This chapter will be very personal compared to the other
chapters of the book. Here I would like to discuss a few among
many of the personal experiences I have had that have led me to
the concepts discussed in this book. These are my actual
experiences with altered states of consciousness. These
experiences encompass basically two categories:
1. My hallucinogenic drug experiences.
2. My astral projection/lucid dream experiences.
I would now like to describe perceptions I have had during my experiences with altered states of consciousness that are most directly relevant to the material in the other chapters. The following will literally be my first hand account of things I have seen in altered states of consciousness. The format of this chapter will be autobiographical. I will tell of a few select personal experiences and then comment on what I feel the significance of these experiences has been in terms of my personal response to them, and my ultimate interpretation of these experiences in scientific and occult terms. It is in this chapter that I leave behind mere intellectualizing about the nature of occultism and its connection to modern science and offer my own proof, my own first hand accounts, of occult realities and the need I have discovered to combine both science and occultism to make sense of these experiences to myself. Later in this chapter I will lay out what I feel is an appropriate conceptual framework by which to understand the implications of what is discussed in this chapter.
One set of remarkable observations I have made that will form the focus of this chapter is that, at certain times during my experiences with altered states of consciousness, I can literally see the inside of my physical body at its various levels of organization. That is, somehow or another, images appear in my visual field that are distinctly reminiscent of biological structures. With my background in science, I have looked under a microscope enough times, dissected enough animals, and seen enough photographs in biology textbooks to know that the images I have seen in altered states of consciousness are too identical to biological structure to be simply a coincidence. What I am saying is that I have seen things, completely unaided by any mechanical instrument, that are thought to be perceivable only via some form of microscopy. These perceptions of my own physiology I call "biological perceptions".
Unusual as this claim may sound, there are scientific authors
who have also put forth the claim that some levels of perception
in altered states of consciousness may be direct perceptions of
physiological and biochemical events. In reference to the visual
images perceived in the hypnogogic state (this being the state
between sleeping and wakefulness in which we often find ourselves
as we are falling asleep or waking up), Mavromatis says the
following:
"As we know from the study of the phenomenology of
hypnogogia many people experience sensations of falling,
drifting, swelling, sinking, flickering or flashing light,
swirling clouds of colors, explosions of sounds, etc. Whether
these are to be seen as autosymbolic phenomena, as van Dusen
tentatively suggests, does not preclude them from being
translations of psychic activities, or indeed of being actual
`inner' perceptions of such activities...as Leary argued in
respect to hallucinogenic-drug experiences, a `direct awareness
of the processes which physicists and biochemists and
neurologists measure',1 that is, cellular and electron activities
which may collectively (in groups) correspond to psychological
processes. However extreme in scope and speculative this idea
might seem prima facie, it might not sound all that unlikely when
seen in its proper perspective."2
Indeed, as extreme as this claim seems, it is this claim I will put forth and substantiate in this chapter. It is interesting to note in the above quote that Timothy Leary is claiming that hallucinogenic drugs induce what I am calling "biological perceptions", for this is the exact type of experience I shall describe in this chapter. Ultimately, the issue here is one of significance in that the ultimate question becomes: what is the significance to give to such perceptions? As we proceed, we will see that this is truly the fundamental issue regarding "biological perceptions", and indeed, any imagery perceived in altered states of consciousness.
My biological perceptions fall into three distinct classes:
1. Things I have seen when under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.
2. Things I have seen (or more accurately-"places" I have been) when in the lucid dream state.
3. Things I see when I fall off to sleep (i.e. in the
hypnogogic state).
None of these classes is simple to describe. First off, in
some respects the distinction between these categories is
arbitrary, especially numbers 2 and 3. An alternative breakdown
of my experiences perceiving microscopic biological structures
could be that of:
1. Drug induced perceptions.
2. Sleep (or "trance") related perceptions.
For various reasons, to be elaborated ahead, I prefer the three class categorization. Yet, I will be flexible in this regard since the nature of the experience is not easily categorized. Furthermore, I am not going to discuss my sleep related perceptions to any great extent in this book, so we need not worry about how I classify them.
The first thing I want to point out about these perceptions is that they are very complex. That is, whether my perceptions of biological structure be drug induced or sleep related, I rarely see the exact same thing twice. There is one exception to this, that being the things I see in the hypnogogic state as I fall off to sleep. This, as a matter of fact, is why I relegated these particular perceptions to their own class; for I often see the same images every night as I fall off to sleep. In the other two classes I may or may not see similar things. I will discuss this aspect more fully as we proceed, but at this point I will say the following about the complexity of these visual perceptions.
First, biological structure itself is highly complex, existing as a hierarchy of simultaneous levels of activity (or nested levels of resolution, as I have described in section 3.2). In my sleep and drug related perceptions this is a primary factor in terms of interpreting what I am seeing.
Second, the imagery itself is made up of complicated and subtle structures that are rapidly moving (that is, highly "dynamic"), and these perceptions are not easy to describe in words, or even to represent with pictures. This will be obvious when I describe some of these experiences.
Third, in terms of my hallucinogenic drug induced experiences, which are the focus of this chapter (and I stress that these are hallucinogenic drugs only, with no exceptions), since these drugs are illegal I do not know what compound I have ingested, its purity, concentration etc.. As a biochemist with some knowledge of pharmacology, I know these are very important factors when discussing the actions of drugs within the body. Thus, not having this information, I am at a loss to go too deeply into the pharmacological aspects of my drug induced occult perceptions. I would assume that the variability of my drug induced perceptions is, in part, strongly influenced by such factors. Thus, that there is a high degree of variability in my biological perceptions, be they drug or sleep related, is no real surprise.
The next preliminary consideration is that there is a further degree of complexity introduced into the discussion in that my observations are open to any number of equally plausible, albeit speculative, interpretations. However, the processes of perception in general are little understood in scientific terms as I have stressed throughout, let alone a seemingly anomalous type of perception as I am about to describe. Such factors obviously create interpretive difficulties. Further, I have observed and experienced things that I have never found direct descriptions of, even in the occult literature, though statements here and there are very suggestive (as I'll show below). What is very significant though is that often occult diagrams, especially Tantric art as I have used in the plates, are highly reminiscent of the imagery of my biological perceptions. It is primarily my biological perceptions that led me to make the claims put forth in the previous chapter about neuroscience.
I would suggest that many of my observations not only shed light on the biological mechanisms of normal perception, they also show that present scientific concepts of the human perceptual apparatus are too limited. This in itself possesses some startling implications, especially with regard to accepting and understanding the claims of occultists. The perceptions I am about to describe are common to the occultist, but not the scientist, and again, this is because science itself is ignorant of occult realities.
On an altogether different line of thought, what I am about to describe could easily be open to the interpretation that I am crazy, mentally or physiologically unbalanced or some type of emotionally disturbed attention seeker. Perhaps this is how a modern psychologist, of whatever school of thought, would interpret the experiences I am to describe here. Yet I know I am not crazy. I mention this interpretation now simply to be fair. Mavromatis' work above illustrates that I am not the only person to make the type of claims put forth here. It is my hope that, as we proceed, the reader will realize that I have thought very deeply about these experiences, analyzed many possibilities in a calm and rational manner, and have tried to present this material in the most reasonable and sane manner I am capable. I do not believe that it is my sanity that is in question. What I believe to be in question here are certain implicit assumptions of a moral and intellectual character made by our present civilization as a whole.
This leads to the final preliminary consideration before I proceed to a detailed description of my experiences and that is the question of the use of hallucinogenic drugs. It is ironic and ultimately hypocritical that our society singles out certain drugs (i.e. marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD) as "bad" while at the same time our medicine chests are full of unpronounceable prescription drugs and strange drugstore remedies that are never given a second thought, and that a drug like alcohol with its ability to turn a person into an uncontrollable idiot is legal. Much has been said about this topic and debates still rage. However, I want to again stress that mindaltering substances, or psychotropic drugs, are barely understood at all. In the previous chapter I have referenced the most up-to-date notions pertaining to these substances and the effect they have on the brain and mind. These references offer only the most speculative and tentative explanations of the modes of action of psychotropic (or mind altering) drugs (see note 17 to this chapter). This present lack of scientific knowledge of these drugs is potentially more devastating than any other problem faced by modern science, for these drugs are very real and produce extremely profound psychological effects that challenge both scientific concepts and our everyday social norms.
As I have already said, no one really knows what is going on, in scientific terms, with the relationship between mind and body. Therefore, it is not surprising to realize that no one really knows what hallucinogenic drugs do. Only the smallest of efforts have been made in scientific directions. The suggestion I have presented in this book, that psychoactive drugs stimulate the chakras, by an unidentified physiological mechanism, is the most reasonable explanation there is about the mode of action of these drugs.
The mind (or more broadly, our subjectivity) itself is the final scientific frontier and ultimately, our present social taboos on the use of mindaltering substances, as one means among many for unlocking the rich and profound secrets of the mind (or of our subjectivity), are but trivial hindrances and mere passing fads. I will repeat, this situation of attitudes towards mind-altering drugs is not unlike that faced by Galileo's confrontation with the dogma of the Church in his day; societies rise and fall, value systems come and go, but science marches on.
Having said the preliminaries, I will now proceed to describe
some of my biological perceptions.
What I believe were my first biological perceptions occurred when I was very young, four or five years old. At night when I went to bed I would see strange patterns of colors filling the air around me. I was not dreaming and I knew I was not asleep (and, in retrospect, I can say with completely certainty that I was not in the hypnogogic state either). These patterns were usually green, sometimes they would change to red and then turn green again. As a child, all I could think to conceptualize these visions was that they looked like baby-pins, though I knew they were not. Long rows of green things that looked babypins filling the air around me; many a night I fell asleep seeing these. I would ask my mother what they were and she said I was just dreaming. I tried to explain to her that I wasn't dreaming and I saw them before I fell asleep. But nothing else would be said and the subject would change. As I got older, my curiosity about the green babypins still persisted, but the imagery I saw transformed. Eventually the green baby pin imagery ceased and what I saw as I fell off to sleep were myriads of whiteyellow points of light swirling about me and filling the darkness.. I have always wondered: What are they? Even today I can still see them any time I want-all I need to do is focus.
With regard to these white-yellow points of light that I see, either in a dark room or when I peer into the darkness behind my closed eyes, according to Mavromatis, this is a phenomena known in psychology as "ideoretinal light". This phenomena has also been called "luminous dust", "entopic light", and "eigenlicht". Apparently the perception of ideoretinal light is a relatively common occurrence, and Mavromatis documents many cases of it. Ideoretinal light is supposedly produced by the random discharge of nerve cells in the retina of the eye either because the nerve cells fire randomly or because stray light gets into the eye and causes the retinal cells (rods and cones) to discharge. The resulting affect is the perception of seeing white-yellow dots of light filling the space around a person. Mavromatis points out that some investigators feel that the ideoretinal light is "the stuff out of which hypnogogic and sleepdream visions arise"3. Yet even Mavromatis admits that "It remains, of course, debatable whether the `specks' are indeed of ideoretinal origin"4. Below, I will discuss a neurological mechanism, called "dark noise" that may, in part, account for not only the phenomena of ideoretinal light but also provide part of the mechanism underlying the biological perceptions I will describe.
Regarding debates about the origin of ideoretinal light, I would like to point out that, because of hypnogogic and hallucinogenic drug induced perceptions I've had, I do not believe that these specks are produced solely by the random discharge of nerve cells in the eye. What I have observed in hypnogogic states and hallucinogenic drug induced states of consciousness is that these "specks" are actually the light given off by the nuclei of nerve cells. I have literally observed, in the hypnogogic state, in the lucid dream state, and under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, images of structures that look identical to light microscope images of nerve cells, and I have seen the nuclei of these cells glowing and giving off light. I do not know at what level of tissue organization these cells belong, but it is apparent that at some level of tissue organization, at least a class of nerve cell nuclei literally scintillate light.
Again, this direct perception of nerve cells is not an
unprecedented situation. Mavromatis documents claims from other
investigators as to having seen nerve cells in the hypnogogic
state, as exemplified in the following quote:
"[I saw] something like a starfish, but the arms were but
slender threads springing from projections of the central
body...Both the centre and the arms glowed with brilliant light,
like that of a full moon....I recognized it instantly as one of
the `giant star shaped cells' of the nervous system...A thrill of
excitement went through me--and instantly all disappeared."5
It is interesting to note that this individual also saw the glowing property of the nerve cell, though in this case it appears that the whole cell glowed and not just the nucleus (a property that fits closely with the self-glowing quality of astral matter as reported by occultists).
In my own experiences I have literally seen the "ideoretinal light" transform into glowing nerve cell nuclei (and in other experiences I have seen this light transform into the stars of outer space, suggesting some interesting connections). The way in which the ideoretinal light "transformed" into the scintillating nerve cell nuclei was by a shift in my perception, or focus, as if I was going back and forth between two related perceptual levels. Again, we will discuss this topic in more detail below.
Returning to the history of my experiences with hallucinogenic drugs, these had little to do at first with the green "baby-pins" I saw as a child, or the ideoretinal light I see even now. My early experiences with these drugs were stimulated by the two major effects they had on me. First, when I was under the influence of these drugs, I thought about things that would have normally not occurred to me. That is, I became very "philosophical". Second, when on these drugs I experienced very intense visual hallucinations. As interesting and profound as has been the "philosophical" side of these experiences, it is simply too much to go into in any detail at this point, but the fruits of this form other chapters of this book, especially the philosophical views presented in section three.
However, regarding the "philosophical power" of these drugs, I feel that the ability of these drugs to increase one's sense of wonder and to enhance the scope and depth of one's insightfulness is a very important aspect of the hallucinogens and suggests much about the biochemical mechanisms of the cerebral cortex as well as shedding light on the whole issue of the mechanisms of thought. As well, as has been much discussed6, this topic is intimately related to the physiology of the mystical experience. That is all I want to say at this point about the ramifications of these drugs on cognition, thought and mysticism. It is the second of these two main effects, the visual hallucinations, that I am interested in here.
My early experiences with visual hallucinations were of the very common variety such as seeing inanimate objects such as walls and chairs "breathe", or the commonly reported experience of seeing "trails", a visual experience very similar to stopmotion cinematography or stroboscopic motion. Fascinating as these were to me at the time-or perhaps a better word to use is enthralling-the visual experience that has captured me from the first was what would happen if I shut my eyes or went into a dark room. Under those conditions I would see behind my closed eyes the most excitingly beautiful panorama of colors. Even Alan Watts' quote in the previous chapter does not begin to capture the essence of these color patterns. A literal psychedelic kaleidoscope of images would fill the space behind my closed eyes or fill the darkness around me if I had my eyes open in a dark room. At the time I was very much involved in drawing and I knew that what I was looking at was impossible for me to draw. The colors were too delicate, the patterns too complex and even worse, the patterns changed so rapidly that I could never even really get a good look at them at any instant. It was a very intimidating experience in that respect.
Today with the advent of computer graphics, it is possible to program a computer to generate images reminiscent of LSD hallucinations and I have even seen computer graphic animation highly reminiscent of the hallucinations I would see. I'm referring of course to fractal images, though these too, even though they are suggestive, pale in comparison to the actual visual perceptions possible with psychoactive drugs. This connection to fractals is an important aspect of drug induced biological perceptions, extremely rich in its implications. I have already discussed the connections between fractals and altered states of consciousness in the previous chapter, but we will go into this extremely important point below and in the following chapter.
Even more important than the sheer beauty of these visual perceptions was the awe and curiosity I felt while perceiving these images. I would stare enchanted by these dancing shifting images and just wonder what the hell I was looking at. And in many respects, the curiosity, fear, wonder and frustration I had felt then has served to drive me to what I am now and, in many respects, this chapter in particular, and book in general are a resolution to the feelings that were generated in me by these experiences.
Before proceeding any farther I would like to point out what I mean when I use the word "hallucination". Normally, this word implies that what is being perceived is not real. However, I am simply using the word "hallucination" here to refer to my drug induced, altered visual perceptions, and I do not mean to imply that these are not real by using this term. As a matter of fact, I obviously feel that these "hallucinations" are very real in that I am perceiving something that is real, only it is something not commonly perceived in our usual states of consciousness. These hallucinations are real in the sense that they are perceptions of nonphysical realities. There is no question in my mind that "hallucinations" are real, and furthermore, that there must be some very real neurological mechanism behind these perceptions. This must be the case since a chemical (LSD, mescaline, etc.) can trigger these perceptions. I want to be very clear in stating that it is only as a matter of convenience that I shall refer to my drug induced perceptions "hallucinations".
Now then, my first fullscale hallucination occurred about the age of 15. I had taken three hits of orange sunshine, a very small orange pill that is presumably highly pure mescaline. The initial visual effect was an experiencing of "trails" to a degree I had never seen before, but, at a certain point, my entire visual field became overlaid with a vast hallucination of chains within chains within chains. At the time I didn't use the term, but in retrospect, this was to be my first "fullbody" hallucination. That is to say, my entire visual field was replaced by a hallucination. It should be explicitly mentioned that these hallucinations are of an incredibly dynamic character. They move, they dance, they spin and spiral round and round. The character of the motion is very unique. Drug induced hallucinations have the quality of seeming to tailspin into themselves, much like the Oroborous, the snake eating itself from the tail. This was one of my initial perceptions of what I refer to as the Möbius process in chapter 10. One can get a slight sense of the paradoxical quality of this motion by looking at the Möbius loops depicted in Plate 1.
I sat staring at these chains so absorbed that I seemed to blink back and forth between the room I was in at the time and the hallucination of these spinning chains. When I could see the room I was in, the imagery of the moving chains overlaid my normal visual perception. This imagery would become so intense however, that it would overwhelm and dominate my normal visual field and I would lose visual perception of the room . Again, the effect was like a shifting of focus, or a visual sliding back and forth between two stable visual fields.
The chains were colored, but the colors were not typically psychedelic in this instance, rather they were more monotone: subtle shades and hues of varieties of reds, yellows, and oranges. What I remember most vividly though about this particular experience was that I tried incessantly to focus on the chain links but could not. When I seemed to perceive a chain, and then tried to focus on a link, what I ended up seeing were more and smaller chains within what I previously thought was a link. I went round and round with this before it dawned on me that each link was made up of smaller chains which were in turn made up of smaller chains, etc.. There were big chains too, filling the space around me. My entire visual field was the dynamic spinning of these chains within chains within chains. And it also left the definite impression of gears turning gears within gears turning gears, ad infinitum (thus the Alan Watts quote in the previous chapter is very meaningful to me). At a later time I had an absolutely identical hallucination of this character, colors and all, about four years later when I was in college. The fact that the experience was repeatable in this fashion suggests to me that different hallucinogenic compounds have different, but reproducible, psychotropic effects. This observation serves in part as the basis for the suggestion I put forth in the previous chapter regarding using these drugs as a controlled means of inducing clairvoyance.
I relate this particular story for a couple of reasons. First, it was one of my really powerful early experiences in terms of visual effects. Secondly, it illustrates a repeating theme in the drug induced side of my biological perceptions: that of seeing things within things within things. That is, this was one of my direct perceptions of the fractal nature of the hallucinogenic experience.
Also I should point out that, at the time of this particular experience I had no concept of what I was looking at. I knew nothing about biology, fractals or occultism. All I saw were these utterly amazing patterns that I could not even describe with words. To me it is no wonder that modern psychologists have not accurately portrayed this imagery (as illustrated by the errors in representation of these images seen in Plate 4), given that they generally know nothing of fractals or occultism either. Years later, when I saw my first fractal I was utterly amazed and could not believe it, because it was the first thing I had ever encountered that was like my visual hallucinations. And, as I discuss below, it was about a year after discovering fractals that I found the second thing that was like these hallucinations; clairvoyant descriptions of the astral plane. Knowing this, it should be obvious to the reader why I am attempting to say the things I am in this book.
Now before I continue to relate my drug induced perceptions, I should point out that in my life I've gone through two distinct phases with my relation to hallucinogenic drugs. The first phase is characterized by the fact that I had absolutely no comprehension of what these drugs were doing to me or what my visual hallucinations meant. Then for perhaps two years during college I quit the drug altogether for reasons related to my personal maturation. The second phase began later in my college career when I began to realize that these drugs had startling scientific implications, in terms of understanding the processes and mechanisms operating within our consciousness. It was at this point that I began to very seriously experiment with these drugs and pay close attention to their effects upon me.
It was in this second phase that I had experiences I currently believe were drug induced perceptions of my own physiological processes. I believe the above described experiences were also my direct perceptions of physiological processes, but at that time I was not aware of this, and the experience I am to describe dwarfed the previous ones in both observational clarity and wealth of detailed information. As well, the following experience I believe is intimately related to the green "baby-pins" I saw as a child.
Again, a bit of background is in order. In my first phase with these drugs the lasting impact they had upon me was, as I stated briefly above, to excite my intellectual and philosophical curiosity to abnormal (at least in terms of our society's expectations of "normal" mental behavior) proportions (and this effect has never gone away, I'm even worse in this regard now than I have ever been). This is relevant because when I went away to college I became a voracious learning machine exposing myself to such strange and seemingly irrelevant topics as mathematical sociology, contemporary evolution theory, Thomas Kuhn, non-Euclidean geometry, the philosophy and sociology of science, fractal geometry and the new sciences of complexity, among other things, and this was aside from my actual curriculum in chemistry and biochemistry. My early psychoactive drug experiences had turned something on inside me, triggered a switch, created an almost insane need to know (note the word "almost"), a strange unyielding desire to understand. What it was I was to understand or what it was I was searching for I didn't know. The point is I simply absorbed anything and everything I thought was relevant. Eventually in this intellectual sojourn, I carried myself into territory that would be essentially considered occultism. It was, as a matter of fact, occultism. Science was no longer enough and whatever it was I needed, the occult had it at that point in my life.
I developed an equal intellectual voracity for occultism and eventually came across some Theosophical material that had the curious title of "Occult Chemistry" by Besant and Leadbeater. Initially cynical and skeptical, I was soon confused. For in this book, Besant and Leadbeater claimed to possess psychic powers that allowed them directly observe atoms. This ability, they explained, was one of the many siddhis or powers that one developed by practicing yoga. As I have already discussed Occult Chemistry I will only mention relevant details here.
Well, over a period of months, and after having unofficially dropped out of school to study subatomic physics and yoga, I realized that, in all fairness, the claims of these occultists were more likely to be true than false. The relevant point I realized was that, whatever these people were doing via yoga that allowed them to see atoms was much too similar to what was occurring with my visual experiences induced by hallucinogenic drugs to be a coincidence.
At the same time, having read Leadbeater's The Astral Plane, I became interested in the notion of astral projection. As I learned more about this phenomena I realized that a few times some years before, I had actually had this experience, though at the time I did not know what it was. These early experiences happened to me twice and both were identical. I had laid down and fallen asleep, but then was suddenly awake and spinning around the ceiling of my room completely terrified! I remember that during the experience it was as if there were two of me, one who was terrified and one who wasn't, and this other me was very curious as to why I was so afraid. Both times were a battle between the curiosity and terror, with the terror finally winning and me waking up in my bed thinking, "God! That was a weird dream!" At any rate, as I became more familiar with occult literature, I realized that these early experiences were not dreams but were astral projections.
Not only did The Astral Plane stimulate me to begin
astral projecting myself, but I also noticed that some of
Leadbeater's descriptions of the astral plane were
indistinguishable from my hallucinogenic experiences:
"...two remarkable characteristics of the astral
world-first, that many of its inhabitants have a marvelous power
of changing their forms with protean rapidity..."7
"Most brilliant and most easily seen of all, perhaps,
though belonging to a more refined order of matter--the
astral--is that part of the aura which expresses by its vivid and
ever-changing flashes of color..." 8
Here Leadbeater talks about vivid colors, and ever-changing forms, things I had seen under the influence of hallucinogens (see also Annie Besant's quote on page 98, and Leadbeater's quote on page 102 in this regard). So not only were the strange dreams I described above related to this occultism, but so were the hallucinogenic drug experiences.
So, out of our enthusiasm, a few friends and I began to undertake experiments, both with hallucinogenic drugs and with our dreams, to see if we could testify to the things we were reading about in these occult books. Again, I am not reporting my dream/sleep related experiences in this book, though these have produced a rich harvest of information about the dream world and inner planes.
One hallucinogenic drug experiment I performed with a friend was crucial in convincing me of the validity of occult claims. I shall now explain this experiment in detail. The purpose of our experiment was to take a hallucinogenic drug and see if we could make sense out of our hallucinations in terms of the occult ideas. There were two ideas that we were to consider: 1. When we hallucinated were we actually seeing the astral plane? and, 2. Did our hallucinations have anything to do with the psychic ability (micro-psi or anima) that Besant and Leadbeater used to see atoms?
What we did in the experiment was take the drug and sit in my room and simply observe the effects of the drug on ourselves. I do not know what compound we ingested, but I would guess we took about 200-300 micrograms.
I don't know if people realize it or not, but taking a hallucinogen is not at all like, say, getting drunk. When one drinks they lose control of their rational faculties. The exact opposite occurs on hallucinogens as I've already stated. We were able to maintain a calm and rational disposition through the entire evening, though we observed many things that left us excited or shaken up emotionally. What I will do now is describe the course of the evening and what we observed, then isolate out all of the relevant features of our observations.
After the initial phase of the drug's effect passed (a sense of nausea that occurs within a half hour of ingestion and lasts maybe a half hour), we indeed began to hallucinate. Now, I should point out that throughout the evening we operated under an assumption that proved to be true, though at the time the behavior was quite automatic. That is, we both realized that we were seeing the same thing, or locking onto the same levels of perception as was the case. What this means will be clear shortly.
Now, I was sitting on my bed looking at my wall, which was an off-white color, and the first thing I noticed was that it was breathing. I went and touched the wall and realized that the breathing motion was in my perception because my hand could not feel the wall move. And it wasn't really a breathing motion when I sat and looked at it closely, it was more like a spinning motion, like the Möbius spinning motion I described above where it seemed to dovetail into itself.
Next I noticed the color and texture of the wall had changed. It had gone from an off-white to a neonish light green color and had taken on a "chalky" appearance or texture. That is, my entire visual field seemed to take on a "grainy" structure, as if everything I was seeing had been colored by chalk. And as well, I noticed that every so often a neonish purple splotch would well up out of nowhere then disappear again. I pointed out the change in the wall's color and texture and purple splotching to my friend. He had noticed the change in the wall's color and texture and it was apparently as obvious to him as it was to me. He didn't see the purple at first though. So we sat for some minutes staring at the wall trying to see the purple splotches appear and disappear. Soon we were both seeing them and they were appearing quite frequently now. We sat there trying to figure out what they were.
It was he who first noticed that what was really going on was that there appeared to be "pipes" and the chalky green color and purple splotches seemed to be liquids flowing through these pipes. I continued to stare at the purple splotches appearing on the wall and eventually saw that he was correct. But then I noticed that what was going on was that the chalky green color was the pipes and that the purple color was actually a liquid flowing through the green pipes. Upon staring further at the images, my friend agreed that this was indeed what we were seeing. And we sat there staring for some time at my wall which had turned into a network of green pipes, which appeared to us to be about one foot wide in our perception, with a purple liquid flowing through them. The green pipes were transparent, whereas the purple liquid was opaque. Both had a neonish texture to them (see Plate 12, frames A and B ).
Then as I stared harder and harder at these pipes, I began to notice new details, and then it dawned on me what I was seeing: that any given pipe we happened to stare at was actually made up of many, many little pipes, thousands of them, it looked like. It was the same way that a rope is made up of many fibers. And he noticed it too after I had pointed it out to him.
And somehow this observation took us into a whole completely different level of perception. Because now, everything in our visual field, my bedroom and everything in it, was seen to be made up of these little green pipes with a purple liquid flowing through them. Now this is very difficult to put into words so bear with me. It was not that we couldn't see my room because we could. It was more like there were two definite levels of visual perception we could go back and forth between; one was my room and all the objects in my room (us included) and the other was this level of all this tubulature, these little green transparent tubes with purple liquid flowing through them. It was as if all the things in our visual field were defined by these tubes. It was apparent from the shapes made by the green tubes and purple liquid that these were somehow responsible for the normal visual images of my room. The outlines between the objects of my normal visual perception (i.e. the edges defining a chair as a distinct object from the wall behind it, see Plate 12, frame A) were where the purple liquid flowed. If there was a colored surface with no contrasting images or edges in it, then it was just made up of these green tubes. And the green tubes weren't rope-like any more. The only thing I could think to make sense of what I was seeing was that it was like a super complex chemistry glassware setup. All these tubes connected amongst themselves in the most striking and complex patterns, but in a "perpendicular" kind of fashion (see Plate 12, frame C). Note here that I have only drawn a few of these pipes, we actually saw many more than are depicted here. Also note that I have made no attempt in Plate 12 to depict how the green tubes and purple liquid aligned with and outlined the normal objets in my visual field.
We started to observe a new affect now; our whole visual field seemed to breathe or pulse in a most peculiar way different in quality from the dove-tailing breathing motion I described above for my earlier experiences. I remember staring at the ceiling and seeing what looked like stalagmites, made up of these green tubes and purple liquid, grow, or fall, or melt, out of the ceiling, then disappear, then reform, and it was like a cycle. Or if I looked at an object (like the chair in my room), its contour was solid and defined for an instant and then would fade, and then become solid again, and again, it seemed like some kind of pulsing or cycle. The effect reminded me of waves on a beach; the wave splashes on the beach and makes an indentation in the sand at the moment of impact, then draws back only to splash again, and the pattern produced in the sand at the moment of impact fades away in the shape of the water as the water pulls back out (this metaphor is almost identical to the actual perception I am trying to describe).
We knew we were looking at something in our brain and we realized that our brain breathed, just like our hearts beat, and our lungs breathed. It seemed like an electromagnetic kind of breathing or cycle, as if a magnet was turned on for an instant, then turned off, then turned on, and so forth. The magnetic effect was as if our perception was drawn outside us, pulled out of us, as if magnetically by the environment. Our perception splashed onto a "something", a milieu that appeared to form into the normal elements of my visual filed (i.e. my bedroom) upon impacting with this perceptual outpouring. As well, it seemed like we could "push" the perceptual outpouring as well. This pushing sensation was very reminiscent of the ability we have to control our breathing and hold our breath.
We called this cycle of our perception the "lock-mold" cycle and it went: lock-mold, fade, lock-mold, fade, lock-mold, fade. What this lock-mold cycle seemed to do was this: in the lock-mold phase the green tubes and purple liquid would seem to magnetically lock around the objects in my room that we were looking at, and they would literally define the contours and shapes of the objects in our visual field. Then, during the fade cycle everything seemed to relax and the tubes would start randomly moving around, breaking apart and forming connections with each other, and the purple liquid would flow as if it was something swimming. Then the magnetic lock-mold would occur again, aligning the tubes and purple liquid in the exact pattern of the "normal" objects in our visual field, and the cycle would repeat. The lock-mold phase seemed instantaneous, and the fade phase lasted longer. If I were to guess, the whole cycle seemed to take about a second (a 1 Hz cycle), and again, it mostly consisted of the fade phase.
In retrospect, it would have been smart to measure our pulses and see if the lock-mold cycle corresponded with our heart beat. We did not do this. However, it seems reasonable in retrospect to think that this lockmold cycle we observed was directly related to the pulsatile flow of blood pumped into our brain by the heart. The typical heartbeat is 60-70 beats per minute and this frequency approximates well the frequency of the lockmold cycle we observed.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this as the evening progressed, we observed another very dramatic phenomena as well. This we called the "holographic color field". We discovered this by trying to understand how the green tubes and purple liquid could produce the color of the objects in my room. What we discovered is that the green tubes and purple liquid did not produce the color of these objects. When we tried to see where the colors were coming from, we then discovered this new factor; the holographic color field.
There seemed to have been two main things going on with regard to the mechanisms of our visual perception. On one hand, there was the green tubes and purple liquid and the fact that these defined the objects in our visual field, but in a sense, the tubes and liquid gave a black and white (or more precisely, purple and green) view of things in our visual field. On the other hand, there was this holographic color field and it seemed to give color to the objects defined by the tubes and liquid. That is to say, the shapes and contours of the normal objects in my visual field seemed to be defined by a separate mechanism from the colors of these objects.
However, there was more to this field than just the fact that it gave color to the objects in our visual field. It seemed to have been a thing in itself, as if there was this super-kaleidoscopic, holographic color field cutting through and filling our perceptual space. It seemed to be its own space superimposed over the other perceptual spaces (thus, at this point we were seeing four perceptual spaces: 1. my room, 2. the level of the big tubes, 3. the level of the little tubes, and 4. the holographic color field.). This color field moved quite independently of the green tubes and purple liquid in a fashion I simply cannot describe in words, and it did not seemed tied to the lock-mold cycle as were the tubes and liquid. It seemed like the color of the objects in our visual field (the things in my room) would force (by what seemed like polarization or magnetization) the part of the holographic color field that happened to be "over" the object to be the color of that object.
Otherwise, if for example we stared at my wall or ceiling which were white, this field was the most subtly beautiful array of colors I have ever seen. It was a fractal too, and it had a very electric quality about it. To sit and stare at the field when it was unaffected by the objects in my room was unbelievable. It was so incredibly beautiful. It was like looking out over a vast mountain range of a myriad incandescent colors, and the colors had the quality of color that one sees in a holograph, thus our name of "holographic color field". But it was not the simple monotone hues of a typical holograph. It possessed the most subtlest of hues, and the most delicate blending of a vast spectrum of electric neon-like colors that would shift and transform in a fashion I simply cannot describe. I remember trying to focus on it, to look for an edge to the thing, but I couldn't. Whenever I'd try to focus, it would just produce more mountainous detail, exactly the same effect found in "zooming" on a fractal image, and the colors would shift and slide from one enormously gorgeous color pattern to another. It was so subtle and beautiful I can't even begin to explain it.
At one point in the evening, one of my roommates came in and interrupted us, and joking around, he shut off the lights in my room. This had a most incredible effect on my perception. My entire visual field became dominated by the holographic color field, and I had completely lost perception of the other levels. This bothered me and I immediately turned the lights back on.
If all of this isn't startling enough, the final clincher came as I was laying with my feet up against the wall looking up at the "stalagmites" forming and fading on the ceiling when I made the most startling discovery of them all. For orientation's sake, we were probably 3 hours or so into the drug experience. I was watching the fade cycle very carefully (which is when the stalagmites would seem to melt out of the ceiling, or, in terms of the wave/beach analogy, when the wave would wash back out to sea), and mind you the holographic color field is in the background of my vision though I'm not focusing on it. With all this going on in my vision, I noticed the most spectacular detail of them all. What I saw amazed me beyond my wildest expectations. The strangest emotions swept over me as I realized what I was looking at. A wave of emotion filled me that felt like the way a proud and loving pet owner feels towards his animal--but multiplied by a million-fold. For what I saw was that the purple liquid was not a liquid at all, but little purple bacteria-like creatures swimming around through the pipe structure. I was awe-struck!
I cried out to my buddy, "There's little bacteria swimming around in our brain!" Very quickly he saw it too and we were both marveled by this. Yet he wasn't as enthusiastic as I was about the little bacteria creatures for he found another perceptual level to lock onto as well that had captured his attention and interest. He "took" me there and I was kind of nauseated by what I saw because it was layer upon layer upon layer of what looked to me like muscle cells. A single "cell" was roughly diamond shaped and had a black dot in the center of the diamond. These things, that definitely looked like cells, were strung together forming planes or sheets, and the planes were layered one upon another. They had a peculiar vibrating motion about them that turned my stomach. As well, since they were fairly transparent, a strange effect was created by the way the layers were stacked that caused the sight to look like a bunch of strangely overlapping faces--human faces. The cells were a soft pinkish orange color and they were textured like velvet or flesh. They did not have the holographic texture of the color field, or the neonish texture of the pipes and bacteria creatures. They had a perceptual quality just like our normal vision. This level of perception made me uncomfortable, and I did not focus on it much. Besides, I was freaking out on the fact that little bacteria creatures were swimming in my head and I went and studied these creature intensely.
It was ironic that I saw these bacteria creatures because the previous quarter in school I had just taken a class in microbiology. In that class we looked under the microscope at bacteria many times. I immediately realized that what I was looking at right then on hallucinogenic drugs looked just like the bacteria that we saw under our microscopes. I could follow these little creatures in my vision easily. The first thing I noticed was that, during the lock phase of the lock-mold cycle, these little guys were literally locked into place, and again this locking was highly reminiscent of magnets. And it was they, the little bacteria creatures that defined the shape and contour of all the objects in our normal visual field.
I remember tracing out my "hallucination" of these creatures in the green pipes exactly as I saw it on my wall in pencil (that is, I drew on the wall of my bedroom, in pencil, the images I was seeing superimposed over the wall). Later I traced that drawing onto tracing paper and colored it in with magic markers. The picture is hanging on my wall now as I write, and it is reproduced in the color plates (Plate 11) so you can have an idea of what I'm talking about here. When looking at Plate 11, imagine having what you see there superimposed over your vision at any instant in such a way that the purple creatures define all the contours of the objects you are looking at. Another way to understand this is imagine making a pencil drawing of the contents of your visual field. Wherever you would put a pencil marking is where the purple bacteria creatures in the tubes would be. All the unmarked space would be filled with the green tubes but they would be empty of the bacteria. Also, I should point out that the apparent shading effect of the coloring of this picture was not present in our "hallucinations". This was actually an effect inadvertently created by the magic markers I used to color this picture.
So I studied these little creatures and tried to pinpoint their behavior as best I could (see Plate 12 frames D and E). As I said above, during the lock part of the lock-mold cycle, they would literally lock into place and not move, though they would flitter and wobble a little bit (the same way that a person who is standing still wobbles back and forth slightly) as they were locked into place on what appeared to be the inside wall of the green tubes. Then, during the fade part of the cycle they would be free from the magnetic influence that held them in place and they would literally swim about like fishes through the tube structures. And they would swim about quite freely until the lock came again, and, wherever they happened to be, they would freeze in place, though like I said they weren't perfectly immobile. They'd be stuck in place, but they'd wag and wobble, almost as if they were nibbling on something. Then the lock would fade and they'd swim about again.
I could zoom in on these guys and look at them fairly closely. I could get it to where one of them looked like it was about an inch long in my visual field. They all had a very definite structure, and the structure was the same for every one I observed. They also had three distinct properties in their behavior.
First, their structure; I've drawn a picture of one in Plate 12, frame E. On average, they were shaped kind of like fish, and they were definitely three dimensional, that is, they had volume. They were surrounded by a darker purple-blue membrane which enclosed a lighter pinkish-purple medium. The light purple medium appeared to be smooth and homogeneous, I could discern no detail in it. The only thing I could see inside of these creatures was a dark particle in the center that I took for a nucleus. This nucleus was a darker kind of purple like the membrane, but it had a different texture. The membrane seemed sponge-like but the nucleus was homogeneous like the inner medium. When I say "homogeneous" I mean that I could discern no detail. So in scientific terms, their morphology was a membrane-bound, nucleated structure.
Now their behavior was fascinating. First, when they were
locked in place on the inside wall of the green tubes, like I
said, they still squirmed and wiggled. Second, the change in
their global structure (that is, the entirety of all these
creatures as they filled and defined my perceptual field) from
lock to lock looked identical to the jerky motion of schools of
fish. That is, their movement looked like the direct and abrupt
movements seen when a school of fish makes a sudden change of
direction. Third, during the fade part of the cycle, they were
free moving and now, each little individual bacteria creature
swam as if it was a fish. They even wiggled like fish when they
were swimming free. They could swim in either direction relative
to each other and they moved at many different speeds. Some just
moseyed along and others were little speeding busy-bodies. When
they were free swimming, it seemed as if each one was moving
quite purposefully, like it had somewhere to go. Nothing about
any of this seemed random. And fourth, any individual possessed
the following behaviors:
1. It could elongate itself out laterally, with or without changing its width. That is, it could stretch its length. I would watch one occasionally increase its length and be surprised to see that it did not change its width.
2. It could elongate itself width-wise, that is, become fatter.
3. It could literally fuse with another one. At times I would
see two of these creatures swim up and approach one another and
then they would fuse together and one binucleated structure would
swim way.
I call these things "meme-bacteria" as a tribute to Richard Dawkins and his concept of "memes". What I feel these meme-bacteria are in terms of known brain physiology and biochemistry I will discuss ahead, and their relationship to "memes" will be discussed in the next chapter.
Other things happened as well in our observations which were of an emotional character. Late into the evening a sense crept over me and my buddy that was something like what one feels when they're trespassing on someone else's property. It was as if we had been stepping on the flowers so to speak, or were stealing apples off of the farmer's apple tree, or like we littered in the forest or something. It's a hard feeling to describe.
As well we discovered a thing called a "spiral".
Your spiral is your aura, but in a different sense. Your spiral
is like the magnetic force that is you and it animates and
holds together your physical body. The sensation is of a magnetic
spiral current moving through one's body, but one controls or
creates the movement itself. Spirals are something you can
feel in your physical body. They cause you to walk the way you
do, and make the kind of faces you make. Your spiral is the way
your body wobbles when you're just standing there, the way you
animate your voice and move your arms when you talk. Your spiral
is kind of like your fingerprint, everyone's is unique. This
spiral I believe was our direct perception of what occultists
call "kundalini", and what Robert Monroe calls a
"curl". Very often in literature that discusses
kundalini, the kundalini is depicted as a spiral current running
through the length of the body, with the spine as the long axis
of the spiral. This is indeed what I felt that night. However,
the sensation was much more complex than feeling something like a
slinky flowing through me. Again, I was this spiral
energy, it was not something distinct from me. Every motion I
made flowed from this spiral sensation.
On the most basic level, I believe that the overall physiological effect of the hallucinogen we ingested was to increase the flow of the kundalini energy through our bodies, at least to the extent we were conscious of it as a distinct process in our being. I believe that somehow the drug increased the flow of this kundalini not only so that we could actually feel (in a kinesthetic sense) that this spiral magnetic current moves through and actually is our body/mind, but as well the enhanced kundalini stimulated our third eye chakras in such a way that we could now perceive nonphysical realities from the standpoint of our waking consciousness. This is my "bottom-line" explanation of why we saw the things we did that night. In other words, the hallucinogenic drug made us clairvoyant. In my opinion, this is the most straightforward explanation of what occurs when one ingests hallucinogenic drugs. This is why I claim that the mode of action of these drugs is to stimulate the chakras.
We learned very much the night that the above experience occurred, needless to say. We were both student scientists performing this experiment; myself with my biochemistry background and my buddy with his metallurgy background. As well, a third friend was present who had not done any drugs, but did witness our behavior and exclamations that night. My friend who had done this with me, even today knows how real what we saw and felt was. A week later, with the same drug, we repeated the experience. I have never been able to repeat these observations exactly when under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, and I mainly attribute this to the drug. However, the various elements we observed such as the lock-mold cycle, the meme bacteria, the spiral and the holographic color field have always surfaced in some fashion in my subsequent experiences with hallucinogens. These elements are common motifs of my hallucinogenic experience, and can assume a variety of forms, which I would assume is a direct function of the drug ingested, its concentration, and as well, my physiological and psychological condition at the time of ingesting the drug. Again, the effects of hallucinogens are very complex and to expect simple correlations between different drug sessions is unrealistic. Nonetheless, the observations described above can be taken as variations on recurring themes.
An extremely interesting effect of these drug experiences is that my friend and I, and a third friend (not the third friend mentioned above) who has also had the same hallucinogenic perception, can all reproduce the effect, only at a much, much less intense level, when we are straight (i.e. not on any drugs at all). Any time, if I relax, let my vision blur and concentrate, I will see the chalky texture, green tubes, and the little meme-bacteria superimposed over my normal visual field, complete with neon colors. But the image is very faint and mostly blurry, and there is no perception whatsoever of either the lock-mold cycle or the holographic color field. Yet, it is as if we have since learned how to "go" to these perceptual levels from the initial drug induced experience. One obvious question I've asked myself is: why is the perception so very much less intense when I'm straight? What it seems to me is that, when not on the drug, my normal physical perception is too strong and it damps out my perception of these other levels that we learned to see under the influence of hallucinogens. And also, of course, the drug itself is triggering off some neurological mechanism that does not operate in me under normal conditions.
At this point I would like to discuss what it is I think I saw in terms of scientific ideas, and what happened to us in terms of occult ideas. Much of this has already been defined by simply describing the experience. It was interesting how we would actually discover the things we saw. It started out that we were initially looking at something that made no sense to us at all. It was almost like a puzzle. But it seemed that we stared at it so much and with such intent to figure out what we were looking at that new details would arise in our perception which we could then focus on and try to define with words and ideas. In this latter regard, my familiarity with microbiology, and biology in general was crucial. If I had not known the things I did about cell structure and body organization, much of what we had seen probably would have made no sense at all. Here now, we can see the paramount importance of the significance given to drug induced visual imagery. Yet, this issue of significance is not that clear cut, as I'll explain below. I have some definite ideas about what we saw in terms of science, but I'm not sure to what degree scientific terms are applicable to our drug induced biological perceptions.
Now, from an occult perspective, there is no question in my
mind that one of the effects of the drug was to allow us to
exercise the psychic ability which was also used by Besant and
Leadbeater called "micro-psi" or anima, though we
obviously did not have the degree of control over magnification
that they did. I remember very definitely trying to focus and see
deeper into a single meme-bacteria, but I was unable to do so.
Yet, in spite of this limitation, it was clear that the drug
stimulated the flow of kundalini energy in our bodies and minds
and this somehow triggered off the micro-psi ability in our
perception. It is obvious that we were somehow visually locked
onto different levels of spacial organization, on at least the
physical plane. All the things we saw had a nested (i.e. fractal)
organization; levels inside of levels inside of levels. The
perceptual levels I could see, starting at the top level and
nesting inwards, were (again, referring to Plate 12):
1. The normal physical level; that is, my room.
2. The level of the big green pipes with the purple liquid flowing through them.
3. The level of the diamond-shaped flesh colored cells that made me uncomfortable (of which nothing will be said other than that I saw them).
4. The level where I could see the meme-bacteria swimming through the complex maze of ever changing pipes.
5. The level where I could focus on one meme-bacteria.
6. And another level I didn't describe above but alluded to when I said the holographic color field looked like mountains. This sixth level was the opposite of the others in terms of scale in that it seemed huge. At times I could look at the holographic color field as if it was a vast vista that seemed to extent out for miles and miles, as if into and beyond outer space actually.
Some of the qualities of this "micro-psi" ability as we experienced it that evening were the following. Late in the evening, after we had pinpointed all of these levels, the sensation was that we could literally slide our perception (actually it was that we could shrink or expand our spirals) up and down these levels and go from one to another at will by simply focusing on it. It was very much a process of focusing. When we were concentrating on one level, all of the others would fade into the background. The effect was exactly like when you focus on an object in the foreground of your normal visual field and the background becomes blurry. And surprisingly to me that evening, I could even "slide" into a perceptual level in which I felt perfectly normal, as if I hadn't even taken the drug. This latter fact is of great importance because it indicates to me that our so-called "normal" perceptions of body sensation and movement, sensory input, emotion and mind are but a subset of all the possible states of perception we can assume in our physical body.
Now, both of us who had taken the drug had perfect control of our rational minds that evening, if not an enhanced control in terms of our ability to focus our thought and our ability to move quickly from one new insight to another. I know for sure that my thinking was essentially no different, if not better, than when I am straight. It was very easy to look at these images and think about what I was seeing. What was difficult though was talking. It was as if I had to go back to the level of my "normal" perception to talk. Talking would cause me to loosen my focus on whatever I was looking at, but I could easily go back after I had said something. Now, it's not as if every time I said something the hallucinations would disappear. Whenever I spoke, the hallucinations faded into the background of my vision. This fact that I would loosen focus on a given level of drug induced imagery is very interesting from a neurological point of view. This observation suggests that, whatever the underlying mechanism of these perceptions, they compete with the neural mechanisms that lead to speech. That is, the neural circuitry for speech and the neural circuitry that allows for these altered perceptions compete with one another, and are distinctly different neural pathways. This is a useful insight because it clearly eliminates certain brain regions (those involved with speech) when we attempt to search for the brain regions involved with sensing these hallucinations.
The second point to mention about this "micro-psi" ability is that both my friend and I seemed to see the same thing. One could say that it was wishful thinking, or that we each influenced one another somehow to make each other believe we were seeing the same things. First off, there was no belief involved. There was no imagining involved. We were quite literally seeing things. We were literally perceiving visual images. Nobody was making anything up. The whole experience was very exploratory, we were trying to make sense out of images we had never seen before. Thus, the question is: how come we both saw the same things? For if we think of these images as simply hallucinations, then there is no good reason that my hallucinations should look like my friend's. I believe that we saw the same things because first, I believe we were looking at our physiological fine structure (as will be described below), and since my friend and I are both humans, and human bodies are generally the same, we were both looking at the same thing, though I was seeing inside my brain, and he was seeing inside of his brain. And second, I believe that we had set up some kind of very intense psychological resonance with each other. That is, one of us would lock onto a new perceptual frequency and he could literally "pull" the other one there. This effect I believe is just like when you're in a glum mood and a friend comes over in a great mood and pretty soon you're in a great mood too. It was unquestionably some type of psychological resonance. In Chapter 14 I will outline in general the type of psychological resonance at issue here.
There was a third quality to the use of this micro-psi that was quite fascinating and may suggest ideas about the actual mechanism of micro-psi. There was a definite sense of a visual amplification occurring. When I spoke of the stalagmites falling out of the ceiling, this was an effect, or manifestation, of this amplification process. It is a peculiar quality that is hard to put into words. The effect is as if a kind of bouncing back and forth, or feedback, is occurring in the visual field, resulting in the effect that the images seem to rise one out of the other. New images seem to arise out of the center of the previous image, and the previous image seems to fade away while the new image grows and takes its place in the visual field. The effect was almost like the way concentric rings ripple away from the point at which you drop a rock in the water, only backwards. That is, the rings seemed to circle in towards the center from the outside. This feedback seemed to be the mechanism that allowed our visual perception to leave its normal state and create a "magnification" effect.
I have experienced this sensation of a circular visual amplification on almost all of my drug-induced visual perceptions, and I have had similar perceptions of it in hypnogogic or lucid dream states. I have seen this "concentric ring effect" many times in the hypnogogic state, but in this case there is no other imagery associated with the perception. In the hypnogogic state what I see is the darkness behind my closed eyes rippling. I am being very literal here: the darkness behind my eyes moves, it ripples. In this darkness, I see what looks like a film running backwards of a rock dropped into the water, and the darkness itself is the rippling water (and of course, there is no rock). Thus, this effect is not unique to the hallucinogenic experience and points to the idea that this amplification effect is a more general property of our human psychology and is not exclusive to the hallucinogenic state.
For some reason, however, it is accompanied by other imagery
in the hallucinogenic state, imagery that leads to micro-psi type
observations. In lucid dreams in which I have been able to
perceive many levels of resolution simultaneously, the transition
from one level to the next is abrupt and very discreet, as if I
bypass all the intermediate levels. In the hallucinogenic state
it seems that one does not bypass these levels, but passes
through them in the transition from one stable level of visual
perception to the next. Why this effect is particular to the drug
induced perceptions is unknown to me. Yet, especially given the
literally circular nature of the perceptions, it seems to me to
be a direct perception of, or through, one of the chakras, in all
likelihood the third eye (ajña) chakra. The sense of perception
is definitely localized between the eyes, which would strongly
implicate the ajña chakra. In the hallucinogenic experience, it
is likely that all the chakras are involved. In the hypnogogic
state, I might perhaps be getting a weak, but distinct perception
of the ajña chakra. Again, even though chakras are implicated in
this effect, I do not know why hallucinogenic drugs would lead to
the perception of what seems to be intermediate levels of
imagery.
At this point, I would like to put forth some plausible ideas as to the underlying neurological mechanism behind the altered visual perceptions described above; ranging from the ideoretinal light I see all the time, to the hallucinogenic imagery, to at least a subset of the hypnogogic imagery.
First, it is clear that this visual amplification effect is central to whatever is occurring neurologically. Furthermore, that this effect is circular in its geometry and creates imagery similar to concentric ripples in water means that we are dealing with a phenomena controlled by periodic oscillations. In physics terms, the effect we are discussing here is referred to as periodic amplification. This means we have some kind of driving force (the "driving force" is the power or energy behind the event) which increases with time, and this driving force oscillates in a periodic way. In the simplest case, this periodicity can be mathematically represented by a sine wave whose amplitude increases with time.
Now, the two main questions arise: 1. what is the force responsible for this periodic amplification? and 2. What is it that is being amplified? For the moment let's focus on the second question.
We must keep in mind we are dealing with the phenomena of visual perception. The neural bases of visual perception are: 1. the neural pathways that conduct nerve impulses (nerve impulses are also called "action potentials") originating in the retina of the eye and traveling to the brain, and 2. the centers within the brain that integrate this visual input with other sensory input to create the coherent pictures of the world that we experience. Let's briefly review what is known about the neurophysiology of vision.
First, photons of light strike the retina of the eye. These photons interact with the rod and cone cells of the retina. The rods and cones convert the energy of the photon into the electrical energy of a nerve impulse. The nerve impulse originating in the rod or cone is filtered (or processed) by other cells in the retina and then leaves the eye via the optic nerve. Even before the nerve impulses leave the eye, they have been signal processed considerably (it is estimated that there is a factor of 20 reduction in the amount of information leaving the eye as impulses in the optic nerve. That is to say, for every 20 bits of information entering the eye, 1 bit enters the optic nerve9).
This processing of the nerve impulse signal continues as the signal travels throughout the visual pathway. Neurophysiologists have discovered that the nerve impulses leave the eye and travel down the optic nerve to a region at the back of the brain called the visual cortex. Here further processing occurs and the signal continues to travel to other regions of the brain. The signal converges with signals from other sensory pathways in a brain region called the thalamus. The thalamus is the major routing station for information processing of signals that come from external senses and muscles. The impulse also travels to a region of the brain called the hippocampus (which is related to creating and storing memories) and is also integrated with other inputs to the brain (from other sense organs, from muscles and joints, etc.). The thalamus and hypothalamus (the hypothalamus routes our internal impressions such as body temperature, hunger, etc. to the cortex) are the major routing stations for sending sensory input to the frontal cortex. The frontal cortex is believed to be the major center related to thought, memory and creativity, i.e. the highest functions of human psychology recognized by scientists today.
So, in a nutshell, light rays get converted by the eye into nerve impulses. These nerve impulses travel through the various brain regions which serve to integrate the incoming visual information with information coming in from other senses. Finally, this integrated input creates in us the subjective impression of our perceptions of the world. By this point, the sensory input is at the level of the cerebral cortex, which subjectively means we are aware of the sensory input, and we are free to think about the information we have received, memorize it, ignore it, whatever we choose to do with it.
Now, given this (extremely simplified!) picture of how visual input reaches our awareness, can we ask just how this pathway of information flow may allow for us to perceive things like LSD induced hallucinations, ideoretinal light, or other seemingly anomalous visual perceptions. To do so we must turn to more recent findings by physiologists about the properties of information flow in neurons (i.e. the flow of action potentials through the nerve cells).
The key question about vision asked by neurophysiologists today is: what is the language spoken by the retina when it conveys a visual image to the brain? Again, the central idea here is that the eye is an organ that converts photons of light, or patterns of photons, into nerve impulses in the brain. Somehow, these nerve impulses created by the retina (and processed by the various regions of the brain) translate in the end as a visual image in our perception. That is to say, there must be some kind of code used by the eye and brain which converts the light the eye senses into the image we see in our perception. The deciphering of this code is one of the major themes in vision research today.
In the experimental quest to decipher this code, which has been partially decoded but by no means completely decoded, neurophysiologists have discovered that this code is not perfect. That is to say, when the eye communicates to the brain, there is noise present in the communication. Noise is like static and it garbles up the signal being communicated. For example, we all know what it means when we get static on the telephone line or on our TV set. The static interferes with the clear reception of our phone call or our TV picture. Such static is called "noise", and experiments on how the eye communicates with the brain have discovered that there is static, or noise, in the communication between the eye and the brain. This static, or noise, that exists in the communication between the eye and the brain is called "dark noise", and it is this dark noisewhich interests us.
More specifically, dark noise is that noise generated inside the eye and brain itself. In the words of one science writer, dark noise is "...noise not originating from the outside world of light but from the dark inner connections in the retina and brain"10: thus the term "dark noise". Two major sources of dark noise in the brain are: 1. the interconnections between nerve cells, and 2. the nature of light itself. In the first case, the interconnections between neurons, what is being referred to here is the fact that a nerve cell may spuriously conduct an action potential (nerve impulse) for no apparent reason at all, or also, it may fail to conduct a nerve impulse. Such spurious behavior on the part of the neuron will serve to erode the sensory signals traveling through the neuron and result in noise. In the second case, the nature of light itself, light consists of photons and it is these photons that strike the rod and cone cells in the retina of the eye. Under conditions of sparse illumination (i.e. in a darkened room) the photons do not evenly illuminate the surface of the retina, and this uneven illumination presumably causes an uneven signal of nerve impulses in the retina. Though the nerve cells of the eye have means to compensate somewhat for this unevenness, it is still presumed to be a source of noise in the visual input. In a very bright setting, this photon effect is not as noticeable.
So, it is important to realize that the eye communicates with the brain via some type of coding of nerve impulses. This code is subject to noise, dark noise. It is quite obvious that, in our normal vision, we rarely ever see static. Thus, to the neurophysiologist, the mystery is: how does the brain correct for the dark noise so that we see a perfectly clear image of the world? At present, there is no answer to this question.
However, the presence of dark noise in our internal neural circuits has a great bearing on other questions we asked above. Remember, we have reviewed what is known about information processing in the visual pathways and asked: is there something in these pathways that could allow for the perception of hypnogogic, ideoretinal and LSD induced imagery? And prior to this in the discussion it was established that a key feature of these so-called "hallucinations" is the circular, periodic amplification present in at least a subclass of these so-called hallucinations, and we asked: just what is it that is being amplified? We will now put forth a possible answer to these questions.
Though we do not know the exact coding scheme between the eye and the brain, we know that dark noise is inherent in this pathway. I will now suggest that it is this phenomena of dark noise that is, in part at least, responsible for the so-called visual hallucinations we are discussing in this chapter: ideoretinal light, hypnogogic images and LSD induced images. This is a key feature of the visual pathways that can be invoked as the underlying brain mechanism which allows for the perception of such imagery. And as to the question of "what is being amplified?" The answer here is that the dark noise impulses set up a reverberation amongst themselves. In other words, circuits of dark noise impulses can be generated in the brain. It is these circuits that are being amplified. Shortly, we will address the question of what force may be responsible for amplifying these circuits of dark noise impulses in the brain.
At this point however, we have now defined a means by which it is possible to perceive something for which there is no corresponding sensory stimuli. The existence of dark noise circuits in the visual pathways would lead us to perceive things visually that were not sensed by our eyes. That is, the existence of circuits of dark noise in the brain will lead to nonsensory perceptions.
Now, before going deeper into this, I want to make very clear that this phenomena of dark noise presents a mystery to neurophysiologists because the question is: how can we get a clear picture of what the eye senses when it is clearly established experimentally that dark noise exists? Obviously, there must be some set of mechanisms in the brain that, under normal conditions, eliminates the dark noise and allows us to see a very clear image of the world. However, for the purpose of understanding the nature of the biological perceptions described in this chapter, we are evoking dark noise as part of the mechanism responsible for these images. The biological perceptions described in this chapter all occur under conditions different from normal, all that is, but the ideoretinal light. The perceptions described above (of the green tubes and meme bacteria) were induced by LSD, and hypnogogic images occur at the border of falling asleep. Only the ideoretinal light occurs under normal conditions. Thus, whatever the mechanism in the brain that is responsible for correcting the dark noise out of our visual perceptions, then this mechanism is altered by both sleep and LSD.
This last statement gives us the opportunity to return to our question above: what is the force responsible for the periodic amplification of dark noise circuits? I can say with no certainty or specificity what this force is. What I can say about this force is that it is probably related to the same mechanism in the brain that normally eliminates noise from our perceptions. We can call this the "anti-noise mechanism" for convenience. Whatever this anti-noise mechanism is, it also prevents the periodic amplification of dark noise circuits. We can state unequivocally that, whatever this anti-noise mechanism is, it is decreased by both sleep and LSD. Most likely, this anti-noise mechanism is actually the inhibitory action of higher brain regions on lower brain regions. It is known, for example, that higher regions of the brain will suppress nerve activity in the spinal chord. Thus, it also seems reasonable to presume that higher brain regions can suppress the activity of spurious signals (noise) at the sensory input stations, such as the eye.
In the simplest case, the anti-noise mechanism is analogous to a filter which filters out the noise in the brain. Sleep and LSD cause the weakening of this filtering process, allowing for the generation of dark noise circuits in the brain. And again, these dark noise circuits will amplify upon themselves, with the ultimate result that one will perceive things that have no sensory counterpart. These self-sustaining dark noise circuits in the brain may be, in part, the mechanism of dreams, or at least the means by which our dream experience is captured as a memory in our brain. Concerning LSD "hallucinations", perhaps the LSD triggers latent properties of the nerve tissue, properties that are not usually expressed but, when they are expressed, make us more sensitive to allowing dark noise circuits to form in the brain (in effect, creating clairvoyance). This would account for the major differences between sleep and drug induced imagery. Whatever the specifics may be, I feel this is all that reasonably can be said, in light of present knowledge, regarding the question: what is the force responsible for amplifying dark noise circuits?
At this point, let us turn our attention to the subjective perceptions created by dark noise circuits in the brain. Again, these are perceptions with no sensory counterpart. We are perceiving things that did not come in through the senses. Thus, we can call these nonsensory perceptions. In the case of ideoretinal light, one sees myriad pinpoints of light superimposed over one's normal vision. In the case of hallucinogenic drugs, one perceives multiple levels of highly complex imagery superimposed over one's normal vision. In the hypnogogic state, one's eyes are usually closed, so the imagery occurs in the darkness behind our closed eyes. In all cases however, we are dealing with nonsensory perceptions; we are perceiving things that did not come into our awareness through our senses. The question we want to ask is: is there any rhyme or reason behind the subjective appearance of these perceptions?
What is the basis of these nonsensory patterns? I will venture the following answer: the imagery created in our perception by the existence of amplified dark noise circuits in the brain is internal structure of the brain tissue itself. Reverberating dark noise circuits build up, or amplify (because the anti-noise mechanism weakens), and the patterns created in our subjective perception are the very patterns of our brain tissue itself. This appears to be the case with LSD induced imagery. It is also probably the basis of ideoretinal light. However, this type of explanation can only account for a subset of the imagery perceived in hypnogogia and dreams.
Given this idea, let me return to the statement by Mavromatis
presented at the beginning of this chapter:
"...a `direct awareness of the processes which physicists
and biochemists and neurologists measure', that is, cellular and
electron activities which may collectively (in groups) correspond
to psychological processes. However extreme in scope and
speculative this idea might seem prima facie, it might not sound
all that unlikely when seen in its proper perspective."
And again, let us review the quote by Alan Watts:
"Closedeyed fantasies in this world (of one's
hallucinations) seem sometimes to be revelations of the secret
workings of the brain, of the associative and patterning
processes, the ordering systems which carry out all our sensing
and thinking."
Basically, on the basis of all I've said above, both of these authors are right on the mark. Hallucinogenic induced imagery, and at least a subset of hypnogogic and dream imagery, as well as the ideoretinal light are "a direct awareness of the processes which physicists and biochemists and neurologists measure", are "...revelations of the secret workings of the brain...". If you think about it, this is the most reasonable conclusion to reach. For it seems quite unreasonable to just assume that there is no logic behind such "hallucinations". And to postulate any other explanation for these images would require an even more complex explanation than is laid out here. Thus, until further information is available or until the ideas presented above can clearly be shown to be false, then we have hit upon the simplest, and most likely explanation of the perceptions described in this chapter.
So, let's summarize what has been said to this point. We began with a discussion of vision. The idea that the visual pathways are subject to internal noise, dark noise, was presented. We postulated that some mechanism, an anti-noise mechanism, is responsible for suppressing this noise in our regular perception of visual stimuli. We next evoked this dark noise as a basis for nonsensory perceptions such as ideoretinal light, hallucinogenic drug imagery and some subset of hypnogogic imagery. We have said that, upon decreasing our postulated anti-noise mechanism, that dark noise forms circuits of impulses in the brain. These dark noise circuits then lead to nonsensory perceptions. Finally we have said that these nonsensory perceptions (especially those induced by LSD) are actually direct perceptions of the structure of the tissue of the brain. Let us now focus more on this last point.
Dark noise induced, nonsensory perceptions are direct perceptions of the structure of the brain. As a simple metaphor, imagine that we have water coursing through pipes. Obviously, the shape assumed by the water will be the shape of the pipes that contain the water. I suspect we are dealing with a similar situation with nonsensory perceptions. Dark noise circuits are circuits of nerve impulses reverberating through the brain tissue, but these circuits have no basis in any sensory input. Thus, the question is: what "shape" will these circuits take? Well, like the water in the pipe, these circuits will take the "shape" of the vessel through which they are flowing, which is the brain tissue itself. So then, we are left with dark noise circuits making patterns in the brain in the very shape of the brain itself. These circuits are then intercepted by the higher, interpretive regions of the brain and decoded by whatever mechanism decodes nerve impulses into perceptions, and the result is that we perceive directly the shape of the brain at some level. Below I will go into detail attempting to find a correspondence between the drug induced imagery I described above and what is currently known about brain tissue structure.
We can carry this model further and postulate that it exists for all the senses. That is to say, it is conceivable that dark noise circuits could be generated in the audio portions of the brain leading to "hallucinations" of sound, or in the touch regions leading to "hallucinations" of touch. Thus we could have modalities in the brain that can create "hallucinations" that correspond to every sense organ in the body: the five special senses (sight, sound, touch, taste and smell), the kinesthetic senses (our senses of movement and position), our senses of balance and temperature, etc. We could conceive of these nonsensory modalities as harmonics over the normal sensory modalities. Such a view brings us very close to developing a concrete understanding of many types of occult perceptions and altered states of consciousness.
What is interesting about this hypothesis is that these internal dark noise circuits create the distinct impression of light and color in the case of visual "hallucinations", or sound in the case of audio "hallucinations, but yet, there is no corresponding sensory stimuli. This would indicate that the qualities of light, color, sound, etc. are independent of the external physical world and that these qualities are somehow dependent upon the structure of the brain or, more likely, upon deeper occult (i.e. nonphysical) mechanisms. Also, however, the nature of the colors and light are different than color and light perceived in the physical world. We have already discussed that clairvoyants report that colors perceived on the astral or other planes have a different quality than physical colors. Usually such colors are described as "lighter" (less heavy) than physical colors. I clearly state above that my own drug induced imagery had either a neon-like or holographic texture. But even these terms are metaphorical at best. The nature of the imagery is simply different than simple sensory perceptions of light and color.
Generally speaking, postulating the above mechanism to explain at least a certain subset of images perceived in altered states of consciousness raises the question: do these mechanisms cause the images? To me, the answer is uncertain. It is apparent that the range of perceptions in altered states of consciousness is very broad. I want to stress that the above mechanism in all likelihood describes only a subset of altered states of consciousness such as those mentioned above: LSD imagery, ideoretinal light, and a subset of dream and hypnogogic images. Thus, the mechanism described above applies only in these specific cases. Furthermore, regarding LSD imagery, this postulated dark noise amplification can account for nonsensory perceptions, but there are other aspects of the LSD experience that cannot be explained by this mechanism (such as LSD induced mystical experiences).
The ultimate resolution to this issue has to do with the question: what is the function of the brain and how is our conscious awareness related to the function of the brain? Basically, one can state two broad answers to this question. The first possibility is that the brain creates completely our conscious awareness, including all altered states of consciousness. This is the attitude of the materialist, and is by far the predominant attitude of scientists today. This attitude assumes that all human experience and awareness can be reduced to an understanding of how the brain functions. Obviously, the implication of this view is that without a brain (and body to support the brain) there is no consciousness. Thus, there is no life after death, and all perceptions of the planes of Nature are but illusions created by the brain. The second viewpoint about the relationship between the brain and consciousness is that the brain is a channel which allows our consciousness to interact with the physical world. In this view, the brain and body are the vehicles by which human consciousness interacts with the physical world. This is, of course, the occult viewpoint, and as such, implies the entire occult world-view of the existence of the planes of Nature, the subtle bodies, etc.. These two viewpoints are both equally plausible, and they are mutually exclusive.
This second viewpoint is obviously the viewpoint I adhere to throughout this book. In my opinion, the range of human experience is simply too broad to be accounted for solely by the action of the brain. Thus, my underlying intent to show that there is a neurological basis for certain classes of altered states of perception is not meant to imply that the brain is responsible for all altered states of consciousness. By defining nonsensory perceptions as I have above, in terms of the existence of dark noise circuits in the brain, I am attempting to open a doorway that bridges the gap between physical and nonphysical perceptions. So, for example, when we dream, we are literally in the astral plane. However, when we remember our dream in the morning, there must have been some mechanism in the brain that transferred the memory of the dream into the brain. Perhaps the stamping of the memory of the dream into the physical brain involves a mechanism such as the dark noise circuits discussed above. I am presuming that this mechanism does not cause the images, but instead opens the physical brain up to subtle, nonphysical stimuli, perhaps even interfacing the brain with the nonphysical planes. I am attempting here to suggest mechanisms that tie together normal and altered states of consciousness; to define physiological mechanisms that can explain the phenomena of sensory independent perceptions, or at least a class of them, without necessarily implicating biochemical or cellular phenomena. However, when all is said and done, there will be cellular and biochemical correlates to the physiological mechanisms discussed above.
Thus to conclude this subsection, I would like to make the
following statements. First, micro-psi is a relatively common
event. It occurs when under the influence of hallucinogenic
drugs, and during hypnogogia. It is not an exclusive "super
power" of adapts and Masters. In all likelihood micro-psi is
a physiological function of the brain. The actual physiological
basis of micro-psi mostly likely involves the mechanism discussed
above: the amplification of dark noise circuits amongst neurons
in the brain. There are probably many factors causing the content
of the images that result from micro-psi, and the one discussed
above, that of the dark noise circuits reverberating in the
"shape" of the brain tissue, is probably only one cause
among many. What the line of thought I am pursuing here suggests
is that there are latent functions in the brain, such as
micro-psi, and these latent psychological/physiological functions
serve to connect our sensory perceptions of the physical world
with our nonsensory perceptions of the nonphysical worlds (such
as dreams or hypnogogia). By pursuing these seemingly anomalous
states of consciousness in a scientific context, as I am doing
here, we are assuredly guaranteed in the long run of recognizing
that many of the occult and yogic teachings are not myths or
superstitions, but are very real events having a very real basis
in the experience of human beings. Eventually, the sciences of
human physiology and psychology will be united with the kundalini
yoga.
Now, let us return to analyzing my and my friend's actual experience described above. What do I think we saw that night? What were these little swimming creatures and these green neon transparent tubes and the other images we perceived? Well, there are two aspects to answering this question: the things I'm sure of and the things I'm uncertain about.
Let me first explain the things that were clear cut. One is that, if it's true that what I saw was in my brain, then we literally have an ecosystem inside our head. That was my definite sense of these creatures; they were a community, an ecosystem. Their motion on the whole was very much identical to the motion you see when looking at a school of fish, or even a crowd of people in a mall. The following day we were at our school union (shaken up and exhausted, drinking coffee and trying to figure out what had happened to us, and still able to see the hallucinations fairly well) and we were really surprised by how much the way that a person moved when they walked, and the way a crowd of people moving resembled the motion of the meme-bacteria.
Looking at these group motions in conjunction with the lock-mold cycle led me to coin the phrase "psychomagnetic force". The meme-bacteria, the crowd of people in our union, a school of fish, a flock of birds, all share the same peculiar kind of behavior. And the behavior is that of a group of individuals polarized in some type of behavioral direction. It is very clear to me that this behavior is the action of this psychomagnetic force on a group of individuals. I also remember calling this the "astral wind" during our experiment. I think this is the exact same thing that Anton Mesmer called "animal magnetism". This is a very definite and real thing with all creatures, including humans. It is because of this force that everybody cheers at the same time at a sports event, or everybody laughs at the same time when a comedian makes a joke, or why everybody claps at the same time after a performance. Another place where one can really see the psychomagnetic force very plainly in operation is when driving on the road. There is a field-wide type of psychological, as well as magnetic, force that polarizes everyone in the group into the same behavioral pattern. Of course, you do not have to cheer, or clap, or whatever, but that does not mean this force is not real. In that case it means simply that you have had to exert will power to go against the tug of this force-field. Had you not exerted this will then you'd be laughing with the rest of the crowd. I will discuss this force more in the next chapter.
So, from the evening's experience, I am certain that there is a thing called a psychomagnetic force and I am certain that an ecosystem of creatures exists somewhere and at some level within our brains. As well, I am certain that our brain breathes. There is no question in my mind concerning the validity of the lock-mold cycle. Possible reasons as to why we do not perceive this effect in our normal waking consciousness are: 1. we somehow naturally damp out the sensation of it (what is called "habituation" in psychology) or 2. it goes so fast in our normal perception that we are unaware of it. This second possibility is identical to the way in which motion pictures work, the frames go by faster than we can perceive, so it creates the illusion of continuous motion. It's still not clear to me why we don't perceive the lock-mold cycle, but there are times in our normal life when you can perceive it to a small extent. One is when you are very, very tired and there is kind of a pulsing sensation in your vision. And the other is when, after sitting for a long time, you get up quickly and experience a "head rush" and one experiences that peculiar type of shaking or rocking sensation. Both of these instances are reminiscent of the lock-mold cycle that we perceived that night. As well, both of these examples are understood in terms of modern physiology and the effects have to do with blood flow in the brain, so I think there is a very definite connection between the heart's beating and the brain's breathing.
There is one precedent for the lock-mold cycle in modern physiology and this is the brain wave patterns measured by electroencephalopathy, or EEG patterns as they are called. Brain waves are the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain as it can be measured through the skull, and this measured activity is on the order of fractions of a millivolt (a millivolt being 1/1000 volts). These brain wave patterns are designated by Greek letters such as "alpha" or "beta" waves. The different types of brain waves have different frequencies. That is, brain waves measure the cyclic electrical activity of the brain. Such measurements show different regions of the brain displaying different electrical frequencies at the same time, and indicate that many different cyclic types of electrical activities are occurring in these different brain regions. Yet the lock-mold cycle that we perceived was coordinated, that is, it unified the contents of our perception. Perhaps the lock-mold cycle we observed is the sum of the brain wave patterns measured by EEG. I am sure that there is a definite connection here.
I think it's pertinent to ask: What is this lock-mold cycle? What is its physiological function? I believe it is the global brain-wide electromagnetic organizing principle that gives rise to (or is a result of) the gestalt nature of our physical perceptions. Traditional EEG measurements have lead to a view of brain activity in which many separate centers are simultaneously operating. Yet modern interpretations of EEG measurements using chaos theory indicate that there are subtle forms of coordination between the different regions of the brain11. It is very likely that all the separate regions of the brain are electrically coordinated, and I am sure that this lock-mold cycle is the coordinating medium. It is the thing that unifies our various sensory inputs and internal impressions into one unified whole; our moment by moment perception. What this implies is an absolutely coordinated type of electrical behavior of all of the tissue types found in the brain and central nervous system. It is possible that the origin of this electromagnetic pulsing, the timer or the clock, is located in the glands in the brain. It is known that the pineal gland plays a crucial role in regulating the internal biological clocks of the physical body12, and this gland may also play a crucial role in the coordinated electrical activity of the brain. That hallucinogenic drugs can alter the normal operation of this cycle points to biochemical clues that may allow the localization of this function. However, this might not be true if the alterations in this cycle are a secondary effect. At any rate, that this pulsing exists and serves as a coordinating force for our perception is definitely true.
One final comment about the lock-mold cycle. Our experience that evening was that our perception was definitely discreet at its roots, and we could see that it was the nature of the fade phase of the cycle that created the illusion of continuous movement in our perception. That is, our perception that evening had a "frame-by-frame" quality about it. Thus, our perception is discreet, just the same way that we conceive matter to be in quantum physics. This is just one more observation that shows that quantum processes occur at the macroscopic level.
Now, what are the meme-bacteria and what are the tubes they swim through? I'm sure they are real, but I don't know to what level of organization of the brain they belong. Are they at the tissue level, the cellular level or the subcellular level? The following is some of my present speculation on this issue and I have come up with these based on other biological perceptions that I have had at other times, as well as on my knowledge of biological organization as it is scientifically understood at present. The following discussion will be fairly technical. However, it is meant to illustrate that drug-induced micro-psi produces scientifically relevant information, though it will also illustrate some of the fundamental differences between micro-psi observations and contemporary scientific methods of observation. Again, we will see how important the issue of significance is with regard to perceptions in altered states of consciousness.
It could be that the initial perception of a purple liquid flowing through green tubes (Plate 12, frame B) was a direct perception of blood flowing somewhere in my brain. This would implicate the green tubes as veins or arteries. The perception of the very complex network of smaller green tubes (Plate 12, frame C) may then be capillaries, and the little meme-bacteria may be some animated form of blood that is not recognized by modern science. But I don't know if I believe this. For one, why would little swimming pieces of blood be membrane bound and have a nucleus? Mature red blood cells are known not to have a nucleus. Secondly, at the level of the complex network of smaller green tubes, they were seen to form patterns of connections that would break apart during every fade phase and reassemble during the lock phase. Why would capillaries do this? I do not believe that there is any evidence that capillaries have such a labile ("labile" means that they form and break apart easily) structure.
My initial interpretation of the complex little green tubes that shifted and changed so much was that they are intercellular microtubules. Microtubules, as I briefly mentioned in the previous chapter, are filament-like, subcellular proteins that are an integral component of a cell's cytoskeleton. Microtubules serve a variety of important roles in a cell including the transport of substances throughout the cell, intercellular signal transduction, and as well play an important role in cell division13.
The idea that the green tubes we saw were microtubules has a
lot of merit. First, microtubules are very labile in vivo
(that means they form and break apart easily in living tissue).
Second, an article in Scientific American about light
microscopy studies of microtubules describes objects observed on
the microtubules that moved in a manner that resembled schools of
fish. To quote from this article:
"...we made the first recordings of particle transport in
the squid giant axon. We could identify most of the particles by
size. The large, elongated mitochondria...multivesicular bodies
carrying surplus membrane. The smallest, least visible particles
moved continuously in masses, like dense schools of fish, towards
the synaptic terminal--the axon's end. These were precursors of
the synaptic vesicles, transporting transmitter substances for
release when the nerve cell was stimulated."14
This description is uncanny! The motion of these presynaptic vesicles sounds practically identical to my observations of the fish-like motion of the meme-bacteria. Based on the description in this article and along with my sense of what I was seeing that night, it seems logical to assign the little green tubes to microtubules, and the meme-bacteria to presynaptic vesicles. However, in this quote, the author is observing the motion of the presynaptic vesicles to be unidirectional, towards the end of the axon. The motion we observed in the meme bacteria was bidirectional, and their velocities were highly variable. So if we accept that the meme bacteria are indeed presynaptic vesicles, then the difference between the motion we observed and what is observed with microscopy could be due to either; 1. the effect of the drug on our physiology, and/or 2. the fact that microscopic observations of presynaptic vesicle motion are artifacts due to having isolated the neuron from its natural environment.
But if I make this assignment, then many questions arise. If the little green tubes were microtubules, which are inside of cells, why didn't I see other intercellular components such as mitochondria or nuclei? Also, even more importantly, these tubes filled my vision, and there was nothing that resembled them being separated by cell membranes. I simply can't believe that what I was looking at was inside of only one cell. Furthermore, presynaptic vesicles ride along the microtubule surface. The meme bacteria were most definitely inside of the green labile tubes. Thus, this assignment seems too inconsistent with known intercellular structure.
There is, however, a third possibility that is the most likely candidate for a scientific explanation of what we saw that night. This is that the little green tubes were axon terminal branches, and what we were observing was the making and breaking of synaptic junctions on the surface of dendrites. Dendrites are the smaller branching structures seen on nerve cells, as opposed to axons which are usually much longer. Dendrites are the receivers of electrical signals from the axons (many axons simultaneously), and the axons are the senders of electrical signals amongst adjoining neurons. There is between the dendrite of one nerve cell, and the axon of the second nerve cell, a space called the synaptic cleft. The electrical signal is transferred between two nerve cells by the release of a chemical substance, called a neurotransmitter, which serves to carry the electrical signal across this synaptic cleft (how this is effected is unimportant for this discussion). The axon end is also called the pre-synaptic region and the dendrite end is called the post-synaptic region.
It is established that synaptic junctions are relatively dynamic entities. That is, a synaptic junction is not fixed or permanent, they can change location on a neuron's surface (be it the dendrite or the cell body). Such concepts arise mainly from studies of experimentally induced pathological changes in neuron populations (such as cutting, crushing, or over stimulating the nerve tissue with electricity). This leads to the destruction of neurons, and the subsequent regrowth of synaptic junctions in adjacent, undamaged regions. However, the turn-over time of synapses in these cases is on the order of hours, and in some cases, days15. It is then inferred that such processes occur naturally, though there is also good evidence to back up the natural (in vivo) turn-over of synapses (see note 15). This particular concept of synaptic turn-over is defined in terms of the disintegration and regeneration of the presynaptic elements. However, the author in note 14 states, "Synapses may also turn over by disconnection and not by degeneration; this makes their identification even more difficult.16"
I would propose that what my friend and I observed as the transient breaking up and reforming of the little green tubes was indeed this process of the transient disconnection and reconnection of synaptic junctions. What this means is that, in essence, the synaptic junctions slide over the surface of the dendrites, and probably as well jump from dendrite to dendrite. I may have been looking at some particular tissue in the brain that is specialized for visual input and this may be the means by which visual images are recorded in the brain; by the transient forming and breaking up of synaptic junctions. The memory of such images would then be the willed reconstruction of such synaptic connections, thus reconstructing the image in the (most likely) cerebral cortex, and thus giving rise to the faint imagery we perceive in our "mind's eye" when remembering a visual image. This may also be, in part, the explanation of why electrical stimulation of certain brain regions can give rise to visual imagery
What this implies is that this process of synaptic disconnection/reconnection operates on a very large scale (at the cellular level that is, though not necessarily at the tissue level). And furthermore this process occurs on the time scale of seconds, or hundreds of milliseconds. We unfortunately did not time exactly how many lock-mold cycles occur in one minute, though it was definitely between 50 and 100. Thus, this process is highly transient and fast (in physiological terms), and it is unlikely that a neurophysiologist would observe it using their invasive methods. Furthermore, this process is most likely localized to the regions in the brain that coordinate and process sensory information, regions that are inaccessible to the physiologist except in pathological cases (such as accident victims who have lost regions of their brain, surgical cases etc.). I would localize this process to sensory processing regions of the brain because this dissociation of synapses coupled to the behavior of the meme bacteria literally defined our visual field. Thus, such an assignment of function is obvious.
How do I know that the approximately 1 Hz frequency observed for the lock-mold cycle was not the (perhaps drug induced) time rescaling of processes occurring at a different time-scale? I feel that this 1 Hz frequency reflected the actual physiology of the brain process we were observing because the patterns formed by the green tubes and meme bacteria corresponded to the real time succession of "normal" images (i.e. the normal physical level) in our visual field. In this regard, this mechanism of vision operates as well in our normal states of consciousness. For example, when you glance around the room and observe the changing panorama of your visual field, this corresponds exactly and literally with the behavior of the green tubes and meme bacteria (and holographic color field, since what you are seeing is in color). If these green tubes are indeed the fine branchings of axon terminals, then our ability to form a succession of visual images in real time is due to the transient making and breaking of synaptic junctions at the ends of these axon terminals. This is a process basically unknown in the context of modern neurophysiology.
Also, though it is not clear to me why, I observed during our experiment that the peripheral vision plays a critical role in the succession of images that define the visual field. It seemed to play a primer role. The tubes and meme bacteria had no defined form in my peripheral vision, but as I would scan across the room, and the image in my visual field would change accordingly, it was apparent to me that the new images would cascade out of my peripheral vision. My peripheral vision seemed like hands in readiness waiting to grab the image in which ever direction I looked. It was as if my peripheral vision was magnetized in readiness, waiting to construct the image in which ever direction I looked.
But again the question comes up: If this is the case then what are the meme-bacteria? Again, they could be assigned as the presynaptic vesicles associated with synaptic junctions. If this was the case, which seems reasonable in that these meme-bacteria were seen swimming in the tubes (as opposed to riding along microtubules), then it would follow that the microtubules were not perceived by us.
Let me pursue this line of thought farther. If we indeed assign the meme bacteria to the role of presynaptic vesicles, then these did not behave as neurologists observe them to behave. The presynaptic vesicle is observed to be a membrane bound structure containing neurotransmitter substance. This vesicle then fuses with the pre-synaptic axon membrane and releases the neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft. The meme bacteria did nothing like this. Even in the lock phase of the lock-mold cycle, the meme bacteria maintained their structure. They were simply locked in place wherever they happened to be within the green tubes (see Plate 11, this is exactly what it looked like at the moment of "lock" in the lock-mold cycle).
Yet, in spite of this inconsistency, it still seems reasonable to assign the meme-bacteria to be vesicles of some sort, whether these be synaptic vesicles or not. First off, they were obviously membrane bound, as any type of vesicle is. Secondly, that they could fuse with each other in the fashion they did further supports the view that they were membrane bound vesicles. This type of membrane fusion is a well established property of membrane bound structures (as found for example in phagocytosis or pinocytosis). Third, as I said, they swam within the tubes, much as vesicles are present within neuronal projections, Fourth, their swimming motion is too identical to the description in the above quote by R.A. Day to be a coincidence.
What this assignment implies is that vesicles of some type play a critical role in the pattern recognition processes of the brain that has not been recognized by modern neurophysiology. The main reason that this role for vesicles has not been recognized in pattern recognition processes is because it only occurs in intact, living tissue that is not pathological with respect to these specific pattern recognition functions. Or in other words, these are processes that simply cannot be observed by modern neurophysiological techniques. Using such techniques, one will only observe artifacts of these structures. It is unlikely that this model of visual perception described here could be inferred from such artifacts.
Furthermore, the main coordinating force of these pattern formation/recognition processes is purely nonphysical. It is the ego point (as described in chapter 10, section 10.2) that is responsible for these formations. When the ego point is broken (i.e. at physical death), this coordinating force is gone, and the meme bacteria revert to free-living organisms, and the tube structure (along with all other cellular structures) begin to disintegrate into free living forms as well17.
This is a extremely interesting model. This model gives the direct neuronal mechanism of visual perception. All that is needed is to localize this process at its appropriate level of brain tissue organization, and to determine the means by which the electrical signals generated in the retina and optic nerve lead to this type of transient pattern formation.
I could go on about this more, but it is apparent that these speculations are highly technical and that there is a high degree of uncertainty in this type of reasoning. It is possible that I could be completely wrong in these speculations.
A much more relevant question is; How do I even know that what I saw corresponds to anything known to science? Aside from the strong correlation between known microscopy structures and our observations as discussed above, I've seen other things in my biological perceptions at other times that look just like things described in physiology and biochemistry textbooks, as for example, my perceptions of nerve cells described above. Needless to say, I've been very surprised to see the correspondence between my biological perceptions and scientific descriptions. It is apparent to me that both means can lead to the same information.
However, as in the case with Occult Chemistry, there are a lot
of disparities that are most likely effects due to the different
methods of observation. For example, on one hand, most of what is
known in science about the fine structure of nervous tissue comes
from studies in which organisms are either killed or manipulated
in some fashion that distinguishes them from their natural state.
So an awful lot of science is inference about what may be
going on in the natural state. In our observations, we were
actually observing living, intact and functioning brains. This is
a big difference and could lead easily to the inability to show a
direct overlap between clairvoyant and scientific descriptions,
as is made clear above. Also, it is not known what affect
hallucinogenic drugs have on brain physiology and chemistry18. We
may have, in large part, been observing effects that are highly
specific to the hallucinogenic drug experience (yet I doubt this
given how similar these experiences are on the whole to occult,
non-drug induced clairvoyant perceptions). Also, on the other
hand, it may have been that what we perceived was either
perceived in a very limited fashion, that is, we weren't seeing
everything that was going on, or the "visual
frequencies" that we were perceiving on only allowed us to
lock onto very specific levels that are functionally related in
the actual operation of the brain, but are different levels of
neural organization according to modern science.
So we exercised micro-psi, but did we see the astral plane? Now the micro-psi issue was very clear cut. Like I said, there is no doubt that we used it that night, limited as it may have been compared to Besant and Leadbeater, and in spite of the fact that it was drug induced. I have used it at other times when under the effect of hallucinogenic drugs, but it has never been as clear as it was on this night. I can also exercise micro-psi to a much more limited extent when I'm falling off to sleep (in the hypnogogic state) or when astral projecting. There is no doubt in my mind that this ability is real. I've seen many interesting things with this ability, some which I can describe and think I understand, and other things that make no sense to me. Now, the issue of what I see and how it relates to what is known by other means is very complicated and I'll return to this when I interpret what I think I saw that night in scientific terms.
Now did I see the astral plane that night on the drug? My answer to this is yes and no. According to what I've read about clairvoyant descriptions of the astral plane (mainly from Leadbeater), and seen there for myself in my projections, it's apparent that the astral plane is a pretty big place with an awful lot to see, and a large percentage of it (at least where I tend to end up) looks a lot like the physical world only with very subtle differences. I think that night I may have seen a portion of the astral plane as it projects or intersects with the physical plane. This is the holographic field that we identified. The colors and motion and behavior of this holographic field were very reminiscent of Besant and Leadbeater's descriptions from their writings about elementals, colors and such.
But also, I've been to the astral planes many times (like we all have when we dream--though I'm referring to my lucid experiences there) and I've never seen anything in my projections that looks like the holographic color field. I think in some sense or another, this holographic color field is related to the brain. It's either some physical or etheric part of the brain, or it is where the astral plane intersects with the brain. I believe this mainly because I have never seen it in my own astral projections. Also, we must remember that Leadbeater was presumably awake and conscious in his physical body when he exercised his clairvoyance, and he may have been seeing this level