Spensorium

From a neuro standpoint – an empirical equivalent, or explanation of the phenomenon of insights from Turya, or what would be called “downloads”, in colloquial terminology – is divergent thinking and the Insight/ “Aha! Moments”, the sudden, profound realization of a solution without step by step logic.



This ability to access constant, novel connections is a recognized cognitive state defined by specific neurological processes.. whether you believe in the ontology of nondual tantra, Alpha and Gamma Bursts are able to be produced through this deep meditation and slowing down of thoughts.



Moments of sudden insight are preceded by a spike in alpha waves in the right hemisphere.. allowing the brain to suppress distractions and shift attention inward – followed by a burst of high frequency gamma waves. Gamma bursts link distant, unrelated pieces of information together into a single, clear thought.



There is also the unconscious network- research shows that “Aha! moments” often occur when the brain is at rest or under cognitive load, suggesting the unconscious mind continuously pieces together loosely connected information to form novel associations.



There is also salience network activity – the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex  is responsible for detecting the insight and shifting attention to this newly realized concept, causing the sudden flash of clarity.



Successfully using meditations/dharanas from the VBT etc, slowing down your thoughts, can, and has allowed me, to produce these, and has allowed me to construct devices of unparalleled efficacy.



One of the things that led me far deeper into exploring metaphysical praxis, specifically into yoga/Tantra, was my background in biopsych/behavioral neuroscience and consciousness studies.



Even in grade school, when I did loads of drugs and got into things like chaos magick, shamanism and was fascinated with the likes of terence mckenna, aldous huxley, william blake, Henry Thoreau and other perennialist/unitarians in which I saw as the distant emblems of true Americana, in which I adamantly sought a modern revival of – I was such a major skeptic and didnt find what I was looking for – I didnt find praxis that was so constant in its practical benefits and ability to yield instruments of power and mobility.



I was primarily drawn further into it in college when learning about neurohacking, things like nootropics (bdnf, bacopa, phosphatidylcholine, cognizin to name a few) and sensory deprivation experiments like that of John C Lily.. and was fascinated by the concept of using technological and scientific means of loosening our filters or increasing our capacity to intake mediums of reality.. I was  intensely transhumanist at one point.



I had, most notably, a specific interest in exploring the prima materia, chaos, at a deeper level – when getting into discordianism and chaos magick, I always thought there was something more esoteric, more subtle, more pure at the core of “chaos”, that one can access practically – drawing inspiration from the primeval waters of Egyptian cosmology, going into scientific/mathematical mysticism, and diving into the esoteric principles of chaos theory and mathematics.




I intuitively felt that chaos, the prima materia, was something you could access not as a pipe dream, or just some glorification of a chaotic state, a state of confusion, producing new insights or grasps of order.. but as something you can tap into practically at any given moment – to give you aha! moments on demand, to sift through all combinations of potential – pure, undifferentiated, raw bounty of multiplicity.

Fast forward after years of looking, I found that this is found in nondual tantric praxis and in what is called turya, the gap between thoughts and chaos was “spanda”.




Turya -the “fourth” state, is the silent, pure witnessing consciousness that exists in the gaps between thoughts, breaths, or distinct states of waking and sleeping. It represents the absolute stillness out of which spontaneous insight emerges.



In Kashmiri philosophy, mental chatter; vrittis, conceals the underlying nature of reality.



By resting awareness in the void between these fluctuating states.. the moment before a new thought fully forms, the mind accesses the spontaneous, creative flow of universal consciousness /Shakti. This is the source of pure, unconditioned insight..




The tools of this tradition yielded both the meta narrative and the scientifically backed, practical results of what I was looking for in chaos, regardless of what, epistemologically, can be verified within it.