Psychedelic Glossolalia

[Seventeen]

I've just read this thread in full now, I never knew people had episodes like that on psychedelics. I've said remarkably stupid-sounding things in order to describe how I or something else looks/feels/tastes/etc, but I'm usually in control of that - it's not so much an urge.

 

[psood0nym]

I came across the first neuroimaging study of a person performing glossolalia recently and thought its findings cohered well with my phenomenological interpretations of psychedelic glossolalia. It's elucidating to my understanding of the phenomena, as articulated earlier in this thread. From an article about “The measurement of regional cerebral blood flow during glossolalia: A preliminary SPECT study” (Newberg, 2006) (full text):

… here is evidence that while speaking in tongues people experience a sharp decrease in frontal lobe function, the area of the brain that enables reason and self-control. There is also increased activity in the parietal region of the brain, which takes sensory information and tries to create a sense of self relating to the world. Psychiatrist Andrew Newberg, Director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, studied five African-American Pentecostal women who frequently speak in tongues. As a control activity, Newberg had the women sing gospel tunes while moving their arms and swaying.*

Newberg gave the Pentecostals an intravenous injection of a radioactive tracer that allowed him to measure blood flow and "see" which brain areas were most active during the behaviors. Newberg and his associates published their findings in the November 2006 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. During glossolalia, the part of the brain than normally makes a person feel in control was essentially shut down.

The findings make sense, says Newberg, because speaking in tongues involves giving up control and feeling a "very intense experience of how the self relates to [a] god." Newberg noted that the glossolalia responses were the opposite of those of people in a meditative state. When people meditate their frontal lobe activity increases, while their parietal activity decreases. In meditation, one loses the sense of self while controlling one's focus and concentration.

I find it highly intriguing that Newberg refers to these states (meditation and glossolalia) as opposed this way when I consider the thematic psychological content of my glossolalia episodes under the influence of IM ketamine and psilocin. My experiences have involved automatic body movements that mimic birthing and birth, as I’ve described in “Reflections in the Obsidian Fountain”:

Periodically my knees will draw up to my chest and my back will arch sharply. My neck cranes back and my face contorts into the expression of a wailing infant. As it has during certain heavy experiences with 4-AcO-DMT and 4-ho-DMT in the past, this episode ends with me choking in a fully tangible pool of warm amniotic fluid.

Whether this is a relived memory of my birth or entirely a hallucination I don’t know, but I actually feel the wetness (and always worry that in reality I’ve pissed myself!) Symbolic body movements accompanied by visions of giving birth to, and being born from, myself have been a constant in this union with my unconscious mind since the second time it happened—an extremely disconcerting event at the time*. This however, is the most complete and astounding of the six re-birthing episodes I’ve gone through, all courtesy of 4-AcO-DMT or 4-ho-DMT—but not from any of the many other powerful psychedelics I’ve used during this time.

From this position on my back, my legs swing upward forming a “< >” shape, similar to a spider’s rear legs as it descends from is web, which is the vision present to me now. My feet bend inward and my toes point toward each other, and I start to feel the sides of my feet brush past one another on alternate sides as my legs swing at my hip joints and move like the blades of a scissors. I feel them sewing some warm visceral substance as they move in this kind of quick repetitive pinching motion.

My arms begin a kind of angular dance, and I have a vision of myself in the skunkworks of a vast mandala, as the central operator of a process I generate but do not understand. Every movement, as I perform it—as symbolized by the content of the mandala vision—is seen as integrated into the mechanics of the conscious experience of the movement itself. Though the limb movements feel integral and functional to the happenings of the vision, I conclude they are made only as communicative and symbolic gestures

These automatic body movements also accompanied my glossolalia, which I suppose is not that surprising since glossolalia very much is an involuntary movement of the tongue, lips, and vocal chords. Newberg’s description of glossolalia’s neural activity pattern as “opposite” to that of a meditative state where one loses a sense of self makes some sense of my experience at the time in that it was a distinctly ego expanding, rather than ego dissolving, process that I perceived internally. From notes for an trip report never finished that were taken at the time:

I was extremely shocked to have the experience I chronicled in my “Ego Trip” report repeat itself. This time the experience was far more transparent, allowing me to chart the topography of the ego union experience with clarity never before achieved. …

… I had the sense that the different “identities” were different facets of myself, entwining and infusing as a kind of meta-egogic braid that I experienced all at once as a series of overlapping phenomenal frames. During the times of fusion my body physically shuttered, making jerking movements not unlike a snake’s that seemed to embody a process of “refitting” and organizing these different aspects of myself into a refined form.

The experience of being controlled by a benign subconscious force was even more pronounced this time. I would relax in bed flat on my back for a few seconds only to be pulled into a ball involuntarily by sharp pangs of ecstasy accompanied by visions and a flood of extraordinary self-awareness. I felt as though I was birthing something as well as being born. I would writhe around like this for perhaps a minute and then be turned gently onto my back, all without consciously initiating the movements myself

Newberg’s fMRI imagery indicates a literal disengagement with the areas of the brain that are associated with our sensations of voluntary control. My subjective recognition of my experience of glossolalia and these other automatic body movements as mediated by a subconscious intelligence may very well reflect the same objective neuroanatomical disengagement of activity recorded in the study’s glossolalia performers. I simply interpreted my experience as “possession” by a subconscious aspect of myself with its own intelligence whereas, traditionally, glossolalia is interpreted by its experiencers as possession by The Holy Spirit or some other deific source.

 

[kingme]

very interesting reading!

also interesting bump of a really old thread.

do you think the fact that the women in the study were religious had any impact on the results?

i also find it interesting that this is a mental state reffered to as a sort of opposite to meditation... and indeed still a way to somehow feel a diety/presence...

 

[bloodshed344]

very interesting reading!

also interesting bump of a really old thread.

do you think the fact that the women in the study were religious had any impact on the results?

i also find it interesting that this is a mental state reffered to as a sort of opposite to meditation... and indeed still a way to somehow feel a diety/presence...

How could it?

 

[psood0nym]

very interesting reading!

also interesting bump of a really old thread.

Glad you found it interesting. This thread is largely composed of an old thread of mine titled "The Nature of Psychedelic Glossolalia." In addition to the notes of mine quoted in post #62 much from that previous thread is being referred to. I think there's just one thread somebody else subsequently made merged with it, then a moderator re-titled it "Psychedelic Glossolalia."

do you think the fact that the women in the study were religious had any impact on the results?

Glossolalia is typically experienced by the religious during a state of ecstasy, usually preceded by a period of intense chanting, repeating prayers, dance, or song, so I assume the results are largely reflective of what they would have been with most experiencers of glossolalia. I think if I had been in an fMRI machine during my experience the results would have been largely the same as well, though possibly with some notable differences. The reason I expect there might be differences is because my experience involved the presence of two powerful psychoactive drugs, did not involve any of the behaviors I mentioned that typically precede glossolalia, and was not interpreted as the possession of an entity external to me.

also find it interesting that this is a mental state reffered to as a sort of opposite to meditation... and indeed still a way to somehow feel a diety/presence...

Yes, I agree. What I think is most telling is that he notes it appears to be the opposite pattern of activity compared to state of meditation where one loses their sense of self through intense focus. During glossolalia, the fMRI indicated a disengagement with higher cortical areas that are associated with focus. The experiencers indicated a lack of a sense of voluntary control, but not a loss of a sense of self. Rather, the interpretation of the state that the glossolalia performers gave was that they were possessed by god. Compared to a state of meditation that involves strong engagement with higher cortical areas and a loss (subtraction) of the sense of self, the glossolalia state's addition of another entity (The Holy Spirit or some other deity, or, in my case, a sub-conscious intelligence) within one's self is indicative of an expanded sense of personal presence rather than a reduced one as in meditation. The performers in the study believe that presence is god speaking through them.

In my case, as described in post #1, I asked a question out loud and, in answer, a subsequent flood of imagery and textures seemed to "spill over" into an urge to speak their meaning, and that meaning came out involuntarily as a strange poetic sentence. The actual sentence was only spoken after about 30 seconds of irresistible movements of my tongue and lips. I think I was probably resisting whatever process was occurring during this 30 seconds. This was probably simply because what I was feeling -- that is, what was perhaps the emergence of a controlling intelligence into conscious awareness that is usually sub-conscious -- was so strange and unprecedented in my experience. I've only experienced psychedelic glossolalia a few times, and the last two times were years ago during my experiments combining intramuscular ketamine and synthetic psilocin.

 

[cj187]

bump