The Breathers

A while back I had an interesting non-visual experiance. I had
taken 3 half gram gel caps of P. Cubinsis (PF variety, home grown).
They had been in storage for a couple of months, so I wasn't
sure what to expect.

I sat down to watch some TV while I waited for the shrooms to
come on. After about an hour I started to feel a bit strange,
a little jumpy and clammy, a pretty good indication that I
was on my way. My mind started to wander, I had trouble
concentrating on any task, they TV began to annoy me, so I
turned it off. I had not planned any activities for the
evening, I was just going to lurk about the house and see
what happened.

I headed for the dining room to lay on the carpet for a while.
On a previous trip I had great success with merging with the
carpet and morphing into a section of landscape, so I thought
I would give it another try. This trip was different tho,
my mind was wandering and there were very few visuals. I kept
hearing voices from the past, clear as a bell, speaking about
things I had done many years past. Interesting, but not that
interesting.

I decided to try some sensory deprivation, so I headed towards
the master bathroom. As I stepped into the long, darkened
hallway to the bedroom I was supprised to see the paritally
open door at the end rush off into the distance. I stood
their stairing at it, it was very distant and very near at
the same time. The shadows cast across the surface of the
door from inside the room started to boil, and at the same
moment I felt my arms lenghening, stretching down to my
ankles and becomming weightless. My whole body started
wavering a bit, but not as pronounced as the growing arms.

The door settled down to its proper location and my limbs
returned to their customary proportions after a bit, and
I made my way to the bathroom. I started the water and
noticed that I had a remarkable amount of control over
the intensity of the trip. With some mental effort I
could force the trip down to a level 1 for extended
periods, or push it up to a kind of strange level 2 or
better. When the shrooms where 'activated' I could see
a kind of dynamic triangular fractal pattern overlayed
on things. This seems to be a recuring theme with me,
the collapsing, rotating, fractal triangles.

I lit some candles and turned off the lights and slid
into the body-temperature water. I had put some bath
bubbles into the water thinking they would be interesting
to watch, they were not. I submerged as much of my body
as I was able, and allowed the water to cover all of my
face, save my nose. This required a strange yoga-like
position, with my knees bent double, elbows behind me and
head tilted back at a steep angle (I'd sure like to have
a big bathtub). Curiously I think the odd position added
to the experiances.

I allowed my mind to drift into a bizaar world of very
non-visual hallucinations filled with the surreal sounds of
the plumbing and my breating. The sensory deprivation and
lack of visuals led me to a place where I had no physical
being, I seemed to be a creature of pure thought, floating
through an infinite darkness filled with strange sounds and
half-formed thoughts.

I slowly became aware of other beings in the darkness, all
of us engaged in some kind of ritual akin to some kind of
vision quest. Its very difficult to put into words, but
the sound of breathing (which was an alien concept to me,
having no physical body at the time) was central to the
ritual, all of 'the breathers' performing the ritual were
in control of a similar breathing entity.

At this point the cooling water and stinging of the soap
in my eyes brought me (most of the way) back to reality.
I got out and pulled the plug. As I waited for the water
to drain I started looking at the candles, still burning
on the sink. I found that I could stare directly into
the flame from above (I was wearing glasses, so the hot
air streaming up from the flame didn't fry my eyeball).
The small area of light that I saw would normally have
been painfully bright (the room was dark and my eyes were
quite dilated), but I had no trouble looking into its
heart. What I saw was breathtaking, to fantastic for
words. It was the definition of purity. Aware that
I would regret any perment damage to my retinas in the
morning I only allowed this to go on for about 30 seconds
or so.

I tried standing in the hallway some more, and various
other things to encourage strange things to occur, but
the most interesting thing the rest of the night was
the cat washing my hair and face as I attempted to lie
on the floor some more. This tickled tremendously, so
I was quite distracted. I pushed her away several times,
but she is very persistant. I finally just went to bed,
the trip was done.

Over all it lasted about 5 hours and had some interesting
parts, but I was in control the entire time, and somewhere
in the back of my mind I was aware of exactly what the
reality of the situation was. An interesting trip.

---eof---