Conversations with God

Warning: Read up on MAO-inhibition before experimenting with Syrian rue seeds.

Date: 5/23/98

Time: Started at 5:00 p.m. and ended at 1:00 a.m. with strong mental effects felt into the next day

Dosage: 7.5 g. potent Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms with Syrian rue extract (following McKenna's advice to the psychedelic "community" to increase dosage :) Actually, I was curious about what this level of dose would do and doubt highly that anything like this is necessary to reach states like those described below.)

Extract was made by grinding up approximately 7 g. Syrian rue seeds which were then put into a pot with approximately a tablespoon of vinegar and water which completely covered the seeds. This mixture was boiled for about a half hour and the liquid was poured into a pan. This step was repeated 2 more times with only water. All of the liquid was poured into a pan which was placed on an oven so as to evaporate the water. After the water was evaporated, I was left with what looked like tar which fit into two "OO" gelatin capsules.

At 4:30 pm I ate the Syrian rue extract. I experienced no nausea from the use of this over the course of the night. This above method of extraction seemed to work quite well. At 5:00 pm, I began to eat the mushrooms and finished them at about 5:10. The next eight hours were to be the most intensely novel of my entire life. It would be possible to write a book about this single event. This will not be done here.

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I will summarize briefly most of what I experienced. I had a truly "mind-manifesting" experience, as the contents of my mind were thrown before me to examine. At the 1.5 hour point, I began to speak with what seemed like "God". I heard a sort of interior voice which began to answer certain questions I had. This voice seems, upon reflection, to be a sort of centered "me", which I can consult when my ego is upset. From the 2 to 4 hour point, I lost all ability to define a "self", and came into contact during this period with certain beings who seemed to be elven children whom I recognized from my own childhood. These were, almost certainly, McKenna's "self-transforming machine elves". The last four hours of this trip were so incredible that it will be difficult to relate all that happened in this report. If I had been in the presence of a psychiatrist, I would have been classified as psychotic, as I could project upon reality any interpretation I wished and fully live within the world which I had created. I was, for instance, crucified, as I became Jesus Christ and understood for the first time the phrase "for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." I understood at this point that every experience in life is a blessing, an opportunity for growth. After this, I "became" Brahman and decided to dream a new universe into existence. Time, at this point, no longer existed. The cycle of time within which this universe existed was coming to an end and I had to decide whether or not I would create a new world. My trip sitter became an angel, who was "Me" talking to myself, informing me that I could decide to go out of existence or create anew. I "saw" her walk through a wall. She informed me that I saw nothing occur, since I only saw a wall there because I believed one existed. I was aware at this point that the person who had began the trip was merely one of My (God's) infinite forms, and that he would no longer exist, as this trip was never to end, since Time had stopped. I "knew" that I had to give up my current earthly form and create another cycle of life in the universe. I was quite whacked at this point and repeatedly asked my sitter to "help me" because I could not understand anything that was happening around me. (A strange idea, as in saying this, I obviously seemed to have some tie to my current self.) Before doing this, however, I was able to experience this world in any way I wished for as long as I wished--I walked through a forest during this period, enjoying the smells and sounds and sights of Nature on Earth at her best. I never went outside, of course, during this time. At approximately midnight, I began to hear voices in my head which were completely controllable by how I wished to perceive the world. These voices were not my own, and they seemed external to myself. These voices were telling me various things--that I was sick, that I was going to die, etc. Real pleasant paranoid stuff. At about 1 am, I came "down" to a certain extent, though I could hardly remember who I was or where I was. My current ego did not fully return until 2 days later. Even after 8 hours of sleep after the trip, I still questioned whether I had ever come down.

After this trip, I have come to view the world of the mushroom in a somewhat different light. I have on previous occasions believed that the mental realms experienced while tripping were autonomous realms of existence to which one can attune one's mind. These realms were felt to be real in the same sense as what I consider real when I am normally conscious. This distinction between differing realms of reality seems misguided to me now. Most of what I experienced coincided with recent readings and trains of thought. It was as if my lack of comprehension of what was going on necessitated some thought structure through which to explain the events. The religious ideas which were going through my mind acted as the thought structure necessary. Interesting metaprogramming work can be done if this is kept in mind. Another way to explain what occurred was that I saw some purely energetic form which I could project thoughts upon so as to create a phenomenal world. During the voyage, these thoughts repeatedly "slipped" off of the world, and so various hypotheses as to what was occurring had to be tested. None of these structures fit the experience correctly, so after testing one hypothesis, I moved to another. I experienced panic only when I couldn't understand what was happening--this led to the continuous attempted explanations by my mind to limit the experience within a given framework. As my mind attempts to explain the event, it finds itself in such a novel situation that every explanation fails except that of being thrown into some alternate universe. This belief is still produced by my mind, however. The philosophic questions surrounding all of this are multipliable without end, and answers to these questions will probably not be forthcoming any time soon. The "problem" is probably that I think there will be one "explanation" of the situation which will neatly tie together all the loose ends of thought brought about by a novel experience. Again, such will not be forthcoming.