Hyperespace dans le cyberespace : DMT et méta-ritualisation

DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) is a potent short-lasting tryptamine with growing appeal in the last decade, independent from ayahuasca, the Amazonian visionary brew of which it is an integral ingredient. Known to effect out-of-body states, and to produce profound changes in sensory perception, mood and thought, DMT has inspired an underground community of enthusiasts who typically embrace the “entheogenic” propensities of this and other compounds. Drawing upon user-reports posted in online repositories and other sources the article focuses on the “breakthrough” event associated with the DMT experience. Likened to a gnosis event, and sometimes compared with a near-death experience, the DMT breakthrough potentiates significant outcomes associated with perceived contact with “entities” and the transmission of information often in the form of visual language. The breakthrough gnosis offers insight on the liminal phenomenology of DMT and other tryptamines, given primary expression in reported travels in “hyperspace.” User-reports of DMT hyperspace evince a transitional process that is individualized, internal, and “ritual like. ” While private, the ontological conditions of the DMT trance are shared publicly, albeit typically anonymously, by way of experiential (or “trip”) report posted on the Internet (eg Erowid and DMT-Nexus). As the Internet provides a transnational homeland and means of expression for this user-community, the article explores its pivotal role in the formation of a global community of practitioners and enthusiasts. While cyberspace (digital hyperspace) possesses a quality of disembodiment informing the experience of DMT hyperspace, rather than mere simulation, or “virtual reality,” the liminal ontology of DMT space is recognized by practitioners as transpersonally authentic. Adopting tropes of travel, passage and transition, these experiential reports comprised a meta-ritual rhetoric.