Time Traveller

First, a word of warning. The experiment described below utilized a MAO inhibitor, Syrian Rue. Please be careful and read up on the possible interactions of MAO inhibitors with other substances.

Second, I hope the below will encourage other explorers to attempt to reach the dimensions described, as the experience was one of the strangest voyages into inner space which I have ever taken. I would _strongly_ suggest working up to the dose described, as the mushroom can exhibit a ferocious side which I have only been able to come to terms with after experimenting with these levels of doses many times. Actually, it's rather difficult to ever come to terms with these phenomena, and a good trip sitter is priceless--albeit unnecessary after a certain point as one can proceed to states which leave one completely alone in the universe of one's own creation. On to the story....

I am writing 5 days after this experience. Though the mushroom has proven a powerful teacher in the past, this was the oddest voyage I have yet undertaken. Though it seems a given in any discussion of these realms, I must note that my words will be able to only convey a pale reflection of the truth of the events which transpired.

I woke at around 10 a.m. and prepared for my trip by relaxing, meditating, and taking a warm bath. I ground 3 grams of Syrian Rue seeds in a coffee grinder and placed the contents in gel capsules. I ate these capsules a half hour before ingesting approximately 6 grams of dried psilocybe cubensis mushrooms. The Rue by itself is generally active and seems to generate a light buzzing feeling in my body which is not at all unpleasant. After ingesting the mushrooms, my trip sitter and I walked outside--I had felt like a short walk before pure zaniness set in, but after walking about half a block from my house, I decided I had better go back inside. This is where things began to get strange.

I have noticed on several other trips a phenomenon which would be difficult to verify experimentally, but which, when it occurs, scares me a great deal due to its peculiarity. Peculiar isn't the right word, really, as it seems that the universe or timestream I claim to have knowledge of is only one of many which intersect and which one can gain access to under the influence of psilocybin. The sort of experience which occurred generally will be rarely spoken of or dismissed as the ramblings of a tripped out psychonaut, but the reason it is difficult to talk of such things is that such ramblings force one to reconsider one's culturally inherited metaphysical beliefs. Perhaps after this short prologue I should share what has occurred in the past and what occurred on this trip: The phenomenon is best described as a breakthrough from another dimension into ours of "spirits" which talk to me personally through the medium of other people. I will speak more of this a bit later, but usually, before a very intense trip, it seems that messages are given to me--synchronicities which seem deliberately sent from a gang of wacky hipsters who wish to show me that they exist. This past weekend while walking back into the house, I noticed two things--first, a man walking down the street mumbling inanities out loud which seemed to be directed to me, and second, a transexual who appeared right in front of my house before I went back in to it. I live near a mental hospital in a fairly liberal college town, so seeing these kinds of things isn't really that surprising for me usually. It would take an entire chapter in a book to describe why I felt an experience of synchronicity here, but I'll explain briefly. I felt as if--especially looking at these small events afterwards--the tone of my trip was being programmed by external forces, and both the seemingly scatterbrained man and the transexual had appeared so as to show me exactly how I was going to feel in the coming hours. As I think about this more, it's as if "they" know that I am ready to take off into hyperspace and send reassurances that everything will be alright. I was only outside for about a minute, too, making these appearances in such a short time period all the more strange. These hipsters, galactic travellers from the end of time, seem to be talking incessantly in our reality, it's just that we rarely take note.

I went back into the house and laid on my bed. I would not move from there for approximately 7 hours. I usually have 10 to 11 hour trips from the rue + mushroom combination, though as I grow more acquainted with these realms, I am definitely down quite a bit after 7 to 8 hours with the last 2 or 3 hours consisting of general visual enhancement and clarity of thought. Each trip seems to grow in scope as I learn to navigate through already familiar ground towards new realms of experience. I will add another warning here--please work up to this experience, as the experiences I will next describe can and will throw virtually everyone who undergoes them into a state of confusion for at least several days, if not weeks, months and years, as one attempts to grapple with the ideas presented. The rue effectively doubles the intensity of the trip and a sitter is really a very, _very_ good idea, as one's normal ties to "reality" completely integrate. I normally try to meditate a bit every day and this really helps in charting the realms of my mind with shrooms. Ideally, each trip is for me a long meditation which I try to direct somewhat. Rarely can I do this with any success--in fact, I don't think I have yet, though I am definitely progressing to states which could be described as more and more "out there" just by repeatedly making high dose voyages. Each trip for me now increases in novelty, as I learn to navigate through familiar territory. I started with a psychoanalytic phase, wherein I examined a thought which arose from the void of my self. I get the strange sense as I examine this phenomena more closely that these thoughts which arose during this portion of the trip are phenomenologically related to both angels and demons in Christian belief systems. A thought arises from the void which is the self, is examined, and is either granted more energy to instantiate itself in material form through word use and action or is left to circle its way back into the void. It seems quite easy to personify each of these thoughts, as the time dilation which occurs when tripping allows one to examine single words and thoughts for long periods of time. Positively energized words--the "Word of God"--are personified as angels, as they carry "God's Word" to his Son, which is symbolically each of us. Prometheus visits each of us--imbues each of us with a flicker of light from the Sun which is God or Reality. Forgive me for so rapidly combining metaphors, but I find them all beautiful in helping to explain what I was feeling. Those thoughts which lead one away from God-Truth-Reality are demons, devils which have fallen away from God. After about an hour of examining various thoughts--both positive and negative past thoughts and deeds were considered--my sitter turned on the Fourplay cd. We sat and talked a bit--it was more like playing around, as I felt just as a child does when creating imaginary worlds for him or herself. The music was perfect. Let me rephrase that. It was _beyond_ perfect. For those of you who haven't heard this cd, imagine the scene from the movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the characters are all sitting at the Restaurant at the end of time. Next imagine being able to sit at that restaurant for eternity with the one you most love while listening to the most blissfully hip music one can imagine. Another good way to get a hold on this feeling is to imagine oneself to have died and gone to another dimension wherein one can reflect on one's past life for as long as one wishes without interruption or emotional attachment to the events of that prior life.

After some time of the above--I believe I listened to the entire cd--I asked my sitter to turn the music off, as I was increasingly becoming detached from reality. I could look around the room, but it was not "mine". I could examine my body, but it also was not "mine". My pupils were, I was told, at this point almost completely dilated. This was perhaps around the 4 hour point of the trip. The next two to three hours were to be the oddest I have ever experienced. I recall stating at this point that "I was receiving too much information too quickly." The light is difficult to look into for long periods of time.

I find that as I navigate the realms of my mind while tripping that I can more rapidly now progress beyond the psychoanalytic stage of the trip toward those states I seek. Once the territory is mapped, I prefer to explore new realms, but am not allowed into those realms until I fully understand (in some sense at least) the previous realms. It's as if to progress to the most intensely blissful and oddly idiosyncratic states, one must leap over the pitfalls of clinging to the notion that one's body represents one's true self. Once this notion is abandoned, once the current instantiation of self is seen to be ephemeral, one can leap from one's culturally bound assumptions as to the nature of reality to examine a universe which is strange beyond belief. This clinging to my current ego can be represented as a sort of cliff overlooking an ocean, which I must jump over with full faith in the ability of my mind to hold it's own in the waters which lie below. This is a very difficult stage to deal with for me, as I often believe that I have died--which, in a sense, is true. I am completely alone at this point. No sitter can help to talk me "down" from the feeling that I have just become the universe. The clear blowing wind of madness has set in, though this madness is viewed as madness only by my previous ego--I have been deluded by this ego into thinking that it (the ego) truly exists. I have truly become sane by dropping the illusion that this state is insanity, as those in consensus reality would hold.

I have no fears now. I have left the vehicle of my current ego and the clear blowing wind of the Void is all that exists. My sitter attempts to speak to me to ask how things are--I can't understand a word she says as "I", at this point, am not the ego which lies on the bed, but am everything at everytime. I have the feeling that perhaps I have really gone too far this time, and will never be able to return to her world. I somehow "know" that this time I will not come back. The first time I experienced this state was several months earlier on a similar dose of mushrooms, though I was terrified by it then, as I did not understand anything that was happening to me. As I become more familiar with the Void, the explosion of my mind into what appears madness is the sole state I strive for, as it is the surest form of sanity. I am sitting on a mountain overlooking the universe, and my creation is good. _I_ am the creator of the heavens and the earth, _I_ am the creator of what I take to be reality. (This state ties in closely with the earlier described synchronistic event with the man on the street muttering unintelligibly.)

The preceding has been fairly often spoken of in literature surrounding psychedelic use. What happened next is not as often spoken of, though McKenna's essay in The Archaic Revival "A Conversation over Saucers" closely approximates what I experienced. After hanging out on the mountain top of the universe for some time--I have no idea how long--I began to feel an intimation that "they" or "it" was coming for me. "They" were "the Other" which was part of my true self, and words can only approximately describe the sense that the issue of what we would take to be an extraterrestrial is far more complex than most think. Either the mushroom is an extraterrestrial or the extraterrestrial is myself. I suddenly "knew" that I was a hip asexual (hence the odd feeling after seeing the transexual on the street--neither quite man nor woman) galactic space ranger from the year three million sixty five thousand (or thereabouts :) ) who was sent to earth to observe the happenings of late 20th century America. The mushroom was periodically "sent" to me (or, alteratively, myself qua space traveller sent it to myself) so that I might either remember that I was a traveller or so that I might be able to report back to others of my kind. I was living in two times simultaneously--there was me as regular human existing as the vehicle for me as space traveller. (Further, after having thought about this more, I recall the distinct feeling that I also existed simultaneously at all points in time, though I currently _choose_ to forget these other selves so that I can best go about the business which must be looked after in my present form. Dennis McKenna, in Terrance's True Hallucinations, seems to exhibit signs of this knowledge--as if he had been moving through time.) This space traveller could invoke the existence of a saucer of sorts which would allow him/her/it to travel through space/time. The saucer was there as experientially real, though I did not directly see anything in particular. I was having visions at this point of my sitter lying next to me accepting that I had to go travel. She knew that my true purpose was to go into the saucer, and though she would miss me, she knew that it was calling me in particular at this point in my life to travel back through the universe. The saucer was non-physical, though it could appear as a material object in my reality. I was a time traveller and just had to remember that this was so.

Gradually, the feeling of the presence of the saucer left, though I was still experiencing myself as this space traveller. I had no ties to my old self. I looked around my room and felt disoriented. It was someone else's room. I did not know who I was or where I was or what I had done. I did not even recall having taken anything. It was as if I as space traveller had just made the trip down to earth and had to discover what was expected of me in the body which was my current vehicle on earth. This feeling lasted for at least an hour and I was completely disoriented. During this period, I did not recall at _all_ (I emphasize this because it was as if I _was_ the traveller, as if my travelling experience was expected since that was my true self) who I was. I sat and questioned my sitter. "What century is it? Where am I? Did I just do something? Who am I supposed to be?" It took at least a full half hour before I could even feel somewhat of a tie to the body lying in that room. My sitter did not understand why I, her closest friend, would not know where I was or even who I was. I gradually settled down into my old self after another hour or so, but it was as if I had to bring the memories of who I used to be out of a storage unit in my mind so that I could return to normal 20th century consensus reality. I came down quickly and contemplated the experience for several hours before going to sleep. This was without a doubt the most peculiar voyage I have ever taken, and I would strongly recommend that those interested in such features of the mind as are revealed with the help of psilocybin read or re-read McKenna's articles in The Archaic Revival which pertain to saucers and extraterrestrials. May you trip long and hard my fellow time travellers.