Mystical Mushrooms

One day long ago a friend dropped a small blue capsule and a larger beige one into my hand and said they came from a guy named Ousley living in San Francisco. Little did I know how significant it was at the time. That little blue cap led to my first full blown epiphany. For twelve hours I moved in and out of dimensions of both space and time. The incomprehensible became comprehensible. Realities within realities blossomed and faded. From the infinitely large to the infinitely small, unbounded and unfettered mind flashed across landscapes of incredible depth and beauty. The thought of God never came up; wasn't needed; not relevant. While I wish I could remember more of that experience, two things do stand out that I'll never forget. The first was my journey into the very small world that I relate to now as probably the spiral helix of the DNA molecule. I experienced an incredibly detailed journey back through time and place that every soul has taken, without knowing it, from the very beginning of life on the planet to what we are today. From the simple to the more complex, a living evolutionary memory of the soul's sojourn through all the realms of life. The record is there for the reading; under the right conditions. The second memory came spontaneously and then left me in wonderment. Two very large heavenly bodies, planets it seemed, came so close as to set up a recoil and reverberation under the immense pull of tidal forces. I came to realize the tremendous power associated with gravity. It was much more than an apple falling on Newton's head. Einstein came to understand its energy in formulating his theories. After all, it bends light.

Years later, like many of my other mystical experiences with mushrooms, I had reached the center of what I consider the Soul. The image is of a sun, but unlike the sun in the sky that is too bright to be looked at directly, this usually takes the form of the sun just before setting. It's large, very orange, and easy to look at. Merging brings the wonder of divine union. The rapture of eternal peace and beauty filled my being; the joy and happiness were without bound; the ineffable sense of serenity and contentment over-whelming. This state continued much longer than in previous sessions, which in many cases were all to brief. Plotinus described it as a 'drawing near, and a falling away.' Unfortunately, I have never been able to'will' it to last, so the inevitable descent would begin. With this experience I had attained the feeling of penetration to the interior of my Selfhood, now all at once the sense of a rise took hold. It was instantaneous, like I hadn't moved at all, but I had. Now I was approaching a huge fireball; the core was a seething mass of pure energy. I was in an ecstatic state of sheer wonder; such as to wonder how close I might get. A moment later the answer returned with the raging fury of a fire storm so intense that my soul was held in balance of being drawn in. As I drew back the realization struck me: 'My God, it's a star, and not just any star: I'm poised next to the sun.' The sun at the center of my soul, and the sun circling the center of the galaxy are really the same thing, but at the same time they're not. I was looking into the source of my very being, and without question, my creator. And then I came to realize too that I was at the interface between individual mind and absolute mind.

Entheogens, or in my case psilocybes, provide the pivotal role of interfacing between individual consciousness and universal consciousness. It is the crucial link or conduit that bridge the two at a single point. That point then begins to widen, and both entities slowly merge. As the interface grows, what were initially two now opens into one. It's not just a random happening though, an alignment process between the two takes place. Actually it's more a matter of one aligning itself to the other. This is not a conscious operation, although consciousness is witness to it. It's something like harmonics, such as a violin player and a pianist playing a duet, or a fine tuning between two instruments. I guess one could call it the attainment of a complimentary and unitary state of mind. Another simple analogy might suffice. Think of a small space craft docking with the mother ship; the small craft aligns itself to the larger ship, and locks onto the port. The hatch is opened and the air mixes as one. To experience this phase of the psychic event was an absolute revelation with all the glory and beauty imaginable. With my minds eye I was able to see the outline of the interface where the two became the One, where duality merged into unity. It was not a solid bond, in fact both seemed to be in motion with electromagnetic charges issuing along the line of contact, or at least this is what the symbolism suggested. I had the pleasant ability at the center of the interface to merge in and out at will. In one moment I was myself, a separate thinking entity with all my individual thoughts; as I merged out my self-hood ceased to exist; my individuality gone; my thoughts as unique things ceased to be, given way to absolute thought. Time and space played an interesting part in this experience. While in myself time existed, time flowed, there was past and future, but while merged in unity time ceased, there was no past or future. Everything was in a single instant; what Plotinus called the 'Eternal Now.' In myself space had dimension, there was up and down, limitations existed. Merged in the other, there was no up, no down, no limitation, all was infinite and absolute. This gave rise to another incredible phenomenon; with time suspended and space without boundary omniscience came into full awareness; yes, all things known; no limitations to knowledge. I don't mean just simply raw information such as how many fish are in the sea, but natural processes, such as the flow and interplay of mind, matter, and energy. (I'll talk more about this later). Omnipotence, and omnipresence also became an awesome recognition, but not related to me personally since the I had ceased to be; they were aspects of that great Oneness that was the universe of consciousness. Merging back into my own ego left me with only a memory of being present to it all. But a rush of insights did come, what I call the fall out. This alternating from unity to duality reminded me of cell division or amitosis in biology, the separation of cytoplasm and its playback in reverse. Analogies help but can't convey the psychic reality, such as dimensions of size. My ego might have been the size of a drop of water, but the Godhead, or the One, an ocean without boundary; limitless, infinite. It can't be imagined, only experienced, and even then the memory only a poor cramped image. I had lost sense of real time. It might have been minutes, but it seemed like hours. Everything was so blissfully coordinated, and choreographed, that it didn't matter.

For more about mystical experience go to www.soultrek.com/gateway.html.