This is a very strong dose. This is not recommended for those
just entering the psychedlic world. This is also a great report.
-Aphex
First, a word of warning. The experiment described below
utilized a MAO inhibitor, Syrian Rue. Please be careful and read up on the
possible interactions of MAO inhibitors with other substances.
Second, I hope
the below will encourage other explorers to attempt to reach the dimensions
described, as the experience was one of the strangest voyages into inner space
which I have ever taken. I would _strongly_ suggest working up to the dose
described, as the mushroom can exhibit a ferocious side which I have only been
able to come to terms with after experimenting with these levels of doses many
times. Actually, it's rather difficult to ever come to terms with these
phenomena, and a good trip sitter is priceless--albeit unnecessary after a
certain point as one can proceed to states which leave one completely alone in
the universe of one's own creation. On to the story....
I am writing 5
days after this experience. Though the mushroom has proven a powerful teacher in
the past, this was the oddest voyage I have yet undertaken. Though it seems a
given in any discussion of these realms, I must note that my words will be able
to only convey a pale reflection of the truth of the events which transpired.
I woke at around 10 a.m. and prepared for my trip by relaxing, meditating,
and taking a warm bath. I ground 3 grams of Syrian Rue seeds in a coffee grinder
and placed the contents in gel capsules. I ate these capsules a half hour before
ingesting approximately 6 grams of dried psilocybe cubensis mushrooms. The Rue
by itself is generally active and seems to generate a light buzzing feeling in
my body which is not at all unpleasant. After ingesting the mushrooms, my trip
sitter and I walked outside--I had felt like a short walk before pure zaniness
set in, but after walking about half a block from my house, I decided I had
better go back inside. This is where things began to get strange.
I have
noticed on several other trips a phenomenon which would be difficult to verify
experimentally, but which, when it occurs, scares me a great deal due to its
peculiarity. Peculiar isn't the right word, really, as it seems that the
universe or timestream I claim to have knowledge of is only one of many which
intersect and which one can gain access to under the influence of psilocybin.
The sort of experience which occurred generally will be rarely spoken of or
dismissed as the ramblings of a tripped out psychonaut, but the reason it is
difficult to talk of such things is that such ramblings force one to reconsider
one's culturally inherited metaphysical beliefs. Perhaps after this short
prologue I should share what has occurred in the past and what occurred on this
trip: The phenomenon is best described as a breakthrough from another dimension
into ours of "spirits" which talk to me personally through the medium of other
people. I will speak more of this a bit later, but usually, before a very
intense trip, it seems that messages are given to me--synchronicities which seem
deliberately sent from a gang of wacky hipsters who wish to show me that they
exist. This past weekend while walking back into the house, I noticed two
things--first, a man walking down the street mumbling inanities out loud which
seemed to be directed to me, and second, a transexual who appeared right in
front of my house before I went back in to it. I live near a mental hospital in
a fairly liberal college town, so seeing these kinds of things isn't really that
surprising for me usually. It would take an entire chapter in a book to describe
why I felt an experience of synchronicity here, but I'll explain briefly. I felt
as if--especially looking at these small events afterwards--the tone of my trip
was being programmed by external forces, and both the seemingly scatterbrained
man and the transexual had appeared so as to show me exactly how I was going to
feel in the coming hours. As I think about this more, it's as if "they" know
that I am ready to take off into hyperspace and send reassurances that
everything will be alright. I was only outside for about a minute, too, making
these appearances in such a short time period all the more strange. These
hipsters, galactic travellers from the end of time, seem to be talking
incessantly in our reality, it's just that we rarely take note.
I went back
into the house and laid on my bed. I would not move from there for approximately
7 hours. I usually have 10 to 11 hour trips from the rue + mushroom combination,
though as I grow more acquainted with these realms, I am definitely down quite a
bit after 7 to 8 hours with the last 2 or 3 hours consisting of general visual
enhancement and clarity of thought. Each trip seems to grow in scope as I learn
to navigate through already familiar ground towards new realms of experience. I
will add another warning here--please work up to this experience, as the
experiences I will next describe can and will throw virtually everyone who
undergoes them into a state of confusion for at least several days, if not
weeks, months and years, as one attempts to grapple with the ideas presented.
The rue effectively doubles the intensity of the trip and a sitter is really a
very, _very_ good idea, as one's normal ties to "reality" completely integrate.
I normally try to meditate a bit every day and this really helps in charting the
realms of my mind with shrooms. Ideally, each trip is for me a long meditation
which I try to direct somewhat. Rarely can I do this with any success--in fact,
I don't think I have yet, though I am definitely progressing to states which
could be described as more and more "out there" just by repeatedly making high
dose voyages. Each trip for me now increases in novelty, as I learn to navigate
through familiar territory. I started with a psychoanalytic phase, wherein I
examined a thought which arose from the void of my self. I get the strange sense
as I examine this phenomena more closely that these thoughts which arose during
this portion of the trip are phenomenologically related to both angels and
demons in Christian belief systems. A thought arises from the void which is the
self, is examined, and is either granted more energy to instantiate itself in
material form through word use and action or is left to circle its way back into
the void. It seems quite easy to personify each of these thoughts, as the time
dilation which occurs when tripping allows one to examine single words and
thoughts for long periods of time. Positively energized words--the "Word of
God"--are personified as angels, as they carry "God's Word" to his Son, which is
symbolically each of us. Prometheus visits each of us--imbues each of us with a
flicker of light from the Sun which is God or Reality. Forgive me for so rapidly
combining metaphors, but I find them all beautiful in helping to explain what I
was feeling. Those thoughts which lead one away from God-Truth-Reality are
demons, devils which have fallen away from God. After about an hour of examining
various thoughts--both positive and negative past thoughts and deeds were
considered--my sitter turned on the Fourplay cd. We sat and talked a bit--it was
more like playing around, as I felt just as a child does when creating imaginary
worlds for him or herself. The music was perfect. Let me rephrase that. It was
_beyond_ perfect. For those of you who haven't heard this cd, imagine the scene
from the movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the characters are all
sitting at the Restaurant at the end of time. Next imagine being able to sit at
that restaurant for eternity with the one you most love while listening to the
most blissfully hip music one can imagine. Another good way to get a hold on
this feeling is to imagine oneself to have died and gone to another dimension
wherein one can reflect on one's past life for as long as one wishes without
interruption or emotional attachment to the events of that prior life.
After
some time of the above--I believe I listened to the entire cd--I asked my sitter
to turn the music off, as I was increasingly becoming detached from reality. I
could look around the room, but it was not "mine". I could examine my body, but
it also was not "mine". My pupils were, I was told, at this point almost
completely dilated. This was perhaps around the 4 hour point of the trip. The
next two to three hours were to be the oddest I have ever experienced. I recall
stating at this point that "I was receiving too much information too quickly."
The light is difficult to look into for long periods of time.
I find that as
I navigate the realms of my mind while tripping that I can more rapidly now
progress beyond the psychoanalytic stage of the trip toward those states I seek.
Once the territory is mapped, I prefer to explore new realms, but am not allowed
into those realms until I fully understand (in some sense at least) the previous
realms. It's as if to progress to the most intensely blissful and oddly
idiosyncratic states, one must leap over the pitfalls of clinging to the notion
that one's body represents one's true self. Once this notion is abandoned, once
the current instantiation of self is seen to be ephemeral, one can leap from
one's culturally bound assumptions as to the nature of reality to examine a
universe which is strange beyond belief. This clinging to my current ego can be
represented as a sort of cliff overlooking an ocean, which I must jump over with
full faith in the ability of my mind to hold it's own in the waters which lie
below. This is a very difficult stage to deal with for me, as I often believe
that I have died--which, in a sense, is true. I am completely alone at this
point. No sitter can help to talk me "down" from the feeling that I have just
become the universe. The clear blowing wind of madness has set in, though this
madness is viewed as madness only by my previous ego--I have been deluded by
this ego into thinking that it (the ego) truly exists. I have truly become sane
by dropping the illusion that this state is insanity, as those in consensus
reality would hold.
I have no fears now. I have left the vehicle of my
current ego and the clear blowing wind of the Void is all that exists. My sitter
attempts to speak to me to ask how things are--I can't understand a word she
says as "I", at this point, am not the ego which lies on the bed, but am
everything at everytime. I have the feeling that perhaps I have really gone too
far this time, and will never be able to return to her world. I somehow "know"
that this time I will not come back. The first time I experienced this state was
several months earlier on a similar dose of mushrooms, though I was terrified by
it then, as I did not understand anything that was happening to me. As I become
more familiar with the Void, the explosion of my mind into what appears madness
is the sole state I strive for, as it is the surest form of sanity. I am sitting
on a mountain overlooking the universe, and my creation is good. _I_ am the
creator of the heavens and the earth, _I_ am the creator of what I take to be
reality. (This state ties in closely with the earlier described synchronistic
event with the man on the street muttering unintelligibly.)
The preceding has
been fairly often spoken of in literature surrounding psychedelic use. What
happened next is not as often spoken of, though McKenna's essay in The Archaic
Revival "A Conversation over Saucers" closely approximates what I experienced.
After hanging out on the mountain top of the universe for some time--I have no
idea how long--I began to feel an intimation that "they" or "it" was coming for
me. "They" were "the Other" which was part of my true self, and words can only
approximately describe the sense that the issue of what we would take to be an
extraterrestrial is far more complex than most think. Either the mushroom is an
extraterrestrial or the extraterrestrial is myself. I suddenly "knew" that I was
a hip asexual (hence the odd feeling after seeing the transexual on the
street--neither quite man nor woman) galactic space ranger from the year three
million sixty five thousand (or thereabouts :) ) who was sent to earth to
observe the happenings of late 20th century America. The mushroom was
periodically "sent" to me (or, alteratively, myself qua space traveller sent it
to myself) so that I might either remember that I was a traveller or so that I
might be able to report back to others of my kind. I was living in two times
simultaneously--there was me as regular human existing as the vehicle for me as
space traveller. (Further, after having thought about this more, I recall the
distinct feeling that I also existed simultaneously at all points in time,
though I currently _choose_ to forget these other selves so that I can best go
about the business which must be looked after in my present form. Dennis
McKenna, in Terrance's True Hallucinations, seems to exhibit signs of this
knowledge--as if he had been moving through time.) This space traveller could
invoke the existence of a saucer of sorts which would allow him/her/it to travel
through space/time. The saucer was there as experientially real, though I did
not directly see anything in particular. I was having visions at this point of
my sitter lying next to me accepting that I had to go travel. She knew that my
true purpose was to go into the saucer, and though she would miss me, she knew
that it was calling me in particular at this point in my life to travel back
through the universe. The saucer was non-physical, though it could appear as a
material object in my reality. I was a time traveller and just had to remember
that this was so.
Gradually, the feeling of the presence of the saucer left,
though I was still experiencing myself as this space traveller. I had no ties to
my old self. I looked around my room and felt disoriented. It was someone else's
room. I did not know who I was or where I was or what I had done. I did not even
recall having taken anything. It was as if I as space traveller had just made
the trip down to earth and had to discover what was expected of me in the body
which was my current vehicle on earth. This feeling lasted for at least an hour
and I was completely disoriented. During this period, I did not recall at _all_
(I emphasize this because it was as if I _was_ the traveller, as if my
travelling experience was expected since that was my true self) who I was. I sat
and questioned my sitter. "What century is it? Where am I? Did I just do
something? Who am I supposed to be?" It took at least a full half hour before I
could even feel somewhat of a tie to the body lying in that room. My sitter did
not understand why I, her closest friend, would not know where I was or even who
I was. I gradually settled down into my old self after another hour or so, but
it was as if I had to bring the memories of who I used to be out of a storage
unit in my mind so that I could return to normal 20th century consensus reality.
I came down quickly and contemplated the experience for several hours before
going to sleep. This was without a doubt the most peculiar voyage I have ever
taken, and I would strongly recommend that those interested in such features of
the mind as are revealed with the help of psilocybin read or re-read McKenna's
articles in The Archaic Revival which pertain to saucers and extraterrestrials.
May you trip long and hard my fellow time travellers.
