Those who have used DMT often talk about machine elves. I imagine there is a part of the brain that specifically recognizes humanoid figures even in the distance that is getting overstimulated.
Remember when stable diffusion would create image soups full of horrifying humanoid faces and figures? I imagine something similar happens when you dull the brain in the right way.
I've read about someone "exploring" the DMT realm with the machine elves by putting a hundred or so willing participants into that state and they found that multiple participants encountered the same machine elf, so there's more going on than just that.
Also, machine elves are not all humanoid. Some of them are complex geometrical shapes that are too complicated to parse. It was very fascinating to read about this phenomenon. I remember that what people described felt like some kind of Internet that is accesses with your consciousness.
Assuming your model of reality is materialist and all of reality is created by grey matter, then yes.
your eyes are usually closed during DMT trip so I don't think your hypothesis stands.
This is obviously just anecdotal, but when I was 6 I got very ill with the flu and was in bed for days. Super high fever and was quite out of it.
I had a, idk, spell one afternoon where I saw this quilt we had on the wall open up at all the squares, and thousands of tiny people/elves poured out. They marched around carrying little boxes and were all around me.
I remember it so vividly more than 30 years later because it freaked me out so much. Tried telling my parents about it and they just dismissed it as a nightmare, but I swear I was awake, just out of it with fever.
Anyways, it was early 90's, and I know I was close to the dangerous temperatures of high fever. Perhaps the brain does interesting hallucinations in these situations?
Have never hallucinated or had anything like that happen since.