A pebble of Eternity

I have been recently reading a lot of the trip reports on this site.
I finally made up my mind to let others know of the kind of experience that I had.
I come from a reasonably large town in India, and would never have been exposed to the world of psychedelics had it not been for the easy availability of marijuana & its derivatives. I know most people would consider that marijuana is border line hallucinogen, but it introduced me to the power of my mind.

Ranji (a very good friend of mine) had been experimenting with growing mushrooms for almost 3 months, the spore print was a very old one, that had been handed down through a mutual acquintance. Germinating fungus from spores that are very old is a bit of a problem, but Ranji's persistence seemed to have paid off, because they had germinated and the first fruits had been appearing.This was in no mean measure due to the fact that we had access to tremendous amounts of information available on the internet.
So during the first few fruiting cycles we had small amounts of shrooms, trying to figure out the potency... we still had no way of knowing the potency in comparison to the figures published by various sources on the internet.

After the first few cycles of testing, I decided to have a large dose of mushrooms, figuring that the best teacher is experience. I would like to add at this point specifically:

Mushrooms are a sacrament, they are not something to be trifled with, if you have no idea about the kind of shrooms you are going to ingest, please talk to someone who has done high doses of shrooms before, having a trip giude is the sanest thing that you can do, and leave machoness and cynicism behind when you are going to trip ! If it will be the first time you are going to trip, try a small dose, to see that the mushrooms agree with you. You have been warned ;-)

It was the rainy season in the area where I live, Ranji called me and told me he had a large dose of shrooms ready for Tosh and me to try... I can clearly recall the anticipation and a vague sense of terror that took hold of me, after the telephone call. My previous experiences with shrooms have always been very pleasant, and yet a high dose was uncharted territory for me. I got this call on Wednesday, and begin to prepare for the trip, which was to be on Saturday. I didnt do much in terms of preperation, i normally meditate everyday... i continued with it, and also avoided eating meat through the week.

The day of the trip i just had a glass of orange juice in the morning, and spent the time till i was supposed to leave, reading a book "Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan.
At around 3 PM, i rode my motorbike to the designated meeting place, and again as usual Ranji was late (Ranji if u ever read this be more punctual will ya !!) I stood around trying to figure out what i was going to do, when Tosh came along... we decided to have a cup of chai (a very indian milky tea)... Just as we finished the tea, ranji came along.... We went to the corner store got a bottle of water and some orange juice and of we went.
Since neither of us people can smoke marijuana at home or in public, we come to a nice well wooded hill, close to our house, easy to access and with a beautiful view of the city. We call this place mighty mountain, and it has become a favoured tripping location for all the people who know about it.
We reached the place and trudged up the hill, to the rock where we normally like to sit, talk & smoke the sweet leaf ! I had this strange apprehension about ingesting a large dose, more so because i dont particularly like the mushroomy taste of the shrooms. But nonetheless, i chewed and swallowed about 32 grams of fresh psilocybe cubensis, helped along the way by the orange juice.
We tend to talk about a lot of things when we are stoned and this was no different day, the only thing being that we were not stoned and had just ingested a reasonably large dose of shrooms, as we continued to talk, i begin to feel a strange feeling of lightness, it was as if my body had becomer lighter, and more receptive to the sorroundings. At that point I realized that I was now beginning to feel the oncoming of the trip. As we talked I had the strange urge to be alone, i supressed it at the time, but then as the talk seemed to border on the very hilarious and i had not stopped laughing my guts out for what seemed like a long time, i thought maybe a change in the place where i was sitting would help..
So that is what I did, I moved to another rock in the vicinity and taking a long fresh breath of air.... looked around me, i was amazed by the feeling of space that seemed to envelope me, something which everyone who does a reasonably large dose of shrooms seems to talk about ?!
Space, emptiness all around me, i felt a strange tug at the bottom of my belly... i thought to myself you are just hallucinating...... As i looked down on the rock that I sat on, i noticed a pattern in the rock, so i bent down in my sitting position, trying to get a better look at it... and there it was, the pattern began to move and swirl ,like when you add a drop of oil paint to water...... and then it exploded in my face....... all around me, myriads of designs, evolving, dissolving.......... into colours that defy explanation......
In my slightly panicked state i looked around but there were only patterns all around, and then all of a sudden they were gone...... I was back on the hill.... Tosh seemed to have been hit too, and he was laughing like there was no end !
Ranji just watched us with a bemused look on his face.... he came upto me and handed me a small pebble, there was nothing great about it, he just asked me to hold it and feel it... i moved it around between my index finger and thumb, and moved it around...... suddenly somewhere almost imperceptibly i made the connection with the pebble and the whole world around me, it was almost like i was holding an eternity of space between my fingers.
I put the pebble away, because i was becoming even more confused at the state that i was in. I looked up at the sky, it was strung with delicate clouds that seemed to glow with a pink colour that was brought about by the sunset and my brain .......... Looking at the clouds was an awesome experience, everytime the breeze blew it was looking like a sea of blue and grey ruffled by some unknown hand. Then suddenly there appeared a vortex within those clouds, and i was drawn up into it.... there was only a vast empty blue space around me, no clouds, no wind........ only space ..... just as quickly as i was there i was dropped out........... and i fell, fell......... at a pace that i could control by thinking about it.
I was back to where i was again, on the rock !
This was beginning to get a little too much for me, so i thought to myself, i should talk to Tosh for a little while, i still dont know what we talked about, i just remember that we became hysterical and laughed, laughed.......... suddenly.... these images flashed by my closed eyes, things so past forgotten in my memory came flooding back to me, it was like watching home movies of those events in my life. They were so random, they just flew past even before i could comprehend the relevance of this thoughts that were manifesting themselves as images in front of my very eyes........
Strange images.....
Climbing up trees, jumping into a cool forest pool, looking down a cliff.............
Again & again............
Images from parts of my life that I could barely remember !

I took a walk around and sat on nice grassy knoll, and felt the wind swirl around me, and there he was, this guys who seemed to be watching me, understanding every thought that ran through my mind. I asked him who he was, and instead of speaking he just shook hi hands, and I saw in a series of disjunct images who he was, I am still unable to clearly remember what he showed me, I just felt awed …. And watched as he showed me image after image, children playing in the park, my dogs running around me, my mon & dad saying something that I just could not comprehend.. amazing…. is all that I can say.
Ego dissolving most certainly, I felt like a 2 year old, innocent and very very open to the various stimuli all around me !

Suddenly there was some talk, we had run out of cigarettes, in this state who would go down the hill and get some, not me ! was my first response, I was in no shape to ride my bike through town !
Ranji, volunteered to go get some, bless him, I decided to accompany him, because I wanted to experience the sights and sounds of the city.
Off we went climbed down the hill, and went to his bike….. he started it up and I sat pillion, when the bike started to move I felt a sense of elation at not having to take any physical effort and yet moving through space and time (in the state I was in!)
We went down to the cigarette store, which was outside a busy restaurant, I had a feeling that I knew the place, yet once in a while I felt I had no clue as to where I was.
Ranji in keeping with his image of doing weird things (lol) decided to have a cup of coffee, we went to this joint, where he decided to have some coffee, I just looked around me, it was almost like I was lost, so many people around me having coffee, and all sorts of things to eat ! The aromas of fresh coffee and spices…… I took a look at the open kitchen, and there were all sorts of food being cooked… I felt hemmed in, the heat from the cooking range, though quite a distance away from me, caused me to start to sweat, and again…. I had this bout of fleeting images… absolutely chaotic images… dragons, devils, angels, people who I have never seen in my lifetime (or someone who I never perceived)!

And then after that off we went, back to the hill again.
WE just sat there on the rock for some time ! and then as fast as I was hit, it just faded away, I wasn’t trippin anymore !


Last but not least,
I must dedicate this trip report to my friends, Ranji & Tosh, for they were there throughout the experience, as guides and buddies who have tripped together through thick and thin! Cheers guys!
To all the people out-there who have enabled people like us who live in the third world (though I find the term explicitly racist), access to information without boundaries.
I would like to thank visionaries like Terence McKenna,Carlos Castaneda and Timothy Leary... without whom understanding the experience would have been impossible.....
Not that I understand it very well, but then experience is the best teacher, and I shall learn all that the shrooms have to teach me !