"Psychedelics may induce the same state of mind as the childhood critical period of learning and development. The flexibility and fluidity of this state of mind may be key to the way humans develop, including with learning language and perception. We may be able to use drug-induced critical periods to accelerate language learning or promote the development of savant-like skills in adults. In this post we will explore this notion of psychedelic critical periods and the kinds of similarities and utilities of these states of consciousness"

https://mad.science.blog...4/26/the-phoenix-effect/

I know myself, I feel like a very young child especially whilst using DMT, my behaviour and those who I have observed act in ways very reminiscent of young childeren with juvenile, more structurally uniform brains..
https://www.instagram.co...CE/?igshid=1uyize23lfkwb ...pretty funny..

I have definitely felt like my child self on psychedelics. One experience with mescaline left me with a feeling of hopelessness that felt so terrifyingly nostalgic to my childhood. It was probably the most difficult experience I have had.

It's very interesting, how much mescaline did you dose? I am yet to go above 400mg...

No idea about the mescaline content... but it was around 3 feet of Pachanoi. I don't think the mescaline content was high at all because I did not have very strong visuals. The trip seemed to last almost a whole day, with most of the visuals fading after 10 hours. It gave a very stoned effect and something in my mind clicked ensuing a feeling of hopelessness which was hard to combat for at least 6 months. It came in waves and as time passed and I worked on integration the frequency of these episodes decreased. It created thought loops not unlike those I experienced as a child when insomnia took hold, except now with a "more" developed mind it seemed these loops could develop further and cause more suffering.

I still don't quite understand what happened. Perhaps there were other alkaloids at play affecting my brain chemistry, but I suspect it was something that I agitated and made up in my mind.

I have experienced this and I'm so glad the idea has been explored elsewhere. Forgive my new-ness when I say this, but I've experienced this "Phoenix Effect" first hand as well as it's application in learning.

Before I came here, I wrote my own notes on this phenomena I noticed, and simply called it "pattern learning". I do a lot of personal self-experiments in virtual reality with psychedelics and first noticed this effect while on cubensis. Theoretically any video will work but I find that proper 180 or 360 videos work best as they seem to trick the mind into a sense of real presence better while under in such a malleable state.

My finding was that any time someone was up close to the camera speaking, even if it's not in English, you pick up so much more detail than you possibly could normally. Eventually, I could even mostly grasp a few foreign words based on all other factors - tone of voice, body language, minute facial movements and expressions, etc. It's as if you just know their emotions. Just like an infant would begin to learn language. After all, you can't really teach an infant words by using words. It becomes so powerful that you can't help but notice even in that state that they're acting because you notice all of their flaws. Something feels wrong. You can even guess reasonably well what happens next eventually.

This effect is best achieved from my experiences by reaching just barely into ego death so you forget what you're doing and sort of "accept" the virtual reality as actual reality. I'm not sure how to better describe this integration, but I would say it's vital to this super learning process. Because of this, you need to have everything playing and watchable before you become too physically incapacitated to do anything. Also, if you are actively watching VR content during the come-up, your brain seems to be able to adjust and prevent the image from becoming cartoony - it remains quite clear. (When you take the set off though the world around you will appear to be a tornado)

On top of this pattern learning, I've also noticed that simply learning in general becomes more interesting and easy. Any content seems to soak into the mind easier. I also find that afterward, a relatively low dose of LSD helps to recall these learned items and more easier make them accessible to you in the normal, sober world.

I've considered trying to run an improved version of this in the future to see how well I can learn part of a new language from scratch inside of virtual reality, and I have no doubt that if there was content specifically geared for this type of learning that it would be super effective.

What kind of activity you do in VR, Mind_Maze?

Jesus says: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children"

I think we can get a grasp of this through psychedelics. Your mind becomes very open and receptive again. Usually as we grow up, we keep ourselves busy, worry constantly and learn to suppress our emotions. But psychedelics can reverse that and that's why I feel they are sacred.

Unfortunately for me, I'm pretty limited on what I can actually do. The main problem is that I've found there needs to be constants in my vision for it to work right. If there's too many cuts to new scenery or things are changing too much on the HUD my mind ends up getting lost without something dominating the view most of the time.

So really I've only found success so far with simple, repetitive type videos. Someone speaking to the camera, certain tours, landscapes... that type of thing. I suppose a simplistic interactive experience is probably doable as long as it's nothing requiring much effort, but something like say... flight simulator? I'd probably get bored and just let the plane crash while I thought about something else haha.

Another thing I have to fight is that inevitably no matter what they all end up feeling a bit silly and a waste of time/supplies and I'll take the set off and ponder other things or write down notes perhaps if I think of something good. I've found that if I can think, I can eventually gather myself enough to write.

Once effects begin tapering off, I like watching informational videos on YouTube in VR. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the closed off sense that makes you really focus on the content. But it really keeps me interested.

But as for the "deep" VR trips... I try to follow rules. Nothing frantic, no loud sounds to jar me, I'm laying down with all physical needs taken care of, and there should be some dominating constant in the video. Sometimes I'll play a low volume background sound, I really like running water and Tibetan meditation bowls.

This is not surprising (to me) considering how psychedelics have been shown to help open new neural pathways and encourage the brain to communicate with itself ways, in turn probably increasing mg neural plasticity. As children, our brains are neurally mutable sponges. On psychedelics, we get to foster and revisit that brain state.

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