Topology Effects on 5-MeO-DMT

One of the ways in which 5-MeO-DMT seemed to drastically alter (and in many ways also reveal) the quality of experience is through what feels like topological changes. There are, I reckon, many ways in which topology meaningfully shows up in these exotic states of consciousness. In many ways, the topology and the geometry of a space are deeply linked to each other, and yet the degree to which a state of mind emphasizes the use of non-trivial features can strongly lean in one direction or another.

At a bird’s eye view, I think that it is fair to say that if classic tryptamines (psilocybin, DMT) are a geometer’s oasis, then 5-MeO-DMT is a topologist’s paradise. Of course they both play with geometry and topology, and in highly interrelated ways, too. But there is something about DMT that really goes so much deeper into geometric subtleties than 5-MeO-DMT. On DMT one gets the sense that one’s field is carefully measuring differential properties of phenomenal objects and spaces and sending that information across the field with both fidelity and enthusiasm. It’s as if the whole field becomes a differential-geometry-information message-passing festival. In contrast, on 5-MeO-DMT geometry does show up and it does matter, but the emphasis is very different: which of these twelve variants of this surface feels smoother and more “perfect”? On 5-MeO-DMT the visuals are rarely the emphasis precisely because the bulk of the valence comes from other areas of experience, such as one’s body and emotions. But within the visual field, the state does have valence gradients; unlike DMT which spans an enormous diversity of configurations, the visions on 5-MeO-DMT tend to oscillate around perfectly symmetrical and complementary modes of vibration. Like choosing a few low-frequency Chladni plate patterns to harmonize with rather than experiencing a never-ending supply of high-frequency combinations. In a way, 5-MeO-DMT seems to teleport you to global minima of dissonance, and global maxima of coherence. Along the way, this can harmonize specific sensory modalities, and depending on the dose, such sensory modalities can at times “trap” some of the energy (this peaks at low doses for me, before the energy starts to flow in an inherently cross-modal way). Only in this case (i.e. low-dose energy-trapped-in-visual-or-body-field) does geometry seem to really matter in a 5-MeO-DMT experience.

But “the point” of 5-MeO-DMT is, I would argue, not its geometric effects per se. Or rather, the geometry may be a reflection of a more important, deeper, change that is going on. And that is, how it alters the topological features of experience and allows you to explore a much more expanded set of possible experiences that have a naturally “hybrid conception of the self”. Let me explain.

One of the things that become apparent when you have a lot of coherent flow is that it evokes a notion of “relationship between boundaries”. How you establish that “this is this, that is that” is by tuning into: (a) the waves emitted by one but not the other, (b) the standing wave patterns in the middle, (c) the feeling of closure in either or both phenomenal objects, (d) the sense of closure of space around the objects, and more. In other words, even in normal life, one is tuning into what amounts to the topological signatures of the contents of experience, and infers the topology by gathering enough consistent perspectives.

What happens on 5-MeO-DMT is that flow leaks across internal boundaries, at first slightly (like a sort of enhanced boundary permeability between phenomenal objects) and then more dramatically, where the surfaces in a way acquire gaps, and flow can go from one side to the other easily. The gaps could be tiny and organized in a grid-like fashion or can be large wavelength oscillations where “boundaries evaporate” (really a kind of feeling that is hard to capture and I need to use terms like “depolarization” or “blowing up” or “sublimate” or “demagnetize” or something to evoke the feeling again). But in either case, the field lines on the one side of a (internal) boundary and those on the other side can intermingle now.

The gaps are there in low doses as one experiences a process of suffusion and saturation with a new kind of “boundaryless” material. At around 4mg (?) the body schema disappears and one experiences instead just the energy body as a field (still capable of condensing into various forms of solidity, just not shaped like a human). It is the process along the way (maybe 2 to 4mg?) that allows for very exotic alloys of senses of self to be felt. Well, of course we could say that higher doses are still far more exotic, and that is true, but they have lost the normal sense of self to such an extent that they are alloys that lack recognizable features from our current point of view.

As an example, consider what it is like to hold hands. There were times during the retreat where we all sat in a circle and held hands with our neighbors while on low doses of 5-MeO-DMT. These experiences had remarkable phenomenology, often involving the sense of being a group circuit where energy and intention can be transferred. We all agreed that the phenomenology of this was quite strong, but nobody to my knowledge was convinced of its reality beyond the feeling. But another aspect of these experiences involved the feeling of physical boundaries when holding hands in various ways. The sense to me was that the gaps would suddenly allow for the “vibe” stored inside my internal representation of myself (yes, in those states vibes can feel like colored liquids inside people) and the representation of the environment to intermingle. Thus, if the environment had a neutral “God vibe” that’s crystalline and white, and I have a blue and curious vibe, when the gaps open up the boundary of “me” then there is a region around my body where you get a God-me mixed vibe. Furthermore, this also happens in the representation of the person(s) I’m holding hands with. There is the strong felt sense, thus, of the vibes of that person leaking into the environment, and also forming a mixture of vibes. Finally, there is intermingling between all three vibes, in what feels like an incredible mixture of me, the other person, and God/universal consciousness all around us. The sense of liquids intermixing was hard to miss. If one ups the dose at this point, then that mixture can be at the center of attention and work as the seed out of which a “supernova effect” takes hold (just to give an example). In other words, here we find that 5-MeO-DMT simplifies the topological complexity of our inner world simulation: rather than two containers (persons) in a shared medium, in total “three kinds of liquids”, on 5-MeO-DMT the boundaries dissolve and you get just one centra mixed liquid. I know it sounds unbelievable, but that is not far from what it actually felt like.

In terms of the structuring of internal representations, 5-MeO-DMT causes profound changes, many of which seem to me unique to the substance. Using Shinzen’s factorization of experience, we could say that on 5-MeO-DMT the inner/outer feel becomes so fluid and low viscosity that the flow lines get a chance to re-organize in much more hedonic ways. If one is blessed with little resistance in the state, then the flow lines will form absolutely beautiful laminar configurations.

Importantly, I felt that the quality of a 5-MeO-DMT experience ultimately depended on the topology of the experience at the peak. I found that some attractors would lead to highly concentrated “pinch points” whereas others would lead to perfectly smooth laminar flow. I interpreted this as becoming a surface with a particular genus. If you become the “surface of a sphere” on 5-MeO-DMT, due to the Hairy Ball Theorem, there will always be at least one point where the field lines converge. But if you become a torus, you can “comb it” with parallel lines. The former might feel really profound, but it still feels like “it is happening to someone.” The latter feel transcendent on a whole other level: an experience that just is and isn’t happening to someone. An important takeaway was: be more like a doughnut – shape yourself so that all the field lines can be parallel to each other. On 5-MeO-DMT, letting your attention “become such a shape” leads to the most pleasant and harmonious of states.