[sammalloy]

You don’t need to take any DMT (or any other substance for that matter) to explore and experience this subject. The interesting thing about Shanon is how he collected data about Amazonian archetypes unique to ayahuasca. Jeremy Narby and a few others followed up on this, but it is considered the very definition of fringe science and isn’t well understood. Shanon, Narby, and McKenna were convinced that there was informational content within the drug that is passed on from the ingestion of the substance to the user, akin to Neo uploading Kung Fu directly into his brain. Sadly, however, nobody has ever been able to substantiate this claim or support it with the most basic kind of evidence.

But there is something to be said about culture and language and the Platonic forms that are communicated through writing. The domain of art, psychology, philosophy, mythology, religion, comparative literature, and theatre is chock full of it, and has enough material to keep you busy for five separate lifetimes. Archetypes, metaphors, symbols, and images in these disciplines are all different aspects of these so-called Platonic forms. In the theatrical arts in particular, there is a very strange body of literature surrounding the French troubadours that you may want to start with. The lore suggests that they were using poetry, music, and themes about love to spread these kinds of archetypes.

[dbtc]

Do you have any book recommendations? Thanks.

[sammalloy]

Probably best to start with Richard Evans Schultes. The book list is at the bottom of this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Evans_Schultes