Letter sent to MAPS

Letter sent to MAPS (The Multidisciplinary Association
for Psychedelic Studies)
Hello:
Thanks so much for the important work you are doing - I've contributed
modestly a few times to your efforts, I believe, and will again when
I can. Other than expressing my gratitude, I wanted also to describe
a current project. Although trained as a composer of music, I also have
published a few books as well as three or four articles in the Co-Evolution
Quarterly/Whole Earth Review in the 70s and 80s. Right now I am writing
an essay on how physical light is transformed in the human body to an
emotional upwelling of happiness-joy-love -- even bliss. (I’ve always
described light as ‘vertical love’ and love as ‘horizontal light,’ with
the heart/cardiac chakra as the transformer.)

My latest informational tidbit came recently over the phone from an
opthamologist who practices Syntonic Optometry (color therapy): "twenty
percent of the stimuli entering via the optical tracts is shunted to
the hypothalamus, the limbic system and no doubt the amygdala also."
I imagine this is not earth-shattering news for those in neurophysiology
or related fields, but it was news to me. Elsewhere I have read that
there are basically five pathways by which light enters the body, four
of them through the brain and then of course the fifth via the skin.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to view the brain as basically
a light-absorbing 'sponge'.

I also wonder whether the basic urge to alter consciousness, which
Siegel in his book "Intoxication' labels the Fourth Drive, can be
reduced to the urge to re-experience the soft-focused, wide-open visual
perception of our infancy when photons were processed directly into
pleasurable body states and not shut out by our indoctrinated concen-
trated, focused, frowning attempts to ‘learn, understand, read, etc.’
Regressive states seem to be triggered by deep meditation and various
altered states triggered by entheogens, etc.

I think evolution began to select for focused traits early on when
we left ‘paradise’ (proto-human existence in Africa?) and had to cope
with staying warm (hunting for food and furs and firewood). Hunting
itself seems to require intense concentration on a specific visual
target. Homo Habilis 'space cases' froze to death (ant and grass-
hopper fable). Of course there always was one ecstatic that the clan
tolerated because he/she would report back from the other realms –
and thus became the shaman, the forerunner of the priesthood that
ultimately became yet another ‘filter’ between the dionysian direct
experience and the individual. (Sovatsky, in the quote I attach,
sums up how the Apollonian mindset co-opted the ecstatic/charismatic
dionysian. Religions never approve of the ecstatics, and either
marginalize them until they are safely dead and can be beatified
or else kill them outright).

Anyway, on the topic of how light transforms into delight, the most
information I've been able to find so far has been via the Seasonal
Affective Disorder websites. Of course I also stumble on line into
all the New Age inner light folks, but I'm really interested in how
photons get transformed into well-being states - and then, ultimately,
methods to improve this transformation. Right now for me, soft focus
wide-open eyes seem to trigger energy flows in the solar plexus
region -- something relatively simple to try.

I have also developed a few other simple exercises in the process
of looking for easy access to ways to improve the average persons
bliss tolerance thresholds. The most recent involving purring/
snarling and also nursing on the soft palette and uvula. They are
posted on my blog at: www.raysender.com/blog-1.html

Any advice or suggestions regarding the light-to-delight phenomenon
gratefully received!

Thanks again,