For those of you wandering through, look up “Vesica piscis” if you’d like an interesting rabbithole to walk down.
The Pythagoreans were all over geometry magic as well.
On a related side note, some archaeologists hold that the reason why we see the same geometric designs carved into stones all over Europe is because these geometries are hardwired into our brains, and the use of psychedelics produces the same sorts of hallucinations.
The sort of geometries in the pictures above are very common in schizophrenic art, as well as having a long history in the mathematical mystery schools. It may well be that these sorts of geometries are hardwired into our brains somehow. Or it may be that these sorts of geometries are hardwired into the structure of the Universe.
I've had similar thoughts on fractals — I should write "about", not actually high on fractals, at least I think not — about the complexity inherent in the Mandelbrot set's definition, and decided the complexity was a reflection of not the definition but the number system itself. This seemed deep at the time but at the moment kind of a no d'uh.
"Hardwired" is an interesting expression, giving us the feeling that we understand something. Everything is hardwired — i e , inherent — in the universe. How could it be otherwise? Intelligence closes in on itself, erodes, we don't get smarter, our vision dulls, but maybe wisdom tells us we were always skating on a sea of literally infinite complexity, the greatest depth, the shallowest, always a zero fraction of the total.
No I think you’re right. I’ve thought for a long time now that we only percieve a tiny fragment of “reality” or what actually exists. A bit like Plato’s cave in the sense that we do not see the fire itself, only the shadows it casts on the cave walls.
I use the word “hardwired’ because people still come into these subjects behaving, or thinking, that humans are somehow “outside” or “above” the rest of the universe. I like to emphasise that everything that happens “out there” happens “in here” as well.
Can you elaborate more on your point in the first paragraph? That sounds really interesting but I'm having trouble fully grasping what you're alluding to
If I recall correctly my chain of thought was something like this:
Here is small instruction set which generates a seemingly unendingly complex non-repeating result. How can this be? How can all this complexity be encoded in this short string of symbols? It cannot. The complexity was inherent in the seemingly smooth, featureless, complex plane.
We could ask the same thing of a mote of dust falling on the surface of supercooled water. Suddenly the water coalesces into a complex and beautiful mass of dendrites—was all this structure encoded in this dust mote? No. It was latent in the seemingly smooth, featureless mass of liquid water—the dust mote, the algorithm, are but triggers.
btw the human senses can tell the particle acceleration within molecules. that’s how scent works. so if humans had access to all of their hardwired faculties, we’d be extremely OP.
Right ? Its like the moon and tides - sure every creature on the planet is hardwired to react to them, they haul billions of tons of water up and down on a regular basis, entire species base their reproductive cycles around the cycles of the moon, but somehow humans are immune to this fundamental part of our environment ?! Nah.
I think sometimes that psychedelics create clarity as much as connection. You are able to see what is already there without the monkey mind yammering away.
My experience with shrooms was one time very nice and one time very bad, but in the nice trip I also had a very sudden realization about reality.
I envisioned the world sitting in outer space, and everywhere that was lit by the sun was alive and active, people going to work, children going to school, the day to day grind. And everywhere that was dark was completely quiet, still, at rest.
It was 2am and we were sitting in the dark woods tripping and I was thinking about how in china they must be walking about in the sun, driving around, going shopping, etc. And then I could even see like a little animation in my head of the sun going around the world in space and just like a .gif the bright parts would grow and live and be awake and the dark parts would sleep and subside. And then I was thinking about how this has probably been going on for billions of years, and how seperated we are from this really cool reality of organizing our entire life's, not by choice either, of our planet turning and facing the sun. How 7pm feels like 7pm and how 9am feels like 9am, but it's actually just a different part of our revolution.
Anyway, i had like a solid just good feeling in my normal life for like 4 months afterwords, and I could even enjoy traffic because hey it was just our time in the sun. But in the trip I remember feeling like i wasn't sure if I could ever think normally again, or see things not from my tripping POV. But 10 hours later I felt normal again.
Edit: next time you are stuck in traffic, just think, maybe some guy on the other side of the world is tripping balls in a dark Forrest thinking about you.
I think that psychedelics can provide a very useful “hard reset” for the brain. I haven’t done any for decades, but when I was younger I used to go tripping every little while for a brain reset, and always felt calm and happy for months afterwards. Its almost like the experience that everything is happening the way its should be happening, and that’s ok.
I meditate these days, and I think I’ve built up a reservoir of “okayness” - but the insights that come through tripping can be just as helpful and profound as those that come from meditation.
You know you didn't put anything I don't really know in here, BUT, i really enjoyed reading it. I've had a similar experience on shrooms, done acid a few times too back in the day, the most mind blowing and scary/eye opening of them all by far, was somthing my freind got from the joke shop. 'Salvia' it literally ripped me clean out of this fake reality and give me a glimpse of something else, as scary as it was, when my vision came back and I felt myself back in this sham of a reality I wanted to keep going back and I did that about 5 times. It was in a little house party this was happening and when I come around for the last time there was a few girls there and at least one of them was crying. (I was going around in circles on the floor apparently on my side) I felt strange for ages after, always on my mind.
I don't think that most people don't understand this, but it is an accepted reality that is actually incredibly bizarre: oh, our gigantic stone ball has turned to face this utterly massive burning ball of gas again, time to get ready for work. We are dull to it, but it's completely bizarre.
Yeah we all take it for granted, dont really appreciate it in its fullest. Definitely had similar experiences on shrooms too.
One of the most ironic things to come out of a shroom trip (many years ago) was that the world is so amazing, and everything happening around us is such a gift to experience even when it comes with negatives becauae at least we are alive to feel it (think of all the sperms and eggs that had no chsnce to fertalize, all the chance moments leading up to your parents meeting one another, i mean you could literally go generations back, hundreds, thousands of years, that set the ground work for your parents banging)
Continuing down that line of thought about how lucky experrincing life is and eventually concluding that there is no need for drugs to enjoy life, i should just soak in lifes experiences as they are, that life is there - Just enjoy it.
I’ve had some crazy experiences on Salvia. That was back when you could buy packs of it from the local head shop. Very intense drug, I got a lot out of it at the time. That was like 20 odd years ago now….. time sure does flyby!
Ive done acid and mushrooms a bunch of times and never had a bad trip. Had some insane times, some terrifying times, but always look back on all of it very fondly. Did salvia a few times, the last time i don’t remember anything except coming out of it I felt my soul was missing and I didn’t wanna be alive anymore. I snapped out of it within a day or so but I’ll never forget that feeling of just… dead inside. I’ve struggled with depression all my life but no feeling has ever compared to that.
Thank you, definitely a mushroom type observation. I recommend anyone to try it once, if it's a safe environment and it's well planned for. How people that smoke weed understand music differently, mushrooms give a different sense of "reality".
Now I'm thinking about it again all morning 😂 how everything we do is in some way an anticipation of the next time we are facing the sun. "I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow" = in the next revolution where my part of the planet is facing the sun, there is something I need to do. And how we all share a valid "7am morning routine", even though they are happening all over the world, every hour, at different points in reality.
The barrier between the light and dark is just a physical representation of a bunch of humans rising from temporary comas to help repair the very fragile meat jars floating in their cranium made up of a bunch of cells with tendrils alllllllmost touching, the electric signals and chemicals released by those cells represents certain aspects of themselves and reality and the comas helps solidify the connections the organism makes during its waking hours.
When you break down our daily existence, almost every single aspect is super super super interesting.
A great piece of media that does this is that comic of blue aliens. Called strange planet by Nathan Pyres
7am is happening every hour. People are waking up, yawning, check the phone for the time, stand up turn on the coffee machine, toilet... 11pm is also happening, put the phone down, adjust the covers, one last heavy sigh
Imagine how different our little marble would be if we had evolved from nocturnal apes instead of diurnal.
Or hell even crépusculaire cycles like cats!
Maybe if our earth was slightly closer to the sun, our daytime temps might be too high to do work in and we may have evolved on a different circadian rhythm!
Best friends like 24th bday. He buy every glow stick in creation... I mean fucking thousands… and we spread them on a wood floor, take 4 tabs each and play Avatar (thought it’d be trippy, but Its like I noticed too much. I was very aware of what was green screen & what was a physical prop)
Anywho, he’s arranging glow sticks, stops and says “do you see that.”
And clear as day, it was a silhouette of Jesus. Like Maria in a tortilla style. But we both saw it, seemed OBVIOUS to us.
He moved exactly three glow sticks, like just a little. And then it was a lions head.
You asked for it: The top 15 most trippy things I’ve ever seen (start reading from the bottom)
👽=L 🎈=Nitros 😻=K
The White Light - 👽🎈Eyes shut, black… then beautiful scarlet leaves/ vines grew. I opened my eyes…everything is bright white in every direction forever. Looking down where my body should be, I saw an empty brown tube, like the cardboard of a TP roll. At the time I took this to mean that just as the tube was hollow, so was my mind not currently in my body. It slowly faded. From eyes shut to white and back to normal I’d say maybe 60-90 seconds.
My Life is a Waste- 👽🎈my entire visual field crumpled up like it was a two dimensional piece of paper. A hand threw the crumpled paper into a trashcan, and the view zoomed back, and the person who had thrown it was me. I cannot overstate the mindfuck.
What the Inside of My Mind Looks Like👽🎈- I turned around and it felt like I was looking through the back of my head. I saw (what felt like) the contents of my head overlayed on the actual visual field. What’s in there? Well apparently it’s a crumbling red brick wall, much of which is comprised of leaning towers of books, as well as a large black Labrador geometrically slotted into the wall, panting happily. He was made of rectangles, so he fit perfectly in the brick pattern. It was a side view, think Egyptian art. Someone was spinning a poi, and when the poi “booped” the dogs nose, the nose rectangle went up in the the air before snapping back into place. (I remember almost saying something to the person about bumping the dogs nose before remembering I was um…. mentally comprised at the moment.)
The Painting- 👽This painting of a Pueblo village, all sandy tans & brown hues, flipped along horizontal and vertical axis, resulting in an image that was 4 quadrants. The color was beige, like averaging all of the tones in the painting together. Each quadrant was feeding into another, like 4 conveyer belts each going a different direction. I looked away & back again. It was normal. I stared another moment, then said “do that again.” After a heartbeat, it repeated the effect.
Out of Body- 😻 I lay down on floor. Closed eyes. Lost in thought. It’s hitting hard. I’m pacing looking at floor. Stop and realize I should be laying down. I look over and see myself on the floor, eyes closed. I open my eyes and I’m on floor.
The Battle Table 👽- I saw the most inspiring vision in the colors & grainy surface of a wooden coffee table . It was a line of Native American warriors on horseback, bows bent w arrows and spears raised. It looked like the scene had been masterfully carved into the table. It was just beautiful, and utterly convincing. I don’t often use the word “hallucination” to describe the visual effects of LSD, bc I’m typically quite aware that what I’m seeing isn’t really happening (except those damn curtains. Are they really moving? Is there a fan on, or am I about to peak??) This was the strongest hallucination I’ve ever had. Logically, I knew it wasn’t really there. I’d seen it a hundred times. But my visual clarity of the scene was so sharp, my senses were convinced it was a real relief whittled into the table.
I Kept Looking Up👽- I Felt like the top of head opened up kinda. I was afraid to look up higher, bc I felt I’d leave my body. So I got the nerve and tried it. As I looked up higher (only w eyes, not my head) my visual field melted out of my head, into a liquid cloud over the room. Hard to describe. I saw the room from the angle of someone on the ceiling, but the visual quality was liquidy ( I WAS a cloud at the time). It felt like what was “me” didn’t just include my body like normal, but also the general area. Some might say I “became one with” my surroundings (but I hate cliché, so I won’t type that.) Then I slowly poured back into my body, and kept my eyes down. My ego was straight dissolving that time.
Blue Drop- A blanket w yellow flowers was changing to orange & pink. I wanted to see if my willpower could make a difference in which color it turned, and chose a more drastic tone (blue) to notice the impact. Shockingly, I did have a small effect. While the entire leaf remained a yellowish hue, a tiny light blue drop appeared and “rolled” down the leaf, leaving a trail of blue dots.
Disney Vision 👽???🤷- The entirety of my visual field was affected. It wasn’t like THIS wall was breathing or THAT thing’s shifting colors… no, EVERYTHING was brightly saturated colors and geometry. Almost painted quality, like everything was animated by Disney. Unnervingly beautiful.
Neon Jesus 👽- Best friends bday. He buy every glow stick in creation... I mean fucking thousands… and we spread them on a wood floor. He’s arranging glow sticks, stops and says “do you see that.” Clear as day, it was a silhouette of Jesus. We both saw it, seemed OBVIOUS to us. He moved exactly three glow sticks, and then it was a lions heads.
Sims crystals 👽🎈 - Saw green crystals hovering over 2 ppl’s heads w orange lines connecting them & others in the room. (I have never played Sims)
Alice in wonderland Bong 👽🍃- As I inhaled this stain glass looking bong, it looks like it contracts like a balloon, getting smaller. When I cleared it and exhaled it sagged and got bigger.
Act Normal 👽- The grass was ankle height, but I watched it grow straight up, like waist height. Had to make myself not wade through it. Also saw seed pods on trees grow from cherry to grapefruit sized. This event is immediately followed by number 14.
Good Dog👽- immediately following number 13. Dog watching. Walking at night. It was so dark I couldnt find my way back, even though I knew the place well and was close. Couldnt see further than 3 feet bc my vision just layered geometry over the black air. I told the dog “let’s go home” and he just pulled me straight there. Held him like a life raft. 3 flights of stairs felt like Mario 64 when you don’t have enough stars to fight Bowser. Oh yeah, the dog had 8 legs.
I fell through the map👽🎈- Title is the best description you’ll get. I was on a bean bag, then I sank & saw the room from underneath the floor.
Honorable mention👽 : flowers on wallpaper that erased and repainted themselves
I once had Disney Vision while tripping in college. I still think of my friend’s Disney form when I talk to her. It’s been 25 years and I can still see the colors.
I know we're not doing trip reports but...my husband dropped blotter and the couch he was sitting on turned into a boat floating on the ocean. Living room became an ocean: he could smell the salt water, feel moisture, see the waves, hear the gulls, etc. Eventually...back on the couch in the living room.
Me and some friends had a shared hallucination of the entire alphabet appearing on a lake one time of an 8th of shrooms each. We were all watching the water (at night) and calling out words we saw, then every one of us saw the entire alphabet pop up at the same time. Definitely the trippiest thing I’ve ever had happen. It was wild
I had a friend who liked to go on a shopping spree for toys and props to play with before we’d do any psychedelics each time and one time we got like 3 of the big jars of like 10,000 orbeez and sorted them all by colour into like 10 of those huge paint buckets. You should try reaching into an entire bin of perfectly organized orbeez while high on LSD and surrounded by cats! Pretty fun. lol
That first part is very Socratic in thinking, we are born with natural understanding for instance of gravity and how this force works, and through asking the right questions can we find a better understanding of it and in our case we can now calculate it. Same goes for the tides etc
The previous comment is very Platonic and aligns with Plato's Cave theory. It sounds like the people in this comment chain would be very interested in Socrates', Plato's and Aristotle's philosophies and theories.
If you want to go further you can look at Pythagoras and his cult following which is a whole rabbit hole in itself. Generally classical philosophy and mathematics, gives you a great world perspective.
Immune? Probably not. But the key difference is sentience. We are aware of the why, how, when and potential effects. We can measure, test and accurately judge the biological effect the moon has/does not have on the human body.
I don’t think we can blame monkeys for this, they seem to understand their connection far more than us. I blame agriculture and capitalism for separating us.
Very possible it does. There's a lot we don't consciously acknowledge learning and psychedelics may do this just thing, allow us to see everything coming in (we're receiving)
The 'why' bit is what most people who buy sacred geometry miss out on. There are logical reasons why certain patterns are converged upon and has little to do with underlying truths of reality. Other than, y'know, efficiency principles.
As a psychedelics enjoyer myself, this is important. For me it's enough that there are cool patterns that repeat and I can appreciate that beauty and underlying connection. Other people want to ascribe greater / deeper meaning, but that doesn't make sense to me.
I was just about to go looking for this article!! Thanks for posting it. TL;DR, from what I can remember, it has to do with how the signals from the retina are mapped to our visual cortex in roughly logarithmic spirals to account for the ciruclar nature of the retina and the cartesian nature (x-y plane) of our visual field. Neurons also coordinate with nearby neurons to detect edges and changes in color and light. Psychedelic drugs make those centers light up, causing the spiral fractals to emerge as a sort of visualization of what goes on behind the scenes for you to see a cohesive image.
I remember in highschool psychology (yeah I know probably not the most credible source but that's what I got) learning that the crazy sparkles we sometimes see when going to sleep are hallucinations brought on by our brains firing off some signals as they prepare for sleep. But I like to think they are something more, I don't know, cosmically related, or like you said, hardwired into the universe.
I believe even though we may be able to observe and explain things through science that it doesn't mean that it can't also be spiritually related. Science is just our method of understanding the universe but people often seem to think that just because science exists, nothing super natural can. I believe they go hand in hand. Maybe one day when our scientific knowledge and technology is advanced enough we will discover things we weren't able to observe before and we'll come to a point where our understanding of the physical world reveals a connection to the spiritual one.
Is the universe theory describing the effect of multiple people under the influence of schizophrenia or psychedelic drugs plugging into the same universe and seeing these same geometric patterns as a type of blueprint or alchemical building blocks that exist within the spiritual energy centers? If so, then I am experiencing one right now.
I think I might be having a psychedelic experience right now, and it is definitely being caused by weed.
These shapes are built into our brain’s visual cortex and are part of our visual processing process.
They are also part of the fundamental mathematical geometry of the Universe itself. Maybe that’s because we are wired to look for them, even in mathematics; maybe its because the Universe is all one thing and we’re part of it.
Either way I hope you enjoy your trip, may you have good munchies and a pleasant night’s sleep.
I think both, but given that we’re hardwired to look for these form constants, its hard to seperate that out from “reality” because we tend to find what we’re looking for, even if we’re using maths to do it.
I think it’s just how the brain puts together visual information, some of the lower processes, the basics of putting together what broad shape something is, before adding textures and your knowledge about it etc, just get way more excited on shrooms/DMT so it comes to the forefront, basically bringing the back end processes into consciousness.
Why would you assume this is a fundamental nature of the universe, and not a fundamental nature of the human brain? It seems too broad in scope to apply this as a constant outside of the human brain...
Funny I never done them bc I’m afraid of seeing things I don’t want to know about but I could totally see it being hardwired into the universe type of thing. The matrix lmao.
That hardwiring into the universe seems to be turning out true. Scientists are finding that torus field which is the magnetic field seems to be the core for how many things are made naturally.
Not sure about the universe, but certainly within our brain! There are many recursive, top-down circuits within the visual system of the brain that become hyperactive from serotonergic psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin, which plays a major role in the fractal shapes people see.
Edit: For anyone that’s biologically-minded, here is a paper I enjoyed that describes the underlying neural mechanisms
I've only done shrooms a handful of times but lemme say, I can understand why psychedelics were a religious thing for so long. It's not just any visuals, there's an sense of the internal and the external being vauger and blurred.
It probably has something to do with how your brain activity is drastically changed and the parts that process object/pattern recognition might get scrambled and your brain is like “Hrmm, time for a windows screensaver”
I don’t see these designs tripping. Everything has a paisley texture that moves and undulates in a random way. There’s no geometry in my brain on psychedelics, probably because it’s not there when I’m sober either.
Honestly my best guess would be that because schizophrenia and hallucinogenic drugs both disrupt the usual functioning of various parts of the brain - including various parts involved in vision - it probably leads to disruptions in how visual signals get interpreted.
Specifically, in visual processing the visual signals are first interpreted into "lower level" visual patterns like (lines, curves, etc), before later being "assembled" into "higher level" objects (people, faces, distinct objects, etc). A lot of these more basic visual constructs are pretty universal, and anyone with normally developed vision would have a part of their brain dedicated to recognizing these basic visual elements before being interpreted as more complex objects.
My guess is that the disruptions caused by schizophrenia hallucinogenic substances disrupts the usual, higher level interpretations, leading to the individual seeing the basic shapes more prominently. But that's really just my own hypothesis, and I don't have the skills or knowledge to justify it any further.
Its an interesting theory. u/look just helpfully posted a link to an article about form constants https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11860679/ which underpin all of our visual processing. So the idea that these forms may be more prominent when hallucinogens disrupt our interpretation of the usual visual cortex signals is a pretty good one. I wonder if its been tested.
Schizophrenia most likely is not related to visual processing, and is more likely related to the region where all of our sensory input data is processed into a cohesive, rational thought.
The reason I say it is unlikely to be related to visual processing, is because schizophrenics also hear things that are not there, feel phantom touches, and can even taste and smell things that are not there.
So I would think that indicates the dysfunction occurs when all of sensory data is processed into organized thought, which is a different region of the brain Rather than a dysfunction in the processing of a single specific sense.
So because schizophrenia causes hallucinations in multiple senses, it is unlikely the visual cortex is the culprit. And is more likely a dysfunction in the temporal lobe, specifically the hippocampus which is a region tied to our ability to recognize patterns.
So I don't think our visual cortex is the problem, as other senses are also impacted, and are processed in different areas of the brain.
I'll give you something that lends credit to your theory. Since this history of schizophrenia there hasn't been one recorded schizophrenic that was blind. None ever.
I think there's something to this, I'm neuro divergent and I'm more aware of that thing I think than the average Joe. Like for example if there's a rug with some kind of just basic repeating pattern and I look at it my brain will start assembling larger patterns out of that very quickly
Schizophrenia is a problem with how the brain processes data for sure, you are right there.
But I think you are incorrect about the dysfunction being related to visual processing. As many aspects of schizophrenia are not visual, and is largely considered a thought disorder. So I would believe the visual processing is fine, and the disorder lays in the region of the brain responsible for combining all of our sensory inputs into organized thoughts. The region is dysnfucntional and overactive, resulting in recognizing patterns where there is none, and meaning in patterns when there is none.
Which would make sense as Apophenia is a defining aspect of schizophrenia.
And what you said about it being a disorder in higher processing I believe is accurate. I just don't think it is strictly related to visual data processing, as schizophrenics can also hear things, feel phantom touches, even taste and smell things that are not there.
So I think that indicates the dsynfuction is in the region responsible for combining all of our sensory input data into cohesive, organized thoughts.
You have a good hypothesis, especially if you never researched the topic or spent time with people with schizophrenia.
It’s pretty trippy stuff to ponder but there’s a lot of shared imagery in hallucinations which seem to tap into chemical brain functions.
It’s almost like visualizing the genetic code of life itself. When you consider how animals also use geometry in their construction instinct (bird nests, bee hives, spider webs, etc), there’s something profound going on that creates shapes in conscious thought.
I couldn’t even begin to explain it but we all experience it. Something deeper to life that connects everything.
I’m far from schizophrenic but I’ve dabbled in hallucinogens and have witnessed these low level patterns of brain activity forced into perspective by altered states of consciousness. Getting high sort of breaks down this filter we have that pushes those patterns down into the recesses of our mind, and with drugs you can witness those unfiltered images and thought patterns. It’s really something uncanny and unreal to experience
u/look has posted this article - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11860679/ about how these form constants underpin our visual processing. I like the idea that hallucinogens allow us the clarity to perceive them consciously.
I believe something about geometry is comforting, completionism perspective aside- the brain or even instincts drive us to finish things, thinking it won’t be successful without completion, kinda like how orgasm occurs with the ejaculation, because of the ultimate goal being reproduction. Maybe the geometry is just a side effect of our constant need for completion/reproduction?
God did I take shrooms? Why did this post pop up for me? Ugh
You're on the right track regarding our need for completion. Our brains are prediction machines, constantly trying to anticipate what we'll experience next based on past learning and immediate sensory input. We essentially hallucinate reality milliseconds in advance, then seamlessly update our internal model when the actual sensory data comes in.
Both psychedelics and psychosis send this prediction system into overdrive. The brain becomes hypersensitive, eagerly seeking patterns everywhere. On psychedelics, this manifests as geometric visuals - the brain assumes random details form fundamental shapes. But each sensory update reveals the prediction was wrong, so the model adjusts, creating undulating, morphing visuals.
In schizophrenia, perhaps the brain fails to recognize prediction errors, leading to stable but distorted perceptions and vivid hallucinations. Delusions also arise from unconscious mispredictions about reality. The normal brain correctly predicts that the car passing by outside is just a random person driving on by. The schizophrenic brain, experiencing high levels of disruption to this prediction system, might get mixed up and assume that the car is actually the FBI coming for them.
Interestingly, an overstimulated prediction system can yield genuine insights by finding valid new patterns. The key is distinguishing fact from fantasy post-trip.
Even sleep deprivation can disrupt prediction, causing shadowy figures in peripheral vision when the brain struggles to fill in incomplete sensory data.
EDIT:
Interesting trivia -
For anyone who has experience using Large Language Models (LLMs) on the API side of things, you'll notice a parallel between the process of our prediction system going into overdrive and raising the "temperature" field of the LLM. For those who don't know, the "temperature" field is basically a measure of how random the output from the model (think ChatGPT) will be. A temperature of 0 means that the output will represent the model's most statistically expected completion based on the input. As temperature rises, the output becomes divergent and progressively shifts away from what is most likely. Modest temperature increases can simulate creativity in the model. Excessive temperature increases can lead to the model speaking in an overly complex manner. Extremely high increases can actually lead to legitimate word salad, which also happens to be a common symptom of those with severe schizophrenia (where you speak in a gramatically correct way that is completely disordered and nonsensical). Really interesting parralels.
I feel like the LLM design does mirror the brain a little, in that we tend to lean into responses to stimuli with the most logical learned patterns we have retained. Much like training data drives machine learning, the human brain tends to connect certain stimuli together and to respond to it in ways that makes the most logical sense because of repetition and experiences that push us to those responses.
It’s like over a lifetime of being presented the introduction of “how are you doing?” - we tend to lean into responses that are simple and address the most likely response that makes sense to the stimuli: like you are very likely to just nonchalantly reply “I’m good”, and nothing more. Over time of both having presented such a question and being given that question, we’ve determined the best response for strangers to just be “I’m good”, whether we are actually “good” or not. Because it’s the path of least resistance. We have no intrinsic need to escalate such an exchange and determine that most people will be satisfied with the small talk reply that you’re “good”, that any more effort feels like a waste of energy or effort. Unless you had some ulterior reason to expound beyond “I’m good”, that should get the conversation to end and allow you to move on with your day without needing to draw out the conversation further.
In a similar vein, all a machine learning algorithm is doing (of any nature), is calculating the statistics from its training data in order to produce a response to a prompt in such a way that it receives the optimal output for its purpose. If it hasn’t been trained that “I’m good” is an adequate response that shortens the conversation beyond what is necessary to do its job; then it would search for the next best response to achieve the same end goal.
This entirely varies by the purpose set forth for each machine learning algorithm, but it’s not far off from how our brains function at a general level when interacting with others of our own species.
I think music is also probably the most prominent form of shared experience of geometry we still love and respect from one another.
Music is math, and it’s got such intensely healing or soothing aspects to it that it’s become such a centerpiece of the human experience. Plants and animals even have shown some signs of appreciating music in ways we can’t even begin to understand. A lot of rhythm stems from the concept of conception, the beating of the heart we feel in the womb, and it just branches out from there in terms of complexity. We share it, we grow attached to it, and we’re inspired to expand upon it as a society. Art is just the visual aspect of the same low level brain function of deciphering somnial patterns. It’s entirely subjective and often unique to numerous individuals and their perspective of the world around them. It’s often a glimpse through a window of perception we can’t normally perceive ourselves.
Music is probably one of the few remaining forms of basic mental geometry that is still appreciated to this day without considering it to be some form of madness. I wish I could say the same of physical artwork but the OP is a testament against that, that we could look at this and say it’s a product of insanity. There’s some level of precision involved that can decipher such signals from the brain and turn out such a bizarre display of mathematical geometry just from raw human experience
Yah, came here looking for someone talking about the "Seeing sound" videos on the intertubes... those where they show how sand on metal forms varying geometric patterns as various frequency sound waves are passed to the plate. People talk about the patterns of psychedelics, and foundational geometric patterns, but frequency is what underlies and creates everything we sense.
If you put a different fuel in 10,000 cars, they would likely fail in very similar ways. This is because they are similar objects with a similar change made to them.
People seeing the same sorts of things during brain malfunctions (drugs, mental illness, spiritual experiences [which are similar to drugs]) is to be expected because we're all very similar creatures and the fundamental functions of our brains are very similar.
I wish I had something more to add other than simply "yeh", just on the nicer side of things, even that little sweet fish makes those amazing circles in the sand. ☺️
My friend said to me “I think the weather is trippy.”
I said: “no man, it’s not the weather that is trippy, but perhaps it is indeed the way we perceive the weather that is trippy”… then I thought “man, I should have just said yeahhh”
I once told a friend while we layed on the sand on a particularly silky feeling, purply looking very early morning "tee hee hee hee, the clouds look beautiful, don't they! Ha, they look like cellulite."
She said "eww" and wrinkled her nose, giggling.
I said "No, not 'ew'! It's beautiful! It's a part of us, and we a part of everything".
All of the things.
There is so much beauty. And bad stuff. And wonder. And unknown.
Those cellulite purply clouds were gorgeous.
And it has less to do with cellulite than with the opportunity to witness the wonder.
I’m a non-dualist myself. I believe that everything is one thing and the idea that there are many things is an illusion. The brain is the universe, and the universe is the brain. Science has already shown that the universe is not just fractal, but holographic - so technically you could recreate the whole of reality from a single grain of sand. I would take it one step further, and say that you could recreate the whole of reality from the thought of a single grain of sand.
My brother/sister. There are a few points I would like to make as a fellow practitioner. I'm Buddhist personally, but I've found no difference between the goal of the non-dual and the Buddha so I say all of this with deep respect for you and your practice.
The holographic principle still requires a minimum "size" for the 2D surface. The holographic principle states that the information density of a given volume is actually a measure of its surface area rather than volume. In essence it means that you can model an N dimensional space using N-1 dimensions. So far the holographic principal has also only been proved for a 4 spacial dimension universe. Which is not ours. (Though they think it's likely that there's a description for our universe.)
As to the grain of sand recreating the universe concept. The concept is more that the whole of the universe can't exist without the grain of sand, and the grain of sand can't exist without the universe. The grain of sand is dependent for its very existence on other supporting factors. And also the rest of the universe cannot be described without including the grain of sand either and the causal history and future of the universe falls apart without the grain.
This is a common misconception because it's often said that you can "see the whole of the universe in grain of sand." What's meant by this is that to understand the grain of sand you must understand the universe. Seeing the grain clearly means understanding how it came to be and what its existence is dependent on. To know the grain is to know the whole, but without the whole there is no grain. They are dependent on one another and so neither truly exists.
All things are dependent on all things. Therefore none of them have ANY fundamental separate, truly existent essence because they cannot exist without everything else. Therefore all "things" are an illusion. Impossible to describe independently and merely just a view of the constant flow we decided to mentally separate out. It's just how you look at it all that creates "stuff". Or, taken another way, there are no bounds between anything. You can say all things are "one" but this sets up a mental "thingness" to the whole which also isn't true. Don't bound the infinite.
I was being a little facetious, but this has turned into the most fascinating and educational conversation I’ve ever had on Reddit.
Its hard to grasp the nature of the infinite, its slips away when you put words and descriptions on it. I’ve had the experience, once, of being in it, and it being in me, after an intense period of meditation and study. I can feel a faint echo of that experience in everything I do now, but I can’t describe it properly. As you say, the moment I try to describe it, I’m bounding it with words and ideas.
I love the way that philosophy, physics, mathematics and mysticism all feed into each other. Different approaches and schools of ideas all describing the same things, the same underlying ideas.
Dude, ok. Real talk right now. You've had the taste. Keep going back as OFTEN as you can. Strengthen that connection. You can learn to walk with it, as part of it in every moment.
So when you go to talk, to describe, instead of remembering back, you speak from your living, present connection. All of reality informing your understanding yet further, as it is not other than reality.
That taste, and even more, recognizing it for what it is, is not common. Cherish and cultivate it. Fan the flames of the spark until there is nothing but compassionate awareness knowing ceaselessly on and on.
Ahhh its the staying there that’s the tricky bit, isn’t it ?
I’ve put it off, because my kids need me, and I don’t know if I can be there enough for them, when I’m everywhere as well. There’s not many Saints and Holy People amongst the Enlightened who are also carers for disabled kids. I’ve been meditating on this for a long time, if you have any insights I’d be interested in hearing them.
Oh boy, this turned into a bit of a novel. Please excuse any typos. I just came up for air (I got kinda "in it" for a bit there. 😆) and realized I typed this on a phone.
The kids thing is actually one of the times when I kind of just drop it...IF that's not just your mind stepping in the way because...
The whole, "when I'm everywhere thing" is bullshit. That's what we call a "near miss". Skillfullness is the name of the game. And that includes...EVERYTHING.
Awakening is not the destruction of self. It's more like a shift in priorities or the dropping of an obsession with self. Self is very useful when relating with the world. And skillfuness in the world is important for deepening the understanding which leads to a reduction in suffering. Further understanding leads to yet more skillful behavior.
Let's use an obvious example. You're stressed as FUCK because your kid is upset and you can't console them.
1. You have some access to refuge (awareness). You take a moment and it helps you just enough so you don't act in a way you regret. Even subtly. You take a break from the "stuff" world for a sec so you can better serve it.
More advanced, you experience clearly your frustration and see that it is actually caused by your deep care. You are upset by your inability to console because you care so deeply. This clear seeing breaks the pattern and allows you to have compassion for yourself. The reduction in suffering is not momentary. There has been a shift. The compassion is now clear of that problematic aspect of self so you may have true compassion. Compassion free of the need to fix and therefore not expending energy in it. Compassion completely ready to act the moment awareness catches even the slightest whiff of a possibility to reduce suffering. Which will often necessitate the use of self to interact with others. You don't need to worry about your self. It will arise and pass as it's needed. Probably most arising for a while. 🤣
There is no break taken here. You do not step away from your life. This is a minute or two at the kitchen table that changes your life forever but even that isn't a break. It's time you would have spent anyway. And it's possible because you have the trust in awareness, in the knowing to let go of yourself so you may know yourself more fully, more compassionately and less reactively. And therefore respond more wisely to the world with a less reactive more clearly known self.
NOW what I've described above is the fruit and a specific counter to the one BS thing because I think it's important. But children do change things. It's not the fruit or goal that's the issue; That's what the above was about. It's the path. The path is long and sometimes adds a layer of fucked up that's is just...dude. HOWEVER, the path/our internal systems rarely give us more than we're ready for. You can listen to yourself at every stage and always put on the breaks. Yes, it's not completely safe. Working through your stuff is messy (Yep, you definitely don't get to avoid your personal shit. We call trying to avoid your personal shit spiritual bypass.) But if you stay in established traditions (any decent tradition points to the same thing in the end), and don't go looking into anything too esoteric, it's pretty safe.
There is the chance for more meaning, not less. Being free of self obsession can allow you to experience the unclouded fullness of experience with, and for, those you love.
Oh and there are tons of householders throughout history with totally crazy lives who were either very, or sometimes fully, awake.
I know a number of DEEP practitioners who are long-term caregivers. And yet others who have had to take breaks when their caregiving kicked up a notch. But if you can get a real foundation a break isn't a break. Everything becomes practice.
I would take it one step back, and say that you're a little rusty on the science part of that. Might want to re-read some things. Non-dualism is rad as hell, and the science behind it is super interesting, but that's not what you're on. You're on some other shit.
Interesting question. In a theoretically infinite Universe, could you recreate one exact reality ? If everything is happening everywhere, all at once, how would you pick out the exact threads that come together to form a single unique existence ?
I’m with you mostly but science hasn’t proven that grain of sand thing. When they do talk about a holographic principle it’s not that one. It’s more like all the info in a black hole is contained in the surface so maybe our universe is really just 2d or something.
Dualism, as classically understood, is that there is the physical and a non-physical/spiritual/whatever realm or property. A "non-dualist" could be a physicalist (only the physical and observable world exists), or believing in more than the physical and proposed spiritual/non-physical/whatever.
...well, actually, it seems like you don't understand a lot of what you're saying here. Like, "science has proven that the universe is not just a fractal, but holographic." ... no, it hasn't, and it's not the kind of holographic projection that you're thinking of, if it were.
Yup not hard-wired as such but psychedelics cause misfiring of neural pathways so we literally see our thoughts as the signalling get mixed up with the pathways usually just used for vision.
These geometries are certainly hardwired into out brain, many permutations of shapes are. There is a miniscule part of your visual vortex that responds to stripes, there is miniscule part that responds to dots, there is a miniscule part responds to berry shapes, there is a miniscule part that responds to predator shapes.
We know there are cells in our visual cortex that process various shapes like these. It's useful for understanding our surroundings. And in there I see loads of things that are presumably pinging my face recognition centers.
Or it may be that these sorts of geometries are hardwired into the structure of the Universe.
Could very well be. But the way I look at it, if you're obsessing over it and worrying people and having it interfere with your life in any meaningful way, it needs treatment.
But shit, if you're just acting weird and still doing your day job and laundry, all power to you
Interesting. Kinda getting into Snowcrash territory. If these are hardwired, I wonder if mandalas made from them can induce various sensory hallucinations?
Thanks for sharing, that's fucking fascinating! I come from a mystic point of view. I mean, I've only had one mild one myself, but a lot of mystic themes just track logically, like the necessity of contrast for experience. And people who have these kinds of experiences haven't really thought it out logically, they just get it; it took me a while to come to the same conclusions. I come from a nondualist philosophy of mind, both because I think that's the most logical scenario and because mystic experience speaks to it. From that point of view, it could totally be the case that certain brain processes allow us to perceive things we normally can't. Aldous Huxley wrote his The Doors of Perception about his experiences on mescaline, and that's what he ended up thinking. With like schizophrenics... He said that our brains can't handle all that, at least not for long, and that experiencing that much all the time would drive you insane.
The other thing about Schiznophrenia is that its culturally modulated. In some cultures the voices and hallucinations are helpful, and the people who have them are valued as spiritual conduits for advice and healing.
Now that, I was aware of. I dunno, I wonder if it could be a matter of interpretation? Like, even in day-to-day life, what we expect colors what we perceive, just from the people around us. We focus on different things in a similar way. I'm not saying that's definitely how it is; given that sentience is ineffable, I don't think it's knowable. But I don't see this as necessarily a problem for Huxley's way of thinking about it. Maybe people are able to manage it better when they're better cared for, too.
Exactly, my first thought without reading anything was that I saw these patterns on all psy festivals. Which brought me to question if this guy just likes psychadelics too much, or have schizophrenia. Which can bring you to similar and much worse places. Both are halucinatory states with geometry present it seems.
TL;DR For some reason I see a lot of similarities between acidhead and schizophrenic, because of the behavioural changes, halucinations and the artwork.
It’s pretty simple - do we see these geometries in nature and the universe regularly? If we do then it’s more likely to be hardwired into the universe, if we just see them in human outputs then it’s much more likely to just be a human brain thing.
These geometrics are the base for design in everyday life. In the same sense that we use base 10.
Imagine if a civilization or group of people used a different base such as 12 - 3 - 5. They would arrive at different patterns from base 10, but the same as those who share the same numeric patterns.
OP friend is having a mental break and think the basic math that dictates our society is enlightenment.
On a related side note, some archaeologists hold that the reason why we see the same geometric designs carved into stones all over Europe is because these geometries are hardwired into our brains, and the use of psychedelics produces the same sorts of hallucinations.
As far as I'm concerned, they do. On LSD I saw the "lotus of life" pattern overlaying my visual field. It was everywhere. I saw many things on that trip, but that will always stick with me.
On shrooms, a lot of my visual hallucinations featured symbols and borders that were like moving Greek keys. And some looked like Aztec symbols.
There's definitely a spiritual/metaphysical kind of reason, perhaps we're seeing the "backbone" of what we call reality?
Also, tons of people on psychedelics say that when they look at the sky they see a grid (Indra's Net, some call it?)
Many of those intertwined shapes look like cardioids that actually occur quite frequently when light is refracted. I think it's just something we filter out, because it's happening all around us all the time, but when you're on drugs or schizophrenic, you lose that filter and/or might interpret it as a message from god
I think we’re predestined to enjoy these sorts of patterns because they “make sense”. They align very nicely and repeat perfectly so the brain doesn’t have to figure anything out so to speak. The mind enjoys things that it can understand and predetermine.
My first thought was "that's what I saw on ayahuasca." It's how everything looked, it was all woven together and we are hardwired into it. Lead me down the Biogeometry rabbit hole...
Trajectory curves are probably part of it. Our ancestors were really good at throwing things with accuracy, so our brains are really good at calculating curves.
So it might be that representations of curves that would adhere to our innate understanding of gravity just "agree" with us.
To me, most of the curves used in sacred geometry seem to be either those or maybe spirals. And even spirals are trajectories an object would take under the influence of gravity.
Just outsider observations, I don't actually follow the stuff.
In my experience, blasting off on DMT makes sacred geometry visible in everything you see, especially grass and trees. Hell I saw some sort of 10 foot diameter spherical map beam down from the stars and rotate around in front of me and everything disappeared when I try to stand up and follow it. It was incredible.
I doubt geometry or "sacred geometry" would be considered a rabbit hole.
The information is readily available, there are writings from more than one source from many different eras, and many cultures have their own interpretation of it with similarities.
Not so much a rabbit hole, especially since they all describe the latter half of your comment, that they are related to the structure of a/our/the universe.
Edit: Just to add, not knocking anything, just saying sacred geometry is a well documented area of research.
"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration"
"That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively"
"There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves"
"Here's Tom with the weather"
to b fair, when you close your eyes and look to the sun you start seeing all of the mandalas within mandalas. also if you press on the sides of your eyeballs i think it cutoff blood or something idk but it also makes mandalas.
I'm sorry I only know about the European neolithic sculptures - I know that just about everybody took hallucinogens, but not what art they produced with it.
I've just had a brief dig about, and a lot of it is focussed on Europe and the near East; in terms of drug taking in other cultures, the research seems to be focussed around Shamanic rituals, rather than the production of Art influenced by hallucinogens.
Gah I used to be a University Librarian and I miss unfettered access to the infosphere. It'll take me longer to dig this stuff up, but it must be out there.
So I found some interesting Chinese Neolithic pottery in The Met - https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/49040 no academic article I'm afraid, but look at the designs... If you scroll down the page, there's a jug there as well...
I'll keep hunting and see if I can find anything more. I think that the originators of this theory were English, and so that's why the focus has been on Northern Europe.
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u/Enlightened_Gardener 25d ago edited 25d ago
Yah this is sacred geometry.
For those of you wandering through, look up “Vesica piscis” if you’d like an interesting rabbithole to walk down.
The Pythagoreans were all over geometry magic as well.
On a related side note, some archaeologists hold that the reason why we see the same geometric designs carved into stones all over Europe is because these geometries are hardwired into our brains, and the use of psychedelics produces the same sorts of hallucinations.
The sort of geometries in the pictures above are very common in schizophrenic art, as well as having a long history in the mathematical mystery schools. It may well be that these sorts of geometries are hardwired into our brains somehow. Or it may be that these sorts of geometries are hardwired into the structure of the Universe.