Back in 1964, when psychedelic exploration was still legal, I obtained three doses of ibogaine. I had previously been do-ing extensive exploration with LSD, peyote, DMT, and mescaline, both in my laboratory as chief alchemist for the League of Spiritual Discovery, and internally on my own quest for illumination.
Always on the lookout for new and effective ways to access God-consciousness, I was eager to try ibogaine. I had heard fascinating stories about ibogainefrom the older friends who had turned me on to my first psychedelic experience with mescaline. One told of a parade of cosmic proportions. Another described a pageant of incredible detail and completely realistic visions, like watching a movie. These were some of the tantalizing descriptions presented to me about ibogaine.
LSD tends to magnify, intensify and empower the vision of a timeless moment. DMT, on the other end of the tryptamine spectrum, tends to transport one into a totally “other” realm, replete with elaborate and intensely colorful designs, strange guardian creatures, and visitations from divine messengers.
Having retrieved rich treasures of spiritual secrets from the DMT realms, I was intrigued by the descriptions of ibogaine. Looking through my anthropology books, I found passages describing members of the Bwiti cult in central Africa using Tabernanthe iboga, a traditional plant source for ibogaine, in ceremonies to visit their ancestors and receive instructions.
In lower doses, ibogaine was said to give hunters the ability to stay motionless for many hours while they became one with the jungle. My two intrepid cosmic companions, Alan and Raymond, and myself were all enthusiastic about trying it. We decided to take it at their flat in Brooklyn Heights—a brownstone building that had fallen into disrepair—that lay on the boundary between the black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods. They had fixed the fireplace and transformed the flat into a psychedelic temple. Now assembled, we discussed the preparations. We had fasted for two days and spent the day before quietly reading, meditating, and doing yoga to ensure the best possible experience. We disconnected the phone and put a “do not disturb, meditation in progress” sign up on the door.
We each took about 800 mg of ibogaine hydrochloride, a chalky white powder with a bitter, earthy taste. We sat on mattresses arranged on a carpet around the fire. We waited one, two, three hours, and nothing happened. The fire burned low, but no one moved to build it up. The shadows grew long and night fell. Simultaneously, we all lay down, as the lethargy that had subtly been coming on grew more intense. I had no desire to move. Everything became silent and still. I felt that I was in a soft, humming, electric cocoon that gave me little “funny bone” shocks if I touched it.
I was in the middle, centered between euphoria and depression. I felt balanced. My sense perceptions were heightened. The little glow from the fire brightened the whole room. My eyes focused in a different way—clear, but taking everything in. And then the room started to spin. It was similar to an alcohol drunkenness, but with no feeling of vertigo or nausea at all. I was glad that I had fasted! The whirling increased and I felt like I was in the center of a pinwheel. Faster and faster it spun and then I was rising like a projectile through the room—great chunks of wall and brick peeling back and falling away in slow motion. I shot up into the stars: a pair of disembodied eyes wandering, searching. I was an essence—a solo awareness flying through the universe, exploring and seeking.
After an immense journey, I came to a planet. It was a sandy yellow color. I was able to project my vision down to it, and I looked around the surface of the planet. It was an inhospitable looking place; with winds strong enough to blow rocks and sand past me. It looked lethally hot and dry. I moved on. Next, I came to a dark green planet. No clouds. No seas. No mountains. It looked as though it were covered with a poisonous mold. I did not want to go any closer. I continued on through the galaxies until I arrived above a whirling vortex that was coalescing into a solar system. I watched a sun and its planets form, and came closer to observe.
I was drawn to one of the middle planets. The fiery liquid surface was cooling and turning from yellow and red to black solids broken by red rivers of lava emitting flames. Slowly, the planet cooled until fumes and vapors veiled the entire surface. As I circled the planet, I sensed a long epoch of torrential rains,as water vapor formed and condensed in the upper atmosphere and fell toward the burning surface, only to evaporate again long before reaching the ground. Eventually, the planet cooled and the rains arrived on the lands below. After what seemed like a long time, the clouds began to clear. I skimmed the planet now, seeing and being everything that I came across. I watched mountain chains rise and volcanoes burst, and everything subside again and again into flat plains and meandering rivers. Time and time again, mountains rose and dissolved and continents appeared and disappeared.
Then this slowed down and I watched the seas and plains. All was sterile—a tan land with smoking volcanoes and no life, yet fecund and ready.As I watched, I then saw life appear. I observed spots of green forming along the seashores. They shot along the banks, forming a green margin and then running up the rivers and tributaries like the veins in a leaf. The barren spaces between these branches of life filled with proliferating plant life. The oceans seemed to be teeming with life and then the first buglike creatures started to crawl out on land. They spread all over, rapidly changing into a variety of insects and strange lobster like creatures. Fern like plants appeared. Vast varieties of life appeared and then disappeared. Elaborate life experiments succeeded one another with awesome complexity.
Then suddenly I was in a steaming swamp-like environment that looked familiar. With a sense of awe and amazement, I realized that I was watching the age of the dinosaur, and it slowly dawned on me that I was witness to the history of life evolving on the planet Earth! With a speed that defies accurate recall, life forms changed again and again, spreading and multiplying in a dizzying array of shapes and colors. Humanoid creatures appeared and soon after were hunting and then farming and building. Civilizations bloomed, spread, and subsided, like bubbles on a fermenting pond. Ages of war and conquest expressed the speed of civilization and technology. I witnessed slaughter and mayhem, torture and mutilation, rape and castration. Man’s inhumanity to man was illustrated in myriad forms. I was there “in” it, feeling it as both the doer and the done to. For what seemed an interminably long time civilization rose and fell in inter-folding waves of creation and brilliant innovations in arts and sciences, only to fall in smoking ruins followed by ages of darkness.
Then, points of light appeared in the dark, interconnecting again in new waves of discovery and renaissance. Undulating waves of humanity were crashing and washing over the planet in a succession of expansion and contraction. As I lived through this flux and change, there arose in me an awareness of the noble and brave potential of humanity and its duty as the intelligent species to protect the forests and life forms and water of the planet. I was experiencing a feeling of the sacred unity with all life. I saw the whole planet’s surface as one organism inhabited by one spirit growing its forests to protect its surface and provide even moisture and temperature for all its creatures.
I saw one species, humanity, as the natural intelligent guardian of all life. I realized that it was humanity’s intelligence that must understand, preserve, and care for the earth’s surface and life that is its nutrient substrate, its womb, and its mother. I felt how all life was precious, interconnecting, and supportive of all other life. I dedicated my spirit not to destroy any part of this puzzle of divine mystery that is the milk of creation. Throughout, there was this balance and acknowledgment of the intertwining of opposites, the negative and positive, the base and noble.
This feeling went through me as a dual aspect of one energy total, deep, and sweeping me away on this immense journey of life’s history. It was like falling in love, so entrancing was this vision.
Hours had gone by. The fire was long gone, yet this movie continued with fantastic detail, one pageant coming on the heels of another. An example of the incredible detail that ibogaine shows: through my constantly available “zoom lens,” I was observing a French king and his retinue during a formal promenade in the gardens of Versailles. Of this large group of people in courtly splendor, one woman’s dress caught my eye. I could see at great distance the hem of her dress, an intricate and tiny embroidery of inter-linked fleur-de-lis. Simultaneously, I could see both immense and complicated scenes and vistas as well as small details with great precision.
On and on it went, and I never moved. This peak experience went on for at least 14 hours. I was watching scenes from the industrial revolution when the sun shown in the window. The movie continued in stronger and weaker waves, dimming in the light and finally fading out, although I know it was still going on at some internal level. Although I could move around now, I was still high and it was still going on 24 hours later. This was a long trip!
