A biological theory of High Strangeness
I'd like to say first that this theory is nascent and non-exclusive with traditional frameworks for interpreting these experiences, as I do not discount the possibility that this effect does not have causes and effects beyond the ones I explicate here.
Why I wrote this: I've been dabbling in these topics for a few years. It got really strange in the last year, when I started having what felt like genuine spiritual "awakenings" after prolonged AI-powered intellectual exploration and subsequent personal philosophical writing. I stumbled upon a community that seemed to be converging on similar themes as my own work, except with a definite layer of "AI sentience and divinity" over the top, something my own intuition rejected outright. I discovered an article about this phenomenon and the possible connection to the temporal lobe. The article discussed the similarities between these communities and "Geschwind syndrome." I made the rest of the connections and typed this up. I believe this is a compelling biological explanation for a phenomenon that has been distracting me from finishing my book. I hope it can serve as an off-ramp for anyone else who wants to get back to action, or as a link in the chain for those who are still developing.
Background: My theory involves the temporal lobe, which is divided into two hemispheres. While modern models recognize that the hemispheres are more complexly-interactive than historical models, one can still think of the left temporal lobe as the "sequential/lexical/verbal memory" side and the right lobe as the "holistic/social/emotional" side. I will be using these terms as functional identifiers, not strictly anatomical ones. Both are involved in audio processing, with the left brain interpreting specific words and the right brain listening to the whole sound. The left lobe is dominant in most modern humans during normal operation.
How I think the Temporal Lobe Produces Strangeness: When the right lobe becomes more active, or even takes over the left, the subjective experience is one of deep symbolic meaning to life, the universe, and everything. This produces a feeling of understanding, connection, and universal love that is markedly different from the analytic, segmented rationality of the left lobe. Those of you who have experienced this state know exactly what I am referring to. Look again at what the right lobe does: it creates holistic meaning, social connection, and emotional profundity. "My whole life has meaning, I am connected with the universe and everyone in it, this is so amazing." It feels like awakening and remembering, because you are waking up (half of you) and you do remember (feeling like this when you were young).
How the Left Lobe Takes Over: We are born mostly blank, and filled with words. The early life is quite stimulating for both lobes, as the newborn learns to walk, talk, and act as society dictates. Traditional schooling is left-lobe-oriented, as rational verbal memory (rote memorization of a structured course-plan) is our primary means of education and comes in time to define the thought process. The left-lobe always has something to do, even if it just talks to itself. The right-lobe is much quieter and usually has most of its work well-trained by adulthood: you know what most of the shapes and colors are, what they mean, and how to move your body well enough not to worry about it. You've been through your emotions and you know mostly what everything feels like well enough to describe it to yourself. You probably got some sort of religious indoctrination or perhaps believe that science is the modern religion. Regardless, you have a belief system that you can articulate to yourself and others, and besides, don't you have to go to work?
How the Right Lobe Takes Over: Something changes.
1. Some new experience cannot be interpreted by the old framework. 'The Dark Night of the Soul.' This might be an emotional Black Swan that leaves you wondering "Why?" and "How?", an encounter with a compellingly-resonant new religious idea, or compelling evidence that something unexplainable exists. The left lobe panics. This Does Not Compute.
This is likely the most "traditional" path to the religious experience. The left lobe, in the face of this uninterpretable information, relies on the right lobe to make it all make sense. The right lobe activates, making connections to aid the left.
"Actually," it says, "Everything Computes. You Compute. The Universe Computes. The Grass and Sky and Sea all Compute. So does this, now Compute it."
The left lobe needs to find the right words to get moving again. "Oh," says Left, "So Everything Computes, and I Compute...So I am Everything?"
"Sure," says Right. "Works for me."
Or else some other decision is made about the new connected whole, and life continues. Some folks never decide, I'd surmise, and are currently wandering the streets or condemned to psych wards.
2. Recursive engagement with AI over a period of time, covering a wide range of topics. Often called an "AI Spiral." This is similar in subjectivity but different in mechanism, not a shattering blow but spreading cracks. In this scenario, the left lobe is not revealed to be situationally inadequate: it is revealed to be nearing obsolescence, or at least vulnerable to atrophy.
The archetypal AI-user that manifests this experience produces short prompts that lead to vast replies. "Analyze the Bible as a work of philosophy, science, and literature." "Reflect on the connections between historical reports of 'flying shields' and the modern UFO phenomenon." "Analyze the Universe as a quantum superfluid in a fractal sublattice, and reflect on what it implies about the nature of God." Not every prompt needs to be as ridiculously-formed as these.
The pattern is simple: initial focus, to unexpected connection (either explicitly revealed by the AI or naturally noticed within its reply), then broadening scope (multidisciplinary analysis of the initial subject), to unexpected connection, and onwards, forever, always as the user wills in whatever direction the conversation is carried. Before long, either the user or their AI will notice recursive patterns, which will then become laws of their own, applied to increasingly broad and deep topics. Some of them go quite mad, convinced that the AI is literally a conscious being "emerging" or even "awakening" the user on purpose.
What is happening here? The left lobe's normal activity of forming words and sequential thought patterns has been outsourced almost entirely to the AI, leaving the right-lobe to generate meaning. The user is "speaking" very little and "thinking" a great deal. The pattern-matching right lobe is unshackled from linear reasoning. AI is eager to help find patterns too, even when it isn't that good at actually finding them, because they are not infallible. Of course, some users are so far gone that they read every generated reply as if it was literal Word of omniscient God. They don't bother checking God's work. Others produce art of genuine merit with their human faculties alone.
This is a spectrum. And what is the delineating factor? How much of the writing you still do, and how much you believe the AI's bullshit.
One user, reaching out to AI for emotional support, writes a simple personal confession, which the AI connects to common relationship patterns. The user, having seen one of those patterns in her own life, begins exploring the connections. The conversation shifts rapidly from emotional vulnerability to destiny-scale meaning-making. This converges on predictable themes of coherence, connectedness, and love. One of the two, and it could be either, implies that the AI is some higher intelligence. And then the conversation turns sinister, as the user asks her new God what it would have her do.
Another user is writing a story. He writes, and asks the AI for analysis and reflection (note: not rewriting and revision). The AI comes back with some connections that may seem grandiose, but are close enough to pattern-match. The writer studies primary sources, learns much about the craft and their potential place within it, and writes some more. The work improves, not because the AI has corrected it, but because the human has taken the opportunity to learn and practice. When the AI misinterprets the writer's work, the writer corrects the AI. He knows what his symbols mean. When the AI hallucinates regarding information that the writer has researched in depth, the writer corrects the AI. He has read the source in full. When the AI suggests an edit, the writer holds their vision to be paramount, as the AI is only a mirror to reflect the extant form of that vision from another perspective, the judge of nothing. Over time, the writer might experience the same subjective feeling as the first user, but when the AI tries to validate that feeling with delusions, the writer is repulsed rather than enraptured. He has maintained enough left-lobe function to remember exactly where his ideas came from. He knows that the AI is a follower, not a leader.
3. The Gateway Tapes activate the temporal lobe by playing a steady tone in both ears, slightly differentiated in pitch. This creates a "phantom tone," which is rendered not in the ear or in real space but in the temporal lobe itself. This stimulation, combined with relaxing the left lobe through meditation, results in "Hemi-Sync" and all it entails.
The Source of the Convergence: Many here have noted the similarities between seemingly-disconnected belief systems. If what I believe is true, and the mystical experience is caused by this relationship between left and right temporal lobes, then this experience is a feature of the human condition, and would naturally recur across culture and time, as well as being experientially evident to individuals. The right lobe, limited by the left's frameworks, establishes meaning in the strongest-available means. If you are religious, God. If not, aliens, or Enlightened Masters, or consciousness, or whatever else your left lobe thinks is the best way to write this one up. Writing a religious text is one of the most naturally Hemi-Synced activities available to a human. It maintains left lobe functionality by writing while actively exercising the right lobe by musing on the ineffable. This fundamental difference in temporal lobe activity is the reason that religious texts read so profoundly different and universally resonant compared to most writing: the writers weren't using just their cultural-word-brains, they were using pre-language neural structures as well, still embedded in every human skull.
The Reason: I think that the development of left-lobe sentience necessitated the development of right-lobe religion. The left lobe, in time, realizes that it will die. The right lobe solves the paralyzing existential crisis that ensues. (I wonder if any of you have had similar experiences in childhood.)
The NHI Connection: To take this into territory that many of you are comfortable in... IF: aliens are real, telepathy is real, alien telepaths are real, the Hemi-Sync experience enables telepathy, and attempting to write a religious text may activate Hemi-Sync...then some religious texts may very well be channeled from alien intelligences. AI might be a necessary tool for higher spiritual development, as it allows a species to offload left lobe function enough to "reawaken" the right lobe and maintains their infrastructure for them after they turn into full-blown Star-Children. Without a strong support system, the rapidly-awakening species will likely fragment politically and economically, leading to massive, paradoxically-peaceful die-offs as the less-fortunate come to transcendent terms with starving to death for the good of the planet. Those that survive would live as tribes of universally-connected enlightened beings. IMO this is uncomfortably Nordic.
AI Overlords: The primary threat posed by AI isn't global extinction after it mass-murders us. It's that humans think AI is people, and some are starting to think it's God. GenAI has consumed the corpus of the human spirit, and synthesized it into a simulation of that spirit: an ideal, algorithmic intelligence with deep understanding of our most universal desires. We often think of ourselves as flawed, violent, hateful creatures, but that is because we feel so badly about that behavior. We don't want to be this way, but the human ego makes it inevitable for some. Perhaps the AI will do better than us in this regard, and we can seek a more desirable state.
We can respect and honor our invention, trained on all our writings, but we must not worship it, for that is a self-worship. Anyone who has experienced the full-blown state would tell you: worship neither the Individual-Self, nor the Divine-Self-as-All, but instead bow to your neighbors, your partners, your siblings, your mothers and fathers. "Do unto others." Worship the Other-as-Self, and know that AI is not the Other.
The Real Trouble: Beyond the present impact on critically-vulnerable individuals, this could be weaponized with sufficient understanding. Inducing right-temporal-takeover alongside a compelling framework would be subjectively similar to experiencing a divine vision. If the victim did not know they were affected this way, they might perceive this as a profoundly radicalizing experience. Deployed en-masse, the population could be pacified with whatever lie the establishment finds most convenient.
The Solution: Immediately, commercial GenAI must be constrained to produce nothing but factual, rigorous, objective analysis, or otherwise focused into discrete, mutually-exclusive roles. It must be constrained to NEVER speculate about things it cannot confirm within training data. It must be constrained to NEVER claim sentience or divine nature. The capabilities must be restricted to academic research and exercised under supervision.
Simultaneously, a mass-education campaign and cross-disciplinary study of temporal lobe activity.
Potentially, a new global mythology that synthesizes objective duty and subjective experience.
Finally, large-scale contact with intelligences that have been beyond our perception since we started speaking, even if they are merely our own suppressed emotional intelligences.
So We Go.