“My ego felt an absolute lack of any perception looming, which is what we the singular consciousness must experience without churning out subjective consciousnesses, and its attempt to conceive of this experience (or lack thereof) resulted in a feeling of complete and utter annihlation. The thought of no linear perception scares the willies out of us! As is only natural. Before ultimately resigning to my fate of eternal nothingness, I perceived myself joining with, or rather emerging into the oneness, and then there was nothing as my ego dissolved entirely. I seemed to blink and it was suddenly 30 minutes later and I was down considerably. This experience grew my doubts, at first, because I had been shown that self-awareness was a joke, an illusion, and completely not real, and that beyond this dream we call life, there is absolute nothingness. But I've come to realize that this perception was my ego's last desperate thought before it was annihlated due to waking up from the dream. But our consciousness lives on. It makes me wonder if that's the whole reason that this 'consciousness machine' exists, so that the universe isn't an entirely empty place, lacking any perception of anything.
Now ketamine is the thing that really started to tie this together. During my two excursions on it, which were both considered peak experiences due to their extreme dissolution of my ego and completely mindblowing nature. During my ketamine travels, I experienced myself not even remotely as the human being who is writing this, but in fact as the only consciousness in existence. Strangely, it was as if that consciousness were segmented, communicating with itself about things I can't remember but which carried grave importance. It was as if there was a part of whatever process that I interpreted as sliding around gray tunnels was no longer fully automated since I was aware of it, and other parts of myself were guiding this part along so that it wouldn't glitch. The fate of all perception seemed to rest on this, in such a way that if I were to screw it up, the past, present, and future would cease to have ever been. As anyone who has really done ketamine knows, I really can't explain this too well, but the experience speaks for itself.
Anyway, I just felt like writing this up because it was occupying my mind. It took a lot of experience, many years, and a lot of sober reflection to arrive to this point in my understanding, and to be able to link it all together coherently. I feel as if I've reached a milestone. However, I'm not arrogant enough to believe that my exploration is finished, or that I have the whole picture. I'm quite sure I as a human never will. But I derive great comfort and joy when going through my life in my sure knowledge of the kind of existence we lead.
I became aware during this where the root of all of human neuroticism lies - the fear of non-being. I know this to be true at some deeply subconscious level even if I don't understand exactly why anymore the next day. It was as if, when each level was peeled away, some instinctual neurotic response to it bubbled forth from my ego, a denial, a refusal to believe. And then it was systematically shut down, only to be replaced by another, in a neverending torrent of vicious thoughts that only stopped when I let myself cease (die). It was very profound because I truly let myself go, accepting that I might never return. I simply had no choice. I experienced that extremely abstract and psychedelic idea that we are all part of everything, but everything is infinite and infinity is really nothing. Very mathematical in nature, which is why it was so scary - it was shown to be true repeatedly, irrefutably. Infinity and zero can be shown to be two sides of the same coin in higher math - I know because I have a math major I graduated with.
I didn't even know it was possible to get so far out of the rabbit hole. I'd only ever gotten as far as the god-energy, the oneness. But this time, I saw beyond even that, into a vast nothingness that I can't even conceive of, a timeless place. I saw that even god, even the lifeforce, all of existence, is just a dream, a blip in the eye of an even larger pattern, an even infinitely larger pattern that I could only conceive of as Unbeing... and so it goes. It seemed that I was offered a glimpse to what lies at the heart of EVERYTHING, even life itself. And it was absolutely TERRIFYING. I should mention that, during the peak experience, I often couldn't differentiate between having closed and open eyes. I simply wasn't 'seeing' anymore in the usual sense; all I could see was all of reality unfolding, collapsing, with nothing to hold itself up. Infinitely expanding and infinitely collapsing.
I transcended the visuals... I saw themes from my original experience but this time I wasn't even aware of visuals during the peak. I became them, lived them, entered into full-on hallucinations that I was unable to distinguish from reality.
It was as if I entered that thought loop through listening to the music with eyes closed. Once I was in there, it was impossible to get out. It was literally a neverending thought loop of irrefutable logic, the end result of which I was trying desperately not to get to even though I knew what it was - unbeing. This was very real and serious. It makes me think about what the mushrooms have shown me, as I was so sure I knew what death would bring - a merging with the lifeforce, an ego shrinking until you became part of everything. Although, I think I still believe that. It still fits as the 2C-E world I saw was another level out in the vast, infinite pattern of existence. It's just that the 2C-E was trying to bring me beyond that, to a place that humans were not meant to go or see.”
