Why do People See Elves When They Take DMT?
What entities might reveal about memory, mind, and nature, with philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
The reports are remarkably consistent: travellers on DMT describe meeting entities, beings, intelligences that seem to greet them, instruct them, even expect them, something I often discussed with Terence McKenna (as in trialogue 13). It’s a question philosopher of mind and metaphysics Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes is well placed to probe. His work centres on panpsychism and the philosophy of psychedelic experience, and he takes such reports neither as gospel nor as nonsense, but as data worth thinking about carefully.
In this clip we turn to those DMT entities directly. Are these visions purely private hallucinations, manufactured by the brain, or might they be glimpses of something more collective, a shared memory within nature of the kind I’ve explored through morphic resonance? Peter and I take the question seriously without pretending to settle it, and the conversation moves from the pharmacology of these states to what they might imply about the reach of mind beyond the individual skull.
It’s a small excerpt from a much longer and wide-ranging exchange about consciousness, memory, and where the edges of the mind really lie. With a free iai trial, you can watch the full conversation.
From the talk…
I got interested in this question in relation to dreams. Psychedelic experiences a few people have had, most people haven't, but everyone's had dreams, and in our dreams we enter a realm where all sorts of improbable things happen... So I thought, what about Ganesh in India, the elephant-headed god? He couldn't possibly have existed in the normal sense of the word, unless there were elephant-head transplants. He's a cultural image: on calendars, in statues, in temples, in people's houses. Almost all Hindus see Ganesh images all their lives. So I asked: does Ganesh appear in dreams? I went online and found Ganesh dream discussion groups, Indians discussing their Ganesh dreams. He's obviously more than a personal hallucination, because he's a collective phenomenon... Maybe he's a manifestation of a deeper principle that works through this image in people's dreams. Then it wouldn't just be a fancy hallucination in a particular person's mind.
The discussion took place in April 2022 at HowTheLightGetsIn, the IAI’s philosophy and music festival, which gathers scientists, philosophers and artists for exactly this sort of open-ended enquiry, the kind of setting where questions that polite science prefers to ignore can at last be asked aloud.
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Rupert Sheldrake
Raised in the Pac NW, I've been aware of a certain nature mysticism since childhood. I was a blue collar rank and file labor activist for 28 years, then back to uni in my 50s, botany major, forestry minor. Given my political and union background, I understood the implications of how the complexities of the mycorrhizosphere meant cooperation was by far the dominant mode of life. Nor was I so used to rationalism and empiricism as to assume that's all of reality, dismissing evidence to the contrary as hallucinations or the superstitions of folklore and uncivilized Indigenes.
To my great surprise, I had a series of mystical experiences that pointed to Christianity, so I went to a consortium grad school in theology. I deeply respect the traditions and the scholarship, but it was too Procrustean for me. I didn't fit in anywhere. Yet while there, I had several encounters with entities that more or less fit with doctrine. But not quite. Through dreams, hypnogogic states, and even in broad daylight while wide awake. Probably to do with set and setting; however, there seems to be more to it. Nothing is either/or, true/false. The older I've gotten, the less certain I am.
I sense what seem to be to be different orders of entities, although their appearances are often quite similar. Occasionally a form I can't understand at all. The similarities may be due to our physical, psychological, and cultural habits. Am I sensing the collective intelligence of a plant species? Traditional western forms such as undines or elves? Jungian archetypes? Local ones like Sasquatches? Something in its own right? With Mind/Deity as background and container. I didn't say energy levels because energy is just another form of matter. To me, they don't feel the same. And panpsychism has the problem of how to explain increasing levels of consciousness. Put me in with the panentheists. Yes, I did the usual '60s-'70s psychedelics. Again, in my experience, they aren't the cause. More like Aldous Huxley's brain as reducing valve and his quotation of Blake on cleansing the doors of perception. I've never done DMT but have Rick Strassman's books. He acknowledges the dark, the possibility of evil, as do Indigenous traditions. Contrary to giddy New Agers and Christian dogma, the universe and Mind/God aren't entirely beneficent.
Another bit of evidence: interview by Ben Turner of Colin Domnauer, PhD student ethnobiology in "Live Science" June 26, 2026. A Chinese bolete that induces seeing tiny people, while everything else is seen normally. I suspect there's more to it than hallucination. www.livescience.com/chemistry/it-sounds-so-impossible-student-studying-fungus-that-makes-users-hallucinate-tiny-people-may-be-on-the-verge-of-a-scientific-breakthrough?