An intrepid group of eleven psychonauts - mindtrippers on DMT - blasted off into the unknown at Imperial College, London in a unique experiment to make contact with mysterious entities.
DMT experiences usually last around just 5-7 minutes but in this journey they were hooked up to the drug intravenously between 30 minutes and an hour in the experiment planned by Dr Rick Strassman who wrote the iconic guidebook, DMT, The Spirit Molecule.
The idea was to stabilise the substance levels in the blood so the peak inner experiences can be safely lengthened in the experiment called DMTx, short for Extended State DMT.
And in this recorded zoom call, for the first time in public, four of the psychonauts explained to an audience just what happened and revealed the entities they met.
For many years psychedelic experimenters in their deep mind state have reported encounters with a variety of beings - author Terence McKenna said he met "machine elves"
No elves made an appearance for our four experimenters interviewed in this call by author explorer Graham Hancock, but encounters included a variety of humanoids, a gigantic squid, cats, chinchillas and even a spider creature.
Some communication with entities seemed to be achieved and as with near death experiences and contacts with UFO beings, the participants reported mystical connections to deep knowledge and oneness.
One experimenter reported his experiences were like "UFO abduction 101"
But another psychonaut Anton Bilton said: "You connect to source - there is a notion of the sacred. I really believe that this is a tool sent here by something to allow us to communicate with it."
He saw a group of humanoid adults and flat nosed children who, as in his similar previous encounters, seemed "to look at the back of me, I think trying to see if a cord has been severed - has this consciousness died and left organic earth, or is it just a tourist passing through on DMT?"
He also reported ten foot tall orangutan type creatures amid trees and waterfalls - a primal environment with a conveyed message that this is how humanity should live.
Graham Hancock, himself a seasoned psychonaut, asked whether in these shared experiences "are we opening a doorway into seemingly convincing parallel universe inhabited by intelligent entities, is it some kind of archive stored on our DNA we're gaining access to in an altered state of consciousness or is it none of the above and just our brains on drugs?"
All the experimenters seemed to believe they entered another realm of reality but a couple suggested caution.
Carl Hayden Smith said there was a danger of "escaping into a nirvana"
He said: "These technologies have to be used carefully to benefit humanity creating altered states. But to what end?"
And pharmacologist DMT tripper Dr Jack Allocca said the new technology was important "but we have to make sure it doesn't take us away from our human experience, that we don't create a new biochemical Netflix - you tune into these fantastical visions which may make everyday life pale in comparison"
He added "A lot of people are disenfranchised in the world - it would be very appealing and seductive while neglecting the so called three dimensional world."
Dr Andrew Gallimore who with Dr Strassman devised the experiments at Imperial College's Centre for Psychedelic Research, said: "We seem to be on the right track with this technology. It seems like we have perhaps finally stumbled upon what could be the secret to extended explorations and establishing relationships with the beings within this space"
Dr Strassman observed that such experiments seemed to increase experiences of psi phenomena, precognition and telepathy and talked of an "overarching repository of information which contains everything from the past, present and all possible future outcomes"
He pointed out that the body naturally creates DMT and wondered for the future "can we genetically engineer humans to create more DMT?"