Entoptic Phenomena

Various geometric designs, such as lattices or grids, parallel lines, dots and flecks,
zigzag lines, wavy or undulating lines, bright dots or flecks, circles, as well as
meandering lines and other similar phenomena (such as those found in the caves
mentioned in chapter 1), form part of entoptic (visual) phenomena. They are
generated in the eye and within the optic system beyond the retina. The images are
believed to derive from the structure of the nervous system (Blundell 1998: 45).
Lewis-Williams and Dowson call such images form constants, phosphenes
and entoptic phenomena (1988: 20145). Entoptic phenomena produced by
inducing altered states of consciousness are very similar in geometric form among
people as geographically distant as the San of South Africa (Blundell 1998: 312),
the northern Paiute of California (Patterson 1998) and Western student subjects in a
laboratory setting (Patterson 1998: 445).5 They are known to appear during the first
stages of a trance state. The images can be experienced as luminous and animated,
and can fragment and reduplicate themselves, as well as rotate in the field of vision.
38 Portals
They can also integrate, superimpose and juxtapose with one another. Although
these various shapes may be experienced the same way universally, they might be
interpreted according to cultural expectations. However, in spite of different cultural
backgrounds, everyone has the potential to see them.
Building on the work of Ronald Siegel, Lewis-Williams and Dowson suggest a
three-stage model, based principally on entoptic phenomena, for understanding the
progression of altered states. Although three stages are mentioned, a person might go
directly to the second and third stages without experiencing the first stage. The first
stage is a description of the various geometric visual percepts that people experience
when initially entering an altered state. In the second stage, the construal stage,
people try to make sense of the phenomena. It is at this stage that an experience
is interpreted according to cultural, subcultural or belief-specific ways, as well as
in accordance with their individual emotional states. They may then move to the
third stage, the iconic, where they become drawn into the images. This may be
accompanied by a variety of sensorial experiences: olfactory, tactile, aural and
somatic.
At the transition between the second and third stages, many people feel they are
passing through or being drawn into a vortex, on the sides of which there may be
a lattice or grid. Some describe the vortex as a whirlpool or whirlwind. They may
experience difficulty in breathing, constriction or a sensation of being swallowed up.
The vortex may turn into a tunnel that leads underground to another realm.
In the third stage, a deep trance occurs. Here, entoptic phenomena are combined
with iconic images of people, animals and monsters. In this stage also, people feel
themselves blend with the images or transform (partially or fully) into animals.
There may be an experience of rising up and flying and/or of being transformed into
a bird, with accompanying changes of a view from above. They may also believe
they can travel beyond their human bodies. Taking these different experiences into
consideration, it is not surprising that shamanic societies hold a three-tiered system
of the cosmos: one that is above, one that is below and the mundane level between.
Certain motifs in rock art show significant similarities to the imagery experienced
in altered states of consciousness. Blundell raises the point that particular entoptics
dominate in certain areas, and ponders that it may be because of different methods
used for inducing altered states of consciousness. Jeremy Dronfield, who has worked
on Neolithic passage-tomb art, argues that the concentric imagery of the tombs
is located on the walls so as to be visually related to the passages. Further, that
concentrics and passages were intended to be, respectively, representations and
reconstructions of subjective tunnel experiences (Dronfield 1996: 37). Dronfield
also considers the position of lattice and lozenge motifs near human skeletal remains
in Neolithic times, suggesting that these images might have been mnemonic devices
and symbols used in the process of negotiating access for the recently deceased. By
linking entoptic imagery to the symbolic construction of space at Irish Neolithic
passage-tombs, Dronfield attempts to move beyond identifying and classifying
Mandalas and Visual Symbols 39
entoptic imagery as an end itself. Indeed, the entoptic designs may be only part of
the picture, perhaps precursors to deep trance, alerting the person that the way is
opening up for the deeper trance experience.
Discussion
In this chapter, although I have taken examples from a broad range of religions,
cultures and historical epochs, certain themes cross-cut all of them with regard to the
role of visual portals. Enhanced visualization and focused attention is a technique and
a training procedure that is emphasized by shamans, Western esotericists, Buddhists
and Australian Aborigines, in order to develop the inner eye however this is
expressed. Another theme is that metaphysical knowledge opens the door to forces
and powers that are both external to, and residing in, the individual. Visualization
and meditation, when accompanied by strong emotions, are key concepts to
attaining some sort of attunement with another presence or power that is greater
than the individual. The interpretation of this invariably ineffable experience is often
expressed poetically or in metaphors, and has to rely on the inadequate use of words
to convey their true impact. Also, the astounding nature of what is seen/felt/heard
is communicated through cultural filters. As the discussion in this chapter focused
on the visual, and the eye is the mechanism for seeing, I now turn to August Reader
(1995), a clinical professor of ophthalmology, to articulate the Wests difficulty
in accepting any metaphysical experience without resorting to a Western science
paradigm.
The physiology of the visual system and its role in occurrences of a mystical
nature was investigated by August Reader after he had an intriguing episode that
involved what has been described in the literature as a typical near-death experience.
At 1.30 a.m. he suffered severe chest pain which radiated with heat down his left
arm and up into the left part of his neck. As the pain increased and his breathing
started to lessen, his heart suddenly stopped beating. As a physician, he immediately
recognized the signs of cardiac ischemia and was convinced that he was dying. He
broke out in a sweat and seemed to become paralysed. Many anxious and troubling
thoughts arose in his mind as he lay there thinking of all the things that needed to
be done, of his family, his practice and his life. Then, in the midst of these thoughts,
he remembered being told as a child that when facing death one should let go of
everything and turn to God. When he decided to let himself go and release himself
to the arms of God he felt a sense of bliss and understanding, and he experienced
(Reader 1995: 55):
holographic flashes of everything that occurred in my life, from the most trivial detail to
the most important events, all displayed equally and with no favor, connected by golden
threads, showing me that everything that had occurred to me in my life was important,
was part of who I was, and was essential to who I had been. And in that knowledge
40 Portals
was the understanding that my life had been worthwhile and I had nothing to regret in
dying.
That vision lasted, he said, only half a second, and then he was projected down a
long rocky tunnel of greyish-brown, with a bright light at the end; this bright light
then turned golden-white and began to surround and suffuse through him, and at
the same time he saw the faces of everyone he had known, both alive and dead,
including his own father who had been dead for seven years. He was asked if he
would like to join the dance, but he said no, and then he awoke to the sound of
his alarm clock.
A Western rationalist approach tends to explain away this incident as being
attributable to a vivid dream (itself an intriguing concept), and instead of exploring
metaphysical literature on the topic, or delving into religious or cross-cultural
sources for similar phenomena, Reader chose instead to investigate the neurological
foundations of the visual system that might have created the experience, and to limit
his explanation to one that might be palatable to an academic readership. Briefly,
these are his findings (Reader 1995: 559).
Readers scientific physicalist explanation is that the stimulation of the sympathetic
nervous system can lead to an increase in visual imagery, which produces images
such as angels, elves, ghosts, the Virgin Mary, and so on, and this is due to a release
of the memories in the right temporal lobe, mediated through the amygdala and
limbic system as part of the fight-or-flight mechanism. When there is excessive
stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, the visual imagery can be vivid
and can generate the experience of a white light. When this light occurs, there is a
profound and sudden decrease in peripheral vascular resistance due to the excessive
parasympathetic stimulus; the sudden release causes a rapid increase in blood flow
through the entire body, which gives a sensation of energy or light being transmitted.
As the white light develops, blood is shunted away from the occipital lobe, which
enhances the white light experience and, at the same time, causes the tactile sensation
of an energy flow through the body.
In short, there is marked peripheral vasodilation that leads to cortical ischemia,
and this, suggests August Reader, is what occurs in profound mystical states such
as those experienced in Zen Buddhism and Hinduism. There is also a psychological
component as the events are enhanced when there is extreme fear or panic (high
emotional states), which comes into play whenever the sympathetic nervous system
is stimulated in a fight-or-flight response. The occipital lobe (say proponents of this
explanation) is of major importance to the white light experience and the temporal
lobe for visual imagery.
The autonomic nervous system, comprising both the sympathetic and parasympathetic
nervous systems, acts as the automatic regulatory mechanism within the
body and in balancing the stresses that assail the physical body, both internally and
externally. There is at play (Reader 1995: 62):
Mandalas and Visual Symbols 41
a complex system of reflexes that mediate ischemia to the cerebral cortex, stimulating
release of the occipital poles and the rostral midbrain to discharge these images in
any profound state of cellular agony. These vascular events are mediated by way of the
autonomic nervous system.
This scientific explanation provides convincing evidence about what the body
is undergoing while something of this kind is being experienced, yet such an
explanation is limited as it does not really account for the entire phenomenon. While
many readers might seem convinced of the above argument, which dismisses the
encounter by offering the systemic mechanics of any unexpected encounter as a total
explanation, Reader himself, in spite of turning to this scientific approach, remained
somewhat perplexed, and concluded by posing the question: why is the experience
(his own and that of others) accompanied by such a profound feeling of Spirit, and
a love that is so profound, deep, and unifying that it seems it can only come from a
Universal Presence, and from nowhere else (p. 61).
There are two aspects of the near-death experience that cannot be fully explained
physiologically, writes Reader (1995: 60), who continues to be baffled by the
experience. One is the initiation of the near-death reflex; the other is the subjugation
of will to a higher power, which subsequently changes the way one lives in the
world after the experience. Not everyone who has a cardiac arrest has a near-death
experience with the classic features of entering a tunnel, seeing a white light and
encountering spiritual beings. It seems that the emotional factor of fear that is
generated by the realization that death is near as well as the hope of rescue in a
high power, and the subjugation of will to that higher power is Readers tentative
explanation. Nevertheless, he concludes his article thus (p. 62):
. . . the internal mysteries of the brain will always hide the Inner Mysteries, although the
heart will always have a way of finding the right answers.
This final statement indicates his own ambivalence about reducing such phenomena
to only one component the physiological in spite of concerted efforts to do so.
While most recorded near-death experiences report a positive and overwhelming
feeling of assurance that death is not to be feared, and many transform their lives as a
result of their encounter, not all near-death adventures are positive. Some individuals
have had terrifying experiences (see Bush 2002), which have led them to harbour
forebodings of death and to fear it. But that is another story which I will leave the
reader to pursue.
It is clear that there are many ways of approaching such phenomena and we should
not restrict our understanding to purely physiological explanations. Such confined
reasoning is limiting and deprives us of exploring exciting alternatives that might
greatly add to, and complement, a Western scientific approach. It also undermines
42 Portals
thousands of years of deep insight gained by people in other cultures on the vast and
seemingly limitless possibilities of mind, body and spirit.
Portal symbols, write Laughlin et al. (1992: 237), are like doors between rooms,
or perhaps keys to the doors between rooms, and myth forms a narrative bridge
that gives context and meaning to symbols. Myths equip the listener with a set
of symbolic images that often can be used as access points, or portals. Many of
the visuals discussed in this chapter aid the practitioner in opening those doors;
sometimes symbols are imaginally inscribed on doorways or other portals in order to
facilitate entrance to and exit from invisible realms. Visual technologies are a strong
method of moving through portals and can be used alone or as an accompaniment to
other technologies, such as sound or physical movement. In the next chapter, sound
technologies will be the focus of the discussion.