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: Understanding Threads and Lights
Geral T. Blanchard • September 4, 2022
It’s quite well known that psychedelics, like psilocybin and LSD can, especially at their onset, generate impressive visual effects.
Hallucinations are simply unfastened visions that are no longer anchored by external forces, circumstances, or societal perceptions. The mind “lets loose.” Another way of conceptualizing visionary experiences is to regard them as a way of receiving different or additional eyes, along with a new and different language – one that doesn’t rely on words.
These psychedelic visions – quite similar worldwide, across cultures and time -- may include bright colors in the form of flowing prisms or geometric designs. The technical term for them is form constants. Stanislav Grof has suggested that descriptions of recurring symbols may point to an intuitive comprehension (albeit somewhat vague) of universal cryptograms (secret codes) of esoteric texts -- almost like a subquantum field containing a complete record of everything that has happened in the universe stored in this suggestive form. Many people have attributed deep and profound spiritual implications to the forms and colors.
These psychedelic experiences, others argue, are caused by complex neurological and biochemical alterations that scramble our sensory apparatus, create different neural pathways, and are somewhat analogous to autism, synesthesia, or schizophrenia. It is human nature to want to explain such things from an established paradigm which could impart a sense of scientific accuracy, but that, it could be argued, is potentially a narrow and limiting perspective. Jonah Goldberg has written, “Science is wonderful at explaining what science is wonderful at explaining, but beyond that it tends to look for its car keys where the light is good.”
There also seems to be a need in us humans – perhaps spiritual or maybe even entertainment oriented -- that yearns for far-reaching or superstitious explanations for the seemingly inexplicable. We can’t quite settle for mystery and are compelled to shape visions into something personally appealing. For instance, when I learned that people born blind can see during a near death experience, I wondered what else might our brains and minds be innately capable of doing in tandem, particularly when “under the influence.”
Joseph Campbell hinted that there may be submerged parts of an iceberg resting below our western understanding of consciousness. He believed that much of what Freud and his disciples referenced in this regard -- like fears, immoral urges, shameful experiences, etc. -- reflected only a tiny smidgeon of what slumbered in the deep recesses of our subconscious and unconscious mind, a mind that we now think may be shared with a larger universal intelligence. With his characteristic Irish wit, Campbell suggested, “Freud was fishing for minnows while sitting on a whale.”
MDMA, an empathogen, does not offer a comparable extravaganza of lights to entertain us. This medicine offers feeling-enhancers and a special mode of perception in which the world of persons and objects is neither distorted nor left behind.
Claudio Naranjo wrote: “Everything becomes clearer, sharper, not only appearing to be more ‘present’ than usual, but with a density of formal relationships that creates the impression that each thing is a miracle of perfection even in its imperfections.” A larger appreciation and acceptance for life is grasped.
The colors and light patterns reported by many MDMA patients seem to have similar characteristics among them including possible veiled meanings. They may appear as threads of light, tunnels of light, sacred lights, glowing orbs, stars, auras, pinpoints of light emerging from cells of the body, or colorful swirling cones of energy, to name a few.
I’ve also heard descriptions of coordinated “squiggles” of energy with “synchronized patterned movements” hinting at opposites that partially divulge a hidden balance and order to life. “Gentle swaying strands” of sparkling light dots, or “tubes of light swaying in the wind,” have been described to me. For some they seem to hold old and connected fragments of information woven into their threads – almost like hidden insights or life clues awaiting discovery. One person, trying to find descriptive language for the visions said, “It was like the money tube at the bank’s drive-up window, information going back and forth.”
Perhaps we can best understand these MDMA images as our personal symbols, our custom-made way to decode complex phenomenon. Remember these symbols because they may carry individual significance for you, the seer, much like how we try to make sense of our dream world. Being generated from inside us, it is up to us to decide what they mean. But keep in mind, we are in the world and the world is in us, and this is a participatory universe. That begs the question, “Are these internal or external lights, or both, playing with each other?” After all, MDMA is notorious for being a relational enhancing drug, but not limited to human relations.
Or should we query, “Are these specters merely memes?” Memes can be regarded as stories, ideas, and ways of seeing things that we copy from person to person by imitation, perhaps in part due to cultural suggestion. And may some of the visions be reflective of a mental state of depression and despair at the time of ingestion? Still another possibility, are they part of an innate religious impulse, or a craving, that is hardwired in our brain circuitry?
Trying to explain such phenomenon can be a bit esoteric in nature. For now they remain mysterious displays that hint at a wide range of wonders, connections, and possibilities.
Tentatively, I will offer one seemingly reasonable hypothesis. The lights suggest energy movement that is altered or accelerated by the medicine. Perhaps what they also reveal is part of an energetic reconfiguration of the whole person, shedding or casting off heavy energies (hucha) that did not promote mental or physical health in our former emotional state. The lights may signify activation of the chakras or even epigenetic shifts in our DNA. I don’t know for sure.
Working with MDMA is both a scientific endeavor and an art form. It is an interpretive dance of sorts. Even with our personal certainty harvested from seeing the symbols, and with the additional insights gleaned from brain scans, we may, nevertheless, fail to comprehend the big mysteries we are participating in. Questions will likely remain. Maybe we will have to reconcile ourselves to being content simply with feeling better.
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“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.”
- James Baldwin
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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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