headphoneperson
Rising Star
Here is a report from yesterday of my first steps into hyperspace:
Oh if only I could somehow recreate that experience in words…I laughed out loud for about 5 minutes after returning; laughed out of utter astonishment and disbelief at the immense power and beauty of what I had just experienced. And now as I reflect on it, it is clear that describing the experience to someone who hasn't also been there is indeed like describing the color red to a blind person -- it can only be done by triangulation; by metaphor, at best. So McKenna's rocket metaphor may be apt, but I now understand that it is apt only in the sense that it is LIKE that physical sensation but in reality is in terms of perception, emotion and cognition instead -- a breathtaking acceleration of profound and beautiful alteration of the quaila -- a blooming, roiling, overflowing and full-throttled roar of consciousness and the sensorium to the degree that falling off a cliff or, indeed, being strapped to a rocket might be like physically. Wow, but it was even so much more than that…I had no idea such a thing was even possible.
Here are the facts of the thing: I've had the pure sparkling white crystals -- a full 375 mg yield from a 50+ g helping of powdered MHRB -- in a small glass dish for the past 5 days now. I've been looking at them every opportunity in anticipation of the right moment which only came yesterday morning. So I loaded a newly purchased Glass VG with 5 screens and a layer of parsley and about 13 mg of spice with another layer of dried parsley over that. I sat down and tried to relax which was rather impossible given my anticipation and excitement: what would it really be like? what of the dozens and dozens of experiential reports I've read, good and bad? There was nothing to do but light it.
Trying to be very careful about not burning the spice, I gently pulled on the pipe with the lighter held well above the ceramic filter (despite a pathetically small flame) and saw a vague something possibly resembling vapor but wasn't sure. I then began to taste a terrible hint of plastic. The dreaded plastic taste! So the reports were not exaggerated?! Was the spice contaminated with lye? Could it really be that noxious? When I finished the pull and extinguished the lighter, the lighter continued to burn. My lighter was actually on fire. The top of it, being plastic, was melting. It was actually melting; thus the hit of plastic vapor. God damned lighter! Additionally, I suddenly got a horrible cramp in my right shoulder and noticed the lighter was now not even usable. Shaking off the cramp and not feeling anything even resembling what I'd been led to expect, I got up, found some matches and tried one of those for a second go. This time I got a tiny bit more vapor but not before the match burned down. I realized too that I now had a rather dull headache and a very sore throat, no doubt both due to the plastic vapors I had just inhaled from my melted lighter. I was now viciously disappointed and angry and decided to go do work instead for the rest of the day and try and ignore the nagging questions: did I just get conned? was my collection of crystals some other inert, useless substance? was all my work and anticipation a colossal waste of time, money, etc.?
In the evening I went back for a second try, with a dim light on and in utter silence. I reloaded the GVG with one screen (5 screens were impossible to work with) and a small bed of dried parsley on top of that and about 20 mg of spice on top of that. Having bought a brand new lighter with a metal top and an electric spark -- as well as a decent size flame -- I was determined to use a lot more flame -- burnt spice be damned. I sat for several minutes trying to capture a moment of calm and certitude. Despite some skepticism left over from the a.m. disaster, I again had tremendous anxiety, still not knowing quite what to expect. My heart rate was going up in anticipation and it was impossible to truly relax, after months of reading and researching and gathering equipment and extracting and…this was it! There was again nothing to do but light up, come what will -- there was no way to otherwise prepare; there was no way to know…
I drew the flame a bit deeper into the ceramic GVG filter and instantly saw the spice melt into the parsley and the glass pipe fill with white vapor. I began to feel it in my lungs -- and it wasn't harsh in any way, no 'plastic' taste whatsoever, no urge to cough, no sting or irritation, nothing -- smoother by miles than the Camel straights I used to chain smoke all those years ago. There was just the feel of something clearly in my lungs. A lot in my lungs. In fact, with a bit of trepidation, I stopped the hit before I even needed to and pulled the rest of the vapor in, set the pipe down and leaned back in my chair with my feet up, closed my eyes and relaxed.
Then I felt it. Holding in the hit I felt the pins-and-needles and the audio 'buzz' people have talked about (felt it, not heard it?) and then I knew I was a goner; I knew as though an enormous curtain was being furled back that there was no doubt this was indeed IT. And as I exhaled, things went really really REALLY weird and beautiful and colorful and crazy and…and you really had to be there. As I peaked, everything I could see with eyes open was multiplied and electrified and so impossibly beautiful. There was little distinction between eyes open and eyes closed at that point. I now don't quite remember some of the details (and there were so many details!). There was some sort of machine doing some unknown thing, and there were corridors and flash-bulb explosions of rainbows and strands of light and hints of Mayan architecture and other impossible things and there was some recognition at some point that I had just briefly lost my self -- had briefly un-become or come undone for a moment which was a bit frightening, and time became unfathomable. The whole experience was simply so enormous, so immersive and total that any hackneyed descriptors like 'high' or 'fucked up' were pitiful non-sequiturs. Physically it was perhaps a bit heavy because I noticed my heart was racing at one point; and there were moments when I felt myself returning back 'here' only to be hurtled again into the thick of the fractal chaos; this electric, encompassing psychedelia just kept washing over me, washing me back up onto these shores, I suppose, now a rather different creature. And then I just started to laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh…
The only point of reference for something like this that I really have are my many recent sallies with smoking salvia. I have kept copious notes of each journey with salvia and even though I cannot remember -- in the very literal sense that I am unable to reconstruct the events because 'I' was destroyed by the experience -- it is clear that saliva engenders utter jaw dropping and wrenching astonishment for me. Existential astonishment. As a point of reference, then, DMT was clearly equal to this in its power -- in its ability to completely obliterate the fabric of the here and now -- but it did so in such a different manner, with such baroque style and class and garish beauty that the two are simply not comparable (not surprising, perhaps, given the different neurochemical mechanisms). I did not feel the utter terror with this DMT experience as I did when I first felt the full force of salvia. Salvia brought me to my knees in astonishment and humility; DMT brought me to my knees in wonder and rapture. This is not to say I don't recognize there is much farther to travel with DMT. It may be, too, that traveling farther brings on the kind of death and terror for me that saliva can; but as such sallies have proven to me over and over, this too can be a very useful thing.
I am filled with awe to be here, to be in the presence of this experience, to have been conscious for something so beautiful.
Oh if only I could somehow recreate that experience in words…I laughed out loud for about 5 minutes after returning; laughed out of utter astonishment and disbelief at the immense power and beauty of what I had just experienced. And now as I reflect on it, it is clear that describing the experience to someone who hasn't also been there is indeed like describing the color red to a blind person -- it can only be done by triangulation; by metaphor, at best. So McKenna's rocket metaphor may be apt, but I now understand that it is apt only in the sense that it is LIKE that physical sensation but in reality is in terms of perception, emotion and cognition instead -- a breathtaking acceleration of profound and beautiful alteration of the quaila -- a blooming, roiling, overflowing and full-throttled roar of consciousness and the sensorium to the degree that falling off a cliff or, indeed, being strapped to a rocket might be like physically. Wow, but it was even so much more than that…I had no idea such a thing was even possible.
Here are the facts of the thing: I've had the pure sparkling white crystals -- a full 375 mg yield from a 50+ g helping of powdered MHRB -- in a small glass dish for the past 5 days now. I've been looking at them every opportunity in anticipation of the right moment which only came yesterday morning. So I loaded a newly purchased Glass VG with 5 screens and a layer of parsley and about 13 mg of spice with another layer of dried parsley over that. I sat down and tried to relax which was rather impossible given my anticipation and excitement: what would it really be like? what of the dozens and dozens of experiential reports I've read, good and bad? There was nothing to do but light it.
Trying to be very careful about not burning the spice, I gently pulled on the pipe with the lighter held well above the ceramic filter (despite a pathetically small flame) and saw a vague something possibly resembling vapor but wasn't sure. I then began to taste a terrible hint of plastic. The dreaded plastic taste! So the reports were not exaggerated?! Was the spice contaminated with lye? Could it really be that noxious? When I finished the pull and extinguished the lighter, the lighter continued to burn. My lighter was actually on fire. The top of it, being plastic, was melting. It was actually melting; thus the hit of plastic vapor. God damned lighter! Additionally, I suddenly got a horrible cramp in my right shoulder and noticed the lighter was now not even usable. Shaking off the cramp and not feeling anything even resembling what I'd been led to expect, I got up, found some matches and tried one of those for a second go. This time I got a tiny bit more vapor but not before the match burned down. I realized too that I now had a rather dull headache and a very sore throat, no doubt both due to the plastic vapors I had just inhaled from my melted lighter. I was now viciously disappointed and angry and decided to go do work instead for the rest of the day and try and ignore the nagging questions: did I just get conned? was my collection of crystals some other inert, useless substance? was all my work and anticipation a colossal waste of time, money, etc.?
In the evening I went back for a second try, with a dim light on and in utter silence. I reloaded the GVG with one screen (5 screens were impossible to work with) and a small bed of dried parsley on top of that and about 20 mg of spice on top of that. Having bought a brand new lighter with a metal top and an electric spark -- as well as a decent size flame -- I was determined to use a lot more flame -- burnt spice be damned. I sat for several minutes trying to capture a moment of calm and certitude. Despite some skepticism left over from the a.m. disaster, I again had tremendous anxiety, still not knowing quite what to expect. My heart rate was going up in anticipation and it was impossible to truly relax, after months of reading and researching and gathering equipment and extracting and…this was it! There was again nothing to do but light up, come what will -- there was no way to otherwise prepare; there was no way to know…
I drew the flame a bit deeper into the ceramic GVG filter and instantly saw the spice melt into the parsley and the glass pipe fill with white vapor. I began to feel it in my lungs -- and it wasn't harsh in any way, no 'plastic' taste whatsoever, no urge to cough, no sting or irritation, nothing -- smoother by miles than the Camel straights I used to chain smoke all those years ago. There was just the feel of something clearly in my lungs. A lot in my lungs. In fact, with a bit of trepidation, I stopped the hit before I even needed to and pulled the rest of the vapor in, set the pipe down and leaned back in my chair with my feet up, closed my eyes and relaxed.
Then I felt it. Holding in the hit I felt the pins-and-needles and the audio 'buzz' people have talked about (felt it, not heard it?) and then I knew I was a goner; I knew as though an enormous curtain was being furled back that there was no doubt this was indeed IT. And as I exhaled, things went really really REALLY weird and beautiful and colorful and crazy and…and you really had to be there. As I peaked, everything I could see with eyes open was multiplied and electrified and so impossibly beautiful. There was little distinction between eyes open and eyes closed at that point. I now don't quite remember some of the details (and there were so many details!). There was some sort of machine doing some unknown thing, and there were corridors and flash-bulb explosions of rainbows and strands of light and hints of Mayan architecture and other impossible things and there was some recognition at some point that I had just briefly lost my self -- had briefly un-become or come undone for a moment which was a bit frightening, and time became unfathomable. The whole experience was simply so enormous, so immersive and total that any hackneyed descriptors like 'high' or 'fucked up' were pitiful non-sequiturs. Physically it was perhaps a bit heavy because I noticed my heart was racing at one point; and there were moments when I felt myself returning back 'here' only to be hurtled again into the thick of the fractal chaos; this electric, encompassing psychedelia just kept washing over me, washing me back up onto these shores, I suppose, now a rather different creature. And then I just started to laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh…
The only point of reference for something like this that I really have are my many recent sallies with smoking salvia. I have kept copious notes of each journey with salvia and even though I cannot remember -- in the very literal sense that I am unable to reconstruct the events because 'I' was destroyed by the experience -- it is clear that saliva engenders utter jaw dropping and wrenching astonishment for me. Existential astonishment. As a point of reference, then, DMT was clearly equal to this in its power -- in its ability to completely obliterate the fabric of the here and now -- but it did so in such a different manner, with such baroque style and class and garish beauty that the two are simply not comparable (not surprising, perhaps, given the different neurochemical mechanisms). I did not feel the utter terror with this DMT experience as I did when I first felt the full force of salvia. Salvia brought me to my knees in astonishment and humility; DMT brought me to my knees in wonder and rapture. This is not to say I don't recognize there is much farther to travel with DMT. It may be, too, that traveling farther brings on the kind of death and terror for me that saliva can; but as such sallies have proven to me over and over, this too can be a very useful thing.
I am filled with awe to be here, to be in the presence of this experience, to have been conscious for something so beautiful.
