Logical Possibility: Something is free from contradiction.
Natural Possibility: Something is consistent with the laws of nature.
Epistemic status: What if?
In Jungian psychology, psychic death is also known as Ego Death. They are both referring to a “fundamental transformation of the psyche“. As 21st century science is making progress, there have been several theories that are shedding light over these mystical phenomena. They are coming mostly from neuroscience and theoretical physics. In this article I will elaborate on some theories that might be used in order to explain psychic death phenomenology from the perspective of dual-aspect monism (in the philosophy of mind, dual-aspect monism is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of the same substance). You’ll find several references to Qualia Research Institute to which I’m thankful for the inspiration.
If you’re wondering: Why dual-aspect monism? I can answer that it is of course still yet another ontological perspective, but very fruitful as it seems. Many aspects of measuring events in our environment and the universe seem to share consistent but different properties. For example, logarithmic scales are used to measure pleasure-pain axis, but they are of no use if you want to count apples on your table. Furthermore, natural logarithm (ln (x)) has a base which is an irrational and transcedental number e (approximately equal to 2.71828). Essentially, the concept of it came out of work that was dealing with hyperbolic sectors. How often do we seriously ask the question why does it seem that invisible “ideas” and visible “matter” are measured with a different scale? Why would natural logarithm have this strange irrational base instead of just using number 10?
Euler’s Formula establishes the fundamental relationship between the trigonometric functions and the complex exponential function. The physicist Richard Feynman called the equation “our jewel” and “the most remarkable formula in mathematics”.
Perfectly symmetrical, therefore imaginary irrational idea and natural number (1) equal zero.
*Could this law justify why Supersymmetry wasn’t experimentally proven? (See Appendix)
Here is where dual-aspect monism is especially helpful. It seems that differentiating between consciousness (how does it feel to be you) and the screen of consciousness (what do you see) is quite important. Hyperbolic geometry is not an aspect of our daily life, but it can be experienced on substances such as DMT. Of course, this doesn’t mean that by the power of your mind you have managed to transform the world around you, but rather, the energy of consciousness transformed the way you perceive your environment.
In the context of dual-aspect monism I will use terms “domain” and “projection” that Gómez-Emilsson also applies in his video “The Screen of Consciousness is Not Fundamental“. (The highlighted insane comment about black holes and crystals is naturally written by me.)
The domain has an inner shape. You can imagine it as a chamber of reflections where waves are bouncing off of each other and the walls. This chamber might as well be the topological pocket (a bubble) of consciousness within the field of consciousness – something that Andrés often mentions in his theoretical approach on consciousness.
This is just a brief extract from an essay where he (among many other things) tackles topology and “the boundary problem” of consciousness:
“For the purpose of this essay I’m defining a topological segment (or pocket) to be a region that can’t be expanded further without this becoming false: every point in the region locally belongs to the same connected space.
Gómez Emilsson, A. Digital Sentience Requires Solving the Boundary Problem. qri.org. 2022
The way we could justify Computational Holism being relevant here is that the topological pockets trap energy, and thus allow the pocket to vibrate in ways that express a lot of holistic information. Each contiguous surface makes a sound that represents its entire shape, and thus behaves as a unit in at least this way.
Creating a topological pocket may be consequential in one of several ways. One option for getting holistic behavior arises if you can “trap” energy in the pocket. As a consequence, you will energize its harmonics. The particular way the whole thing vibrates is a function of the entire shape at once.”
The field itself has electromagnetic properties (quantum field theory is less relevant for now, but it is generally important as it is closely related to Hawking Radiation). Since the pocket is characterized by resonance of the waves (in a way, its signature), cymatics shows us that this resonance can also be translated to geometry. So, it’s not just that the waves can be interpreted and observed only as waves, they can be interpreted as geometric shapes as well. Here’s where the fun part kicks in.
If we can indeed think of our own “vibe”, i.e. resonance of our energy body (the field of consciousness), we can also think about the ways that our vibe could impact its own environment, and vice versa. Just like the waves on a surface of an ocean. If my topological pocket of consciousness is surrounded by billions of others, then there should be enough reasons that I will be impacted by the environment, primarily on a subconscious level. I imagine this holds explanatory power for psi (psychic phenomena).
Simply put, the projection is a holograph emitted from the domain – it refers to everything that you can experience through your bodily senses. Physics refers to it as spacetime, but that same spacetime completely collapses under specific circumstances, such as on DMT breakthrough when you become nothing but that chamber filled with high frequency self-reflecting colors.
Such impact of pure waves can clearly be seen by deaf musicians who can play along with orchestra or a band based only on the vibration that their body feels. There is no need to truly “consciously” hear anything, a body is under the impact of the energy of its surroundings. Of course, we must admit that this is happening all the time, and that we are aware only of a very narrow bandwith of all the electromagnetic circus around us.
Since psychic death entails both (1) loss of subjective self-identity, and (2) fundamental transformation of the psyche, I imagine that it is pretty straightforward to think about this change as the change in the geometric domain of one’s consciousness. The most intense experience would probably be something akin to enlightenment, where I imagined a physical property grounded in binary system (for example, positive and negative pole of a magnet, or particle and antiparticle) transcending into a higher dimension and therefore fundamentally changing its geometric shape and resonance. This would happen to a sphere when it undergoes geometric evolution and becomes a donut.
I am more convinced that strings and wave behaviour have been all along describing consciousness and that this switch of perspective will be the biggest change in 21st century science. My opinion grew stronger after getting familiar with the work of neuroscientist Buzsáki who wants to correct the 19th century paradigm: It is not that what is outside that’s sliding in our minds, it is quite the other way around. For that he published a book “The Brain from Inside Out”.
“Before he wrote the recent book The Brain from Inside Out, the neuroscientist György Buzsáki previewed some of the arguments in a paper written 20 years ago (“The brain-cognitive behavior problem: a retrospective”), now finally published. The principal focus of the paper is the relationship between neuroscience and psychology. The direction in which that research had proceeded, and continues now, is, in his view, fundamentally misguided. Building on the critique, Buzsáki presents arguments for an “inside-out” approach, wherein the study of neurobiological objects has primacy over using psychological concepts to study the brain, and should, in fact, give rise to them.“
Against the Epistemological Primacy of the Hardware: The Brain from Inside Out, Turned Upside Down – PMC (nih.gov)
On top of that, thinking of topological pockets and bubbles: What if the whole universe is filled with those topological bubbles of consciousness that represent the molecular system of the universe? Then we, as those tiny molecules, might actually be the “victims” of a cosmic chemistry. Speaking of free will, in a certain way, there might be things that we can’t avoid, but we can always choose to retune and rewire ourselves when we get a bit too stingy. Hereby I suggest geometric or molecural docking as explanatory models for psychic death or Ego Death phenomenology.
Example of docking in nature:
Furthermore, the Twin Flame phenomenon I attemp to explain [34.5k (!) members on Reddit] might as well just be complementary hyperbolic strings doing the “docking” in the domain. There’s also the example of superimposed standing waves. The principle works as a key and a lock, where one hyperbolic string (which spiritual circles refer to as the “Divine Feminine”) might actually be a hyperbolic cylinder that docks to another (“Divine Masculine”), sort of truly like a penis and a vagina.
Shape complementarity
“Geometric matching/shape complementarity methods describe the protein and ligand as a set of features that make them dockable.[10] These features may include molecular surface/complementary surface descriptors. In this case, the receptor’s molecular surface is described in terms of its solvent-accessible surface area and the ligand’s molecular surface is described in terms of its matching surface description. The complementarity between the two surfaces amounts to the shape matching description that may help finding the complementary pose of docking the target and the ligand molecules. Another approach is to describe the hydrophobic features of the protein using turns in the main-chain atoms. Yet another approach is to use a Fourier shape descriptor technique.”
Wikipedia
As a consequence, the energy of the two docked objects is fundamentally changed – one hyperbolic bubble experiences fulness, but the other one is sort of trapped. Can this process truly “give birth” to a photon by physical annihilation of positive and negative poles and geometric transcendence? Is looping of a string truly possible to be felt as love? And is this why ring has been used as a symbol of love from time immemorial?
I do believe that from the aspect of non-materialist physicalism (David Pearce) the answer is that yes, it could be possible, and I do believe that mechanisms of nature are more ubiqitous than we think. Another thing that I believe is that this molecular/geometric transformation what is felt as a violent, sudden, non-causal “enlightenment” is a consequence of wave activity in the domain, which is the topological unit of our experience. And I don’t believe it is a mere coincidence that Eric Weinstein’s proposal for a Theory of Everything is called “Geometric Unity“.
Oh me, oh my…! Has it been waves lurking all along? And “Consciousness is music!”, proclaimed the musician.
Stay tuned.
Update May, 2023 With Michael Johnson‘s approval, I’m sharing his comment on the blogpost:
Dear Del Pierro, Thank you for the ping, and the lovely piece. I think the cymatics-monism perspective is fresh and well-written, and there’s nothing I disagree on. One topic I used to talk about internally is the lock-and-key dynamic of internal symmetry, which may be helpful in thinking through your docking metaphor; I’ll attach a brief excerpt from an upcoming piece. (I suspect much could be said about ‘vibes’ as well here, but perhaps the limiting factor is knowing which mysteries about vibes are worth focusing on.) Monism is a very deep topic; I’ve always thought Strong Monism & the meta-theorem of monism from Taking Monism Seriously will pay dividends at some point.
Kind regards, Mike
Gratis literature #1
Gratis literature #2
The question of what belongs to imagination and what to reality is a question of spectrum.
Dijkstra, N., Fleming, S.M. Subjective signal strength distinguishes reality from imagination. Nat Commun 14, 1627 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37322-1
Gratis literature #3
My Twitter @Homoplasmate
*The Promised Appendix
Euler’s Formula & Supersymmetry, Qualia & Gravitons
ChatGPT’s take on to summarizing the relationship between Supersymmetry and particles and anti-particles:
Particles and anti-particles are a central concept in supersymmetry theory in physics.
Supersymmetry (SUSY) is a proposed extension to the Standard Model of particle physics that introduces a symmetry between particles with integer spin (bosons) and particles with half-integer spin (fermions). In supersymmetry, each particle has a “superpartner” particle, which differs in spin by 1/2 unit.
For example, in supersymmetry, the electron (a fermion with spin 1/2) would have a superpartner called the selectron (a boson with spin 0), while the photon (a boson with spin 1) would have a superpartner called the photino (a fermion with spin 1/2).
Particles and anti-particles play an important role in supersymmetry because the theory predicts that for each particle and its superpartner, there must also exist an anti-particle and its corresponding superpartner. The existence of superpartners for all particles and anti-particles is necessary to maintain the symmetry between bosons and fermions.
In supersymmetry, the superpartners of particles and anti-particles are related by a mathematical operation called “charge conjugation.” Charge conjugation transforms a particle into its anti-particle by changing the sign of its electric charge, while simultaneously interchanging its spin and other quantum properties. The superpartners of particles and anti-particles are related to each other by charge conjugation, and they are said to have opposite “charges” under supersymmetry.
The idea of supersymmetry is motivated by various theoretical and experimental considerations, including the search for a unified theory of all fundamental forces in nature, as well as the observed hierarchy between the masses of the known particles. While supersymmetry has not yet been experimentally confirmed, it remains an active area of research in theoretical physics.
That’s what GPT says. Now, from the human perspective of dual-aspect monism, the reason for experimental failure of Supersymmetry could potentially already be recognized within Euler’s Formula shown earlier in this article:
The supersymmetrical particle (“superpartner”) exists as a perfectly symmetrical mirror reflection (irrational and transcedental number, “-1”) relative to the partner in question (a natural number, “1”).
That’s a part of the docking I’m talking about.
They can’t exist simultaneosly within the same projection because they are compartments of the same thing, mirror reflection of each other. Imagine two sides of a sand watch – it doesn’t work with one side only – or rather the Aztecian mythological double-headed snake trying to eat its own tail (string looping up!).
More about that myth here:
8. How is Enlightenment Real? – Things I Wasn’t Supposed to Talk About (thingsiwasntsupposedtotalkabout.com)
Finally, based on presented ontology (which is NOT the one academics are led by) and conjoined theoretical tools and methods, here is a speculative idea regarding marriage between qualia and gravitons:
“Have we been looking at ourselves all this time? If so, graviton will be the particle that behaves as an interior analogue of a photon. From the more and more promising ontological perspective of dual-aspect monism we can say that gravitation is a natural language of attention, therefore relativistic, resulting in different qualia for each and every observer, despite the identical sensory perception.
Gravitons: (1) all the snapshots binding subjective past and future states of a conscious system – the dream, (2) cosmic memory unit of relativistic qualia, (3) internal analogues of photons. Gravitons are private, while photons are not. That’s why they can’t be detected.”
Lovefool, D. How Can a String Represent Consciousness? Solution to Graviton Problem. Blog: Things I Wasn’t Supposed to Talk About. 2022.
Thoughts On Evolutions 
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