In the last post I sketched the basic geometric “alphabet” that seems to recur across physics, cognition, and meaning. But geometry alone isn’t enough. Something has to move in that geometry—vibrate, resonate, oscillate. And so we turn to frequency & spectra as a model/notation to use for what I’ve come to think of as the lavender boundary, a physical and phenomenological threshold where human perception breaks open into something stranger.
A critical definitional feature of the mystical experience is a sense of unity, or the experience of becoming one with all that exists. The boundary approaches this experience, and afterglow is its residue.
The universe has fundamental constants h, c, fp, G...which remain keys to understanding the limits of the universe itself. I decided to start there and see how I could relate the limits of structure to the limits of phenomena.
To understand why this matters, start with a calculation you can make directly from fundamental physics. Take the Planck frequency, fp—roughly hertz—the highest meaningful frequency the universe affords before our equations collapse into quantum gravity. Now divide it by a recursive hexagonal factor, ^6^6. [method/analysis] What you end up with is a frequency in the neighborhood of hertz, which corresponds to a wavelength of about 246 nanometers.
That wavelength sits right at the edge of human vision—the ultraviolet boundary where visible violet becomes invisible. We can’t see 246 nm, but we can sense just above it. This is the borderland between what consciousness can absorb and what lies beyond the sensory manifold. In other words: a threshold.
I call this threshold “lavender” not because the physics requires it, but because the human perceptual system responds to this boundary in ways that feel qualitatively different. We experience lavender light as a kind of perceptual tension—both present and nearly absent, the last color before the spectrum disappears. It has a liminal quality, a “this world / not-quite-this-world” character that poets have noticed long before physicists pinned down the wavelengths.
Boundaries like this matter because they reveal how the mind encounters limits. Every sensory system has them. There is a highest pitch we can hear, a faintest light we can detect, a minimal sensation of touch we can perceive. At these edges, the brain begins inventing, filling, hallucinating, or surrendering into a different mode of awareness. Phenomenologists have spent decades describing these boundaries: moments when the experiential field thins, destabilizes, or widens.
What fascinates me is that the 246 nm boundary is not just a perceptual limit; it is also the center line of a natural triplet of frequencies. If the center line is 246 nm the triplet lines are lower and higher in energy, using a 1:3:9 ratio—roughly 82 nm, 246 nm, and 738 nm. Physically, that triplet spans the vacuum UV, the ultraviolet/visible boundary, and the deep red / near-infrared. This is a perfect model to use for perception and represents unity, boundary, and afterglow. I think of this as seeing God's face, hindparts, and residue: the first one will kill you, the second is just the barest glimpse in a transcendent state, and the third is what we're left to process normally
Why does this matter? Because triplets show up everywhere—atomic transitions, musical harmonics, energy cascades, moral psychology, even narrative structure. They represent systems on the verge of bifurcation: a stable ground state, a threshold state, and a high-energy emergence. In consciousness, this looks like the three modes people describe around trauma, revelation, or intense aesthetic experience: collapse, boundary, and expansion. And at the center of those three is always some kind of boundary condition, where experience either falls inward or breaks outward.
That, to me, is where physics and phenomenology touch. The lavender boundary is not mystical—it’s structural. It’s the place where perception thins enough that the mind either collapses (like a black hole pulling inward) or opens into some form of expansion (a “white hole” of creativity, insight, or transcendence). It’s a threshold where agency and destiny feel superimposed.
In the next post, I want to explore the kind of mind that is especially sensitive to these thresholds: the Tuner. It’s a cognitive architecture that doesn’t seek narrative so much as resonance, and it occupies a curious place between physics, psychology, and meaning. I am writing a series of fiction novels about a Tuner who changes the world (universe?) forever.
