of deliciousness you get when a chocolate hits the tongue just right. And in fact I could concentrate on this ball of amodal pleasure too, and sometimes almost disappear into it. It was really fun and informative. As a practice I could imagine a lot of people would sign up to experience it, because it was so surreal but also so pleasant!

Well, the day after Wystan called us and we discussed this experience. According to him, there is actually a practice that sounds a lot like it, and indeed the point is to cultivate this ball of bliss to such an extent that you can make it explode and consume all of your experience and then use that to realize the true nature of your mind (see: Tummo and four joys).

Now that’s a practice I can get behind!

All joking aside, I think that a realistic outlook for how Team Consciousness can harness 5-MeO-DMT for the benefit of all sentient beings is precisely by seeking harmony between the Heavenly Realms and the Buddhist Realms (or whatever secular version of this debate we end up having). I think that emphasizing the synergies is absolutely viable and I think, in the long run, a good approach. I am, of course, open to changing my mind :-)