Dancing Aliens

Yesterday at 1:00pm I ingested 3 moderate specimens of Psilocybe cubensis. At 2:30 I took several inhalations of crushed Peganum harmala seeds. I was trying to see if I could experience McKenna's "vegetable television" which he discovered on mushrooms while smoking Banisteropsis caapi shavings. My experience was likely very different than his, but still wonderful and unique, not a standard mushroom trip.

I ground the (dried) mushrooms in a coffee grinder and mixed the powder with one pint of orange juice. I immediately took a shower, to give me a good feeling going into the trip. I asked the mushrooms to show me how to find the giggling delight they seem to command. That was all I wanted, to feel some joy about the world (I had been feeling particularly cynical lately). While in the shower, I became aware of severe distortions of my self perception. Macroscopia was experienced, and I watched my legs "stretch" and bend. Water dripping down the walls looked like chrome droplets of dragonfly juice. I began to wonder if I didn't really take more than I thought...

I became very confused, certainly "tripping". I checked the time, trying to make sense of what time meant. It seemed like such an arbitrary measure of the immeasurable. I found to my incredible surprise that less than 20 minutes had gone by since ingestion. Even in my hazy mental state, I knew that it was unusual to feel so much so early. I started to get very nervous, wondering what would happen when it REALLY kicked in. I mostly sat and breathed deeply, watching a plant gently morph, and savouring incredible auditory information from beyond. I realized the fact that I ALWAYS have a hard time "taking off", it is a real problem for me. Apprehension is a guaranteed aspect of my mushroom trips. I find myself instantly wondering why I took them...

I began to lose my physical form, and was squeezing my ankle very tightly to remind myself that I existed. Visual information started to pour in from all directions. The normally-white ceiling was vandalized- someone had replaced its clean white aesthetic with animated arabian-mosque motifs. My usual host of "entities" began to make their presence known, this time as big-headed "aliens" connected at the hands like those "fold-paper-and-cut-out-a-string-of-dolls" things from grade school. They slowly danced around me, and my mind produced images of HUGE spaceships, planet-sized discs composed of thought which often loom above our heads.

Then I smoked some rue in a glass pipe. I mixed a small amount of cannabis with the rue, to help it burn. After a single toke, I felt the familiar change in "head-pressure" that dmt brings about. I felt "lifted" upwards, and an orange tint filled the room. As quickly as it came on, the rush went away, and I was "dropped" back into mushroom reality. The rue had a not-unpleasant fragrance, which lingered and seemed directly related to its psychoactivity. I took several more inhalations, and announced to my companion, "this stuff works". He agreed. We smoked several hits of it, and discussed the effects.

I felt suddenly "clear". All the morphing/hallucinating suddenly stopped. I felt remarkably sober, but my mind was generating all kinds of crazy information. For example, a hyperspatial creature revealed to me a method to make any element condense in any part of the space/time continuum. It involved a template, in this case it was the creature's "hand". It made an esoteric-shaped hole between its fingers, and allowed the "stuff of being" to flow through the hole. A crystal slowly appeared. I said "I want to try" but the being claimed I did not have the structural knowledge of OXYGEN to try that, so exotic crystals were out of the question. "Later," I was told.

A connection was felt between my current situation and countless shamanic ecstacies of the past. I could indeed imagine that archaic shaman had combined harmaline with tryptamines long ago, a few of them seemed present at the time...

I looked around the room, snapping back into the present, and realizeed that now I was no longer "clear", there were animated visuals everywhere, all with a strange orange tone. I discovered that by changing "focal length" in my brain, not my eyes, I could alternate between two mental environments. One was crystal-clear and still, as described above. The second was a hallucinatory circus, with hundreds of autonomous ideas and entities competing for my attention. I smoked more rue.

Metaphor and the rules operating metaphorical mechanics were obvious to me. I could completely grasp the process of reality being sculpted by language. I felt as though my own personality was a fractal reflection of the "personality" of the human race in general, and that my own life history was just a smaller version of human history. Inside my own life history could be infinite smaller divisions of history, down to the quantum-mechanical level. It seemed quite possible that the rise and fall of rome, the pyramids, world war ii, and the sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes" were all inspired by molecular pattern and activity. The chrome self-reflecting translinguistic goo was beginning to condense. By staring into this stuff, all types of information was immediately accessable, thanks to some holographic programmer millenia ago.

I thought about basic priorities of humans. I mean, after needs like food and shelter are met, we really have no plan. Most people blot out their time with work and expensive recreation. The mushroom-rue told me that it offered an inexhaustible amount of information, many granules of which could serve as useful maps/tools for humans to use. "Why not base your society on our plan?" asked the mushroom. "Why base it on hollow pursuits like money and bad tv when you can EXCRETE reality for living? We do it all the time, join us!". I became a little bit suspicious of this alien life form making such a tempting offer, wondering what it was trying to gain. I had to simply trust that it was suggesting symbiosis/syzygy more than it was trying to lure me and my race into service. I figured any creature with this kind of knowledge could have taken us by force long ago if that was the plan.

I was well aware of the fact that I existed as potential before I was born. I mean, the actual "stuff" I am made of (DNA) has been carried around for a long time. My own life was a breath in the life of a larger, older creature.

The mushrooms indeed made good on their promise, I was filled with nothing but joy. The wretched, twisting mass of disease-ridden american culture did not seem a sufficient threat to the prevailing good forces of the universe. I was highly optimistic that with the aid of institutionalized ritual ecstacy, humans will soon be back on track, talking to our oldest friends once again. They are waiting for us to mature...

Part of this process involved that familiar sensation of ego-death, but this time it was absolutly pleasant! I could not believe it... The tell-tale signs (not knowing my name, feeling like I was disintegrating, etc) gave me an initial feeling of fear, but some benevolent presence (I dont know if it was internal or not) supported me, "holding my hand" while I died. It was beautiful... I watched my brain spill out of my ears, and tasted the delicious lack of oxygen which immediately precedes physical death. I was given a "sample" of the endogenous tryptamine which only a mortal jolt can stimulate. "All in good time!" I was told, while morbidly anticipating my own demise, and the subsequent return to my "home".

These episodes were interspersed with moments of perfect clarity. I could look out my window, see cars, almost but not quite tell time, and entertain a relatively coherent and interesting conversation. I tried to vocalize my thoughts regarding ingression of metaphor into our "reality" but it was fruitless. *I* knew how such things worked, and while trying to explain how everything was a metaphor, I became entangled in the fractal pastime of counting how many metaphors I was using to explain metaphors. When I realized that counting was another metaphor, the tally hit "infinity" and I laughed and gave up. Many minutes were whittled away in such games.

Rarely in my many episodes of psychedelic bliss have I had such intellectual clarity while digesting such alien information. Indeed syrian rue is (to quote gracie and zarkov) an "Indo-European plant TEACHER". I look forward to trying it orally.

Many thanks to the VPL member who materialized in my mountain town and layed a couple ounces of rue on me, only to dissapear as quickly. You know who you are...