LSD and the holotropic mind

In the early 2000’s, I was attending a postgraduate course in human ecology. I had just finished studying psychology, and I had actually had enough of the theories and the different, partialized views on the psyche and how to approach diagnostics and therapeutics.

Did you have to present a test to your client, maybe to assess his level of intelligence, to get a pattern and diagram of his emotional tendencies, did you have to do research using statistics and correlations, did you have to analyze the communications patterns in a family system to find the censorships and silent contracts being channeled into acting out? Did you have to punish and reward people systematically like they were dogs you were training with cookies and biscuits, maybe radiate some unconditional love or just listen to dig up the repetition of old repressed emotions? Was it all about words, or could you learn something from the way mice and monkeys behaved in laboratory settings?

I was confused. There was no psychology. There were only very different and fragmented parts of theory and research that were thrown into one big educational denominator, and that was psychology. But what did you have to do, what did you have to think? Did you have to find your own taste and preference, like some people prefer that dish or that clothing style, whilst another dish or style might be more appealing to someone else? Or did you just have to say you were an expert in many different disciplines and traditions, and without any personal preference, just pull the appropriate form of protocol and methodology out of your magician’s hat depending on what institution hired you?

I didn’t know what to do, so I postponed the working scene for another year, and sought out something that was more down to earth, more practical and concrete. So I studied for a year at another university, learning about pollution and the remedies for it. But more than satisfying my curious mind it did not do, for with a postgraduate degree in human ecology, you could not get a job in that field unless you had a prior education of let’s say chemistry or biology.

So that was that.

I did however get the best ideas of my life considering the direction of my final dissertation that year. I decided to approach science from a system’s perspective, and the ecological agenda from the perspective of repression and human psychodynamics.

So I wrote about how you cannot restore the whole by simply tugging at the parts. And I wrote about imposing an ecological policy by force, which would only call for a reaction formation on the part of the people. I proposed cymatics as a way of viewing a holistic method of healing, and wu wei, the natural flow of the bioenergetic body, as a means of working things out.

I proposed that forcing people to behave in a collective and uniform way would only suffocate the energy and stifle the movement, whilst what we needed was the promotion of communication, one part of the population exchanging information with another, clearing as many blockades and as much of the silence and deafness as possible.

It was rather anarchistic, as it was about the people working it out for themselves, the people doing it for themselves, the people, doing it themselves. And just facilitating the flow of information and communication between the different parts of the world, so that the whole of the planet could be feeling itself, through different scattered and spread out parts finding each other and relating to each other.

It was a psychologist’s approach to politics, opposing, questioning, warning.

It was remarkable that some years later, I encountered a traumatic incident, that followed exactly this same logic.

In 2005 I got sick, I had problems with my dental gums. They were infected with bad bad creatures, eating it all away. I had some problems, communicational problems and difficulties with the dentists, a story I will spare you from, which led to the fact that I was not treated as well as I should have been. So the disaster that could have been prevented, actually presented itself: I was left with big parts of my gum eroded and eaten away.

This led to a big outbreak of psychosis.

As I understood it, the nerves in my tongue were looking for the nerves of my dental flesh, more specifically the part that had covered my front teeth on the inside of my mouth before. Now there was nothing to feel, just harsh and barren teeth, that were no longer covered in a light and sparkling, playful response to the touching. Which happens unconsciously and automatically, all of the time. And the flesh itself, which had been eaten away, could no longer feel my tongue.

So as I saw it, it was my nerve system that had been damaged, and I knew, from my education in neurophysiology, that there was a part and function in the brain called the homunculus, which was a neurological representation of the body as it was covered by the nervous system. So to me, my homunculus system in my brain was tripping, showing loose endings and lacking certain connections. My deepest sense of physical self, coordinating my day to day behavior, was traumatized and shaken.

The neurons in the brain that were now no longer finding their connection in the nervous system, were just firing away in empty space, and the brain was trying to figure out how the new system could functionally be reconfigured.

I figured that the neurons firing away into empty space, and other neurons asking for input where there no longer was any, were the cause of my psychosis.

One part of the whole could no longer communicate with another. The whole system of connections and loops, the whole body-representation, had to be reformed. It was an identity crisis, which was very real.

Compare this to someone who always likes to sit cross-armed. One day he loses an arm, and the other arm can no longer find the posture. It can no longer touch the arm now absent. And the arm now absent can no longer feel the other arm in the usual embrace.

Part of me was missing another part of myself.

I was deeply sad.

It was like a long long funeral.

I was looking madly for the sensations of my flesh, the tingling, joyful and sparkling feeling that had always been there in response to my tongue pressing against the front of my teeth. Now there was nothing left. All was gone, barren, hard, insensitive. I had lost part of my senses and sensitivity.

So regarding the psychosis, I thought well, my brain will have to adapt, find a new configuration for my homunculus. I will have to get used to my new identity and my brain will find a new system of loops and connections that functions. I just needed time.

Of course, no one understood my problems. They said it was because I was smoking too much dope, and I needed to get a job at that point in my life, or I would lose my income, my welfare checks that I was living on in order to try and write a book. So there was a lot of pressure to act normal, but my brain was firing away in empty space, and I was missing myself and my identity. I was crazy, insane, and desperately sad. I felt like I had died, and someday, I didn’t know when, I might live another life again. If and when the time would come.

Now communication, and the promotion and restoration of the loops within such a system, the need for coordination and balance, that had been a special topic for me.

In the title to this piece, I am referring to LSD, because I have found, since using it twice, that it takes us into a deep and intense tunnel where we are shown things by the healing power of the spirit. And I found that LSD kind of taught me a lot about my spirit.

I have always had special experiences with communication. There were times when I knew exactly what someone else was thinking. Not many times, but times. And there have been occasions when animals just talked to me, on the inside, in spirit. Again, only a few times, but it happened. And there were times when some force clearly and unmistakingly showed me when disaster was about to strike. A few times, but unmistakingly. And there were times when I received detailed guidance concerning a problem form a personal and close teaching and explaining source of information.

So communication, to me, is instinctive, it is very natural. It happens when you listen, it comes to you when you are open. And that open mind that I have been blessed or cursed with since I was a little kid, and that manifested itself on different occasions in different times in my life, that flow of vision and inspiration, image and sound, that guiding presence of feeling and support, which is not always there, but just shows up whenever it feels like it, that part of me is communication, communication in the spirit.

And lately I have been meditating a lot, still trying to get over my schizophrenia, which is now no longer acute, but is still a worry to me. And meditating, and trying to empty my mind to receive insight in my own and other people’s healing, that seeking calm and space to find the vision and the key to work things out and solve the problems I am facing, that is kind of like, if you will, the deep and warm communication of spiritual LSD, but without using the substance.

Maybe I am a kind of LSD person. Maybe I have experienced LSD since I was a child. The communication, the visions, the inspiration whispered in my ear. The openness and receptiveness of my spirit, to guidance, to help, to insights and healing.

Maybe I am an LSD person, and taking LSD just showed me what I had been experiencing since long before.

Now this morning, I was in an LSD mood again, sitting there patiently and waiting for things to come to mind in the order and apparition of their choice. And it happened, and I was very blessed, that my spirit slipped out of my head and was touched by the stars. I felt the stars, like I was tickling them with some small movement of my fingertips. And I stopped, and I let that feeling be, and suddenly, the stars on one side were communicating with the stars on the other side. The universe was talking to itself, in gentle shimmer. It was talking, like you and me talk, and like animals sometimes talk. Evidently, gently, clearly. Just talking, nothing special, but it was there, like the reverb in a dub song, present, wide and big, and peaceful, ever so peaceful and always there.

And I cried my heart out. I must have cried and cried for five to ten minutes, thinking of nothing but how beautiful it was. I said the universe is talking to itself, and it was so beautiful and so intimate, and it was so wonderful and it was such peace. It was the most playful and spontaneous activity, it was like a baby making gentle sounds while moving his arms and legs about. It was nothing, yet it was everything. And I cried and I cried, and I was happy crying, I was touched, and I am privileged. I was honored and deeply moved. To see such beauty, to experience such a miracle.

And I knew that that was the problem of my psychosis. This communication, this shimmer, this sparkling firing of neurons touching and finding each other. This pure feeling, this essential experience of touching and being touched. My tongue could no longer touch my flesh, and my flesh could no longer answer to my tongue. I feel very different now, since the unfortunate trauma and crisis of missing the experience of myself, one part of me no longer feeling and communicating with an other. My neural connections going berserk. My spirit out of control. Insane communication.

And I had to think of Stanislav Grof, the good and intelligent man who has developed the notion of holotropy as a way to view the path to healing and wholeness through expanded states of consciousness.

You know, there are multiple ways to expand your consciousness. It does not need to be acid, it can be breathing, drumming or dancing, going on a vision quest or simply meditating.

And mister Grof says that the direction in which such special states of mind take us, is in the direction of wholeness. Finding yourself, your whole self, your complete and full identity.

So I wanted to write this text, because I feel this morning I have come home somehow, hearing the universe talking to itself. I feel like indeed, the state of meditation and visions that I am often in, can lead to the essence of your healing, that which you are trying to say, but cannot say fully.

I wanted to say, about my disease and psychosis, that the communication had died. But now, I feel like there is still communication, there is communication in the universe. The stars are talking to each other as they twinkle and sparkle with promises and secrets.

And continuing the thoughts of anarchy and my thesis, I still believe people should talk to each other. Things should be explained and laid out on the table. Words should be out in the open.

It is when you silence people, it is when you try to shut them up, that diseases enter. And as system theorists know, those diseases are challenging to say the least. Unwanted behavior, fear, schizophrenia.

So I still think communication is sacred. I still think it is necessary and healing, and I think, as Freud remarked as well, that we cannot not communicate. Freud said that if someone’s ‘lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips’. What are you trying to say, what am I trying to say, what are we trying to say? And even, what is the earth trying to say?

We should try to listen and understand, and speak our minds. For in such way, we each play our part and the whole may come to the health, healing and sanity that is inherent as pure potentiality. Things can work out well, if we talk, if we listen, if we try to understand.

You cannot silence the stars, you cannot really shut me up.

No one should and no one should try.

So speak, tell your story, and tell me how you feel.

It is important, because you are alive, because we are living in a sparkling, sweet and gentle universe where everything is having a good time in the company of everything else. And we should be together like the stars, and we should talk, and we should shine for all eternity.

Things are the way they are, we are alive.

Perhaps we will shut up when we are dead.

Or continue talking like the stars.

To be part of that ocean, that sweet and gentle presence, it is a privilege, and it is an honor.

May it touch you, and may you realize we are all children of the universe.

May you come home with all the life and fire in your spirit.

Burning clearly, for all to see, and love.

Let us break down the barriers and raise our awareness to the stars.

Let us meet each other.

As one heart, as one big and giant love.