“The torus is a multidimensional geometric figure that lies at the heart of all space‑time.”
– Richard Rudd

The torus is a helpful metaphor for thinking about the movement of primordial consciousness and where our personal consciousness can be seen to be positioned within it. The symbol depicts expansion and contraction within the same dynamic system: outward flow, inward flow, and a centre through which both movements pass. As a symbolic model of consciousness, the torus helps illustrate the relationship between the many forms of experience and what appears when the structure of identity itself disappears. The full disappearance of personal consciousness or identity structure (the subject‑object relationship) corresponds to the centre of the torus.

Noetic: relating to mental activity or the intellect.
Noetic quality: the felt sense of direct knowing often reported in mystical experience.

The language surrounding these encounters therefore carries a strong noetic quality. Something feels known even when it cannot be fully described. The best language does not capture the event directly but points toward it.

In the context of 5‑MeO‑DMT experiences, many reports point toward a decisive transition point — a final threshold at which the ordinary relationship of subject and object no longer organizes experience. Prior to that threshold there may be extraordinary, profound, and often indescribable phenomena. Yet these remain experiences that can still be reported because the appearance or function of personal consciousness remains active.

There are multiple shifts in the subject–object relationship, experienced as successive thresholds. When the final threshold is crossed — when the positioning of the self‑identifier arrives at the centre of the torus — the organizing standpoint of the experiencer disappears. What ceases is not merely ordinary thinking or perception but the structure of identity‑consciousness itself. Descriptions that follow such an event are necessarily retrospective. Language returns only after the re-oriented experiencer has emerged from the centre. For this reason attempts to describe what lies beyond the final threshold inevitably rely on metaphor, analogy, and approximation.

White‑out and Void

Often, I hear reports such as: “I had a whiteout and I don’t remember anything.” So, what does that mean? Let’s look at these definitions and then some description from nondual thinker Richard Rudd.

White‑out: a loss of visual field often preceding loss of consciousness.
Blackout: a temporary loss of consciousness.

“At one end of the torus is the black hole, representing the yin pole that contracts and enfolds. At the other end is the white hole, the yang pole that expands and releases.”
– Richard Rudd

Within 5‑MeO‑DMT sessions two recurring phenomenological patterns often appear as individuals approach the final threshold: what many describe as a white‑out and what many others describe as the void.

The void or blackout is frequently associated with stillness, nothingness, absence, silence, emptiness, or remoteness. The white‑out is often described in terms of fullness, everythingness, radiant intensity, plenitude, or totality. These descriptions vary widely, but both patterns appear near the limits of describable experience. Black and white function here as a kind of prime duality: opposite poles that nevertheless belong to the same field. Poles so close that only one thing lies between them: the centre. 

From the perspective of the torus metaphor these poles can be understood as different phenomenological approaches to the same centre. The approaches do not necessarily represent two different ultimate states but rather two ways the dissolution of personal identity may be experienced as the threshold is approached.

Importantly everything that can be described — luminous, ecstatic, empty, terrifying, or silent — still belongs to the domain of experience. The threshold itself is marked by the disappearance of the standpoint from which experience is owned or narrated.

This is where ‘out’ becomes a clue. White and black can be viewed as a binary—simplistic perhaps, but distillations of duality itself. In the torus figure, the ‘out’ is the centre. As the position of the self‑identifier moves closer to that centre, personal experience may feel like an implosion or an explosion. Whether personal consciousness encounters white or black, it is near the centre—perhaps as near as it can get. The sense of “I” is almost out. Using the definitions above, personal consciousness is absent: out of consciousness, unconscious.

Personal and Impersonal Domains

Ecstasy: an emotional or religious trance‑like state originally describing mystical self‑transcendence. Etymology: ekstatsis (Greek)
Ekstasis: “standing outside oneself.”

Experiences that occur prior to and after the threshold remain personal, even when they are extraordinarily expansive. They are interpreted, remembered, and integrated by a person. Sensations, emotions, visions, or insights may be profound or simple. In any case they still arise within the structure of subjectivity.

What is at the centre of the torus corresponds to what might be called an impersonal domain. Here the usual polarity between subject and object no longer operates. Because no vantage point remains from which to observe or narrate, the event itself cannot be described directly.

What can be described are the penumbral phenomena — the experiences that occur as identity begins to dissolve and again as it re‑forms afterward.

The Centre of the Torus

“The torus unites centrifugal and centripetal forces, bringing implosive and explosive dynamics into the same system.”
– Richard Rudd

The torus image helps visualize the relationship between these phenomena. The spectrum of experiences — luminous, empty, ecstatic, terrifying, or silent — can be understood as movements along the field surrounding the centre. The centre itself is not another experience within that spectrum. It represents the disappearance of the structure that would make experience personal and relative.

From this perspective white‑out and void are not opposites competing for primacy. They are phenomenological entry points that may appear as the boundary of identity begins to dissolve.

The torus therefore becomes less a literal map of ultimate reality and more a symbolic representation of a dynamic process: differentiation moving outward, return moving inward, and a centre where the polarity between subject and object collapses.

Difficult Encounters with the Void

“Falling into the Pit of the Void… entails an authentic and irreversible insight into Emptiness and No Self. What makes it problematic is that the person interprets it as a bad trip.”
– Shinzen Young

Encounters near the boundary of identity dissolution are not always interpreted in the same way. Experiences that resemble the void can be interpreted as terrifying, destabilizing, or nihilistic if they are understood as loss rather than release. In contrast, the same territory may be interpreted as profound freedom.

The variation reflects how experiences near the threshold are filtered through the structures of interpretation that are inherent and relative to the individual. Understandably, the one who has an experience will judge that experience, often preferring qualities that feel desirable while resisting those that feel threatening.

Describing the Indescribable

Attempts to describe such events inevitably remain partial. Language functions after the fact. Yet the persistence of similar reports across individuals suggests that the boundary between personal consciousness and what lies beyond it may have recognizable features.

“The two types of peak experiences are relative and absolute… Absolute peak experiences are timeless, spaceless, and characterized by unity in which subject and object become one.”
– Alan Hefner

The value of metaphors such as the torus lies not in proving what the absolute is, but in helping us think about how the transition from personal experience to the disappearance of identity—and vice versa—might occur.

In this sense the most reliable descriptions concern what precedes and follows the threshold rather than the threshold itself. Those descriptions are then perceived and interpreted in relative ways.

Seen through the image of the torus, the reports of white-out and void begin to make more sense. Both a white-out and a blackout can be experienced as the boundary of the separate self begins to dissolve. The mind might prefer one and resist the other, interpreting the experience through the familiar language of gain and loss, pleasure and terror. But the torus suggests something simple: that both movements belong to the same process. Expansion and contraction, light and dark, fullness and emptiness all curve toward the same centre. What lies there cannot be described from the outside of it. Yet the recurring testimony of those who approach it and return from it suggests that there is one source.

In the torus, there is one centre. Duality flows into and out of this One.

Ekstasis is to be out of oneself.

Into the One; out of oneself. 

There are many selves.

There is One Self.