Magic Salamanders & the Zero-Point Field (3 of 5)
Imagination & the Morphogenetic Field
In Parts 1 and 2, we covered the bioelectric correlates of the regeneration of salamanders as well as the changes that take place during hypnoanalgesia. We even touched up on the data indicating that combining trance states with “conscious hallucinations” can influence wound healing quite dramatically. While this would seemingly be very useful in a clinical setting, is there anything else to this concept of altered states and “conscious hallucinations”?
We use the term “conscious hallucinations” in contrast to “unconscious hallucinations”. The difference being that exogenous psychedelics, the condition known as schizophrenia, or even plain ol’ regular dreams represent “unconscious hallucinations”. We name them as such because these are visionary experiences that people generally have little to no conscious control of. By contrast, “conscious hallucinations” are based upon active, focused imagination and attempting to deliberately visualize something into existence. Some have described the effectiveness of “conscious hallucinations” as not being solely relegated to strict visualization but also including an essence of multi-sensorial immersion within the experience.
While we can speculate, philosophize, and even present evidence of the effects of “conscious hallucinations”, nothing can compare with direct experience. Therefore it is homework time!
Here we have included a 15 minute audio track to allow you to experience both a relaxed trance state in combination with visualization. For optimal results, we suggest you turn your phone’s ringer/alerts off, listen to this audio via headphones, and follow the verbal directions as precise as possible while in a safe, quiet environment (not driving, lifting weights, tweeting furiously, etc.).
Now that you’ve experienced what it’s like to combine the effects of a relaxed trance state with visualization, the concepts that we have presented thus far might make a little more intuitive sense. The trance state is induced by the verbal instructions in terms of respiration rhythm, fractionation techniques (eyes open and close on the finger snap), and numerical deepeners (counting down). This is followed by vivid visualization and immersive imagination. For the vast majority of you who tried this (90% or more), you likely experienced the subjective sensation of warmth in your right hand coinciding with the “conscious hallucination”. The mechanisms of this coincide with changing the direction of the DC current in the brain via deep trance and directing a signal alteration to the area of the body you want to influence. While some of you might be wondering whether your right hand actually experienced an objectively measurable increase in temperature, let me assure you that this phenomena has already been studied extensively (Maslach, 1972; Roberts et al, 1973; Daniels, 1976; Grimsley, 1994; King, 1980; Freedman et al., 1983; Kojo, 1985; Middaugh et al., 2001; Paqueron et al., 2019; Swope, 2013; Kistler et al., 1999; Douglas et al, 2014; Conversa et al., 2019). The fields of biofeedback, hypnosis, and guided imagery (which is utilized in major healthcare systems) have all observed this effect for many decades.
While it still might seem like a fringe phenomena, for those of you interested in researching this occurrence, the phrase “conscious hallucinations” can be interchanged with “mental imagery” or “motor imagery” (there are 2200+ pubmed search results under the term “mental imagery” and 4400+ results for “motor imagery”). In past review papers, it’s been cited that as high as 90 percent of Olympic athletes utilize mental imagery of some form in preparation for their live performances (Murphy et al., 1990). Research over the past several decades indicates that athletes that utilize mental imagery experience an increase in muscular strength compared to athletes that don’t utilize mental imagery (Slimani et al., 2016; Tod et al., 2015). The form of visualization that Olympians generally utilize is vividly immersing themselves in the imagination of competition. It is believed that this visualization stimulates activation of neural networks associated with competition inducing an enhancement of neuromuscular development (Janjigian, 2024). Not to be outdone, the elderly seemingly benefit even more from mental imagery practices in terms of gaining muscle strength than their younger counterparts (Liu et al., 2022). A 2020 fMRI study published in the journal eLife observed that the resting state visual cortex excitability is a primary factor in predicting mental imagery strength. The study found that subjects with the lowest resting state visual cortex excitability experienced greater effects of mental imagery compared to those with higher resting state excitability. This alludes to the reason for combining relaxative trance states in order to suppress the visual cortex excitability. This then allows for greater effect of the “conscious hallucination”.
We’ve touched up on the relatively tame examples of the effects of “conscious hallucinations” on human physiology.
Now let’s get into the wild stuff.
Milton H. Erickson was a psychiatrist and is considered one of the most prolific practitioners of hypnosis in modern history. His approach to hypnosis could be considered non-traditional at times based on his utilization of unorthodox conversations in order to induce trance states as well as implementing direction. His body of work played a prominent role in the development of the modality known as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
Here is an excerpt from the book titled, “Ericksonian Approaches”.
“In 1960 he [Erickson] told about a 20-year-old man who grew 12 inches in height in the span of one year. In hypnosis, at the start of therapy, this stunted young man looked out on his world as though unwilling to grow, a modern-day Peter Pan.
For example, he described the room as though he were standing beneath a table. Similarly, a cow on his farm was visualized as though it were ten feet tall; his eyes were on a level with the cow's udder. Growth began to take place when Erickson encouraged the man to hallucinate his world as though he were standing part way up a staircase.
I said, "Why have you kept this report out of the literature?"
Erickson smiled and said, "No respectable editor of a scientific journal would publish such an impossible thing."
"Dr. Erickson," I answered, "You are the editor of a respectable journal."
He smiled again and said, "I would like to keep my job."“
This all sounds rather far-fetched that an adult man could experience such a dramatic increase in height growth simply based on hypnotic imagination. There is the possibility that this 20 year old gentleman simply had a delayed growth spurt that happened to coincide with him seeing Dr. Erickson. There have been many documented occurrences of delayed puberty in which men experience growth spurts in their 20’s although it is not considered to be the norm.
In 1960, Erickson would publish a case study in which 2 women (ages 17 and 20) who experienced a condition of underdeveloped breasts were able to induce significant breast growth utilizing hypnosis (Erickson, 1960). While similar criticisms of this report regarding delayed maturation of subjects could also be applied, multiple follow up studies combining hypnosis and visualization also induced similar results. In 1969, psychologist Leslie M. LeCron would publish a case study including a total of 20 women (ages 20 to 30) who would also experience significant breast growth from hypnosis and visualization (LeCron, 1969). In the 1970’s, there were a total of 4 follow-up studies regarding the effects of hypnosis and visualization on breast growth in adult women (Williams, 1974; Staib et al., 1977; Willard, 1977; Williams, 1979). The ages of the subjects in these studies ranged from 18 to 54 years old and it was found that neutral hypnosis without the suggestion for visualization did not induce breast growth. It was also found that the women who experienced the most dramatic increases were also the subjects there were able to obtain their visualizations quickly and consistently. Roughly 50 percent of the subjects found it necessary to buy a larger bra size following the completion of the study (12 to 16 week average). The volunteers also experienced significant sustained growth in 3 month follow-ups by the clinicians. There was also a measurable decrease in waist size for the women throughout the process indicating that weight gain was not a factor.
There are 3 ways to view this field of research:
1. It is impossible.
2. It is possible and it has to do with the neuroplastic aspect of hypnosis (DC current reversal) to reorganize neural networks to signal locations in the body to release site specific nerve growth factor (NGF) and growth hormone (GH) that upregulates estrogen receptor expression leading to breast growth.
3. It is possible and including reason #2, hypnotic states allows for a person to resonate with the zero-point field in a manner that allows them to create a morphogenetic field via sustained, focused visualization in which the physical body must follow based on this mentally generated blueprint ala the “Electric Frog Face”.
You can likely already tell that we are leaning heavily on reasoning #3 in this instance. However, speaking in these more theoretical terms can be difficult to present for an audience steeped in modern neuroscience which focuses on neuroimaging, electrophysiology, and biochemical flux. It’s believed that the default mode network (DMN) of the brain is the neural connections which are associated with a person’s sense of self or identity (Yeshurun et al., 2021). The DMN is believed to be active when an individual is at rest and not actively focused on the exterior world. Hypnosis has been shown to decrease DMN activity similarly to that of psychedelics and because of this, there arises a comparable neuroplastic potential to reorganize the brain regions and networks associated with the DMN (Jiang et al., 2017). We believe that an upregulation of neurotransmitters such as DMT/Endohuasca are likely being utilized during this process to stimulate the restructuring of neural connectivity. By combining hypnosis with a specific visualization, it allows for a subject to create a specific network of DMN connectivity with peripheral nerve pathways associated with the visualization. This creates the potential for constant signaling to take place when a subject is not under hypnosis being that the network has been created and retraced each time a person induces the same specific visualization. This network is now part of the DMN and has become part of the constant default signaling (amongst many others) for the subject. These electric signals from the brain to the periphery induce site specific changes in hormones with epigenetic influence to induce the desired change. These same proposed mechanisms could apply to negative conditions such as cases of stress induced cancer… which we will touch up on in a bit.
(Once again, this brings us to an experiential component with which we may be able to provide direct experience and insight into these proposed mechanisms. If you listen to the visualization audio track we provided multiple times (3 consecutive days) with precision focus, your ability to induce the hand warming effect will be easily accessible even without listening to the track. )
From our vantage point of option #3, the reason for the downstream effect of biological changes is based on consistently maintaining the morphogenetic field aka the energetic blueprint of the change. It’s easy to induce an acute change in the body such as changing the temperature of an extremity based on a “conscious hallucination” (if you did your homework, you’d know). It seems as though it takes more time to induce an anatomical change as the physical body must follow the laws of the natural world. A salamander limb doesn’t regenerate instantaneously so why would we expect such a change in a human? The world would be nearly impossible to navigate if a person’s thoughts could manifest instantaneously and without effort.
For all the excitement and current interest in psychedelics to address conditions such as addiction, pain, eating disorders, PTSD, and depression, deep trance states coupled with guided instructions have been shown to have significant positive effects in all these conditions for decades (Potter, 2004; Hassan et al., 2014; Batra et al., 2024; Siegel, 1979; Bicego et al., 2022; Delestre et al., 2022; O’toole et al., 2016; Shih et al., 2009; Ramondo et al., 2024). In addition, hypnosis has been observed to have significant positive effects on stroke recovery, hair growth, and even weight loss in published research (Holroyd et al., 1989; Sanyal et al., 2022; Perini et al., 1994; Willemsen et al., 2006; Willemsen et al., 2008; Bolocofsky et al., 1985; Ersan et al., 2020). Anecdotally speaking, there are numerous claims of even more dramatic physical changes from hypnotherapists and their clients.
While exogenous psychedelics appear to create their therapeutic effects by inducing a broad neural restructuring of sorts, it is the trance state coupled with specific instructions that seem capable of inducing specific “magic” effects. Why would the effects of these “conscious hallucinations” be relegated to superficial effects such as hand warming, breast growth, or hair regrowth? Perhaps these effects can be applied to influence the function of specific endocrine organ secretions or to reverse impaired fluid dynamics in neurodegenerative conditions or to influence the progression of diseases such as cancer.
Dr. Michael Levin at Tufts University has displayed the effects of bioelectricity in terms of being able to switch cancer growth on and off without inducing genetic changes (Levin, 2021). While it seems that Levin’s work is mainly based on cellular biology, it’s clear that bioelectric signaling influences not just cancer but all organ function and metabolic processes. The autonomic nervous system is considered to be key in terms of regulating processes in the body such as blood pressure, digestion, and heart rate. This system works automatically without the need for direct influence of a person. However, autonomic nervous system dysfunction has been consistently observed in subjects with cancer (Stone et al., 2012; Pimentel et al., 2013; Lakoski et al., 2015; Magnon, 2015; Coumbe et al., 2018; Zygulska et al., 2018; McCallum et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021; Garramona et al., 2024; Park et al., 2024). It has also been observed that stress can induce autonomic signaling dysfunction as well as influencing cancer metastasis (Moreno-Smith et al., 2011; Teixeira et al., 2015; Abate et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2022; Lempesis et al., 2023; He et. al., 2024).
This would indicate that changing the top down (brain) signal from this autonomic system could potentially alter the electric signaling to the cancer cells inducing a reversal of the condition. What we have just described is also known as the term “spontaneous remission”.
We will be diving into the phenomena of spontaneous remission in Part 4.
P.S. Don’t judge us for this random musing. In the book, “Autobiography of a Yogi”, there is a story of a man who was purportedly capable of regenerating his limb after it was severed rather instantaneously. While we do not advocate for research regarding severing the limbs of people just to see if they can access the ability of limb regeneration, it would be intriguing to conduct a specific case study on the topic. This is simply a thought experiment and we are in no way advocating for this to actually take place. However, the experiment would go as follows: 1) Subjects with partially missing fingers would undergo deep hypnoanalgesia to re-sever the knob of the missing digit while feeling no pain. 2) Following the procedure, the subjects would be kept under hypnosis with the instructions to regrow the finger fully. 3) The subjects would undergo hypnosis once per week for 12 weeks with the instructions to continue regrowing the missing digit. The reason for needing to re-sever the finger is because there seems to be a time window in which instructions need to be signaled within the body to induce this potential regenerative healing effect. Like we said… this is only a thought experiment.