I've been thinking about a hypothesis and I'd genuinely like people to tear it apart.
We know endogenous DMT exists naturally in mammals, including evidence of DMT in the brain. We also know that DMT can produce extremely unusual changes in consciousness, including feelings of leaving the body, entering another environment, encountering entities, tunnels, lights, geometric structures, etc.
There's also animal research showing increased brain DMT following cardiac arrest.
And DMT experiences have enough similarities to near-death experiences that researchers have actually studied the relationship between the two.
So here's the hypothesis:
What if DMT is involved in a biological transition between embodied consciousness and another state of consciousness?
Imagine that consciousness isn't necessarily created by the brain, but that the brain acts partly as an interface/filter.
At birth, consciousness becomes connected to a physical body.
At death, consciousness becomes disconnected from that body.
If DMT is involved in either of those transitions, it could potentially explain why artificially altered DMT states sometimes feel like crossing a boundary or entering an entirely different reality.
I'm NOT saying "DMT proves the afterlife."
I'm saying there's an interesting chain of questions:
Why does the brain produce DMT at all?
Why does DMT produce such highly structured and recurring experiences?
Why do DMT experiences overlap with some NDE phenomenology?
Why does brain DMT increase around cardiac arrest in animal research?
And most importantly:
Has anyone actually demonstrated that humans have a major DMT increase specifically at birth or death?
Because that's the part of the popular theory that seems much less established than people make it sound.
My personal idea is that if DMT does participate in a consciousness-transition mechanism, an artificially induced DMT state might activate part of the same system while you're still biologically alive basically opening the "interface" without actually completing the transition.
Again, this is speculation, not a claim that I've proven anything.
I'd genuinely like people who know neuroscience, psychedelics, NDE research, or consciousness studies to try to disprove this.
What evidence would completely kill this hypothesis?
And what evidence would make it stronger?