Andres Gomez Emilsson, co-founder of the Qualia Research Institute (QRI), presents a new mathematical framework for modeling psychedelic perception using coupled oscillators — dynamic systems where individual oscillating units (each with its own preferred frequency) sense and adjust to the phase of their neighbors according to distance-dependent coupling rules. He argues this framework explains a wide range of psychedelic phenomena, from visual distortions to the feeling of oneness, and may reveal deep truths about the nature of consciousness and reality itself.
Qualia vs. Sensory Input
Qualia refer to the way experiences feel — the subjective quality of sensations — and are conceptually separable from the sensory input that triggers them.
The same quale (e.g., the experience of “blue”) can be produced by infinitely many different combinations of light frequencies, or even by non-visual stimuli in synesthetes, including blind individuals who experience color through sound.
This separation means you can study the geometry of qualia space — the relationships between phenomenal experiences — independently of any particular sensory modality.
Andres suggests qualia space could serve as a universal reference for communication between minds (even alien ones), much as mathematics is often proposed, because the internal relational structure of qualia may be shared across conscious beings.
Whether your “blue” is the same as someone else’s “blue” remains an open question.
Evidence for shared geometry: people converge on the same four pure hues (red, yellow, green, blue) — colors that don’t appear to be mixtures of others — and agree on asymmetries like the fact that the brightest blue is less bright than the brightest yellow.
Evidence against strict identity: a phenomenon called hyper-blue (seeing a blue brighter than normally possible by combining a yellow afterimage with bright blue) suggests the asymmetry is imposed by receptor limitations, not by the intrinsic geometry of qualia space, raising the possibility that pure hues could be swapped between individuals without detectable inconsistency.
Coupled Oscillators as the Engine of Psychedelic Visuals
A coupled oscillator is a system where each unit oscillates at its own preferred rate but adjusts its phase based on the phases of neighboring units, with the strength and sign of coupling depending on distance.
When nearby oscillators want to be in phase (positive coupling), they synchronize and adopt similar states (e.g., the same color).
When nearby oscillators want to be out of phase (negative coupling), they differentiate, producing diversity and contrast.
By stacking multiple coupling rules at different distances (a coupling kernel), the system can generate waves of specific wavelengths, from fine-grained patterns to large-scale coherent structures.
These systems naturally produce topological defects — points where phase convergence fails and the system “breaks” into discrete domains — which manifest visually as pinwheels, vortices, and fractal-like boundaries.
The defects tend to organize into integer divisions of the available space (e.g., a circle splitting into an integer number of color sectors), reflecting the resonant modes of the underlying geometry.
The framework generalizes to higher dimensions: a 3D lattice of coupled oscillators supports 3D waves, and projecting these into 2D (as the visual field does) creates complex interactions between dimensionalities.
How Psychedelics Exploit This Architecture
Psychedelics increase the energy or flexibility of the experiential field, making it more wobbly and dynamic — analogous to heating a material.
Semantic content (recognizable objects, concepts) and symmetries (repeating patterns, crystallographic structures) act as energy sinks that “cool” and crystallize the flexible field around them — a process Andres calls shrink-wrapping.
This explains why DMT visions are shaped by the individual’s cultural background and memories: the field crystallizes on familiar semantic content.
Symmetrical patterns, by contrast, are more universal and culturally neutral.
Video feedback is a second key mechanism: the brain’s ability to copy, transform, and reinsert chunks of experience back into the visual field (as it does with mirrors) is dramatically amplified on DMT.
Surfaces are interpreted as mirrors reflecting other mirrors, creating recursive, self-referential structures — evocative of Indra’s net.
Small changes in attention or perspective can produce dramatic, nonlinear transformations of the entire visual field, as if navigating a kaleidoscope connected to everything else.
Multiple “channels” of feedback operate simultaneously, with some cameras looking at the screen itself, creating layers of recursive complexity.
The combination of coupled oscillator dynamics and video feedback explains the hallmark features of DMT visuals: tubes along which waves travel, extreme depth illusions, recursive mirroring, and the sense of interconnected, self-transforming structures.
5-MeO-DMT: Global Coherence and the Cancellation of Opposites
5-MeO-DMT produces a phenomenology of global coherence: everything in experience wants to synchronize with everything else.
The visual and tactile fields generate pinwheels (topological defects — vortices and anti-vortices) that find each other and annihilate, canceling out into uniformity.
This process is described as the vacuum of consciousness splitting into particle-antiparticle pairs that then reunite, rejoining the “sea of the universe.”
The result is often described as merging with a white light, becoming one with emptiness, or experiencing “everything everywhere all at once.”
When all oscillators are perfectly synchronized, there is no internal passage of time — because time perception depends on phase differences between oscillators, and when all phases are identical, there is no way to distinguish one moment from another.
Andres connects this to David Peacock’s zero ontology (from hedweb.com), which argues that everything can be reconstructed from nothingness: in mathematics (the empty set), in physics (zero total angular momentum of the universe), and in phenomenology (the cancellation of opposites into pure space).
DMT tends to split the vacuum into polar opposites (colors and their anti-colors, competing clusters of coherence) — a state of rich, structured contrast.
5-MeO-DMT does the reverse: everything finds its opposite and cancels out, smoothing into undifferentiated unity.
Temporal Distortions and the Pseudo-Time Arrow
Andres distinguishes physical time from the phenomenology of time’s passage, which he calls the pseudo-time arrow.
The feeling of time arises from tracer effects — sensations that linger and reference each other, with more recent sensations being more vivid. The direction and gradient of fading creates an internal arrow of time.
On psychedelics, tracer effects are amplified, so more sensations accumulate and reference each other, creating a sense of expanded time.
When the arrow of time wraps around and connects to itself (e.g., under repetitive music), the topology of attention closes into a loop, producing the subjective experience of a time loop — a genuine exotic configuration of consciousness, though not a literal breaking of spacetime.
On 5-MeO-DMT, hypersynchrony eliminates phase differences between oscillators, so the internal mechanism for detecting the passage of time ceases to function — time subjectively stops.
Valence, Suffering, and the Geometry of Energy Flow
The valence (pleasantness or unpleasantness) of an experience is shaped by the geometric configuration of energy flow in the experiential field.
Concentrating energy at a point (e.g., the base of the spine) creates a sense of pressurization and extreme discomfort.
When field lines align and become parallel, valence can flip from extremely negative to extremely positive — a phenomenon reported both on 5-MeO-DMT and in deep meditation.
Andres frames meditation, energy work (like Reiki), and martial arts as forms of neural annealing: using attention and surprise to “heat up” the experiential field, allowing it to reorganize into more ordered, harmonious configurations upon “cooling.”
Near states of peak positive valence, there often exist configurations of extreme dissonance — developing equanimity to navigate these transitions is a key part of meditative expertise.
He remains open-minded but skeptical about claims of non-local energy work, noting that some reported effects could be explained by hypnotic suggestion, while others (like shared processing of trauma between people on 5-MeO-DMT) are harder to dismiss.
DMT Entities: Mantis Beings, Machine Elves, and Seraphim
High-dose DMT commonly produces encounters with entities — intelligent, often insectoid or hive-mind beings with many arms or tubes, made of interconnected, self-reflecting parts (e.g., mantis beings, seraphim).
These are understood as the field crystallizing around semantic content (the concept of an intelligent being) combined with symmetrical structures (recursive, self-similar geometry) and video feedback (mirrors within mirrors).
The specific form is shaped by the individual’s world model and cultural background, but the underlying symmetrical and recursive dynamics are universal.
Andres does not rule out the possibility of external intelligences influencing these experiences but emphasizes that the phenomenology is clearly patterned on the individual’s own mind.
Psychedelic Cryptography
Andres developed psychedelic cryptography: images containing hidden messages that become visible only in certain psychedelic states.
The mechanism exploits tracer effects — on LSD, visual components painted sequentially linger and accumulate, revealing patterns invisible to the sober eye.
A competition was held where participants submitted encrypted images; the winning entry contained an unambiguous, pro-social, family-friendly message that was decoded by 6 out of 8 team members on mushrooms.
The threshold for visibility is roughly 150 micrograms of LSD; microdoses are insufficient.
Collective Effects and Shared Fields
During a 5-MeO-DMT retreat in Canada (2023), participants reported phenomena suggesting a shared experiential field:
Advanced meditators found that their time to samadhi (deep concentration states) was significantly shortened when another person nearby was on 5-MeO-DMT, even though the meditator was not dosed.
There were reports of people processing each other’s traumas — difficult experiences seemed to dissipate through the presence of an equanimous, experienced meditator.
A preliminary test of direct mind-reading (one person in the state trying to guess a number the other was thinking) was unsuccessful, but Andres notes the difficulty of following complex instructions while in such a state.
Andres’s interpretation has shifted over time: he previously assumed psychedelic experiences were purely internal hallucinations but is now more open to the possibility that coupled oscillator dynamics operate within a larger field that includes others.
The Qualia Research Institute’s Mission and Approach
QRI studies consciousness from first principles, building mathematical models of phenomenology and developing tools to visualize it, with the ultimate aim of reducing suffering.
Their approach is a force multiplier compared to traditional academia: they run retreats where technically skilled participants (mathematicians, visual artists, meditators) conduct hundreds of visual experiments and produce detailed phenomenological reports at a fraction of the cost of conventional lab studies.
They are open-sourcing their psychedelic visualization tool (described as “Photoshop for psychedelic phenomenology”) and crowdsourcing data from thousands of users to refine it.
The tool combines coupled oscillator dynamics, deep dream-style feature clamping, and video feedback as primitive effects that can be modulated with sliders to replicate specific psychedelic states.
QRI is funded primarily by donors, including individuals who became wealthy through cryptocurrency, and accepts donations at qri.org.
