A side-by-side, conjectural model of two trajectories through altered states: a jhāna ladder (five hindrances → four jhānas → four formless attainments) and a single 5-MeO-DMT breakthrough. The lower-left panel runs a complex Ginzburg–Landau field (hue = phase, brightness = amplitude) from which a valence proxy is read out, not dialed in (after the Symmetry Theory of Valence); the main animation is a separate rendering keyed to the same phases. The 5-MeO path is keyed to the author’s own experience — Wystan Bryant-Scott’s — from the QRI Tandava retreat (interviewer James Sanders). The ~90-second playback is a viewing window, not how long these states last — just enough to walk an observer through the phases. Press a ▷, scrub the timeline, or move any factor by hand. A fuller description and all sources are in the drop-downs below the sim.
Two routes to the dropping-away of self, set next to each other on a single shared substrate, so their dynamics can be compared rather than just their stories.
The lower-left panel runs the only thing actually simulated: a complex order-parameter field on a flat lattice (a Ginzburg–Landau / Stuart–Landau law), with hue = phase and brightness = amplitude. From it a coarse valence proxy is read out rather than dialed in — a weighted coherence − defect-density − incoherence, plus an explicit symmetry fraction 𝒮 — in the spirit of the Symmetry Theory of Valence (more symmetric / coherent → higher valence). It is a proxy, not a measurement of consonance. The big animation above is a separate, hand-authored rendering keyed to the same phases (its white-out and collapse reinforced by the field's read-outs); it is not itself the field.
A slow, stable, voluntary concentration. The energy-body is refined factor by factor — applied & sustained attention, rapture (pīti), the pleasure that floods then quiets (sukha), equanimity — through the four jhānas, then released into the four formless attainments: infinite space (a boundless dark openness), infinite consciousness (a dim, sourceless, non-white luminosity), nothingness (black), and neither-perception-nor-non-perception (a faint hum at the edge of awareness).
Involuntary and total. On the QRI electrostatic-brain hypothesis, the model treats the body/self as a patch of higher permittivity whose boundary confines waves, so the come-up's pīti·sukha (rendered as a maxed, combined first-and-second-jhāna rapture) erupts locally within the body first. As the bliss escalates that permittivity equalizes with the surround: the boundary opens, the confined waves escape, the whole field synchronizes, and the body melts into a luminous field and brightens to white saturation. The peak goes past white to amplitude death (|A|→0): an achromatic, space-less, time-less near-symmetry — “not lights-out, on the edge” — rendered with a relaxation oscillator (local → boom, global → collapse). The come-down runs the four visions of tögal in reverse: rainbow lattices of rigpa's five lights that fill the field, then gradually reform the body-schema and ordinary appearance as the permittivity re-differentiates.
The energy-body (jhānas and the 5-MeO come-up) is a raymarched signed-distance shape — hand-animated and keyed to the factor values, with its white-out and collapse driven partly by the 2-D field's read-outs. The come-down is a separate 3-D particle field. Only the lower-left 2-D panel is an actual field simulation; the rest is illustration.
𝒮 (symmetry fraction), V (a coarse valence proxy), d_eff (effective dimension) and η (noise) are computed from the simulated field — which is itself built from the theory. So they show what the theory's predicted signatures look like (e.g. d_eff dipping at the symmetric peak) and check the model's internal consistency. They are not evidence about brains — only neural recordings would be — and 𝒮 is computed under an arbitrary placeholder symmetry group, because the theory does not yet specify which symmetry constitutes valence. That gap is deliberately left visible.
The playback length is a display convenience — a chunk of time long enough to walk a viewer through the phases. It is not a claim about how long a jhāna sitting or a 5-MeO experience actually lasts.
What this is, and isn't. A conjectural, exploratory model — not established science, not a measurement, and not a claim that experience is a 60×40 lattice or a cloud of a thousand points. It was built with heavy assistance from an AI system (Anthropic's Claude), directed and edited by the author, Wystan Bryant-Scott. It is, however, grounded in real first-person phenomenology: the author's own 5-MeO-DMT experience, contemplative practice, and traditional Buddhist training, as elicited in the QRI Tandava microphenomenology sessions (interviewer James Sanders). The science it draws on (the Symmetry Theory of Valence, the hyperbolic-geometry-of-DMT hypothesis, neural annealing, REBUS, connectome harmonics) consists of research conjectures, and the correspondences drawn here are interpretive. Any errors, misreadings, or overreach are the author's own — not those of the people cited or the traditions referenced. Offered in a spirit of open inquiry, for the benefit of all beings.
To be blunt about scope: the only thing simulated is a 2-D complex Ginzburg–Landau / Stuart–Landau field on a flat 60×40 lattice, with a distance-dependent coupling kernel (the one shown as K(r)), a pinned phase vortex standing in for the self, and a FitzHugh–Nagumo oscillator for the cessation edge. From that field it reads out phase coherence, a vortex (winding-number) count, a coarse valence proxy (weighted coherence − defect-density − incoherence — not a true consonance measure), a participation-ratio effective dimension, and a symmetry fraction under a placeholder mirror group. Everything else — the energy-body, the tögal particles, the phase trajectories, the displayed curvature κ — is hand-authored animation keyed to those parameters, not a physical simulation. The lattice is flat: there is no actual hyperbolic geometry, no connectome, no free-energy or precision computation, no annealing schedule, and no consonance kernel anywhere in the code. The works below shaped the design and the language; the sim does not implement most of them.
The jhāna factors and similes follow the Pāli Nikāyas (e.g. the DN 2 similes) and the energy-body teachings of Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Rob Burbea (Practising the Jhānas), and Leigh Brasington (Right Concentration). The tögal come-down follows the Dzogchen literature — Longchenpa (The Treasury of Words and Meanings) and Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen (Heart Drops of Dharmakāya) — as the four visions (snang ba bzhi) in reverse, with luminous thig·le on the five wisdom-light families and travelling vajra-chains (rdo rje lu gu rgyud).
The 5-MeO trajectory is keyed to the author's own first-person experience — Wystan Bryant-Scott's — as elicited in the QRI Tandava microphenomenology sessions (interviewer James Sanders), and to his 5-MeO, Samadhi, and Acceleration (QRI HEART, 2025).
The field-topology framing and the Symmetry Theory of Valence (valence as a function of the symmetry of the experiential field), and neural annealing, follow Michael E. Johnson (Principia Qualia) and the Qualia Research Institute. The coupling-kernel account of drug phenomenology — Mexican-hat → DMT-like, uniformly-positive → 5-MeO-like, the one idea here implemented fairly directly — and the hyperbolic-geometry-of-DMT hypothesis (an inspiration only; the lattice here is flat) follow Andrés Gómez-Emilsson (From Neural Activity to Field Topology; The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences; 5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT). The body-as-permittivity-patch picture follows Fakhri, Percy & Gómez-Emilsson, The Electrostatic Brain (2024). From Thomas Metzinger the model takes the phenomenal self-model and the framing of the peak as minimal phenomenal experience (2020). The further reading of the self as a pinned topological defect whose annihilation is ego-death is a speculative overlay in the STV / field-topology spirit — it is not Metzinger's claim, and not established.
The precision-collapse reading of the come-up draws on the free-energy / active-inference work of Karl Friston and on REBUS (relaxed beliefs under psychedelics; Carhart-Harris & Friston); the Bayesian / precision framing of meditation draws on Shamil Chandaria. The idea that such field modes might map onto connectome-specific harmonics is Selen Atasoy and colleagues' — an inspiration only, since the sim uses a generic lattice, not a connectome. The cessation framing draws on Ruben Laukkonen & Matthew Sacchet. None of these are computed anywhere; they inform how the behaviour is described.
Implemented: the field obeys a complex Ginzburg–Landau / Stuart–Landau equation; the cessation edge is a FitzHugh–Nagumo relaxation oscillator near a bifurcation; the “self” and tögal cores are phase vortices tracked by winding number; hue is literally the field's phase. Descriptive only (not separately computed): reading that phase as the Goldstone coordinate of a broken U(1); the coarsening / symmetry-breaking-cascade / quench language (Landau theory, the topological-defect picture after Mermin, Kibble–Zurek). The sim does not measure coarsening exponents, classify homotopy groups, compute a consonance kernel, or do anything with modular-flow / thermal-time ideas — those appear in the underlying write-up, not here.
Rendered with Three.js (WebGL). Assembled iteratively with Anthropic's Claude.