An intensive meditation practice called Fire Kasina can induce mystical experiences comparable to those produced by high-dose psychedelics. Six individuals completed a retreat and reported experiences they described as the most intense of their lives. Mean scores on the Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire reached 85%, similar to prior observations with high-dose psilocybin and stronger than moderate-dose psilocybin. Scores on the Hood Mystical Experience Scale averaged 93%, exceeding levels reported for near-death experiences (74%) and high-dose psilocybin (77%). Participants also described substantial shifts in worldview following the retreat.
High-dose DMT experiences often involve encounters with seemingly autonomous entities, usually considered hallucinations. This paper explores an alternative hypothesis using the conscious realism framework, where reality is a network of conscious agents and perception is a limited interface. DMT may perturb this interface, allowing access to normally imperceptible agents. The framework distinguishes hallucinations from experiences with stable, structured dynamics consistent with agent interactions. Testable predictions and experiments are proposed to assess if DMT experiences can be externally constrained or show intersubjective correlations, with implications for understanding perception and reality.