[INDOLOGY] Soma and hallucinations

Steve Farmer saf at safarmer.com
Thu Nov 22 18:36:51 UTC 2018


My apologies for a second post: the link to the classical paper on “ghost oppression” I used apparently timed out. You can download the study from the first paper on that mentioned in this link to Google Scholar:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=ghost+oppression+1994&btnG= <https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=ghost+oppression+1994&btnG=>

Steve Farmer

> On Nov 22, 2018, at 10:31 AM, Steve Farmer <saf at safarmer.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Matthew,
> 
> You write:
> 
>> Hallucinations may arise, as Steve Farmer usefully observes, in anyone whose default mode network has been interrupted by any means, whether that be through drugs, self-flagellation or whatever. Robin Cahart-Harris et al. have for several years been publishing interesting results of the action of LSD and psilocybin on the DMN.
>> 
>> However, I believe that the core of the issue relating to soma/haoma is whether or not soma/haoma was/is capable of inducing an 'entheogenic' state. (We are of course in the area of tricky and contentious demarcation criteria here.) I am not talking about strange hallucinogenic experiences but an experience of what might be called 'divine transcendence'. Even high doses of LSD in optimal, controlled conditions only induce a transcendent experience in about 6% of subjects (see my book for references). Such transcendent experiences may also involve hallucinations, but these are secondary (and relatively insignificant) phenomena in the context of a properly transcendent experience. Experience of the 'cosmic', non-dual void or Godhead is the paramount and rarely obtained treasure.
> 
> Oddly enough, extensive interviews we held in the mid 1990s with narcoleptics about their hallucinations — including those triggered by chronic use of stimulants (mostly catecholamine agonists) — almost always involved mention of interactions with disembodied spirits, demons, flight through the air, etc. 
> 
> In one remarkably common modern twist on these themes, abduction by aliens from outer space was also mentioned. :)
> 
> This is also a standard feature of so-called sleep paralysis (routinely referred to as “ghost oppression” in Chinese traditions - see one classic study here http://tinyurl.com/y8qls65t <http://tinyurl.com/y8qls65t> ). Sleep paralysis is common not only in narcoleptics but can be triggered as well in just about anyone by chronic use of stimulants — as well as by a wide range of behavioral interventions including ritualistic sleep deprivation, which also often involves stimulant use. 
> 
> So in my post I really didn’t have some kind of generic hallucinations in mind, but took it for granted that those involve visions of anthropomorphic beings of some sort, which are a regular feature of intense stimulant-induced hallucinations. This is also true of the auditory hallucinations in schizophrenics triggered by acute as well as chronic use of methamphetamine, cocaine, methylphenidate, and a wide range of other stimulants. 
> 
> A standard means of diagnosing suspected schizophrenic tendencies, in fact, in which auditory hallucinations are the most common type, comes in fact in what is known as an “amphetamine challenge” or “methylphenidate challenge.”  On this and related topics, see, e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30460884 <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30460884>. 
> 
> Hence my suggestion that spiritual visions and auditory hallucinations of the sort we find in the soma hymns of the RV, and in a zillion other premodern sources throughout the world, could be triggered by virtually and drug that disrupts attentional neural networks involved in the integration of sensual, cognitive, and emotional information, including above all the known sensual integration systems in the insular cortex and nearby regions.  
> 
> I think there is good evidence that sleep systems, which also involve the insular cortex, take part in virtually all hallucinatory experiences in some way. For some further hints here, see, e.g. http://tinyurl.com/yckyupfk <http://tinyurl.com/yckyupfk>, where the list of related phenomena actually includes alien abductions! :)
> 
> I think all this really boosts your key argument, Matthew, which I find to be persuasive: that many different drugs could have triggered the kinds soma-like religious visions we find in Vedic sources. My only slight modification of your argument is that I think the evidence is clear that different classes of drugs lead to similar results, not just those we choose to classify as “hallucinogens.” What is critical in my view, as I argued in my original post, isn’t the specific drug but what neural systems are perturbed.
> 
> Best wishes, and thanks much for your quite remarkable work. 
> 
> Below, to contextualize a bit what I say above, I reattach my fuller post on this from 10/24, which you mentioned in your note today, addressed to Mark Singleton.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Steve Farmer
> The Systems Biology Group
> Palo Alto, California
> saf at safarmer.com <mailto:saf at safarmer.com>
> 
> *****************
> Dear Mark,
> 
> Thanks much for passing on this really interesting post from Matthew Clark, whose work I wasn’t aware of previously.
> 
> I’ve always viewed skeptically claims that all references to homa/soma over the long periods and vast regions in which its use was reported in antiquity referred to one psychoactive plant. I think that you and I discussed this at one point years ago. It is nice to see Matthew suggesting the same thing, backing his case with cross-cultural evidence involving ayahuasca, which has long been known to involve different mixtures of drugs in different S. American regions. 
> 
> That said, in discussing the different types of plants & drugs putatively linked to homa/soma, I suspect that Matthew underestimates the potential role of ephedra (or ephedrine), which like a long list of similar sympathomimetic drugs in modern use (cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, methylphenidate, etc.) is capable with chronic use of triggering schizophrenic-like visions not substantially different from those produced (if more reliably) by the hallucinogenic substances used in ayahuasca or similar psychoactive mixtures in the premodern world.
> 
> Thus Matthew writes: 
> 
>>> 7. Ephedra is a mild stimulant, but like any stimulant, engenders a hangover. It is not visionary or psychedelic. 
> 
> A lot of medical evidence in fact exists that off-target effects of chronic use of ephedra and related sympathomimetic drugs do, in fact, include hallucinations, although that was not the reason the FDA banned ephedra’s use in 2004.  
> 
> I became aware of these issues when involved in the mid 1990s in studies of narcoleptics, whose treatment at the time commonly involved long-term use of high doses of methylphenidate, methamphetamine, and other sympathomimetics related structurally to the stimulants in ephedra. A frantic search was on at the time for replacements for those drugs since an increasing number of narcoleptics were having psychotic reactions to the drugs that involved visual and auditory hallucinations indistinguishable from those seen in schizophrenics and users of LSD and similar psychedelic drugs. 
> 
> New supposedly safer stimulants like modafinil eventually came on the market, but over time it turned out that hallucinations were among their common off-target effects as well. The reasons why that is try can be inferred from what I say below.
> 
> I solicited and collected in the mid 1990s numerous reports from narcoleptic patients, including some who became friends, of contacts with aliens (or alternately, depending on their cultural backgrounds) of communications with gods, angels, or demons, etc., attributable to the drugs and not the waking dreams narcoleptics (who are not psychotic) experience daily.
> 
> The evidence is very strong today that hallucinations of similar sorts can be triggered by many different kinds of drugs, not just those currently viewed as psychedelics. The similarities are explained by many recent fMRI and post-mortem anatomical studies that suggest that the main driver of hallucinations of all sorts involves disruptions of neural systems linking “higher” cortical regions in the prefrontal cortex to subcortical networks and key integrative neural networks in the insula and linked cortical structures, e.g. the anterior cingulate. 
> 
> The key point here is that *any* disruptions to the default resting networks linking those regions — whether deriving from ingestion of exogenous chemicals like those in ephedra or by specific neurological diseases (bipolar disorder, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease, & many others that produce hallucinations) will lead to similar schizophrenic-like or waking-visions. 
> 
> For some suggestive evidence here, see this recent paper by a major group on auditory hallucinations in the _Schizophrenia Bulletin_ which suggests the existence of “domain-general mechanisms for hallucinations” of all major types:
> 
> _Auditory Hallucinations and the Brain’s Resting-State Networks: Findings and Methodological Observations_:
> 
> Full paper downloadable here: http://tinyurl.com/ycfyhm5j <http://tinyurl.com/ycfyhm5j>
> 
> Other recent papers on Alzheimer’s disease and hallucinations and visual rather than auditory hallucinations come to the same conclusion. 
> 
> In sum, you can damage these networks in many different ways, but the existence of those disruptions and not the specific diseases or chemicals causing the damage is what defines the character of the hallucinations. 
> 
> And all this together implies that you will never be able to identify the drug or more likely multiple drugs behind the hoama/soma question from evidence in the different strata of Vedic or early Iranian texts describing the nature of the visions. Hallucinations on this model whether triggered by stimulants, psychedelics, intentionally cultivated visionary experience, visions induced by sleep deprivation, or for that matter a well-aimed hammer to the head can all be expected on a deep level to look pretty much the same.
> 
> Granted, however, that some hallucinations may be more pleasant than others:
> 
> https://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/481451 <https://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/481451>
> 
> Regards,
> Steve Farmer
> 
> The Systems Biology Group
> Palo Alto, California
> saf at safarmer.com <mailto:saf at safarmer.com>
> 



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