We look at a thing — a bird, a ball, a planet — and perceive it to be a certain color. But what we are really seeing is the color that does not inhere in it—the portion of the spectrum it shirks, the wavelength of light it reflects back unabsorbed. Our world appears a swirling miracle of blue, but its blueness is only a perceptual phenomenon arising from how our particular atmosphere, with its particular chemistry and its insentient stubbornness toward a particular portion of the spectrum, absorbs and reflects light.
In the living world beneath this atmosphere that scatters the shorter wavelengths as they pass, blue is the rarest color: There is no naturally occurring true blue pigment among living creatures. In consequence, only a slender portion of plants bloom in blue, and an even more negligible number of animals are bedecked with it, all having to perform various tricks with chemistry and the physics of light, some having evolved astonishing triumphs of structural geometry and optics to render themselves blue. Each feather of the blue jay is tessellated with tiny light-reflecting beads arranged to cancel out every wavelength of light except the blue.
Blue jay feather under my microscope.
The Morpho peleides butterfly, singular and striking with its enormous cobalt blue wings, is covered with miniature scales ridged at the precise angle to bend light in such a way that only the blue portion of the spectrum is reflected to the eye of the beholder — a variation on diffraction grating, the technique astronomers use inside telescopes to fan light into a rainbow in order to study each color of light individually, decoding the chemical composition of the star observed by the absorption pattern at the various wavelengths, uniquely absorbed by different atoms. Of all the known animals, only a handful of butterfly species produce pigments as close to blue as nature can get — a green-tinted aquamarine the color of Uranus.
The Voyager‘s farewell shot of Uranus. (NASA.)
In 1990, the Voyager spacecraft completed its epoch-making mission of surveying the outer Solar System with a triumphal final photograph of Neptune, rendered a stark cobalt blue by a methane atmosphere that so readily inhales the red and infrared wavelengths. Then, before its cameras blinked shut for eternity, before continuing on its vectorless voyage to travel farther from Earth than any human-made vessel, Voyager turned its enormous mechanical eye toward its origin planet — a pixel of barely distinguishable blue across the expanse of 30 astronomical units, an unfathomable four and a half billion kilometers away. With the camera’s optics unequal to this sweep of spacetime, the photograph had no apparent scientific value. It was a poetic gesture, the permission for which the poetic astronomer Carl Sagan had spent years petitioning unpoetic NASA administrators.
In the grainy image that came back, Earth appeared the way Whitman had seen it in his mind’s eye, the poet’s eye, a century ahead of the spacecraft engineer’s — “a blue point, far, far in heaven floating.” Sagan saw it as a precious “pale blue dot” beckoning us to cherish and preserve it, this “only home we’ve ever known.” A home whose blue mystery we know no better than we know our own depths.
The Pale Blue Dot (NASA)
An epoch earlier, the aspiring poet turned pioneering chemist Humphry Davy, whose 1799 experiments with nitrous oxide became the first systematic study of altered consciousness, traveled to Italy, where he collected samples of crystals for a series of chemical experiments that would unravel the chromatic secrets of the ancient world. First in Rome, among the remnants of the baths of Titus, and again on a small pot in the ruins of Pompeii, he discovered an arresting deep blue he identified as Egyptian blue — humanity’s first synthetic pigment, manufactured by the ancients from the rare mineral lapis lazuli, which they mined in the Sar-e-Sang valley of present-day Afghanistan and turned into the stunning blue that occupied a special symbolic place in their art as the color of the sky and the life-river Nile, a chromatic echo of the universe itself. Their methodology for transforming crystal into pigment, matter into meaning, had been lost during the Dark Ages, leaving millennia of artists and natural philosophers to speculate on the secret of the richest blue. Upon his return from Italy, Davy published a paper humbly titled Some Experiments and Observations on the Colours Used in Painting by the Ancients. In it, he demonstrated that Egyptian blue — chemical formula CaCuSi4O10 — is “a frit made by means of soda, and coloured by oxide of copper.” The color of creation, broken down to chemical code.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Light Coming on the Plains, I, II and III, 1917, synthetic watercolor on paper. (Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.)
Two centuries later, the Madras-born, American-based chemist Mas Subramanian would accidentally discover, while conducting electrical experiments, the first new inorganic blue pigment since Davy’s day, the first safe synthetic alternative to the crowning chromatic glory of ancient Egypt: the deep, intense YInMn Blue — so named for its constituents: yttrium, indium, manganese. Nontoxic, unlike cobalt and Prussian blue, it withstands fading even when confronted with oil or water, and reflects infrared light; to paint a roof in YInMn Blue would be to keep the habitat beneath it cooler, more energy-efficient, more impervious to the solar radiation that gives life and vanquishes life. All this splendor and unsuspected might derive from its singular crystal structure, encoded in which is the subtle, bewildering reminder that even in a portion of the universe as slender and human-trammeled as synthetic pigments, there are wonders yet to be discovered.
We live in a bipolar epoch — on one end, the blamethirsty finger of cancel culture and politicized othering; on the other, the zeal for designating people, real human beings with real human lives, as secular saints expected to give us unremitting consolation, inspiration, and encouragement. Both are cages that dehumanize the caged, negating the tessellated variousness of their personhood, the complexity of their human experience. All the while, our cultural mythos of success is skinning life of joy on the crucifix of achievement.
Of all the ills that require our constant vigilance and courage, these three — ambition, blame, and worship — menace modern life more perniciously, because more subtly, than all the rest combined.
“Who serves best doesn’t always understand,” wrote the Nobel-winning Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. With her oceanic laugh and sunlit vivacity, Samin has been serving more than food for two decades — she has served, for millions, a model of being a conscientious objector to the warfare of cynicism destroying the modern spirit. She has also suffered the struggle, the strangeness, of being regarded as “a bringer of joy,” being expected to play that role while wading through a thick inner darkness, the tension between wanting to be of service but also needing the freedom to meet sorrow on its own terms — not the performative suffering and competitive trauma rewarded in our time, but that most inward, private, and subterranean current of soul-ache that demands everything of us and shows nothing.
In trying to find a way “to be truthful and authentic, and also share goodness,” Samin found herself reckoning with how she came to be the way she is:
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there has been so much sorrow and grief and loss in my life, from the very beginning. I’ve had to actively orient myself, almost as a survival mechanism, toward goodness and toward joy, toward love and friendship and nature and beauty, just to make it. And that is what I want to put out into the world.
And yet she found herself in a void of joy, puzzled by how this was possible given how hard she had worked at her life:
What happened was I spent my life in a singleminded pursuit of excellence, with the flawed (probably subconscious) belief that if I achieved the right combination of thing, that would make me feel okay, make me feel happy, make my parents finally proud of me. And then, somehow, I did achieve all the things I set out to do — and more — and it sucked the life out of me… There was an emptiness inside of me — I did all these things, I held up my end of the bargain, and it didn’t work. So now what…
I had to just sit there and be in that pain.
Burnout is often our best catalyst for transformation. But for Samin, that pain collided with another, vaster and more primal, until the two ricocheted into a revelation that turned her life around. Just as she was crouching there in the darkness of her burnout, her father suffered a traumatic brain injury. As he lay dying, they had the difficult conversations they had never faced. She reflects:
More than anything, watching him die in that way really brought me face to face with my own mortality and gave me a sense of such clarity that time is so precious and that the way I had been looking at life… “If I I’m good now and work hard now, then one day I’ll be okay, one day I’ll be happy, one day I’ll have joy, one day I’ll cash this in.” And I realized, oh no, no, no — there is no cashing it in: You have to spend it as you go.
That really reoriented me to this sense that every day is my life… All of the small choices I make — that’s what I’m doing. And I have to have joy… And, actually, all the sort of boring and menial parts of my life are where, if I just make some small shifts, I can have a good life.
Couple this fragment of Yo-Yo & Friends — which features five other conversations about the creative life (including one with me) — with the pioneering psychologist Carl R. Rogers on the three elements of the good life, then revisit Mario Benedetti’s magnificent “Defense of Joy.”
A lady was once heating up a pot of water on a gas stove with the intent of cooking pasta for her family for dinner. A frog fell into the pot while it was sitting on the stove. While it wasn’t his intention to be stuck in a pot of water, he didn’t try to escape. He was comfortable enough as he was.
The lady soon turned on the flame to begin boiling the water. As the water’s temperature began to rise, the frog was able to adjust his body temperature accordingly, so he remained in the pot without trying to do anything to change the situation.
However, as the water approached its boiling point, the frog’s body temperature could no longer keep up. He finally tried to jump out of the pot, but with water temperature continuing to increase, he didn’t have it in him to make the leap.
It was too late for the frog to save himself.
Unknown Author
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”
~ Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech,[2] Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.[3] Wikipedia.org
Dr. Luis Montaner, seated right, with his team at the HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia | Wistar Institute
Is a cure for HIV in sight?
Since the virus that causes AIDS was identified over 40 years ago, finding a cure has been the holy grail of HIV research and the army of scientists conducting it.
I’m certainly confident that we’re going to have a breakthrough within my career, and I have a good 10 to 15 years left.
While antiretroviral (ARV) therapies are extending lives and keeping HIV at bay, and PrEP has the potential to effectively halt transmission of the virus, a cure has remained elusive. That’s because the HIV virus itself is elusive, both co-opting the immune system and hiding from it.
But new discoveries are putting the goal of a cure within reach, according to Dr. Luis Montaner, D.V.M., D.Phil, and the director of the HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center at the Wistar Institute.
Montaner doesn’t foresee a “magic bullet” for the job, but a combination of approaches, just like antiretroviral therapy. “One doesn’t work, but three do,” he says.
He spoke from the Wistar Institute’s offices in Philadelphia to explain.
LGBTQ Nation: I’m going to put you on the spot right out of the gate and ask: When will there be a cure for HIV?
Dr. Luis Montaner: I’m certainly confident that we’re going to have a breakthrough within my career, and I have a good 10 to 15 years left.
We’re really kind of landing this effort with the progress we’ve made to date. If you think about it like landing a plane and you’re going at 30,000 feet, and you’re then going down towards the runway, and you’re seeing the runway ahead, I think that we see the runway now much clearer than we did, say, five or 10 years ago, and it’s been because of the investment that’s been made.
If you think about the cure-directed research activities that have been supported, both in the U.S. and internationally, over the last 15 years, they’ve really been an exponential investment, and that has resulted in a lot of activity in understanding the dynamics of persistence. Why does a cell persist without dying in the context of being infected by a virus? How does the immune system deal with clearance, and what are new strategies that have emerged that empower the immune system, when the immune system itself cannot deal with it to better clear it?
I think the only component where we need a clear breakthrough is with respect to how to expose an infected cell. I think that that still remains an area of active investigation by all of us, and by all of us, I mean independent groups that are looking into this question and specific approaches to try to accomplish that.
We have now a whole inventory of strategies to empower the immune system to clear an infected cell, but we still want to identify a strategy that can effectively expose a cell as infected. I’m quite confident that if we continue the investment, the outcome would be successful.
| Shutterstock
There have been about a dozen cases, by my estimate, where people with HIV have been declared virus-free. Is that an accurate description, and how did they get there?
Yes, you are correct. But in all these cases where individuals were viremic and therefore subsequently identified to be virus-free, all had included interventions that removed their immune system—their circulating immune system — and replaced it with a transplant with cells that are less fit to sustain infection.
That really proved a couple of important points. One, that tissue would not still be a source of virus in the blood. And second, the ability of a new immune system to not be compromised by mechanisms that we don’t yet understand. That did not happen either.
So that means that the dynamic of infection, as we understand it, holds true: that the virus needs certain steps to get in, and there’s nothing in the body that would sort of bypass that.
It’s almost like being at a slot machine, and you’ve put all these quarters in, and you’re about to hit the jackpot, but there’s somebody saying, “All right, well, you’ve been at it long enough. Get out, and go to another machine,” and you’re like, “No, no, I’m staying at this one.”
I’m arguing we have to wait for the payout. We don’t get up from the chair until we finish the job.
How does HIV work in the body, and what are the qualities of the virus that have made a cure so elusive?
Evolutionarily, the HIV virus gains from the same machinery that the immune system uses to respond against an infection. In the same manner that the immune system controls the virus, the virus uses it to persist. So, it’s sort of a central player in the cascade of activation that will follow an immune activation event.
You could think about it like material in a non-lending library. You have to make copies of it in the photocopier if you want to get the material out. As a retrovirus, HIV makes itself from a copy to an original. It goes backwards, and it does so in a very sloppy manner, and that has benefited it evolutionarily, because it means that if it can make a lot of mistakes, because of the nature of how it replicates, it can afford to survive as it gains from the immune activation event.
Because the immune activation event is going to home into a particular component of the virus to try to control it. And the virus needs that because it actually wants to replicate in the context of immune activation. So how does it gain from the activation, while at the same time not sign its death warrant?
Because, the way that it replicates, it goes back to an original, so it can always pressure itself to make a component that could be one step away from what the immune system is responding against. And because the viral replication is a day or less, and the immune system takes more than a day to respond, it’s always going to be days ahead of the immune system.
Now, the other component that it has, which we still don’t understand and is part of what drives this need to come up with strategies to reactivate it or expose it, has to do with immune memory. How does our immune system remember everything that we have been exposed to, and how do we regulate that whole system within ourselves to be sustainable for years on end? Meaning that, “I was exposed to this infection when I was 15, and I’m now 50, and I still have immunity against it.” We don’t really understand how that happens.
Somehow, HIV is able to persist in that same system. We refer to that as a reservoir, or an infected cell that can persist over time.
The old dogma was that if any T cell gets activated to divide, then it must make virus, and if it makes virus, it must die, or it must be detected by the immune system.
A 3D medical illustration showing an HIV retrovirus targeting T-cells. | Shutterstock
But all of a sudden it became clear that, no, there’s a subset of cells that appear to divide, not make a virus, and not die. How does that happen? Obviously, the cells that you have today are not the same cells that you had, say, two years ago, right? Just like it’s not the same cells in the top of your nail. Cells that you had two years ago, you replace them.
So, how do you retain memory from one year to the next if you have to generate new cells? There must be a system that we use naturally to divide without activation, and the virus appears to have hijacked that system because it can integrate and divide together with it.
So that’s the other component that it has. It has the component that I described earlier, which is how it can expand and yet survive as it infects initially, but once it gets through the door, then it has a secondary mechanism to persist by just becoming part of the immune system.
I think that answers part of my next question, which is that antiretroviral drugs, or ARVs, have been available for years for people with HIV, and they’re keeping them healthy. Why aren’t those drugs enough to produce a cure?
For the reasons that I just highlighted. All the drugs target the steps outside of the nucleus coming in. But the nuclear component, we don’t have any drugs for that.
So with all of that said, what are the most promising avenues to a “cure” for HIV? Do they take similar approaches? Are they radically different?
I think that the beauty is in the diversity of approaches, because I think everyone acknowledges that there’s not going to be a magic bullet, but a combination, just like antiviral therapy. One doesn’t work, but three do, because they all target potentially different components.
I think there’s several things that are really exciting.
The first is the discovery that there are antiretroviral regimens that could promote cell death of an infected cell, and that’s basically an intrinsic outcome of the drug and the infected cell.
Now, a lot of these drugs don’t kill 100% of the cells, so understanding what drives those that persist is going to be important. But still, it’s a process that we can build upon, because it doesn’t require immunological selection that the virus can escape from. So that’s one.
The second is lipid nanoparticles as a therapeutic strategy to deliver genetic information to cells.
illustration showing cross-section of a lipid nanoparticle carrying mRNA of the virus (orange) | Shutterstock
That has opened up a lot of opportunities to identify an infected cell and deliver a cargo that may clear it, or identify cells that you want to empower with specific properties that then become antiviral. I told you that reactivating HIV to identify it was a major goal. So now there are lipid nanoparticles that you can actually package with a protein from the virus itself that can drive that.
The third is gene therapy approaches as a whole. The expansion of gene therapy for cancer continues to open up new opportunities for HIV cure-directed research. For example, being able to empower certain T cells with enough viral detection strategies that the virus cannot mutate against them.
Another development, which is really exciting, is this acknowledgement that we can identify the virus that is not controlled by your own immune system.
And why is that important? Because if we can identify the virus that your immune system doesn’t yet control, we can try to empower the immune system while someone is on antiretroviral therapy to that virus, specifically, as opposed to the virus that you already control.
Because the virus has a one-day life cycle, and the immune system takes a lot longer, it’s like trying to catch a moving train. If you could actually stop the train with antiretroviral therapy and be able to design a strategy against the front end of the train, then by the time you get the train to restart, you would already be waiting for it with something that can control it.
If you have a million trains, and you don’t know which train you have to empower your immune system against, then you would be shooting blanks most of the time, right? But if you can identify the one train that you know has the probability to move forward and ignore the other ones because your immune system already controls them, then you would maybe have a better shot. And that has been a recent development as well.
So I think the future looks bright as far as a cure. I think we just need to not lose sight of the fact that we have invested so much.
It’s almost like being at a slot machine, and you’ve put all these quarters in, and you’re about to hit the jackpot, but there’s somebody saying, “All right, well, you’ve been at it long enough. Get out, and go to another machine,” and you’re like, “No, no, I’m staying at this one.”
I’m arguing we have to wait for the payout. We don’t get up from the chair until we finish the job.
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Greg Owen writes about politics and culture for LGBTQ Nation. An award-winning writer, producer and journalist, he was recently recognized for Excellence in Online Journalism by NLGJA: the Association of LGBTQ Journalists for his coverage of the 2024 election. He’s written for Q Digital since 2015 and for LGBTQ Nation since 2022.
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
–Mark Twain
Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was a prominent American writer, essayist, and humorist. His novels and stories are known for their humor, vivid details, and memorable characters. His most well-known works include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both considered American literary classics.
Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M., who passed away on November 21, 2024
April 5, 2022
By Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M. (forwarded by Pam Rodolph, H.W., M.)
This started out as an essay on the importance of ontology in forming a democracy. Once Russia invaded Ukraine, a relook at democracy was needed. Yuval Noah Harari, in his talk about how the future may look drew my attention to history. Reiterating what Harari said: Wealth and the rulers of the past, the plutocracies were all drawn to the idea that wealth and power was based on land ownership. In the 20th century, that changed to machines. Those that had the most machines or machines that could produce wealth were the rulers. We are now in a time where wealth and power will be based on data. Data of all kinds, not just what you like to eat, wear, and do but data that tells someone about your health, tells them about your emotional life, even about your gender preferences in your private life. The data will know you better than you know yourself.
This is not about privacy, but the idea that we will have little choice in our actions unless we know ourselves. In turn, this allows a small group of oligarchies to rule masses without protest. Apparently, as I am writing, this is happening in China where evidently collected data on citizens is being used to help direct and calm people before an outbreak of unrest can happen.
As I write this, according to Freedom House, America’s Democracy rating has declined 11 points putting it out of range of democracies such as France and Germany and on the same level as weaker democracies such as Romania and Panama. This is more than sad it is a dangerous legacy to give the world.
The lack of Democratic insight and understanding throughout the USA has reached a point where we are losing our interconnection as a society. We no longer recognize equality of being and the need for understanding that sameness is not equality. During WWII, the loss of sovereignty of countries and individuals and the stripping away of the basic right to life was an ontological disaster. The Prosperos emerged out of ashes of WWII. Thane saw that ontology was the answer to demolishing plutocracy, dictatorship and tyranny of all kinds. In both, the general population becomes slaves, unable to pull themselves out of the darkness of toil for survival.
A Small History
The Ontology idea of humanity is as individuals and beings with purpose. Democracy is more than a political system of governance, it holds deep roots back to 5 BCE and the Athenian idea of freeing humanity from slavery. In the study of Ontology as consciousness, we know that all that is in our world is a product of our thinking. This means that which appears to be separate is still a part of our conscious awareness.
Because we know that mind evolves, expands, awakens, we know that all we are aware of is evolving, awakening to a new understanding of the beingness of life and what appears to be nonlife. Evolution is more than that of the flesh and bone, or plant life. Evolution occurs in every aspect of mind. No matter how static an idea, structure, or a philosophy appears, it is evolving.
The Prosperos was formed to create a body of Truth Practioners and to awaken us from the illusion of darkness. To free a group of people, they must be given a common identity. In democracy, the common identity we call citizen, in The Prosperos we call it students. To be a citizen or student, or common identity meant that you must agree to a social contract. Once you agree to this contract you can participate in voting and governance at level of equality. In the United States, our contract is the Constitution. All organizations in the modern world have these contracts – businesses, schools, and sites on the internet. Every time you click on an I agree on the Internet, you are making a social contract. In the Prosperos, this is the creed of Melchizedek, not the by-laws. High Watch has always been the voting body. Only in the early foundation of The Prosperos was it not.
The separation into the rulers and those being ruled is ages old. It has evolved into organized groups of all kinds. The philosophy states “Groups must be ruled for the nature of humanity is bad and unable to remain moral and ethical without a governing supreme being.” The conservative mind sees their form of supreme being as God, or God like figure, rather than the group who votes in laws (ways of proceeding). The liberal thinker sees the social contract as ruling factor where the citizens vote on the rule of law and believe in humanity as good or able to practice moral and ethical actions without a God like figure head. The philosophy that humanity is not naturally good and able to be ethical, has allowed CEOs, headmasters, and presidents of all organizations to form.
John Locke’s influence on those starting to make changes in the evolving desire of people and how they were governed, Locke saw the state of nature, humanity as a state of perfection with the ability to conduct life as the individual saw fit. He saw humanity as being able to rule themselves without interference from others. Locke’s writing showed that he did not mean that humanity should be free to do what they please if it harmed others. He saw humanity as having a basic morality. His working axiom was the state of nature or beingness is pre-political but not pre-moral. Thomas Jefferson and the fathers of the wording of the United States Constitution were greatly influences by Locke’s philosophy.
The organization of The Prosperos has been influenced by Locke’s philosophy and the USA constitution. The Dean and Executive council work as the supreme court judging according to the rule of ontological law. HW acts as legislatures forming pathways to the future with ideas and use of Translation. Executive council was never meant to rule on their beliefs but on the basics of ontology. For the Prosperos to evolve it must allow the HW to vote on such things as the members of the Executive Council, Dean, and pathways that lead us to the future. To continue as an organization that treats its members as incapable of self-rule, and good intentions leaves it open to tyranny, and loss of participants who seek more ontological ways of being in a group.
If an organization, government, or business does not plan for the future in a manner that includes natural evolution, it will die out. Organizations and businesses of all kinds fall under the same laws of progression as biological life, albeit they move according to societal changes in consciousness. All are started by an individual or small group who are the ruling body of the entity. For survival to occur the organization (this includes schools) and business must progress to the next level of development. As research and changing environments must be accounted for in preparation for the future. Planning must take into justification aging population, growth expectations, research, and management needs. If this is not done the dogma of the culture of the organization will cause a breakdown. This collapse is seen in group determination, managerial systems, and financial growth. Growth and evolution of an organization does not preclude an organization staying at smaller levels.
In the second half of the 20th Century a strong change began happening in some USA companies and organizations. Problem solving and management moved from the top to the levels that were dealing with problems, trends, and development. The CEO, president, and Deans became spoke persons/communicators rather than the god in control or supreme authority. This meant ontology and democracy began to be integrated in organizations of all categories.
The consensus is that the supreme authority is no longer a viable source of leadership. The validity of the contract between the citizenry and leaders is being seen as no longer acceptable. Out of this a country, organizations, and businesses must begin to reimagine a future and how leadership will look and how the contract will be drawn. The new leadership must have the ability to use all systems, see and apply whole system thinking. Understand the totality of the consequences of decisions and designs of their organization.
Autonomy is basic to democracy
For there to be a democracy there must be a fundamental commitment to ontology. Our beingness, according to Heidegger, is influenced by the situations we find ourself in and practices we are immersed in. Most modern-day ontologists believe that individuals in society are shaped by historically situated linguistics. We can separate ourselves from society, but our beingness is built by our language, history, and the meaning we place on words. Democratic debate relies on the value laden ideas of true and false, in this we are separated from a state of wholeness, plunging us into a binary world. The ontological pursuit allows the debate to flush out the Truth of realities being presented by each side. Individuals bring their idea of reality to the debates in democracy. Without a common agreed upon reality the debates are riddled with pluralism. The ontologist scientist is always conditioned by personal values even when they try to escape a propensity to judge while aspiring to value neutral observations.
The first branch is ontology, or the ‘study of being’, which is concerned with what actually exists in the world about in which humans can acquire knowledge. Ontology helps researchers recognize how certain they can be about the nature and existence of objects they are researching. For instance, what ‘truth claims’ can a researcher make about reality? Who decides the legitimacy of what is ‘real’? How do researchers deal with different and conflicting ideas of reality?
To illustrate, realist ontology relates to the existence of one single reality which can be studied, understood, and experienced as a Truth; a real world exists independent of human experience. Meanwhile, ontology is based on the philosophy that reality is constructed within the mind, such that no one ‘true’ reality exists in society. Instead, reality is ‘relative’ according to how individuals experience it at any given time and place.
“What drew me to this work is a desire to understand myself more clearly, but not just in an abstract or purely intellectual way. In a way that actually changes how I live, relate, and choose. I’ve spent years observing patterns in myself that I can recognize but don’t always fully master, cycles of effort and withdrawal, moments of clarity followed by old habits reasserting themselves, and a recurring sense that there’s a deeper coherence trying to emerge if I can learn how to meet it properly.”
“Most men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” Meher Baba’s quotation came to mind as I read through the many responses to my recent question. I had asked what you were looking for—what is the essence of your search. The answers surprised me in their precision. Here is one:
“What drew me to this work is a desire to understand myself more clearly, but not just in an abstract or purely intellectual way. In a way that actually changes how I live, relate, and choose. I’ve spent years observing patterns in myself that I can recognize but don’t always fully master, cycles of effort and withdrawal, moments of clarity followed by old habits reasserting themselves, and a recurring sense that there’s a deeper coherence trying to emerge if I can learn how to meet it properly.”
In anything we pursue, we are either drawn to something or away from something. Inner work requires some kind of balance between both drives. Dissatisfaction alone, without the belief that genuine change is possible, tips into depression. And the reverse error is equally costly: those captivated only by the promises of spiritual growth, without an honest reckoning with their low starting point, are prone to self-deception.
The reader cited above is a case in point. He is dissatisfied with the gap between what he understands and how he actually lives. Those who share this experience will recognize it all too well: our old habits disregard our better understanding. They go left when we want to go right, speak when we should remain silent, or shrink back when we know we should make an effort. The reader continues:
Bride Applying Bindi to her Forehead | 18th c. Indian Miniature
“I’m not seeking escape or transcendence so much as integration and how to live more consciously, with less inner friction, and with greater responsibility for my own state. What continues to draw me is the sense that this work points toward something practical and grounded as a way of working with attention, resistance, and self-observation that doesn’t bypass ordinary life, but engages it more honestly.”
Practices that teach integration and conscious living generally fall under the umbrella of Spirituality — a problematic term, because it has grown to mean so much it has ceased meaning anything at all. Spirituality now encompasses yoga, astrology, Tarot, psychedelics, energy healing, and a plethora of other teachings and practices that readily lend themselves to escapism. The true monk is placed on equal footing with the tramp, the true believer alongside the charlatan, the true practitioner alongside the lazy idler.
But since escapism is the exact opposite of what this reader is after, how will he find the needle of integration in the giant haystack of Spirituality? Hopefully, there will be more than one such needle. Whichever it may turn out to be, it will have to strike a healthy balance between embracing the limitations of our present state and pursuing the promises of spiritual growth. Only a teaching that encompasses both can serve as a reliable guide—one that takes our present condition seriously without flattering it, and points toward genuine change without inflating it into fantasy.
My wife asks, “Can I enter your brain?” We are in the middle of a magic mushroom trip. With a smile and glint in my eye and on the backbone of long-established trust, I respond with a “Yes.” Immediately, my head bowls over. Even though my eyes are open, my vision is filled with complex, swirling rainbow fractals. Her consciousness is in my brain! I am filled with glee and her love. She energetically penetrates my lobes. My wife’s simple thought of ‘entering my brain’ was actioned when I agreed to her request. We were now sharing consciousness in a telepathic mindmeld.
Little has been written on using psychedelics to manifest psi abilities. While shamanic traditions take the skilful use of psychedelic plant medicines to enhance their psi abilities for granted, mainstream Western society is generally oblivious to such possibilities.
There are several possible reasons for this lack of awareness.
First, the illegal status of psychedelics for the past several decades has severely restricted usage, never mind research into psychedelic psi. Second, Western religions and their cultural influences typically identify such explorations of consciousness as demonic or occult, both major taboos. Third, atheists, inculcated by dominant Western cultural materialist beliefs, deny psi abilities are a possibility and are consequently not interested. Underlying this third reason is the arrogance of the industrialised world towards what shamans have shared through the millennia of what they see as the nature of reality and what humans are innately capable of. Fourth, many people fear exploring consciousness, particularly their unconscious, and especially using psychedelics to do so. The remaining balance of folks are more simply unaware of the general potential of psi and psychedelics.
But light is beginning to shine on what is possible when using higher doses of psychedelics like ayahuasca, LSD, and magic mushrooms to purposefully induce psi effects. To help in this effort, I offer insights into the power of thought forms and provide some introductory techniques for attaining psi effects when using psychedelics.
The fields of Out-of-Body and Astral Projection have developed a great depth of knowledge about the power of our thoughts in shaping our experiences in nonordinary states of consciousness. These insights can be applied to psychedelic states. With proper understanding and wisdom, one can cultivate the skilful use of thought to manifest internally projected realities, including psychic powers.
The Out-of-Body and Astral Projection literature tells us how to reprogram our subconscious mind with thoughts to leave the body at will and explore multiple dimensions or planes through either meditative trance states or dream states. When we leave the body and our conscious awareness moves away from the physical body and physical reality, the more our thoughts and emotional states create the reality we inhabit. Thought and emotion become action and form. Think of these elements existing on an energetic continuum, influencing each other and what is experienced when out of the body. As such, unconscious thought and emotion can manifest as chaotic and challenging experiences, but purposeful thought becomes a tool to create one’s reality consciously, including influencing one’s emotional state. Below, I briefly explore the contribution of thought and emotion to out-of-body states.
When out of the body, thought, or mental matter can, consciously and unconsciously, create the reality that is perceived visually and direct the course of the journey direction. Based on one’s beliefs and biography, including cultural background, visualised energetic experiences usually manifest as familiar objects of awareness. For example, when meeting a higher discarnate being, a Christian may see Jesus, while a Buddhist could see Buddha. This is not to say that the “real” Christ and Buddha cannot present themselves or that the discarnate being can’t be seen in its original form. Still, a person’s cultural background usually manifests in their view of the energetic beings they meet and the realms they enter.
Mental matter can go a step further. With stability and focus, one can choose, for example, a specific destination to travel to. Concerning the physical world, this ability is often called remote viewing. When leaving the body but travelling around the physical realm, reality appears similar to the physical world. But at this level of journeying, there are limits to the influence of thought. While the astral body can be mentally directed to do things like pass through physical objects such as walls or fly, one cannot usually change the nature of an object or the attributes of the world, like the colour of the sky.
As one’s consciousness moves further away from physical reality, one can enter dimensions or planes of the collective unconscious and the archetypal. In these cases, the thought forms of millions of living and passed humans, possibly billions in some cases, create all-encompassing thought-based realms. Here, too, there is little capacity to change the realities one enters, whether it be a Christian heaven or hell or the heaven or hell from any of the world’s other main religions.
However, when one moves beyond realms created in the collective unconscious, skilful people can enter spaces where they can create worlds of their own. At this fount of creativity, one can manifest fantastic crystal castles in the clouds, adorned by the rainbow light from three different suns, shaped as double-tetrahedrons. The adept can create such powerful thought forms that they are lasting and can be visited by others when out of the physical body. Other examples of directing out-of-body experiences are manifesting the best feast you have ever eaten or having the best sexual encounter you have ever had. This is the power of thought form.
At the same time, emotions have a powerful momentum that can shape thought expression in the journey and become action. We all hold all possible personality traits and emotional states within ourselves as a mosaic of seeding potentialities. However, as individuals with unique biographies, we have our dominant patterns of emotional states. These states are often a mix of negative and positive energies. Because some emotional states can have stronger momentum than others and may not be easily influenced by thought, they can profoundly influence the context and environment of the journey. For example, someone who consistently struggles with anger may be more likely to process it by manifesting an aggressive bear or angry bogeyman who confronts them or chases them down a chaotic city street during a thunderstorm. On the other hand, someone abiding more in a calm, loving awareness may be transported to a heavenly realm and engage with angelic beings.
Most people are unaware of how chaotic their minds are. Buddhists refer to the untamed mind as the monkey mind. Where there is no steering of thoughts, the mind jumps haplessly around from branch to branch like a monkey in the loud and busy jungle of the unconscious. With training and experience, one develops skills to be more purposeful in the journey, where intention more clearly becomes intent, and intent immediately becomes reality and action.
Let’s look at some examples of what can be achieved using thought forms during a psychedelic session. For over fifteen years, I have engaged in psychedelic mindmelding, the telepathic sharing of physical and psychic energies and consciousness. Mindmelding is commonly discussed in the Out-Of-Body literature. It is the primary means of communication between discarnate beings where energies are shared telepathically and information is exchanged instantly.
When two humans mindmeld and share physical and psychic content, a telepathic link is established between their minds and bodies, manifesting a co-creative and shared experience. The dyad experiences its “interbeingness.” There can be an empathic or intuitive sharing of emotions. The joint exploration of emotional processes can induce psychic expansiveness, process energetic traumas stuck in the mind and body, enhance cognitive fluidity, and creatively lead to attitudinal changes and greater internal harmony. The communion can lead to physical and mental healing and regeneration. The mindmeld can go even further to a complete sharing of consciousness where shared visions and exploration into other dimensions and realms are possible. At its most extraordinary profundity, when the borderlands of super-consciousness are breached in the mindmeld, both participants can find themselves in non-dual states of consciousness. Here, there is no distinction between one another – both participants are absorbed in unity consciousness.
To attain such states of telepathy, one must meditatively engage with one’s partner. In my book, The Psychedelic Mindmeld: Telepathically Exploring Shared Consciousness, I describe detailed techniques and thought forms for manifesting telepathic states, emphasising a safe set and setting.
Much more is possible for higher psychic attainment, whether in the mindmeld, or when going alone in a psychedelic session. What psi states can be achieved using thought forms? The list is long and varied. Below, I briefly summarise what appears in the literature from the traditions of shamanism, Eastern wisdom yogic traditions, and out-of-body and astral projection. The list of psychic abilities includes:
Astral projection or out-of-body experience; automatic writing; bilocation; clairvoyance; channelling and mediumship; healing; levitation; materialising objects; precognition and prophesy; psychic surgery; psychometry; remote viewing; retrocognition; shapeshifting; telekinesis or psychokinesis; telepathy; time travel; and xenoglossy.
While I have not experienced all of these abilities, I have my favourites. I have connected to past lives and my future self and interacted with varied different beings, including plant intelligence. I have channelled the souls of the dead. I have contributed to healing others, sometimes using x-ray vision, bilocated into the bodies of others (and had others in me). I have sometimes experienced being different animals (though not physically shapeshifting). There have been journeys to the cellular level, travels to other dimensions and planets, including connecting to the archetypal energies of planets, the moon, and the Sun, journeys to the Akashic Library where I connected to past and future events, connections to the zeitgeist of whole human populations in various countries, and embodiment of various mythical archetypes. My body has been filled with divine heavenly light and bliss. I have telepathically shared consciousness to travel with others to other dimensions and planes and interact with discarnate beings. And, finally, but most rewarding, is visiting heavenly realms and entering nondual states of consciousness.
These experiences sometimes occurred intentionally using thought forms. But often, they occurred without conscious intent, instead with the guidance of spiritual guides or through the grace of the Divine. So, not all psychic ability flows from conscious intent, but using one’s mind purposely makes it more likely.
To attain psychic states during a psychedelic session, it is helpful to plan to work with particular thought forms beforehand. Be mindful and strategic. Before sessions, one can repeat several longer and more complex affirmations or intentions. However, the trick is to focus on only one specific thing while in the session. When formulating specific thought forms, use simple language and a short sentence. It is essential to be clear and directive in the thought form you choose to manifest. Examples are: “Show me a past life” or “Spirit guide, reveal yourself.” Don’t hesitate to ask your spirit guides for help, saying something like, “Show me what I need to learn for my highest evolution.”
There is much more. You can be specific about the emotional state you want to enter. You can specify a destination on earth or elsewhere you want to journey to. If you go to the Akashic Library, go with a specific question you want answered. You can state an intent to visit a person, alive or dead. Try asking how you can be of the most valuable service to others. When engaged in healing work, state the health issue or body part and then, “Healed to completion now.”
If you are floundering or struggling with confusion during a session, use direct commands like “Clarity now!” “No illusions!” or “Raise my vibration now!” If you are caught in fear, try, “There is nothing to fear because I am infinite. I am eternal. All experience is God manifesting itself, and I am that.”
Because remembering the otherness and vastness of what can occur in a session when it ends can be challenging, it can be valuable to affirm you will recall everything. Try, “My memory shall recall everything from this session.” Then, consciously put the effort into writing down the session’s events immediately afterwards.
The most potent experience to manifest is the loving light of God, the Divine, or Source, whichever word and concept resonates best for you. Opening a heavenly portal can help. To do this, call in God’s holy angels, ask for their help, and open the heavenly portal. Then try using a statement like, “Take me to the heavens.” To enter emotional states of bliss, try “Loving awareness, now,” “Heavenly bliss, now,” or “I am infinite and have God’s loving light in every single cell in my body.”
To work towards being adept in manifesting your reality in psychedelic states, train yourself in thought control using various meditation techniques. Pre-program your subconscious mind with mantras and well-chosen, succinct thought forms. Practice keeping your body completely still, which contributes to hypnogogic states and is a strong base for manifesting psi abilities. Work with different breathing techniques to centre yourself. There can also be a need to clear the negative and traumatic energies trapped in your physical body to journey to higher planes and more effectively work with thought forms, which can be accomplished through repeated psychedelic sessions, meditation, physical yoga, and other similar modalities, dream yoga, psychotherapy, and different types of physical energetic healing and massage work. Keep your body healthy with exercise and a predominantly plant-based diet; avoid toxins like alcohol. Try using trance-inducing music with a strong, positive, energetic signature during sessions.
A word of caution. When working with the psyche and psychic states of consciousness using psychedelics, beware of ego-inflation, fantasy and delusion, psychological projection, manifesting the negative, and working with unprocessed trauma.
In closing, journey purposefully and safely with gratitude, patience, and perseverance. Trust in your intuitive guidance and ability. Remember, you can access all of the universe because you are a finger on the infinite hand of God. Know that the inner healer is within you, and your higher self is your most trusted guide.
Like my wife’s spontaneous wish to enter my conscious experience, you may open a portal into a psychic experience with your name on it.
I wish you the best in your explorations of consciousness.
For more insights and techniques, check out my book, The Psychedelic Mindmeld. I also highly recommend books on out-of-body experience by William Buhlman, Kurt Leland, and Robert Monroe.
Wade Richardson’s new book The Psychedelic Mindmeld: Telepathically Exploring Shared Consciousness is available from Inner Traditions.
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About the Author
Wade Richardson is a psychonaut with more than 15 years of experience participating in and facilitating hundreds of psychedelic sessions. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there has been so much sorrow and grief and loss in my life, from the very beginning. I’ve had to actively orient myself, almost as a survival mechanism, toward goodness and toward joy, toward love and friendship and nature and beauty, just to make it. And that is what I want to put out into the world.
Dr. Luis Montaner, seated right, with his team at the HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia | Wistar Institute
