Traces of the Other – Are DMT Entities Real? DMT Phenomenology in the Framework of Conscious Realism
This preprint is a theoretical paper proposing a Conscious Realism–based framework for studying DMT entity encounters, arguing that the hallucination-only interpretation should be treated as a testable hypothesis and outlining experimental paradigms to investigate whether DMT experiences contain information beyond internally generated cognition.
The authors provide a theoretical analysis of DMT-induced entity encounters within the framework of Conscious Realism (Hoffman), treating perception as an evolved interface rather than a veridical representation of external reality.
It argues that the prevailing neuroscientific interpretation—that DMT entities are purely endogenous hallucinations—is a working assumption rather than a conclusively demonstrated empirical result, and therefore remains open to formal testing.
The authors introduce the concept of “traces” of conscious agents, proposing a hypothesis that some structured features of DMT phenomenology could, in principle, be interpreted as interactions with information-bearing conscious systems (without asserting this is the case).
The primary contribution is the formulation of a testable research programme, including experimental paradigms (e.g., extended-state DMT protocols and information-transfer/hidden-target designs) intended to discriminate between:
internally generated perceptual content, versus
experiences containing information not reducible to the subject’s prior knowledge or imagination.
Abstract
Encounters with apparently autonomous and intelligent non-human entities are a striking and recurrent feature of high-dose N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) experiences. Such encounters are typically interpreted as complex hallucinations derived from internally generated brain activity, although many features of the DMT state remain a challenge to explain within the standard neuroscientific paradigm.
Here, we explore an alternative hypothesis grounded in the conscious realism framework, in which reality consists of interacting conscious agents and perception functions as a species-specific interface rather than a veridical representation of an objective world. Crucially, the space of conscious agents we can normally perceive and interact with represents only a thin slice of the agent network that comprises the totality of reality and is partly determined by representational limits set by the qualia kernel that governs transitions between experiential states.
We propose that DMT induces a profound perturbation of our perceptual interface, expanding the accessible region of experience space and allowing consciousness to reach regions with entirely different dynamical regimes under the qualia kernel. Under such conditions, normally imperceptible agents may influence experience, leaving perceptible “traces” in its dynamics that can be rendered as stable, coherent, and meaningful structure and experienced as the abundantly populated, inordinately complex alternate worlds typical of the DMT state.
This framework enables us to distinguish between internally generated hallucinations and experiences exhibiting structured, stable, and causally efficacious dynamics consistent with interactions with normally imperceptible conscious agents.
Rather than asserting the reality of DMT entities, we draw on the phenomenology of the DMT state, models of psychedelic brain dynamics, and the formalism of conscious agent theory to derive testable predictions and propose experimental paradigms to assess whether DMT experiences can be constrained by external variables or exhibit non-trivial intersubjective correlations. The outcome of such experiments may have profound implications for our understanding of perception, consciousness, and the structure of reality.
Gallimore, A. R., Hermansson, N., & Hoffman, D. D. (2026). Traces of the other: Are DMT entities real? DMT phenomenology in the framework of conscious realism. PsyArXiv preprint. Read Paper
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