On the DMT laser “Code of Reality” Effect

Thoughts, Speculations, Reflections, Diffractions…

In October 2021 I received a message from a guy called Danny Goler making a rather bold claim:

“I have found a way to see the source code reliably, 100% of the time while on the molecule.”

By “the molecule” he was, of course, referring to DMT and, by “the source code”, I could only assume he meant some kind fundamental code running our reality. I receive lots of message from people making grand claims — and this seemed about as grand as it gets — which invariably amount to nothing so, at the time, I didn’t think much about it and eventually forgot about it. Then, a year or so later, Danny happened to be visiting Tokyo and asked to meet. Although I was initially reluctant (I’m a very private person and rarely meet strangers who turn up in Tokyo — lately that’s almost every week), he was pretty persistent and, in the end, I agreed. I liked Danny and didn’t doubt his sincerity — he really believed what he was telling me and his story was consistent (even after about a dozen Japanese rice wines). However, in all honesty, what he was telling me didn’t seem to make any sense to me (even after about a dozen lemon sours). A year or so later and it still doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s potentially an important discovery — I do. I’d like to explain why.

For those not familiar with Danny’s claims, the basic idea is simple: If you shine a red (650nm) laser at a surface and, after inhaling a low dose of DMT, stare at the laser projected onto the surface you can see what appears to be a kind of “code” — a matrix of tiny stable geometric structures together with rapidly moving characters that resemble Japanese katakana.

This “code”, so Danny claims, “serves some kind of fundamental function in the fabric of reality”. It is, in other words, a kind of “code of reality”. A grand claim indeed. But, to Danny, this isn’t just a working hypothesis, but an ironclad conviction. He doesn’t merely believe that he’s found a fundamental reality code, he knows it. Whenever someone tells me they know something with absolute certainty about what the DMT state means or reveals, especially if revealed to them by an entity encountered within the space, I’m immediately suspicious. DMT is tricksy. As such my first instinct is to tell them why they might be wrong. In the past, this approach has served me well, since I’m largely dealing with people who “know” that DMT visions are simply the brain making up stories or that people only see elf-like beings because they’d once heard Terence McKenna rave about them. I would estimate that about 80% of my work over the last decade or so has been devoted to seeding doubt in such assertions. I don’t believe there’s anyone on Earth that truly knows what DMT represents. In my work I tend to focus on those aspects of the DMT state that are hard to explain within the paradigm of modern neuroscience, carefully analysing and deconstructing standard explanations and showing why I think they fail. In other words, I spend most of my time explaining what DMT does not represent rather than what it does. It’s in that remaining 20% or so that I get to have a bit fun, carefully and rationally speculating on what DMT might mean and what the DMT entities might represent. But this is only ever framed as speculation.

So this laser effect drops me into a somewhat unusual and, I dare say, uncomfortable position of having to push back against the claims of someone who, in most respects, sits comfortably on the same side of fence as me. I do lean towards the position (although I don’t know!) that DMT likely gates access to some kind of intelligent agent and, in fact, have been arguing for people to take that idea seriously for years. And, of course, I welcome any testable evidence to support that case. However, if we’re hoping to get to the bottom of the DMT mystery — and DMT remains, in my opinion, largely a mystery — we need to be careful that the speculations and claims we make actually hold together and make sense. I think the main problem I have with this reality code claim is that I struggle to make it do that.

Danny and I had a 2-hour X-space conversation a few weeks ago, which helped me further understand the nature of his claims. Crucially, Danny is not claiming that the evidence currently confirms that what he believes is true. His claims are largely based on personal conviction — a kind of private revelation — and he doesn’t expect people to simply believe what he believes. However, at the same time, he does attempt to support his claims with certain characteristics of the observed code, actively counters alternative hypotheses, and is even attempting to test his claims scientifically. Furthermore, Danny has said that he welcomes critiques and alternative explanations for this effect. As he also said, the truth can withstand the pressure. However, considering Danny’s seemingly unshakeable conviction that he “knows” the truth, I really wonder what kind of alternative explanation or evidence would actually be required to uproot that conviction. To his credit, Danny doesn’t prevaricate and is quite explicit about what he’s claiming: The code revealed by the laser “serves some kind of fundamental function in the fabric of reality” and exists as an object in the environment that is actually illuminated by the laser as it would illuminate any other object. He says:

“It’s a real object… Something real is there and then the laser reflects off of it and goes back to your eye just like with any regular object.”

The brain receives visual information about objects in the environment encoded in patterns of light reflected off said objects. So, for Danny’s model to be correct, the reflected laser light must carry information about the code to the eyes, which is then interpreted by the brain, just as with any other object. This is how visual perception works and this is where I have my first major problem in my attempt to make Danny’s model make sense. The laser reflected off the surface of an object — such as a wall — cannot carry information about what’s happening beyond the surface. This is why brick walls are opaque. And yet, Danny claims that the code he’s seeing is not merely on the surface but “goes infinitely into the z-axis” (i.e. extending into the surface). It’s simply not possible that light reflected off the surface of a wall can contain rich and detailed visual information about a code that extends beyond and into the wall.

Explaining the effect further, Danny then said that the code “on the surface behaves a lot more like a hallucination” than “whatever’s inside”. It’s the code extending inwards that Danny sees as most significant, as opposed to that appearing on the surface. This is precisely the opposite to what I would conclude here. Again, whatever’s going on beyond the surface simply cannot be encoded in the reflected light of a laser, whereas what’s on the surface might be. In other words, the mere fact that what’s described as the most important aspect of this code is only seen as extending infinitely beyond the surface means that it’s precisely this aspect of the code that’s most strikingly behaving like a hallucination, in that it contains information that cannot possibly be encoded in sensory inputs from the laser. I don’t see how we can have it both ways: Either the laser is reflecting off the code as an object in the environment (in which case we’d only see the “surface” layer of this code, since the light is concurrently being reflected off the wall) or it’s somehow granting the observer of the code the ability to “see beyond” the surface.

What Danny said later also seems to indicate an incoherence in his model that I struggle to get past:

“[The code] is everywhere, even in the air, but you can’t bounce the laser off the air to see it.”

So, despite being itself an object in the environment that reflects red laser light just like any other object but which we can’t normally see, the code only reflects light when said light is concurrently reflected off a solid object that we can normally see? Does the code only encode solid objects that happen to reflect light but not liquids or gases? I can’t make it make sense.

Danny’s approach to validating his model is completely different to the approach I would taking in attempting to understand the effect (which he fully understands). Rather than carefully and thoroughly testing and eliminating more grounded and plausible hypotheses — the reality code model is about as far out as you can get — Danny is currently going for what seems to me to be a kind of moonshot experiment that will provide evidence for his claim that the “code” is indeed a real object in the environment. In short, he believes that the code can be “scrambled” with a strong magnet. I’m currently supporting him in making sure that the experiment is designed and can be performed so as to generate valid results. Do I think it will yield a positive result? I’m skeptical, but what I think doesn’t matter. Even if this experiment does yield a positive result — which would indeed be remarkable — I’m not sure how it supports the claim that this code “serves some kind of fundamental function in the fabric of reality” and yet is so labile that it can be scrambled by a horseshoe magnet without having any other measurable effect on said reality? I’ve written enough code to know that if I scramble it – even just a little – it no longer works. Again, I can’t make it make sense, but perhaps I’m just not fully understanding what’s in Danny’s mind.

OK, let’s put Danny’s interpretation of the code aside and look at the code itself, which is described as comprising two distinct features:

• Japanese Katakana-Like characters: symbols running within the laser diffraction lines.

• Stable Geometric Structures: Independent of the observer’s frame of reference.

Here’s an artist’s representation of this code from a recent paper uploaded by Danny (although this image actually contains Japanese kanji/Chinese characters mixed in with some katakana and characters I don’t recognise):

I’ll get to the geometric structures later, but the likening of the characters to Japanese katakana was the first thing that struck me when Danny and I discussed the effect in Tokyo. What Danny is claiming is his own particular flavour of the now highly familiar idea known as simulation theory: That we live in a computational reality that is being simulated (presumably) by some higher intelligence. Of course, the Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix movie is by far the most well known rendering of this idea in dramatic form and, in fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to state that simulation theory and The Matrix have become so deeply entwined within our cultural milieu as to render them basically synonymous. The most famous imagery from that movie is the digital rain effect created by visual artist Simon Whiteley and generated by scanning his wife’s Japanese cookbooks:

“I like to tell everybody that The Matrix's code is made out of Japanese sushi recipes.”

Indeed, the Matrix digital rain is constructed from…. Japanese katakana.

Although it has been pointed out to me numerous times that the DMT “code of reality” only resembles Japanese katakana, its similarity to the code used in by far the most famous movie depicting a type of “reality code” isn’t something to be glossed over. A sketch of the characters from the trailer of the upcoming documentary “The Discovery”, doesn’t just contain characters that resemble katakana but which are katakana (with my own annotations showing the katakana represented):

Whiteley used Japanese katakana because, inspired by Japanese anime, he presumably thought it looked cool — it does. Obviously, there’s no reason to think that katakana ought to have been chosen over any other script. Further, the digital rain imagery was used in the movie simply as a visual device to show the computational nature of the simulated world humanity was trapped within — there’s no reason to think, if indeed our own reality was being simulated, that the code running it would actually be permeating the world in this way anymore than you can see the code running a computer game by zooming in on the screen. The code is running elsewhere and the world is its output. It seems just too on the nose that this fundamental code of reality revealed by a diffracted laser would not only be running through the environment, as in the Matrix digital rain imagery, but would also bear more than a passing resemblance to that very same code from the movie.

Awkward similarities to the Matrix movie aside, there are two features of this code that proponents of the “code of reality” model point out more than others that they claim help confirm that it cannot be explained as hallucination. The first of these refers to the apparent stability of the code. I’ve heard the words “object permanence” and “objectness” used to describe the code: It’s stable, doesn’t move with the laser and, in fact, the laser appears to be illuminating the code rather than being dependent on it. Unfortunately, while this might seem like compelling evidence that the “code” cannot be a hallucination, I’m not convinced this “object permanence” actually tells us much about whether or not the code is independent of the observer. Firstly, there’s nothing ontologically special about a vision that appears “out there” versus one that appears “in here” or behind the eyes. All perceptions, whether real or hallucinated, are built from the same stuff in that they’re part of the brain’s world model constructed from patterns of neural information. The fact that a perception is integrated into the brain’s model of the external environment doesn’t necessarily endow it with the ontological status of being “real”. Secondly, so called “true hallucinations” that appear solid, stable, anchored in space, and apparently obeying physical laws are not rare. Entirely convincing hallucinations of people, for example, will often appear to not only be solid and indistinguishable from a normal perception of a real person, but will also walk through doorways but not walls; will sit in chairs rather than float above them; will be illuminated by light but light will not appear to pass through them. Many people seem to assume that hallucinations are inherently dynamic and unstable — that they must restlessly shift and morph — but this simply isn’t true. DMT imagery, in particular, can be remarkably stable and persistent once it has established itself and once this code imagery has become integrated into the brain’s world model instantiated in the visual cortex — which is what is happening here, whether the code is real or not — it’s not particularly surprising that it appears stable and anchored in space giving it apparent “object permanence”. Nor is it surprising that the code appears to be illuminated by the laser light rather than moving with it — that’s how light works and that’s how your brain models objects in the environment. In fact, I’d be more surprised if it did move with the laser, since that would suggest the brain is modelling this code in a highly unusual manner. Also, the fact that the code appears to extend beyond the surface can only mean that the brain is going well beyond the information encoded in the sensory inputs from the laser reflected from the surface — just like a hallucination. In short, I think we need more than the code’s visual appearance if we’re going to draw any conclusions about its ontology.

The second feature of the code that’s potentially far more interesting than its “object permanence” is its repeatability: We’re told that “Everyone sees the same code”. But, again, I’m yet to be fully convinced here. I don’t doubt that large numbers of people see something very similar: Running characters accompanied by an orderly “matrix” of geometric structures. But are they really all seeing exactly the same code at the same time? Are they seeing exactly the same sequences of the same characters? I’m yet to see compelling evidence of this (but I’d like to). The counter-argument here is that the characters are moving so quickly that it’s difficult to “catch” them. But if that’s the case then it’s hard to argue that everyone is seeing the same code rather than merely similar patterns. Someone I know personally who has tried the experiment (with Danny) and was able to see the “code” (and was suitably impressed by it) denied the characters had any similarity to katakana:

“Whatever unrecognizable characters I saw flowing down were unlike any I’ve ever seen before or after. They weren’t katakana or kanji or anything I recognized.”

Did he see the wrong code? Does it only count if you see the correct code?

We know from countless reports going back decades that letters/digits/code/language are a common feature of the DMT state (and indeed that of other psychedelics). The artist Allyson Grey has centred her art around what she calls secret writing, which she first saw during an LSD trip at the age of 20:

“Secret writing all over everything. Secret writing wafting through the air. Secret writing washing over surfaces…”

Two examples of Allyson Grey’s art showing her “secret writing”.

There’s no indication that Allyson believes this language to represent some kind of fundamental computational reality code so, presumably, just like everyone else that reports seeing strange characters and language under the influence of psychedelics, she’s seeing a different kind of code — not the code. However, another person I know did, in fact, see the same language as Allyson Grey, whilst under the influence of DMT and whilst staring at the light reflected from a red laser:

“I saw this with the laser… exactly the same just not with a yellow background.”

Again, was this person seeing the wrong code? Does it only count if it’s the correct code? Of course, it’s possible that, even if this is some sort of fundamental reality code, it might appear different to different people, since each individual’s brain must construct its own model of the code. However, admitting that “everyone sees the same code differently” doesn’t quite have the impact of “everyone sees the same code” — whether that’s true or not — and makes it even more difficult to build a case for this being a “code of reality”.

My friend psychologist David Luke describes his own experience seeing “code” under the influence of DMT:

“My own experience seeing code (not necessarily ‘the code’) on high dose DMT was that it was like a high speed whirl through thousands of different alien languages. Perhaps not so much a source code but a repository of languages through our time and space. At least that is how it appeared and felt. Why just one anyway?”

Indeed, why just one anyway? Are people really seeing the code when staring at red laser light or are they each seeing a code or, at least, characters and structures that some choose to call code? (We don’t actually know it to be code since there’s no evidence yet that it actually encodes anything)

And it’s not just under the influence of psychedelics that people report visions of what might be construed as code. In hallucinatory neurological disorders, such as Charles-Bonnet syndrome, hallucinations of letters/digits/numbers are seen in about a quarter of cases, making them one of the most common forms of visual hallucination. This makes sense since we are very much a linguistic/lexical species, and our brains are wired to generate such forms. Danny does point out that the "code" is much more complex than mere letters and numbers, but we can say that about all DMT imagery. Admittedly, however, even if we accept that the perhaps not everyone is seeing exactly the same code, or that the prevalence of code-like imagery is fairly common and not so difficult to explain, it still doesn’t explain why so many people consistently report seeing something that appears uncannily similar: A combination of running characters and a stable 3D matrix of complex geometric structures. Surely that alone is proof that this code exists out there in the environment entirely independent of the brain? This is where we need to talk about the laser itself.

When the light from a laser reflects off a surface (even an apparently smooth surface) microscopic surface irregularities cause the reflected light to scatter in various directions. As these light waves propagate to the eyes, they interfere with each other. This generates a well-known effect referred to as laser speckle — a pattern of dark and light spots on the retina.

However, unlike the ambient light reflected off the surface, the laser light remains coherent and, even if the eyes are crossed or defocused, this speckle pattern remains sharp. This creates the illusion that the speckle pattern is independent of the surface and, if the focus is directed "behind" the surface, the speckle pattern can appear as a stable object extending beyond the surface and occupying 3D space (all without any DMT). Here’s a report from someone who observed this effect in an entirely sober state:

“The laser's emissions were cast onto a flat/matte off-white surface - a door panel - at a distance of about 20cm from the surface, resulting in a roughly 5cm x 15cm diffusely reflecting illuminated area in an otherwise dark room. Parallax of the speckle effect was clear and visible without the addition of any molecules. Looking "through" the zone using the "parallel viewing" technique - the way you'd cause a Magic Eye-type stereogram to pop - led to very stable, small, fine detailed speckle patterns that felt like they had depth and stability that went beyond the illuminated surface.”

It’s worth noting that those who have seen the code often state that it requires a certain amount of effort — crossing the eyes, defocusing, averting the gaze, etc — just as in the report above. There’s nothing magical or mysterious about this effect — it’s simply the brain trying to make sense of conflicting sensory inputs and attempting to “place” the speckle pattern in the environment. Whilst this speckle effect is seen with all types of lasers — and is extremely difficult to eliminate — it’s possible to minimise the speckle by judicious selection of the laser type, projection surface and, most pertinently, its colour. For a speckle pattern to be clear and prominent, the laser light must remain coherent over the distance from the surface to the retina. Longer wavelengths of light tend to remain coherent over longer distances and, as such, produce a more pronounced, higher contrast, speckle effect. Short wavelength blue lasers generally produce a finer and less noticeable speckle pattern compared to red lasers when shown to human subjects. This is quite noticeable in the image below:

Speckle effect of a blue and red laser.

If I was charged with generating a testable and refutable hypothesis, my first guess would be that, in the presence of DMT, this basic laser interference pattern on the retina acts as a kind of stable and repeatable "sensory scaffold" upon which complex forms emerge. The interference pattern is essentially generating a pointillistic matrix — yeah, a matrix — of discrete and bright sensory inputs into the primary visual cortex around which the “geometric structures” of the code emerge under the powerful influence of DMT. Andrés Gómez Emilsson, whom I consider to be one of the world’s leading experts on DMT phenomenology, suggests that the geometric structures seen within the code represent naturally emergent patterns of neural activity, perhaps focused around the points of sensory inputs from the laser interference pattern:

“These patterns are non-linear, high-frequency resonant modes of the visual field… This isn’t evidence of intelligent design, communication, or purpose. It's pure physics: the natural behavior of non-linear wave dynamics.”

Cymatic forms (originally posted by Andrés Gómez Emilsson)

Andrés knows far more about these emergent patterns than me, so I’ll defer to his expertise here, but it’s worth noting that this wouldn’t be the first time that the visual system has been shown to generate spontaneously emergent patterns experienced by large numbers of people under the influence of psychedelics. As early as the 1940s, Heinrich Klüver noticed the appearance of certain common patterns — spirals, tunnels, cobwebs, honeycombs — he called form constants in people under the influence of mescaline. We now know these to be patterns of neural activity that emerge from the structure and connectivity of the primary visual cortex when stimulated by a psychedelic molecule.

Klüver’s Form Constants

Are these geometric structures observed within the code a more exotic and complex variant of these form constants scaffolded to this laser interference pattern? I don’t know, but there’s a hypothesis to be tested. A prediction of this hypothesis would be that a red laser would be more likely to generate these patterns than a blue laser owing to its more prominent speckle effect. That indeed seems to be the case. If the code effect does not depend on the speckle effect, then we’d actually expect the opposite: A basic principle of optics, the limit of resolution, explains how light cannot carry precise, detailed information about objects smaller than its wavelength. Red light, having the longest wavelength of light in the visible spectrum, provides the poorest resolution. So, if the code is indeed a real object in the environment that is illuminated by the laser, it ought to become clearer, sharper, and more detailed with a shorter wavelength light, such as a blue laser. This is precisely the opposite of what is observed.

Danny does point out that the code appears independent of the laser speckle, with both effects visible simultaneously, which he interprets to mean that they are independent. However, I don’t find this persuasive. In my opinion, the interference pattern likely acts merely as a kind of trigger or catalyst for the emergence of this code imagery and, once it has established itself within the visual cortex, I wouldn’t be surprised if it remained even if the laser was switched off (although I’ve not heard that this is the case). As I mentioned before, DMT imagery can be remarkably stable and persistent. It wouldn’t be difficult to set up an experiment that tested the ability of people to see the code or particular visual characteristics of the code under different conditions. One prediction would be that smoother surfaces, which produce a less prominent speckle pattern, would be less effective. Again, I’m not saying I’m right here. I’m merely presenting a hypothesis to be tested and refuted before moving on to more grandiose speculations.

Already, some people appear to be noticing this kind of effect. Just a few weeks ago, someone contacted me who had tried the experiment with the laser and, indeed, was able to see the code:

“It started off as few points, scattered around, dark-blue I dare say. Then the points started dancing, swirling, and gathering slowly in clumps until they formed very tiny, small, and very thin shapes that all of a sudden extended all throughout the beam-lit area. They even extended a little beyond, but were hardly visible until I would point the refraction in their direction… They looked like tiny mathematical figures and letters, numbers, and strange other symbols… It felt as if I was looking at some kind of a holographic projection that was both inside and outside of the laser, and the shapes didn’t change after that. I could reveal more simply by moving the laser up or down, or in any direction, my head position had no influence on their position whatsoever. They were simply there. It was amazing to look at and behold.”

I dare say that, as it stands, this report would easily merit a place in the thousand or so reports of others who have seen the “exactly the same code”. Note the “object permanence” in this report — how the laser light apparently illuminates and reveals the code which remains stable and fixed in place. But then, as he continues to move the laser light across the wall, he notices something:

"There seemed to be some discrepancies between the number and scattering of characters between different walls and even different parts of the same wall. On a very “soft and smooth” part of the wall, there were very few characters, hardly ever. On a very ‘rough” portion of the wall, there were so many!”

If the code is independent of the laser interference pattern on the retina then this variation in character density makes little sense. If, on the other hand, the code is dependent on the laser speckle, then it makes perfect sense. Of course, this is just a single anecdotal report, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to test this effect more formally. This study from 2019, for example, demonstrated a striking difference in observed speckle effect between different variants of screen commonly used in projectors for laser imaging. I can imagine a similar set up to test this with the “code of reality” effect.

So, in summary, the claim is that this “code of reality” is an object in the environment and not dependent on laser interference patterns on the retina despite behaving in no way like an object in the environment (barring its apparent “object permanence”, which isn’t so difficult to explain) but in several ways like visual imagery scaffolded by an interference pattern on the retina and amplified by DMT. That imagery might well be remarkably complex, compelling, and extraordinarily impressive, but that applies to all DMT imagery. To accept the reality code claim we need to quietly ignore the inconvenient coincidence that these interference patterns, particularly those from a red laser no less, can generate stable patterns on the retina that appear as a matrix of tiny points that extend beyond the surface (in the absence of any psychedelics). The fact that the characters of the code are described as looking similar to Japanese katakana and the fact that the Matrix “digital rain” — the most famous rendering of the simulation hypothesis of which this reality code claim is but a new variant — was also constructed from Japanese katakana is also an irrelevant coincidence which we must ignore.

Overall, I don’t think the regular appearance of characters or digits is difficult to explain or particularly unusual with DMT, nor a matrix of stable complex geometric structures extending into a surface, especially given the peculiar optical effects that can be generated by a red laser alone. Why these characters and geometric forms should so reliably appear together in this way is an interesting question that will be hard to answer until more formal studies of the effect have been performed, but it’s perhaps not surprising that the unique but consistent type of visual sensory input provided by a red laser might generate unique and highly repeatable visual effects that seem entirely different to the imagery normally experienced with DMT. I certainly don’t think the effect is so difficult to explain as to force us to conclude that they can only represent a fundamental reality code existing as an object in the environment. I think Danny fully understands this and doesn’t expect the subjective reports alone to justify the model he’s come to believe, which is why he’s hoping to test his model experimentally. And while I don’t necessarily believe that psychological priming — in which expectations influence perception — provides a completely satisfactory explanation for the code, there’s little doubt that priming is involved in its interpretation. Sequences of running characters and a matrix of geometric structures might be seen as merely fascinating or even extraordinary to someone who had never been exposed to The Matrix and simulation theory that now saturate the memesphere, but it seems unlikely that “code of reality” would be the first conclusion they’d reach. But for the majority who have been exposed to such ideas, it’s understandable that the urge to leap to this grandest of conclusions would be irresistible.

However, I’m not ready to make that leap just yet. Until somebody is able to demonstrate that everyone who sees this code is seeing exactly the same code — the same sequences of the same characters at the same time — rather than similar-looking code, my current working hypothesis (which I invite to be disputed and eliminated) is that this laser code effect represents a technique for fairly reliably eliciting a particular slice or fragment of the broader DMT visual phenomenology — the appearance of digits/characters/language and complex geometric structures — by scaffolding it to regular pattern of discrete visual sensory inputs from a red laser. And I think this is an extremely interesting discovery and potentially of immense value in studying the rich and complex visual phenomenology of the DMT space. But, anything beyond that is going to be extremely difficult to prove — but isn’t that enough? I guess I just don’t get why this effect just absolutely must be some kind of fundamental code running reality that absolutely must be a physical object in the environment that reflects red laser light and that absolutely must demonstrate that we’re living in a computed reality, rather than simply another way for DMT to reveal what it’s been revealing for a very long time and yet which we still don’t understand. If DMT does grant access to some kind of intelligent agent, then perhaps — and it’s a big perhaps — this “code” truly is some kind of message; some mode of communication; some kind of reveal. My hunch is that, if this is the case, we’d have a much better chance of making sense of it if we approached it without assumptions about its nature or meaning. On the other hand, perhaps it’s simply an extraordinary visual effect induced by the patterns of light from a red laser — DMT is no slouch when it comes to leaving us baffled, bewildered, and dumbfounded by such imagery.

I’m a firm believer — as is Danny it seems — that finding a path to the truth requires constant criticism, questioning, and occasionally quite robust pushback when hypotheses and conclusions appear to be drifting off the path of reason and into the aether. The taller an idea grows without a firm foundation, the more unstable and fragile it becomes and, if it should eventually come crashing down, I very much doubt it’s those currently cheering on these reality code claims and attacking anyone who questions them who will be flocking to help pick up the pieces. Danny and myself have always engaged in perfectly amicable and good-natured discussions on this “code” — although we disagree on some fundamental points, obviously. And I have no doubt that this will continue. And, eventually, the truth — whatever the truth might be — will rise to the surface.

I was watching one of my favourite movies recently — Jaws — and am reminded of the scene where fisherman Ben Gardner has just strung up a huge shark on the dock, shortly after a young boy was consumed whilst playing in the ocean. Chief Brody has a lot invested in this being the shark the frightened islanders are looking for; the celebrations are already in full swing; the reporters are snapping pictures for the front page of the Amity Gazette; and I can’t help feeling a bit like specky oceanographer Matt Hooper with his college degrees and “bite radius bullshit”, spoiling the party by awkwardly informing the Chief that he doesn’t think they’ve got the right shark. DMT is like a Great White shark that, rather than munching its way through the inhabitants of Amity Island, is munching its way through our most cherished illusions about the nature of reality and of our place within it. That much I think is true. But while I don’t doubt that Danny’s caught a shark, I’m yet to be convinced he’s caught the shark…

Perhaps we’re gonna need a bigger laser…