Visionary Syntax continued
Following up on my earlier thread, I have another dialectic to add to the mix:
Entoptic vs. Eidetic Hallucination
Figure 8 : Fractals generated by computer programs and nature are isoforms of nonlinear psychedelic hallucinations.
Geometric hallucinations, or phosphenes, are considered to be entoptic, meaning they are a product of excitation and destabilization in spatial coupling between neural assemblies in the retina and visual cortex, and produce complex patterns similar to fractal recursion (Fig. 8). Entoptic hallucinations can be contrasted with eidetic hallucinations, which are more fully formed images that appear from visual memory or imagination. Psychedelic eidetic hallucinations are generally more explicitly personal than the abstract geometric forms associated with flicker phosphenes. Over the course of a psychedelic session hallucinations will start with flicker phosphenes and then increase in complexity from entoptic to eidetic content, often containing a seamless mixture of the two. It can be assumed that eidetic hallucinations only begin once serotonergic modulation of the forebrain has been sufficiently interrupted to allow cholinergic modulation of mid-brain vizualization.11 This transition from entoptic to eidetic hallucination is also associated with a transition from the high frequency beta or gamma state to a low frequency alpha or theta state.
Figure 9 : Geometric phosphenes or entoptic hallucination induced by meditation, autohypnosis, or during transition to slow wave sleep.
Meditation and autohypnotic exercises are targeted to produce states of hypnogogia associated with theta waves and entoptic hallucination (Fig. 9). Drugs which naturally drive theta waves in the brain are called hypnotics. Some psychedelics are naturally hypnotic, others are hypnotic only in sensory deprivation or under the influence of a theta-band periodic driver.12 The hallucinogenic tea ayahuasca is a mixture of a high-frequency interrupt psychedelic (DMT) and a low-frequency hypnotic diver (the beta-carbolines harmine and harmaline). This synergistic blend of high-beta interrupt and slow-theta attenuators means that ayahuasca should promote both fast beta geometric flicker phosphenes as well as slow eidetic theta dream snippets. This prediction can resolve paradoxical EEG analysis of subjects under the influence of ayahuasca, which sometimes indicates increased power in high frequency beta and gamma coherence,13,14 but in the context of shamanic ritual shows increased power in slow-wave theta activity.15
The correlation of Eidetic and Entopic to ACME and OMMM is an easy fit. Taking the outer edges of the multisense mural and putting them together, the Entopic themes on the Left side (‘out West’) and Eidetic on the right side (‘back East’)
For me, the Rorschach like patterns on the right are hard for me to not interpret eidetically. The are made out of images of ordinary things - a closeup of an eyelid, a view of Earth from space, a solar eclipse, and then cropped, mirrored, shrunken, and enlarged but now all that I can see is a glowing headless angel, a spider queen, an evil dog, some live sex acts, goofy eyes, etc.
The images on the left hand side remind me of matter and space, but even more they remind me of phosphenes and entopic geometries. There are some interesting things to consider here.
The literal - figurative relationship is somewhat layered and sophisticated between entopic and eidetic hallucinations. The entopic geometries are in a sense more literal: they seem like they map readily to neurological processes, although I’m not sure that we have established that is actually the case. Have we actually seen a site in the visual cortex that is producing identical geometries? Is our visual qualia physically present in a directly observable way, or do we have to translate it algebraically from invisible statistical variations, or have we not yet even found any way to detect in the brain what we are seeing in our mind’s eye?
The prospect of finding a signal in the brain shaped like a miniature castle however, seems less promising.
The eidetic castle though, in another sense, is also ‘literal’.
“Eidetic objects, scenes, or people that become solid and retain their shape for an extended period of time are called frank or concrete hallucinations.”
A castle is appropriate too because eidetic hallucinations are dreams. They are stories in which we participate over ‘time’. I use the scare quotes around time because dreams reflect the primordial nature of experience, which is sequentialized through significance rather than clocked as metered duration. Dreams and stories skip around time from episode to episode, employing elliptical* condensation and descriptive augmentation to weave proprietary customizations of multiple arrows of time. Rather than experiences happening in time, experiences are using the qualia of temporal realism as pigments of their palette. We employ dramatic devices such as plot, scene, and narration to induce this dreamlike sense of vicarious participation in a spectacle.
Entopic designs then are more of a WYSIWYG syntactic literalism. There are visual figures that present themselves as what they ‘really’ are, the raw qualia of visual sense.
Eidetic images are simulacra. They are not figures presented as themselves, but rather semantic portals, visions of what they are not. This is the essence of how visual qualia fits into the overall gestalt of our perception. Eidetic realism is accessed hypnotically, through the slow and low theta-frequency range of brain activity. The range in which subjectivity is high and objectivity is low. This is in contrast to the higher frequency activity associated with entopic hallucinations, which is fairly straightforward evidence that what you are witnessing is in fact your own interior process. Eidetic dreamscapes pose a greater threat to sanity, yet they reveal a more profound truth that ultimately, the entire universe is a living web of fiction.
Since entopic and eidetic distinctions refer to hallucination, they relate primarily to the edges of only the Eastern (Orient) half of the multisense continuum. They tell us about where interior meets exterior ‘in front of our face’ (entopic) and ‘behind our back’ (eidetically). The eidetic edge is the same as the Profound Edge of the multisense continuum, but the entopic edge corresponds to the center of the continuum (the Pedestrian Fold) and not the Western edge of the continuum, which extends into empirical realism.
*ellipse 1753, from Fr. ellipse (17c.), from L. ellipsis “ellipse,” also, “a falling short, deficit,” from Gk. elleipsis (see ellipsis). So called because the conic section of the cutting plane makes a smaller angle with the base than does the side of the cone, hence, a “falling short.” First applied by Apollonius of Perga (3c. B.C.E.).
elide 1590s, a legal term, “to annul, do away with,” from M.Fr. elider (16c.), from L. elidere “strike out,” from ex- “out” (see ex-) + -lidere, comb. form of laedere “to strike.” Phonological sense is first recorded 1796. Related: Elided; eliding.
