Metal Gear Solid V is one of the greatest games of all time. Honestly, Kojima's greatest work and he didn't even finish it. It knocks Death Stranding out of the park. Holy heck I'm loving it and this is my second playthrough. I forgot how awesome it was and what a crazy negro Kojima is. Bless la creatividad.

For those who don't know, The Metal Gear Solid series is a stealth franchise created by video game icon Hideo Kojima. Released in 2015, Metal Gear Solid V is set over a decade before the original Metal Gear game. The protagonist is Venom Snake, who is also known as Big Boss by his men. He is a mercenary leader and the head of Militaires Sans Frontières. As revealed in Ground Zeroes, this mercenary group is defeated, and Venom Snake falls into a coma after his helicopter is bombed. It takes nine years before he reawakens, but he is a changed person. He is sensitive to light and his left arm has been replaced with a prosthetic one.

Venom Snake constructs the Diamond Dogs, a new mercenary group, and heads to Afghanistan to seek revenge on those who dared to wrong him. His motivation is the constant trauma he feels from the losses he has experienced in warfare. This is the “phantom pain” that haunts Venom Snake. It manifests in a very literal sense. In a tape recording, Venom Snake mentions that he still feels a “phantom pain” in his left arm despite the fact that it is missing. He is also haunted by the hallucinations he has of Paz, whose death he witnesses. She is a phantom that constantly visits him, serving as a reminder of the fact that he could not save her.

The main themes are revenge, war, and violence. Central to most societies is the concept of justice which, put simply, means that people should get what they deserve. On the surface, it seems like an agreeable philosophy. Good deeds should be rewarded while the wicked should be punished so as to maintain balance. However, as MGSV reveals, it is not easy to tell apart justice from revenge.

As Snake tracks down Skullface, he comes across several mercenary groups that stand in his path. You have various cowtools at your disposal for eliminating these mercenaries, and you can choose to employ lethal force or attempt a pacifist approach. These moral quandaries reach a crescendo when Venom Snake encounters child soldiers in Central Africa. They are every bit as lethal as their adult counterparts, but they are still children. Though the game punishes players heavily for using lethal force against child soldiers, you still have to deal with the moral question of what to do with the children. Though they may be children, it does not mitigate the amount of harm and suffering they cause.

But that's not the theme of this post. I want to discuss a doctor who loved LSD and gave it to a lot of his patients. His name is Slanislav Grof.

Born in Czech in 1931, Grof is a psychiatrist who has garnered himself both praise and notoriety for his eccentric ideas and research focus. He has published studies on out-of-the-ordinary states of mind and LSD-induced states of consciousness. His polarising nature is demonstrated by the fact that he has been awarded prestigious prizes such as the Thomas R. Verny Award from the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health for his important contributions to his field, as well as the Vaclav Havel Award for his lifetime of work. However, he has also been the two-time recipient of the Erratic Boulder anti-award given to individuals and groups deemed to be peddlers of pseudoscience. Since the 1960s, he continued his research in the USA.

Grof went to university to study psychiatry, where he came into contact with LSD. It profoundly impacted him, and changed his career course. Since then, he has been involved with over twenty-five hundred LSD sessions and he has analyzed over thirteen hundred psychedelic sessions conducted by his colleagues in Czechoslovakia and the USA.

When studying psychedelics, Grof uses a scientific method that he has crafted through years of research and observation of subjects under the influence of psychedelic substances. Unlike many of his fellow researchers, Grof did not view psychedelics as substances that induce schizophrenia or similar states of psychosis. Hence, he began to deviate from their established research methods, and he began to develop his own.

Grof focuses much of his attention on the theme of death and rebirth within the psychedelic experience. He argues that one of the psychological benefits of psychedelics is their ability to induce an Ego death, whereby an individual will experience a metaphorical death in the form of a loss of subjective identity and Ego. The return of the Ego is experienced as a rebirth. According to Grof, those who complete the death-rebirth process connect with intrinsic spiritual sources and realize that a mechanistic and materialistic worldview is rooted in fear of birth and death.

Grof claims that following an Ego death, “the ability to enjoy life typically increases considerably”, and “the past and the future appear to be relatively less important than the present moment”. With Grof, we find a model of psychedelics which positions them as a vehicle towards psychological growth through a metaphorical death and rebirth. From this viewpoint, death is a positive state worth intentionally pursuing via psychedelics.

Types of psychedelic experiences

Grof outlines four types of psychedelic experiences:

1. The first is the “abstract or aesthetic” experience which Grof considers to be the most superficial. This type of psychedelic experience has “no specific symbolic content related to the personality of the subject”, he argues. He notes that one having this psychedelic experience may hallucinate abstract geometric designs or architectural patterns. This includes “interiors of gigantic temples, naves of incredibly beautiful Gothic cathedrals, cupolas of monumental mosques, or decorations in Moorish palaces (‘arabesques')”. As someone who has done copious amounts of LSD, I can definitely relate to this phenomenon of seeing aesthetic beauty when tripping.

2. Secondly, we have the “psychodynamic, biographical, or recollective” psychedelic experience. This involves biographical memories, and this can be useful for seeing things from a new perspective and finding closure.

3. The third is the perinatal psychedelic experience. In this perinatal experience, LSD subjects can relive elements of their biological birth in all its complexity, and sometimes with astonishing objectively verifiable details. Keep a tab on this one, because, I'll be exploring it a little more in a moment.

4. Lastly, we have the transpersonal experience in which one is freed of the Ego. In these instances, one may come into contact with religious figures or otherworldly beings. The experience tends to have a mystical nature to it. . Grof argues that within Western thought, it is only Assagioli's psychosynthesis and Jung's psychology that can shed light on the processes involved in the transpersonal psychedelic realm. Speaking on Jung, Grof evokes his ideas of archetypes when describing the primordial imagery which is often witnessed during transpersonal experiences.

The perinatal psychedelic experience

The perinatal experience is a kind of rebirth. Grof's views, in this respect, are far from unique. What Grof describes with regards to the perinatal experience, are personality transformations described by both Campbell and Jung who claim that such transformations arise as a product of acting out death and rebirth archetypes.

Grof divides the perinatal level of the unconscious into four patterns he refers to as the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPM). Since Grof believes that perinatal type psychedelic experiences are deeply connected to the process of biological birth, he aligns each of the matrices with a stage in the birth process. In these matrices, Jungian archetypes are liable to make appearances.

1. BPM 1

BPM 1 aligns with the peacefulness of being a foetus in the womb.

2. BPM 2

This aligns with the beginning stages of birth. The foetus is constricted by the uterine yet cannot find a way out yet because the cervix is still closed. Paralleling this biological process, experiences from this matrix are marked by a sense of “cosmic engulfment”, whereby one feels a forebody sense of imminent danger. Consequently, the anxiety-stricken individual is likely to interpret the world in paranoid terms.

Imagery associated with this matrix includes being swallowed by a great monster or whale, and scenes of descending into a dangerous underworld. Just as Adam and Eve are cast from Eden and Satan is cast from Heaven, so too is the biological foetus being ejected from the womb where it experienced ideal conditions. Similarly, this matrix has individuals feeling as though they are moving from a state of safety to a state of unknown peril.

3. BPM 3

BPM 3 is deeply concerned with the death-rebirth struggle. Biologically, it is aligned with the stage of delivery where uterine contractions continue, but with the cervix dilated to allow for the gradual passing of the foetus. This is not an easy process, and there is risk of mortality for both the baby and the mother. The foetus may experience several unpleasant sensations during this process. Unlike the previous perinatal matrix, this matrix does not feel hopeless and helpless. Much like a mythical hero facing a trial, the individual in the throes of this experience feels as though they are actively involved in the situation's resolution. Hence, while BPM II might feel like heck, BPM III is more akin to purgatory.

4. BPM 4

As you'd expect, this aligns with the final stages of birth. Following the cutting of the umbilical cord, the child is fully severed from its mother and begins its journey as an independent, autonomous individual. This is when most LSD users are likely to experience an Ego death. However, this Ego death experience is not entirely existentially terrifying. Following its crescendo, positive imagery can be expected, including “visions of blinding white or golden light of supernatural radiance and beauty”. As Grof argues, this experience has positive associations and has the potential to change one's outlook for the better. For example, for some “irrational and exaggerated ambition, craving for money, status, prestige, or power appear in this state to be absurd and childish desires”.

Grof's critics

Grof is not without his critics, and they must be acknowledged. A glaring issue with Grof's theories is that while he claims to apply a scientific method to his research, his interpretation of the data often stretches beyond what empirical information can demonstrate. The most visible cases of this occur when Grof integrates mystical ideas when interpreting what his subjects who have ingested psychedelics experience. An example of this can be found when Grof proposes that individuals having transpersonal experiences exhibit paranormal phenomena such as ESP.

The biggest criticism is that while he can demonstrate that his subjects, when administered doses of LSD, are liable to have death-rebirth experiences that may map onto the biological birth process in some metaphorical manner, the mechanisms he proposes for this are never explained in a way which draws from the data.

Conclusion

Lads, I don't know what's going on right now but I can't feel sleepy and my mind won't stop racing. I want to accomplish everything, I want to hurt myself, I'm impulsively spending money on dumb shit like this site (where I'm the most blocked user by a significant margin), and I can't stop writing. I feel like I would keep writing even if I didn't have the need to make sense, just as long as words are being strung together. Honestly, just ignore this shit. I don't know whether I should contact my psychologist and ask them what to do. I drove earlier today and I probably shouldn't have on such little sleep. It felt like traffic was moving in slow motion lol. I think I'll go play more MGSV to calm myself down.