Quantum Science of Psychedelics: The Pineal Gland, Multidimensional Reality, and Mayan Cosmology

INTRODUCTION

Understanding the Universe to Understand Psychedelics

No one knows how psychedelics work! is a common statement that you meet in the literature about them. Not everyone agrees with it, however. Many, probably most, are primarily seeking their own experience and feel that they know how they work from such experiences. This is an understandable attitude. Yet, there are also those who want to understand how psychedelics work in order to deepen their understanding of the world. They wonder how these experiences fit, if at all, with the currently dominant worldview and science. It is for this group that this book has been written, since the effects of these substances raise very profound questions. Why is it, for instance, that substances that we can crystallize and so touch, taste, see, and maybe smell and thus would be called physical can have an influence on a mind that we cannot see, taste, or hear and so must be called nonphysical?

This conundrum goes to the heart of a mind-matter discussion that has been going on for millennia. If we could understand how psychedelics work, we would probably also be able to resolve age-old questions pertaining to the philosophy of the mind. Possibly we would understand how the universe is created and how quantum healing works. However, up until now, at least, I think it can squarely be said that psychedelics have not given rise to a new science (referring to the quote by Stanislav Grof in the opening pages of this book). The predominant idea has instead been, with little success, to try to explain the psychedelic state within the framework of our existing sciences or to look at it as an unreal anomaly that we do not have to understand. I will here, however, follow another course and from the outset recognize that in order to understand the existence of altered states of consciousness, a revision of the fundaments of science needs to be developed on a scale that has not happened for a hundred years, or since quantum science and the theory of relativity forever changed physics. What this means is that if the problem of how psychedelics work has now been adequately solved (and the reader will have to be the judge of this), then a whole range of problems related to how the universe works (including evolution, healing, meditation, and other altered states) will also have been solved.

When it comes to the model to use for understanding psychedelics, thinkers in the field have essentially been divided into two different groups. On one side are the current mainstream scientists, who base their ideas on the assumption that consciousness is generated by the human brain. In this view, everything that happens in a psychedelic state goes on in a person’s head and has no higher cosmic or spiritual origin. On the other side are those who believe that the mind/brain is a reducing valve for a cosmic consciousness that exists independent of the human being. In this view, psychedelic substances have the power to remove this valve and create resonance on another frequency, which creates an altered state. Up until now, this view has, however, been presented mostly as a philosophical concept with little scientific evidence to support it. Part of the purpose of this book is to present such evidence—as far as I know, for the first time.

Since at the current time a new wave of research into psychedelics is taking place and there is a possibility that they may in the future become more easily available for various kinds of therapies, this discussion of their nature and why they have the kinds of effects that they do takes on a new importance. New results gained about psychedelics hold considerable promise for treating different adverse mental conditions such as addictions, PTSD, or depression, and the researchers preparing the ground for this should be rightly recognized. Yet, this medicalization also carries the risk that psychedelics are understood only according to a biological model that denies the reality of the spiritual and cosmic experiences people have with them. With a materialist model for understanding the origin of life, humanity may fail to gain the more profound understanding of the universe and its evolution that it is meant to have. Hence, how psychedelics may alter the scientific understanding of our world is what this book is primarily meant to deliver.

Although I am a chemist by training and therefore understand well the scientific materialist point of view, the theory that I propose in this book supports the reducing valve viewpoint. I’ve written this book in an attempt to clarify how psychedelics work in a larger perspective than mere neurology and pharmacology. Many of the experiences people have under the influence of psychedelics—say, for instance, a kaleidoscopic vision of strange-looking creatures dancing in an amusement park—simply cannot be readily explained as a simple response to a chemical substance. The explanation must reasonably be more complex, and if a more encompassing understanding of the nature of psychedelics would gain widespread acceptance, this could completely alter how we view our place in the great scheme of things.

I have been working with questions pertaining to psychedelics off and on for a few years now, and at an event led by Mayan Grandmother Flordemayo, during the spring of 2018, I felt called to present my proposal in the form of this book, Quantum Science of Psychedelics. In this book, I will not just be exploring the subject but will actually propose a complete solution to why psychedelics have the kind of effects that they do as well as identify their place in the cosmic plan. Psychedelics are phenomena profoundly at odds with materialist biology and science in general, so if they can be understood on a rational basis, there will probably be many other things that can also be understood in a new light. The study of the effects of psychedelics and the nature of the shamanic state thus presents a fascinating scientific challenge in which a deeper understanding could affect many theories outside the very issue itself. In terms of disciplines, it would very much affect our views of biological and historical evolution, and also cosmology, theology, and psychology, and so too the whole question of why we are here to begin with. In other words, in order to understand how psychedelics work, we will need a science that understands how the universe works, and this has to include an understanding of the nature of consciousness (alluding to the quote by William James on the opening pages of this book).

Darwinism, still today regarded as a cornerstone of science, is what most clearly blocks such an enhanced understanding. Time after time when writing this book, I have come to realize how detrimental this theory is, or at least its key idea that the evolution of life is a product of random accidental mutations, not only to spirituality but also more generally to our understanding of our place in the cosmos. Thus, any attempt to understand how psychedelics work will have to begin with the development of a new theory of biological evolution. This is what I have done in chapters 5 and 6 of this book (and in much more detail in my book The Purposeful Universe). As I see it, it is not enough to make minor changes, such as complementing Darwinism with epigenetics, since this does not address the root of the problem, which is the belief in a process of evolution governed by randomness. An entirely new theory of evolution must be developed as our point of departure if we are to create a meaningful new understanding of the nature of life.

What such wide-ranging scientific consequences point to is that how psychedelics work is not something that can be answered by a simple formula, which, incidentally, also is the reason that this work could not be fitted into the format of an article in a scientific journal. Instead, to understand how these substances work requires that you first go to the bottom of several theories that to many researchers today, mainstream as well as alternative, seem fundamental. It requires looking at several established theories of modern science and seeing that they are, at the very least, highly limited, such as the ideas that history and biology result from random processes. This then means that to solve the problem at hand, we first have to clear away various concepts and replace them with more powerful theories. This very revision of modern science I look on as a core result of this investigation. Once a new, more profound paradigm has been created, the possibility is at hand to gain a more inclusive and meaningful understanding of the world we live in. To grasp the outline of this new paradigm, I do think the most meaningful way of reading this book is chapter by chapter, in the order presented, even if superficially some of the topics of the early chapters may seem far removed from the book’s central focus of explaining how psychedelics work. I believe that grasping the early chapters is a prerequisite for attaining this ultimate goal of the book; concepts that may seem peripheral will indeed come back later to bring it all together.

Based on a new quantum theory of evolution, it is possible to address the nature of the shamanic and psychedelics states in a meaningful way. I also explore topics such as the origin of life, the nature of spirits and the soul, and death—phenomena that based on this new theory can be approached rationally. In addition, such phenomena as healing and Eastern medicine, which have appeared mysterious and enigmatic from the perspective of materialist biology, will be placed in a new context. I will argue that it is possible to look at all these phenomena in a new light so that they are included in a common scientific understanding. For this reason, I hope that this book will be of interest to healers of many different traditions and practices, since I propose an inclusion of spirituality and the realm of the supernatural within the scientific framework. I do believe that a larger conceptual framework can be developed in which the experiences people have with the world of spirit can be understood.

My theory, within which we can understand how psychedelics work, came from an unexpected source. The embryo of the macrocosmic quantum science that I develop here originated among the ancient Maya. This embryo of another quantum science, notably from a shamanic civilization, is almost totally unknown in the modern world, and so for many its role here may be unexpected. Even many of those who have taken an interest in the Mayan calendar may have missed the point, which is that although this calendar was developed some two thousand years ago, it was based on an understanding of reality as quantized. This is the reason the science of the ancient Maya has greater potential than our modern science, at least when it comes to providing answers to the greater existential questions. Yet, to see this, we have to be able to distinguish between the Newtonian and the quantum aspects of their science and choose to focus on quantum science. If we do so, the road will be open to understand a whole range of phenomena that by our current science are mostly considered untouchable. A problem with basing a theory on Mayan science is, however, that their calendar has been so misrepresented in recent decades that it first needs to be rehabilitated. Some might dismiss such a point of departure from the Maya offhand, but I believe the serious person should ask what our science today would have looked like if it went back to the Maya instead of to the Greek. We must ask if a science that tracks its origin to a shamanic culture could provide a profound learning experience that would finally allow us to understand how psychedelics work as well as the origin of consciousness.

Quantum Science of Psychedelics is the seventh book I have written based on Mayan science. It builds on earlier books such as The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, The Purposeful Universe, The Global Mind and the Rise of Civilization, and The Nine Waves of Creation, each of which underlies certain aspects of it. In my own mind, the last two of these books, together with the present one, form a trilogy, a postshift trilogy offering a new paradigm of science, and this trilogy is now completed. Even if much background material is provided in the earlier books, it is not necessary to have read them to understand the current one. Yet, if someone feels there is a need for more evidence to support what I am saying, it is quite likely that this can be found in earlier books and especially in the last two.

I need to clarify that this is not a self-help book or one that teaches you how to practice any particular healing art or use psychedelics therapeutically. Moreover, I want to qualify that my own experience of psychedelics is limited to a dozen or so ayahuasca sessions in the Amazonian jungle. Sharing of personal experiences will then be limited. The aim of this book is in fact different from many others in this field. Its purpose is essentially to provide a new scientific framework for understanding human development and healing that I think is sorely missing. Hopefully, it can then serve as inspiration for further developments by practitioners in the field. What I also hope is that this book will contribute to our understanding of the big picture of human existence and the place that altered states of consciousness have in it. It aims to explain why there are altered states of consciousness to begin with and also why these states may potentially be healing and open us up to spiritual domains.

The first ten chapters provide preparatory material, while the last four provide the actual results of what we can understand about the nature of consciousness and how this is affected by psychedelics. The book has been organized in this way because I believe that before we can even begin to discuss how psychedelics work, the reader will need to be convinced that shifting cosmic quantum states drive evolution in all of its aspects. Chapter 1 provides the foundation of the book, which is that the ancient Maya started to develop a macrocosmic quantum science that has since gone missing. The chapter also summarizes some universal mythological concepts from the ancient world that this book clarifies the nature of. The second chapter provides a historical background of the Maya, briefly describing the people and the culture that discovered the driving forces behind evolution and codified these in the form of calendars. This chapter details the frequencies and activation times of the nine waves of creation and the various worlds of consciousness that these give rise to, which are crucial for our understanding of the reducing valve.

Next, chapter 3 describes recent findings in cosmology that validate the existence of the Tree of Life and the yin-yang duality it creates and brings some added perspectives on this duality from ancient traditions. Chapter 4 discusses how not only the Maya but also many other ancient peoples viewed the four directions as quantum phenomena. It provides an initial overview of how the corresponding quantum states have shaped the different worlds of human history, ultimately by altering the dualities of the human mind, which is a key to understanding its multidimensionality. Chapter 5 explains how the Plumed Serpent is a metaphor for the wave movements that underlie the evolution of life and how the matching of these waves to the fossil record provides an inroad to a new theory about life. Chapter 6 demonstrates that the DNA molecule does not qualify as a code of life and outlines a new theory about biological evolution based on the interference patterns of waves described in chapter 5. Chapter 6 also shows how the quantum field resulting from the waves can create biological organisms, including ourselves. It ends with a discussion of quantum healing such as this may be understood from this new theory of biological evolution.

Chapter 7 begins with a discussion of how human beings became more than animals through the effects of the Fifth Wave and how this transformation was reflected in the art of the Paleolithic cave painters. It goes on to validate the quantum shift to the Sixth Wave and how the ensuing change in the human mind brought civilization into existence. This it validates through a number of mythological expressions that people living at the time developed (although a detailed description of this shift has already been provided in my book The Global Mind and the Rise of Civilization). Chapter 8 describes how this new dualist quantum state continues, leading up to our own time and beyond. It also goes into the difficulties that this wave has created for human beings and how not only the Serpent but also the associated macrocosmic quantum science have been suppressed throughout the past 2,500 years. Chapter 9 provides evidence of how the human mind is related to that of the Earth and the Cosmic Tree of Life and outlines a fractal-holographic model of the universe in which hemispheric separations are reproduced on several connected levels of the universe all the way to the cosmic center. It also shows how the new theory of biological evolution provides a scientific basis for so-called alternative medicine.

Chapter 10 begins the discussion of altered states of consciousness and presents an overview of shamanism and its ancient origins. Examples are given from different cultures highlighting different phenomena, including a note about my own experiences with ayahuasca. Chapter 11 describes essentially where modern science stands when it comes to psychedelics. It reviews the history, pharmacology, and phenomenology of psychedelics, as well as many of the recent studies of their therapeutic effects. Chapter 12 explains why they have these effects from the larger perspective of macrocosmic quantum science and an understanding in which the mind is not seen as created by the brain. It presents the place of the pineal gland in this and the origin of the multidimensional experiences people may have with psychedelics, and it explains why, when appropriately used, they may be healing. Finally, it explains the origin of their phenomenology and how this is related to their pharmacology and the broader consequences of this. Chapter 13 points out that if reality were not quantized, there would be no altered states of consciousness to begin with, and as a consequence the understanding of how psychedelics work requires quantum theory. It presents the holographic model of the universe, the nature of spirits, and UFO abductions as well as death and near-death experiences within the new perspective. Finally, chapter 14 gives a short overview of the higher waves (which otherwise have quite extensively been discussed in my book The Nine Waves of Creation) and where these may take us. It demonstrates that the appearance of psychedelics on our planet is part of a cosmic plan and how there is an interaction between this plan and the means of disengaging the ego that go hand in hand with creating a better world.

From all of this, I do believe that a scientific framework has been provided within which we can understand how psychedelics—and healing more broadly—work. However, this will not mean an end to our quest for answers to the ultimate questions. As I explain in the final chapters, there is an ocean of potentialities as to how consciousness manifests in a given individual, which only the individual can give meaning to. If this book has fulfilled its purpose, faith in the actual higher cosmic origin of such experiences will come to be strengthened.

CARL JOHAN CALLEMAN TRUCHAS, NEW MEXICO SEPTEMBER 18, 2019 (9 WIND, SECOND DAY OF THE EIGHTY-SEVENTH NIGHT OF THE NINTH WAVE)

1

An Expanded Quantum Science

THE LOST SCIENCE OF THE MAYA

What is the nature of reality? Why do we human beings exist? And is there some underlying purpose for our lives in this universe? These are fundamental questions that many human beings ask at some point in their lives, but the answers can hardly be gained from a superficial study of the physical universe in accordance with established theories. Science, as we know it today, does not, for instance, recognize spirituality as a real phenomenon. Modern science also mostly shuns addressing existential questions and believes that a large part of existence is not accessible to rational study. Religions, on the other hand, may provide some answers to these questions, but these answers are often based on dogma and are often in direct conflict with the actual experiences of people living today.

So is the current lack of inroads to understanding the universe and our place in it something we just have to accept? Or is there some crucial knowledge that humans in our evolution have passed by or lost and need to retrieve in order to move forward with our quest, especially if we want to understand altered states of consciousness? The answer is yes: there is one very important part of the knowledge of humanity that has not been fully developed, and this is macrocosmic quantum theory. There is an embryo to this among the ancient Maya, which even if it has been crushed several times over keeps coming back. Even if very few people today can say exactly why the Mayan calendar is important, there is still a widespread intuition that there is something more to learn from it. And yes, it is indeed part of a rational science that allows us to probe our spiritual connection to the cosmos in a meaningful way. In this book, Mayan quantum science will help us understand what psychedelics do.

The background to this focus on psychedelics is that today, many people have had contacts with mystical realms through the use of what goes by the names of plant medicine or psychedelics, and their experiences place big question marks for how both religions and the sciences are understood. I see it as an important objective of this book to provide an explanation to why it is that such substances may connect us with extraordinary worlds and even the source of the universe. I will then argue that macrocosmic quantum science is an indispensable key for understanding the generation of altered states of consciousness and why they exist in the first place. Since such issues cannot be dealt with other than by a holistic approach involving all disciplines of science, I will also provide connections to meditation and healing that I think many will find interesting and really necessary for those practitioners needing a deeper understanding. Yet, such an understanding requires that the reader has a background in quantum science, without which there is a very significant gap in our ability to deal with these questions.

Already the title of this book may raise some eyebrows. It may seem like just another use of the buzzword quantum remote from its actual scientific meaning, but when I say that the Maya outlined a quantum theory, I am serious. Even if I do not think that the ancient Maya had a technology that was close to what it is in the modern world, and they certainly did not have the kind of knowledge of the subatomic world scientists have gained in the past century, theirs was still a quantum science.

Science is not the same thing as technology, and while the modern world has developed a tremendous amount of advanced technology, there is precious little science that can explain the place of human beings in the universe in a meaningful way. Modern science works largely to develop technologies that are commercially viable and so upholds a materialist way of thinking. Mayan science, on the other hand, was knowledge serving the development of wisdom and the understanding of our relationship to the cosmos and the Tree of Life. Given this difference of purpose, it is obvious that we cannot use our own science as a measuring stick to assess theirs. While the Mayan culture technologically was at a Stone Age level, the Maya’s quantum science was very advanced; if our current science had been based on theirs, we would likely be in a much better place today than we currently are. Mayan science, however, became a lost science, and what I aim to demonstrate is what science might have looked like today if Mayan quantum science would have been incorporated into the body of knowledge of the world at large, and then especially that which pertains to our understanding of the nature of consciousness.

Before we get into these central matters of the book, I think it is necessary to provide some short background to both quantum theory and Mayan cosmology. I am aware that quantum theory may seem like an obstacle to the many who do not have a background in chemistry or physics. In order not to unnecessarily complicate things, this book will not display any advanced mathematics and overall not too much of physics or chemistry either. Yet, it is necessary to begin by setting the record straight as to what quantum science basically is. I know that for those truly interested in how psychedelics work the effort invested in this study will turn out to be worth it.

DEFINING A QUANTUM

To begin with then, when I refer to Mayan cosmology as a quantum science I mean quantum in the original meaning of the term as defined by its modern pioneers: Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Schrödinger. The German physicist Max Planck was the scientist who first introduced the concept of a quantum and the quantization of energies in 1900. He felt obligated to do so when he discovered that heated metals only emitted light with specific frequencies, so-called black-body radiation. To him this quantization was actually shocking, and he hesitated to publish his findings because scientists at that time thought all the essential problems of physics had been solved. Later, when Albert Einstein used Planck’s idea in his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905, in which he assumed that photons had frequencies that were quantized (only had specific values), the idea began to get momentum. The concept of quantization got an even stronger boost in 1913, when Niels Bohr proposed his model of the atom in which the electrons could only have certain distinct energies, referred to as quantum states. The shifts between these states are referred to as quantum leaps (fig. 1.1). According to Bohr’s model, such shifts took place instantaneously and without any intermediary steps. Said somewhat differently, what exists and is visible from the perspective of one quantum state does not necessarily exist from the perspective of another. This obviously does not easily fit with our everyday experience of physical reality at the macro level, but on the other hand may be quite relevant for our understanding of consciousness. Later, Erwin Schrödinger developed his quantum mechanical model of the atom, in which the nucleus was surrounded by electron clouds with distinct geometric shapes, and from this quantum leaps also gained the meaning of shifts between geometries. As this theory became accepted, the science of physics underwent a profound change, and the rest of its history in the twentieth century would to a large extent be about quantum theory. It is a history that also led to much apparent quantum weirdness, such as entanglement and non-locality, from which it could be concluded that on an underlying level everything is connected. This insight in turn led to the discussions of quantum theory as playing a role for healing, psychology, and spirituality.

Figure 1.1. Diagram of quantum leaps between different energy levels of electrons. In atoms, only certain energy levels (ℇ0, ℇ1, ℇ2, etc.) or quantum states are allowed.

However, modern quantum theory, whose history was very briefly outlined above, only applies to the microcosmic world of atoms and subatomic particles, which means that some of these speculations stretched beyond what the theory actually explained. Regardless, there can be no denying its radical consequences and that it pointed to an invisible field (including geometric structures) underlying the physical reality we experience. Quantum science seemed to obliterate the view of reality as solid.

Following its establishment, Bohr and Einstein would then continue to debate whether quantum theory was a complete theory of the universe. Einstein argued that it was not a complete theory, famously asserting that God does not throw dice.¹ While the scientific community at large has now sided with Bohr against this view, I side with Einstein. Einstein may have been wrong in saying there could be no spooky action at a distance, but he was not wrong in asserting that quantum theory as it was then developed was an incomplete description of reality. To support this, I will demonstrate that there is something fundamentally missing in the scientific consensus view regarding the nature of quantum theory. This book develops what is missing, namely macrocosmic quantum theory. For now, however, let us stay with the original concept of a quantum as a phenomenon that was only associated with certain distinct quantized energies (or distinct geometries of electron clouds) as in figure 1.1, but not with a continuum of them.

It is this basic concept of a quantum as a distinct (or discrete) energy linked to a distinct geometry that makes quantum theory special and may open up new vistas for us. When I teach college students quantum theory, I will typically use a simple analogy to illustrate the difference between quantum physics and classical Newtonian physics. In classical physics, the potential energies of an object form a continuous sliding slope where they can take any values, while in quantum physics, potential energies and their corresponding frequencies can only take specific distinct values—much like steps in a staircase where your feet cannot land on a potential energy between the steps (fig. 1.2). To further clarify how the two types of physics differ, while Newtonian physics revolves around the concept of mass and the movements of physical objects, quantum mechanics (and the Schrödinger equation in particular) describes how geometries organize energy. These two types of physics correspond to two very different ways of experiencing reality, and as we go on to study quantization on the macrocosmic level, the profound consequences of these differences for the existential questions will become apparent. Newtonian physics with its focus on objects with mass is—in contrast to quantum physics—not very compatible with a shamanic worldview of invisible spiritual forces existing in a multidimensional reality. As a hint to where this leads in chapters 10 through 14, the induction of an altered state of consciousness is actually a quantum leap to another frequency but on the macrocosmic level, which is generally not considered in modern quantum theory. But before going into this, we need to understand how shifts in consciousness occur, and for this a new framework of science will be developed in the first nine chapters.

Figure 1.2. In Newtonian physics, a continuous range of potential energies is allowed; in quantum physics, only certain specific levels (steps in the staircase) are possible. Quantum leaps correspond to shifts in energy between the different steps.

(Courtesy of Bengt Sundin.)

MACROCOSMIC QUANTUM SCIENCE

If the difference between classical and quantum physics is so fundamental and quantum physics is consistent with a shamanic worldview, it is warranted to ask whether Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Schrödinger really were the first on our planet to entertain a quantized view of reality. As you might have expected, as nothing is totally new under the sun, the answer to this question is no. The Maya (and to different degrees several other ancient peoples as well) entertained a quantized view of the world. The main difference between modern times and the ancient Maya is that the Maya applied quantization only to the macrocosmos and not to the subatomic world of electrons and photons. The Maya applied their quantum theory to the evolutionary processes that govern all aspects of life in the universe, including their own civilization. Mayan quantum theory was about the evolution of life—biologically, spiritually, and mentally—on a large scale.

Interestingly then, the staircase of quantum energies shown in figure 1.2 very directly parallels the nine-storied terrace-formed step pyramids found in the central plazas of many Mayan sites. Famous examples of such pyramids are the Pyramid of the Great Jaguar in Tikal (fig. 1.3), the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, and the Pyramid of Kukulcan in Chichén Itzá (fig. 2.6), all of which were built in nine levels.

These pyramids were not built in a haphazard way; they carried important messages, then as now. These nine levels reflect nine different quantum states generated by creation waves with distinct frequencies. When the ahauob, the shaman kings of the Maya, climbed these pyramids, they enacted an evolution through nine quantum leaps symbolizing the attainment of an undivided cosmic consciousness at the top level. As we will see, these step pyramids are more than superficial parallels to modern quantum theory and reflect a profound knowledge of the quantized evolution of the cosmos. Judging from the prevalence of pagodas (sometimes nine stories high) in Eastern cultures (fig. 1.4), it also seems like other civilizations—similarly to the Maya—may have looked on evolution as generated by leaps between quantum states.

I will go even further and say that there are many myths, including those presented in figure 1.5, that were universally embraced by the ancient cultures of our planet and that reflected the quantum nature of reality. (What culture did not honor the Tree