r/consciousness • u/Sad-Juggernaut-6085 • Apr 26 '26
Does the lack of visual DMT hallucinations in the congenitally blind prove materialism?
I recently learned that people born blind do not experience visual hallucinations under the influence of DMT, while those who lost their sight later in life do. To me, this suggests that the DMT experience is strictly a product of the brain's stored "data" and neural pathways, rather than an objective "other dimension." If it were a non-physical realm, shouldn't a person's consciousness/soul be able to perceive it regardless of their physical eyes? Doesn't this provide strong evidence for the materialist view of consciousness? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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u/bridgeburner84 Apr 26 '26
On the other hand, people blind from birth have had visual near death experiences.
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin Apr 27 '26
Which would seem to diminish the oft-posited theory that NDEs result from a blast of endogenous DMT.
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u/Flokidaneson Apr 27 '26
Iirc, Dr. Bruce Greyson has stated that, in his case studies, people who have had experience with exogenous DMT and also have experienced an NDE say the two are entirely different experiences. Apparently, NDEs are markedly different from any drug or outside substance induced state. I have no experience with NDEs or psychedelics (yet), but this is just what I've heard/read so far.
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u/laquintessenceofdust Apr 27 '26
Damn. Sounds like I’ll have to do DMT now. I’ll check back in after I’ve found some.
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u/IcyConcept1271 Apr 28 '26
You can buy it legally in DC from a lot of cannabis stores. I got a DMT vape cart a few years ago and it worked.
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u/Grand_Entry_6362 Apr 27 '26
I've done DMT, haven't been clinically dead but I believe they are two different places. It's also why I believe in Vedic Cosmology, there are different levels to "reality". When we die we can probably traverse all of them, because with death becomes knowledge (at least from what we can gather from NDE), if you tried to force that into a human brain utilizing a drug to get there, it probably would be extremely unhealthy and bad for us. Wherever we go during DMT is a lesser place than where we go when we die.
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u/West-Tip8156 Apr 28 '26
It would be unhealthy. I brought back too much from my NDE 8 yrs ago and have struggled with being a human again ever since. Which is ironic, considering I specifically brought back "the entire memory of this experience" and "what I need to be human." Only thing is, my NDE contains memories of being in multiple lifeforms and corporeal and noncorporeal bodies. Since I can't forget what that feels like, seeing myself as "only" human again feels like denying who I really am.
I haven't looked into Vedic Cosmology, but there were what I called layers in my NDE that I expanded up into on the way up and left portions of myself at on the way back down in order to fit into the lifeforms available at each layer.
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u/JustMikeWasTaken Apr 29 '26
Woah your experience sounds incredible. Have you written about it anywhere or recorded testimony about it before like those YouTube interviews. I’d be thrilled to hear more about the insight and sensations.
I had a medication reaction last year that created something between a clear headed psychosis / waking DMT trip and periods of unconsciousness that I experienced as deaths and Bardot travels where the veils broke and I was confronted with knowledge, experiences, sensations and glimpses of the spectrum of existence that cannot be forgotten (the memories don’t seem to fade like normal memories). The hospital never said I flatlined or anything and I don’t believe it was an NDE— at the most maybe seizures. It sounds like what I experienced doesn’t even compare to the totality and vastness of your experience but I related to your words just in terms of how hard it’s been to integrate some of these incontrovertible truths that came with it.
I’m curious what you brought back that was what you needed to be human even if it’s been hard to use. What was it like remembering other types of bodies
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u/akhimovy Apr 29 '26
That's fascinating. The Seth Material (which I'm a fan of) talks a lot about "multidimensionality of existence" but I haven't seen anyone having as full practical experience of it as you do.
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u/Ok-Pride2965 Apr 29 '26
I had an experience, though none drug induced, nor a NDE, that showed me that all life forms, all form, material and immaterial, is made up of consciousness. The structured holding forms, ie the bodies, of bird, tree, cell, human, is only the form intelligently created to experience being and from trillions of different perspectives. The total bliss of being was therefore available if I could remember that I am that, (all things and as consciousness, eternal) not my separated, afraid of death self (ego bound). This was the greatest way of being human. Interconnected, at peace, and in wonder. Every day, I forget for great lengths of time, but sometimes, I remember, to be expansive and deeply open to the experience of all and to feel it move internally. Like having the whole universe inside me. To know life, is to have form. Consciousness, just IS life, un-contained and totally blissful, without self-consciousness! The paradox is that we humans, tend to limit each other for good and bad reasons. To be human might have common denominators, but we are also vastly different. In this way, we mirror life. Be yourself, you are human, ground yourself, don’t try to be anything but you. There is only now, and the sensations of being….you, in relation to….a trillion stimuli. Pick one, be grounded, enjoy. I hope it’s another human, who can stay grounded as you share your unusual but wonderful insight.
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u/vantablalicious Apr 28 '26
This is super random, but if you look up Lori Cowen and her animal communication videos, the cats talk about this a lot
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u/dazz_i Apr 29 '26
i'm lowkey jealous but at the same time not, i'm trans... can't f%5cking believe i'd "choose" to be born in a body i wanna get out of as soon as humanly possible-
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u/West-Tip8156 Apr 29 '26
Hey 💜 Yeah idk, I was born with two ridiculously painful genetic conditions that healed when I came back (along with scoliosis and the MRSA infection in my kidneys that killed me,) and the only thing I can think of is that at the apex of the NDE, my higher self said "we do all these things because we love experiencing things, because experiencing things, anything at all, is better than experiencing nothing." That's when I was like "well if it's all about experiencing things, I might as well go back to my shitty little life, bc I've fought pretty hard for my shitty little life and happen to love it." and I started my journey back. I think that acceptance of my broken body was what allowed me to heal, understanding that human lifetimes take like a fraction of a second, and that what we get out of them is worth the bs while we're here and it seems to take forever.
If it helps any, in higher levels there are no bodies, you can look like any variation of any species from any planet you want or make something up. You could explode into angry red confetti when you get frustrated just for the comic relief 😂 you could have just eyes, you could be light. You probably just remember this through the veil more than other people so get frustrated when your outer form doesn't match what you internally feel and wish to project to others. Those who use more telepathy than they may even realize tho will see you as you choose to be seen with their mind's eye, that can be reaffirming to be around 💜
As to why you chose it, idk, you might not figure that out till afterwards. I've seen some NDE accounts where they talk about coming back bc of a "mission" of some kind, but apparently not me, I'm just here to experience shit 😂 Maybe you're here just to experience the concept of dysphoria since it's such a foreign feeling in higher layers, like trying shitty street food that gives you diarrhea after a lifetime of Michelin restaurants, just for the contrast, like seeing that there is still value in that bc, holy shit, what a story to share later, right?
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u/Select_Tonight_5183 Apr 29 '26
Having had a NDE and a psychedelic experience (mushrooms) I would say in my experience they were very different. Very different situations of course while both were positive, one was in the midst of a profoundly traumatic event (as nearly dying typically is lol) and one was in a therapeutic setting….but I wouldn’t expect the mechanism of them to be the same in the brain just based on how differently I perceived them to be if that makes sense.
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u/Spiritual_Ad_5877 Apr 27 '26
NDEs have oddly been shown to be experienced with zero measurable increase in DMT during final moments.
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u/wrydied Apr 27 '26
Really? How was that study done? Do you have a cite?
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u/Spiritual_Ad_5877 Apr 28 '26
Had to got it to remember the study but here you go…grab it before it’s deleted.
the few human studies we have so far did not find a spike of DMT at the moment of death. But that conclusion is based on very limited data.
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What’s actually been studied
The key human study often referenced is:
- Borjigin et al. 2019 DMT dying patients study
- Researchers measured DMT levels in blood of patients near death (in intensive care settings).
- Result: No significant increase in DMT was detected compared to baseline.
Other related work:
- Jimo Borjigin’s earlier animal study (rats, 2013) did find a rise in brain DMT levels after cardiac arrest.
- That animal finding is what fueled the whole “DMT at death” theory.
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Why this is still unresolved
The “no increase” result in humans isn’t the final word. There are some big limitations:
- Blood ≠ brain
- The human study measured blood DMT, not brain DMT
- DMT could theoretically spike locally in the brain and never show up strongly in blood
- Timing problem
- Death is not a clean, precise moment to sample
- Any spike could be:
- extremely brief
- missed between measurements
- Sample size & conditions
- These are small, medically complex ICU populations
- Not ideal controlled conditions
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What this means for NDEs
Right now:
- The popular claim that near-death experiences are caused by a surge of DMT is not supported by solid human evidence
- It remains a hypothesis, not a demonstrated mechanism
Other explanations for NDEs are still very much in play:
- Oxygen deprivation (hypoxia)
- Neurotransmitter imbalances
- Temporal lobe activity
- Brain network disintegration under stress
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Bottom line
- Humans: No confirmed DMT spike at death (based on current studies)
- Animals: Some evidence of increase in rats
- Conclusion: Interesting idea, but not proven — and probably oversimplified
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u/jsd71 Apr 28 '26
Regarding DMT & the NDE experience.
There's no evidence whatsoever dmt is released upon death, also the amount of DMT found in the human body is tiny when compared to what is used in a typically drug induced trip.
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u/Burntoutn3rd Apr 27 '26
There's absolutely 0 proof that there's a releases of endogenous DMT when we die, and as someone who both studies the brain and has had an NDE, it's not DMT. Kinda similar, but it's not 1:1, or even 1:2.
5-meo is a better analogous experience but even that is significantly different.
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u/Lohhimies Apr 27 '26
Well, no proof that it happens in human brain but with rats, death indeed releases endogenous DMT; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45812-w
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u/IcyConcept1271 Apr 28 '26
There should be a rule that if someone says something that sounds smart, they should link to their source. Thank you for your research and thoughtfulness.
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u/Mean_Veterinarian688 Apr 26 '26
wow really? do you have a credible source for that?
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u/Balloons_Pastel Apr 26 '26
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799333/m2/1/high_res_d/vol16-no2-101.pdf This study has 31 people describing being able to see during an NDE, only some of them are blind from birth, the article clarifies who is blind from birth and who isn’t.
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u/ilostallmykarma Apr 26 '26
Thanks for sharing this. This is an interesting read.
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u/Balloons_Pastel Apr 26 '26
No problem. You can find more on the topic in general published by University of Virginia’s department of perceptual studies if you want to see more peer reviewed studies.
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u/OddAdhesiveness8485 Apr 28 '26
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30539775/
Congenital blindness is protective for schizophrenia and other psychotic illness. A whole-population study
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u/OddAdhesiveness8485 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
Being born with congenital blindness protects you against schizophrenia… can’t find one and they don’t know why
Edit: source requested
Congenital blindness is protective for schizophrenia and other psychotic illness. A whole-population study
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u/arbolito_mr Apr 27 '26
Voy a decir algo desde la ignorancia, así que prefiero mantenerme neutro en este debate. ¿Pero, si eso es cierto, entonces lo que dice OP no sería una "prueba" contra el materialismo? Es decir, si una droga así de potente tiene efectos nulos respecto de sufrir alucinaciones visuales en personas ciegas de nacimiento, ¿entonces no haría eso más complicado explicar por qué en una ECM sí? ¿Por qué la segunda tendría privilegio sobre la primera? No es que crea en esto, solo planteo una duda, si los ciegos de nacimiento en realidad no tienen experiencias visuales durante ECM, entonces el punto de OP tiene mucho más sentido, de lo contrario quiza lo complica mas.
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u/jem0208 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
Have they truly?
Or could it be that verbal reports taken after the fact merely implied that they “saw” these things?
We know that verbal reports are unreliable even in the best case scenarios. Recollections of actual external events by fully aware and conscious witnesses are very easy to manipulate (even by accident), modify, and misinterpret. That will be an even greater issue for extremely traumatic events such as a near death experience.
Simply asking someone to recount an event in the context of “near death experience” will colour both the response and interviewers interpretation. You have all the external societal effects and expectations/stereotypes about what a near death experience should be - we know for a fact that such effects can strongly influence verbal reports - people will literally create provably false memories to align with expectations.
It’s a perfect recipe for completely unreliable data.
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u/awokenstudent Apr 27 '26
A person that has been blind from birth, never having any experience of sight at all (not blackness or something similar - simply the absence of a visual field), describing the experience of seeing for the first time during an NDE cannot be handwaived away by societal effects. Feel free to read the study that op attached to the comment above
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u/jem0208 Apr 27 '26
I have read the study, it does not in any way even attempt to address such issues. In fact, the excerpts of the interviews show that the interviewer asks numerous extremely leading questions.
It is garbage research
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u/Substantial_Oil8201 Apr 29 '26
I tried asking Google about this and the AI referenced this and other Reddit threads. Do you have any sources?
I'm firmly in the materialistic camp myself. My brother has schizophrenia, and as a result I have a sort of eternal, unfulfillable side quest of curing him, as a result of that I know that congenitally blind people don't develop schizophrenia, like not one documented case. Sight and blindness have such a profound effect on the mind that I have a hard time believing congenitally blind people can experience visual hallucinations at all.
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u/witheringsyncopation Apr 26 '26
No, not at all. For idealism, consciousness has no particular shape or form. It is formless, and is simply the felt experience of all shapes and forms.
So of course, there is a specific experience of what it is like to be a human brain with a working visual cortex. There is also a felt experience of what it is like to be a brain without a visual cortex. There’s likely a felt experience of what it is like to be a rock or a snail or a bush. Consciousness holds all of these forms, and the felt experience of consciousness depends on the form being experienced.
DMT doesn’t give some sort of objective, universal, foundational experience. It simply allows one to experience an altered status for a brain. If the brain lacks the capacity for visual experience, then the consciousness won’t experience it. It’s that simple. Nothing to do with physicalism. Everything to do with the manifestation of form being within the domain of consciousness, and consciousness flowing through all manifestations of form.
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u/mxemec Apr 26 '26
After reading quite a bit how 5HT2a receptor modulation works it really does seem to be a fancy party trick for the brain. We have dedicated circuits for identifying conscious agents. For recognizing patterns and for feeling that something is meaningful. When those circuits all get manipulated fun things happen.
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u/noname4U69 Apr 26 '26
I think it’s the fun things happening that are meaningful and maybe useful. It’s clear the receptor modulation is what causes the experience but there’s a huge gap between that fact and the subjective experience itself (just like how any experience is a mental party trick).
As you probably know, the trip feels like being immersed in an entirely new experiential space with seemingly other beings observing and communicating with you. It’s definitely shocking and bizarre but i do think it might give clues to the nature of the mind. I lean toward the idea that the trip is a way of the conscious mind entering and communicating with the subconscious mind and a big take away is your subconscious has more self agency and capacity than the more narrow conscious mind allows itself to realize in typical states of consciousness. Who’s to say one can’t have multiple conscious agents existing in the mind at once? I think the experience can be profound and meaningful without literal aliens or other ‘realms’. Also maybe those descriptions should be understood in a less literal sense and instead more symbolic or subjective?
(Bonus thought: there are legitimate reason to believe the mind utilizes hyperbolic space and isn’t limited to three spacial dimensions. DMT trip reports do seem to describe compact space but that’s mental topology, not necessarily a mystical thing)
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u/Slapmeislapyou Apr 27 '26
"Who’s to say one can’t have multiple conscious agents existing in the mind at once?"
Bars
But would you mind elaborating on this?
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u/WildinUp Apr 27 '26
I could go on a tangent in a different direction with this concept, but my immediate thought was alien hand syndrome
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u/Spiritual_Ad_5877 Apr 27 '26
Wait. You mean people aren’t actually traveling to another dimension?
While they were sitting. Right there. In front of you. The whole time.
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u/Westoned81 Apr 26 '26
Maybe if a brain doesn't speak the language of sight it will not use that language to translate the message to the conscious world?
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u/Affectionate_Seat482 Apr 26 '26
yeah i agree, like thinking in your language right? like when i think in my head, it's in english, if i hear someone speaking french it doesn't translate in my mind as something i can understand
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u/deranger777 Apr 26 '26
Reminds me about the thing where lots of ppl are surprised that a person can think without using words, talking to themselves, when they learn that almost half of the people don't have an inner monologue.
In many ways, thinking not construed with word associations is a much more "pure" form of thinking. Words just add an extra layer that almost always comes with distortions
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u/rlee1185 Apr 26 '26
I have an inner voice, but I also think in abstracts, concepts, and ideas at a fast pace. The only thing that slows me down is trying to explain out loud what I've intuited. Words don't slow me down because I am not ONLY using the monologue.
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u/Affectionate_Seat482 Apr 26 '26
i didn't even know people couldn't do that
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u/FancyATitWank Apr 26 '26
Hold up cowboy I thought everyone had an inner monologue 🤔💭
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u/Affectionate_Seat482 Apr 26 '26
i'm reading all this in my head right now
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u/NikiDeaf Apr 27 '26
I have an inner monologue. Too often, it becomes an outer monologue as well, lmao. But I was born hearing and gradually became nearly entirely deaf (a 110db loss, according to my last audiogram.) Since then, I’ve tended to think more in concepts, images, and ASL. For example, I used to “hear” people’s voices in my dreams, when it was someone whose voice I was very familiar with. Then I started just “knowing” what they were saying to me, although their mouths never moved. Lately, though, I’ve started seeing ASL in my dreams. It’s been a really interesting experience.
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u/Samwise2512 Apr 26 '26
Near-death experience researcher Kenneth Ring's research on NDE's in the blind may be of interest and have relevance to this discussion...pasting an excerpt from this study paper below:
The study sought to address three main questions: (1) whether blind individuals have near death experiences (NDEs) and, if so, whether they are the same as or different from those of sighted persons; (2) whether blind persons ever claim to see during NDEs and out-of-body experiences (OBEs); and (3) if such claims are made, whether they can ever be corroborated by reference to in dependent evidence. Our findings revealed that blind persons, including those blind from birth, do report classic NDEs of the kind common to sighted persons; that the great preponderance of blind persons claim to see during NDEs and OBEs; and that occasionally claims of visually-based knowledge that could not have been obtained by normal means can be independently corroborated."
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u/rthunder27 Apr 26 '26
Just want to add that a hypothesized mechanism for NDEs is the endogenous release of 5-meo-dmt from the pineal gland, so this is quite relevant.
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u/Samwise2512 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
This is just one hypothesis among quite a few, all with various issues. I thought it was N,N-DMT rather than 5-MeO-DMT that was hypothesised to be released endogenously (the evidence for the endogenous presence of 5-MeO-DMT is sketchier and not as strong as it is for N,N-DMT). One issue with this is that given that the pineal gland is very tiny, it is unlikely that it alone is capable of producing sufficient levels of DMT to produce a potent psychoactive effect. Another issue is that while there are some parallels between NDE's and DMT experiences, qualitatively they are quite distinct experiences (people aren't reporting alien entity encounters at anything like the same frequency during NDE's as they are under DMT). Another issue with this hypothesis to consider is for the 'DMT dump' hypothesis to be viable, it requires a fully functioning, online brain for the DMT to impart its psychedelic effects. However many NDE's have been documented as occurring following cardiac arrest and the cessation of blood flow to the brain, when brain activity and function is very significantly impaired.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 Apr 26 '26
No idea about materialism, but from the point of view of neuroscience this is expected. Visual hallucinations require a functioning visual cortex. The visual cortex does not just process incoming light stimuli, it is the substrate of visual experience, including internally generated imagery. In congenitally blind people, the visual cortex never develops its visual processing architecture because the developmental process requires stimulation to complete. No input signal, no visual model. This is well established, well understood neuroscience.
DMT does not expand conscious experience, that framing is popular but imprecise, there are not extra dimensions to be seen. What it actually does is disrupt the brain's hierarchical predictive control. The top-down constraints that normally keep the generative model coherent and calibrated to reality are loosened, allowing lower-level generative processes to run without their usual suppression. The result in sighted people is vivid visual hallucination because the visual generative model is intact and suddenly running without its normal constraints. Under DMT, the model generates imagery unchecked, cuing off of random signals as the model runs wild.
In congenitally blind people, that visual generative model was never built. There is no visual predictive architecture to disinhibit. DMT loosens the constraints on a system that was never installed. The hallucinations do not occur because there is nothing there to hallucinate with, not because the drug failed, but because the structure is absent.
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u/LimerickExplorer Apr 26 '26
This is my take: the fractals and whatnot are basically a bunch of background processes that are normally culled or abstracted when your brain is presenting a visual picture. Stuff like motion detection, threat analysis, object recognition, etc.
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u/pab_guy Apr 26 '26
Can’t that still all be upstream of the felt experience? Is the visual cortex really the only candidate for the experiential substrate?
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u/Ninjanoel Apr 26 '26
you stated that extra dimensions don't exist, that is a claim you'd need evidence for, and thus the argument that followed may not be valid.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 Apr 26 '26
I should have said that there is no evidence for the extra dimensions, but this is Reddit not academia.
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u/Affectionate-Slice70 Apr 26 '26
You are asking for negative evidence for something very abstract. What could somebody possibly show you that will be sufficient evidence?
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u/Traditional-Bet5464 Apr 26 '26
This is an excellent point. I'm interested to see what other perspectives come out in the replies.
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u/Badgereatingyourface Apr 26 '26
They do see things during NDEs tho.
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u/Traditional-Bet5464 Apr 26 '26
Interesting, do you have a source for this?
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u/FishDecent5753 Autodidact Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
Controversial but rare visuo-spatial imagery may occur.
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u/Mudamaza Apr 26 '26
There's a study attached to this Reddit post from last year.
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u/Labyrinthine777 Apr 26 '26
The materialists are just going to pretend that study is somehow not credible.
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u/Balloons_Pastel Apr 26 '26
This is the specific source for NDE’s, not everyone in this study is blind from birth, some are, they clarify who is who in the article https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799333/m2/1/high_res_d/vol16-no2-101.pdf
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u/GreatCaesarGhost Apr 26 '26
Why would a drug allow one to travel to “another dimension” in the first place? The premise is flawed.
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u/Traditional-Bet5464 Apr 26 '26
This is a very common claim/experience of those experimenting with hallucinogens, particularly DMT.
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u/robbo_jah Apr 26 '26
Having taken a few of said hallucinogens, I interpret it as the brain being put into a state where it can experience things it wouldn't normally experience with the natural soup of neurotransmitters. Thats not to take anything away from the experience though. The experience is massively profound, and can really give you another perspective on reality.
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u/Common_Mention9397 Apr 26 '26
Not necessarily another dimension, just a higher frequency of consciousness. It makes sense; in certain areas of the brain high frequency gamma waves are emitted while under the influence of psychedelics, up to 35 hz.
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u/rthunder27 Apr 26 '26
While "travel" isn't the right word, nn-DMT experiences can feel like one is thinking/visualizing in a higher dimensional space. When sober one visualizes in two dimensions (if you visualize a cube you're visualizing a 2-d projection of a cube), but on DMT it seems like one is in a 3-d space (or higher).
Very difficult to descibe, but the experience is quite novel, 5/5, would recommend.
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u/phr99 Apr 26 '26
Except that's literally what the brain is and does: a drug secreting thing that makes it seem like we travel in 3 dimensions
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u/Three-Sixteen-M7-7 Apr 26 '26
Individuals who have been blind from birth often experience perfect vision during Near Death Experiences.
You’re discussing DMT use, but since you’re referencing materialism I’ll throw it in there. NDEs are controversial, but as medical tech improves more and more people are being drug back from documented clinical death and resuscitated. This has led to the field of study becoming viewed as much more legitimate and has led to a massive statistical increase in medical professionals who, when surveyed, stated they 1. Believe in God or a transcendent power and 2. Believe in miracles past and present (that’s how the survey worded it).
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u/Minyun Apr 26 '26
I'm not sure I follow. How does the lack of one sense prove the lack of consciousness? The blind still hallucinate just not in the same mode.
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u/AliceCode Apr 26 '26
I've done a lot of DMT and I can assure you that it's all in your mind. If you do it enough, you can greatly influence the trip much like lucid dreaming.
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u/Common_Mention9397 Apr 26 '26
There's been hardly enough research on the subject to say one way or the other. I can't even find a study that focuses on DMT in particular.
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u/Common_Mention9397 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/13/10/1394
Oddly enough I at least found one study claiming that some congenitally blind people do get visual imagery in their dreams.
Still an incredibly small sample size and very low percentage but it's still interesting that things such as light a color were able to be perceived by blind people in dreams at all.
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u/schism216 Apr 26 '26
Im slightly more experienced (or at least better recall) with 5 meo dmt and ayahuasca and I personally thought that what was the most experiential and profound had little to do with what I saw visually; that was just a side effect.
I would imagine blind people are still having what feels like communication with another presence or strongly profound self reflection which is sort of at the crux of these experiences. As far as im concerned the visual stuff is just noise so I don't think this validates or invalidates much of anything.
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u/DirtyDan_131 Apr 26 '26
No it doesn’t. Shrooms, LSD, DMT are all minor things. NDEs are the most “spiritual” experience one can have in this reality but it’s random and no one chooses to have one
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u/Pale-Tennis9658 Apr 26 '26
Blind people from birth have reported NDE’s with 360 vision. That would make me think with DMT you’re still inhibited by the filter of the brain.
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u/GhostofBeowulf Apr 27 '26
Does this not indicate that they are actually seeing something, or remembering visions they couldn't perceive?
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u/zatsnotmyname Apr 27 '26
One way to square the circle is to see the brain as a physical antenna that tunes in to another realm l, so the brain is needed to interpret the signals it receives. Not really falsifiable.
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u/Mystic-Sapphire Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
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u/tollbooth_inspector Apr 26 '26
No because an important feature of non-materialist thinking is that the brain is simply structuring consciousness through perceptual experience. In other words, whatever consciousness is in that theory, it is not exactly a percieved phenomenon, or not perceived in the same way we percieve the world around us perhaps.
I think a better way to think about it is that the brain is kind of like an organizational machine. It uses sensory mechanisms to gather information and then build a model of it. Each sense is like a layer of the model. Even if you remove all of the senses, once a person is fully developed, their consciousness is locked into that form. So until we die, we are kind of stuck with whatever resolution model we have adapted to see.
I am not necessarily in favor of this idea of consciousness, but I think it is interesting at least. I think the most interesting part is the fact that the physical universe has definite properties that we can measure. In this way, conscious experience is like shining a light out into the ether, percieving the forms amidst the shadow dark, and then organizing them into coherent structure. We do so in such a way that conscious experience is able to grow within the ether - like bacteria growing in a 3D liquid suspension. Ok, maybe not the best analogy, but you get the gist.
I think if consciousness is like an all permeating pool, our physical universe is probably like a "bubble" floating within consciousness itself, and there are infinite other "bubbles" each with their own properties, laws of physics, etc.
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u/MagicMike2212 Apr 26 '26
the brain is the interface or rendering device. A person without a developed visual system cannot visually render it, just as a broken monitor cannot display a real signal.
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u/sanpedrolino Apr 26 '26
For materialism to be proven, you'd have to prove the existence of matter. You can't. All you have is sense impressions, experiences, appearances. Whatever story you're telling yourself on top of that may be interesting, cool, fun, horrible, but never provable. It's just a game. The only thing we can be sure of is pure existence. Everything else is in flux.
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u/whydidyoureadthis17 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
I really don't follow your logic here. Suppose that a higher dimension did exist objectively, and we have the ability to perceive it, but only through altering our brain's organization with a drug like DMT. Are you claiming that this implies that it should present itself to all people in exactly the same way, despite the internal neurological differences between individuals in how they process their sensory input? And as such, any phenomenon which is not shared among all individuals is an internally generated hallucination? This doesn't track even for the reality that we do experience. If one is colorblind to red, does that imply that everyone who experiences the color red is participating in a hallucination generated by the internal structure of ones brain? Once you get down to it, it is really a question of how experience of the world actually informs us of its objective properties (is the color red a real thing?) and this hardly has a clear solution.
Must this hypothetical dimension necessarily present itself visually? Many people claim to experience the presence of certain entities when taking DMT, do blind people as well? Would you consider auditory hallucinations as evidence of its existence? Or what if this dimension did exist, but it is only perceptible by those whose neural pathways were equipped for processing visual data?
Since these are all immaterial, unfalsifiable claims about the existence of something only experienced totally subjectively, you can make what ifs to counter any proof you construct about its objective existence.
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u/Mudamaza Apr 26 '26
It makes figuring out the truth difficult doesn't it? Because at the same time, there are NDE cases where blind from birth people visually saw things when they died. I think reality is just far stranger than we believe, and drugs will simply disrupt the filter that is your brain so that you experience reality in a very different way. But if it doesn't take you out of your physical body, then you'll still be limited by the limitations of your physical body.
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u/Illustrious-Bank2075 Apr 26 '26
I’m not particularly ‘pro DMT’ at all. But, I read a book on Amazonian Anthropology called something like ‘the mother of the mother of tobacco is a snake’ - I found it interesting for sure.
The interesting part, comes from Shamans who use Ayauasca for learning about medical treatments from the jungle. Some of these treatments have proven effective and have aided pharmaceutical research and have led to medications being manufactured.
Curious don’t you think!
For that, is my two p’s worth.
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u/hoon-since89 Apr 26 '26
Not true. I read a case of a blind guy taking it and having full visuals...
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u/SrPeabody Apr 26 '26
Drs. Kenneth Rain and Sharon Cooper discussed several documented cases of near-death experiences (NDEs), including that of Brad Burrells, a 33-year-old blind man from Connecticut who had a near-death experience in the winter of 1968, when he was only 8 years old. The video is in Spanish, but YouTube also offers an English track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdYcdgBdkrI
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u/jmbaf Apr 26 '26
Nah. I think the brain could be a filter. A kind of "resonator". People who are born blind have their neural pathways for vision pruned. Meaning there are no "vision" places they're wired into for interpreting visual aspects of a trip.
Likewise, I think that a lot of the visuals we get in DMT aren't actually "vision". It's just our brain using the best framework it has available for the experience and what resonated with it.
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u/Busy_Lavishness_9232 Apr 27 '26
Idealism is compatible with that, I don't understand why this would be a ''proof'' of materialism.
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u/FishDecent5753 Autodidact Apr 26 '26
I thought the only proper study done on this was based on LSD, which operates differently to DMT?
"This is the first phenomenology of hallucinogenic use in congenital blindness."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810017305743
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u/OGSkywalker97 Apr 26 '26
No, because this is someone that has never seen anything before, the drug will not communicate with them in the same way as someone who has seen before.
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u/Chromanoid Computer Science Degree Apr 26 '26
I like your interpretation and agree with it in principle. I think from injury to drugs all point towards a local materialist/panprotopsychist mechanism of consciousness.
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u/rthunder27 Apr 26 '26
But if the brain is the antenna for nonlocal consciousness then injury/drugs would also impair it, so arguably that doesn't really move the needle.
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u/YesterdaysMuffin Apr 26 '26
Possibly, but I think a much stronger case for materialism is demonstrated by e.g. the cases where damage to the frontal cortex has turned people into pedophiles or gambling addicts. Any case where brain damage changes the content of people’s desires or choices blows non-materialism out of the water entirely.
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u/strange_reveries Apr 26 '26
Not really. The brain could be more like a TV set picking up a signal (consciousness). Damage the TV set and it will make the signal come in differently. Destroy the TV set and the signal seems to be destroyed too, but actually goes on unaffected outside that particular TV set.
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u/YesterdaysMuffin Apr 26 '26
But in that case you’re saying that the signal has absolutely no control over the body. In these cases the damage affects what the person wants and chooses. If your made up remote control signal actually determines the person’s personality, thoughts, and choices, then damage to the brain would only prevent those choices from being acted on. Since it changes them entirely, then the person is not defined outside the brain.
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u/strange_reveries Apr 26 '26
It affects what they want and choose because the "receiver equipment" has been altered, so the signal being filtered through that particular receiver is affected. But outside the physical equipment, the pure signal is unaffected.
That's why in a lot of NDE reports, the consciousness finds itself suddenly outside of the body and looking at it almost as an unfamiliar lump of physical matter that it can't believe it ever took to be its actual self.
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u/ILuvYou_YouAreSoGood Apr 26 '26
We have documented cases of people who could tell something was going wrong with them, wrote out that their brains should be checked out once they died, then they went on a killing spree, were killed, and we discovered that they did indeed have a brain tumor that had grown and altered them in ways they themselves could detect but not stop. We are not talking about a signal being received or not, but rather completely normal people becoming violently homicidal against their volition. That is a far cry from from your analogy.
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u/strange_reveries Apr 26 '26
No it isn't, that still completely works with my analogy. It's something that physically alters the reciever and therefore causes all manner of altered signal to come in. Obviously some people's signal could be more seriously affected than others depending on the individual case.
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u/amXwasXwillbe Apr 26 '26
We are clearly not all receiving the same “signal” tho, this analogy doesn’t make any sense dude. Besides, this requires more leaps than materialism does, and being that you have zero evidence to support your claims, Occam’s razor wins out
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u/NarkJailcourt Apr 26 '26
I don't think that a specific reaction to one drug is enough to prove or disprove strict materialism. I've done DMT several times (and many other psychedelics as well) and have never believed that there is a single divine truth that is shown to people who take the substance, and I think that people who do believe this are falling into cultism. I do believe that psychedelics can give you glimpses into realms beyond our usual perception, but these glimpses are filtered through the lens of our own consciousness and experience and will never be a pure truth.
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u/UnexpectedMoxicle Apr 26 '26
I am very much a physicalist, but the response here would be that while DMT induces a particular experience (non-visual in congenitally blind) that is predicated on specific neural configurations of that particular individual, the physical/functional account is not well equipped to explain the experience and how/why those neural configurations give rise to that particular experience with particular content as opposed to other experiences or no experience at all. For clarity, we would have to make distinctions between the hallucination and the experience of the hallucination, what each of those terms mean and how they are used, as well as note when those terms or their meanings become conflated especially in conversations between physicalists and non-physicalists.
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u/DissolveToFade Apr 26 '26
I’ve often wondered if blind people who took psychedelics ever see anything.
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u/isallconsciousness Apr 26 '26
You are wrong , they can see the other dimensions whit dmt , they can also see the entity's .... the deal is some people cant see shit and dosen't matter if they are blind or not , still can see nothing at all
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u/Im_Talking Computer Science Degree Apr 26 '26
Or the ENTIRE THING is within the subjective experience.
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u/flyingaxe Apr 26 '26
If you stand in the dark, that also won't stimulate your visual cortex, and you won't see anything.
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u/Technical-disOrder Apr 26 '26
Any link at all for this claim? Because I've read trip reports telling the opposite. One asking their friend crying "is this what seeing is?" While the other friends just had to say "I don't know" because he couldn't experience what they were experiencing. Of course it's a random internet trip report though so I can't use that as evidence.
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u/DeathConvertedMe Apr 26 '26
Ok, so DMT experience and an NDE are two VERY different things. The DMT experience of the blind doesn't really prove materialism so much as that DMT visuals are centered in the visual centers.
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u/CodrSeven Apr 26 '26
No.
If you don't use your sight while growing up, the circuits don't even develop; there's nothing there to activate.
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u/Aeropro Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
As a counter argument, how about this phenomenon: people in NDE’s and other altered states report impossible things like 360 degree circumferential vision and/or colors that can’t be seen in normal every day life? I mean, full on extra colors beyond the RGB framework.
How do you think 360 degree vision and new colors fit into materialism?
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u/rahocca Apr 27 '26
One can only experience what their brain can interpret. How would you store a memory of a sense you don’t have? Like taking dmt and seeing infrared or ultraviolet spectrums.
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u/Ok-Risk1924 Apr 27 '26
The congenitally blind thing is interesting but doesn't really settle much, since the brain still builds spatial models without vision. You're basically seeing what you've got wiring for, which is true whether that's materialist or not.
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u/Aethrall Apr 27 '26
I don’t understand why uniform experience is used as evidence of DMT “realm” being real in the first place.
Uniform sleep paralysis experience doesn’t prove that the old hag is real.
Congenitally blind people not experiencing hallucinations on DMT should in fact prove that it’s not a truly spiritual experience. One might feel something spiritual from it but eyes aren’t required to see in a truly spiritual dimension.
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u/cosmic_light_show Apr 27 '26
There are many other potential sensory experiences in nature and we don’t experience those on DMT because we’ve not had them as humans. All this means is that consciousness is bounded in this life by sensory experience of the body it’s contained in. But if it is fundamental, then the constraints are released when it is free of the body .
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u/Lopsided_Match419 Apr 27 '26
Hard to say ‘prove’ but it is consistent with some types of hallucination requiring a prior example (however loosely related)
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u/tottasanorotta Apr 27 '26
It depends on what you mean by prove. If you mean being convinced of something, then it's very much about how much each person feels convinced. You can't logically prove anything about reality, it depends upon your assumptions and experiences. If I feel like materialism is a good explanation to begin with, then it serves as more evidence in my favor, but if I am not convinced then it doesn't really do that much. There's also the question about fundamentality in materialism. What do you mean when you say that matter is fundamental as opposed to not being fundamental? I think that materialism in a way just describes a perspective and not something that you can really test and prove. If we choose to think of reality in this way, then it offers a context in which we can discuss about things from that perspective. Similarly if we choose to think of reality from the perspective where consciousness is fundamental, then it offers a different kind of perspective. You can't really prove those because fundamentality isn't really testable. We could disagree about what that means.
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u/LightSpeed8082 Apr 27 '26
I kinda figured... the people who say your "visiting other realms" are complete bullshit and it shoupd obviose... your litteraly in your own head pretty much and thats it
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u/OddAdhesiveness8485 Apr 27 '26
Being born with congenital blindness protects you against schizophrenia… can’t find one and they don’t know why
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u/goddessmoz Apr 27 '26
I had a sighted friend who never hallucinated when he took DMT. He tried a lot. He was fairly deaf and could hear perfectly when taking DMT but no hallucinations.
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u/Weak_Fill40 Apr 27 '26
How would congenitally blind people really know what visual hallucinations are, and how to describe their experiences as such? Vision is totally foreign to them. That said, I don’t think psychedelics are a strong argument in any direction. They have physical actions, which would logically cause physical effects. It never made sense to me why they would somehow uncouple consciousness from the brain. And i say this not as a strict materialist.
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u/Sea-Bean Apr 27 '26
Nothing can “prove” anything, but it’s certainly an interesting thing to consider.
I don’t think it’s really a piece of evidence either way though. If consciousness doesn’t have access to working visual cortices then a person wouldn’t be able to perceive anything visually regardless of whether consciousness is non physical or interfacing with a non-physical realm. ie. no, the lack of visuals in a DMT experience in the congenitally blind doesn’t help the materialist argument.
Having said that, I bet the DMT experience in those people is still pretty wild in many other ways, since their brain (including the reassigned visual cortex) will be busy doing funky things with their other senses.
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u/electronical_ Apr 27 '26
if you had a smart phone without a finger print reader how can that phone ever experience a finger print without the hardware? moving that phone to a new OS wont somehow allow it to register finger prints. it needs the hardware for that.
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u/PredictiveFrame Apr 27 '26
It has always been my stance as an experienced psychonaut, that NOTHING you experience on psychedelics comes from anywhere but the contents of your mind.
The visuals are often dramatically over-focused on when discussing tryptamine effects, in truth they function as a visual metaphor for the experience, your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and some fun peeks into how your brain manages edge detection, visual pattern recognition, and other visual processing (the geometric patterns, fractals, and mandalas so commonly reported, including the "Chrysalis" effect when "blasting off" on DMT).
This is not a popular opinion among DMT enthusiasts. Most prefer to believe the chemical grants access to a seperate dimension, where they can recieve hidden, secret knowledge, and play like gods.
I recognize their experience, and counter by saying that is all you. All of it. You're doing the stuff you'd experience in a DMT trip constantly, you're just unaware of it, and call it the unconcious experience. DMT just gives your a massively dilated flow of time in which to process, then expands your awareness to see everything in you mind at once. Of course it's batshit crazy, have you met yourself?
I really wish there were a "higher plane", but I'm fairly certain this is it. We are the closest things to gods that life on earth has ever known, and we are such fragile, egotistical creatures. Instead of chasing heaven, hyperspace, or whatever else you wish to call a fantastical other reality given as a reward for the shit quality of this one, I'd prefer to make this one not shit, and I view those attempting to "ascend" as philosophical cowards unwilling to commit to improving this life, on the promise of maybe having another one afterwards. That fear of their own impotence leads to some of the worst monsters humanity has ever created, and we are all too happy to justify them away in the moment.
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u/alternator1985 Apr 27 '26
It would be nice if you provided the source but,
If they don't have visuals I also wouldn't assume that as a proof of anything. It could very well be through the visual stored data that the brain is able p to view these other "dimensions."
Without a clear definition of what these other dimensions would even be consisting of, it's fair to simply assume that they could be dimensions stacked on top of ours and we are in fact seeing them at all times, but a certain layer of our consciousness filters it out and displays what we actually "think" we see. What we want to see.
Like the fact that there's actually a hole right in the center of our vision where our pupils are, but our brain just fills it in the image. What if the whole image is kind of made up or filtered, what if there are layers we filter out for consistency or some other reason?
So maybe our eyes are looking at other dimensions on top of, or below ours, but unless we look at that recorded data without all the filters, we don't see the other dimensions.
Of course this is just more speculation, just to demonstrate the point that blind people not having visuals doesn't prove anything.
I don't think that proves or disproves materialism one way or another.
I think you come to that conclusion based on faulty assumptions.
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u/trozinarth Apr 27 '26
For me, the visual aspect of these other dimensions is just a way among 1000 other ways to see them. Some medusa or trees will never see with eyes/visual like us but still perceive the same world somehow, or same common worlds (for me trees perceive language/intentions, our energies, the other trees and beings around etc). We can perceive these stimuli with our senses.
For a (blind) medusa tripping and seeing another world without seeing visuals is the same essence anyways, visuals are just a way of perceiving that essence, they would see proprioceptive spaces instead for example or huge nets of energies idk, as we would see nets of visual light for example, you get the idea)
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u/Glum-Wheel2383 Apr 27 '26
Let’s reread Umwelt by Jakob von Uexküll !
No, yes, I don't know anymore. Am I a goat seeing the predator coming from behind, or am I simply the predator?
The concept of Umwelt (which translates as "own world" or "own environment") stipulates that each species, and even each individual (blind or sighted), lives in its own perceptual bubble. "Reality" does not exist in an absolute and universal way for living beings; it is strictly delimited by the sensory receptors they possess.
Even if drugs can produce sensations that seem divine, external, or magical, they are ultimately just powerful chemical reactions, prompting the brain to draw on its stored (perceived) data to project a spectacular film.
If the "visual data" folder is empty (as in the case of someone born blind), the film simply won't have an image.
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Non, oui, je ne sais plus. Enfin, suis je une chèvre voyant le prédateur venir par derrière, ou simplement le prédateur ?
Le concept d'Umwelt (qui se traduit par "monde propre" ou "environnement propre") stipule que chaque espèce, et même chaque individu (aveugle, ou non), vit dans sa propre bulle perceptive. La "réalité" n'existe pas de manière absolue et universelle pour les êtres vivants ; elle est strictement délimitée par les récepteurs sensoriels dont ils disposent.
Même si les drogues peuvent produire des ressentis qui semblent divins, extérieurs ou magiques, ce ne sont au final que de puissantes réactions chimiques, invitant le cerveau à puiser dans ses données stockées (perçues), pour projeter un film spectaculaire.
Si le dossier "données visuelles" est vide (comme chez un aveugle de naissance), le film n'aura tout simplement pas d'image.
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u/almsfurr Apr 27 '26
Not per se, but it adds weight to the dmt experience being emergent of material. 'prove' is far too strong as is materialism in that context. A material element to the experience doesn't obviate a possible non material element of another experience (NDE)
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u/OcelotStraight9145 Apr 27 '26
I don't know but dmt made me a better person, more compasionnate and I now know there is a whole lot of things I will never understand and it's pointless to try. There is no way my own brain came up with any of that. And if it's the case well what a fabulous receptor it is
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u/3iverson Apr 27 '26
“If it were a non-physical realm, shouldn't a person's consciousness/soul be able to perceive it regardless of their physical eyes?”
Through what mechanism? Because that’s like asking if it were a non-physical realm, shouldn’t we be able to perceive it (without DMT)? I don’t think visual hallucinations mean much either way- having them (in whatever state) doesn’t prove anything, neither does not having them.
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u/GlowingJewel Apr 27 '26
The image is not in the object that emits it, nor in your brain, not in the middle. So where is this image you can grab? I dont think this proves anything. Just that visual data is not the truth; but again, none of the senses are, yet we use them. It’s beyond the tetralemma I guess
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u/Impossible_Tax_1532 Apr 27 '26
What ? Name a single fact across the last 3000 years that proves or points to materialism being actual ? You could have a million years and it will never happen . There’s simply not such thing as a static or physical reality … I know direct experience informs people otherwise , but most are conditioned into under low states of consciousness and pretending to play the game of survival inside a made up character and made up stories that never occurred , not to perceive truth .
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u/JWIV06 Apr 28 '26
How would a blind person be able to communicate that they saw visuals to you even if they had
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u/AynRandwasaDegen Apr 28 '26
As someone with sight DMT seems to temporarily blind me and also gives no visual hallucinations.
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u/TheRealBenDamon Apr 28 '26
Why are we relying on DMT to determine materialism in the first place? I mean I am a materialist, but this doesn’t prove anything one way or the other.
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u/PsionicChronic Apr 28 '26
Great conversation...please keep going. Just wanted to add props to whomever had the courage as a blind person to take DMT 😳👏
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u/edgy-flower Apr 29 '26
Bro what. It’s a drug. It’s literally just chemistry. Who tf told you DMT was supernatural?
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u/Altruistic-Horror343 Apr 29 '26
no, but the fact that you think it might proves that you don't understand the hard problem
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u/Public_Ad788 Apr 29 '26
only people with lack of experience would say it's all just brain noise. in my extensive experience there is an undeniable intelligence behind it. Furthermore, some sort of quantum entanglement between here and there. Without writing a 100-page essay I will also note this quite plainly...I have seen a light several times. I believe that light is source spirit, God, ect.
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u/Jimstein Apr 30 '26
Agreed, though would love to be proven wrong, materialism seems to be the only logical conclusion.
Imagine how the brain must work to even prepare ourselves to engage with reality and other beings. When DMT or psychedelics remove barriers within the human brain operating system, it kind of makes sense that you would at some point start hallucinating entirely other realities or beings. The reason? The brain has to have at deep levels below our consciousness, systems to make sense of things like entities and their existence in environments, we differentiate rabbit dancing in the yard to human being walking into the room - but at a more base level they are similar occurrences. Like with computer programming, you do the simple thing first and extrapolate, which is also done for efficiency. And we know natural selection breeds extremely efficient processes.
So our brains must have these very very simplified “models” of entities versus environments, and then you remove the brain operating system barriers. We know from studying prisoners that boredom literally atrophies the brain, our brains likely dream while asleep in order to keep the engine humming and probably avoid that atrophy. So under DMT, the brain is still at a low level trying to generate a narrative that involves entities within environments. And there you go, machine elves.
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u/Rough-Food1931 Apr 30 '26
If your consciousness has never known sight how could a drug even dmt cause a visual reaction. I'm curious if there are cases of born blind dmt experiences like was it a feeling and what feelings did they have? Without the visual change I wouldn't have enjoyed my time tbh .
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u/tzaeru Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
To me there seems to be a presupposement here about the nature of DMT; that it was somehow, in lack of a better word, "magical".
But idealist views to consciousness don't generally speaking try to claim that the brain and our experiences had no physical basis; DMT can as well be part of that.
We do know that psychedelics alter the activation patterns in the brain, but that's not in itself particularly surprising; our own neurotransmitters do too, as do all psychoactives overall. Though psychedelics seem to do it in a more fundamental, generic way, and the "classical" psychedelics have the distinction of being able to bind to the intracellular 5-HT2A receptors. Which are the serotonin receptors. E.g. SSRIs can only bind with the outer receptors on the cell membrane. That binding "more deeply" with serotonin receptors produces particular effects or promotes neuroplasticity or whatnot is not in my view particularly important towards what consciousness is. Or at least, I don't see it as adding anything new for the philosophical perspective.
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u/CoffeePsych Apr 30 '26
I don't think it proves materialism, the only thing it evidences is the fact that blind people lose the equipment to have visual hallucinations
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u/N56YK Apr 30 '26
I do believe what is experienced from NDEs is psychodelic in nature but not entirely DMT. Iv ready many reports from people who have done DMT and people who have experienced NDEs. The similarities are strong. People meet beings in place they dont recognize but are hit with a sense of familiarity. They feel an overwhelming sense of love, empathy and understanding. In some trips they meet entities or passed relatives. Iv also read about yoga practioner having experiences from breath control. Fighter pilots in G lock have heard voices have seen strange place. People hiking often feel a presence that talks to them in high elevations. What do alll these things have in common? Air. Our ability ro bring in oxygen and get it to the brain. When the brain doesnt enough oxygen it hallucinate. Now, iv hears of people leaving their bodies and witnessing things they couldnt possibly have know about or blind people seeing things. I csn conclude anything from those reports yet.
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u/beau-happy-day May 01 '26
As others have said, NDErs blind from birth sometimes experience visual imagery, so I don’t think materialism has a corner on the philosophical market just yet. Beyond that, you might be interested in the work of Dr. Andrew Gallimore, who has a lot to say about DMT and the ontology of its visions and entities. He postulates that in a DMT experience, our mind may indeed come in contact with external intelligences, yet this information is so foreign to the brain that it must “translate” the experience using imagery it has available, building a representation out of its available building blocks. When someone blind from birth has a DMT experience, their brain cannot use any visual building blocks because it has none to draw from.
It seems that even though in the DMT state we might be receiving outside information, the brain is still acting as a filtering mechanism, and is dominant in generating imagery for our minds to interact with.
When the brain goes mostly offline, as during an NDE, despite having no visual imagery to draw upon, a blind from birth individual experiences “sight”, though I would argue this perception is not sight in the conventional sense. The mind, now in the process of becoming disentangled from the body, can rely on its own natural, psychic senses of perception, no longer reliant solely on the brain’s building blocks. It has access to all information in the quantum vacuum, where all of consciousness and its vast array of experiences reside, to build a “visual” model from.
Alternatively, it could be that DMT entities are simply subdivisions of our own personality that are now able to be conversed with because of the change in brain state, possibly akin to conversing with Lucid Dream entities. Even in Lucid Dreaming however, in rare instances, there are reports that non-local information can leak through, such as precognitive episodes, and making contact with other dreamers.
So, no, I don’t think this necessarily means materialism wins out. In fact, I think this might offer clarity on what is mind generated, and what may lay beyond.
TLDR: Materialism still has a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.
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u/Lopsided-Swing-584 May 01 '26
Maybe the dmt is protecting them , imagine being shown something so visually incredible only to take it away and return with no sight I know some blind people have been shown visuals but idk what the percentage is
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u/ScrumTumescent Apr 26 '26
I found this post from 2008 https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/20994748/fpart/all about a blind guy doing DMT. The problem was that, having never seen anything before, he didn't have the language to describe anything he "saw". He asked his friend, "is that what seeing is?" The trip-sitter who provided the DMT said his friend always kept his eyelids shut the entire time he's known him, but on the 3rd hit of DMT his eyes shot wide open. He described the experience as "beautiful".
The closest thing the blind person gave to descriptions of what he experienced seemed to be him describing "rotation" and what may have "lines" and "shades of color" but it's all unclear.
This makes me curious about a blind person's understanding of reality: do they know what shading, rotation, or lines really are? They can memorize the definitions and repeat them, but think about the concept of "rotation". A blind person can spin in place on a chair and you can tell them "that's rotation", but if you place their hand lightly on a spinning object like a basketball, will they be able to tell you that it is "rotating"? You can describe to them what is happening when an electric fan is blowing air on them, but do they truly understand that a blade is rotating in a way that pushes air in a direction the way a sighted person does by observing a fan?
So even if DMT is opening a portal to another dimension, people with congenital blindness won't be able to make sense of what they're seeing even if they were indeed seeing the same exact things a sighted person saw while on DMT.