The narrow claim is real enough to discuss carefully: there is a documented online protocol built around a diffracted 650 nm red laser, and some people under N,N-DMT report seeing stable geometric symbols or “code” in the projected light.

The clearest formal write-up is Danny Goler’s 2025 article in IPI Letters. Goler describes a recurring visual phenomenon seen under exogenous DMT while viewing a diffracted 650 nm laser, and says a pilot study produced reports of coherent geometric structures and code-like symbols. The article appears in the journal’s “News and Views” section and is authored by Goler himself. The project also maintains dedicated websites describing the effect and collecting reported symbols.

What the Public Evidence Actually Shows

The claim gets weaker when it moves from “people report seeing symbols” to “thousands of participants saw the same thing.” Public counts are not the same as audited research. Some widely repeated numbers come from promoters, project pages, social posts, or adjacent online communities rather than blinded, independently replicated studies.

I did not find a mainstream neuroscience or optics paper independently validating cross-observer symbol matching, blinded agreement, or machine-capturable external structure corresponding to the alleged glyphs. That absence does not disprove the reports. It means the strongest public evidence remains anecdotal, project-centered, and vulnerable to expectancy effects.

Why DMT Plus Laser Speckle Could Feel Like Code

There is strong background science for why this experience can feel vivid, stable, and meaningful without requiring hidden simulation code. DMT reliably produces intense visual imagery, geometric patterning, alternate-space impressions, and entity encounters. Large analyses of inhaled DMT reports describe fractals, shapes, patterns, vivid colors, rooms, tunnels, higher-dimensional spaces, and a high rate of entity encounters.

Neuroimaging research also shows that DMT changes brain dynamics in ways that matter here: increased global functional connectivity, reduced normal network segregation, lower alpha and beta power, and increased signal diversity. These shifts are strongly tied to the visual and immersive parts of the experience.

The laser matters too. A red laser passing through a diffraction grating creates structured external input. Coherent laser light projected onto real surfaces also produces granular speckle patterns. Under DMT, the visual system may treat that structured noise as a scaffold for meaningful patterns, symbols, depth, and motion.

The Simulation Theory Is Interpretation, Not Evidence

The simulation-code explanation is a metaphysical interpretation. It is not an experimentally established result. The same caution applies to microtubule explanations. Microtubule-based quantum consciousness models exist in the literature, but they remain theoretical and controversial, and current DMT research does not show that DMT reveals external code by changing the optical properties of brain microtubules.

The more defensible conclusion is simpler: the reports are interesting, the protocol is culturally sticky, and the perceptual setup may be worth controlled testing. But current evidence supports altered network dynamics, context-sensitive perception, and optical scaffolding. It does not prove access to a hidden physical substrate of reality.

What Would Make the Claim Stronger

A stronger test would need blinded conditions, multiple wavelengths, non-laser structured controls, symbol-matching tasks designed before the session, independent observers who cannot communicate, and machine-readable reporting before memory decay sets in. Without that, the safest reading is that the “alien glyphs” are a serious subjective report, not a confirmed discovery of simulation code.

Editorial note: This article is not medical, legal, or practical advice. DMT is illegal in many jurisdictions, can carry serious psychological risks, and lasers can injure eyes when misused.