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4 the Psychedelic Landscape University of Plymouth PEARL https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk 04 University of Plymouth Research Theses 01 Research Theses Main Collection 2011 Communicating the Unspeakable: Linguistic Phenomena in the Psychedelic Sphere Slattery, Diana R. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/549 University of Plymouth All content in PEARL is protected by copyright law. Author manuscripts are made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document. In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher or author. 3 Author's Declaration At no time during the registration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy has the author been registered for any other University award without prior agreement of the Graduate Committee. This study was self-financed. Relevant scientific seminars and conferences were regularly attended at which work was often presented; several papers were prepared for publication. These are listed in Appendix IV. Word count of main body of thesis: 87, 322. Signed l'>^!:f:ffif:?:^...^.! Date ..Zl..d^^$:^..^.±LL COMMUNICATING THE UNSPEAKABLE: LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA IN THE PSYCHEDELIC SPHERE by DIANA REED SLATTERY A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfillment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Planetary Collegium Faculty of Arts AUGUST 2010 Copyright Statement This copy of the thesis has been supplied on Condition that any one who consults it is understood to recognize that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author's prior consent. COMMUNICATING THE UNSPEAKABLE: LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA IN THE PSYCHEDELIC SPHERE by DIANA REED SLATTERY A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfillment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Planetary Collegium Faculty of Arts AUGUST 2010 Abstract Psychedelics can enable a broad and paradoxical spectrum of linguistic phenomena from the unspeakability of mystical experience to the eloquence of the songs of the shaman or curandera. Interior dialogues with the Other, whether framed as the voice of the Logos, an alien download, or communion with ancestors and spirits, are relatively common. Sentient visual languages are encountered, their forms unrelated to the representation of speech in natural language writing systems. This thesis constructs a theoretical model of linguistic phenomena encountered in the psychedelic sphere for the field of altered states of consciousness research (ASCR). The model is developed from a neurophenomenological perspective, especially the work of Francisco Varela, and Michael Winkelman's work in shamanistic ASC, which in turn builds on the biogenetic structuralism of Charles Laughlin, John McManus, and Eugene d'Aquili. Neurophenomenology relates the physical and functional organization of the brain to the subjective reports of lived experience in altered states as mutually informative, without reducing consciousness to one or the other. Consciousness is seen as a dynamic multistate process of the recursive interaction of biology and culture, thereby navigating the traditional dichotomies of objective/subjective, body/mind, and inner/outer realities that problematically characterize much of the discourse in consciousness studies. The theoretical work of Renaissance scholar Stephen Farmer on the evolution of syncretic and correlative systems and their relation to neurobiological structures provides a further framework for the exegesis of the descriptions of linguistic phenomena in first-person texts of long-term psychedelic self- exploration. Since the classification of most psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, legal research came to a halt; self-experimentation as research did not. Scientists such as Timothy Leary and John Lilly became outlaw scientists, a social aspect of the "unspeakability" of these experiences. Academic ASCR has largely side-stepped examination of the extensive literature of psychedelic self- exploration. This thesis examines aspects of both form and content from these works, focusing on those that treat linguistic phenomena, and asking what these linguistic experiences can tell us about how the psychedelic landscape is constructed, how it can be navigated, interpreted, and communicated within its own experiential field, and communicated about to make the data accessible to inter-subjective comparison and validation. The methodological core of this practice-based research is a technoetic practice as defined by artist and theoretician Roy Ascott: the exploration of consciousness through interactive, artistic, and psychoactive technologies. The iterative process of psychedelic self-exploration and creation of interactive software defines my own technoetic practice is the means by which I examine my states of consciousness employing the multidimensional visual language Glide. Table of Contents Abstract 5 Table of Contents 6 1 Table of Figures 10 2 Acknowledgements 13 3 Author's Declaration 15 1. Introduction 16 3.1 The Research Climate 16 3.1.1 The Academic Discourse on Consciousness 18 3.1.2 The Unspeakability of Anomalous Experience 19 3.1.3 The Ineffability Standard 20 3.1.4 The Unspeakably Aw(e)ful 23 3.1.5 Secrecy 24 3.1.6 Pragmatic Approach to Definitions of Language 24 3.2 Research Question 26 3.2.1 Neurobiological Models 27 3.3 The Appendices 29 4 The Psychedelic Field and Its Literature 31 4.1 A Divided Field 31 4.2 Literature Review 35 4.2.1 Consciousness Studies 35 4.2.2 Phenomenological Perspectives 39 4.2.3 Altered States of Consciousness Research (ASCR) 40 4.2.4 Anthropological Accounts of the Psychedelic Sphere 43 4.2.5 Cultural History of Psychedelics 44 4.2.6 The Literature of Psychedelic Self-Exploration 45 5 Methods 47 5.1 A Transdisciplinary Stance 48 5.1.1 Subjectivity/Objectivity 48 5.1.2 Nicolescu and Transdisciplinarity 51 5.2 Varela and the Calculus of Self-Reference 54 5.3 The Thesis It/Self: Self-Reflexivity 55 5.4 A Technoetic Practice 57 5.4.1 Technoetic Practice and Language 62 5.5 First Person Reports 64 5.5.1 Research Data: the AUen Downloads 71 6 The Psychedelic Landscape 75 6.1 Reality Reviewed 75 6.2 Hallucination 82 6.3 Extended Perception 83 6.3.1 Synaesthesia 89 6.3.2 Crystal Vision 92 6.3.3 High Resolution 94 6.3.4 Filaments 95 6.3.5 Hyperconnectivity 97 6.3.6 Hyperconductivity 99 6.4 Dimensionality 100 6.4.1 The Dimensions of Dimension 101 6.4.2 Fractal Dimensions 106 7 Neurophenomenological Perspectives on Language Ill 7.1 The Symbol and the Symbolic Process: Laughlin, McManus, D'Aquili Ill 7.1.1 Conscious Network 112 7.1.2 TheSensorium 112 7.1.3 The Primary Units of Experience: Dots 113 7.1.4 Symbols and the Symbolic Process 116 7.1.5 Semiosis 117 7.1.6 Evolution of the Symbolic Process 117 7.1.7 Evolution of Symbolic Forms 118 7.1.8 The Universal Symbol 121 7.1.9 Symbolic Penetration 122 7.2 Psychointegration: Winkelman 123 7.3 Presentational and Representational Symbolic Cognition: Hunt 124 7.4 Biologic: Varela 128 7.5 Correlative Systems: Farmer 136 7.6 Summary 140 8 Xenolinguistics 143 8.1 Novel Linguistic Forms 143 8.2 Language in the Warp 147 8.2.1 Effects on Natural Language '. 147 8.2.2 Eloquence 151 8.2.3 Glossolalia 152 8.3 Evolution of Language 153 8.3.1 Prehistory 154 8.3.2 Media 158 8.3.3 Language, Culture, Nature 161 8.3.4 The Call for New Language 165 8.3.5 Constructing Languages 167 8.3.6 Sensory Modalities of Xenolinguistic Presentation 168 8.4 The I Ching and Correlative Systems 172 8.4.1 I Ching as correlative system 173 8.5 The Idea of a Living Language 176 8.5.1 Panspermia 179 8.5.2 The Rainbow Serpent 182 8.6 The Xenolinguists 184 8.7 Jason Tucker: Actual Contact 184 8.7.1 Allyson Grey: Secret Writing 188 8.8 Terence and Dennis McKenna: Timewave Zero 191 8.8.1 The Experiment at La Chorrera 192 8.8.2 The Philosopher's Stone, Translinguistic Matter, and the Hyperdimensional Object at the End of Time 196 8.8.3 Timewave Zero, the Novelty Principle, and 2012 199 8.8.4 Dimensionality 205 8.8.5 Language and the Structure of Reality 206 8.8.6 Ethical Dimensions of Timewave Zero 208 8.9 Diana Slattery: Glide 210 8.9.1 The Bright Trauma 211 8.9.2 Glide Mythology 212 8.9.3 Software 220 8.9.4 The Idea of a Visual Language 220 8.9.5 Forms '. 225 8.9.6 Semantics 228 8.9.7 Logic 235 8.9.8 Uses 238 8.9.9 Ethical Dimensions of Glide 242 9 Conclusions 245 9.1 The Psychedelic Field and Its Literature 245 9.2 Methods 246 9.3 The Psychedelic Landscape 2 47 9.4 Neurophenomenology 250 9.4.1 Conscious network 251 9.4.2 TheSensorium 252 9.4.3 Dots and Waves 252 9.4.4 The Symbol 253 9.4.5 The Universal Symbol 253 9.4.6 The Matter of Correlation 254 9.5 Xenolinguistics 256 9.5.1 Contact With The Other 256 9.5.2 Natural Language, and the Evolution of Language and Consciousness 259 9.5.3 TheEschaton 261 9.6 Contribution to New Knowledge 263 9.7 Future Research 265 10 References 267 11 Appendix I: Illustrations 279 12 Appendix II 325 13 Appendix III 327 14 Appendix IV: Contact with the Other—Knowledge Acquisition in the Psychedelic Sphere , , 331 14.1 The Noetic 331 14.2 Epistemological Rupture 333 14.3 Neurobiology and Knowing 334 14.4 Self and Other 337 14.5 Transformations of Self and Other 339 14.6 The Other as Alien 345 14.7 Ego-dissolution 351 14.8 Protocols for Knowledge Acquisition Between Phases of Consciousness 356 14.9 The Technoetic Practice 359 15 Appendix V: The Technoetic Practice, History and Protocols 361 15.1 The Download Experience and the ADs 361 15.2 Protocols in Personal Practice 365 15.2.1 Initiation of the Relationship with the Other 369 15.2.2 A Spectrum of Transpersonalities 372 15.2.3 School ...376 15.2.4 Elrond 378 16 Appendix VI: Extended Perception as Alien Art 382 8 17 Appendix VII: Constructed Language Practices 389 18 Appendix VIII: The Xenolinguists 395 19 Appendix X: Bibliography 402 1 Table of Figures Figure 1.
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