Getting There

Richard Bolstad

Towards an Overarching Biological Theory of Altered States

In two previous articles (“NLP and Psychedelic/Entheogenic Assisted Psychotherapy Treatment“, “An NLP Based Guide to Supporting People in Altered States“) I discussed the blossoming research about the effects of psychedelic assisted therapy, and the skills and understandings useful to become a guide for people experiencing altered states such as those being studied in the research. In this article I want to talk a little about the biological details of how to get into profoundly altered states of mind. I approach this as an archaeologist, trained at Leicester University, and using the biosocial model of religious experience developed by anthropologist Michael Winkelman and others. As in my previous articles, I will start by reassuring you that it is not my intention to encourage people to commit illegal acts, and possession of entheogens or psychedelics such as Psilocybe mushrooms is illegal in many states. Here we will be looking at creating similar altered states by many different means, and I am trusting readers to respect the law of their state and only use means permissible in that state.

William James (1961) was the first westerner to systematically explore the altered states of consciousness induced in religious and spiritual experience. The search for religious states of mind, says James (“The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p398) is the source of Religion, not the complex beliefs which encrust that word. “Disregarding the over-beliefs, and confining ourselves to what is common and generic, we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes.” By the 1970s Charles Tart had coined the term “Altered States of Consciousness” or ASC, and was building a neuroscience description of how these states might differ from normal consciousness states such as waking, deep sleep and dreaming. Laughlin et alia (1992) pointed out that “warps” between the more “normal” states can be built into an ASC, as when Shamanic dancers stay up all night, and shift into dream-like hypnogogic states simply due to lack of sleep. ASC appeared to result in an integration of the cortex with deeper brain areas such as the limbic system, as slower theta brainwave patterns (3-6 cycles per second) spread across the brain. These “integrative patterns” were identified by Arnold Mandell as being produced by “reduction of the inhibitory serotonin regulation of temporal lobe limbic function” (Mandell, 1980). Serotonin, a feel-good chemical, then floods the cortex, he suggested. Previc (2009, p. 21) suggests that the integrative experience is also induced by the freeing of Dopamine pathways that results from the alteration of Serotonin transmission. Long distance running, hunger, thirst, sleep loss, rhythmic auditory stimuli such as drumming and chanting, sensory deprivation, dream states, meditation, physical injury, and drugs such as psychedelics could all produce this effect (Winkleman, 2010, p. 26). Dai et alia (2023) showed that newer psychedelic-like drugs such as Ketamine, and classical psychedelics such as LSD perform similar functions in the brain, reducing connections within conscious networks, while increasing brain-wide integration.

Meditation

Andrew Newberg studied integrative consciousness in Buddhist monks engaged in meditation and Christian nuns in contemplative prayer (D’Aquili and Newberg, 1999). He particularly studied the cessation of usual activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe (the Orientation Association area) that usually gives the person a sense of where they are in their body, and the distinction between them and their environment. Without input to that area, the area generated an alternative experience which Newberg called “Absolute Unitary Being”, a sense of being one with God, or one with all that is. He replicated the study with Muslims engaged in prolonged Islamic prayer, and reports (Newberg et alia, 2015) that in all cases he observed reduced activity in the orientation association area and in the default mode network of the brain. The decreased activity in the prefontal cortex which is also seen in all these types of inner quieting also occurs in glossolalia (speaking in tongues) and mediumistic practices, he notes (Newberg et alia, 2006). The classical psychedelics such as psilocybin, DMT and LSD also interrupt the functioning of the brain’s Default Mode Network: the pattern of thinking and interpreting experiences that a person reverts to when not focused on any particular task (Gattuso et alia, 2023). That means that the person starts to experience the world much like an innocent child might, as a place of wonder.

Newberg and D’Aquili speculate that the same stilling of the OAA occurs in peak sexual experiences, and that earlier in human history this may have been the main source of such states of oneness (and may be its evolutionary “purpose” in the brain — Newberg, D’Aquili and Rause, 2002, p 126)

Dance, Whirling, Shaking and Rhythmic Music

Once we understand the significance of the Orientation Association area in creating the experience of “Absolute Unitary Being” then the human fascination with dancing and whirling (as in Sufi dancing in the Mevleviye school) makes sense. Sufi dancers show dramatically diminished Default Mode Network activity, reduced cortex volume especially in the Orientation area identified by D’Aquila and Newberg (1999), and differences in processing of own-body representations, which allow Sufi dervishes to spin for prolonged periods without the vertigo that is initiated by normal attempts to keep track of where the body is in space (Cakmak et alia, 2017).

In shamanic cultures, whirling and vibrating dances are usually combined with drumming and other auditory input, and form a key part of preparing shamanic practitioners for “soul flights” or “shamanic journeys” (Winkelman, 2010, p. 130). Prolonged chanting, drumming and other rhythmic auditory input entrain the pulse and the EEG pattern, producing theta and low alpha range brain-wide rhythms (called “auditory driving” by the researchers), effects which in turn are associated with changes in time perception and body location, and even visual distortions (Vaitl et alia, 2005, p.107).

In our Integration course, we utilize a “dynamic meditation” practice popularized by the Indian teacher  Osho (Rajneesh) called Kundalini Meditation. This involves a quarter of an hour of repetitive shaking of the body, a quarter of an hour of rhythmic dancing, a quarter of an hour of standing, and a quarter of an hour of lying down. The first three sections are done to fairly loud and repetitive music. The result is usually a fairly profoundly altered state of consciousness (Osho, 1988, p. 43). The music can be bought on Amazon here, and the instructions are safe enough to summarise here too: “The technique is divided into four fifteen-minute stages.  Specific music is used as an accompaniment to the first three stages, and the final stage is done in complete silence.     

• First Stage: For fifteen minutes, standing in one place, let your whole body shake. Let the shaking start from your hands and your feet, where all the nerve endings in the body are located. Keep your eyes relaxed, the muscles of your face relaxed. Let everything shake, everything vibrate. In the beginning you will have to do it, but after a few minutes the shaking will take over. If you keep your whole body loose, The shaking will move from your hands, from your feet, from your head, until it takes you over completely, until you become the shaking.     
• Second Stage: Now, for fifteen minutes, allow the energy that has been awakened to he expressed through dance. You will be alive with energy; allow this energy to he dispersed through dance. The dancing is important. More energy has been awakened in you than your body is accustomed to. Without the dancing you will feel a certain disturbance, a certain restlessness, a certain uneasiness. So move totally into the dance. Express whatever energy has been awakened in you through dance, through celebration. Enjoy!     
• Third Stage: Standing or sitting, remain perfectly still for fifteen minutes. Allow yourself to merge with the music, which is designed to flood your internal dialogue and gradually quieten it.
• Fourth Stage: For fifteen minutes, lie down and be. There is nothing but silence, nothing but stillness, within and without. Note: Eyes remain either opened or closed in the first two stages and closed in the last two. A gong will sound at the end of the music.”

Fasting and Sleep Loss

Many shamanic experiences are conducted throughout the time when practitioners would usually be sleeping, an experience which automatically produces a trance-like state that modern travelers experience in long distance flights. Serotonergic pathways linking cognitive appraisal and “ego systems” are disrupted by the intrusion of REM (dreaming) semi-sleep states, producing a lesser version of the interruption of these serotonin pathways that occurs with psychedelic drugs (Hobson, 1992). Harry Hunt (1989) noted that this provides an alternative entry into a lucid dreaming state, which he showed to be similar to a meditative state: EEG and autonomic system changes are similar to meditation, and lucid dreaming is commonly reported by experienced meditators. Lucid dreaming and hypnogogic (dreaming while awake) experiences both require the beginnings of integrative activity across brain systems that are usually distinct, representing the shamanic experience of “having a foot in both worlds” (Ivanescu and Berentzen, 2020). Ernest Rossi (1986) suggested that the brain shifts into a similar state on a regular basis, every 90 minutes or so, following an “ultradian rhythm” that reflected the REM – deep sleep cycle, and that Milton Erickson utilized these natural trance states in his hypnotic work.

Prolonged fasting produces a dramatic drop in Serotonin production and this is one of several biological stressors which can produce altered states including hallucinations and integrative states (Fessler, 2002, p. 85). Pain endurance, extreme exertion, sensory deprivation and fatigue also cause the body to release endocannabinoids and endorphins which mimic the effects of classical psychedelics, producing a “runner’s high” (Winkelman, 2010, p. 140-144, Dietrich and McDaniel, 2004).

Shamanism: Seeking a Guardian Spirit

Ruth Benedict noted that a search for a guardian spirit to connect the individual to the spiritual world and the resources they would need for their life, was the most fundamental and widespread religious practice in North American peoples and had parallels in all shamanic belief systems (Benedict, 1923). Winkelman suggests that shamanic ritual can be understood as deliberately creating a lucid dreaming state of mind and symbolically accessing resources from the unconscious (Winkelman, 2010, p. 140-141).

In our Integration training we do a series of shamanic rituals including a Shamanic Journey to identify a spirit animal guide, adapted from Steven D. Farmer (2006). The journey is done to rhythmic drumming music, while lying down. We also utilize several ceremonial processes taught us by shamans and medicine women in Peru and in the Hopi territory of Arizona, including the use of Aqua de Florida, used originally by the Q’ero Paqo medicine people of Peru. A kind of Native American version of Eau de Cologne, this mixture includes Bergamot, Neroli, Lemon, Clove, Cinnamon, Lavender, Rose, and Orange flower, and is inhaled to have a calming effect on the brain. It was mass produced first by New York perfumer Robert I. Murray, in 1808 and the Peruvian version is easily available online. Some of these plant products, such as cinnamon, are known not so much as psychedelics, but as a) chemicals that stop psychedelics being rapidly broken down by the body, and b) precursors to the body’s natural psychedelics. Safrole and eugenol, found in cinnamon, are MDMA precursors. (Nemu, 2019). That means that these simple herbs may enhance a person’s ability to enter an altered state, using their own body chemistry, if they follow other directions, such as shamanic visualization.

Near Death? Brain Damage? Epilepsy?

Frequently, in traditional cultures, shamans are people who have had a near death experience and returned.

Jill Bolte Taylor’s story provides a non-religious neuroanatomical description of this oneness. On December 10th, 1996, 37 year old Indiana Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a massive stroke, the result of bleeding from a damaged blood vessel which destroyed most of the left side of her brain. Over the next weeks, she was in the unique position of knowing with a scientist’s precision exactly what damage and repair was occurring in her brain. Her book, “My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Journey” is a moving story identifying what works in recovery from brain injury, and also reporting what life without the controlling dominant left hemisphere is like. After her stroke, she was left with almost no functioning left brain. Her consciousness existed entirely in the non-verbal, creative, intuitive and holistic right brain. As a neuroscientist, she was aware of the actual process occurring and her report is an extraordinary bridge between the world of brain injury, the world of neuroscience and the world of mystical experience. What history has recorded as unusual and profound spiritual awareness was, she discovered, the basic functioning mode of her right brain.

She explains “In the absence of the normal functioning of my left orientation association area, my perception of my physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air. I felt like a genie liberated from its bottle. The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria…. Without a language centre telling me: “I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. I am a neuroanatomist. I live at this address and can be reached at this phone number,” I felt no obligation to being her anymore. It was truly a bizarre shift in perception, but without her emotional circuitry reminding me of her likes and dislikes, or her ego centre reminding me about her patterns of critical judgement, I didn’t think like her anymore…. I had spent a lifetime of 37 years being enthusiastically committed to “do-do-doing” lots of stuff at a very fast pace. On this special day I learned the meaning of simply “being.”…. All I could perceive was right here, right now, and it was beautiful.” (Bolte Taylor, 2006, p 67-68). She adds “For many of us, thinking of ourselves as fluid, or with souls as big as the universe, connected to the energy flow of all that is, slips us out just beyond our comfort zone. But without the judgement of my left brain saying that I am a solid, my perception of myself returned to this natural state of fluidity.” (Bolte Taylor, 2006, p 69). Jill Bolte Taylor gives us a brain scientists view of the kind of experiences that created the original shamanic spirituality and were central in the production of the major religions.

This bliss came “at the price” of her old self, and of any cherished illusions that this sense of individual self was non-corporeal. “Because of my academics, I intellectually conceptualised my body as a compilation of various neurological programs, but it wasn’t until this experience with stroke that I really understood that we all have the ability to lose pieces of ourselves one program at a time. I never really pondered what it would be like to lose my mind, more specifically, my left mind. I wish there were a safe way to induce this awareness in people.” (Bolte Taylor, 2006, p 78) Small wonder she later concluded “I loved knowing my spirit was at one with the universe and in the flow with everything around me. I found it fascinating to be so tuned in to energy dynamics and body language. But most of all, I loved the feeling of deep inner peace that flooded the core of my very being. I yearned to be in a place where people were calm and valued my experience of inner peace. Because of my heightened empathy, I found that I was overly sensitive to feeling other people’s stress. If recovery meant that I had to feel like they felt all the time, I wasn’t interested.” (Bolte Taylor, 2006, p 82).

Although Jill Bolte Taylor maintains that how much time we spend with our right brain “spiritual” experience of the world is a choice, Geneticist Dr Dean Hamer claims he has identified genetic markers for the tendency to spend more energy in this way. He notes that people with a certain variation of the gene VMAT2 demonstrate statistically higher tendencies to feeling at one with the universe, loving nature, and being willing to sacrifice self for the greater good — all elements of a personality test variable called self-transcendence (Hamer, 2004).

It is also true that today, as in Shamanic times, one of the most common ways for people to create the experience of oneness with the universe is to have a near-fatal injury. According to Gallop Poll research (Ring, 1998, p 305), over 8,000,000 people in the United States alone have had the experience first called by Raymond Moody a “Near Death Experience” (1976). These people believe that, during a medical emergency, they have “left their body”, re-evaluated their life and made contact with a “being of light”. Brain researchers have found that stimulating specific areas in the temporal cortex will produce feelings of spiritual transcendence and a sense of a mystical “presence” nearby, and many attribute the whole Near-Death Experience to the final activation of this brain structure (Carter, 1998, p 13-14). For the present, whether such people have actually had such an experience, or merely hallucinated it while their brain was in crisis (as is claimed by Susan Blackmore in her book “Dying To Live” for example), is immaterial (if you’ll pardon the pun). The point is that we now have decades of careful research on tens of thousands of these people. Those who recall the moments which would usually precede death consistently report the same kind of experience, whichever culture they come from, whatever their previous beliefs, and whatever their age (eg see Ring and Valarino, 1998; Bailey and Yates, 1996; Morse and Perry, 1990; Eysenck and Sargent, 1997, p 205-206). A major shift in values and behaviours tends to result from the experience. Survivors characteristically say that they now have a sense that love is the central issue in life, and that all things are connected in an undivided whole. They describe much the same shift that Jill Bolte Taylor refers to.

These changes spread out to those who come in contact with the person who had the NDE. Firstly, most experiencers want to share their new world-view. Carl Jung, who had a NDE at age 70, urged others to vicariously experience this, saying “A man should be able to say he has done his best to form a conception of life after death…. Not to have done so is a vital loss.” (Jung, 1961, p 302). In his book The Omega Project, Dr Kenneth Ring reported his study of 74 people who had an NDE, and 54 persons who did not have the experience, but studied it. The shift in values and beliefs in the “control group” was almost as powerful as that occurring in the NDE group (Ring, 1992). Psychiatrist Bruce Greyson published a study of 89 NDE survivors and 175 members of the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS). He showed again that a parallel rise in the importance of altruism, self-actualisation and spirituality occurred as these people integrated the meaning of the NDE (Greyson, 1983). Some studies suggest that just reading this article will be enough to produce values realignment in many people (Ring and Valarino, 1998, p 204-215).

People who experience the fits of temporal lobe epilepsy also experience unusual experiences which they frequently categorise as mystical (psychiatrist Norman Geschwind says (Hamer, 2004, p 131-137, Tucker et alia, 1987, p 181-184). Between fits, they show symptoms such as hyperreligiosity (attending religious services twice a day, building shrines in their house, leaving their job to become a religious pilgrim etc) and hypergraphia (writing extensive tracts about philosophy). The life stories of many great mystics are strongly suggestive of temporal lobe epilepsy. Characteristic is the case of Saul of Tarsus, a Jewish Pharisee who was travelling on the road to Damascus when he saw a flash of light, fell to the ground, and heard the voice of a local religious teacher speaking in his head. He changed his name to Paul, joined the religious teacher’s sect and promoted it across the Roman empire. His fellow student Luke noted that Paul had a bodily weakness, and he himself confirmed that he was subject to such “trance” states. This is not to deny Paul’s teaching, but merely to point out that temporal lobe epilepsy possibly made him more receptive, just as Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke made her more receptive. Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran has done extensive brain scanning research on this phenomenon and notes that epilepsy permanently alters the brain making its subjects more receptive to spiritual ideas and experiences.

NLP Processes and Hypnosis

In hypnosis, higher order cortex functions (connecting the anterior cingulate cortex and the prefrontal cortex) are also disrupted, while connection between the anterior cingulate cortex and the emotional and physical control areas (limbic system and hypothalamus) are increased. This allows for greater regulation of both emotional and physical responses, without the usual gatekeeping of the conscious mind (Allman et alia, 2001), so that the person can produce hypnotic phenomena such as analgesia and catalepsy. In their book “Varieties of Anomalous experience”, Cardeña et al (1996) argued that traditional shamanic practices and near death experiences share much of the same neurological basis as hypnosis. Milton Erickson, a leading developer of modern therapeutic hypnosis, was particularly interested in unitary states of consciousness. He interviewed his friend Aldous Huxley about his use of Mescaline, for example (Erickson, 1965; Erickson, 2006). He also used his hypnotic skill to spontaneously enter such states. In 1967 he explained to Ernest Rossi “I was in the backyard a year ago in the summertime. I was wondering what far-out experiences I’d like to have. As I puzzled over that, I noticed that I was sitting out in the middle of nowhere … I was just an object in space. Of all the buildings I couldn’t see an outline. I couldn’t see the chair in which I was sitting; in fact, I couldn’t feel it … It was one of the most pleasing experiences. What is this? Tremendous comfort. I knew that I was doing something far out. And I was really doing it! And what greater joy is there than doing what you want to do? Inside the stars, the planets, the beaches.” Rossi asked “That sounds like a spontaneous experience of nirvana or Samadhi wherein Indian yogis say they experience “the void”. You feel that is so?” and Erickson replied “Yes. The far out experience of negating all reality-related stimuli.” (in Rossi, 1980, p. 129-130).

We employ a wide range of NLP and Trance processes on our Integration training. These are often experienced as quite profound. Technically, these processes have varied instructions, and in the background, they frequently ask the person to start with a challenging situation, and then expand their awareness step by step until they reach a boundary-less state which completely changes their experience of both the specific situation that was a challenge, and of life itself. For example in response to the Transcendence Process developed by Julia Kurusheva, here are two comments: “When you were speaking about the cosmos it was as if I’m not me any more; I’m a field of energy. So it was a really healing process. It’s very nice. When I was reading about it I was wondering “So how would this feel?” Now I know. As we were going through the levels, the heaviness started to get lighter and lighter. I don’t feel it any more. I have different representations, different submodalities everything. We are very blessed.” Lubna Al Sharif, Master Trainer, Coach and Mentor, Laurus Training Centre, Cairo, Egypt. “A process that changes the perception of the situation on so many levels that nothing is the same anymore.” Magdalena Daraż-Gogół, Coach and Trainer, Tarnow, Poland.

Such states can be reached by a variety of NLP processes: by recursively asking the person to identify their higher intention for some default state network response, by recursively having the person look, reach or listen “behind” or “below” their “default state network”, by stepping out from the usual default perceptual position to a state which is all-encompassing, by recursively rejecting default state responses as “all there is”, by finding the state beyond all dichotomies, by connecting with powerful spontaneously created states of bliss or love and bringing those back to everyday situations, by experiencing life without the concept of time itself, and by understanding recursively that all suffering is simply a result of not fully understanding the wider system in which the challenge was created. As Lubna Al-Sharif notes above, you may read the instructions for these processes, but until you experience them, it is not possible to convey how profound the result can be.

Psilocybe mushrooms

In general, a single profound experience of oneness tends to alter a person’s life. In 1962, Walter Pahnke at Harvard University studied the effects of taking a hallucinogenic substance on measures of “mysticism”. He gave a single capsule to 20 research subjects, all of whom were divinity students and attended a church service that day. Half the capsules contained psilocybin (30mg), an extract of psychoactive mushrooms like those used by shamans in numerous cultures around the world, and the other half contained a placebo. The difference was rather obvious, with psilocybin subjects saying things like “All of a sudden I felt sort of drawn out into infinity…. I felt that I was caught up in the vastness of creation…. Huge as the mystics say…. I did experience this classic kind of blending…. The main thing about it was this sense of timelessness” (Hamer, 2004, p 87). In 1986, Rick Doblin began a series of 25 year followup interviews. He administered the original mysticism questionnaire again and found that subjects who originally had psilocybin capsules scored at 65% while controls scored at below 13%. This correlated with interview comments where the controls only dimly recalled the original experiment, while the drug users consistently reported it as the highlight of their spiritual life.

When there are apparently so many ways of accessing states of unitary consciousness, why would we use psychedelic or entheogenic herbs and mushrooms? Perhaps an equally valid question is “Why would we not?”. Roger Sullivan, at the University of Auckland, postulates (along with Terence McKenna previously) that “humans have shared a co-evolutionary relationship with psychotropic plant substances that is millions of years old.” and that this relationship may have aided our evolution (Sullivan and Hagen, 2002). They point out that these plants and fungi have evolved precise links into the Dopamine and Serotonin transmitter systems. Psychoactive plants are at once a more certain way of creating an altered state of consciousness, and a more risky (i.e. often illegal) way. Just to restate, this article is not recommending the use of illegal substances, and there are many deadly poisonous mushrooms which appear very similar to common Psilocybe species (although they do not bruise blue), especially Galerina species. For those living in places where Psilocybe mushrooms are legally available, note that potency of Psilocybe mushrooms varies from species to species, and even varies within a species by a factor of up to 10 times. Sensitivity to psilocybin varies from human to human, and not only by body weight. Mushroom dried in a dry place, and ground in a coffee grinder, has 10 times the psilocybin as the same weight in wet mushroom. As a consequence of all this, any estimates of doses are approximate unless you are taking a medically prescribed amount. As a generalization, there are three levels of experience, depending on dosage. A mild “microdose” is not even noticeable. A gentle dose of 1-2 grams of dried mushroom (2 grams for an adult male), delivering 10-20 mg of Psilocybin, will give altered perception and, if you focus on the experience, a sense of spiritual awakening, on a journey which will last 4-5 hours. A stronger dose of 4 grams of dried mushroom will make physical movement less easy and likely produce actual “hallucinations”, in a journey lasting at least 7-8 hours, and this is therefore not recommended as a first experience (Haze and Mandrake, 2016, p. 289-304; Stamets, 1996, p. 34-45). A higher dose than this should not be taken at all without a trained shamanic practitioner from an experienced lineage to supervise.

Many More Ways

We are really only giving examples above, when we discuss meditation, prayer, making love, dancing, drumming, fasting, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, shamanic journeying, near death experiences, epilepsy, hypnosis, and NLP, and psychedelics. Ultimately, we are reminded that this unitary experience is everywhere, and always just a moment away from us. It only requires us to stop using our “default mode network”. However that network is what we think of as our “self”. And this is the ultimate illusion! Finally, to restate, all these ways of creating altered states of consciousness should obviously be done, if at all, with the guidance of someone who is an expert in that particular modality. For work with psychedelic drugs, this was the subject of a previous article. If our species has hundreds of thousands of years of experience of these methods, it also has hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated expertise!

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