Sarah Hakani 2023 03 04

Spoke with Sarah this morning about her thesis work, which has a lot of common interests, including repetition, neuroscience, sound, spirituality.

Her repetition work included turning pages in a book, prayer beads, a drum machine. She wondered how I could invoke repetition other than my usual modality of sound (and probably light), like through something in my life like eating the same meal all the time.

I can look at each incident of a repetition and then the space in-between them (which are like Bardo experiences), and the duration of the space in-between sets the frequency of the signal, like a pitch of a sound.

Looking at repetition, what does it provide for my brain? Consistency, safety. What does lack of repetition provide my brain? Novelty. So the exchange is novelty for a sense of stability, trust.

This parallels my experiences with relationships. I lived in Berkeley for a few years and spend all day, every day with a cast of friends who all worked remotely. It was deep consistency, and in that, deep love and friendships bloomed. I don’t get that when travel a lot or just see friends briefly here or there a couple of times a month.

On the flip side, I thought of the idea of “bonding agents” in that group was bonded around one person who ended up being very mentally ill and self-destructed, and the group fell apart. He was very charming and good at gathering groups together, but ultimately things fell apart.

LSD is a similar bonding agent for deep psychological experiences, but also can be dangerous or volatile. So a deep experience can be created, but the thing that creates the experience may itself be unstable, jeopardizing the whole system.

Notion notes:

https://jasonjsnell.notion.site/2023-04-03-Sarah-Hakani-f9c5dad072bc488c90a1257df661a249