It is a striking pattern in modern entheogenic culture: again and again, those who inhale DMT speak of departing the world they know, and stepping into what they call “hyperspace.” In countless user reports, this hyperspace is not just a fanciful hallucination but an entire state of being that feels more real than ordinary waking life.

Anthropologists and consciousness researchers have long noticed that these journeys echo ancient initiatory patterns. As early as 1909, Van Gennep described how rites of passage pass through three phases: separation, liminality, and reaggregation. DMT users today unwittingly enact a version of this: they separate from consensus reality, drift through an in-between dimension where rules bend and new insights arise, and then return to the familiar world, changed, if only slightly.

What they call “hyperspace” is not the hyperspace of physics textbooks or multi-dimensional geometry alone. It is an experiential hyperspace: a realm that seems to transcend our four dimensions, populated with imagery, symbols, and often entities whose presence feels astonishingly autonomous.

Encounters with these “ultradimensionals” have now formed an entire folklore of their own. Rick Strassman’s clinical work famously found that about half his volunteers met these beings. Later surveys, like Meyer’s review of hundreds of reports, push this even higher, over 66% describing contact with distinct sentient forms: machine elves, teachers, insectoid mantids, shapeshifters, or tree spirits. Some speak of them as wise cosmic midwives; others experience them as unsettling archons or tricksters. Some see them as hallucinations, others as independent minds in a parallel dimension, or as Jungian archetypes given visionary flesh.

A phosphene-like inner cinema

In this swirl of accounts, we glimpse how DMT hyperspace becomes a shared ultrasubjective terrain. It is not merely “inside the head,” nor entirely “out there.” It occupies a liminal zone, a phosphene-like inner cinema, where the mind’s entoptic light forms merge with cultural expectation and deep psychic archetypes.

Three major currents run through DMT practice. First is the gnostic dimension: users speak of revelations, a sudden lifting of the veil. Writer Daniel Pinchbeck described this realm as the hidden fabric behind waking life, a place “next door,” shimmering like a flicker on the edge of perception. Many feel they glimpse truths about nature, self, or cosmos that ordinary language struggles to hold. Hanegraaff’s research calls this entheogenic esotericism, a new branch in Western esoteric history, where plant sacraments and synthetic tryptamines alike function as doorways to spiritual gnosis.

Second is the therapeutic path: modern self-shamanizing. Here, DMT is approached not as a party drug but as an instrument for healing soul wounds, lifting trauma, or restoring contact with forgotten layers of self. Unlike traditional shamanism where the healer navigates for the patient, the modern neoshaman is self-guided: they inhale, plunge, interpret, and integrate — all within their own mind. The “letting go” is radical, yet the meaning is woven back into life on their own terms.

Third is the ludic, the playful. DMT is not only a tool for gnosis or therapy; it is also embraced as part of dance festivals, changa ceremonies, or psychedelic revelry. Here, hyperspace spills into shared celebration, animated in movement and music. Ott once argued this is no trivial pastime: ludibund, from the Latin ludere, reminds us that play is serious business, a transgressive force testing the boundaries of mind, culture, and even the law.

In all three modes, a common thread runs through: the emergence of an ultrasubjective hyperspace — an interior realm where entoptic light and sound merge with memory, symbol, and mythic imagination. In the Yoga of the Inner Light, we see this too: closed-eye light phenomena, or phosphenes, become gateways to layered visionary space. They flicker like Pinchbeck’s candle, expanding the mind beyond its routine dimensions.

Afterword: The Candle Flicker and the Inner Light

When Daniel Pinchbeck described the DMT realm as “a soft shadow, a candle flicker away,” he captured an image that resonates deeply with ancient and modern accounts of inner light. Across many cultures and practices — from spontaneous entoptic flashes to deliberate phosphene meditation — this subtle flicker is often the first sign that the mind is stepping beyond its ordinary sensory limits.

In the Yoga of the Inner Light, this flicker marks the threshold of the ultrasubjective field — the luminous region where consciousness reveals layers normally hidden behind the curtain of waking perception. Just as the flicker at the edge of Pinchbeck’s vision hinted at a realm “next door,” phosphene practitioners discover that the faint lights seen with closed eyes can blossom into intricate patterns, morphing mandalas, or even vast scenes that seem to carry insight or meaning.

What makes this comparison so compelling is that both the DMT user’s hyperspace and the meditator’s phosphene visions arise in the dark — behind the eyelids, beyond the routine feed of the senses. Both open a portal into inner hyperspace — not the cold mathematical hyperspace of equations, but a felt dimensionality, warm with images, symbols, and the strange presence of meaning.

In this sense, the candle flicker is a symbol for the mind’s latent light-body: a subtle radiance that can grow brighter when given the right condition — whether through sacred plants, disciplined meditation, or simply an attentive surrender to the dark within.

For those walking the path of the Yoga of the Inner Light, the phosphene becomes not merely an optical curiosity but a doorway into this ultrasubjective hyperspace — the mind’s own visionary terrain. And for those who step into the flicker, whether by breath or molecule, there is always the chance that beyond the veil, a deeper light waits.

For now, DMT’s strange realm of machine elves and cosmic teachers remains a puzzle at the edges of scientific explanation. But it is not an idle fantasy. It reminds us that the mind, when opened by the right key, can slip its usual limits and enter a luminous region where form, meaning, and light are woven in ways that our waking eyes alone can never fully see.

The best article at the moment on DMT consciousness I found is: St John, Graham. “The breakthrough experience: DMT hyperspace and its liminal aesthetics.” Anthropology of consciousness 29.1 (2018): 57-76.

Shunyam Adhibhu

Further references:

Ott, Jonathan. 1996 1993. Pharmocotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History. Kennewick, WA: Natural Products Co.

Pinchbeck, Daniel. 2002. Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism. New York: Broadway Books.

Shulgin, Alexander, and Ann Shulgin. 1997. TIKHAL: The Continuation. Berkeley: Transform Press.