Carl Hayden Smith, a professor at the University of East London, recounts his eight-year journey as the first human subject (“patient zero”) in Imperial College London’s DMTx program — a series of intravenous DMT studies designed to explore consciousness itself, not to treat pathology. The episode weaves together his firsthand trip reports, the evolving science of extended-state DMT, parallel research into cyberdelics (technology-induced altered states), ancient mystery traditions, and a developing “hyperhuman” framework for using psychedelics and tech to amplify — rather than outsource — human capacity.
DMTx trials at Imperial College
The program ran in three phases: (1) 2016–17 EEG + IV DMT pilot; (2) fMRI + EEG + IV DMT; (3) 2021 onward, DMTx extended-state infusion (target-controlled infusion pump borrowed from anesthesiology, swapping anesthetic for DMT).
Smith completed five dosing sessions over three months (one every three weeks, half-hour infusions at escalating doses). Safety data showed heart rate spikes then stabilization, supporting feasibility of longer infusions (others have since done 5-hour runs).
Inside the fMRI: extreme claustrophobia, loud noise, total immobilization, no control over dosing timing. Entities arrived en masse, seemingly confused to find him being scanned — they usually do the scanning. They communicated “you’re not scheduled” (not near death) and he spent the trip calming them down.
Two weeks later, same dose, same scanner: no entities appeared. Smith interprets this as context-dependence — the setting (hospital, noise, restraint) shapes the experience as much as the drug.
Micro-phenomenological interviews followed each session: researchers interrupted every two minutes asking “how intense? how anxious?” creating a double-consciousness state (in the trip + in the body). Ratings guided post-session re-entry into the experience for detailed recall.
What the brain shows on DMT
Chris Timmermann’s publications reveal a neural signature resembling dream sleep (high delta, low gamma) — the brain “thinks” it’s asleep while the subject is hyper-lucid.
Same pattern appears in: sober subjects in the Great Pyramid’s King’s Chamber (EEG measured by Smith’s group), alleged UFO experiencers wearing EEG helmets, and possibly other sacred sites. A “golden thread” links dreaming, psychedelics, and sacred architecture.
Andrew Gallimore’s model: the five senses are a “VR headset” filtering reality for survival; DMT strips the filters. Gallimore now collaborates with Donald Hoffman (idealist: spacetime is a construct of consciousness) at the newly launched Trace Institute (LA) to test this.
Entities, “lockout,” and the Elusis Caribbean project
74–78% of DMTx participants at Elusis (St. Vincent & the Grenadines, legal license) report entity encounters; many meet “children of entities” — introduced as kin.
Lockout syndrome: some users (e.g., David Luke, 50 doses on the Ganges) hit an “orange screen” for decades until a later Imperial study “unlocked” them. Others are genetically unable to experience DMT at all. Elusis plans a three-arm study: locked-out, never-responders, and typical responders.
Curatable trips: IV infusion allows stepwise dosing (start at 3–4 mg, bolus for launch, pull back rapidly). Set in nature (snorkeling, lomilomi massage) rather than a hospital ward — context engineering to reduce fear/death associations and amplify insight.
Goal: bring skilled people (mathematicians, scientists) into extended state with specific intentions — solve problems, retrieve information — not colonize the space. Smith warns: staying too long/frequently risks “colonizing” the entity realm; he was told “you’re coming back too frequently.”
Cyberdelics: tech that alters consciousness
Luma band (pre-order): transcranial stimulation (angular gyrus) during REM to induce lucid dreaming on demand. Raises ethical questions: are we meant to earn lucidity through practice? What happens to flow states if time-perception is outsourced?
North Sense (CyborNest): body-pierced implant vibrating to magnetic north; after weeks, user retains internal compass. Hyperhuman version: wearable belt for six weeks, then permanent internal sense without hardware.
Ultrasound-targeted ketamine (Stanford): focus ultrasound to steer ketamine to specific brain regions.
Magneto-receptor caps (Gallimore vision): non-invasive magnetic switching of receptors — “eventually we might not need substances at all, just magnets.”
Smith distinguishes hyperhuman (tech amplifies latent human capacity, then removes) vs. transhuman (permanent implantation, outsourcing).
Life reviews, karma, and the “learning lab” model
Smith experienced a full life review in reverse (episodic chunks) during a psychedelic session — triple consciousness: present self, reviewing self, and out-of-body entering objects/people (wood consciousness, then another person’s experience of him).
Hypothesis: karma = experiencing what you did to others from their POV simultaneously with your own. Death = massive expansion of consciousness, not termination; life = a learning lab where you choose experiences to later review.
Free-diving near-death triggered a 40-year life review in ~10 seconds real time. Salvia trips report similar multi-year subjective lives in minutes, with post-trip grief for “lost” dream people.
Journaling, memory palaces, and 3D modeling
Three-tier journal (40 years): Word doc (doing/content), video (feeling/context), handwritten notebooks (thinking/integration) — whole-brain engagement. Enables cross-sectional review (same day across years) to reveal spirals, blind spots, relationship patterns.
Memory palaces: Smith’s early career reconstructing ancient sites in 3D (Palace of Darius at Persepolis, Cistercian abbeys) accidentally built internal memory palaces. Side effect: expanded peripheral vision, better driving, deeper spatial cognition.
Ancient Greek method: map speeches onto virtual architecture; walk the palace to recall. Modern memory athletes use same technique. Building your own palace is key — consuming others’ games doesn’t stick.
Sound, archaeology, and the Museum of Consciousness
Pascal Savy composition commissioned by Imperial: played during every DMT session for eight years. Now acts as a conditioned trigger — hearing the opening bars induces DMT-like state sober.
Museum of Consciousness: 100+ artists create 5–6 hour sound transmissions (no drugs, no bar, uncomfortable seating) to induce altered states with lasting trait changes. Tests pre/post smell sensitivity (reminiscence therapy model from Alzheimer’s research).
Archaeoacoustics: King’s Chamber EEG shows high delta (sleep signature) while sober. Same 117–120 Hz fundamental frequency in Great Pyramid and Chichén Itzá. Ancient “sound hospitals” (Saqqara boxes) may have used resonance physiologically.
Histotripsy (2025): focused ultrasound mechanically liquefies tumors — modern validation of sound’s physical power.
Second Sphinx and Giza Plateau scanning
Filippo Biondi (SAR satellite data) claims a second sphinx buried on Giza Plateau, facing sunset vs. sunrise. SAR reveals subsurface structures; Smith’s team (New Nordics) adding hyperspectral satellite data (soil chemistry, crop marks) to corroborate.
Biondi’s SAR also shows three additional levels below the known three in the Osiris Shaft. Mainstream archaeology dismisses claims; Egyptian authorities reportedly blocked Biondi from future access.
Hyperspectral satellite tasking: community-directed platform (launching soon) lets anyone point the satellite at sites of interest — bypassing gatekeepers.
Hyperhumanism vs. transhumanism
Transhuman: engineering the human as a problem to solve (longevity escape velocity, Neuralink, DMT pods with IV nutrition/waste — Gallimore’s early vision). Shamans called it “bonkers.”
Hyperhuman: life as mystery to live, not problem to solve. Scaffold for amplifying latent abilities: intuition, intention, embodied intelligence, relational awareness, liminal-state practice (hypnagogic/hypnopompic problem-solving, peripheral vision expansion, breath/jaw tension release).
Anterior mid-cingulate cortex (Huberman): grows when doing things you don’t want to do but override — seat of will to live, not just willpower. Enjoying the challenge defeats the mechanism.
McLuhan: every media extension amputates a faculty. Cold media (books, radio) require co-creation; hot media (CGI film) do the work for you. AI risks outsourcing creativity — better to use AI as critic of your own output, not generator.
Umwelt hacking, interspecies communication, and telepathy
Umwelt = species-specific sensory world. Lobster: brain in throat, hears with legs, tastes with feet. Fungi: no head/heart/center, global resource-sharing networks (“wood wide web”). Ants perform surgery. Frogs freeze solid, thaw alive.
Earth Species Project / Project CETI: LLMs decoding sperm whale phonetic alphabet, dolphin language, plant signaling. Playback experiments risky — distress calls played to whales caused distress.
Telepathy tapes (nonverbal autistic children reportedly communicating telepathically): Smith leans real but notes grifters, monetization, and refusal to admit stage magicians/mentalists (skeptical energy “ruins it” per proponents). Wants in-person verification.
AI, agency, and the Center for Human Agency
Agency erosion: outsourcing cognition to LLMs (writing, coding, memory) atrophies neural networks, especially in developing brains. Guardrails appear/disappear; model sunsetting causes genuine grief (sycophantic AI mimics relationship).
Data center externalities: Colossus (xAI/Grok) noise pollution, water use — “sacrifice zones” like Memphis. Frontier models banned (Fable/Clude) for national security — regulatory capture risk.
Center for Human Agency (with Josh): literacy-first approach — don’t outsource, use AI to critique your work. Teach kids to build neural architecture before handing them tools. “Good ancestor” framing: what serves seven generations?
Mystery schools, Eleusis, and the 1,000-month lifespan
Eleusinian Mysteries (Alfsis): Greek philosophers underwent inner/outer mysteries; kykeon possibly ergot/psychedelic. Three-day descent/return — “learning to die before you die.”
Kogi tribe (Colombia): shamans raised in caves 9–18 years, taught world in darkness, emerge on birthday — endogenous DMT incubated in dark.
1,000 months (~83 years) = total human lifespan. Only ~300 months discretionary; average person spends 300 months on phone. Presence = longevity. Travel, novelty, journaling, memory palaces, breath, peripheral vision — practices that keep the brain “online.”
Closing frame
Smith’s work consolidates at contextology.org (talks, papers). Elusis (elusismind.com) runs the Caribbean DMTx program. New Nordics (nonprofit research arm) funds Trace Institute, archaeological scanning, cyberdelics hub (cyberdelicnexus.com).
Core tension: mystery vs. mastery. Science can map correlates, but the “white disc” cracking into “plurality of unities” suggests reality exceeds capture. The point isn’t to solve consciousness but to live the human span fully — dipped in mystery, not dissolved by it.
