Ok, cool. -:) It's not something I was exactly inclined to believe until I had my own experiences either, but I was tantalized enough by all the stories to really give it a shot. When I casually tried it in college, I didn't really do it right, and I didn't get anywhere near breaking through, but when I did it in my late twenties, I really smoked it properly, and I burst right through that vortex (or whatever) that people talk about, and it was by a very long shot the most intense thing I've ever experienced. I was enamored with the phenomenon, so I smoked DMT almost every night for many months, having all sorts of bizarre transdimensional experiences. It's rich with meaning and seriousness and higher intelligence.

There have actually been two studies in DMT/ayahuasca, and both of them showed the majority of participants reporting "transdimensional" encounters. One was by Rick Strassman on DMT, the other by Benny Shanon, an Israeli professor, on ayahuasca. Shanon's study was large-scale, and it showed about 3/4 of people who took ayahuasca reported encountering entities and believing or reporting they were in some other dimension. If you listen to accounts of ayahuasca, this is the norm, not the exception. But, yeah, it would be great to have a lot more formal studies.

The basic question of- what the fuck is going on here?- has been explored by some writers. One is Jeremy Narby, who wrote an amazing book called "The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge." He's an anthropologist who spent a couple years living with ayahuasca-using people in the Amazon jungle, took ayahuasca himself and had one of these realistic experiences, them spent a year researching shamanism and found some really interesting information, such as that shamans essentially discovered DNA long before western scientists ever did. He also saw images like DNA, twin twisting serpents, ubiquitously in shamanic art and oral tradition. Pretty fascinating to look at closely.

They made lots of other discoveries before scientists as well. He came to theorize that DMT somehow acts as a key to let us see into this other dimension, which probably exists literally at the atomic or sub-atomic level. Maybe these "entities" have something to do with DNA; maybe they are DNA, or are embedded in DNA.

"The Cosmic Serpent" is really worth reading (I have a PDF of it) if you're intested generally in alien intelligence, as is Graham Hancock's book "Supernatural," which follows up othe same themes. I understand that no one can be or probably should be convinced or the existence of other dimensions and non-human intelligences being somehow embedded in a part of our minds that we don't usually use- until you have the experience yourself. However, if you really listen closely to what a range of people who both have these experiences and formally study the phenomenon say, it's at least very compelling.