Abstract
Aim
Gaining a more detailed understanding of the patterns of relationship of the content of psychedelic experiences can help build a deeper understanding of the nature of consciousness and assist in navigating those extraordinary experiences for therapeutic, spiritual, exploratory and creative purposes. To help achieve this goal, this study examines the patterns of relationship between Entities and Environments found in narratives of complex psychedelic experiences resulting from smoking N,N-dimethyltryptamine.
Methods
The narrative accounts examined in this study were drawn from a variety of online sites and were analyzed in order to examine the patterns of relationships between different types of Entities and Environments encountered during psychedelic experiences resulting from inhalation of N,N-dimethyltryptamine. In this study different types of Entities were identified and charted in relation to the frequency of the different Environments they appeared within.
Results
Some consistency was found in encounters described with Entities and the Environments they appeared within. Various types of Entities were encountered with greater frequency in some Environments and various Environments had unique mixtures of dominant and less common varieties of Entities.
Conclusions
This study helps advance our understanding of the subjective psychedelic experiences resulting from ingestion of DMT. It reveals some of the distinct relationships between Entities and the Environments in which they appeared and provides a framework for developing a predictive model of those relationships and the progression of those psychedelic experiences.
Introduction
Understanding the patterns within psychedelic experiences provides valuable insights into how individuals can navigate and integrate these profound and often enigmatic experiences. This understanding is particularly beneficial for therapeutic, spiritual, exploratory, and creative purposes, as it allows individuals to both integrate and approach these experiences with greater clarity, intention, and preparation. With this knowledge we can reduce the potential for overwhelming experiences, enhance the ability to draw meaningful insights and hopefully come to a deeper understanding of neurophenomenology.
This paper aims to contribute to this understanding by examining the relationships between Entities and the Environments in which they are encountered during psychedelic experiences, resulting from inhalation of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The questions guiding this exploration include: What Environments are associated with specific types of Entities? Are certain Entities more frequently encountered in certain Environments?
The first stage of this research involved analyzing the content of 100 reports of complex psychedelic experiences resulting from inhalation of N,N-dimethyltryptamine through the lens of phenomenology. The basic categories of DMT psychedelic experiences were found such as Entities, Objects, Places, and Feelings and the frequency of recurring elements within those categories were identified (Kagan, 2022). In this paper, we build upon that foundation by focusing on the frequency and contextual relationships between Entities and the Environments in which they appear. Through this focused analysis, we aim to provide a more comprehensive understanding of these experiences, contributing to a framework that can guide future explorations in both research and practice.
Methods
This study analyzed 150 reports of DMT (dimethyltryptamine) experiences sourced from various online platforms, including YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/), Erowid (https://www.erowid.org/experiences/), 340 DMT Trip Reports (https://www.serendipity.li/dmt/340_dmt_trip_reports.htm), DMT World (https://dmtworld.net), and DMT-Nexus (https://www.dmt-nexus.me/). These reports were publicly available and authored or recorded by individuals who did not participate in formal research studies. The accounts examined in this study reflect personal narratives shared without the influence or prompting of researchers or interviewers.
For the YouTube reports, videos were identified through search terms such as “DMT Trip Reports” and “DMT Breakthroughs.” These videos were transcribed into Google Docs, either through direct transcription of the spoken content or by utilizing YouTube's automatic voice-to-text transcription feature and edited for punctuation and formatting. This process ensured that the natural language and original descriptions provided by the report authors were preserved. Similarly, written reports from the other websites were copied directly into Google Docs for further review and analysis.
Following transcription, the reports underwent a content analysis using an iterative coding process. Each report was assigned a unique identifier and entered into a spreadsheet in Google Sheets, with separate rows representing each individual report. The cells in each row were used to record the title of the report, along with key terms that describe the structural elements and processes mentioned by the participants. Frequently occurring keywords were identified, such as “Voids,” “Darkness,” “Rooms,” “Cities,” “Orchards,” “Gardens,” “Jungles,” “Caves,” and “Classrooms.” These terms, which described common elements across reports, were grouped into broader categories such as “Environments.”
The occurrence of each subcategory was recorded numerically, and the totals for each column were summed. The results were then organized in descending order of frequency. The data were exported to Excel and visualized using Tree Map charts, where the size of each subcategory's rectangle was proportional to the frequency of associated keywords. Subcategories with fewer than five occurrences were excluded from the charts.
The variability in individuals' ability to articulate their psychedelic experiences was substantial. This research necessitated the review of over 1,500 DMT experience reports, where many participants expressed the indescribability of their experiences due to their overwhelming nature or the profound insights gained. However, the focus of this study was on those narratives that detailed complex and varied experiences, including descriptions of alternate realities, encounters with unusual entities or objects, indicating that the selected reports came from individuals with notable recall and descriptive capabilities, offering detailed accounts without external interpretation.
For charting purposes, the percentages of the results in the current study were rounded to the nearest whole number.
Characteristics of participants
The people in the video reports appeared to vary in age, gender and in cultural and ethnic ancestry. The reports were all given in English and most written reports included no personal identification or characteristics of the subjects such as age, gender, ethnic identification, economic class identification, education level or religious affiliation and none of those factors were included in this study.
Results
Within the various Environments subjects entered or observed after inhaling DMT, they encountered various kinds of beings, presences or creatures that are here itemized under the category of Entities. Some types of Entities appeared in many different Environments and others in few. In some reports Entities were encountered with either vague or no reference to an Environment at all, here labeled as Unknown or Undefined.
As in the previous study on the Content of Complex Psychedelic Experiences Resulting from Inhalation of N. N. Dimethyltryptamine (Kagan, 2022) and in the current study, the various Entities encountered were broken down into categories of Appearance and Behaviors. Here we examine the frequency of the most common types of Entities in each category in relation to different Environments. Entity types that were encountered in less than 10% of the reports were not included here, and appearances in Environments less than 5% or that had only a single occurrence of an Entity encounter in each Environment were not added to the charts.
Appearance of entities in environments
Humanoids were the most encountered type of Entities, present in 68 or (45%) of the reports in the following Environments at the following percentages: Simple and Unspecified Rooms: (13%), Geometric and Fractal Places: (9%), Cities and Suburbs: (9%), Machines: (7%) and other Environments that were less than 5% (Fig. 1).
Humanoid Entities. This diagram illustrates Humanoid Entities and the Environments they appeared within. The thicker lines display the larger values of appearances Human Entities in each of those Environments
Citation: Journal of Psychedelic Studies 2025; 10.1556/2054.2025.00438
Disembodied Entities were present in 29 or (19%) of the reports in the following Environments at the following percentages: Geometric and Fractal: (14%), Void and Darkness: (14%), Light and Energy: (10%), Simple and Unspecified Rooms: (10%), Undefined and Unknown: (10%), Tunnel and Hallway: (7%), Caves: (7%) and other Environments that were less than 5%. The following network diagram displays the frequency of relationship between the Disembodied Entities and the Environments they appeared within. The number of appearances is shown by the thickness of the lines connecting them (Fig. 2).
Disembodied Entities. This diagram illustrates Disembodied Entities and the Environments they appeared within. The thicker lines display the larger values of appearances Disembodied Entities had in each of those Environments
Citation: Journal of Psychedelic Studies 2025; 10.1556/2054.2025.00438
Unknown and Undefined Entities present in 20 or (13%) of the reports in the following Environments at the following percentages: Space and Cosmos: (10%), City and Suburb: (10%), Caves: (10%), Geometric: (10%), Natural Landscape: (10%), Void and Darkness: (5%), Village and Town: (5%), Pyramid: (5%), Garden, Park, Orchard, Jungle: (5%), Indefinite: (5%), Unknown and Undefined: (5%), Hyperdimensional Room: (5%), Self Transforming Room: (5%) and Simple Rooms: (5%). Here 5% was a single occurrence.
Gods and Mythic Entities were present in in 20 or (13%) of the reports in the following Environments at the following percentages: Pyramids: (20%), Space and Cosmos: (15%), Simple and Unspecified Rooms: (10%), Unknown: (10%), Void and Darkness (10%), Light: (10%), Geometric and Fractal: (5%), Indefinite: (5%), Cartoon and 2D: (5%), Pillars and Columns: (5%). Here 5% was a single occurrence.
Elves and Goblins were present in 18 or (12%) of the reports in the following Environments at the following percentages: Caves (11%), Pyramids: (11%), Machines: (11%), Party and Festival: (6%), Space and Cosmos: (6%), Manufacturing Plant: (6%), Temple and Monument: (6%), City and Suburb: (6%), Infinite: (6%), Geometric and Fractal: (6%), Geometric Room: (6%), Operating Room: (6%), Unknown: (6%), Self Transforming: (6%), Multidimensional: (6%). In this case an appearance in Environments of 6% was a single occurrence.
Amorphous and Featureless Entities were present in 16 or (11%) of the reports and appeared in the following Environments at the following percentages: Unknown: (25%), Chaotic: (19%), Garden, Park, Orchard, Jungle: (6%), Caves: (6%), Domes: 6%, Machines: (6%), Multidimensional: (6%), Geometric and Fractal: (6%), Simple and Unspecified Rooms: (6%), Operating Room: (6%) Hyperdimensional Room: (6%). In this case an appearance in Environments of 6% was a single occurrence.
Living Machines were present in 16 or (11%) of the reports in the following Environments at the following percentages: Void and Darkness: (19%), City and Suburb: (13%), Natural Landscapes: (13%), Operating Room: (13%), Simple Rooms: (6%), Laboratory: (6%), Unknown: (6%), Mosaic and Jeweled: (6%), Sidewalk and Street Corner: (6%), Space and Cosmos: (6%), Tunnel and Hallway: (6%). In this case an appearance in Environments of 6% was a single occurrence.
Light and Energy Entities were present in 15 or (10%) of the reports in the following Environments at the following percentages: Simple and Unspecified Rooms: (13%), Unknown and Undefined: (13%), Void/Darkness: (13%), City and Suburb: (13%), Geometric Room: (7%), Hyperdimensional Room: (7%), Hyperdimensional Space: (7%), Chaotic: (7%), Machines: (7%), Village/Town: (7%), Light and Energy: (7%). In this case an appearance in Environments of 7% was a single occurrence (Fig. 3).
Entities by Appearance and Environments. This diagram illustrates the three most common Entities types by Appearance. Humanoids, Gods & Mythic and Disembodied Entities. The thicker lines display the larger values of appearances each Entity type had in each Environments
Citation: Journal of Psychedelic Studies 2025; 10.1556/2054.2025.00438
Behavior of entities in environments
Teachers and Guides: were present in 34 or (23%) of the reports and appeared in the following Environments at the following percentages: Space and Cosmos: (17%), Void and Darkness (13%), Hyperdimensional: (13%), Unknown and Undefined: (13%), Simple and Unspecified Rooms: (13%), Hyperdimensional Rooms: (9%), Natural Landscapes: (9%), Villages and Towns: (9%) and other Environments with singular occurrences.
Divine Beings were present in 29 or (19%) of the reports in the following Environments at the following percentages: Simple and Unspecified Rooms: (21%), Void and Darkness (17%), Space and Cosmos: (14%), Geometric and Fractal: (7%), Mystical, Heavenly, Sacred: (7%), Pyramids: (7%) and other Environments with less than 5% and singular occurrences.
Caretaker and Guardians were present in 29 or (19%) of the reports in the following Environments at the following percentages: Simple Rooms: (31%), Unknown and Undefined: (10%), Garden, Park, Orchard, Jungle: (10%), Geometric and Fractal: (7%), Natural Landscapes: (7%), Domes: (7%), Void and Darkness (7%) and other Environments with less than 5% and singular occurrences.
Doctors and Surgeons were present in 20 (13%) of the reports and appeared in the following Environments at the following percentages: Operating and Observation Rooms: (20%), Geometric and Fractal Places: (10%), Natural Landscapes: (10%), Unknown and Undefined: (10%) and other Environments that were less than 5% and singular occurrences.
Playful and Children were present in 18 or (15%) of the reports and appeared in the following Environments at the following percentages: Garden, Park, Orchard: (17%), Buildings: (11%), Caves (5%), Unknown and Undefined: (5%), Classrooms: (5%) and other Environments that were less than 5% and singular occurrences (Fig. 4).
Entities by Behavior and Environments. This diagram illustrates the three most common Entity types by Behavior. _ Entities. The thicker lines display the larger values of appearances each Entity type had in each Environments
Citation: Journal of Psychedelic Studies 2025; 10.1556/2054.2025.00438
Discussion
While there was a high level of variability in encounters with different types of Entities resulting from inhalation of N,N-dimethyltryptamine, certain types of Entities were encountered more frequently in some Environments than others and each type of Entity had its own unique distribution across different Environments. For each type of Entity, there were also some Environments in which they had never appeared.
The most frequently encountered type of Entity based on Appearance was Humanoids. They were most often encountered in Environments described simply as Rooms. Because people in their daily non-psychedelic lives often encounter other humans in rooms within houses and buildings, this similarity to DMT Entity encounters could be interpreted as referential or representational. Similarly, in the reports, Gods and Mythical Entities appeared frequently in relation to Pyramids in the reports. This could represent mythological and spiritual beings in relationship with Pyramids in ancient cultures such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Central America.
There are however no obvious references or metaphors in our daily lives for all the different types of Entities and Environments encountered through DMT ingestion. One example was Disembodied Entities, which were encountered most frequently in Geometric and Fractal Environments. Others that have no obvious associations are Hyperdimensional, Geometric, and Self-Transforming Entities.
A hypothesis to explain psychedelic experiences resulting from ingestion of DMT is that what results is immersion in a dream-like state with access to unconscious material. This was described as a psychodynamic model of interpretation (Cathart-Harris, 2007). When considering DMT ingestion, we expect habitual or local associations to be replaced with more unusual associations. Entities such as Humanoids would then be less likely to appear within Rooms, and disparate or distant associations would increase, such as Humanoids appearing more frequently in Hyperdimensional and Geometric Environments. The opposite of this, however, is what occurs.
With some types of Entities, however, disparate associations did appear more frequently; in others, closer associations were more common. These inconsistent patterns of symbolic associations seem to show that the psychodynamic model does not sufficiently explain the relationships between DMT Entities and Environments. And according to the people who report encounters with Entities and immersion in these Environments, it is not subjectively satisfactory to interpret them as metaphorical. The subjects in these reports did not experience these encounters as though watching a movie or even playing a video game but directly, viscerally and at times mystically as though they were really there, as real as their normal experience of the world of their daily lives (Davis, et al., 2020) or more real than real. And so, we must consider other ways to interpret the complex visionary phenomena encountered by subjects and the relationships between them.
Another hypothesis of what happens in the brain after ingestion of DMT is that a deconstruction of our normal model of the world occurs. This model, woven together from sensory experiences and concepts, breaks down, and other models of experience are constructed instead. “More broadly we can think of this state of construction as a form of virtual reality that arises in the DMT experience.” (Timmerman 2023). Supporting this hypothesis is the recognition that the brain is an organ subject to evolution (Pinker, 1999) and largely functions by organizing experiential information. It has evolved to navigate, adapt to, and make sense of the world, not to represent it accurately (Hoffman, 2019). There is no direct channel into the brain from the experiential visual world, for example, but photoreceptors in the eyes channel signals through neurons and synapses. The brain does not mirror the sensory world but builds representations of the content of the world constructed of neurons.
Likewise, in Integrated Information Theory, the brain creates maps, models, or simulations from sensory information but only periodically checks the senses to do error corrections. And so, with altered or limited sensory information, these models become prone to instability and change. With high doses of DMT, while the brain is usually disengaged from the senses, it displays this instability in relation to the normal model of the sensory world and appears to construct entirely new worlds of experience (Gallimore, 2019).
While this is an interesting hypothesis, it does not describe how the brain progresses from a familiar sensory-based and naturalistic experience of the world into some of the extraordinary, unusual, and complex Environments encountered after ingesting DMT. Some of the Environments and types of Entities in the reports are described simply as Natural Landscapes, Basic Rooms, Villages and Towns, Surgical Rooms, and Classrooms. We are faced with the challenge of answering the question of how the brain progresses so rapidly in the construction of elegantly complex rooms and futuristic cities, places decorated with mysterious languages, fractal patterns, dynamic and intricate geometric, mosaic designs, and extraordinary architecture as well as self-transforming and what are perceived to be hyperdimensional Environments. While intriguing, this hypothesis does not yet provide any useful information about the content and relationships of the psychedelic experiences either with psilocybin or DMT.
Species and biomes
To assist in understanding the complexity of the data in this paper, we will set aside questions about the nature of consciousness and qualia of symbolism and world construction. Neither will we address the question of how real these Entities may or may not be and the veracity of phenomenological experiences. Instead, we can employ a thought experiment in which Entities encountered resulting from inhalation of N, N-dimethyltryptamine are intelligent beings living in Environments independent from the seemingly normal sensory-based world. While we don't have to assert or deny the truth or falsehood of that, we can see if wielding it yields any valuable insights. To do this, we will set aside the popular nomenclature of hyperspace and instead consider these Environments to be a complex variety of biomes within a kind of psychedelic biosphere. With this perspective, we find that some species of Entities inhabited a diverse set of Environments while others inhabited a few.
While on Earth, humans inhabit a wide variety of biomes, with 57% currently living in cities and suburbs (Federal Statistical Office); in the reports, we found that 33% of Humanoids inhabited constructed Environments such as Cities, Suburbs, and various kinds of buildings and Rooms. On Earth, 43% of the human race is found in the following biomes: Temperate Deciduous Forests, Coniferous Forests, Woodland, Chaparral, Tundra, Grasslands, Deserts, Tropical Savannas, and Tropical Forests (Biomes, 2024). Each of these biomes is also inhabited by a wide variety of plants, animals, insects, and fungi that outnumber humans significantly. In contrast, 67% of DMT Humanoids were distributed across various Environments, some of which were shared by other species of Entities.
Despite the variety of Entities that appeared within a given Environment across all the surveyed reports, subjects dominantly reported interacting with only one type or species of Entity at a time. Within the reports, we discovered that when more than one type of Entity was encountered in a given Environment, those Entities more often did not interact with each other.
Conclusion
The goal of this paper is not to determine the veracity of these Environments and Entities but to gain a better understanding of the structure and content of psychedelic experience and consciousness and how we might help others navigate these complex and unusual experiences. With the data gathered in this research, we can explore a more in-depth ecological thought experiment on psychedelic experiences, surveying the diversity of Entities within given Environments and the interactions that occur between them. It may also be possible to determine if some of these Environments are connected into some topography or topology by the presence of the same types or species of Entities or sequentially by migration of Entities and subjects between them.
In the majority of reports Environments were described first, often followed by Entity Appearance then Behaviour. By developing more complex network diagrams that display the values of the relationships between Entities and Environments we can re-conceptualize them as nodes in a neural network. With these values we can also begin to work with them within the larger dataset of Entities, Environments, Objects and Feelings to build predictive and generative A.I. based on the patterns of relationship in these extraordinary experiences. The Predictive Model Diagram shows the progression between the most common Environments, Entities by Appearance and Entities by Behavior (Fig. 5).
Predictive model diagram
Citation: Journal of Psychedelic Studies 2025; 10.1556/2054.2025.00438
Certainly, more can be done to gain a better understanding of the nature of Entities encountered and their Environments through the psychedelic experiences by contrasting these DMT experiences with those evoked by other serotonergic psychedelics like psilocybin, ayahuasca, and LSD. Reports from sustained immersion in DMT experiences may provide more detailed data and. With the current data set, we can also examine not only the relationships between these Entities and the Environments but also the Objects, Feelings, and Insights associated with each of them. At this stage, it doesn't matter if the Entities encountered are indeed autonomous beings living in transpersonal realms we cannot yet explain, or if they are personified manifestations of different states of consciousness and complex patterns of neural circuitry, we have not yet discovered. What we can say is that the nature of the Entities and Environments encountered in psychedelic experiences can be made clearer by examining the relationships between them in greater detail and that, for some people, they provide profound and transformative experiences.
As this knowledge grows, hopefully, it will become helpful for people navigating these profound experiences for therapeutic and spiritual purposes as well as for creative inspiration and curiosity. We can predict that we will soon reach a stage of neurophenomenology where detailed descriptions of psychedelic experiences will help us gain a better understanding of the brain and the nature of consciousness. The popular focus on psilocybin and psychedelic mushrooms for therapeutic use has so far appeared to eclipse the research and therapeutic use of DMT. We can anticipate that when the hype around psilocybin eventually subsides, DMT may be discovered to be a more practical compound for certain kinds of therapeutic use as well as creative and innovative insights.
Challenges
Sometimes, these accounts were given soon after smoking DMT, while others were recounted years afterward. Some said they had written down their experiences soon afterward and had even read aloud what they had written. Some people gave no indication of when their experiences had taken place but said that these were some of the most profound experiences in their lives. The vividness of profound experiences results in long-term recall, but we must still question the accuracy of these recollections when extended time has passed.
Data integrity and availability
The benefit of using published reports is that there is no risk of influencing the accounts or content of people's experiences. On the other hand, although many of the reports in this study show detailed recall of such extraordinary and strange experiences, the reliability of people's eyewitness accounts in public might be questioned. This may be balanced out by the profundity and intensity of these experiences that have been reported as some of the most memorable events in their lives. The author will make the raw data supporting this article's conclusions available upon request.
Conflict of interest
The author has no known conflicts of interest to disclose.
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