Physiology, Perception, and the Grid
There is no fixed physical reality, no single perception of the world, just numerous ways of interpreting world views as dictated by one's nervous system and the specific environment of our planetary existence.
—Deepak Chopra, “A Consciousness Based Science”
What you see is what you get!
—Geraldine, The Flip Wilson Show
Are you a card-carrying Democrat or a loyal Republican? Your political beliefs matter not to us, but did you know that your brain could indicate political preference? A scientific study published in the American Journal of Political Science in 2012 suggests that brain scans show a difference in the parts of the brain most utilized by those leaning right and left. Peter Hatemi of Penn State University and Rose McDermott of Brown University reported that conservatives had more activity in the amygdala section, which is associated with the brain's threat response system, while individuals who considered themselves liberal and progressive appeared to have more activity in the insula, which acts as an internal monitor of feelings. Conservative brains seem to be more associated with fear of outside threats and liberals with emotions/feelings that lead to empathy.
While this study has been backed up by others like it, to suggest that an internal cause for beliefs and perception exists is incomplete, because our environment influences us, too. Even such things as a tendency toward gambling, addiction, crime, and violence can be discerned by specific activity in the brain; however, that presence doesn't always guarantee it will manifest in a person's actual experience. Thus, you could be born into a conservative family and still end up liberal, or vice versa, whether or not your brain was entrained for one, or your environment (parents, peers, society, media) overly influenced by one or the other. We still have some choice, do we not?
Which leads us to ask, how much of our reality is based on the brain's neurochemical activity and how much is based on our perception of external events? How much of our reality is really real at all? We looked in the last chapter at environmental influences that may affect our ability to perceive reality and other levels of the Grid. But what about what goes on inside of us?
Perception is the ability to understand and experience reality based on input from the five senses. It is the reality we create based on physical awareness of environmental influences. Perception is not fixed, but rather based on illusion after illusion, memory and past experiences, beliefs and social conditioning, parental and peer pressure, and even media influences. Perception is what we think we see, feel, hear, taste, and touch based greatly upon expectations and previous interpretations.
In other words, perception is a dusty lens through which we view reality. At best, we can clean that lens enough to see more clearly, but most of the time we seem content to walk through life with dirty vision.
Although there is a purely physical cause for how we experience things through the five senses, as in light striking the retina of the eyes to create a visual image, or sound waves reaching our ears, so much of what we perceive is tainted by what we have learned in the past and our memories and expectations. The perceptual systems of the brain of both humans and animals are modular, with different sections responsible for different types of sensory information processing. Many of these modules interact and influence one another and create connections that add to experience. Over time, we layer interpretation over simple experiences to create an even more complex perception of reality, which ends up looking a lot like an onion, with layer upon layer of our own personal take on what is happening to us. Objective reality then becomes more subjective as it is influenced by the mind of the perceiver.
But the objective reality itself may be something completely different from what we end up with once our selfdriven interpretation kicks in. Our brains are only able to perceive so much of the constant streams of information coming at our senses. So what of the information we chose to filter out, ignore, and set aside, because it would appear to have no immediate value to our survival and daily operation? That is the realm of the Grid, where information exists in the form of “unperceived realities” waiting to be discovered. Going back to the skyscraper imagery of chapter 1, it's like living in a huge skyscraper with over one thousand floors, each one rich with experience, but only being aware of twenty-seven of them. Thus, your perception of reality becomes those twenty-seven floors alone. Imagine what it would be like to cleanse the glass and experience all one thousand.
One of the most fun ways to toy with perception is with images that can be “seen” in different ways. The eye will usually automatically process an image based again upon existing cues, clues, and information, but point out to someone another way to see something and they can never go back to not seeing it that way again. The brain has been exposed to a new way of turning an image that may have been ambiguous into a very tangible interpretation, one that they can then point out to someone else. This works well with camouflage and biological mimicry, where creatures look like their environment and often blend in so well you don't see them until someone who has already perceived them points them out to you.
The brain sees what it needs to see until it has a need to see something else. There is also usually more than one physical stimulus involved in the translation of perception. In other words, it might take more than just one visual cue to allow the brain to see an image, or more than just a cue from one type of sensation, say visual or auditory, to create the whole perception. Based on previous expectations and experiences, the brain even fills in incomplete images or shapes. Remember those connect-the-dot drawings in kindergarten? They were fun because they allowed our brains to naturally fill in the blanks based on what we expected the overall image to be by following the numbers in order.
Figure 7. Stare at the white dots, and the nearby dots appear black. Courtesy of Wikimedia
Figure 8. Though the lines look to be of different lengths, they are the same. Courtesy of Wikimedia
So many things can skew perception. Proximity is definitely a big one. Think of seeing something from afar and then discovering once you got closer the object was something else entirely. The brain was only able to create an interpretation with limited visual information that, when more information was available, became negated by a new perception. This kind of misinterpretation also occurs when dealing with similar stimuli, patterns of objects, incomplete visual objects, ambiguity, and even movement, all of which make it harder for the brain to nail down exactly and consistently what it is seeing.
Another problem arises when we remember the quantum nature of particles and waves and that, at our foundation, we are not solid. Nor is anything around us. It is all vibrating, superpositioned “stuff” waiting for our act of observation or measurement to collapse its wave function and give it a fixed place in our reality. Our brains argue with us that the objects around us are solid as a rock, but our consciousness knows better. It tells us that there is more to reality than meets the eye, even if it cannot prove it.
Nothing is really real until we realize that it's real, and much of that realization is clouded by what we think and expect! Imagine standing in a forest alone. You are afraid, as there are sounds around you that you cannot identify, and you are lost. It's about to get dark. You see something off in the distance and immediately your body reacts. Fight or flight. It looks like something big—a bear? Mountain lion? Zombie? It is moving slowly toward you. You freeze, horrified. It is just . . . so . . . big . . . and misshapen in the shadows. You cannot quite make out the exact form. Is it Dick Cheney? Does he have a gun?
Alone in the woods, at dusk, your brain goes into overdrive. What is it? What should you do? Panic sets in and you turn tail and run, smacking right into a tree. Down you go, as the thing gets closer, only to turn in terror and find . . . it's a forest ranger with water, food, and a way back to your car.
Reality is just like this. We create a reality out of perceptions, interpretations, and biases, many of them mistaken, based on the available environmental cues and our own internal influences and expectations. But the thing is, that is not reality. As you waited in terror for the zombie-lion-bear thing to jump on you, all around you there may have been angels, demons, aliens, invisible creatures, wormholes leading to parallel worlds—escape routes into other levels of the Grid you did not see because your internal influences were so focused on the available environmental cues.
This does not mean those realities do not exist. You just didn't expect them to, and therefore did not experience them. Good thing, too, because in one of those realities, it really could have been a bear-lion-zombie attack.
In the various levels of the Grid, there are realities we cannot normally experience and do not normally perceive. But each and every day we get glimpses of these other realities, even experiences of them. And yet some individuals do not. Why is this? If we all have the same shared reality in which we agree that blue is blue and a chair is a chair and Christmas falls on December 25 each year, and if we are all made the same physically with blood and guts and bone and brain, why is it that one person can experience or perceive something completely differently from another?
Reality may be more of an inside job than we think.
The human body is a strange brew of chemical and biological interactions, all designed to give us the experience of being alive. From blood type to body build to bone density, genetic makeup, brain chemical levels, and hormones, we are machines that may look similar outside and inside, and yet are tweaked to allow for some degree of individuality. When all of these interactions run smoothly, we feel good and are healthy and operate at a maximum. But when these interactions are not functioning as they should, disease and disorder enter the picture. Our concern is this: Can these physical interactions in the body have anything to do with the experience of other realities?
It's hard to imagine that your blood type or the amount of cortisol or serotonin in your body has a direct influence on your ability to perceive the unperceivable, but there is ample circumstantial evidence to show that they do. We say circumstantial because we cannot prove it in an empirical sense—at least, not yet—although studies like the one we mentioned at the start of this chapter certainly are intriguing. But science is getting ever closer to showing that internal and external work together to create this reality, and enough people have experienced other realities when just the right alignment of inner/outer is achieved.
Did you know that your brain contains a trace amount of a chemical that could make you believe you are seeing a ghost (as well as experience or perceive a whole litany of other paranormal phenomena)? DMT (dimethyltryptamine) is a psychoactive compound and is considered a psychedelic drug because it can cause out-of-body experiences (OBEs), hallucinations, the sense of the presence of spirit or alien life-forms, as well as divine visions, precognition, and déjà vu. DMT is also a naturally occurring trace amino neurotransmitter/neuromodulator in the brain, derived from the essential amino acid tryptophan and structurally similar to serotonin, melatonin, and the psychedelic tryptamines, such as 5-MeO-DMT, bufotenin, psilocin, and psilocybin. DMT is present in the brain's pineal gland in tiny amounts, yet because of its ability to produce wild and wacky experiences of other levels of reality in larger doses, it is classified as an illegal drug. It is also an active ingredient in ayahuasca, the sacred brew used by shamans and indigenous peoples in the Amazon and elsewhere to induce the experience of alternate realities and access the inner eye.
Between 1990 and 1995, Dr. Rick Strassman became the first scientist to ever conduct government-approved research experiments on human beings using psychedelics and hallucinogenic substances, focusing on DMT. At the time he was a tenured associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico's School of Medicine in Albuquerque. Strassman's theory was that DMT would be released from the pineal gland in larger amounts when a person was on the verge of dreaming or dying, and DMT might account for the visions experienced during NDEs. He chose DMT because it is an endogenous psychedelic found in hundreds of species of plants and mammals, including humans. Because of his years of interest in Eastern religions and brain physiology, he saw the potential for DMT to mediate spiritual experiences and psychedelic drug states similar to the effects of meditation.
Strassman utilized more than sixty volunteers who received what he calls “the God or Spirit molecule” in doses large enough to cause some type of vision or sense of presence, many of which involved encounters with entities that could be described as alien. Some volunteers reported seeing strange geometric shapes and patterns that they could change at will. These experiences are all documented in Strassman's book DMT: The Spirit Molecule and suggest that this substance we all have in our brains has the ability to transform our experience of reality in just the right dose.
Strassman also experimented with psilocybin, which is a naturally occurring alkaloid found in certain types of hallucinogenic mushrooms. His research opened new doors to the nature of consciousness and the ability to alter consciousness to literally transcend normal waking state experiences. Strassman's research continues through his colleagues Dr. Steven A. Barker and Andrew C. Stone at the Cottonwood Research Foundation.
Strassman's findings with DMT mirror those of Graham Hancock utilizing ayahuasca in his book Supernatural, which documents common imagery and experiences on hallucinogenic substances. The Brazilian government made DMT a legal supplement after studying it for years, including its usage in the shaman's brew. Much of this imagery is archetypal in quality and suggests a collective unconscious at work that transcends any geographic, religious, or traditional boundaries. These images and concepts are experienced by a variety of people from a variety of cultures; they know no bias of race or gender or belief. Other types of drugs, both naturally occurring and chemically created, do the same, creating everything from mild states of euphoria to full-on trips of the mind down the rabbit hole.
Because DMT occurs in the human brain, is it possible that our experiences of the Grid, and what we might deem paranormal or anomalous events, happen in a natural setting when some external influence acts upon us that causes an increase of DMT to be released?
There are many studies involving the role of neurochemicals and paranormal experiences. Besides DMT, tryptamines, ketamine, and B-carboline alkaloids have been linked to psi experiences such as OBEs, NDEs, even ESP, telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. Some of these studies are outlined in Advances in Parapsychological Research, published by the Parapsychology Foundation, including more than 200 scientific papers written solely on the subject of psychoactive drugs and paranormal experiences.
The use of both clinical and recreational drugs such as ketamine, a substance commonly used for anesthesia of animals and often referred to as Special K, certainly plays a role. Ketamine is known to cause intense experiences of being out of the body and other very powerful sensations of spatial distortion.
As these and other studies point out, the drugs in question offer similar experiences such as OBEs and psychic ability, with an occasional rarity such as telekinetic ability, but for those who are not on any kind of drug, these experiences can be triggered by the brain and body chemicals themselves, if in just the right amounts. An altered state of perception, mind, and reality can easily occur based on the ingestion of a substance that sends our brain's neurotransmitters into overdrive, or that disrupts the natural chemical balance to create a different state of being, including varied perceptions of time, space, and our place in the fabric of reality. It is common for ayahuasca to cause distortions in the perception of time, either slowing it down or speeding it up, or creating a sense of complete and utter timelessness, as if we have for the time being (pun intended) escaped the confines of linear past, present, and future and entered a realm where all exist at once.
Zero-point field. Akasha. Kingdom of Heaven. The Grid.
We don't necessarily need to be “on” anything to make these experiences happen, although many of the substances that we deem “drugs” are natural and were probably ingested as a part of the daily lives of those who lived off the land, and still do. To these people, anomalous and paranormal experiences are part of their reality, because they are part of the world they naturally exist in. For those of us living in cities and buildings and out of touch with nature, paranormal experiences are something to be feared or approached with caution.
Fear itself was also found to be an influence on whether or not someone taking a particular drug would experience the paranormal, suggesting that emotions play a role in the release of certain brain chemicals, and ramping up or suppressing certain brain activity. The power of the brain goes beyond just chemical interactions. Our emotions, beliefs, and perceptions are already at work influencing what we will experience and what we will block out or filter—especially if an experience was traumatic.
When we experience something out of the ordinary without the aid of drugs, we tend to view these experiences as abnormalities, although they can happen for perfectly explainable reasons that include both environmental and internal causes, and vary from person to person according to the amounts present of key chemicals and hormones, including serotonin, DMT, cortisol, and many others. Though the scientific literature may indicate that psychedelic drugs can cause these experiences to happen more often, and even increase the number of experiences one will have as one continues to do the drug, taking hallucinogens like DMT or mushrooms is not entirely necessary. Our own bodies seem to possess an inherent ability to take a walk now and then through the Grid. In other words, we don't need to eat a mushroom or smoke or snort something to trip a little.
So let's remove the entire drug aspect, legal and illegal, natural and manmade, from the picture for a minute, and focus on a more natural “drug” that has many of the same effects.
DMT has a molecular structure similar to both melatonin and serotonin.
Serotonin, also known as 5-hydroxytryptamine, is a hormone found in the pineal gland, the digestive tract (gut), the central nervous system, and blood platelets, and it is one of the body's chief hormones that regulates certain cell and organ activity. It is also a neurotransmitter, meaning it sends nerve impulses across the space between neurons, or nerve cells, which are called synapses. Serotonin plays an important part in the regulation of learning, sleep, and vasoconstriction (the narrowing of blood vessel walls as cells move through the veins). Altered levels of serotonin in the brain can cause depression and anxiety, but also calmness, contentment, and a sense of well-being. It can also affect how much you sleep, as well as dream activity and intensity.
What most people don't know is that about 90 percent of the body's serotonin is found not in the brain, but in the gut, in the enterochromaffin cells, which regulate intestinal movements and trigger digestion. Thus, the gut feelings some people claim to get may be the effects of serotonin in the gut itself, working via the central nervous system to send signals to the brain that something is amiss or needs our attention.
In a May 2009 issue of Scientific American a study conducted at the University of Essex in England found that people with the long versions of the gene for the serotonin transporter protein, which controls serotonin levels in brain cells, paid more attention to positive imagery than negative imagery, all but ignoring the negative. The opposite results were found for those who carried the shorter gene. The study, involving ninety-seven patients, suggested that depending on their serotonin levels, people were more positive or negative in their outlook on life, more glass half-full or glass half-empty. Thus, the presence or lack of certain levels of this particular neurotransmitter had a definite impact on what a person chose to perceive, and what they chose to ignore or set aside.
Of the primary neurotransmitters, the other two being dopamine and norepinephrine, serotonin influences our moods and perceptions, as it also is involved in the regulations of emotion, memory, and learning in a way that affects our perception of reality and our approach to it. Lower levels of serotonin have even been linked anecdotally to being more open to belief in the paranormal and religion, with higher levels more often associated with objective, empirical views of spirituality and religion.
There are other important chemicals in the brain and body that may influence how we experience reality. Melatonin also shares a structure similar to DMT and mescaline and is notorious for promoting not just good sleep, but intense and freaky dreams! Secreted by the pineal gland, melatonin is the hormone that regulates the sleep and waking cycle and the body's circadian rhythm. The body produces more melatonin when it is dark, and less when exposed to light, and disruptions in the cycle can result in insomnia, jet lag, and even poor vision ability during the day.
Because of its similar properties to DMT, melatonin can produce incredibly vivid and intense dreams. Peak production of natural melatonin in the body is between 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., which interestingly corresponds to anecdotal paranormal activity increases. Is it because melatonin, either not enough or too much of it, is influencing something in the brain that perceives what is not visually there? Melatonin plays a key role in regulating the female menstrual cycle, including initiating menopause. Might this account for why women seem more intuitive, psychic, and even more prone to reporting visions of ghosts or spirits? The lack of sleep may be just as much of an issue as too much melatonin in the body. More on this in the next chapter.
Hormones and brain chemicals have a distinct role in how we function, and how well we function, both physically and psychologically. Imbalances of naturally occurring chemicals disrupt our ability to operate in a normal way in our waking world, and in extreme cases may cause us to lose touch with reality altogether. Have you ever been sleep deprived? Both visual and auditory hallucinations are common when someone lacks proper sleep, something people who suffer from PTSD can attest to. Even being deeply depressed or in a state of paranoid anxiety can create a reality that does not entirely exist in an objective sense. Our bodies, and our brains, trip us up. This is never clearer than when we fall in love.
The very biological act that is designed to keep the human race thriving causes a rush of chemicals to flood the brain. The combination of particular neurotransmitters causes us to feel a sense of euphoria when love strikes, and yet the sensation of our boundaries being lowered and the openness and joy we feel being in love is really the result of perfectly natural machinations. We say love is elusive, wondrous, and even inexplicable and indescribable, and yet . . . we all believe love is a real thing, do we not?
When love happens, the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen drive the action. Lust and attraction are powered by three main neurotransmitters—adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin, all of which have their role in getting us hooked on someone. Remember, these are biological urges with a foundation of neurochemical interactions, all designed to create babies.
Once the attachment stage kicks in, the “cuddle hormone” oxytocin is released, mainly during orgasm, believe it or not, but this deepens the bond between two people needed to go the distance in a relationship long enough to result in a baby. Oxytocin helps mothers bond with babies and helps the release of breast milk at the sound of a crying baby, hungry for sustenance. Vasopressin, another hormone, also may be involved in creating a desire for long-term bonding.
In a study conducted at the University of Pisa, Italy, Dr. Donatella Marazziti followed twenty couples who claimed to be madly in love for less than six months and found that the same brain mechanisms occurred in the brains of the wildly and obsessively beloved that occur in the brains of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Low serotonin levels were to blame for both, proving that when people fall in love, it literally changes their thought processes, patterns, and behaviors. It also blinds us to our lover's faults and problems, thus the saying “love is blind.”
Love changes our entire perception of reality.
Phenylethylamine, or PEA, is also a suspect in the mysteries of the emotions that lead to love. This central nervous system stimulant is found in the brain and assists in arousal of emotion. Think about the meaning of the phrase “pea brain.” Some studies in the past linked chocolate intake to a rise in levels of PEA, thus creating the feeling of being in love while eating a candy bar, but these results have since been negated. The body absorbs very little PEA from chocolate, although there certainly are other foods that act as aphrodisiacs. This does not explain, though, why so many people fall in love with chocolate!
Food and drink also affect our moods, our bodies, and our minds, because, in turn, they influence the levels of all of these chemicals that already exist in the brain. We are, it seems, unknowingly controlled by our own bodily functions, at least to the degree that we allow it. Although try not falling in love with someone you are falling for to see how powerful these neurochemical cocktails can be.
So even this mystery of love is really not much of a mystery at all.
We live in a stress-filled world, one where we are surrounded by fast food and polluted water, air, and soil. In an effort to keep up, our natural levels of many of these chemicals have been altered significantly. Cortisol and adrenaline, the fight or flight stress hormones, are surging and staying at high levels when they should be balanced, thus resulting in more and more stress-related illness and disease. Dopamine, which keeps us happy and satisfied, may be in short supply, which results in cranky dispositions and miserable personalities. We are an anxious, depressed species, overworked and overwhelmed, and it is not just affecting our inner physiology, but our outer world as well.
Because our perception of reality is directly influenced by these biochemical functions, we see threats where we did not see them before, and we envision problems that may or may not exist. The sheer volume of information our brains must process, thanks to the progress of technology and the presence of electronic intrusion into every aspect of our lives (are you reading this on your cell phone or tablet?), is overwhelming as we filter out what we don't need in order to preserve what we do.
Imagine the information we are filtering out right now at this point in history. Maybe it's the entire Grid itself. When we are most stressed, we feel the most disconnected—not just from ourselves, but also from any sense of a greater whole that we may exist in. The feelings of being connected and at one with the world around us slip away, leaving us with a powerful sense of separation that we are convinced is our real reality. And yet, those experiences continue to happen to us that poke and prod us to reconsider our notion of what reality really is. Problem is, we have to be paying attention to notice our misperception of separateness in the first place.
Most of the other realities we propose are in the Grid may be presenting themselves to us all the time. But we tune them out, willingly or unwillingly, in our attempt to just survive. Our bodies may hold incredible keys and clues to the doors to altered realities and states of perception that allow us to move between them. Too bad our ability to open those doors has been so compromised.
Our bodies are intricately designed to keep us alive and living the life that is before us, at least to the best of our ability, and that is the most critical aspect of being a human. Every part of our physicality is meant to keep us grounded in reality, at least this reality, so that we can grow up and become an adult and hold down a job, pay exorbitant taxes, raise a family, and do our part to contribute to society. Our chemicals and hormones, our blood, our organs and cells, minds and brains all are given a particular role in the perception, manifestation, and experience of this reality. When they work together well, we thrive. We might even find love and happiness and purpose. When they are imbalanced or influenced by outside cues, we suffer, become ill, or experience an altered sense of reality.
But our physiology can also open the doors to other realities. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and what we don't pay attention to may be the truth about just how much more there is to this thing called life than meets the eye.