Strange Ripples

The Bizarre Relationship Between Psychedelics and Dreams, Part I

By Danny Byrne

It is nighttime, and I am looking down one of the many canyons that form the hills of Hollywood, California. The canyon opens to the expanse of the Los Angeles basin, with the grid of city lights stretching out to the horizon.

In the sky above the city is an object of prominence, in the form of a large oval spherical cloud protruding from the right side of my view. My attention is drawn to it, and just as suddenly, the fear is amplified within me. I am paralyzed as the object appears to transform from a gaseous state into a gigantic solid disk, several miles wide. It motions inwards towards the center of my view. I can feel a clenching in my chest. The fear grows in intensity.

The sensation becomes so intense that I wake up.

I look around, feel my bedsheets underneath me, and see the sun peeking through the window. It is May of 2015 and I am 31 years old. I am completely oblivious to the turn that my life and view of reality will take in about a month’s time, a multi-year journey set into motion by an encounter with a potent, mind-altering plant.

In his 1990 book The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan (of “How to Change Your Mind” fame) examines humanity’s intricate relationship with plants. In a small passage in the introduction of the book, he describes the gardens that humans have maintained throughout history–gardens that are tended purposefully to include plants that can heal, plants that can kill, and a few “...with the astounding power to alter consciousness–even to plant dreams in the brains of awake humans.”

This is a journey of books and an exploration of ideas, and of how we form expectations, preconceptions, and misconceptions. This story relates to psychedelic experiences with both Psilocybin mushrooms and Ayahuasca. These plants and fungi would more appropriately be called ‘the dream team’, and an even more accurate roster of this team would include many more plants throughout the world.

These are my own accounts along with those of others–some of whom I know and others I have never met. However, this piece is less about the effects in the immediate hours after one has been ingested, and more about experiences that are detached, oddly, sometimes taking place before ingestion. In my experience, these two biological organisms are catalysts for these experiences.

However, herein lies the conceptual challenge. When I refer to them as ‘catalysts’, our mind defaults to an understanding within the confines of temporal causality–the only framework we’ve come to trust, the ‘natural law’ we term as cause and effect. I’m here to show you something incredibly strange, and also something that you may be able to experience for yourself. Know that there really is nothing I could say that would spoil it for you. I am writing this because I have to start somewhere.

Right now, at any given moment, someone out there may be about to have their first experience with one of these materials. And for that person, or even for the reader who researches just out of curiosity, when entering into the expanding informational realm of psychedelics, a person can develop many expectations of what kind of experience they may have when it is their turn. The altered state carries with it a series of strange interpretations and anecdotes in our modern day culture that have undoubtedly been shaped by misinformed opinions of them in the past. Quite often these misconceptions wind up in our expectations.

So, for a newcomer to the ever expanding realm of the psychedelic, these questions may arise:

“What will I experience? What are the effects?”

Eight years into my journey with these plants and fungi, one thing that has struck me as the most odd about these experiences is a side effect, or a more appropriately titled phenomenon, that I had neither associated with these two, nor even heard of before.

The phenomenon is a particular kind of dream, one that has been named many names: hypnagogic, oneirogenic, prescient, prophetic. There is something distinct about this dreaming as opposed to a standard dream that is quickly forgotten. There is a clarity, intensity, and lucidity to them, certain themes and images repeat themselves. You could even say that they are experienced with part of your awake mind. These dreams are remembered vividly. The reason I hesitate to call this a psychedelic effect, or a side effect, is because of one important distinction. Simply put, that reason is this:

A side effect of a drug does not take place before a drug is taken.

Or, to spin one of the most prevalent of the modern misconceptions of altered states on its head, you can kind of grasp just how bizarre this phenomenon really is with the following statement:

An LSD flashback isn’t supposed to occur before one has ever taken LSD.

A few years into my journey, sometime in early 2017, I heard Ayahuasca described by one of my teachers as being “an intelligence that transcends time and space.” I didn’t really realize it at the time, but I had already experienced how.

One month before I drank the pungent sweet brew for the first time on June 19th 2015, I had no idea I would be imbibing it. I was not actively seeking it. Although I had heard of it and some of its immediate effects, I had little idea of what it actually entailed. I won’t kid you, some of those things sounded pretty strange. Yet, it was in this period that I had the most bizarre dream of my life up until that point. As I would come to realize, this dream with a disk in the sky eerily mirrored many facets and shared many characteristics of the Ayahuasca experience itself.

Before learning about this ceremony, to me Ayahuasca existed as something that I had watched a YouTube video about or heard some friends talk about in the years prior. In all of those conversations and all the articles and books that I had read regarding the topic since, I had never heard one could enter or re-enter the experience not in the immediacy of ingestion, specifically in dreams.

Additionally in relation to this very first dream’s imagery, I had also possessed somewhat of an interest in the UFO topic. I experienced something as a kid that I have never been able to explain. Up to my very first Aya dream, I had never considered UFOs as being anything other than an ‘externalized’ experience. The intricate psychological layers underpinning such experiences, which I delve deeper into later in this narrative, had never crossed my mind.

Ayahuasca artist Pablo Amaringo's paintings frequently depict UFOs and 'entities'

When I had this dream in the middle of 2015, the ‘psychedelic renaissance’ had not quite kicked off yet. A week or so after this dream a friend of mine reached out proposing a dinner date. That evening, I learned of a local facilitator organizing Ayahuasca ceremonies.

Less than a month after this dream with the disk in the sky, I traveled to a secluded property a few hours outside the city, and for the first of many times since, I drank the thick and pungently sweet tasting brew. That night I began what at the time of this writing has been an eight and half year journey into psychedelic ceremony guardianship, musical guidance, and co-facilitation.

It wasn’t until two years into this profound work that I connected this initial dream to my experiences with Ayahuasca. The catalyst in this shift in my mindset was that these dreams returned, more vivid and telling than before. Through their content I put together a message about my life that absolutely shook me to my core on so many levels. As many of the more profound lessons of the plants come in retrospect, it was as if the message of the initial dream was ‘Knock knock..this will eventually all make sense.’

Quite often these dreams contain some kind of specificity about objects, subjects, themes, and even explicit messages. At some point after this, we see that there is some truth or significance to what was shown to us in this dream, correlating with a real physical occurrence either past, present or future. This occurrence is always in some way unbeknownst to us. The contents are always ‘out of scope’ in a certain weird way. If we are relying on conventional ideas about how information enters into our psyche, our ability to ‘know’ or ‘observe’ these occurrences and commit them to conscious or subconscious memory isn’t quite there yet. These dreams and the experiences that spring from them confront us with the irrational. They defy logic. You could even say that they defy the laws of physics.

Not too long after uncomfortably grasping the extraordinary nature of my own dreams, I took note of some interesting anecdotes from various podcasts, suggesting that this phenomenon is part of the bigger picture of the psychedelic landscape that has not quite come to our awareness yet. There is no one speaking about this at psychedelic conventions. There is no one including this in surveys for research purposes. There is no one doing studies on this. There is no data.

When I discovered these conversations over the span of several years, I took some comfort knowing that I was, in fact, not alone. Others who experienced this found it just as baffling as I did.

The following is a transcript from a conversation that aired Feb 26 2021, told by Kyle Buller of the ‘Psychedelics Today’ podcast. [Spotify @ 44m11s, Youtube Clip] from an episode appropriately titled Embracing the Mystical. Key quote: “That dream was happening as the event was unfolding.”

Here is the news story about what occurred that day

In this example, Kyle Buller dreamt of events that, in a sort of skewed way, were unfolding in real life. A convenience store robbery, the phrase “this town is going to shit”, and a prank involving an AK47. Interestingly, within this dream, he also consumed psilocybin mushrooms.

It is important to reiterate that besides the dreamlike state produced by psychedelics, these experiences mostly take place detached from any ingestion of any substance at all. In my experience they quite frequently occur in the run up to the two main psychedelics that have been involved with, Psilocybin mushrooms and the Ayahuasca brew. However the dreams can also happen separated from any ingestion of a psychedelic by longer time periods, sometimes by years.

Kyle Buller’s account reminded me of an experience that my wife and I had not too long before. During a visit to the Big Island of Hawaii in February 2021, we spent a day exploring the eastern side of the island. We had planned to visit some of the lava tubes and caves that dot the landscape, and to explore some of the beaches north of Hilo. Our plan for later in the day was to venture up to the observatory on Mauna Kea to see the sunset and stargaze at 11,000 feet. We had planned to take some microdose mushroom capsules before sunset. People knew we were in Hawaii, but we had not mentioned our plans for that day to anyone.

Early on in our adventures, we received a text message from someone who had attended one of our mushroom ceremonies over a year prior.

In this dream she pulled in three details from what we were doing that day: the beach, the cave, and the stars. To us, this was another nod from something that expresses itself in this amazing way, and another glimpse into a tremendous mystery that we have come to believe has accompanied us even before we realized we were setting foot on this path, one that has been with us since even before we took these ‘drugs’.

For more cool bits about this topic, feel free to visit @ayadreamsproject on instagram

The connection between Kyle Buller’s dream and the dream of our mushroom ceremony attendee seems to be psilocybin mushrooms. As Kyle had eaten mushrooms in his dream, and we had served our friend in ceremony approximately a year prior, almost to the exact date.

These occurrences leave us somewhat baffled. We can’t help but to ask “What are the odds that this is a coincidence?” The dream and the real life occurrence are always out of time or out of scope in a particular way. They are events that are unfolding as we dream, unknown events from the past, and even more strangely, sometimes they are events that have yet to happen. Such experiences lend themselves to the theory that these plants and fungi have supernatural qualities. Of course, there is actually no such thing as ‘the supernatural’--there is only the natural, and the rest is just what we have yet to understand.

Delving deeper into the mysteries surrounding magic mushrooms, renowned mycologist and author Paul Stamets shared a narrative on the Joe Rogan Podcast #1035, dated November 7, 2017. Regardless of one's opinion of Joe Rogan, the format and topics of his podcast encourage guests to share such experiences openly. The importance of the stories like this that are shared by his guests is paramount.

In this segment, Paul recounts a day in his youth when he and some companions stumbled upon a patch of mushrooms in the wild. Once identified as a strain of psilocybe, they decided to ingest them. [Youtube Clip]

Rogan lets out an audible gasp, and Stamets continues.

After a moment of disbelief, supernatural claims in the air, Rogan chimes back in.

Paul responds.

He then states probably one of the most important observations that one may eventually reach in a journey into the realm of psychedelics, which could also be seen as the crux of this exploration:

It is not every night that you dream of fields filled with hundreds of dead cattle, and not every day that you see one less than a week afterwards. What, then, are the chances? Once more, mushrooms emerge as a strange companion in these scenarios. Paul Stamets actually did eat the mushrooms in real life, and did fall asleep and had that dream within the effect of the mushroom journey itself. However, the context of that dream had not yet occurred. In Paul’s dream, he had to rush to his cabin to save his research (presumably about mushrooms), then the scene cuts to a field full of dead cows. Both of which he experienced in real life the following week.

His dream, while distinct from that of Kyle Buller and our friend, all share the same characteristic, a familiar pattern. How would any of them have known? If not them, then what did? If I were to suggest “an intelligence that transcends time and space”, would you believe me?

Dreams are not talked about as a wider part of the narrative within the psychedelic renaissance because dreams are not what we expect or look for when we think of the broader effects of a drug. We may not even think to associate the two because of this. Some may scoff at the idea and write it off as hallucination-persisting perceptual disorder, aka “flashbacks”, or the often lauded excuse of simply being ‘projections of the subconscious’, or even psychosis.

Conceptualize this phenomenon as I do with this statement:

The ripples from a stone thrown into a pond do not form before the stone breaks the water.

If you had gone through one of these experiences, what would you think?

Some of the most intriguing cases of this dream phenomenon involve the ingestion of the amazonian plant brew, Ayahuasca. Moreover, experiences with Ayahuasca are markedly distinct from those with mushrooms. The ‘Strange Ripples’ metaphor applies in an even more profound way.

In indigenous cosmology, one of the many uses of Ayahuasca is to commune with the spirits of plants in search for answers and guidance. It is commonly used as an aid on the hunt, to visualize where the next animal will be felled. It is said to help the experiencer visualize the location of lost items.

The next example is one of the most pivotal in our understanding of why it might not make sense to call these drugs.

On May 1, 2023, a single-engine Cessna took off from the Amazonian town of Araracuara, Colombia, en route to the town of San José del Guaviare. The occupants of the plane were the pilot, four children, their mother, and another adult. Approximately halfway to their destination, the plane experienced engine failure and crashed through the thick foliage of the jungle canopy. A search was initiated involving 100 Colombian Army commandos and 70 indigenous locals from the local Indigenous community.

When the downed plane was located, searchers found the bodies of the three adults, but the four children were nowhere to be seen. There was evidence of their presence surrounding the wreckage, and a trail of items led deeper into the jungle. What followed was a 40-day search — an event that may become one of the most public and widely publicized examples of the strange ripples that this phenomenon seems to create.

The search area was calculated to be 17 km by 19 km, roughly the size of Washington, D.C. This is a massive area, made even more difficult by the sheer density of the Amazon jungle. I recently returned from the region, having spent time in the Peruvian jungle about 200 miles south of the crash site. The jungle is so dense that visibility rarely extends beyond 50 feet before the foliage forms a wall you can’t see past.

The ordeal is detailed in the beautiful documentary The Lost Children, released on Netflix in the fall of 2024. When I started watching, I didn’t expect Ayahuasca to play such a prominent role in the story. I remembered seeing news reports when the event occurred, but—as is often the case—many important details went unreported or underreported. As the film unfolds, you witness the growing desperation among the rescuers as their hope of finding the children alive begins to fade. The searchers eventually tried a new tactic: searching at night.

Huitoto tribal elder Don Rubio details where the paranormal aspect of the story begins:

One of the commandos adds:

On day 34 of the ordeal, military commander General Sánchez made the heartbreaking decision to abandon the search, leaving the Indigenous rescuers to continue alone.

Don Rubio continues:

Ayahuasca is known as yagé in Colombian lineages like the Huitoto, Tukano, and Cofán.

The tribespeople had their village prepare the brew and conduct ritual prayers. The prepared yagé was then airlifted into the jungle by the Colombian military. The rest of the group had already arranged for a helicopter to take them out on the 40th day. Don Rubio drank the brew on the 39th night in the jungle.

He woke up on the morning of June 9th.

The team departed in the northwest direction from the camp. At 2:00 p.m. that day, a group of four Huitoto from the Putumayo region found the children—emaciated, weak, and dehydrated, but alive. The children’s rescue, after an unimaginable 40 days alone in the jungle, sparked a wave of national jubilation, led by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who described the rescue as “a miracle.”

The Ayahuasca connection made headlines, including coverage by and , which noted:

“Some people become anacondas during these ceremonies, some tigers, others large birds. I don’t know what animals the Murui transformed into that night, but it is what brought them to circle back toward the crash site, where they found the kids,” says Flavio Yepes, a member of the Sikuani community.

“Many of us had dreams which helped guide them towards the children,” said Luis Acosta, head of Columbia’s indigenous guard.

This piece was originally published on June 9th, 2024, the one year anniversary of the rescue. That is a total coincidence. The documentary was released on November 14th 2024. After I saw the Netflix documentary, I knew I had to update this piece to reflect the story and the similarities between it, and what I had been experiencing for the better part of the last decade. This particular article is just a start of the process of me telling this story.

In the cases of Paul Stamets and Kyle Buller, the revelations they received were not something they actively sought—they arrived uninvited, yet carried meaning that was undeniably tethered to real-world events. With visionary plants and fungi, nothing is by accident. Every transmission feels precise, intentional, and purposeful. In the story of the Lost Children of the Amazon, the message was just as clear: an indigenous shaman, having communed with the spirit of the plants, pointed the search party in a direction and said, “Go that way.” The ability of these plants to guide or reveal hidden truths is not a fringe belief—it’s woven into the mythology and cosmology of the cultures that have worked with them for generations. And similar ideas are woven into Ancient Greek culture as well.

My own experience echoed this same motif. The dream I described at the beginning of this piece occurred about a month before my first Ayahuasca ceremony. At the time, I had no idea I would be drinking the brew. That possibility wasn’t even on my radar. It was nowhere in my perceptions or occupying any cognitive thought process. And yet, the dream carried context—scenes, sensations, even emotional textures—that would later unfold during that first session, and in many of the experiences that followed.

That particular dream’s animate and sensory nature was identical to the Ayahuasca experience in the immediacy of ingestion. I have even experienced little hallmarks of my first, pre-Aya dream experience later on in Ayahuasca and Mushroom journeys, a reference to a real location, physical/emotional sensations, context. It is as if the same artist were using the same brushes to create it. The dream was the preview and later, the Ayahuasca “journey” itself was the continuation. There was another ‘presence’ in the dream, which seemed to have control over what I was experiencing. This is a central attribute of what Ayahuasca does. This is what the entity experience is. I did not make the connection between dreams and the plants for a while because I lacked context. After all, a side effect of a drug isn’t supposed to occur before a drug is taken. This first dream was like getting a preview of what was to come a month later. The contextual clues from my initial Ayahuasca dream did not reappear for nearly two years, during which I had been supporting the ceremonies as a guardian. The dreams came back, and in a strange sense they continue to this very day.

In my experience, Ayahuasca acts both as an artist and a curator, with our perceptions serving as both the gallery and the canvas. You could also say that Ayahuasca is the playwright, the stage, and the characters. You may notice one character that stands out a bit more than the others, one that is more prominent. When detractors question the reality of the entities encountered in these states, asking 'Is what you experience real?', I respond, 'Is Mickey Mouse real? No. But is the intelligence that created Mickey Mouse real? Yes.’ For some, this concept may appear entirely incomprehensible. If you’re “hallucinating things that aren’t there”, that means you’re crazy.

The dream team encourages us to think outside of the box, and of the many other things, I think one thing that all who have worked with the team for a while would agree upon, is that it makes us confront our fears.

As humans, we harbor specific fears about the unknowns or 'big questions' of our existence. One is the fear of death, and another one of those fears is uncertainty of what else is out there in the universe. Are we alone?

A month after dreaming of a disk in the sky, I drank Ayahuasca and experienced a metaphorical death. With this came the intense realization that there were many other ways of experiencing and much more to this existence than I could ever have conceived of prior. In the many years since, I have experienced the myriad ways that this ‘other’ intelligence can present itself. Including a somewhat reliable way of encountering what I now confidently describe as “an intelligence that transcends time and space.”

At the age of 33, two years into my journey with the plants, I had a series of dreams that came straight from the mind of Ayahuasca. Little multi-sensory clues, little dots that at some point I realized I had no choice but to connect.

It seemed to me like I had to recognize their importance, their relevance. I had to realize that this was not a flashback. This was not ‘dream psychosis’ or a ‘projection of my subconscious’. This was a very ‘real’ phenomenon. Once I formed that realization, the rest of the dreams started rolling in. Like being fed little bite sized chunks of information to digest.

Even more bizarrely, this series of dreams, spanning two years, were book-ended by dreams where I was in the presence of disk shaped objects, the first of which I detailed at the beginning of this piece. The second was a dream that happened at the terminus of this sequence of dreams approximately two and a half years after the very first one in May 2015.

In this dream which occurred in the early Fall of 2017, I was holding onto a liquid metallic disk-shaped object. Accompanying me was someone else that I knew well, but they appeared as they did when I was just a young child. Our arms were extended outward, as if connected to this object. We stood seemingly still but were at the same time traveling through the surface of an uphill slope of a mountain. The ground crumbled below us and the trees split into pieces, moving along a disc-shaped path around, above, and below us, reforming in our wake like water flowing around a ship. We crested the mountain and shot up into the sky.

Then the entire scene changed. I was viewing a dimly lit room from a distance. I experienced an intense emotion I will never forget. I physically felt things I can never un-feel, and was shown an image that I can never unsee. And like that very first dream, the sensations became so intense that I woke up.

I sat with the contents of this dream for a few weeks, wondering, ‘What did that one mean?’ I knew at that point that there must have been some reason as to why this was happening, but I had not yet discovered the dreams of Kyle and Paul. I had never heard of any other examples of this. In these experiences and the conversations that they led to, I pieced together something about my own life that shook me to my core. I learned about a series of events in relation to my life that were ‘true’, that I had no knowledge of or had ever conceived of prior. It had not yet taken on this dimension. Understand that this information is deeply personal, and I will share more details when it is all ready to be shared.

Just know that this was one of the most significant moments of my life, and something that made me view it under a different light.

There are various schools of thought regarding unconscious and subconscious memories. Some branches of thought do link UFO experiences with traumatic memories recollected from other parts of the experiencer’s life. Accounts of “alien abductions” and narratives of Indigenous Shamans entering the spirit realm in their rituals bear striking similarities. They must hold some tiny truths in relation to this extraordinarily strange puzzle.

Carl Jung explored why UFOs are commonly encountered in dreams

In his essay “UFOs: A Modern Mystery of Things Seen in the Skies”, first published on New Years Day 1958, the psychologist Carl Jung discusses the psychological aspects of the UFO phenomenon, and in particular the experience of UFOs in dreams.

The imagery of the disk, the sphere, the golden wheel, the mandala, is something that transcends time periods and cultural backgrounds. Maybe it is an image that something deep down inside of us comprehends in a strange way. If anything, what this really indicates is that I am far from the first person to experience a UFO or disk-like object in a dream.

In contemporary culture, mentioning disk-shaped objects in the sky, UFOs, or their more modern term, UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomenon—which aren't always solid objects), carries significant baggage. This subject will undoubtedly become their own chapters in this. For now, this story is just starting to get weird. It only gets more strange.

I have also had UFO encounters while awake, and the timing of these experiences in relation to what else was going on, is quite suggestive. Five times (at least) I have seen something anomalous in the sky, most commonly appearing as a blinking, flashing, or pulsating orb, except for the time that it wasn’t.

I believe it is no coincidence that of those five times, four of these occurrences have happened either in the hours before an ayahuasca ceremony or in the hours after the major effects have subsided. Never in the immediacy of ingestion has this happened. I didn’t see this because I ‘was on drugs’. If I include the experiences of my friends, that number grows, and also includes similar sightings surrounding psilocybin mushroom experiences.

Most mysteriously, in 2018 my wife and I witnessed a dark, completely silent object with no visible means of propulsion, traveling from west to east maybe 100 feet above 29 Palms Highway in Joshua Tree, in broad daylight. It was like a dark liquid metallic blob that was rotating. Its shape obscured the red desert rocks of hills that form the northern part of Joshua Tree National Park as it traversed our view with its strange, undulating form. This particular sighting took place two hours before we were to provide music for an Ayahuasca group.

My logic tells me that if the supernatural exists, and if two seemingly different supernatural events take place hours detached from each other, then those events have some sort of causal or as Carl Jung would suggest, acausal connection.

In my dream experiences, it seemed as if an intelligence presenting itself as a disk appeared to me outside of my understanding of causality, of time. This was later accompanied by other awake time experiences where actual physical objects operated outside of my understanding of space and gravity.

Time, space, and gravity.

Correlation is defined as “a mutual relationship or connection between two or more things.” In regards to the wider UFO phenomenon, there isn’t much correlation in the overall accounts (actually, I take that back, there is a correlation with UFOs and nuclear weapons, a topic for many a separate article). In the examples I have provided, we have three data points: dreams, tryptamine-based psychedelics, and UFOs. A Venn diagram of these three would show each overlapping with a big question mark in the middle..

Jacques Valle wrote Passport to Magonia, in which he explored the UFO phenomenon in relation to human consciousness and psychology

Jacques Vallee is a well-known scientist and author, long regarded as one of the most respected and senior scientific investigators of unidentified aerial phenomena and their related experiences. Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind features a main character based on Vallee. He is well known for bringing to light the commonalities in UFO reports in modern times with those from before the ‘modern era’ of this strange phenomenon. He is one of many who note the same patterns in accounts spread across cultures and time periods. He compares modern UFO encounters with tales of apparitions from the Middle Ages and faerie lore from around the world. In a nutshell, it’s the same script, different costumes, worldwide, and not confined to the post-WWII ‘Roswell’ era. This phenomenon goes back to prehistory. There are even indications of this in the art of our cave dwelling ancestors.

In Vallee’s book Passport to Magonia, he mentions a case where a farmer dreams every night for a week that a UFO will land in his field and on the final night, one actually does. According to Vallee, this particular dreaming detail places that particular case “in the best tradition of the fairy faith”. Vallee was well-known for proposing the interdimensional theory of UFOs, which posits that the craft and beings might originate from different dimensions, rather than being advanced biological beings from planets within our own universe. He states:

Dr. Jacques Vallee proposes that there is a genuine UFO phenomenon, which is partly associated with a form of non-human consciousness that manipulates space and time. The phenomenon has been active throughout human history, and seems to masquerade in various forms to different cultures, over different time periods.

He states:

J. Allen Hynek sand Jacques Vallee. J. Allen Hynek (1910–1986) was an American astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is best known for his work as the scientific consultant for the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, which investigated UFO sightings. Initially a skeptic, Hynek eventually became a prominent figure in the study of unidentified flying objects and introduced the classification system for close encounters. Jacques Vallée (born 1939) is a French computer scientist, ufologist, and author. Vallée is known for his research on unidentified flying objects and is a proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. He has also explored alternative theories, including the idea that UFOs are interdimensional or time-traveling phenomena. Vallée's work has contributed significantly to the study of UFO phenomena and the paranormal.

This idea also appears in the work of Harvard Psychology professor John Mack. He observed that the boundary between dream states and what might be considered ‘real’ experiences was often blurred in abduction narratives. For some ‘experiencers’, abductions occurred during sleep or in states that closely resembled dreaming, yet these experiences carried a sense of reality and consistency that was hard to dismiss. Mack also explored the transpersonal dimensions of alien abduction experiences, suggesting that they might represent a form of engagement with a broader consciousness or reality. He proposed that these experiences could serve as a catalyst for personal transformation and a deeper understanding of one’s place in the universe. John Mack faced criticism for his departure from mainstream psychological interpretations, as many others who share a similar disposition do.

The connection between dreams and knowledge of medicinal plants is deeply rooted in global indigenous traditions and may have even been a central part of ancient Greek religious practices. In the book The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart of Nature, author Stephen Harold Buhner speaks on how indigenous healers from all over the world know about the plant Yarrow’s healing abilities, even on different continents, independent of each other. When asked how they knew, they all said the plant ‘came to them in a dream, and told them.’

This archetypal experience is alive in the origin stories of Ayahuasca itself as well, as the instructions on which plants to use to make the brew are frequently said to have been delivered in a dream. In his insightful book on Amazonian Shamanism Singing to the Plants, Stephen Beyer recalls an experience shared with him by his teacher, Doña Maria.

The intertwining of dreams, molecular compounds produced by nature, and human perception underscores the intricate relationship between the mind and the mysterious forces that co-inhabit this world with us, forces that humans have encountered repeatedly across cultures, locations and historical epochs. Such narratives highlight this profound connection.

The neuropsychological theory of cave art suggests that archaic humans immortalized their transformative experiences, including encounters with powerful natural elements, in cave paintings. This theory can also be extended to consider how such experiences and the environment influenced other aspects of prehistoric life, such as the development of medicinal plant knowledge among hunter-gatherer communities.

The elders or healers in these societies, who were often the most experienced or knowledgeable individuals, played a crucial role. They not only practiced healing but also taught others about the properties of various plants. This knowledge was often framed within the broader context of their spiritual and cultural beliefs, intertwining the practical with the mystical. For example, certain plants might be considered powerful not only for their physical healing properties but also for their purported spiritual benefits, such as protection against evil spirits or enhancement of one's connection to the spiritual world.

Ayahuasca and Psilocybin mushrooms are rooted in indigenous botanical wisdom. They also share a few molecular compounds in common within their makeup. Psilocin, found in mushrooms, contains 4-hydroxy-N-Dimethyltryptamine. Ayahuasca vine contains Beta-carboline alkaloids, including compounds like harmaline, harmine, or d-tetrahydroharmine. The leaves of plants like Psychotria viridis or Diplopterys cabrerana which are used in Ayahuasca brews, contain the powerful psychoactive compound N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Dimethyltryptamine has garnered various nicknames, such as 'The God Molecule' and 'The Spirit Molecule,' highlighting its profound effects on consciousness. A common myth in the psychedelic realm is that DMT is the active component in Ayahuasca. I would argue that it is not that simple.

This observation suggests that the molecular combination of DMT, harmala, and beta-carboline alkaloids may possess more complexity than a purely materialistic perspective can explain. The interplay between these compounds and the human mind remains a captivating mystery. Of the many things I am trying to demonstrate here, this is one I would underscore the most: a schism exists in the psychedelic space between materialists, who believe these compounds and their experiences can be synthesized in a lab, and those who argue their full experiential potential cannot be synthesized. The re-creation of these profound experiences with synthetic counterparts remains a topic of debate in the psychedelic community. However, current studies often do not delve deeply into the intricacies of these ‘other’ sorts of experiences. These examples I have shared with you underscore why it is so important to not let one specific voice dominate the narrative on what these things even are.

The common thread among the dreams experienced by individuals like myself, Paul Stamets, and Kyle Buller, and our friend lies in the consumption of DMT-containing biological material. From an evolutionary perspective, the common ancestor of plants and fungi is estimated to have existed around 1.1 billion years ago during the Proterozoic Eon. This organism likely possessed characteristics similar to both modern plants and fungi. Over time, these lineages diverged, leading to the diverse plant kingdom and fungi we recognize today. Before plants existed, the earth was covered in mushrooms that were as tall as houses and trees. While the earliest plants grew from the ground, fungal mycelium acted as their roots.

This raises questions about the potential loss of essential aspects of the psychedelic experience, either due to a lack of data or the hesitancy to explore those realms of the experience that may be regarded as too ‘woo-woo’. It is essential to recognize the significance of these experiences and their potential impact on our understanding of human consciousness. Ignoring or dismissing these aspects could prevent us from making groundbreaking scientific and spiritual discoveries. It would be a shame if this aspect of the psychedelic experience got lost in the sauce simply because of the reluctance of our minds to want to go there. It would be a shame if the scientific establishment were 'missing the forest for the trees' in their quest to create novel designer molecules that rob experiencers of the experience and cash in on what they view as the next generation of antidepressants.

Let's reconceptualize this phenomenon with the following statements:

The ripples from a stone thrown into a pond do not appear before the stone penetrates the water.

The ripples from a stone thrown into a pond do not appear before we know of a stone, a pond, or a ripple.

In other words, it is unreasonable to attribute these dream experiences solely to the power of suggestion and expectancy effects, i.e., 'someone said you'd experience it, and that’s why you did.’

In the final days editing this piece, I take note of another anecdote from author Brian Muraresku, again, from the Joe Rogan podcast. Except this one is a bit different, as Brian himself has never experienced a psychedelic.

Brian is a lawyer turned author with a background in classical languages: Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. In his book, 'The Immortality Key,' he explores the historical role of mind-altering plants and fungi from Ancient Greece and medieval Europe up to the present day. He does so without ever having experienced a psychedelic substance himself, to ‘maintain objectivity’.

Despite this, he has twice dreamt of drinking a hypothesized ancient Greek psychedelic potion, and even felt some of its effects.

The two get into the reluctance of researchers in academia who do not want to tarnish their reputations, thus reinforcing the stigma these materials unnecessarily carry.

Brian continues…

Joe chimes in.

In The Immortality Key, Brian explores the pagan continuity hypothesis, which suggests that Christian traditions are based on earlier pagan traditions that were assimilated into Christianity. This is not a new theory; in fact, it was discussed in an academic paper by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1950. In the context of Brian Muraresku's book, this hypothesis suggests that the Christian tradition of a wine-based sacrament has roots in the Eleusinian Mystery tradition of the Ancient Greeks. A common practice among Greek philosophers was the practice of pharmakon, the knowledge of medicinal plants and fungi. In Eleusis, initiates would drink a powerful potion called the Kykeon, and would go through some sort of an experience. Muraresku’s work is a continuation of Professor Carl Ruck of the Boston University Classics department. Ruck co-authored “The Road to Eleusis” in 1978 with Albert Hoffman and Gordon Wasson.

The theory posits that during Ancient Greece and earlier periods, alcoholic beverages were very different from those of today. Quite often, medicinal and mind-altering plants were mixed in. The alcohol served to preserve and decoct the chemical components from the plant materials into the wine itself, which was then drunk in small amounts. The fermented juice was merely a carrier of something else which produced an experience that is closer to that of Ayahuasca than it is to the communal wine served in the Catholic Mass.

A notable detail of his account is that although Brian has never consumed a psychedelic in real life, he has experienced consuming the Kykeon and feeling its effects in his dreams. I would argue that he is experiencing the same phenomenon as myself, Paul Stamets, Kyle Buller, and the shamans of the world throughout all of human history.

He also notes that if you are an author, scientist, or someone with academic credentials who has consumed a psychedelic, your credibility is often questioned. This is the stigma that these altered states carry unfortunately. You cannot be trusted if you’ve done drugs. You can be a drunk, but if you have experienced any of the more magnificent states of mind that this world has to offer, historically, you are discredited and your career is put in jeopardy.

So, the question arises: Why do we drink psychedelic potions in our dreams?

I browse Reddit one day and I come across a post appropriately titled “Had a dream about taking ayahuasca”.

As I make my way through it, I hear another strange echo of a sound I’ve heard before.

Another term that indigenous peoples of the upper Amazon use to describe Ayahuasca is ‘plant teacher’. She is just one of many. To me, many of these experiences feel like encounters with a very old and wise teacher, who sometimes displays a peculiar sense of humor.

Although these ideas may initially seem strange, they only really reinforce themselves. These experiences point to something larger than just the effects of drugs. Some voices within the community struggle to conceptualize these experiences and their meanings, particularly those individuals who fail to distinguish between communion with this 'other' intelligence and psychosis. Some individuals do not recognize the value in these primary religious experiences.

The issue of psychedelics directly pertains to some of the most profound questions we, as humans, face regarding our existence. Furthermore, as the psychedelic renaissance progresses, it is clear that we may only be scratching the surface of these profound connections. Considering all this, we can reconsider the question skeptics often ask ”Is it real or is it imagined?” Perhaps the answer is ‘both’.

To truly understand the implications of these experiences, we must 'Embrace the Mystical.'

This is where I find part of my purpose in this renaissance.

Aya Dreams

About the Author

Danny Byrne is a software engineer and musician. He is currently writing a book about his experiences facilitating groups with Ayahuasca and Psilocybin mushrooms. He creates meditative ceremony music as Harmala, and the co-founder of Harmala Temple, a psychedelic church. He lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter. You can find Aya Dreams Project on instagram at @ayadreamsproject and follow musical happenings at @harmala.music.