Fractals, Resonance, and Psychedelics

We’re fascinated by patterns, but it’s escaping from patterns that we need.

“My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back, I see a pattern.”
— Benoît Mandelbrot, mathematician

So Much Noise

I was attracted to the article “The Fractal Qualities of Hallucinogenic Phenomena” by Jesus-Mario Serna (2020). Fractals and altered states are fields I know well, but I find little useful in what I read.

These areas are conceptually rich, and many authors try to connect them. They fail because of a lack of direct and detailed experience. There are connections between beautifully complicated fractals, the engrossing visions generated by psychedelics, and the complicated psychology of our minds. Finding these connections starts with talking about them. Lacking the details, we speak in generalities.

We Love Stories

Some authors are great at talking in generalities. They spin engrossing stories with powerful messages. They rarely know what they’re talking about, but people love to listen to them.

It’s the direction you send people in that matters, not the truth behind why they should go there. This principle is a fundamental truth of psychotherapy: your reasoning was probably wrong from the start, so the unreasonable will offer a new direction.

Any new reasons may suffice to change your direction. Change is the object, not truth. You chart your own path in the end, so what gets you started is of incidental importance. This focus doesn’t bode well for truth—but it gets people out of their ruts.

Fractals

Mathematical relationships define fractals, and people build psychology on half-baked ideas. The two combine only when you discard the elements that don’t work together. Whenever you combine ideas from different fields, you must throw away details.

Fractals are formally defined relationships that use some kind of measure or metric. The essence of fractals is self-similarity at different scales, so you need a unit of measure to describe the scale you’re looking at. Psychology doesn’t have scales, but it does have relationships. We can look for self-similar relationships but must let go of the idea of scale.

Fractals appear everywhere in nature because nature is efficient. Natural systems reuse again at larger scales the solutions that worked before at more minor scales. This efficiency works when the same situations exist on small and large scales.

For example, roots looking for moisture or branches looking for sunlight continue to encounter the same conditions as they grow larger. It is eminently sensible to do what worked before again, especially when what worked before worked well, and what’s different is unknown.

Thinking Repetitive

Your mind doesn’t have scales; there is nothing to which we can apply a measuring tape, but it does have structures of relative importance. We should not be surprised that fractals appear in our mental structures. In fact, we would be puzzled if they did not. And this is the critical point: it’s not the fractal aspect of thinking that’s fascinating, it’s where thinking is not fractal.

Repetitive patterns stop when the situation changes. Snowflakes stop growing when the temperature rises, and you’ll stop talking when you realize no one is listening. Or maybe you’ll start listening when things begin to make sense. This phenomenon is the magic of hallucinations; they focus your attention on issues you would otherwise ignore.

Our thinking is basically fractal—if you can call something fractal that lacks a scale. Our thinking is repetitive, and it regenerates itself in the process. This process is what our personality is: a self-regenerating system that runs on glucose. An ever-expanding snowflake of cockeyed relationships and fragile conclusions that just keep coming. It takes little effort to keep doing the same; we need to focus on what creates change and difference.

Resonance

Resonance means to act in collaboration and to enhance. A thin plate vibrates sympathetically with the plucked string, both amplifying and enriching the sound. We call it a musical instrument.

A good dream creates a resonance between ideas, memories, and associations with an invigorating and enduring result. Love is a resonance between positive things that bond people together, enhancing and solidifying their relationship.

In the case of personality, the resonance is more of the problem than the solution. We need the resonance to maintain our sense of self—our sense of self is the resonance—but eliminating certain destructive frequencies would serve us better.

Your personality is a resonance of past associations, present actions, and future plans. It’s not a clean resonance, as it’s full of setbacks and interruptions. It’s not a very well-built musical instrument.

In this metaphor, the resonance is the good thing, and the bad things are what interrupt it. This perspective is what you naturally think unless you’re neurotic, in which case you think you’re the source of all your problems.

Most people who come to me for counseling are not neurotic, but they’re not perfect. They are like people on a squeaking swing who can’t stop the squeak. However, the metaphor breaks down because while squeaks are small, people’s problems usually are not.

People think reasonably, which means they have priorities and set things in order. But people’s ability to hide, repress, and avoid things means that the order they’ve established, which is the resonance that sustains them, can hide many underlying flaws. They can’t see these flaws, these flaws don’t make sense, and they don’t want to address them.

Coming Back to Fractals

The fractal nature of your personality consists of all the things you think are true and all the habits you repeat. These expand into all your areas of opportunity where you repeat yourself.

The psychedelic patterns we see are the template structures of our mind. The clearer they are, the more structure we impose on the world. These structures are the egg cartons that underlie the painted Easter eggs of our thoughts.

As much as I’ve melted into these visions of the organization of the universe, and they give me comfort, it’s not an entirely reliable feeling. It’s not as stable as it seems. The operating principle of life is change within the larger structures. We want both the change and to preserve the structure of our personality, but there is a trade-off.

We define change as something that isn’t the way it was before. Fractals are not about change; they’re about reapplying the same formula in what appears to be the same situation. Fractal behavior is similar to resonant behavior without the amplification.

Systems stop continuing their fractal patterns when the environment stops supporting the pattern. Systems stop resonating when some of the elements stop collaborating or when a newly-introduced element drains the energy. Damping dispels resonance; new paths to progress are what extinguish fractals.

Making Choices

Most change offers two options. That’s how we see things. One of those choices is to stay the same while the other is to do something differently.

We have a built-in bias to remain the same. It’s what we know and, presumably, what we want. Change comes with risk, and managing novelty takes thought and effort. We might rise to the challenge if it offers a reward, but if it has no attraction, we’ll prefer to keep resonating or fractal-ating.

Disruptive elements are keys for navigating change. Even if our repetitive patterns are positive and we want to continue them, we still need to attend to the disruptive elements.

“Routines, habits, and even life decisions often follow self-similar cycles. The way we structure our daily lives—through routines that repeat with subtle changes—mirrors the iterative nature of fractals. Over time, these behavioral loops might form larger patterns, such as the structure of one’s career, relationships, or personal growth, each iteration adding complexity and depth.”
— Douglas Youvan, biophysicist

Exceptions to the Pattern

Evaluating alternatives in light of old patterns is one way to understand novelty. Another is to drop habitual thinking and approach change with an open mind.

The concept of having an open mind is elusive because it means considering perspectives we don’t understand. Society trains us to have a place, know our place, and defend the system that provides our place. Most people are uncomfortable fully accepting what they don’t know, which is precisely what exceptions require.

We may not really understand our repetitive patterns and resonating relationships, but we believe in them well enough to defend them. An exception suggests that we should not, but exceptions tend to speak softly, so it’s easy to shout them down.

The importance of fractal and resonant patterns is not why they should continue but why they should not. It’s much easier to consider change and to make small changes when things are going well. When things are going badly, the system screams for restoration, and you rush to restore comfort.

Look to the breaks in the normal and the usual. What doesn’t fit and doesn’t resonate—that is a harbinger of change. Discontinuities are signs that changes are happening and may become significant.

You can’t see the differences unless you see the pattern. This insight is the importance of fractals and resonance. If they’re comfortable, you’ll tend to stop seeing the patterns and let them become your baseline.

Attend to the Imbalance

Pay attention to the balance in order to better notice the unbalancing and irregular forces. Pay attention to the comments that don’t fit, the expressions of others that seem out of place, and the dreams that cause consternation. The people who make these comments and expressions are rarely aware of what they’ve said or done as they’re also experiencing a disturbance.

You’re more likely to see unusual expressions in others than in yourself. You’re constantly filtering your own thoughts, and your biases work to focus your attention on what you prefer to see. This tendency could be a preference for what you like or a fixation on what you fear.

Psychedelics amplify the patterns within yourself. Seeing these as things you’ve created is always tricky in the same way that it’s difficult to experience a dream as fiction. To be good at recognizing your patterns, you need to be able to move between different perspectives, but our world does not teach us to do this. We have few alternatives in how we’ve structured our lives and relationships.

Look for the significance in outside events that don’t seem to fit. This approach is not to encourage fear or paranoia but to emphasize that significant changes are announced beforehand to those who know how to read the signals. Develop some distance from what you think is real.

Dreams reflect things that don’t fit, so pay attention to those dreams where things do fit. These are unusual dreams. They draw your attention to opportunities of consonance that you don’t have or, to be completely honest, that you sabotage, prevent, or reject.

Resources for Deepening Your Psychedelic Reflections

• Explore Psychedelics and the Narrative Self: How Psychedelics Influence Identity and Storytelling
• Learn About Positive Disintegration and Psychedelic Integration in Dark Contemplations
• Learn How Psychedelics Can Inspire Belief in Panpsychism and Animism
• Dive into the Convergence of Psychedelics, Spirituality, and Mental Health

Coming Back to Resonance

Resonance is good for you; it strengthens and attracts you, but the resonances you dream about are those you deny yourself. You are so habituated in your denial that you overlook how denial operates. You deny your self-deprecation because to do otherwise is to dislike yourself.

The goal is to change yourself for the better, but in order to succeed, you must like yourself. The dream, the illusion, and the hallucination take you backstage to mingle with the characters. These are as much characters that create you as characters that you’ve created.

Looking at your life as a fractal is to see basic patterns repeated in different situations, perhaps to the same end but for different reasons. It’s the different situations that hide the similar behaviors. This approach isn’t an exercise in judging yourself. Instead, it’s an exercise in noticing patterns separate from their results.

Taking control of a psychedelic experience has much in common with becoming lucid in a dream. There is no such thing as complete lucidity, aside from being awake. In both cases, you’re in a non-material reality. If you were fully lucid, then you wouldn’t be there. But you can decide on your state of mind, your mood, and your emotions.

Not Harmony, Resonance

To look at your life in terms of resonance, look at your emotions. Resonance is emotional, as it’s emotions that make music. Self-love helps you see how you fail yourself. If you can be virtuous and give yourself full credit for it, you will not tolerate demeaning yourself or others who demean you.

People take set and setting to mean your physical environment and intellectual intentions, but this overlooks the most important area where you can develop control. That is the area within the vision itself.

Don’t tumble into your subconscious ass-backwards and in conflict. What clarity would you expect to find?

Rid your mind of negative energy. Shoot first and ask questions later. Take the highest road you can, and don’t second-guess yourself.

References

Marks-Tarlow, T., Shapiro, Y., Wolf, K. P., & Friedman, H. L. (Eds.). (2020, January). The Fractal Qualities of Hallucinogenic Phenomena. In A Fractal Epistemology for a Scientific Psychology: Bridging the Personal with the Transpersonal. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. https://dokumen.pub/a-fractal-epistemology-for-a-scientific-psychology-bridging-the-personal-with-the-transpersonal-1nbsped-1527540235-9781527540231.html.

Youvan, D. C. (2024, September). Fractal Time in Consciousness: The Brain’s Perception of Iterative, Self-Similar Experiences. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384243482_Fractal_Time_in_Consciousness_The_Brain’s_Perception_of_Iterative_Self-Similar_Experiences.