[leemoore]

I believe the main factor at play in the first pair of images, is that on LSD and other hallucinogens as well as intensive meditation is that there are little mind programs that run on our perception that smooth out reality for us.

If you notice, even just sitting still we are constantly moving our head just a little, constantly moving our eyes. Without these programs, our visual field would seem far more jumpy and unstable. In certain states of consciousness, these smoothing programs can become intermittent, less effective or even completely disabled.

Also, when mind rambling, chatter and perpetual loops stop, a greater amount detail can be seen and perceived through all senses. At higher and higher levels of perceptual resolution with our filters disabled and the smoothing programs down, you begin to notice that we don't perceive reality smoothly. We perceive it in tiny little frames. If you just watch the first picture, your mind isn't drawn to he frames. After looking for a bit at the second picture of the pair, suddenly you can start to see the frames of perception more clearly. It's simply a matter of learning to (or being tricked to) get past our habitual programs and filters to tune into a more fine grained perceptual reality happening.

These observations come from my own experience with psychedelics in my 20's and extensive meditation practice including a number of longer meditation retreats.

[leemoore]

To take this phenomenon further down the Rabbit Hole, if you pay close enough attention, a defined sense of self is just a feeling or thought that rises from time to time. However addiction/compulsion to perpetual thinking (which 99.99% of humans are caught in) plus the smoothing programs that provide a sense of continuousness and continuity begin to act on that sense of self firmly establishing a deep continuous sense of me. And there is a tremendous amount of conscious energy wrapped up in the perpetuation of a continuous sense of me. Certain states and activities more deeply lock the sense of me in including anger, conflict, proving yourself right, proving someone wrong.

Meditation and Hallucinogens can quiet the mind (or more dramatically short circuit habitual mind loops) and allow you to see the gaps in the self-ing process. The self-ing process never really stops. You never really stop having a sense of self arise from time to time, but when you see the frames and gaps of self-ing you begin to question a lot of who you think you are. And you begin to see the amount of time and energy you spend protecting the self from paper tigers.

Spiritual circles generally call this awakening and tend to over-emphasize it's specialness and idealize those who have deeply conditioned themselves to reside in that state. But it is real and mostly desirable phenominon (with a few drawbacks). Putting aside questions of full enlightenment and mind blowing transcendent unitive states, simply freeing up the consciousness that gets locked up in perpetuating the continuous sense of self and all the efforts to defend as if you are defending your physical body from harm allows for a richer, higher resolution and more textured moment to moment experience of life.

From my subjective experience it is the same sorts of filters that smooth out reality, that also give you a continuous sense of a psychological self which basically manufactures the vast majority of our problems and suffering.

[GuiA]

This idea of reality being "passed through" multiple filters, and these filters being reduced or disabled on psychedelics, is developed (somewhat unscientifically) by Huxley in "The Doors of Perception"- it's a fairly good read.

If I remember correctly, the main criticism against this is that if it were the case brain activity should be reduced, at least in some regions, when on psychedelics. However, observing people on psychedelics with fMRIs does not match with that.

[luxbock]

However, observing people on psychedelics with fMRIs does not match with that.

This study would appear to disagree: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/6/2138

Decreased activity in the ACC/medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was a consistent finding and the magnitude of this decrease predicted the intensity of the subjective effects. Based on these results, a seed-based pharmaco-physiological interaction/functional connectivity analysis was performed using a medial prefrontal seed. Psilocybin caused a significant decrease in the positive coupling between the mPFC and PCC. These results strongly imply that the subjective effects of psychedelic drugs are caused by decreased activity and connectivity in the brain's key connector hubs, enabling a state of unconstrained cognition.

[ZeroFries]

If you have bottom-up sensory associations and top-down inhibitory control (the filters), only inhibitory signals would be reduced. You would actually see more brain activity, since the bottom-up sensory associations would be less inhibited, and therefore trigger a greater amount of neurons. Probably an over-simplification, but you can see how it would be tough to use an fMRI to measure reduced inhibition and increased activation.

[saiya-jin]

maybe the mechanism of "shutting down" these processors is not about ON/OFF behaviour, bur rather just disconnect from processing pipeline, not being in sync with other ongoing processes etc.

generally brain on psychdelics is in "overdrive" mode (confirming on myself), but maybe not everything is on turbo in same way, and works seamlessly in normal state doesn't work well anymore

[okc]

Why would it follow that less filters would infer less brain activity? - even partially. Surley any cleansing/removing of the filters would excite all the brain, as it reacts to new stimuli.

To quote Huxley "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."

[dasil003]

> Surley any cleansing/removing of the filters would excite all the brain, as it reacts to new stimuli.

"Filter" in this case is just an analogy, and not necessarily a good one. We don't know the nature of consciousness and how it maps to brain activity, so it's not appropriate to assume that what is perceived as removing a "filter" is increasing stimuli, it's just processing it differently in some way.

[okc]

I was replying to the someone, who it seems has misunderstood what Huxley meant by filters - I wasn't defending or affirming them, let alone discussing in what context they are 'appropriate'. I used the quote to give the 'filters' being discussed a context. Are you saying Huxley really meant: If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would not appear infinite but just 'processed differently'?

[sridca]

That's interesting. Could that be because those filters are imaginary in nature?

After all, no specific brain activity can be detected on a person imagining Santa Claus to be real either.

[choosername]

Brain activity is not a precise meassure, not in terms of fMRI, which just shows an increased blood flow.

The hypothesis is obvious on the other hand. However, individuals that would submit to a test on psychedelics is likely the type that gets easily exited just for the sake of it and doesn't. Or brain activity doesn't corralate with actually functioning correctly. I' expect a failing subsystem would respond with increased activity, simple feedback. Eventually some controle unit would shut it off or the subsystem would keep working but a bit unusual, despite increased blood flow.

[choosername]

did the easily exited type bit strike a feeling or why the downvote? I mean, it can't be given to an unsuspecting control group. That would probably feel moderately icky and the desire to rest.

[danneu]

    > I believe ... there are little mind programs that run on 
    > our perception that smooth out reality for us

http://psychedelic-information-theory.com/The-Control-Interr...

Our cortex’s main role is to provide inhibitory control on thalamic activity. The serotonergic activity of psychedelics blocks this control signal, and thus prevents the swift extinction of qualia once the triggering stimuli (whether internal or external) is removed.

The OP article cites it to explain lingering visuals, but the source generalizes the mechanism. How would we ever sit at a desk all day or argue about Javascript on HN if we didn't evolve inhibitory processes to dull life down?

It's a thought easy to marvel at when you're on acid, and a mechanism easy to appreciate when you take too much.

[4ad]

Anecdotally, I can perceive the smoothness turning into jerkiness even after something benign as caffeine.

[rudolf0]

Kind of like toggling "motion blur" on and off in a first-person shooter, I suppose? Or maybe more accurately "motion of other 3D objects" blur.

[choosername]

that would rather be because of motor control issues, including inhibited feedback from the visual cortex or simply dry eyes but something about focus.

[awl130]

i've been meditating for 6 yrs now and i'm interested in your meditation experience. do u have a blog or social media account or something publicly available about it?

[leemoore]

I don't have that. However if your not familiar with the Dharma Overground, I'd check it out. There are lots of dedicated geeky practitioners over there that share experiences and to whatever degree possible attempt to document the results with more scientific rigor than a typical spiritual community. http://www.dharmaoverground.org/

[awl130]

thank you, will check out

[leemoore]

I just popped over there. I haven't been in a while. It looks like one of my longer reports was linked up to their wiki. This chronicles my meditative exploits from when I really got into it up until an 8 month sabbatical I took and had some initial breakthroughs. http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/messa...

[awl130]

lee, i copy/pasted one of my hn comments below, that describes my meditation. there's a lot of lingo in your link that i don't understand. can you comment on what i describe as stage 1 and 2 below, and if that is related to stream entry, etc.?

--

2009: 1 hr

2010: 30 min

2011-2014: 10 min

2015-present: 0-10 min

these are my daily averages. i have one rule: before I go to bed, I must assume the lotus position on the floor in front of my bed.

2015 was particularly a challenging year for me (startup problems), and it was all i could do to even assume the lotus position for a second. so for much of 2015 i really didn't meditate, which was ironically when i probably needed it the most. such is my life.

it takes around 4 minutes for me to reach what i call stage 1. this is when all the normal chatter in your mind ceases and your breathing is synced (i've also noticed that it takes around 40 breaths, which is roughly 4 min, so sometimes for shits and giggles i just count to 40). after much trial and error i've noticed i don't even need to do anything; it's the mere passage of 4 minutes that gets me to stage 1.

thereafter is when the real effort begins. it is a constant effort to reach what i call stage 2, or what i consider the beginning of true mindfulness, which means you are neither thinking of the past nor the future. i would say i only enter stage 2 at seconds at a time, only to fall out again into stage 1 (usually by an intruding thought, and that thought is usually "oh, i've got it!").

to be honest, i don't know what the effects have been for me. i seriously don't feel any different. anyway, how are we to separate the effects of meditation with the normal process of maturation or aging? am i getting calmer because of meditation or because i am getting older?

i take it on faith. faith in data and science. our personal experience with meditation cannot be the guide with which we measure it's effectiveness, because subjective experience is exactly that. i liken it to flossing. i floss my teeth every day but still have worse gum recession than those who do not. my periodontist and dentist chalk it up to genetics, because that is the best they can conjecture based on the current science. we can measure flossing easily; without a brain scanner in our basement we cannot so measure effects of meditation. so from the research i take it on faith that the effects must be beneficial on my brain.

[leemoore]

Stream Entry is a Theravada Buddhist term for the first of 4 stages or paths of awakening. A precise model has been created but it tends to be only useful if you have a certain mental makeup and you engage in the practices with a certain degree of intensity. Even then it feels to me like too much effort to make a subjective process set of experiences into a hard and fast model masquerading as authoritative and true.

I'm not so familiar with your stages model so I can't really comment. Based on your last paragraph, my engagement with meditation comes from a very different place than yours. It started in order to stabelize attention after an ADHD diagnosis; a way to get off meds. Quickly that was left behind and the real focus was enlightenment, spiritual awakening or whatever you want to call it. It was motivated by a deep spontaneous inner faith that there was something to it and it was important that I go 100% into it and discover for myself. It was not based on research or attempting to find the best approach to make my mind measurably more effective. I just felt a powerful internal yearning for awakening and I had to follow it.