Psychedelics and Evolution: Our Past and Our Future

Serotonin Agonists and Evolution

By KB Updike, Jr​

Introduction

Terence McKenna has presented a theory of evolution which states that hallucinogenic mushrooms as encountered by grasslands chimps made possible a transition from chimpanzee to human. Terence was convinced the brief duration wherein this species to species transition occurred can only be explained by the introduction of a potent neural stimulant into the chimp diet. McKenna has exploited the grasslands as the most plausible location chimps would have encountered psychedelic mushrooms with sufficient regularity and concentration to promote long term consumption, and as the location the modern theory of evolution suggests chimps transitioned into human beings.

I agree with McKenna’s assertion that physical sensitivity and increased visual acuity on low dosage psilocybin mushroom usage would have offered an evolutionary advantage likely to be embraced by successive generations of chimps. I consider McKenna’s opinion that increased sexual arousal would have offered the shrooming ape a reproductive advantage an objective inference. I assert these advantages tend to result from increased nervous system use increasing processing power, including the expansion of one’s capacity to experience enjoyment.

I consider McKenna’s attempt to explain the development of language insufficient and blatantly erroneous. He believed an impulsive tendency to babble on psychedelics partially explains the evolutionary root of human language. I have read him attempt to debunk a parallel between a spiritual tendency amongst Christians to speak in tongues, and a tendency amongst psilocybin and DMT users to do the same. It is my opinion the parallel is real, and it is explained by the kind of disassociation which can be induced by a significant upswing in serotonin as spiritual energy, the primary neurotransmitter of love, interacting with our lingual impulse. My theory is that psychedelics didn’t start triggering such babble until after humans had already evolved complex language.

A simple language of immediacy has been documented amongst primitive species of animals. I consider the plausible evolutionary root of human language to be the tendency of psychedelic drugs to drastically increase serotonin, and the tendency of an increase in love to increase our natural desire to socialize, as well as by inducing neural stimulation to significantly increase the rate at which our brains are likely to evolve.

Serotonergic psychedelics such as LSD, DMT, and psilocybin are the most potent nontoxic neural stimulants mankind has yet discovered. This fact alone suggests a significant probability long term usage increases neural use, thereby potentiating evolution.

Increased arousal on psychedelic drugs is encountered in modern humans at a moderate dosage. The chimpanzee is evolutionarily similar enough to humans that it isn’t a stretch of the imagination to assume ancient grassland chimps experienced psychedelic drugs in a similar manner. If chimpanzees ingested psychedelic drugs more often during mating time than any other time period, I suspect an evolutionary anomaly known as puberty can be explained, as well as the transition into a social ego this experience induces in humans. An increase in love around mating time increased socialization, and this pattern remained consistent for so long it became biological imperative.

Psilocybin mushrooms as the evolutionary catalyst of tribal society: serotonin as the love neurotransmitter, sufficiently increased, increases tolerance and desire to socialize. This would have increased the grassland chimp’s social body as well as social ability level. In the long term, such an evolutionary catalyst would have plausibly resulted in complex socialization, which is human language.

Evolution, Creativity and Love

The reproductive act is physically creative, literally the act of creating.

I consider safety in the arms of the mother, or comfort within the confines of familiarity, the evolutionary ancestor of love, and the reason why the first love is the mother. Familiar territory is least likely to kill an instinctive being because its boundaries are too well defined. My childhood memory of minnows may be one of my primary inspirations for considering this angle, in the sense they utilize the evolutionary advantage of familiarity-as-safety to scare away larger fish. Birds have a similar tendency, perceived at a distance as one massive avian.

As chimps became man through a long term and gradual evolutionary process, I perceive the manifestation of serotonin as creative energy to have been itself a gradual transition between the impulse to create offspring and the impulse to self express. This postulation is in keeping with the idea mating time was when grassland chimps consumed hallucinogenics with greatest frequency.

Outside the realm of human experience, the artistic desire to self express may be unique to chimpanzees, gorillas, similar apes, and mammals to have evolved in close proximity to man.

Timothy Leary’s Eight Circuit Model as a Map of Evolution

The eight circuit model divides the human mind as naturally occurring into four circuits: biosurvival as an advance-retreat mechanism, emotio-territorialism as herd or pack mentality and familial love, either / or language, and the socio-sexual moral circuit.

The first minibrain is often referred to as amphibious or reptilian and may be rooted in the reactive nature of cellular life. Fear of big and / or unfamiliar, advance upon energy. This becomes a function of the mammalian mind when love is introduced in its most primitive form, and pride triggers into effect a hierarchy.

I suspect the third and fourth circuits evolved simultaneously. The circuit of language and the circuit of social identity possess interrelated titles: socialization is language. Potent love-induced neural stimulation around mating time would have resulted in increased moral concern and social interest, and long term increase in neural use interconnected with increased social desire would have plausibly triggered the development of the semantic mind.

I disagree with Leary's left brain right brain theory, that psychedelics increase creativity and higher circuit activity by stimulating the usually dormant right brain, because I consider the serotonin affinity of the drugs in question, and the nature of the serotonin system, a simpler explanation. I suspect the four lower circuits have yet to escape the conditioning and imprinting of the dopamine-fueled ego, and that love itself in sufficient quantity is unconditioned and creative enough to loosen or directly reprogram the ego.

The dopamine fueled ego is literally an impulse directed neurotransmitter system, whereas serotonin is still therefore choice directed. Since they co-evolved they occupy exceedingly similar regions and structures of the brain. In other words, unimpeded by the ego, the serotonin system does anything it can do via impulse and instinct as directed by conscious decision.

The fifth circuit, according to Leary's model potentiated by cannabis, constitutes hedonism and creative verbalization. I consider marijuana's affinity for serotonin just high enough to loosen social lingual ego boundaries and induce exploratory conversation.

Love calms the ego in interaction, inducing marijuanna tranquilization. I suspect increased heart rate induces hunger. Neural stimulation increases physical sensitivity, which translates as arousal, or increased physical desire.

The sixth circuit is the self programming mind. I suspect high dosage psychedelics make ego reprogramming possible because a superior quantity of serotonin is available with which to impact the ego and re-create it.

Species to species transitions, as well as familial traits, may be explained by a biological record of the lives of one's ancestors until the moment of reproduction. This minimizes chance of mutating genetic defects and increases the probability of smooth species to species transitions during times of rapid environmental change. The information constitutes a code I suspect the nervous system usually only automatically accesses as its developmental stages unfold.

Timothy Leary's model claims the seventh circuit possesses the ability to consciously interact with stored genetic data. Most commonly, this circuit manifests as an accidental recollection on LSD or DMT of the experiences of one's evolutionary ancestors. If serotonin triggered evolution from chimp to man, the serotonin system probably interacted with the genetic code most often, which dialogue might rationally be recalled on serotonergic psychedelics such as LSD and DMT because it now as a result of this evolutionary catalyzation exists within the serotonin system.

Stanislav Grof has researched the tendency of LSD trippers to experience life as ancestral organisms of mankind the subjects had never heard of. He also records instances wherein memories of silver backed gorillas, primates of no ancestry to humans, are encountered. I believe the resolution of why the gorilla memories are encountered similar to the theory that like vibrations interact most often, and that psychedelic impulsiveness triggers a communication between genetic memory and universal memory: the province of the eighth circuit.

The Next Stage in Human Evolution

Robert Anton Wilson has suggested Ketamine can stimulate eighth circuit awareness. I consider this side of Ketamine resultant from the inhibition of abstraction simultaneous to drastic neural stimulation. Free and direct flow through the transition between events.

Too much impulsive creative inference occurs on normal psychedelics to permit a smooth and reliable dialogue with time as the flow of causation. I postulate the source of this noise to be ego, fueled by dopamine, impulse interacting with radically amplified levels of creativity. Without an impulsive psyche, this creative energy doesn't induce a trip.

Most major paths of mysticism, or Western mystery schools, promote total ego death as an ultimate goal. I consider success crowned by an unconditional increase in the love neurotransmitter. If this is true, such a reward taken with a high dosage of DMT or LSD would result in a permanent and delusion free peak, because the peak unconditionally perpetuates itself

If astral travel exists, & is more common in the modern era than in times past, a sort of telepathic dialogue may develop to unite paths of a goal to achieve ego transcendence at such a level as to trigger a species to species transition far more pivotal than the transition from chimp to man: I suspect anyone to successfully surrender all egotistical emotions and learn to love unconditionally, with help or as an effort of focus, can empathically communicate this experience to others.

 

interesting post. i read it, but don't have anything to comment...

 

Wow i literally just wrote a post discussing the stoned aped theory (which is the same theory) wow i feel like a jerk lol

I totally agree with their findings and theories