In this video I discuss in depth the following topics:
1. MDMA is cardiotoxic and likely neurotoxic, with real and significant side-effects when taken often. Don’t do that. Respect and honor this beautiful state and save it for when you really need it.
2. The phenomenology is often described as “removing layers of conditioning and finding your essential, loving, and pure *core*”. It seems to significantly reduce greed, hate, and delusion, for at least a solid 90 minutes.
3. I argue that a good frame would be to think of the effects as drastically reducing both reactance and fear. Then you can assess a situation without the distortions of these two mental factors, which tend to generate rather self-serving thought-forms.
4. The concept of “authenticity” and its operationalization as a good lens with which to see the effects of MDMA. Big up to Matt Baggott, Co-founder and CEO of Tactogen, who is aiming to perfect MDMA and developed and applied the construct of authenticity in the scientific study of MDMA. Also thanks to Thomas S. Ray, who is on a similar path. Well done! Let’s get more people involved!
5. Another frame is to think of the state as clarifying what the “substance of thought” is like. We usually live under the illusion that emotional reactions follow Newtonian physics. They don’t. A better analogy would be corn starch and water, where applying force quickly can solidify (and even tear) the medium. Thus, we get in our own way and cause a lot of sense of solidity without even realizing it, which will take time and effort to soften and return to normal.
6. Discussion about QRI’s Psychedelic Thermodynamics model applied to MDMA.
7. Self-organizing principles, such as “repulsion-based algorithms” to undo knots, might explain what is happening to the field on MDMA.
8. A possible personality factor might be how “hard” someone is. I discuss personality disorders from a “hardness realism” point of view.
9. Emotional processing as a “skill tree” rather than “levels”.
10. High Entropy Alloys (HEA) are materials made of many metals that, in some cases, lead to really surprising effects, such as a new symmetry space group for their molecular organization (where none of the “ingredients” tend to crystalize that way, but as a whole they do). MDMA might be a bit of a unique HEA that balances serotonin (social anxiety reduction), dopamine (motivation and mental clarity), oxytocin (sense of closeness), and endorphins (bodily pleasure). It is more than the sum of the parts.
11. This leads to a speculation where the key high-level effects of MDMA, in addition to reducing fear and reactance, is the presence of courage, love and equanimity. I try to explain these features in terms of MDMA’s “vibratory signature”.
12. Deep discussion about self-honesty and why it develops in the state. I speculate it has to do with the de-modularization of our vascular clusters (or something else, if blood turns out to be a special case).
13. This blending of modules with each other results in an uncomfortable but helpful overlap between contradictory faces that we put in social settings. It is ideal to experience this with equanimity and patience, however difficult it is to acknowledge it to ourselves. The other side of this wall is light and beautiful, I promise.
14. It seems to me that MDMA creates a highly redundant and highly overdetermined Euclidean geometric phenomenal space, where each point “knows” really clearly how far it is from every other point. Psychedelics can sometimes do this for short periods of time, but they usually create complex fractaline phenomenal spaces. MDMA is different – highly “clear and normal” yet unblocked and euphoric.
15. The concept of Gnarliness as it relates to the “field knots” that MDMA can help unwind.
1) Explore the state-space of consciousness because you want to know it for yourself
2) Study it from many points of view because you want to understand it intellectually at a deep level
3) Intend to apply it for the benefit of all beings
In June of this year, we were proud to launch QRI’s first guided meditation series titled “Qualia Mastery.” Central to this series is the cultivation of a direct experiential understanding of how the mind works, coupled with an epistemological framework that values intellectual clarity. In essence, these guided meditations strive to provide both direct access to and intellectual insight into scientifically and personally significant states of consciousness. Furthermore, we embark on this journey with a sincere desire to serve and uplift others. The initial release features 9 foundational guided meditations. In this next installment, we’re collaborating with QRI associates Wystan Bryant-Scott and Roger Thisdell to go even deeper with another 9 meditations.
We genuinely hope you derive value from this series! We invite any feedback or phenomenological observations. Your perspective is invaluable to us.
Thank you!
Metta – Fabric Softener of Experience
Metta is a Pali word that can be translated as benevolence, friendliness, or good will. It is a key state of mind for meditative practice; it has the capacity to heal, invigorate, and center the mind.
The majority of guided Metta meditations emphasize the ways in which you can trigger this state of mind with semantic content and imagery. For example imagining a loved one, a pet, or even a beautiful scene, and tuning into the feeling of friendliness that such an image sparks.
In this meditation we instead emphasize the phenomenal character of Metta as a way to develop it, establish it, and understand it deeply. For example, we discuss how one can use different varieties of attention in order to kindle this feeling. We also tune into one’s intentions and background mood in order to nudge the mind towards Metta. More so, we carefully study how technical phenomenological features such as rhythm, wave envelope, and energy affect the quality and intensity of Metta.
May this meditation be of benefit to sentient beings!
It is often said that one of the most important meditative skills that one can cultivate is the practice of *letting go*. This means letting go of attachments, of cravings, of a sense of identity, and the need for things to be anything other than what they are. However, in practice doing this is more difficult than it sounds; we have a habit of holding tight to much more than we require for optimal wellbeing.
This guided meditation emphasizes two key aspects of letting go. Namely, (1) tactical methods for letting go, such as the judicious use of unusual varieties of attention, higher order equanimity, imaginal practices, and precise technique (such as rhythm and timing). And (2) the fact that letting go can be practiced in much deeper ways and with a much wider scope than is usually realized. In particular, letting go can take place in the visual, tactile, auditory domains, in addition to the spacious, cognitive, spiritual, and intuitive levels of the mind.
We conclude this meditation by listening to meditative music with the goal of experiencing it with complete equanimity and acceptance and putting our letting go techniques to practice.
Goldilocks Zone of Oneness
In this guided meditation, we delve into the phenomenology of various conceptions of personal identity. Specifically, we observe the experiential nuances of believing that we are individual souls (Closed Individualism), that we are a single universal consciousness (Open Individualism), that we represent ephemeral moments of experience (Empty Individualism), and that we encompass all these identities concurrently (Goldilocks Zone of Oneness).
As with the “The Phenomenology of Ontology” meditation, our objective here is to discern the qualities of experience that shape a specific worldview. In essence, the phenomenology of personal identity is a pivotal subject for any holistic consciousness research initiative, regardless of the metaphysical veracity of these perspectives. The capacity of these conceptions to modify experiential attributes—such as refining internal boundaries or amplifying the choppiness of sensations—underscores the importance of this topic for both phenomenological and scientific exploration.
More so, many exotic states of consciousness involve implicit alterations to our conceptions of personal identity. Therefore knowing how to detect the experiential features that make these beliefs feel more or less plausible is essential to successfully navigate exotic states of consciousness without compromising one’s epistemology.
In this meditation, Roger Thisdell guides us in a meditation of somatic scanning up and down the body using concurrent waves of awareness that pass through one another. We are trying to balance both the sense of grounding, stability with the sense of wakeful, levity.
By the end of the meditation, the goal is to isolate and metacognize the sense of ‘becoming’ within experience, and notice that this signal is always presenting itself. We may question, if everything seems like it’s always ‘becoming’ (but never fully become), then what significance does this have with the goal of trying to have ‘arrived’ somewhere?
For more guided meditations by Roger, check out his Patreon page where he releases a new guided meditation, on a variety of techniques, every week: https://www.patreon.com/rogerthis
Don’t Pay Attention
Normally in meditation we are focused on what IS in experience, but to be able to notice the absence of phenomena is key as well! Where there once were qualia, now there aren’t – what does that reveal to us about their nature?
Roger Thisdell guides a meditation starting with a taste session on the major ingredients which make up our experience. Then after paying attention to these components, we deliberately try to not pay attention to them. What we find is the move to let go of paying attention to anything is a universal move – no matter the object of attention – how convenient!
The ability to take attention off of more and more aspects of experience is an essential skill which eventually culminates in the ability to not pay attention to time, space and consciousness, resulting in cessation.
For more guided meditations by Roger, check out his Patreon page where he releases a new guided meditation, on a variety of techniques, every week: https://www.patreon.com/rogerthis
Co-Arising Expansion and Contraction
Expansion and contraction are the subtlest distinguishing features of experience. This meditation on expansion and contraction, given by Roger Thisdell, is a guide for finding and synchronizing to the oscillatory nature of experience at different levels, and then realising the co-dependence on one another in order to exist. Where there is expansion there is contraction and vice versa. By having sufficient energy in the mind and being able to widen the ‘aperture’ of our present moment perception it is possible to notice contraction within attention, and expansion within awareness (and vice versa) at the same time!
For more guided meditations by Roger, check out his Patreon page where he releases a new guided meditation, on a variety of techniques, every week: https://www.patreon.com/rogerthis
A Clap of Thunder
In this guided meditation, our invited facilitator, Wystan, leads participants through meticulous body scanning techniques designed to cultivate an acute consciousness of the immediate present. Transitioning seamlessly from body scanning to methods of introspection, and further incorporating the nuanced technique of finger-following to “spread out the vision”, Wystan imparts a spectrum of methodologies that promise to augment the meditative practice of individuals across all levels of expertise.
This meditation explores the phenomenology of absorption into Platonic objects. We delve into what it feels like to imagine, embody, and generate the sense of knowing of classic geometric and mathematical constructs.
One of the main takeaways from this meditation is that we can attune to the difference between (1) how we render a particular instance of a Platonic object and (2) the sense of knowing and existence of that object that arises as we do so.
That is, (1) emphasizes the specific point of view from which a Platonic object (say, a cube) can be apprehended. Each point of view gives rise to, in a way, a completely different experience (cf. Borges’ Funes the Memorious). Namely, the experience of rendering such an object from that particular point of view, with all of the sensory and qualitative features that come along with it. In contrast (2) points to that which remains the same across all of these points of view. Namely, the ways in which holding these objects in one’s attention keeps aspects of our experience invariant (such as the intuitions and resonances that come with each particular Platonic object).
In addition, we also explore how the geometry of attention affects one’s valence and sense of ease, with the goal of naturalizing “Sacred Geometry” for the cultivation of Qualia Mastery.
There are many spiritual and yogic practices that utilize “elemental” objects of meditation. For example, the guided meditation by Michael Taft called “Five Elements Meditation” (link below) centers the mind around mental formations evocative of earth, water, fire, air, and space.
Alas, it is natural to be skeptical of the value of these practices on the basis that science has shown that the universe is made up of particles, forces, and fields, and not the traditional elements of ancient ontologies.
Nevertheless, within the paradigm of Qualia Mastery in meditation, we affirm the significance of specific states of consciousness, irrespective of the techniques used to induce them. Adhering rigidly to a modern scientific worldview might, in fact, impede one’s engagement with such meditative practices. Engaging fully with a meditation that posits, for instance, fire as a fundamental entity, can often yield richer results when one genuinely subscribes to the idea. Continual internal rebuttals, such as “fire isn’t foundational; electrons are!” can inhibit deep immersion into these states.
So how can we rescue what is valuable from this style of meditation without having to buy into an implicit “elemental ontology”? Here is where the relevance of “self-organizing principles” comes into play. Namely, where we realize that the nervous system is capable of instantiating a cornucopia of diverse self-organizing principles that are used to render one’s inner world-simulation. Thus, when you imagine and embody “the element of fire” you are, in a way, instantiating a collection of self-organizing principles that roughly emulate the behavior of fire.
Therefore, we can use a more generalized conception of “elemental meditation” as a window into these self-organizing principles. This is what this meditation does.
PLUS FOUR, n. (++++) A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a “peak experience,” a “religious experience,” “divine transformation,” a “state of Samadhi” and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2, and +3 of the measuring of a drug’s intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of that same drug. If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end, of the human experiment.
— Alexander Shulgin, PIHKAL, pages 963–965
In this post and accompanying video we provide a general “theory of candy flipping” that aims to explain why LSD + MDMA is so synergistic. What makes, say 200 micrograms of LSD and 150mg of MDMA so prone to be spiritual, psychologically healing, and loving? To get there, we address the following three/four questions:
How do we improve research on candy flipping?
How do we optimize candy flipping proper? And how do we generalize candy flipping for even better results?
What would a general recipe for Shulgin’s ++++ be?
1- We go over current methodologies used to study candy flipping and why their results are limited (Straumann et al., 2023). Then we explain how a “think tank” approach (e.g. phenomenology club) allows us to create more phenomenologically grounded research paradigms (Gómez-Emilsson, 2021). By weighting in the personal experience of highly precise psychonauts with skills in areas like physics, math, visual art, and signal processing, we can arrive at mechanistic models such as those proposed by Steven Lehar in The Grand Illusion (Lehar, 2010) where MDMA causes your world simulation to vibrate in pleasant ways, which in turn “smooths out the rough edges” of the LSD state, or models involving algorithmic-level annealing dynamics (Gomez-Emilsson, 2016; Johnson, 2019; Gómez-Emilsson 2021, 2023). This kind of approach would add phase diagrams, wave mechanics, and nonlinear effects into the picture.
2- Optimizing candy flipping can be done by looking to generate the kind of synergy MDMA + LSD achieve in the best of conditions. Of note, trip reports involving low doses of each together with 2C-B and cannabis are discussed and analyzed. One needs to be mindful of annealing dynamics, drug effect arcs including how to handle the MDMA comedown, and pattern-focused readings of wave effects that for lack of a better metaphor could be catalogued as “qualia lensing“.
And
3- We hypothesize that the key ingredients to catalyze the blissful nondual awareness that comes from high-end candy flipping are (a) a full-spectrum energizer, (b) something that increases interconnectivity, and (c) a deeply relaxing agent. The combination of these three elements gives rise to a highly-nonlinear effect I call “FU§ION (Field Unification Search/Simplify in Invariant Optical Networks; to be fully unpacked at a later date), where all of the “resonant cavities” are fully relaxed, have a high degree of impedance matching between them, and are energized, so that they kick-start a “field harmonization” process that culminates in profound blissful nondual awareness. The energizer shouldn’t be narrow spectrum (like cocaine) and the relaxing agent shouldn’t be too blunting or non-Newtonian (like opioids). Examples of each:
Combine one of each, carefully dosed, and according to this theory, you might get a ++++. (Please exercise caution when mixing substances – the rule of thumb is to not do it).
Note: 5-MeO-DMT might, in this model, be actually doing all three at once. It happens to be hitting receptors in the right combination for such a deep mystical “relaxed stimulation” to take hold. That said, it is possible that 5-MeO-DMT also has some rough edges, and that it can be further optimized (e.g. such as by combining it with nitrous). More research is needed 🙂
Example Formula: 15mg 2C-B, then an hour later 2g of GHB, and then an hour later DMT (100mg over the course of 2 hours) was reported as a ++++ by a trusted psychonaut recently (comparable in “depth” to 5-MeO-DMT). Please be careful – I am not encouraging anyone to try this. But if you do, or have done something similar, I’d be grateful if you let me know what happened. 🙂
Gómez-Emilsson, A. (2023), Neural Field Annealing and Psychedelic Thermodynamics presentation at PhilaDelic 2023. Retreieved from https://youtu.be/pM9k1I3VPOg
Straumann, I., Ley, L., Holze, F. et al. Acute effects of MDMA and LSD co-administration in a double-blind placebo-controlled study in healthy participants. Neuropsychopharmacol. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-023-01609-0
In this video we discuss possible meaningful, novel, and non-trivial parallels between something like the Manhattan Project and what we need to do to catalyze a positive breakthrough in our understanding of consciousness.
We cover how explosive lenses have a parallel in the “brain as a non-linear optical computer” paradigm developed at QRI. The short explanation is that the “index of refraction” for local field potentials (LFPs) can be modulated with drugs/interventions, and so in principle one can use varying concentrations of things like nitrous oxide, ketamine, and MDMA in order to focus waves of energy to catalyze precisely crafted phase transitions of consciousness.
There are also much more subtle parallels. Another one is how the development of the von Neumann computer architecture was a world-transforming significant outcome of the Manhattan Project. In the context of consciousness research, one could envision figuring out the “principles of qualia computing” that allows DMT entities to sample from a wide range of possible “mind designs” as an achievement of comparable significance. Arguably most DMT entities are “psychotic”, but some of them aren’t; the way they copy, mutate, differentiate, and analyze “qualia bundles” hints at a very general set of qualia computing building blocks for alternative qualia-based information processing pipelines. The successful Manhattan Project of Consciousness could in principle lead to a revolution on computing paradigms that generalize to qualia computing systems.
I think that the really stunning thing about DMT entities, which I still haven't properly captured in any content (will I ever?) is their *intelligence*. Here of course I'd talk about a super general qualia-based conception of intelligence. Really, you are sampling from a vast… pic.twitter.com/K6xACT4OVT
— Linalool Enjoyer, Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@algekalipso) August 14, 2023
In contrast to the atomic bomb, the kind of “phase transition implosion” developed at the Manhattan Project of Consciousness would be deeply relaxing, rejuvenating, and capable of undoing years of trauma in seconds. Using as research leads “candy flipping done right” (usually with some 2C-B/2C-D/2C-C), 5-MeO-DMT, and LSD + nitrous oxide, one has in fact a lot of hints for how to produce instantly relaxing, deeply healing “waves of enlightened qualia”.
Importantly, the combination of Open Individualism and Valence Realism might catalyze a paradigm shift on how we approach the game theory of human collectives.
If it takes a bunch of geniuses in the desert to figure out how to optimize this effect, so be it. It would be a really worthwhile investment!
~Qualia of the Day: The Burning Man Collective Intelligence~
Come and meet other like-minded and like-hearted people who are curious about these topics in order to share fun experiences, listen to a comedy sketch about consciousness, experience exotic scents, and taste the bliss of a heartfelt community in a cozy plant-filled Oasis at the heart of SF!
Schedule
2PM – Setup (feel free to join and help) 2:30PM – Start, casual (and causal!) hangout 3PM – Drinks, snacks, and music-sharing 4PM – QRI scent workshop delivered by yours truly* 5PM – Comedy sketch and talk about the binding problem and aligning DMT entities 6PM – Participants share the experiences they brought 7PM – Food (catered**) 7:30PM – Participants can give a 5 minute speech (there will be a signup sheet) 8:30PM – Start of takedown 9PM – Everybody out, afterparty***
Please feel encouraged to bring with you an experience to share with others (your ~Qualia of the Day~) at 6PM! This can be exotic candy, spices, perfumes, special massagers or haptic devices, unusual sounds, weird concepts, brief meditation, etc.
One Embarcadero Center (Third Floor, Next to the Cinema), San Francisco, CA 94111. The venue is at the Embarcadero Building furthest away from the water, on the third floor (“promenade level”). You can get there via the elevator (“Floor P”) or by taking the escalator, and then the stairs, following the signs pointing you to the (now defunct) Cinema. It’s a big red building, right next to a large Maple tree.
VALENCIAGA
You have probably seen by now Harry Potter by Balenciaga (cf. Lord of the Rings, Breaking Bad, Star Wars, Pulp Fiction, Legend of Zelda, TPOT, etc. by Balenciaga). Besides this being an incredible show of power of recent AI advancements, seeing these videos also tickled my aesthetic sensibilities in a rather unusual way. On the one hand, the very idea that all of these powerful characters would leave aside their world-saving tasks for the sake of fashion and looking really sharp is compelling. On the other hand, it also highlights the incredible silliness of our perceptual filters: why on Earth does our Monkey Mind take more seriously someone just because of their sharp looks?
After mulling it over for a bit and letting reflective equilibrium naturally arise, I came to the conclusion that my strange reaction to these fashion shows was indeed a symptom of spiritual decadence:
Balenciaga is Mara. It's made to deceive you, to bind you to delusion, to keep you spinning in the wheel of Samsara, pursuing lesser forms embedded in a matrix of selfing.
The real deal is Valenciaga. The quality of consciousness that is within you. This is the true liberation.
— Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@algekalipso) April 6, 2023
This is why we introduced VALENCIAGA by QRI. The first valence-centric luxury brand that aims to focus on the actual pursuit of altruistic bliss. Yes, it’s hot, sexy, and above all attractive. But at the same time, the dopaminergic wrapper hides within a core of real Jhanic bliss (unlike the amphetamine-comedown textures of qualia hiding behind your prototypical New York fashion houses).
Thus, for this QRI meetup you are encouraged to come in a fashionable, qualia-rich attire that makes you *feel* like you just came down from the 7th Jhana or your bliss-state of choice.
Looking forward to seeing you!
Thank you!
Note: We originally kept this meetup low-key on the basis that we were worried that the venue might reach its maximum capacity. After learning more about the venue, we are confident that it will hold up. And if we do experience overflow, don’t worry! There is a park nearby (Sue Bierman Park) which we can use as a buffer where you can hang out with others until there’s enough space for you. This is also why this announcement is in such a short notice. Sorry!
* You will have an opportunity to test (and purchase!) our exclusiveQRI Scents, including the mythical Hedonium Shockwave. ** You can, and are encouraged to, bring vegetarian food, drinks, and snacks to share. *** Location in Berkeley with capacity for up to 40 people (from 9PM): 2042 Hearst ave apt c Berkeley CA very close to the downtown Berkeley BART
Last week I did a second Jhana retreat. I’ve been meaning to post a full writeup for both the first and second Jhana retreat, but it has been really difficult to do them justice in writting. Do expect some more content about Jhanaphenomenology soon, though. In the meantime, I highly recommend checking out Rob Burbea’s Practising the Jhanas retreat lectures. They hold the potential to heal you in ways you didn’t even know were possible.
The Qualia Research Institute (QRI) is excited to announce the launch of three Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness (NSCs) Art Contests: Immerse, Innovate, and Inspire with submissions accepted until 5/17/2023. Examples of non-ordinary states of consciousness are psychedelic experiences, meditative experiences like the jhanas, and near-death experiences.
Our objective is to highlight the reciprocal relationship between art and consciousness research, enabling artists to create lifelike representations of non-ordinary states of consciousness, and contribute to the development of consciousness studies and psychedelic science.
About the Qualia Research Institute
The Qualia Research Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing our understanding of consciousness. Its mission is to:
Develop a precise mathematical language for describing subjective experience
Map out the full range of possible conscious experiences
Build technologies to improve the lives of sentient beings
Replication Contest (Immerse): Entries will be judged based on transparent and interpretable qualities that accurately capture the low-level subjective effects experienced in non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Psychedelic Cryptography Contest (Innovate): Artists are invited to create encodings of sensory information that are only meaningful when experienced on psychedelics in order to show the specific information-processing advantages of those states.
For the sake of transparency and to benefit the community as a whole, QRI reserves the right to publish the winning submissions made by contestants on its website. Artists retain their intellectual property rights, allowing them control over their artwork’s use and distribution. However, QRI would appreciate permission to showcase participants’ art on our website or use it in potential research publications with proper citations and links to the artists’ work.
Disclaimer
We understand that the replication contest may not capture the full complexity and nuances of psychedelic experiences, and that there are concerns about the potential harm associated with the use of psychedelics. Participation in these contests does not require the use of psychedelics, and we encourage all participants to prioritize their safety and well-being.
We welcome feedback and suggestions for future contests at hello@qri.org. We look forward to exploring these topics responsibly and respectfully.
Replication Contest
The Replication Contest seeks to celebrate the artistic capabilities of participants in accurately depicting and interpreting the low-level subjective effects experienced in non-ordinary states of consciousness (NSCs), with a particular emphasis on (1) valence effects and (2) geometric transformations.
Valence effects focus on demonstrating how the shape of the experience can reveal whether a person is having a clean and blissful experience or a mixed affect experience. The transition between feeling normal and feeling blissful might involve changes to the shape of the visual experience. Rather than focusing on the semantic content (e.g. seeing an angel) here the point is to visualize the texture, shape, and dynamics that bring about this change (e.g. harmonizing flow by reducing turbulence).
Geometric transformations such as rotations, reflections, glides, affine transformations, and so on often feature in psychedelic experiences. Can this be rendered in a realistic way? We suggest that you consider how symmetry and geometry are two sides of the same coin in order to better appreciate this quality of psychedelic experiences. When the geometry of phenomenal space changes, so do the symmetries within it. Can this be expressed artistically in an accurate way?
To participate, artists should create a piece of art that embodies the subjective effects they have researched or encountered during NSCs, emphasizing the two highlighted areas.
Familiarize yourself with the concept of algorithmic reduction (cf. our glossary), where the complex zoo of effects is interpreted as emerging out of a few core effects interacting with each other. See also the different subjective effects cataloged at effectindex.com, and draw inspiration from the QRI videos on psychedelic epistemology and the tracer tool. Additionally, explore the r/replications subreddit to see some remarkable replications.
Example ways to explore (1) and (2)
Showcase how more smooth, symmetrical, regular, and soft visual features express pleasant qualities of the experience (cf. valence structuralism, Michael Johnson’s Symmetry Theory of Valence).
Visualize an annealing process where the video contains blinking lights driven by metronomes that can sync up with each other until the whole scene is shining in a coherent way (cf. Neural Annealing).
Show how bouba vs. kiki imagery highlight different emotional tones during a psychedelic experience (cf. CDNS in Quantifying Bliss), where spiky feelings tend to be harsh and disquieting, whereas bubbly and round features tend to be calming and welcoming (extra points if these features emerge out of some kind of annealing process, or if you find counterexamples to this general pattern).
Visualize how wallpaper symmetry groups transform textures into repeating patterns.
Show waves interacting with each other in order to construct psychedelic interference patterns (cf. non-linear wave computing)
Use hyperbolic minimal surfaces in order to exemplify how sensations aggregate on DMT.
Show how the Reverse-Grassfire Algorithm can create 3D crystals (cf. Harmonic Gestalt).
Show a 2D Euclidean grid becoming hyperbolic by adding additional nodes and edges in order to demonstrate a change of geometry (cf. world-sheet).
Model the the experience of achieving a DMT breakthrough level experience using a physical instability (such as Kelvin-Helmholtz).
These are just some suggestions and there are many other ways of connecting technical descriptions of the phenomenology of NSE and visual replications. It helps if you can ground the effects visualized on paradigms and explanations presented by QRI, but it is not necessary to win the contest. What matters is that you can create realistic yet interpretable visualizations that hint at the underlying processes that are generating these experiences. What we are after is insight. In other words, we want to be able to discover new, meaningful, and non-trivial explanations for why NSEs manifest in the way they do. Hence, being able to describe how the replication effects are achieved is highly beneficial.
Entries will be judged based on the number and precision of replicated subjective effects, with special attention given to valence effects and geometric transformations.
The Psychedelic Cryptography Contest invites artists to create unique encodings of sensory information that are only meaningful when experienced on psychedelics. The goal is to challenge participants to develop innovative methods of encoding sensory information in such a way that an encoded secret is only apparent on a NSC. The contest encourages the exploration of how sensory information can be modulated and presented in a way that reveals hidden patterns or messages when experienced under the influence of psychedelics.
Entries will be judged based on the difficulty of the encryption method used and the clarity of the message or pattern when experienced on psychedelics.
The Inspirational Piece Contest seeks to highlight the powerful connection between art and consciousness research by encouraging artists to create pieces that exemplify this relationship. The focus of this contest is on originality, creativity, inspiration, impact, quality, and execution. Artworks submitted for this contest should evoke a sense of wonder and curiosity about the nature of consciousness and the vast landscape of possible experiences.
Entries will be judged based on originality, creativity, inspiration, impact, quality, and execution, with winners determined by a public poll.
Participants can submit their entry in the form of a video or image.
The submission should be original and created specifically for the contest.
Participants can submit up to three entries per contest.
Submissions will be accepted starting on March 17th 2023 and must be submitted by May 17th 2023. Winners will be announced on June 1st 2023.
We encourage artists from the psychedelic and visionary art communities to participate and explore the connection between art and consciousness research. Good luck to all participants!
QRI’s Resources for Technical and Artistic Inspiration
Why it’s helpful: This article presents 8 models of art: 4 common ones, and 4 that connect it to consciousness studies. The overall frameworks of 8 models might help us arrive at methods to create innovative aesthetic qualia from first principles. We think that artists participating in any of the contests might benefit from the vocabulary introduced in these models to create innovative and meaningful pieces that explore the relationship between art and consciousness research. In particular, taking into account the energy parameter, efficient state-space exploration, annealing effects, and the vision of a meta-aesthetic all provide a unique lens for how psychedelics and art are so connected.
Why it’s helpful: This article discusses possible methods of communication that can be understood primarily by individuals under the influence of LSD and other tracer-inducing psychoactives. This may serve as inspiration for artists to think about novel ways to encode information or create unique experiences tailored to specific states of consciousness.
Why it’s helpful: This article provides a detailed analysis of how the visual effects of psychedelics might be understood and replicated using algorithmic processes. It can serve as a foundation for artists attempting to replicate the visual aspects of non-ordinary states of consciousness in their artwork, or as inspiration to propose alternative algorithmic reductions that capture effects that are currently unaccounted for.
Why it’s helpful: This article explores the connection between the subjective effects of DMT experiences and hyperbolic geometry, various possible algorithmic reductions to explain this connection, as well as detailing the progression of an experience through the DMT levels. Artists participating in the Replication Contest may find inspiration and insights into replicating specific visual patterns and structures often encountered in DMT experiences.
Why it’s helpful: The Psychophysics Toolkit and accompanying article are collections of resources and tools designed to help researchers and artists explore the intersection of perception, consciousness, and the physical world. It includes a variety of resources and interface tools that can aid artists in understanding the principles of psychophysics used to measure subjective experience and applying them to their work. This can be particularly useful for participants in all three contests, as it can provide insights into the ways that sensory information is processed during both ordinary and non-ordinary states of consciousness, and how this can be utilized in creating innovative and impactful art pieces.
Why it’s helpful: This video introduces new epistemological frameworks for studying and understanding non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelic substances. By incorporating these paradigms into their creative process, artists can develop a deeper understanding of the nature of these experiences and their potential implications for human knowledge. This enhanced understanding can help artists create innovative and thought-provoking pieces that capture the essence of exotic states of consciousness.
Why it’s helpful: This article provides a detailed explanation of the concept of phenomenal time and how it relates to the structure of conscious experiences. Understanding this concept could help artists in the contest to better represent the perception of time in non-ordinary states of consciousness and incorporate these insights into their artwork.
Why it’s helpful: This article explores the concept of wireheading and how it could be applied responsibly to maximize pleasure without causing psychological harm. Artists participating in the contest might find this article helpful in inspiring their work, particularly in the Inspirational Piece Contest, by envisioning a future where technology is used to enhance well-being and explore the state-space of consciousness responsibly.
Why it’s helpful: This video explores the concept of state-space neighborhoods, where specific aspects of conscious experiences are clustered together. By understanding the structure and dynamics of these neighborhoods, artists can create pieces that more accurately represent the nuances of different non-ordinary states of consciousness, leading to a more immersive and impactful experience for the audience.
Why it’s helpful: This article provides a comparative analysis of the experiences induced by 5-MeO-DMT and N,N-DMT. By understanding the unique characteristics of each substance’s effects, artists can draw inspiration for their artwork and more accurately replicate specific psychedelic experiences in the Replication Contest.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our profound gratitude to the donors of the Qualia Research Institute. Your unwavering support has been invaluable in making our work possible. Your investment in our research has not only inspired a growing number of individuals to take our approach to consciousness research seriously but has also led to an expansion in our collaborations. As a result, we have seen the integration of our insights into the work of others, building upon the foundation we have established thus far.
First and foremost, we would like to extend our appreciation to Loka Vision for inspiring the contest. Their dedication to the Psychedelic/Visionary Art community, as demonstrated through their Psychedelic Replication Masterclass, has shown us the immense potential this community holds in furthering our understanding of consciousness.
Thank you Andrés Gómez Emilsson for offering technical insights that will enable artists to create life-like replications of the low-level subjective effects experienced on NSCs and incepting the idea of psychedelic cryptography as a viable field of research.
A thank you goes to Josie Kins of effectindex.com for their open-source approach to developing psychedelic art through generative AI, as well as their support of and feedback on the Replication contest and insights into the visionary/psychedelic art community.
Additional thanks to Scry, Marcin, gydravlik.eth, PsyNFT, and Ferociously Amused for their invaluable feedback on the contest and their contributions to our understanding of the visionary/psychedelic art community and thank you Maggie and Anders Wassinge for your unwaivering support.
We are deeply grateful to have you with us on our expedition through the state-space of consciousness. It’s been an exciting and productive year and we’re thrilled to share all of our updates and accomplishments. None of this would have been possible without support from sentient beings like you.
1+ Million Views
First of all, we are thrilled to announce that our presentation on DMT & Hyperbolic Geometry has reached an amazing milestone of 1+ million views this year. We highly appreciate the support and engagement of the community. This presentation has also helped to catalyze some incredible collaborations.
“I interpret QRI as coming at the problem from the opposite direction as everyone else: normal neuroscience starts with normal brain behavior and tries to build on it until they can one day explain crazy things like jhana; QRI starts with crazy things like jhana and tries to build down until they can explain ordinary behavior. This is naturally going to be shakier and harder to research – but somebody should be trying it.”
Our Slicing Problem paper, which provides a novel critique of computational theories of consciousness, has been accepted to the journal Open Philosophy.
We’ve also recently submitted a paper on our Heavy-Tailed Valence Hypothesis (read the preprint), which is the latest iteration of our Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain – a key foundational piece for the field of valence research.
QRI has been working on building this field since 2015. We are proud to continue pushing the boundaries of knowledge in valence research. We are just getting started!
In addition to our research efforts, we’ve had the opportunity to connect with others in the research community. Our Director of Research, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, presented at the Tyringham Initiative, and we held a meet-and-greet in London with approximately 40 attendees, including some of QRI’s earliest supporters. We are thrilled to see such a strong interest in building a worldwide “qualia research community”, and we look forward to hosting more meetups in the future.
QRI now has an unofficial Discord server which has already gathered over 1000 members and has fostered engaging discussions related to QRI, attracting notable figures in the field like Roger Thisdell and the founders of PsychonautWiki.
One of the highlights of the year for us was getting to host a QRI event in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended by over 200 people. It was a great opportunity for us to showcase some of our latest tangible innovations, such as our scents and a demo of our Light-Sound-Vibration system. We also had a speech about the Future of Consciousness, which generated some thought-provoking conversations.
TEDx Talk
QRI’s first TEDx Talk got published, which discusses interventions that will have as much, if not more, impact in reducing suffering as anesthesia. The most innovative part of the talk was about anti-tolerance drugs. We believe that we are the only organization in the entire world talking about anti-tolerance drugs as a dedicated field of study with enormous implications rather than as a mere biochemical oddity.
A thorough explanation of how the science of consciousness and valence structuralism inform ethics and what the Effective Altruism movement is missing.
This talk explores modeling the generator of each aesthetic in order to create a network of “compatibility between aesthetics” that minimizes dissonance between them while emphasizing their synergies as well as their unique and valuable contributions.
Discussion on indirect realism, phenomenal time, qualia formalism, exotic phenomenal spacetime in psychedelic and meditative phenomenology, the effects of persistent subject-object nonduality on phenomenal spacetime and hedonic valence, and more!
A wide-ranging discussion and sharing of perspectives covering jhāna, Brahmavihārās, comparisons with psychedelic states, and the journey to and from the Absolute.
Is Google’s LaMDA sentient? The phenomenal binding problem asks us to consider, ‘how can a huge set of discrete neurons form a unified mind?’ Is topological binding a requirement for AI to be sentient?
You can now listen to QRI material on the go, while driving, doing exercise, in the sauna, or any other healthy annealing rituals!
Supporting QRI
Purchase a scent pack from QRI’s new scent line “Magical Creatures”. This line of scents explores the complex and often puzzling interactions that exist in the state-space of olfaction, highlighting the exotic and unique qualities that can emerge in this space.
Please feel free to donate to QRI independent of our Magical Creatures campaign.
Thank you!
We want to thank everyone who has helped QRI in any way, including our current and past collaborators, donors, readers, video watchers, and event attendees. Special thanks to Hunter, Anders & Maggie, Marcin, Chris, Winslow, Olaf, Crystal, Libor, and David who really stepped up this year to help QRI in an incredible way. Our efforts wouldn’t matter or be possible without all of you! May you all be prosperous, energized, and access the full-state of consciousness for the benefit of all beings! Thank you!
¹ Additional QRI references by Scott Alexander on Astral Codex Ten this year:
The quote above comes from a lecture Richard Feynman gave in which he talks about the challenges and opportunities of studying and interacting with the world at a very small scale. Among other things, he touches upon how gaining access to e.g. a good-enough electron microscopes would allow us to answer long-standing questions in biology by just looking at the thing (cf. Seeing Cell Division Like Never Before). Once you start to directly engage with the phenomenon at a high-enough resolution, tackling these questions at the theoretical level would turn out, in retrospect, to be idle arm chair speculation.
I think that we can make the case that philosophy of ethics at the moment might be doing something like this. In other words, it speculates about the nature of value at a theoretical level without engaging with the phenomenon of value at a high resolution. Utilitarianism (whether classical or negative), at least as it is usually formulated, may turn out to have background assumptions about the nature of consciousness, personal identity, and valence that a close examination would show to be false (or at least very incomplete). Many criticisms of wireheading, for instance, seem to conflate pleasure and reward (more on this soon), and yet we now know that these are quite different. Likewise, the repugnant conclusion or the question between total vs. mean utilitarianism are usually discussed using implicit background assumptions about the nature of valence and personal identity. This must stop. We have to look at the thing!
Without further ado, here are some of the key ways in which an enriched understanding of consciousness can inform our ethical theories:
Mixed Valence
One ubiquitous phenomenon that I find is largely neglected in discussions about utilitarianism is that of mixed valence states. Not only is it the case that there are many flavors of pleasure and pain, but it is also the case that most states of consciousness blend both pleasurable and painful sensations in complex ways.
In Principia Qualia (Michael Johnson) the valence triangle was introduced. This describes the valence of a state of consciousness in terms of its loadings on the three dimensions of negative, positive, and neutral valence. This idea was extended in Quantifying Bliss, which further enriched it by adding a spectral component to each of these dimensions. Let’s work with this valence triangle to reason about mixed valence.
In order to illustrate the relevance of mixed valence states we can see how it influences policies within the context of negative utilitarianism. Let us say that we agree that there is a ground truth to the total amount of pain and pleasure a system produces. A naïve conception of negative utilitarianism could then be “we should minimize pain”. But pain that exists within an experience that also contains pleasure may matter a lot less than pain that exists in an experience without pleasure that “balances it out”!
The naïve conception, would thus, not be able to distinguish between the following two scenarios. In Scenario A we have two persons, one suffering from both an intense headache and an intense stomach ache and the other enjoying both a very pleasant sensation in the head and a very pleasant sensation in the stomach. In Scenario B, we switch it up: one person experiences an intense headache while also a very pleasant sensation in the stomach, and the other way around for the other person.
But if you have ever experienced a very pleasant sensation arise in the midst of an otherwise unpleasant experience you will know how much of a difference it makes. Such a pleasant sensation does not need to directly blunt the painful sensation; the mere presence of enough pleasure makes the overall nature of the experience far more tolerable. How and why this happens is still, of course, a mystery (in a future post we shall share our speculations) but it seems to be an empirical fact. This can have extraordinary implications, where for example a sufficiently advanced meditator might be able to dilute very painful sensations with enough equanimity (itself a high-valence state) or by e.g. generating jhanic sensations (see below). Have you ever seen this discussed in an academic journal on ethics? I didn’t think so.
We don’t need to invoke such fancy scenarios to see the reality and importance of mixed valence states. The canonical example that I use to illustrate this phenomenon is where: you just broke up with someone (-), are at a concert enjoying really good music (+), are coming up on weed and alcohol (+), but also need to pee really bad (-). We’ve all been there, haven’t we? If you get sufficiently absorbed into the cathartic pleasure of the music and the drugs, the negative feelings temporarily recede into the background and thus might tilt the experience towards the net positive for a while.
Once you consider the reality of mixed valence states, there is a veritable Cambrian Explosion of possible variants of utilitarianism. For example, if you do accept that pleasure can somehow dilute pain within a given moment of experience, then you could posit that there is a “line of hedonic zero” on the valence triangle and anything on one side of it is net positive:
A version of negative utilitarianism we could call within-subject-aggregated-valence negative utilitarianism recognizes any experience in the “Net Positive” region to be perfectly acceptable even though it contains painful sensations.
Alternatively, another version we may call strict negative valence utilitarianism might say that pain, whether or not it is found within an experience with a lot of pleasure, is still nonetheless unacceptable. Here, however, we may still have a lot of room for a civilization animated by information-sensitive gradients of bliss: we can use the gradients that have a mixture of positive and neutral Vedanā for information signaling:
Yet another view, perhaps called within-subject-majoritarian negative valence utilitarianism might say that what makes an experience worth-living and unproblematic is for it to be at least 50% pleasant, regardless of the composition of the other 50%:
Now, I am not going to adjudicate between these views today. All I am pointing for the time being is that actually engaging with the phenomenon at hand (i.e. how valence manifests in reality) radically enriches our conceptions, and allows us to notice that most of ethics has an impoverished understanding of the phenomenon it comments on. We can change that.
Logarithmic Scales
As argued in Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain (summary) we think that there is a wide range of evidence that suggests that the intensity of both pleasure and pain follows a long-tail distribution. I am not going to repeat the arguments here, since I’ve written and presented about them extensively already. I will merely mention that I am deeply suspicious of the intellectual seriousness of any ethicist who somehow fails to notice the enormous moral significance of the following states of consciousness, among others:
On the positive side:
Temporal lobe epilepsy
MDMA
Jhanas
Good high-dose 5-MeO-DMT trip
On the negative side:
Cluster Headaches
Kidney Stones
Bad high-dose 5-MeO-DMT trip
Valence and Self-Models
One of the claims of QRI is that every experience, no matter how outlandish and unlike our normal everyday human experience, has valence characteristics. An analogy can be made with the notion of physical temperature: every physical object has a temperature, no matter what it is made out of or what its shape is.
Most human experiences have a lot of shared structure, with things like a central “phenomenal self” that works as an organizing principle for arranging sensations. Many meditators and psychedelic enthusiasts point out that suffering seems to have something to do with our sense of self. That feelings matter only to the extent that they are happening to someone. But experiences without a phenomenal self (or with radically altered phenomenal selves) will nonetheless still have valence characteristics. Ego deaths can be dysphoric or euphoric.
We argue that what matter is actually the overall structure of the experience (cf. valence structuralism). It just so happens that above a certain level of valence, the phenomenal self starts to become an impediment to further bliss. Ultra-pleasant experiences, thus, tend to be selfless! But this does not make them worthless. On the contrary, their intrinsic worth, coming from their positive valence, can go through the roof.
That said, reporting the valence of very exotic experiences can be remarkably difficult. This doesn’t mean that we should give up; rather, we ought to develop new methods, vocabulary, and culture to be able to place these experiences on the same moral footing as our normal everyday life.
For example, the so-called “toroidal state” (on DMT) or during a meditative cessation can have profound valence effects, to the point of making you reconsider the very nature and scope of what matters.
Regardless of the way a specific door manifests, it reveals something completely extraordinary about the relationship between “the watcher” and “the watched” that it would take a very warped, non-Euclidean view of the universe to explain, though I will try shortly. One way or another, these fleeting experiences cannot easily be explained in terms of our normal, four-dimensional experience of space-time, or within our ordinary subject/object experience. […] When the no-self door predominates with suffering as its second aspect, then a very strange thing happens. There may be an image on one side staring back, but even if there isn’t, the universe becomes a toroid (doughnut-shaped), or occasionally a sphere, and the image and this side of the toroid switch places as the toroid universe spins. It may spin sideways (horizontally), or it may spin vertically (like head over heels), and may also feel like a hood of darkness suddenly being pulled over our heads as the whole thing synchronizes and disappears, or like everything twisting out of existence. The rarest no-self/suffering variant is hard to describe, and involves reality becoming like a doughnut whose whole outer edge rotates inwards such as to trade places with its inner edge (the edge that made the hole in the middle) that rotates to the outer edge position, and when they trade places reality vanishes. The spinning includes the whole background of space in all directions. Fruition occurs when the two have switched places and the whole thing vanishes.
I recommend reading the whole chapter for what I consider to be some ultra-trippy phenomenology of surprising ethical relevance (see also: No-Self vs. True Self).
In summary: this all indicates that states of consciousness have valence characteristics independently of the presence, absence, shape, or dynamic of a phenomenal self within them. If your ethicist isn’t considering the moral worth of Nirvana… perhaps consider switching to one who does.
Valence and Personal Identity
The solution to the phenomenal binding problem has implications for both personal identity and ethics. If, as I posit, each moment of experience is in fact a topological pocket in the fields of physics, then Closed Individualism would seem to be ruled out. Meaning, the standard conception of identity where you start existing when you are born and stop existing when you die would turn out to be a strange evolutionarily adaptive fiction. What really exists is a gigantic field of consciousness subdivided into countless topological pockets. Empty Individualism (“you are just a moment of experience”) and Open Individualism (“we are all the same universal consciousness”) would both be consistent with the facts, and it might be impossible to decide between them. Yet, I argue that the vast majority of ethical theories have as an implicit background assumption Closed Individualism. So realizing that it is false has major implications.
In particular, if we take the Empty Individualist perspective, it might be easier to defend negative utilitarianism: since each snapshot of experience is a completely separate being, you simply cannot “make it up” to someone who is currently suffering by giving him/her enough happiness in the future. Simply put, that suffering will never be redeemed.
Alternatively, if we take the Open Individualist perspective, we now might have actual grounds to decide between, say, average vs. total utilitarianism. Ultimately, you will be forced to experience everyone and everything. This line of reasoning becomes particularly interesting if you also take seriously something like Feynman and Wheeler’s One-electron Universe. Here we might possibly even objectively determine the moral worth of an experience in terms of “how long the one electron stays trapped inside it”. An experience with a huge spatial breadth and one with enormous temporal depth may be equivalent according to this metric: they’re just structured differently (cf. Pseudo-Time Arrow). In this account, you are bouncing backwards and forwards in time interfering with yourself forever. The multiverse is the structure emergent from this pattern of self-interference, and it is eternal and immutable in a certain sense. Relative to a small experience, a large experience would be one that keeps the one electron trapped for longer. Thus, there would be a strong case to care more about bigger and brighter experiences: you’ll be there for ages!
If indeed you are bouncing backwards and forwards forever in this structure, then perhaps average utilitarianism can be defended. In brief, since you are always somewhere, what matters is not how large the structure is, but the shape of its distribution of states.
Valence Structuralism
Finally, if you pay attention to the nature of highly valenced states of consciousness you will notice that they have structural features. The Symmetry Theory of Valence (overview; CDNS) can be experientially verified for oneself by introspecting on the structural features of one’s experience when enjoying intense bliss or enduring intense suffering. Rob Burbea’s meditation instructions are very well worth reading to get a sense of what I’m talking about. This would seem to matter a lot when it comes e.g. deciding what kind of artificial sentient minds we might want to create. Much more on this in the future.
Putting It All together
High-dose DMT experiences are an excellent example of the sort of state of consciousness that is part of reality, is generally not taken seriously in philosophy (despite its enormous significance), and has many elements that challenge preconceptions about pleasure and pain and inform our understanding of valence. These experiences:
For a theory of physics to be true it needs to be able to explain physical phenomena outside of room temperature. Likewise, for an ethical theory to be in any way true, it ought to be able to account for states of consciousness outside of the range of normal human everyday life experience. DMT states, among others, are examples of non-room-temperature states of consciousness that you can use to test if your theory of ethics actually generalizes. How do you make sense of experiences that have more qualia, have mixed valence, have exotic phenomenal selves, and have valence effects up there in the logarithmic scale? That’s what we need to answer if we are serious about ethics.
By an anonymous reader (this was sent by someone who was formerly deeply skeptical of the Symmetry Theory of Valence. The experience described below made them reconsider QRI’s explanatory frameworks and paradigms. In their own words: “[this experience I] recently had made me think “hmm so maybe there _is_ something to the STV”).
There was a sequence of going back into old experiences, each of them somehow positive or negative. The very earliest one that came to mind was a memory of my mother talking to me with love and delight when I was maybe one year old. There was a sense that my mind and body had been in a particular kind of position when that had happened. Ever afterwards, they had been trying to shift themselves back into that same position, on the theory that the same internal configuration would recreate the same external environment and recreate the same experience of being loved.
There was a sense of the bodymind holding a pattern that was a snapshot of that moment of love, and that the bodymind had been trying to also align the external world into the same kind of a position, out of an understanding that the pattern could only be completed – the puzzle piece matching the rest of the puzzle – if the external world provided the right fit for the bodymind’s internal configuration, letting them interlock in the way that would recreate the old pattern.
In the moment of completely seeing this, there was an understanding of the wisdom that the stuck pattern held – it had correctly seen and recorded a facet of reality, of what I had been like and how that had gotten me love – and also of the fact that its vision had only captured an incomplete facet, with it being impossible to go back to being a baby and replay the same experiences.
As this was seen, seeing the pattern that the stuck energy had been trying to complete caused it to be completed, the parts interlocking once more. There was a sense of the stuck energy pattern being released and melding back into a pattern of universal harmony and love that could be felt in the body. There was an understanding that the stuck pattern had previously acted as a constraint, trying to repeatedly pull the bodymind into a particular configuration whenever possible in order to recreate the original harmonic pattern, when the harmonic pattern had actually been available all along.
Something shifted and the legs felt like they opened and spread out, a pull relaxing that the mind hadn’t even known was there.
There was a sense of tapping into the universal harmony that could now be felt in the body, as a stream of energy trying to run up from the root chakra to the top of the head. As the body tried to upright itself to align with the energy, it found more stuck patterns interrupting the flow, each of them associated with a past experience and a particular configuration of the bodymind that was at odds with the one that the stream was trying to upright the body to.
There was a seeing that the bodymind’s configuration would affect the bodyminds of the people around it, all other people also moving in a constant process of trying to recapture particular configurations, trying to pull their environment into shapes that would complete specific patterns. In seeing this, there was a sense of testing possibilities. If this bodymind wanted to upright itself, what positions would that pull the bodies of others into? How would those positions constrain this body’s positions, and what was the shape that it would be pulled towards in turn?
Each of those considerations brought up a new pattern of stuck energy, a time when the bodyminds of others had been in a particular position, and this bodymind had learned to adapt or avoid a particular position in response. Whenever such patterns were found, they temporarily turned into reality, with the bodymind reliving the experience and seeing both how the pattern held within a piece of wisdom – a true fact about what reality had been like – and how that pattern was at the same time incomplete and unintegrated with the rest of the bodymind’s knowing.
Sometimes that lack of integration caused the pattern’s understanding to be a mistake overall. There were situations when an energy pattern had been scanning for signs of others reacting negatively and stored that as the primary interpretation of the experience, seeing only that and missing out on the way that the thing had been too minor to matter, or missing out on the way that others had been able to see the positive aspects as well.
There was a sense that the act of trying to assume specific configurations required selectively taking in information, so as to not see things that would destabilize the desired postures. There was a sense that the content of consciousness gets selectively filtered so as to create particular mindstates, to allow certain configurations to be reliably recreated.
There were fears around the possibility of being seen, a sense that others would not necessarily take well to a bodymind that was standing upright, and would try to bring it back down. There was a sense that the configurations of their bodyminds had constantly been pulling this bodymind back into more cramped positions, as a way for it to stay safe.
There was a sense that many of the configurations the bodymind has been trying to contort itself into have been physically impossible, different people requiring different physical positions that have been impossible to satisfy at once. There was a thought that it’s no wonder that this bodymind has been grinding teeth at night, given all the contradictory expressions that the jaw and the face have been trying to take at once.
There was also a sense of how some other people’s erratic behavior had been a result of them trying to twist themselves into impossible sets of overlapping configurations. There was a sense that bodyminds will allow the tension of the physically incompatible postures to tear themselves apart, so that different parts of the whole can get split off to adopt different postures at once.
There was a sense of people occasionally catching from the corner of their eye a glimpse of something that a part of them thinks they absolutely cannot be allowed to see, their bodymind instantly making a sharp angle to rotate away from the sight of it and blocking all line of vision, in a single movement of pure terror.
There was a perception that despite everything, the positions of other people didn’t need to matter, and that if this bodymind could tap into the universal resonance of harmonious energy, then that resonance would pull at the body stronger than any other bodyminds can.
There was a sense that if the bodymind tapped into the universal resonance, it wouldn’t need to contort itself to others, but would rather dance together with others who were part of the same resonance, standing effortlessly upright at all times if it so desired.
—
The bodymind tries again to align with the resonance, to find a stable flow of energy going up from the pelvis through the body.
As stuck energies stored in different parts of the body are released, those parts test whether the rest of the body is capable of holding their full energy. The body parts trash against their restraints, then relax as they become assured that it is safe to do so. Waves of laughter and contented sighs bubble up through the system, a flavor like warm pleasant honey.
There’s a seeing that all the different holds and stuck energies have been attempts to capture the universal resonance and that the way to relax them is to lean into them until they meld back into the resonance, each of their energies containing a fragment of home that shows the way back.
As one leans into them they each become more like reality, are reality, and then there is a recollection and recognition of their essential truth as it’s merged into the whole. Each such merging allows one constraint to be released, for the dynamic system that is the bodymind to move more fluidly between positions, no longer forced to twist and contort itself into a particular rigid shape whenever it comes near to that region of configuration space.
Rather it can do what bodyminds exist to do, weave a smooth and graceful path between configurations that make sense in any given situation, dancing in a way that still repeats specific configurations but with a fluidness that is every human’s birthright.
To have too many constraints is to be torn apart; to have no constraints is to be a newborn incapable of action; to have just the right amount of constraints, pulling the bodymind into configurations that are the right expressions of its essential self, is to be a mature and competent adult.
As this happens, it is as if resonance patterns spread across the body, connecting parts that were previously disconnected. The feet start drumming together, remembering that they are brothers who can do their own thing. The throat spontaneously joins the chants and the song of the people around. The pelvis finds more of its energy, though large parts of it still feel blocked off.
As constraints are dropped and the bodymind manages to better tap into the universal harmony, it begins looking for a new shape, one that would be harmonious both with the universal resonance and the bodymind’s own pattern of energy. Parts of the body try tuning themselves into the song and music and try what it’s like to be in harmony with the universal resonance, what it’s like to generate their own resonance patterns that are separate from the universal resonance but harmonious with each other, how to create something of one’s own that combines with that which is not one’s own. The bodymind explores a role and an identity as a bard-shaman of earth, song and myth, sees where parts of that would fit and where they would not.
There is a sense of harmonious delight and love, of everyone in the room being connected to the same universal resonance that is pulling everyone together, each of them also contributing a piece of their own unique essence into the whole. There is an experience of seeing this bodymind from the outside, and a feeling of it being beautiful and lovable. These new patterns are absorbed into the bodymind to act as the foundation for a new way of being.
See Also:
Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing might help explain this quote: “There was a sense that the act of trying to assume specific configurations required selectively taking in information, so as to not see things that would destabilize the desired postures.” In particular, note the proposed duality between physiological dissonance and resisting information discussed in that article (special emphasis on “denial”).
Buddhist Annealing: Wireheading Done Right with the Seven Factors of Awakening (video). This might help explain: “As stuck energies stored in different parts of the body are released, those parts test whether the rest of the body is capable of holding their full energy.” Namely, that one key aspect of equanimity is increasing impedance matching between various parts of the nervous system so that one part can process the stress stored in another one.
Non-Linear Wave Computing: Vibes, Gestalts, and Realms. This video provides a conceptual framework capable of making sense of “stuck patterns” that “need to be completed by environmental circumstances”. In brief, these are stored non-linear patterns of resonance that require their oscillatory complement in order to become harmonious. Dissolving them allows you to instead rely on the natural harmonics of your nervous system and thus to not be dependent on external circumstances for positive valence.
Here’s an interesting report I received a few days ago. It’s noteworthy due to the author’s familiarity with QRI paradigms, emphasis on the phenomenal character rather than on the intentional content of the experience, and its interest in observing the structural properties of valence. [Comments and links added by me].
25/03/2021 – Conversations with my ‘self’ and cheat codes to bliss
Demographic information:
Age: 24 Gender: Male Ethnicity: European descent Weight: 70-75kg Height: 170-180cm
Substances consumed:
T- 1:30 45g raw cacao (solid) [NOTE: it’s unsafe to combine 5-MeO-DMT and MAOIs. I do not know if cacao’s MAOIs in these doses could possibly represent a problem, but out of an abundance of caution I’d recommend against it.] T+/- 0:00 ~30mg(?) 5-MeO-DMT (freebase) T+ 0:25-1:30 13 double balloons of nitrous oxide T+ 0:35 ~50mg cannabis
Set and setting:
I prepared my room by cleaning the air with my HEPA purifier, increasing the temperature to a comfortable degree, turning off all the lights (except for a dull red light in the corner), and collecting various soft blankets and pillows into a heap on my bed.
I prepared my mind by drinking cacao, re-reading some of my favourite 5-MeO-DMT trip reports and accounts of its phenomenology, and meditating for 20 minutes.
Past experiences:
Two past experiences with 5-MeO-DMT at low doses:
A dose of 10-15mg (plugged) in which I experienced ~45 minutes of very slight effects. Around 15 minutes into the experience I decided to experiment with nitrous oxide, which I discovered increased the feeling of connectedness and bliss considerably, but still not to the level of combining high doses of other drugs with nitrous. Around 30 minutes into the experience and past the ‘peak’ I vaporised a small amount of cannabis, which brought back the intensity of the 5-MeO-DMT for a brief period (~10 mins) in conjunction with the nitrous.
A dose of ~5mg (vaporised) to test ‘the machine’ pipe that I built. The energy / intensity I felt was perhaps 5 times greater than my past experience with 5-MeO-DMT (not counting the nitrous and cannabis synergy), but only lasted for about 10 minutes.
Lots of experience (~50+) with conventional psychedelics (e.g., LSD, Mescaline, Psilocybin, 2C-B), often mixed with other psychoactive compounds (e.g., cannabis, ketamine, MDMA, nitrous oxide, Syrian rue).
Philosophical background:
I have studied analytic philosophy near full-time for the past eight years with a focus on philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology, applied ethics, well-being, and value theory. During this time, I have developed a strong personal ontology of experientialism (i.e., subjective experiences are important to answering philosophical questions in a fundamental rather than instrumental sense).
I was gifted about ~40mg of 5-MeO-DMT from a friend. Unfortunately, they did not weigh it out, nor do I have a precision scale, so the actual quantity of the substance I received could have been +/- 10mg from the estimated quantity.1 I had already used one quarter of this amount (10mg) to test my vaporisation apparatus, of which I wasted half (5mg), so I assumed that I had 30mg left. After talking with some friends and weighing up the risks, I decided that I would try to vaporise the remaining quantity in one go. I strongly discourage anybody reading this report from being so reckless; my rationale was that (1) I have limited access to 5-MeO-DMT and I did not want to waste this rare opportunity, (2) I have extensively researched the phenomenology of 5-MeO-DMT consumption and knew what to expect, and (3) my prior on having a ‘bad trip’ on conventional psychedelics is very low.2
Earlier in the evening I consumed 45g of raw cacao, which I grated up and boiled in a small pot of soy milk (with monk fruit extract added to sweeten the mix). The subjective effects of unprocessed cacao at high doses are very slight and similar to coffee (probably due to its mild caffeine content), but with more of an empathetic and euphoric quality. That said, I suspect that an individual’s expectations also play a nontrivial role in producing these effects.
After preparing my room and meditating for a short period to lower my heart rate (which I measured using a pulse oximeter), I fired up ‘the machine’. Due to the small size of the device, the chamber filled up fairly quickly and I lost some vapor, so after about 20 seconds I began to slowly inhale the contents of the chamber while continuing to heat the steel mesh with my butane torch. Soon enough I began to feel the effects of the substance, and once I lost the ability to coordinate my hands I placed the device gently on my bed, wrapped myself up in a soft blanket, and lay down with my eyes closed. In the background, I had the song ‘Structures from Silence’ by Steve Roach playing quietly.
My memories of the peak are very limited, and that is because I lost the capacity to experience the passing of time, the boundaries of space, and even the first-person phenomenology of thought. While I have had psychedelic experiences resembling descriptions of ego death before, I don’t believe that I have ever had an experience in which my attention – the focussing of my awareness on particular aspects of my experience – was entirely absent from my consciousness. Without this capacity, the appearance of duality within my experience collapsed, such as the distinction between subject and object, internal and external, or mind and body. This corresponds with nondual accounts of 5-MeO-DMT that I have previously read where people experience ‘becoming one with the universe’ or ‘pure consciousness’.
An important takeaway from this trip was that while the valence of the experience was very high, it felt qualitatively different from ordinary instances of high valence experiences, such as physical pleasure. If I had to describe the general qualia of being on 5-MeO-DMT, I would use the terms ‘significant’ or ‘meaningful’ rather than ‘good’ or ‘enjoyable’ [see a similar observation made on this trip report]. Consider the feeling of encountering something so profoundly important that it cuts deep into your conception of intrinsic value, and then increase the intensity of that feeling by a few orders of magnitude. However, I could not point out where in my field of experience the feeling of ‘significance’ was located, suggesting global rather than local coherence.3 Additionally, while the information content of the experience was extremely low, the feeling of ‘connectedness’ was extremely high.4 I remember observing this as I was coming up and coming down from the peak – the perception of ‘synchrony’ between different modes of my experience directly mapped onto its perceived intensity.
After I had regained my attention, the first thing I noticed within my body was how heavily I was breathing – louder and faster than if I had just finished a sprint [I don’t know how common this is, and/or if it might be related to the cacao consumed before the experience]. From past experiences of ego-disillusion, I know that once I have passed an energy threshold my nervous system will instantiate a ‘self-preservation’ algorithm which involves breathing heavily. Soon after noticing this, I became aware that I was on 5-MeO-DMT and so I was not alarmed. My body then began to cry; however, as my consciousness was still experiencing disembodiment, ‘I’ did not identify with the crying state and simply observed this process as it unfolded.
After a short period, my body rolled over onto its front and began talking sweetly to ‘me’ – the disembodied awareness – as if different aspects of my internal personality model wanted to reassure the light of consciousness trapped within that it was loved and supported, and to thank it for always being there to assist in the survival of the organism that sustained us both. This was totally fascinating to experience, especially as I became increasingly lucid until eventually it was ‘me’ who was talking! In other words, I experienced a gradual merging of two distinct ‘selves’ – the metaphysical ‘me’ (i.e., my conscious awareness) with the ontological ‘me’ (i.e., my ‘self’ model) – until one had completely osmosed into the other and an equilibrium was reached. I feel very fortunate to hold a system of philosophical beliefs that is sophisticated enough to make sense of this experience without detracting from its perceived significance. Also, yay to self-love! <3
Immediately after this ‘cool down’ period, I decided to try and use up whatever was left within the vaporisation device, which turned out to be quite a lot!5 I’d say that while I didn’t go into ‘blackout’ territory, I certainly re-entered nonduality, and soon enough experienced my self-model talking to my consciousness again. I then decided to experiment with potential synergies between 5-MeO-DMT and other psychoactive substances I had lying around in order to document their effects. Given the success of my past experience on a very low dose of 5-MeO-DMT (plugged) and nitrous oxide, I cracked two bulbs into my nitrous canister, prepared as much 5-MeO-DMT as I had left in the glass device and inhaled it, and then quickly discharged the pressurised gas into a large balloon which I subsequently inhaled, repeating this process several times.
The resulting experience was, somewhat surprisingly, higher valence than my 5-MeO-DMT breakthrough.6 On its own, nitrous isn’t that interesting to experience, but it has remarkable synergistic properties when combined with other drugs – especially psychedelics. It is difficult to describe the exact ways in which the phenomenology of nitrous interacts with the phenomenology of 5-MeO-DMT, but I can confidently say that the valence I experienced was more blissful / pleasurable but less spiritually significant. In a general sense, I would argue that nitrous functions as a sort of magnifying glass on certain aspects of experience by slowing down the speed at which your consciousness processes sensory information (which includes thought), and in this specific case it amplified the blissful qualia that resulted from having high levels of consonance between different regions of my nervous system. I also noticed that if I wrapped myself in my softest blanket immediately after inhaling the nitrous and consciously wriggled my body around, the tactile sensations gave me my first visuals; tens of thousands of tiny specs of qualia dotted across my world-sheet, moving together in a synchronous pattern corresponding to the feeling of soft fabric rubbing against my skin.
After vaporising absolutely everything in the glass chamber, I then proceeded to vaporise some cannabis to observe how it would interact with the residual effects of the 5-MeO-DMT that still remained in my body. The resulting effects were then more typical of ordinary nitrous experiences, except that they were far more tranquil with a deeper sense of love, compassion, and serenity. During the peak of each balloon, I had the first-person sense of ‘being’ a thought process, constructing low-information ontological models that entirely made up my world simulation. Coming out of each balloon involved constantly updating this ontological model to account for a steady flow of prediction errors as I was increasingly capable of comprehending complexity within patterns of information contained within my experience, until I would eventually realise that I had taken nitrous.7
Concluding remarks:
I would like to reiterate that guesstimating the dose of a highly volatile and dose-dependent drug such as 5-MeO-DMT is extremely dangerous – especially without taking steps to work your way up the dosage ladder to become acquainted with its effects. As such, I would not recommend doing what I did for the vast majority of people interested in taking 5-MeO-DMT. Despite this risk, I had what was probably the most intense experience of my life and it was net-positive in valence, so I consider it a success. I am looking forward to future experimentation with this substance – especially in conjunction with nitrous oxide – and would like to work on developing a better understanding of how nitrous works and why it produces such a wide range of effects with different drug cocktails.8
Notes:
1. I do not endorse eyeballing drug doses – especially high-energy substances such as 5-MeO-DMT that have the potential to create extremely unpleasant states of consciousness. [This is such an important point that I considered not sharing this report based on this fact alone in order to not encourage unsafe practices. In the end I figured that the content was valuable enough that sharing it with this note was worth it nonetheless. The point remains: NEVER eyeball milligram-sensitive drugs like 5-MeO-DMT.]
2. This observation is based on past experiences in which I have consumed high doses of psychedelics – often in conjunction with other substances – and observed the various autonomic responses of my body and mind.
3. This is not the case with ordinary high valence experiences in which I can usually locate its ‘source’ within specific sensations (e.g., tactile, visual, auditory).
4. I cannot remember whether I opened my eyes, but I’m sure even that if I did, this would not have altered any aspect of the experience in the moment.
5. I hypothesized that it would be more efficient to use the remaining 5-MeO-DMT as soon as I could physically operate the device in order to make use of the residual effects of the previous dose that I had consumed.
6. Perhaps this is more the result of my having extensive experience with nitrous and limited experience with 5-MeO-DMT, or my 5-MeO-DMT experience was more mixed / dissonant than I remember.
7. For some, the vibe of nitrous can be quite frightening, as if they are the subject of one big cosmic joke. However, for the philosophically minded who are also on the right combination of substances, it can be an extremely intellectually rewarding experience, shedding light on the internal workings of their mind.
8. A combination I am even more excited to experiment with is MDMA + 5-MeO-DMT + Nitrous Oxide, which I would assign a nontrivial chance to being the most blissful synergy between all known substances.
