Reported Encounters with External Entities

Entities perceived during DMT inebriation have been represented in diverse forms of psychedelic art. The term machine elf was coined by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna for the entities he encountered in DMT "hyperspace", also using terms like fractal elves, or self-transforming machine elves.

McKenna first encountered the "machine elves" after smoking DMT in Berkeley in 1965. His subsequent speculations regarding the hyperdimensional space in which they were encountered have inspired a great many artists and musicians, and the meaning of DMT entities has been a subject of considerable debate among participants in a networked cultural underground, enthused by McKenna's effusive accounts of DMT hyperspace.

Cliff Pickover has also written about the "machine elf" experience, in the book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves, while Rick Strassman notes many similarities between self-reports of his DMT study participants' encounters with these "entities", and mythological descriptions of figures such as Chayot Ha Kodesh in ancient religions, including both angels and demons.

Strassman also argues for a similarity in his study participants' descriptions of mechanized wheels, gears and machinery in these encounters, with those described in visions of encounters with the Living Creatures and Ophanim of the Hebrew Bible, noting they may stem from a common neuropsychopharmacological experience.

Strassman argues that the more positive of the "external entities" encountered in DMT experiences should be understood as analogous to certain forms of angels:

"The medieval Jewish philosophers whom I rely upon for understanding the Hebrew Bible text and its concept of prophecy portray angels as God's intermediaries. That is, they perform a certain function for God. Within the context of my DMT research, I believe that the beings that volunteers see could be conceived of as angelic - that is, previously invisible, incorporeal spiritual forces that are engarbed or enclothed in a particular form - determined by the psychological and spiritual development of the volunteers - bringing a particular message or experience to that volunteer."

However, Strassman's experimental participants also note that some other entities can subjectively resemble creatures more like insects and aliens.

As a result, Strassman writes these experiences among his experimental participants "also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research."

Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Stephen Szara in a 1958 study in psychotic patients, in which he described how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced "strange creatures, dwarves or something" at the beginning of a DMT trip.

Other researchers of the entities seemingly encountered by DMT users describe them as "entities" or "beings" in humanoid as well as animal form, with descriptions of "little people" being common (non-human gnomes, elves, imps, etc.).

Strassman and others have speculated that this form of hallucination may be the cause of alien abduction and extraterrestrial encounter experiences, which may occur through endogenously-occurring DMT.

Likening them to descriptions of rattling and chattering auditory phenomenon described in encounters with the Hayyoth in the Book of Ezekiel, Rick Strassman notes that participants in his studies, when reporting encounters with the alleged entities, have also described loud auditory hallucinations, such as one subject reporting typically "the elves laughing or talking at high volume, chattering, twittering.