Emergent Properties of Reality using Psilocin Microscopy

Ingenious members of the human species are continually evolving new technologies which allow us to behold the wonders of the emergent properties of matter. We marveled when we discovered there are organisms living entire lives, being born, taking in and converting matter, reproducing, and dying, and they are too small to see with the naked eye. Our curiosity has lead us onward. A series of the question, “Yes, but what is THAT made of?” and the tiniest sliver of cosmic time has us discovering the emergent properties (properties that become more apparent as you ‘zoom in’) of quantum particles and how their interaction gives tangibility to the world and universe around us. You know what we discovered? It’s mostly empty space. To provide perspective, if you take all of the empty space out of the empire state building, you would have an object the size of a marble, but weighing many millions of tons. .. Nothing is there. Our bodies, and most importantly, our brains to which many accredit our consciousness is mostly empty space. Energetically vibrating energy with voids of vacuum around it, whatever that means.

I feel we can drill down as long as we’d like, and we’ll continue to find *poof*! Barely anything there.

I believe the language we use when describing events is a key to finding connectivity when there is none apparent. Using the same word to describe both events and sensation is the key, I believe, to understanding more regarding the nature of our existence. An example, yes, yes.

Vibration is used to describe a feeling of motion we feel physically. It is also used to describe a state of being of an object, i.e., that guitar string is vibrating. It is also used to describe a state of being of a person, i.e. “He/She had a bad/good vibe.” Closely related and worth consideration for addition to this thought ball, “We are on the same/different wavelengths”, “I’m feeling your vibe”, “[Take the action] and ride the wave”, “I’m buzzed”, “Raise your vibration”, etc etc.

Nearly every sense you use as a human to build your picture of the world around you makes use of incoming waves. Light waves for sight, audio waves for sound, electron field waves for touch (you don’t actually ever touch other matter, the electrons that compose you and the electrons that compose the matter repel each other). Smell is based on the receipt of aromatic particles that are themselves vibrating.

In our biosphere, there are plenty of animals using waves and vibrations that we do not process to build their picture, and interact with their environment. We learned that honey bees use micro-frequency waves to navigate. We learned this when we placed micro-frequency cell towers near bee colonies and they started dying off or abandoning their hive. We know that homing pigeons make detailed maps in their mind using ultra-low frequency sound waves, and that is how they navigate home. Elephants are able to communicate across miles using ultra low frequency, sound waves which we cannot hear.

One of the most recent discoveries that astounds me most is one that I saw in the documentary, “Resonance, Beings of Frequency”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV9dhGv_tTs. It turns out that the earth has a ‘pulse’, or a ‘frequency’. If you imagine the earth as one sphere and the ionosphere as another sphere and calculate the tension between the two, you arrive at a frequency. 10 Hertz. This is a measurable frequency which surrounds life on earth. Are you ready for the 2×4 to the face? Your alpha brain waves also are measured at 10 hertz.

Ok, so everything is vibrating, our mental construction of our environments are based on waves and vibrations, there is a lot of data in terms of waves that are constantly interacting with our bodies, and we only really consciously perceive a fraction of the input. What does this have to do with tripping and emergent properties of reality?

Have you ever been under the influence of a psychedelic and have seen the walls breathing, or wood grain moving, or patters on a tile swirling? This is pretty much a rhetorical question, if you’ve taken psychedelics and haven’t seen these things you haven’t taken enough. This is a standard occurrence of my trips, and most trip reports I’ve read or heard. So what’s it about? If Psilocin was causing an ‘error’ as critics portray, then why is it exactly the same error for so many? I thought it was just one more thing about the psychedelic experience that was far from being understood, and who knows when a brilliant scientist will find this specific answer.

Then I saw this Ted Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_o_connell_making_sense_of_a_visible_quantum_object.html

Aaron O’Connell, theoretical physicist, performed an experiment where he made a device which has the ability to be in a quantum position. Essentially they built a computer chip around a microscopic piece of metal so they could create a vacuum, super-cool the metal, remove all light, and still measure the metals movement. It turns out that when all stimuli (photons, heat, other partials and gasses) were removed, the object began to MOVE! “In weird ways” he says. “It wasn’t sitting perfectly still, it was vibrating. And it was BREATHING!” he goes on.

WHOAH! I jumped immediately to, well, that’s the way things really are, and psychedelics let you see that. I even made that statement to a friend who told me that I was crazy, there was no proof, and you better not say that again to other people. Challenge accepted to at least try to make someone want to design a test for this.

I propose for the collective unconscious to work on the following idea: Psychedelics allow an individual to consciously process more of the sensory input which we receive every day and in every way. The increase in consciousness is the result of the molecular displacement of the neurotransmitter serotonin by the neurotransmitter psilocin, and something changes regarding the bandwidth of the data stream.

A lofty thing to try to prove. Well, I’ve begun the baseline work to show that there is something there to be proven (apart of course from ingesting psychedelics, then you absolutely know that there is something there worth inspecting). The effects of psilocybe cubensis mushrooms come from the dephosphorylation of psilocybin to psilocin, which passes the blood brain barrier and interacts directly with the 5HT2A receptor neurons which normally operate using the neurotransmitter serotonin.

This is psilocin and serotonin side by side. Not too much difference you’ll notice.

Serotonin in the brain (5HT Receptor Sites)

“The neurons of the raphe nuclei are the principal source of 5-HT release in the brain.[67] There are 7 or 8 raphe nuclei (some scientists chose to group the raphe linearis nuclei into one nucleus), all of which are located along the midline of the brainstem, and centered around the reticular formation.[68] Axons from the neurons of the raphe nuclei form a neurotransmitter system, reaching almost every part of the central nervous system. Axons of neurons in the lower raphe nuclei terminate in the cerebellum and spinal cord, while the axons of the higher nuclei spread out in the entire brain.”

It seems as though the 5HT family is responsible for a lot of stuff. Let’s drill down into the emergent property. Notice above that the nuclei responsible for the 5HT interactions are “Centered around the reticular formation”. Form and function in human anatomy are closely related. Let’s see where this takes us.

The Reticular Formation

“The reticular formation is a region in the brainstem that is involved in multiple tasks such as regulating the sleep-wake cycle and filtering incoming stimuli to discriminate irrelevant background stimuli.[1] It is essential for governing some of the basic functions of higher organisms, and is one of the phylogenetically oldest portions of the brain.”

Notice! “Filtering incoming stimuli” The reticular formation, working under the influence of serotonin eliminates some incoming stimuli.

“The reticular formation consists of more than 100 small neural networks, with varied functions including the following:

Somatic motor control – Some motor neurons send their axons to the reticular formation nuclei, giving rise to the reticulospinal tracts of the spinal cord. These tracts function in maintaining tone, balance, and posture–especially during body movements. The reticular formation also relays eye and ear signals to the cerebellum so that the cerebellum can integrate visual, auditory, and vestibular stimuli in motor coordination. Other motor nuclei include gaze centers, which enable the eyes to track and fixate objects, and central pattern generators, which produce rhythmic signals to the muscles of breathing and swallowing.”

Notice! “relays eye and ear signals to the cerebellum so that the cerebellum can integrate visual, auditory, and vestibular stimuli..”

Serotonin gets to choose what makes it in for processing!

“4. Sleep and consciousness – The reticular formation has projections to the thalamus and cerebral cortex that allow it to exert some control over which sensory signals reach the cerebrum and come to our conscious attention.”

Notice! “that allow it to exert some control over which sensory signals reach the cerebrum and come to our conscious attention.”

“5. Habituation – This is a process in which the brain learns to ignore repetitive, meaningless stimuli while remaining sensitive to others.”

Notice! Above! 🙂 …ignore repetitive meaningless stimuli – like the constant vibration of all matter around us?

I propose that the way psilocin and serotonin function as neurotransmitters can be compared to frame rate for video speed. We’re talking about optics (breathing walls, flowing grain, amorphous rugs) so it’s a decent comparison I believe. Serotonin provides an environment in which your data processing frame rate ‘smooth’s out’ so to speak. That is to say, walls appear stable and solid, although we know this is not true about the quantum universes that comprise that wall. Imagine you changed the filter to allow more data to pass and increased the processing frame rate. On a quantum level, the molecules in the wall, every single one of them, is “breathing” as Allen O’Conner so perfectly put it to make this leap of thought. Just incredibly fast.

I think, what would happen, if you changed the filter and increased the frame speed is that you would start to see the beginning of this quantum movement. You would see it as a very slow representation of what it truly is, but the point is, you would be seeing more about the true nature. The faster you speed up the information processing, the more you see about the truth.

In a study conducted by Dr. Roland Fischer in the 1970’s at John’s Hopkins University, it was conclusively proven that minute doses of psilocybin increased visual acuity. In the test, there were two parallel bars and the subjects were told to ‘buzz in’ when the bars were no longer parallel. The findings showed conclusively that those under the influence of very small doses of psilocybin were faster to pick up on when the bars were no longer in sync.

Dr. Fischer was quoted by Terence Mckenna as saying “So here you have the proof that a drug can show you a truer picture of reality”!

Since all of matter is vibratory in nature, could it be proposed that the molecular weight of the neurotransmitter causes it to vibrate faster or slower as a molecule in space time, and that difference makes for the difference in data processing speeds?

I lack the resources, education, and intelligence to design a test to this hypothesis. I invite the collective unconscious to explore this line of thought and see if there is any validity to it.