DMT as a gateway to pre-lingual memories?

[jbark]

Part of this was initially a response to a question in another thread, but I have been meaning to field this for a while to get people's impressions (so I cut and paste and deleted parts from the other post):

I have always thought (and I am working up a more coherent and viable theory), that one of the things DMT does is allow us to tap into the vestigial, pre-lingual, and infantile parts of our brain where memories are still, though perhaps vaguely, stored: when the letters of the alphabet looked bewilderingly alien, when language and the general aural landscape seemed cacophonous and chaotic, when clowns and jesters, lego and stuffed animals were the things of our concern and when these, and blocky primary colours were most pervasive in our visual field and everything was filled with unlearned mystery, the world swirling around us as our brains learned to sift and sort pattern from an infinite array of discord, of stochastic noise and business, eventually separating nonsense from form to distinguish books from toys from hands and faces, food from plastic, glass, wood and metal.

Maybe we are tapping into memories of how the world looked and sounded to us (anyone ever had nursery rhyme -like songs play in their heads during trips?), before we had the knowledge - and the brain soft/firmware - to make any real sense of it?

I am working on a chapter in book about all this and more, and would love to get your thoughts on it.

Cheers,

JBArk

 

[AikyO]

It's a theory I most definitely partake in.

It would be interesting in that regard to map the territory and try to establish relationship with an infant life (by using many trip reports and personal experience guided by intuition). It would be interesting to start before birth and try to relate in degrees and zone of the psychedelic experience what it would be to only be pure feeling, or if there is already the possibility of visual perception/distortion. If anything, psychedelics can clearly be expressed as this "day in the night" thing (or inversely "night in the day"?) and far out hallucinations in a dark setting would lead any forming mind to the conclusion of an "inner sun", that there is something within us that can see even with no light, and that it makes apparent a link between the above and below. That there is a link.

I mean it's life in highspeed in many way, you may hit many corner stone, go through the hero's journey in an instant, so obviously it will have correlation with the moment when one defines himself.

However I would argue that there is nothing chaotic about it and seeing it as such is the result of lost of contact with it - like hearing Japanese from an outsider point of view. Eventually this primary, and more sensory, form of language cannot be explored deeply while remaining in the one, reductionist of the former, we know. It function around different sets of rule, more animistic (or holistic, to not say natural (because we are in the domain of a consciousness that is pure experience and not in a dissociated state))

Those pre-lingual memory can be seen in terms of the mind to what music is to language: a form of expression less defined by the cultural framework. Less defined by culture means more universal, and like music is more abstract and fluid, it might enhance learning abilities (which is a feat of the spongy child's mind and the creativity that it spawns spontaneously). This is, in other terms, the unconscious. the unconscious is like music, you feel it but it might tell a different story for different people, because it isn't precise in this way - important shared characteristic: allows great deals of projection.
From then, defining things, music in language, dream thought in rational, is killing the music, killing the dream. Or rather, burring it, losing touch.

So I would definitely not call the subsequent way of perceiving the world akin to "making real sense of it". In the child like in the primitive man, the self and the subconscious are not separated (unconscious being another word for inner nature, past lives as expression of dna/ancestry, and that kind of thing). However the creation of language, and the over-reliance on it, is driven by a need to comfort oneself, to reassure a frightened sense of identity and exerce control over the world by separating one from it (a technique most well mastered by the depressive), by creating one's own version of it that fits the need for beliefs that are inevitably trying to cop out with personal traumatic memories (or to express the world in accordance to that trauma and transform oneself through it, which is what artist do) - traumas that are inevitable and inherent to the sensitivity of man (sensitivity brought by hyper-consciousnesses birthed from contact with the subconscious (or: this sensitivity being amplified to unknown extent by the mind/imagination) and the need of the ego to determine itself (like words put on a specific sound, it's nice for communication but ultimately very shaky foundations - not inherently bad but with a high potential for isolation into one owns creation).

Of course science is an interesting form of language because even while separated, non organic form of life and experience, it takes the "turning a note into a concept" to ultra realistic frontier.

All in all, I think it's just what the world is like when a human mind is healthy and full of life. In our modern days there is also a chaotic stream of information that we cannot make sense off because every layer of human way of experience reality get on top of each other, and when you cannot (or we don't want yet) to abandon the primitive in us but we cannot be fully go in it and fully in what we created/are creating - like one cannot be entirely in his breath and in his thought, or listening and thinking at the same time.

 

[dragonrider]

Iboga can bring back memories from pre-lingual periods. I have experienced it myself. Ironically though, i also experienced a short period of aphasia when this happened.

If you are realy interested, then maybe it's worth trying it yourself. Iboga is quite a tasking experience. But i think that, especially with a guide, it can bring you deeper into your "primal self", than any other drug i have ever taken.

It shares some things with DMT. But the DMT world is far more elegant and cerebral, compared to the iboga realm.

 

[jbark]

Iboga can bring back memories from pre-lingual periods. I have experienced it myself. Ironically though, i also experienced a short period of aphasia when this happened.

If you are realy interested, then maybe it's worth trying it yourself. Iboga is quite a tasking experience. But i think that, especially with a guide, it can bring you deeper into your "primal self", than any other drug i have ever taken.

It shares some things with DMT. But the DMT world is far more elegant and cerebral, compared to the iboga realm.

I am very interested in Iboga, and I have been for quite some time. Near impossible to find the time. I am lucky these days if I have an hour aside.

Regarding the aphasia - I wonder if this means Iboga affects the 'Broca's area' and/or 'Wernicke's area' - maybe it shuts them down? I think other psychedelics affect these areas also, sometimes hyper stimulating them (from subjective observation). I also hypothesize (again, from a layman's subjective experience), that psilocybin, DMT and acid (and perhaps mescaline) affect the fusiform gyrus area of the brain (its functions being the processing of colour information, face and body recognition (pareidolia) as well as word recognition, and has been linked to synesthesia and dyslexia.) Based on my trips, there must be a link, I believe.

Cheers,

 

[jbark]

If anything, psychedelics can clearly be expressed as this "day in the night" thing (or inversely "night in the day"?) and far out hallucinations in a dark setting would lead any forming mind to the conclusion of an "inner sun", that there is something within us that can see even with no light, and that it makes apparent a link between the above and below. That there is a link.

The thing within us that "can see even with no light" - as in closed eye visuals - I believe is the brain and its soft/firmware searching desperately for form and pattern in stochastic noise. As we know, the eyes and the light that passes through them are only one small part of the visual experience. In fact, as a simple demonstration, what we perceive and what is projected on our retinas is actually (from an optical point of view) upside down and backwards. It is our brain that interprets the visual data and presents us with something that appears to us to be right side up and coherent from left to right. Our brain alters, selects and re-represents what we see. On psychedelics (again, my belief), we toy with the the firmware and software to the point where we see faces that are not there (a pareidolian affectation), experience colours that don't exist (fusiform gyrus affectation?) and conflate sound and shape and colour (synesthesia - again, the fusiform gyrus) - seeing "with no light" and perceiving shapes and hearing noises that are not there.

However I would argue that there is nothing chaotic about it and seeing it as such is the result of lost of contact with it - like hearing Japanese from an outsider point of view. Eventually this primary, and more sensory, form of language cannot be explored deeply while remaining in the one, reductionist of the former, we know. It function around different sets of rule, more animistic (or holistic, to not say natural (because we are in the domain of a consciousness that is pure experience and not in a dissociated state))

An adult hearing japanese has years of environmental learning and brain structuring, so recognizes it as a language that it cannot understand. A baby, on the other hand, has no point of reference (note here I am referring to babies in their perlingual state, and not "children" who have been subjected to a high degree of learning and cultural brain forging), and hears noise that, I believe, because of the soothing tones of its mother voice and a brain's pre-disposition to do so, looks for and eventually finds pattern in the "noise" of language. There have been documented cases of adults blind at birth who have, thanks to surgery, been given sight. The barrage of light and colour and shape and stereoscopic depth that assaults them when the bandages come off is invariably too much for them. They are soon re-bandadged to give their brains a rest and allow them to process. They are slowly introduced to sight, and it takes quite some time for the brain to use what is innate and incorporate this new visual data to understand the world - the patients do not even recognize faces as faces or people as people at first. It takes time for the brain to find the 'face' and 'body' patterns to develop its sense of pareidolia. The same goes for perception of depth, distinction of colours and the understanding of space and speed.

I believe babies are thrust into this world and met with this same barrage of incomprehensible visual data, but also taste, touch, and audition. It takes time for the brain to sort, document, find pattern and apply this to everything it sees, hears, touches tastes and smells. There is a reason babies are born with a sight that is blurred beyond about 6-8 inches (the distance from a mother's breast to her face). A baby needs a mechanism to shut out the rest of the visual field to concentrate on nipple and to make sense of and to recognize its mother's face.

Those pre-lingual memory can be seen in terms of the mind to what music is to language: a form of expression less defined by the cultural framework. Less defined by culture means more universal, and like music is more abstract and fluid, it might enhance learning abilities (which is a feat of the spongy child's mind and the creativity that it spawns spontaneously). This is, in other terms, the unconscious. the unconscious is like music, you feel it but it might tell a different story for different people, because it isn't precise in this way - important shared characteristic: allows great deals of projection.

I agree, but again, culture is learned, and I am referring to pre-lingual babies, HOW they actually learn these cultural rules (and environmental rules, of course (separation of colour, face recognition etc)), and to the parts of the brain that are primed to sort pattern from noise in the infant mind. And, of course, the possibility that on psychedelics, our brain shuts down certain areas and stimulates others, forcing otherwise hidden memories into consciousness of what our brains were doing in this prelingual state, and how we actually reacted to shapes like letters and harmony and depth.

Very interesting stuff.

JBArk

 

[DmnStr8]

Interesting thread!

One of my first DMT trips I heard a strange jibberish language. I have heard the same jibberish language on several DMT trips since then. I found it odd that somehow I was able to understand this language in some form. More like I could feel the language.. coming across as emotions in language form I guess. Hard to explain or put my finger on it.

Anyhow... I got a clear message the first time I heard this odd jibberish language. The message was 'Expand your language'. I played around with idea of expanding my language. I tried learning scottish gaelic. I tried improving my vocabulary. I tried looking into other languages and the history of language in general and how they relate to english. None of these ideas panned out anything for me. This language study did nothing to explain what 'expand you language' meant. The only thing in this world that even remotely made any sense to me was music as language.

I can listen to a piece of music and feel the emotions of it without any lyrics. Listen to Mozart, Bach or Beethoven and really listen with the intent of picking up the emotion of the piece. It feels like my mind is doing the same thing it was with the jibberish language I heard. Picking up certain emotions even though there is no words that I recognize. It plays out a story in your mind with no words or lyrics attached... only the sound.. only the emotions.

Perhaps you are on to something here with your theory. It is certainly interesting to think about. My thought is that language is just mouth noises. Making sounds with the mouth is really no different than a violin making sounds. We happen to agree on what the sounds mean and language evolves. Sometimes I feel that language is devolving, which, I feel, is why I received the message to expand my language.

Sometimes I feel like english and other modern languages are devolved forms of language. Have our modern languages been intentionally manipulated enable to control the emotions of people? Can a new languages be formed at this point? Food for thought. Please check out this quote below as I feel it demonstrates what I am trying to convey here.

Sanskrit has 96 words for love; ancient Persian has 80, Greek three, and English only one. This is indicative of the poverty of awareness or emphasis that we give to that tremendously important realm of feeling. Eskimos have 30 words for snow, because it is a life-and-death matter to them to have exact information about the element they live with so intimately. If we had a vocabulary of 30 words for love ... we would immediately be richer and more intelligent in this human element so close to our heart. An Eskimo probably would die of clumsiness if he had only one word for snow; we are close to dying of loneliness because we have only one word for love. Of all the Western languages, English may be the most lacking when it comes to feeling.

 

[Tyler_Trismegistus]

You could even take this further and say that it brings us to pre lingual ancestral memories, from before language was ever created.

 

[jbark]

You could even take this further and say that it brings us to pre lingual ancestral memories, from before language was ever created.

We could... but that would require a huge leap and an adherence to a dubious belief system.

Not impossible, I am just trying to stick to examining this more from a neurological than an epistemological point of view. There will be parts of the book, and entire chapters, in fact, dedicated to the more speculative, less empirically oriented facets of the experience.

Then again, I am no neuroscientist, so it’s all in the realm of speculation anyaway!

Cheers,

JBArk

 

[jbark]

Interesting thread!

One of my first DMT trips I heard a strange jibberish language. I have heard the same jibberish language on several DMT trips since then. I found it odd that somehow I was able to understand this language in some form. More like I could feel the language.. coming across as emotions in language form I guess.

[/quote]

Yes, I have experienced this jibberish also. Like A sort of auditory glossolalia - I have even been lured by the jibberish into glossolalia myself on several occasions. It makes me think that maybe this is the same phenomenon: tapping into prelingual memories where all speech sseemed like jibberish, and where, as babies, we made random noises, likely in imitation of the percieved random noises elicited from the mouths of our mothers and other adults.

And yes, I believe the number of words we hang on an idea indicates how much value we place on it as a culture. We need more words for love.

Cheers,

JBArk

 

[dragonrider]

I just had a conversation yesterday, about how many different dutch words there are for "having sex". English isn't much different.