Geral Blanchard, LPC, is a psychotherapist who is university trained in psychology and anthropology. Formerly of Wyoming and currently residing in Iowa, Geral travels the world in search of ancient secrets that can augment the art and science of healing. From Western neuroscience to Amazonian shamanism, he has developed an understanding of how to combine old and new healing strategies to optimize recovery, whether from psychological or physical maladies.
MDMA, Quantum Physics, and the Spiritual Path
Geral T. Blanchard • December 4, 2021
It is easier to get over the “past” once we realize there is no such thing.
It is easier to get over what “others” have done to us when we realize there are no “others.” We are all one, like blades of grass in a gigantic field, all under the influence of the sun, wind, and our own misleading minds.
When we can get past this human thing called language (few other animals get confused with complicated symbols for real things), and when we commune with the Universe/Greater Whole/Creator/God, we become open to knowing. By rejoining the full one dimensional existence beyond ideas of ego, it is possible to “download” a larger healing way of being in this world. When humans are “under the influence” of MDMA they are under the influence of a deeply familiar, albeit largely forgotten, Unity Consciousness.
This may be why some medicinal patients have new/old experiences that transcend ideas of space and time (spacetime). It may help to understand why minus language a knowing is experienced and is later described as “realer than real.” Perhaps we have rejoined our larger Creator personage.
When the Whole diminishes the painful ideas of self and “others”, while also diminishing ideas of what was done to us by all those “others,” it also shrinks time, including notions of the past becoming closer to what might be better described as something circular called now.
Maybe the “past” is just our way of dumbing down our experiences of the vast interconnected universe so we can feel like we understand it.
And in the process we imagine our self as something bigger and more self-important than we really are. We put one big universal life into a very personal story of suffering, lifted from a far greater story of a collective and harmonious existence.
Recall when you were “under the influence” of MDMA you may have lost this culture’s shared perspective of time – it wasn’t normal, at least as we humans have described time and normality with our languaged minds. Or maybe you lost your sense of space when you navigated to “distant” locations. MDMA doesn’t cause hallucinations; it introduces reality – a larger reality than we have ever considered. The vastness of it all, and the connection to all, is often described in one word, awe.
Unlike weekend shamanic classes that describe a lower, middle, and upper world – multiple layered dimensions – would it not be more accurate to see that reductionistic notion as a creation of the human mind? Might it be that the real world is one gigantic organism, vaster than we ever imagined with our puny human minds? Maybe life is all one circular and self-contained dimension, intricately connected and communicating with itself which may help us understand why morphic resonance and the passage of information can happen instantaneously. Seen in this much bigger way long distances may not exist as we know them and thus we can feel like we are in two places at once when in actuality this is only one vast interconnected place.
We are not what we previously thought of as the “other.” There is no separation, no distance, as much as our human minds would like us to believe otherwise. We may not be, as our football stadium chants suggest, “Number One!” We may be simply…one.
Welcome to quantum physics, what many authentic shamans, rain drops, and armadillos already know to be reality. Deep knowing can supplant shallow believing. In the world of quantum physics many regard it as a spiritual path. And isn’t it interesting that so many MDMA psychonauts report profoundly spiritual and deep healing experiences during and after their medicinal ceremonies? Maybe we are spiritual beings residing in human bodies waiting to more fully emerge.
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Additional Reading:
The Quantum Revelation by Paul Levy
Other Topics
Basics of MDMA
Rituals and Ceremony
Brain and MDMA
Trauma
Heart
Energy Movement
Quantum Physics
Native Cosmologies
Nature
Spirituality/Enlightenment
Kogi Tribe
Books written by Geral T. Blanchard
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There can be two levels at which trauma is processed. The first tier may be a time of quiet denial or the dissociation of nearly all thoughts of how painful the past was. The body feels it, but the mind does not speak it. On the second level a person awakens to the entirety of it, often an unpredicted and sudden onslaught of previously suppressed details with extensive associated pain. When trauma is reconstituted at the second level it often happens unwillingly. A person may be swept away by an awakening that seems very ugly. It feels like too much to absorb in its entirety. The result is often to feel afraid, even shattered – at first. Now with everything out in the open, what must be done with it?
At the second level of awareness, it is almost impossible to go on pretending that everything is fine. No longer can the visuals and emotions be kept submerged. One wonders, “Damn it, will I ever get better?”
Traumatized persons, with their pervasive pain, typically seek mood altering experiences. This can include ascetic restrictions, hedonistic over-eating, chemical dependency, sexual dependency, sexual anorexia or celibacy, romance addiction, relationship dependency, compulsive gambling, TV or movie binging, rock climbing, auto racing, reliance on antidepressants and/or antianxiety medications, religious addiction, and so much more that can serve to pacify, distract, and avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings. By thrill-seeking, the higher the risks being engaged, the greater mood alteration one can experience. It’s a big dopamine splash and more.
These are the adult versions of childhood thumb sucking, according to Dr. Harvey Milkman, the author of Craving for Ecstasy (the feeling of ecstasy, not the drug). Harvey pointedly said, “Growing up consists of finding the right substitute for your thumb.”
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It is one thing to imagine how another person feels. Psychopaths, despite what the general public believes, are very good at empathy on an intellectual level. Even criminal psychopaths can put themselves in another person’s position and understand their perspective. It is bigger, better, and far healthier when empathy, in its deepest sense, allows us to “feel with” other people by recognizing a sense of oneness with them, what’s called unity consciousness. To hurt others would be to hurt ourselves.
It’s impossible to talk about projection without incorporating a discussion about Sigmund Freud and Donald Trump. In this article I will skip Donald but throw in a little Carl Jung. Freud, of course, named several distinctive defense measures – reality distorting strategies to keep us safe. Two of the big ones are displacement and projection.
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Does this empathogen work in a similar manner as psychedelics, blasting us off to a sudden and dramatic awakening of the mind and soul? Not necessarily. Much like massive stress, psychedelics and MDMA can knock people off an unhealthy path and offer them an entirely different trajectory, but there is a lot of arduous individual work that must follow the use of these propellants.
So, could it be concluded that MDMA is a transcendent spiritual event -- a chemical event, or perhaps a neurological experience? By themselves, both seem unlikely. They can change activity in the brain, but enlightenment comes from hard work before and after their use. Entheogens and empathogens likely have a catalytic but not a primary casual effect in awakening.
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