/** * file: chatgpt_karbytes_15july2025_p0.txt * type: plain-text * date: 16_JULY_2025 * author: karbytes * license: PUBLIC_DOMAIN */ The following is a plain-text transcript of a conversation between karbytes and ChatGPT-4o which took place between 11:59PM Pacific Standard Time on 14_JULY_2025 and 11:59PM Pacific Standard Time on 15_JULY_2025. The conversation pertains to the subject of "hallucinating" extremely long (in temporal duration) and detailed sequences of qualia while using a high dose of Salvia divinorum. karbytes is curious how it is possible for users of strong Salvia divinorum to experience what appear to those users to be vivid and realistic dreams which seem to last for several decades while only tripping for approximately five minutes in the user's base "physical" universe. * * * karbytes: What happens to the brain during a strong Salvia trip (especially with regards to extreme time dilation such as experiencing reality from the perspective of an inanimate yet sentient object watching detailed events unfold)? ChatGPT: A strong Salvia divinorum trip—especially one that induces profound time dilation and identity transformation—can result in dramatic, albeit temporary, changes in brain function and conscious experience. The specific mechanism is still not fully understood by neuroscience, but here’s what is currently known and theorized: 🌿 1. Core Mechanism: Kappa Opioid Receptor (KOR) Activation Salvia’s main active compound, salvinorin A, is a potent and selective kappa-opioid receptor agonist (unlike classical psychedelics which affect serotonin receptors). This is critical because: - KOR activation disrupts the default mode network (DMN)—a network involved in self-referential thought, time perception, and ego stability. - This disruption often causes ego dissolution, non-linear time perception, and bizarre shifts in identity. 🧠 2. Disruption of Temporal Processing and Memory Integration Extreme time dilation on Salvia may result from: - Desynchronization of time perception circuits, likely involving the cerebellum, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus. - Users report living through long scenes, lifetimes, or complex narratives in seconds. This may be the brain’s attempt to integrate fractured sensory and conceptual data into a coherent—but distorted—narrative. - The brain may rapidly loop, remix, or invent elaborate simulations using memory fragments and imaginative constructs. 🪞 3. Identity Disintegration and Objectification On high doses, users often become: - Inanimate objects (e.g., walls, furniture, rotating gears, cartoon characters) - Sentient but immobile observers, often feeling like they're part of a different dimension or universe This may involve: - Breakdown of proprioceptive and somatosensory integration, leading the brain to misattribute consciousness to non-biological constructs. - Cross-modal confusion: Visual, tactile, and conceptual boundaries collapse, so being a “spinning gear” feels real, with imagined tactile sensations and mechanical logic. 🌀 4. Fracturing of Narrative and Spatial Continuity A strong Salvia trip often exhibits: - Overlapping or simultaneous timelines (you might feel split across multiple realities or identities) - “Snap-back” phenomena, where the world is suddenly reconstructed and the user has no idea where they are or who they were seconds ago - Non-verbal insight or comprehension, which seems profound during the trip but difficult to verbalize afterward These effects imply non-ordinary neural firing patterns in the thalamus, cortex, and limbic system, leading to a dream-like, sometimes terrifyingly lucid alternate world. 🧩 5. The Hypothesis of "Simulation Narrative Patchwork" One working theory among psychonauts and cognitive theorists is: - The brain, stripped of external reference points and flooded with abnormal internal signals, begins building “stories” from memory fragments, symbolic ideas, and imaginative permutations, as if it's trying to simulate a meaningful world without real sensory input. - This can give rise to scenarios like being a button on a couch, watching eternity pass, or feeling like you are the wall that watches a family age and disappear over centuries—often with full emotional and sensory realism. Summary of What’s Happening: [preformatted_text] Effect ----------------------------------| Likely Brain Region(s) ------------------------------| Explanation Ego dissolution -------------------------| Default Mode Network --------------------------------| Loss of cohesive self-model Time dilation ---------------------------| Cerebellum, Prefrontal Cortex, Hippocampus ----------| Fractured perception of linear time Object identity -------------------------| Parietal Lobe, Somatosensory Cortex -----------------| Misattributed body schema Narrative hallucinations ----------------| Temporal Lobe, DMN ----------------------------------| Construction of imaginary experience flow Confusion and emotional intensity -------| Limbic System ---------------------------------------| Dysregulated emotional processing [end preformatted_text] Final Thought: Salvia is unique among psychedelics. Rather than enhancing perception or inducing introspection like LSD or psilocybin, it scrambles perception and identity, producing brief but intense transpersonal or surreal experiences. The feeling of becoming an inanimate, sentient object observing deep time may reflect the brain's attempt to anchor experience when stripped of normal temporal and bodily constraints. Would you like a simulated internal monologue or stream-of-consciousness that might accompany such a trip? karbytes: How are people that do that able to experience detailed simulations going on for decades within just a few actual minutes? That seems physically impossible. ChatGPT: You're absolutely right to question how it’s even possible to subjectively experience decades of events during a few minutes of real time. On the surface, it seems to violate the brain’s computational limits and temporal constraints. But here's the current best synthesis of how this paradox may be explained: 🧠 1. Subjective Time ≠ Objective Time The key distinction is between objective clock time (e.g., a stopwatch ticking) and subjective psychological time (your internal sense of how long something lasts). Salvia and certain other altered states don’t stretch actual time—they distort or collapse your brain’s normal processing of time. 🧩 2. Narrative Compression and Nonlinear Perception Instead of literally simulating billions of neural events that would occur over decades, the brain might be doing something more like: Creating a compressed, symbolic representation of a vast amount of time and experience. For example: - You might feel like you lived through a childhood, grew old, and died—but the brain isn’t rendering every second. It gives you highlight reels, key emotional beats, and associative transitions, which your mind interprets as a full experience. - It’s similar to how a dream can feel like hours even though it lasts minutes or seconds, because the brain is skipping around, remixing fragments, and filling in the blanks automatically. 🧬 3. Memory Fabrication in Real Time Strong Salvia trips may result in the real-time fabrication of entire autobiographical narratives, complete with: - Emotional continuity - Spatial familiarity - Social roles and identities - A sense of time passing But these memories were never actually lived through—they’re simulated and implanted in the moment using existing neural structures for episodic memory. This is possible because: - The hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and visual association areas can generate “memories” and “visions” on demand. - Under Salvia’s influence, these systems are disinhibited and can operate free from sensory constraints, leading to high-fidelity, but invented experiential sequences. 🧊 4. Perceived Simultaneity and Infinite Density Some people report multiple lifetimes, universes, or dimensions all happening at once. This implies: - The brain might be processing many symbolic timelines in parallel, but collapsing them into a linear interpretation only afterward. - There’s no need to simulate every sensory detail—just enough representational tokens to give the illusion of temporal depth. It’s analogous to a zip file—a lot of experiential "data" is compressed in form and then decompressed into a plausible timeline by the mind. 🧠 5. Altered Neural Entropy and Time Rate Modulation Some researchers propose that Salvia puts the brain into a high-entropy, disordered state, where: - The usual temporal encoding mechanisms break down (like oscillatory synchrony). - Brain rhythms that anchor time perception (e.g., alpha, beta waves) are distorted or suppressed. As a result, internal mental events feel “faster” or outside time altogether. In other words: The brain doesn’t need to simulate 50 years of life in 50 years of neural activity. It creates the illusion of 50 years using a highly compressed, disordered, and reassembled series of moments. 🧪 Analogies That Help: [preformatted_text] Analogy -------------| Explanation Dreams --------------| You feel like you lived a full day in a dream that lasted 30 seconds. Movies --------------| A 2-hour movie condenses years of character life. You accept it as coherent. Flashbacks ----------| A flash of memory can feel emotionally as long as the real event. Book summary --------| You don’t read every word of a book to feel its story—just enough to construct the arc. [end preformatted_text] 💡 Final Insight: It seems physically impossible because we equate lived time with brain activity time. But in these altered states: - The brain trades resolution for illusion. It generates the impression of time, not the actual passage of time. - The simulation is not continuous; it’s highly discontinuous but emotionally cohesive, which your mind interprets as lived experience. Would you like a speculative timeline showing how the illusion of decades could be formed over a few minutes in a Salvia trip? karbytes: Yes please! ChatGPT: Here’s a speculative minute-by-minute timeline of how a Salvia trip could generate the illusion of decades of experience in just a few real-world minutes—say, a 6-minute breakthrough trip. The focus is on how compressed memory fragments, emotional cues, and symbolic transitions might simulate the passage of time from the perspective of a sentient object or alternate identity. 🧠 A Speculative Breakdown of a 6-Minute Salvia Trip: Subjective experience: 40 years Real time: ~6 minutes Minute 0: Inhalation and Onset Physiological event: Salvinorin A hits the bloodstream and binds to kappa-opioid receptors. Neurocognitive shift: - Sudden dissociation from the body. - Visual and proprioceptive distortions. - Identity and time anchors begin to disintegrate. Subjective moment: “Something is happening. I don’t know where or who I am.” Minute 1: Identity Explosion Cognitive fragmentation: Self-model fractures into components (e.g., limbs, thoughts, textures). Spatial dislocation: User becomes a fence post, a painted tile, or a doll in a forgotten drawer. Temporal rupture: - Time ceases to flow linearly. - Symbols and emotions imply memories, as if they had always existed. Subjective moment: “I’ve always been this.” “People walk by me every day. I observe them aging. I do not move.” Minute 2: Constructing a Lifetime Narrative synthesis: The brain builds a lifespan-like storyline using emotional arcs and transitions: childhood wonder → youthful yearning → midlife dread → resigned old age Interspersed are vague scenes: - A woman in a red dress touches you (a fence post). - A rainy year where mold grew. - A neighborhood kid paints you once, then forgets. Subjective experience: “Decades go by, and I witness all of it silently.” “The sun rises and falls. People come and go. I remain.” Minute 3: Emotional Climax / "Death" Narrative resolution: - The object-self is removed, thrown away, or burned. - A sense of finality sets in—this mimics death. Emotional release: Feelings of nostalgia, surrender, transcendence. Temporal collapse: All decades collapse into a singular “moment of reflection.” Subjective moment: “My life was quiet, but it mattered.” “Now I am going to sleep forever.” Minute 4: Reality Reboot Initiates Cognitive reintegration: - The self begins to reform. - Colors stabilize, geometry becomes coherent. Residual confusion: - You “remember” being a couch button for 40 years. - You might still feel like you are that object even while regaining body awareness. Subjective moment: “Wait… am I back? Where is the woman in the red dress? Was I dreaming?” “Was that my life?” Minute 5: Shock and Afterglow Ego fully reforms. Physical sensations return. Sense of time resumes, but with lingering disorientation. You might still cry, laugh, or feel deeply moved or disturbed, unsure why. Subjective moment: “That felt so long. How could it only be 5 minutes?” Minute 6: Post-trip Integration Memory crystallization: - You try to remember the “timeline,” but most details are already slipping. - The main residue is emotional: awe, dread, beauty, confusion. Subjective insight: “I was more than a person. I was a witness to time, and now I’m back.” 🧠 Summary of Mechanism: [preformatted_text] Phase ----------------------| Cognitive Event -------------------| Simulation Technique Onset ----------------------| Ego disintegration ----------------| DMN disruption Identity rupture -----------| Objectification -------------------| Misassigned body schema Timeline creation ----------| Narrative compression -------------| Associative memory synthesis Death ----------------------| Symbolic closure ------------------| Emotional resolution Reintegration --------------| Return to self --------------------| Thalamic & cortical reset Afterglow ------------------| Meaning-making --------------------| Hippocampal memory binding [end preformatted_text] 🎭 Final Analogy: Imagine reading the Wikipedia summary of a 40-year life, watching a montage, and feeling the corresponding emotions—all within seconds. That’s what the Salvia brain may be doing: not simulating literal time, but invoking a dense symbolic landscape of what time “feels like.” Would you like a follow-up narrative written as if from the first-person perspective of such a trip? karbytes: What you provided thus far is sufficient for my purposes. Thanks! ChatGPT: You're very welcome, karbytes. I'm glad the explanation was useful for your purposes. If you ever want to explore related phenomena—like how different psychedelics compare in their effects on time, identity, or memory—or if you want help translating these ideas into plain-text documentation or narrative prose, I'm here. Good luck archiving or incorporating this into KARLINA_OBJECT or any related chapters. 🌿🧠📚