For quite some time, let’s call it decades by this point, I have been fascinated by the various descriptions offered by Terence McKenna of the ‘DMT Elves’ encountered a couple of minutes into the inner journey that arises when that compound is smoked.  McKenna pioneered this exploration some forty odd years ago and has been followed by many other experiencers since.  All have attempted to paint a picture and each set of perceptions reveal another aspect of the amazement undergone.

     In one talk McKenna speaks of exceeding a threshold and an impression of transition, as if tumbling down a series of chambers, being propelled from one space to the next, until you are there, and you wonder where is there?  It appears as a room which comes on as a dome, a softly lit space whose walls appear to be crawling with geometric hallucinations, very brightly coloured, iridescent scenes, machine like, polished, throbbing with energy, but what more immediately arrests his attention is that it is all inhabited, and as you enter there is a cheer of Hooray!  And you are immediately swarmed by speaking self-transforming elf machines, which are made of light and grammar and sound which come tumbling toward you and they say, Welcome, you’re here!  The love one feels is hard to describe but can be felt as a sort of glue that seeps all around as these being are in your face, jumping into your chest and then out again and what they are doing is singing and chanting in some bizarre language which you can see even as you are confounded by what you see.  Like jeweled self-dribbling basketballs they come running towards you, making gifts out of this visible language, like something that looks like a cross between a Sopwith camel, a Havana cigar, a piece of abalone, an opal…and as you look at it it also transforms, speaks, sings, undergoes continuous metamorphosis, and these gifts are just accumulating, and each elf machine creature elbows others aside, saying look at this, look at this, take this, choose me, and as you direct your attention this way and that you have the overwhelming conviction that if you could bring just one of these objects back, still transforming you could blow the reality tunnel of anyone.

     This state of ecstatic frenzy, a cartoon running backwards,  continues for about three minutes with the elves saying do not abandon yourself to amazement, but pay attention to what we are doing, and then do it, do it!   When that energy moves into you and seems to be rising towards your throat until this musical gibberish emerges.  Acoustically it’s nonsensical, but visually it’s a modality where these tones are surfaces, with shading, textures, colours, insets, jewels, … add cerulean, put in stick figures, and they go mad with joy when you do this.

     The above is mostly quotes with some necessary editing, for which I take full responsibility.  What is of great interest to me in such reports is the exposure of creativity for its own sake.  The joy of creation, the sheer pleasure of instantaneous construction and the giddy silliness such play can engender in those who participate, all can be felt in McKenna’s various talks on the matter.  I first encountered it in his book from the 1990s The Archaic Revival, and was charmed that psychedelic research and exploration had found its new prophet.  At the time I compared it to several accounts by clairvoyants, such as Dora Van Gelder (The Real World Of Fairies) and Geoffrey Hodson (Fairies At Work And Play) and the more recent co-creative activities recounted in The Findhorn Garden. The fairies/elves in these accounts all seemed to be joyfully energizing the plant and flower forms rather than manifesting them as the DMT elves did.  Later I would discover the work of Vee Van Dam whose communications with Devas as they attempted over and over again to produce a more perfect planetary atmospheres than previous efforts revealed yet another layer of cosmic creativity.  It fit in well with what we had heard of the endlessly expanding universe and more planets and stars than could usefully be counted.  Somebody had to be making them, or at the very least fabricating existing materials into viable structures. 

       My own explorations into the spirit realms had taught me the creative possibilities on the astral plane for one who knew the secrets of manipulation were not much more than a careful imagining that was then projected.  The surprise was that that knower of secrets was my very self, albeit one who had been keeping secrets from ‘me’.  At least until ‘I’ was ready to discover them.

     Although my library of channeled texts had grown considerably over the years, there were still not many that spoke clearly of the boundless creativity of the mental plane, but I shall quote from one that I am familiar with.  Elsa Barker’s Letters From The Light, 1913, contains some pertinent references.  From the chapter The Pattern World:  “There are strata here, this I have learned recently.  I still believe that in the lowest stratum nearly all that exists has existed on earth in dense matter.  But go a little farther up, as I did the other night in exploration, I got into the world of patterns, the paradigms if that is the word, of things which are to be on earth.  Inventions for example.  I saw wings that man could adjust to himself. I saw new forms of flying machines.  I saw model cities, and towers with strange wing-like projections on them.  The progress of mechanical invention is evidently only begun.  When I was in this pattern world I saw almost nobody there, only an occasional lone voyager like myself.  I naturally infer from this but few of those who leave the earth go up there at all.  I think from conversations I have had with men and women souls, that most of them do not get very far from the earth, even out here.”      

     The obvious comparison, historically, would be to Plato and Aristotle’s writings on the sphere of idealized forms.  The mystic philosopher Vee Van Dam, in his book Starcraft (1990) writes extensively about his contacts and communications with Devas and I have already included some of his/their thoughts in my memoir Moving Through Many Dimensions.

     “They make the point that were it possible for cosmic devas to construct a more perfect universe, however defined, they’d certainly try, for each universe/galaxy/world is, ultimately, an experiment.  Despite being carefully planned on a cosmic level, the precipitation often deviates from the plan and has to be modified.  Their intent is always to create as perfect an environment as possible, and when they fall short they know they are learning and ready to better themselves with better worlds and universes.

     “They ask that we remember that they too are evolving and not in any way static or perfected.  They wonder if there is such a thing as perfection at all.  They continue to manifest worlds along the lines of the so-called laws of nature and are pleased to take credit for their efforts, all the while knowing that they are able to polish up their manifestations.  They mention improvements in world conditions and what they refer to as ‘the human mold and its multilevel energy structures’, although these improvements might take as much as 500 years to become apparent. They claim to be already manifesting these prototypes, but point out that physical evolution takes time ‘to catch up’ with their inner designs.”

     Do the DMT Elves exist in their own creative sphere and in what way are they connected to the various creative nature spirit beings envisioned and recorded in mystical, magical, spiritualist and theosophical writings?  This is a question I would like to answer but as yet I am but fielding the enquiry to any and all explorers.  When I contacted, through OBE projection, the ‘spirit’ of McKenna about two years ago, sometime after his ‘passing’ he seemed to be a gently throbbing energy matrix suspended in space, something I found myself orbiting around.  He mentioned he’d taken care to deposit a recognizably human version of McKenna in the astral plane where the curious might visit and comfortably commune.  Perhaps because I’d attempted a visit to the DMT Elf sphere sometime before and was still trying to digest the almost overwhelming set of situations I saw myself being propelled through, I did not ask about the DMT Elves.   

     I am sure I will be brave enough ‘next time’.  I might also approach the spirits of Hodson and Van Dam to see where their post mortem journeys have led them.  As with all aspects of the inner journey, the more you ask and explore the more there is to uncover.  Just the other day I came across a pithy quote from George Orwell, whose political predictions from what, 1948, seem more relevant with each passing year, the Ministry of Truth now being housed in the Deep State and I thought Hmm, I wonder what he’s focused on these days.

     I trust I have illustrated the dizzying selection of options available to the psychic explorer as they repeatedly expand beyond what they assumed were their limits.  Speaking of limits I now recall a communication from an obe practitioner-colleague who insisted that “I” had shown her how this planet Earth was created by, more or less, waving my arms and bringing all the elements necessary together to produce an image of a planet like ours as we hung in ‘empty cosmic space’.  While I, even then some years back, understood that we (versions thereof) exist on higher levels going up all the way to the Monad, passing through the ‘solar angel’ stage referred to by such explorers as Vee Van Dam and others, I was reluctant to inhabit that refined status.  But as unlikely as it sounded even then, I had learned not to dismiss the perceptions of others in visionary and mystical matters, and thought it best to put it in my back pocket for later.  Well, later seems to have arrived.

     I am not saying “I” created this planet, not at all, but I am suggesting that some of us could well have been junior members of the construction team, observer-trainees learning the ropes.  And when we have completed our incarnational cycles to the point of graduation, I am also suggesting that we will have the option of becoming trainee angels/ascended masters of some “new” star about to be the home for some new species that will require guidance in their fog of ignorance and despair.  That, of course, is the long view, of an horizon that always seems to be receding.