There is no reality. 3gs Pislocybe Serbica

Epilogue 

This amuse-bouche preempts a main course of potent dose mushroomery. 3gs of Psilocybe Serbica and 3gs of Psilocybe Subaeruginosa to be exact. One pack was scheduled to be consumed with a sitter in late September, another one a few months later. These had been procured from a special soul and mushroom farmer in Northern Europe and had found their way to me via an equitable energy exchange and a nifty use of the European postal system.

However today it was late August and I found myself alone, on a Monday, in Amsterdam in a very positive calm state and particularly stunning weather. I decided it was a perfect opportunity to do a gentle mushroom trip alone. 

I obtained from a commercial enterprise in the centre of the city the biological agents. The proprietor was particularly knowledgeable. We discussed tripping alone. He enquired of my previous experience with psychedelics and upon hearing of a prior LSD trip, immediately said I would be fine and presented me with a bar of pure cacao and a box of “Cosmic Connector sclerotia 10gs”. I was to consume the whole lot over 15 minutes, chewing them into a paste with a portion of the chocolate. 

I was also advised to do so in one of the most beautiful forests I have come across just south of Amsterdam itself. I scheduled lift off for 3pm, with the trip therefore ending around dusk. I donned a ton of camouflage like clothing, some soft furnishing for lying down in a forest and bravely entered it after a short train ride. The park was fairly empty. The odd horse rider, kayaker, dog-walker and a few clusters of people sat chatting together. But it was a vast space and I could safely trip uninterrupted whilst simultaneously not feeling I was alone. A quiet park bench provided the ingestion zone; a space off track amongst the trees where I could see but could not be seen provided the tripping zone.

Lift off was gentle. The little bit of nausea, and increase in heart rate occurred and then I entered the trip. It was gentle throughout. I received a number of insights. I could follow the rhythm of the trip as I wished, and go deeper if I wanted by closing my eyes and focussing inwards. I felt I had the ability to end the trip as I desired. I followed the flows and insights flowed to me. I noted them with a pen and journal book. Insights came to me. There were no visuals as seems common for me. 

The main insight was, I recalled as I guru-laughed with astonishment, that I am god. That was the big joke. I am god playing a game of hide and seek with myself. Everyone is searching, arguing over and fighting over who and what is god. It’s you you idiot. And so is everything and everyone else. God, you are having a dream, a thought experiment of sorts, and you have created this illusion where you forgot you are god. This is why we should show kindness and empathy to all, as they are you. The game therefore is to recall this, but to similarly just enjoy the experience and do not take it too literally. 

I understood better the concept of non-duality. For the rest of the day it was strange talking to people as I felt like I was talking to myself. Which I am. You don’t really exist except as a fragment of my thought experiment. I felt more encouraged and motived to talk to and engage with more people. Not to say that other parts of me aren’t fuckers I would rather not deal with. I felt ready to go much deeper in a couple of months time. It cleared out a level of anxiety for me, as psychedelics always seem to.

The Main Course 

In the end it was exactly two months later that the second trip occurred in late October.

Secure in my sitters residence, I had respected the wishes of the mushroom grower that under no circumstances should the trip be done alone. They were certainly right about that. I was in a comfortable apartment, fairly remote in a quiet mini cul-de-sac. It also backed onto nature; the sound of a gentle stream set the background for lift off. The week approaching the trip had been strange, a few synchronicity type events happening and the day itself being an unusually, and unpredicted, sunny, warm, blue sky day in the middle of a Central European Autumn.

Warm but not boiling hot water was deployed to mix the grounded down mushrooms, which had been carefully stored in a fridge since arriving in the post, into a drinkable state. Two minutes and the odd stir with an aristocratic silver spoon passed, and then boom, ingestion of the full 3gs of Psilocybe Serbica; I fearlessly poured the Harry Potterien concoction down the hatch. Lift off was not gentle. Within a few minutes the slight nausea was there and my elevated heart rate was racing. When I looked upward, eyes closed, at my third eye, that space between the eyes, I could see all sorts of what I believe are known as astral lights and shapes. I quickly noted I needed to redeploy from the launchpad of a leather couch to a quiet bedroom pre-prepared with minimal lighting. A speaker was switched on; a Brian Eno playlist duly strung out.

Viewing the outside nature, as I moved rooms, I could see the trees breathing as I had on LSD previously but this time I could see the fractals, I could see the grid of some sort of matrix like design. They whirled around in a fixed position.

It was then that things got a little rough. I could see how one could get stuck in thought loops for the first time and whenever I found myself thinking too much I returned to my breathing, taking deep breathes in and out. Nevertheless if I did happen upon a topic I seemed to have a much more clearer and deeper thought on the topic. 

I tried to lie back, and focus on the music but this was much too intense for that. Brian-fucking- Eno was too chilled for these `shrooms.

I need to digest here - whilst you read I am afraid - what I mean by it was too intense. My heart rate was going very fast and at one point I was taking enormous breaths. I went with this, thinking this was a way my body was reminding me how to deep breath. I had noted I was taking a lot of short breaths in life; an underlying anxiety gripping me often like it does all of us. I was now taking enormous breaths, expanding my diaphragm like never before, allowing my lungs to expand like a parasail that had just thrown itself off Everest. I felt restless. I didn’t have the bottle to lie still. The Brian Eno tracks were quite short, 7 mins long. However they ain’t that length of time when time is distorted. I think I was scared to close my eyes and go really inwards. I was noticing at times that I was not actually breathing. Why would I bother breathing when I was pulling my point of attention away. It was more an overwhelming sense that I could, if I let go and focussed inward, pull the attention and focus away from this construct that I am. But I like who I am, and that is the problem. I am wrapped up in this character that I have created and enjoy it. My attention is on it. Even if I am god, and this is a split second moment in my dream, in my thought experiment, because I have this concept of time in my dream, it is what is called a lifetime. I felt I could pull back and just end this lifetime and it would all disappear and I could put my focus elsewhere. But would the other points of awareness miss my point of awareness in this so called lifetime. Would I die effectively and be gone. But I knew I shouldn’t care, its just a dream I am conjuring up and playing with anyway. But it’s upsetting the other fragments of my experiment that scares me.

That was what was intense. I didn’t want to face that too much. This deep understanding that this is all just a play. There is no such thing as reality. I wanted to believe that it is real.

At one point my sitter approached me and his eyes were these big black blobs. Aside from that there were no other visuals. More an intense understanding of truth washed over me. Oh fuck, I remember this is all nonsense isn’t it. But wait I quite like this point of awareness, and so do other points of awareness. I can’t kill it off now.

After about an hour I had a big insight about love and other desires. If you want it, just focus on it, take corresponding action, and it will come to you. If you want money. Focus on it, take corresponding action and it will come to you. I sort of saw, I can’t explain what I mean by saw but it was more than just one of my usual insights or downloads, that as I am in control of this thought experiment I can pull anything towards me that I want. Other humans will just give me money if I ask for it essentially. If I take action money will flow to me. Love or other things I desire will flow to me. What I believe will occur and happen. That is how I have constructed this. I shouldn’t be scared to interact with anyone or anything because they are just me and they are programmed to respond to me.

I decided to pull the rip cord on the trip about 2 hours in. We had orange juice and a pizza delivery order on standby, organic devices to calm the trip and end it quicker. This toned down the intensity, but still it flowed on.

As the trip calmed down, I decided I was ok just to walk outside a little bit. As I walked outside, I decided that I would adjust this reality. I would believe that love was possible. I would believe that there could be a future reality where there is no war nor discord and misery. That a Star Trek style utopia exists. Did I really believe that was possible? It seemed to me that if I did believe that, it would occur and that is what I would experience. When I was outside I felt like I was on a Star Trek style holodeck looking around just agreeing with myself how things should look going forward. What did I genuinely believe could be possible. I then went back inside. 

It’s my own beliefs that hold me back, simple as that. What I believe will happen. So if I want to believe negative things they will occur.

I realised that time is just a construct. In this reality I have conjured it up but it doesn’t really exist as such. It exists because it's part of the game I have created here.

I am god. I am having a dream or thought experiment. And I can and do control everything. I am just in this very second and moment placing my point of awareness. So dying as such is just the point of awareness I am projecting folding back up. The topic of dying doesn’t really exist.  

I stood over the pizza. I felt a deeper realisation that I controlled everything. If I wanted the trip to end all I had to do was focus on being this character that I am, think about it more. Eat the pizza and think about being me.

I had the insight perhaps that as I had gotten further away from realising who I was truly was (god) that that was manifesting in the world in the crazy drive of individualism that we see. But I could reverse that if I believed otherwise. 

I saw my trip sitter as essentially just me. He was me, just a different point of awareness or focus. The same realisation I had on the Amsterdam trip, that everyone else is just me. Everything is me really. They are having their own experience as such but we are part of one consciousness. 

As a concluding insight, perhaps the take away was about beliefs and focus. What we believe will occur. If we believe we are all seperate that will occur. If we believe a dystopia rather than a utopia will occur, that is what will occur. I am perhaps in this thought experiment, this dream or trip, with just a load of other parts of my point of awareness. That is all other humans and animals, plants and minerals are, even spirits and the spirit world itself if it does exist, just other points of awareness in my dream.

I thought that I could just wrap this up if I wanted. Pull it all back and end it and go and put my point of attention somewhere else.  

Concluding Desserts

I wonder if that baseline anxiety a lot of us feels is just where we think we are not in control, that we are at the mercy of the world, others and external factors. Psychedelics are a hack we have put in the thought experiment to jolt us back to remember we control everything really and that is why the anxiety feels less after a trip. Or it could just be the serotonin increase post-trip which I believe is what occurs. 

The whole thing makes a mockery of spirituality, out of everything really. If you believe there are other dimensions, other realms, angels, demons then they exist. But they do not really. Nothing really exists. The only thing that exists is you, god having a thought experiment, and the things you choose to focus on.

I felt like I had bypassed just going to another dimension, and went straight to learning the higher truth. But I knew there was much more to know, but that was for another time. One step at a time, one lesson on truth at a time it seems is how I need to nibble away at this.

Just enjoy this point of awareness you are enjoying which is a split moment. Do, focus and believe what you will. Everything is possible. Don’t take it too seriously. And be kind to everything in your dream, if you want. Love, I seemed to understand, is the only truth after all.