muflax65ngodyewp.onion/content_muflax/experiments/temporal_lobe.mkd

title	date	techne	episteme
Temporal Lobe Experiences	2010-05-14	:wip	:believed

Personal Info

Something about me.

Interestingly, my left eye is about 0.5 dioptre better than my right, just like my fathers eyes.

Most Recent Seizure

2010/05/13 at 21:05.

It was day 3 of my caffeine withdrawal. The headaches were already over, but I was still very irritable (one little inconvenience and I'd write a 5000 word rant) and could barely think. No memory or concentration whatsoever. The best I could do is read some funny websites and eat strange cheese.

The first thing I noticed was that the upper part of my inner left mouth felt weird, as if a bit of fluid was oozing out of my skull, soon followed by an actual, but faint sound of bone-on-bone movement. If that sounds very confusing, that's because it was. I first thought, alright, probably just my jaw moving in a weird way or something like that, when I spaced out a bit. I just relaxed and lost all mental content for a bit, but was still aware what was happening. I was not sure at that point if I was actually spacing out or just pretending to. A minute later, I remembered the experiments I wanted to try.

First, I focused on the area to the left and behind me, trying to feel a presence. There was a vague sense of something being there and a few images rushed me, but I was underwhelmed, so I tried another one. I closed my eyes, focused them right at the point closest to my face I could do and then, without moving them, looked up.

A bit adrenaline, some light, a bit of colors, but that's not more than I see when I just press my eyeba.. WHAM.

It just fired. I didn't know what it was, but my eyes moved wildly, I began shaking and there was definite rumbling going on at the front of my head. I snapped out of the meditation and laughed uncontrollably. I jotted down a short note of the time in my log and ran of to the toilet, pouring water over my face. I had the wild I just saw god face, eyes wide open, still laughing, getting happier and happier. I ran back, grabbed my rosary and started praying. If prayer can ever work for me, then now!

I was shocked once I started. That's not my voice. It was completely different, as if there were many voices, whispering and very fast. I seemed to speak whole chunks at once. It was still me speaking, but certainly not in any way I recognized. I began laughing more and more. After 15 minutes and the first 3 sets of the rosary, the effect finally started to disappear. My voice returned to normal and I noticed that I found it quite a bit harder to speak. Language was definitely harder than normal. I still decided to finish the prayer.

Afterwards, I got up and noticed a changed consciousness, as if I was more present or complete than before. I tried thinking, but messed up the words, so the other I just said, "Just listen. Don't speak. Just listen. Don't speak." for a while.

(I'm a big fan of dissociation, so I do this intentionally. I'm very aware that I have many "modes" or "drivers", sometimes competing, and I like to play with them.)

For some reason, I felt the urge to stand on one foot. I first tried the right one, but lost balance (which I always do; I have horribly balance). So I switched and could, somehow, stand perfectly fine, one leg bend backwards at the knee and both arms stretched to the side. Even pulling the arms in and moving the right leg around didn't throw me off. That's very unusual for me. Normally, I can't even put on my shoes standing without falling down.

After a bit, I just sat down and was happy for a while. The world shifted for me and started to glow again. Not really literally glow, as in became brighter (although colors seemed more intense), but more mentally glow. Glow with meaning. This was very close to the DXM afterglow or how I felt after coming down from Ayahuasca. Very happy and aware, all senses a bit sharper than usual.

That was either a temporal lobe seizure or the most psychedelic cheese in all of Europe.

Ghosts

As a child at about the age of 6, I had a strong experience of ghosts. I was sitting on the toilet, when quite suddenly I felt surrounded by a group of dark grey entities, maybe a dozen or so, each about my own size. They hovered around me in a circle, located in a mental realm closely related to the one in front of me when I close my eyes.¹ I immediately knew that they were friendly. They communicated to me, though they never spoke, that they are a kind of guardian and that I could trust them.

I didn't feel disturbed by this or in any way upset. It seemed perfectly natural at the time. I started to talk to them occasionally, telling them my thoughts, similarly to a self-monologue. I stopped doing this after some time because it started to feel weird, like I was not supposed to be doing this kind of thing.

They didn't reappear until I was 18, when I experimented with psychedelic mushrooms. At that time, I had drug experiences with Caffeine² (but not alcohol until about a year later), Argyreia Nervosa³, Nutmeg⁴ and Ayahuasca⁵ and DXM⁶, in that order, but in none of them did I ever encounter another entity or presence. However, that summer I had just grown my first batch of shrooms and ate about 2 grams of recently dried ones on toast with honey⁷.

After a few minutes, I felt a powerful sense of joy and lightness. I danced around and strangely really enjoyed juggling objects, like my water bottle. I felt I could slow down time and gravity slightly, making it a lot easier to catch something. After about half an hour I was overcome by a bright light and sense of bliss. I sat down in my chair and closed my eyes, when I had the impression to face a great Pyramid in Egypt, bathed in sunlight. Suddenly, I was connected to the whole human species (and maybe more).[^6th] The Collective Unconscious⁸ was available to me. I believed that my true purpose in life was now clear to me. (Although, to be honest, I never exactly knew what that purpose actually was. It was more a feeling of complete trust in fate, without ever knowing any details.) Soon, I felt the presence of many beings. I was consciously aware of maybe half a dozen, but knew that they were legion. I recognized them from my childhood. I asked multiple questions, mostly about future choices and when thinking of a possible answer, got an powerful emotional response. I was being showered by pure love when I thought of the right answer and pulled away from any wrong one.

I do not remember anymore if I felt asleep for maybe half an hour or not, but the experience soon faded away and I started to play Katamari Damacy. While the most intense part was now over, I continued to feel full of energy for the next few days. The personal connection with fate is still there today.

However positive the first experience was, all future shroom trips except the last one were much more negative. I would inevitably encounter the ghosts again, but they were disappointed in me. They made it clear that I couldn't handle the experience and shouldn't come there anymore.

Being Haunted

When I was 17, I had what could be called a psychotic episode. I was depressed, worried about many things in my life and was still dealing mentally with my former girlfriend (more on that later). But that's not the real problem. That I could deal with; I knew that I would one day be able to overcome all those problems. (I was right. It took me about 3 years.) However, it got worse when I started feeling haunted. It started with a general sense of unease once I entered my room, but after a few days I started hearing voices. At first, I heard noise on my speakers that wasn't there. I could even turn them off completely and there would still be barely noticeable noise. Soon, that noise whispered to me. All the time. I couldn't make out anything it said, not like a schizophrenic who hears commands (although I thought at the time I was one). It sounded more like ominous, satanic chanting.

Especially at night it sometimes got so bad that I couldn't sleep at all. Once, I was woken up at around 4:00 by a sudden, bright and incredibly loud mental flash of a pentagram with Baphomet on it. I was terrified and scared for my life. My sleep didn't recover for months. I tried dealing with it by meditation, but I couldn't concentrate at all in silence, with the permanent evil whispering. I also tried doing an demonic incantation (no result) and an exorcism (which temporally worked!).

The voice was physically tied to my room (but not to anything in it). Interestingly, our neighbor was an astrologer and big believer in the supernatural. I never told anyone about my experience, but learned that she recently had done a kind of seance with some medium and found out that the basement of our shared house was cursed - exactly where I lived. She had her own exorcism scheduled, but luckily we moved out, leaving the presence behind. I never encountered it again. Within weeks after we left, the whole basement was flooded because of faulty architectural design.

Note that during the whole time I didn't believe in ghosts, demons or any supernatural entity. However, at the end, I sure had my doubts about it! Nonetheless, I still don't believe the cause to be an actual supernatural entity, but I'm quite open that it was still a real experience. Persinger's explanaition of such phenomena through magnetic disturbances seems like a good candidate to me.

Romantic Love

Sensory Shutdown

Bathroom. No sound at all. Voice bright, with very high contrast.

Anxiety

Social Problems

At first, I thought I was an autist. (I even have a tentative diagnosis for it, but never followed up on it because I found enough evidence to disprove it myself.) When that didn't quite work out, I went with ADD, mainly because of the unusual reaction to caffeine, which calmed me down instead of making me hyper, something typical for people with ADD or mania. But that didn't quite work, either, as my ability to concentrate didn't exactly work like would be predicted by ADD (I would often go into short bursts of high focus, becoming obsessed with a topic for a month or so, and then switch to something completely different). Also, there were too many unexplained symptoms left.

I analyzed my social problems more thoroughly. It's really not that I don't understand social interaction. If I watch others, I know very well what they are doing and why. It's not mysterious at all to me. But when I am supposed to act, I simply... draw a blank. There is no memory, no idea, nothing. My mind goes entirely silent and I can only stare. I'm perfectly aware of this all the time and desperately try to fix it, but just don't get any answer inside. However, that only happens with some people. With others, I function normally and probably talk quite a lot. That way, almost everyone either knows me as silent or talkative, but not much in between. There is no connection to sympathy - I shut down with plenty of people I like a lot, but because it is so incapacitating, I tend to only become friends with the people I can talk to. I still can't tell in advance whether this will happen just by knowing something about the other person. There is no connection with topics, gender, intelligence, age or anything else I could think of. It is very consistent, though, just seemingly random in who I'm open to and who not.

Another important puzzle piece is that I don't care much for social interaction. This is atypical for autists, who tend to want to interact with people (at least in some situations), but just can't, which leads to many just "giving up" on friendship. This lead me to believe I was more schizoid, but the emotional flatness that comes with it just doesn't describe me at all. Also, some people I do care about. Instead of being more or less equally interested in most people, with maybe a few spikes for close friends and family, as is normal, I have zero interest in almost everyone, but strong devotion of Kierkegaardian proportions to a select few. I still have a very positive attitude in general towards people, which is not very schizoid; it's just that most people don't seem to be as enjoyable as ice cream to me, for no reason I can discern, but some are like ecstasy, at least some of the time.

Eccentricity

It's not so much that I don't know what's normal, but more that I don't care.

[6th]: Basically, the 6th Morphogenetic Circuit, for those of you that know some Leary or RAW. (And you all should. Prometheus Rising is highly recommended.)

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1. There are many experiential spaces. For me, thought is fundamentally a spatial thing and I tend to create a new space in which I arrange things whenever I analyze or organize something. They are mostly 2- or 3-dimensional, although I have been able to create 4-dimensional spaces, too. ↩︎

2. Caffeine ↩︎

3. Argyreia Nervosa ↩︎

4. Nutmeg ↩︎

5. Ayahuasca ↩︎

6. Dextrometorphan, DXM for short, is my favorite drug. It dissociates me from any negative or disruptive emotion, gives me immense concentration, a strong sense of wonder, makes me even more verbose and music... oh boy, how music sounds on it! I try hard to cultivate the DXM state as my normal mental state.

   I also like that it causes only my left pupil to dilate, making me look literally like this: o_O ↩︎

7. I chose honey because I had been told that I they taste awful and I knew to take such warnings seriously after Ayahuasca. Ironically, I came to really like their taste and now get really bad stomach cramps from honey (probably because of the high amount of sugar). ↩︎

8. Although I don't like the term Collective Unconscious because it never felt particularly unconscious to me. I always thought it was closer to the Malkavian hive mind. ↩︎