8. Follow-Up and Actual Final Thoughts
This was a bad idea. It's an understatement to say that writing about this hasn't been healthy for me, but maybe it wouldn't have made a difference one way or another. Kindly ignore the section on my "recovery"; that was but a cruel joke. It's starting all over again, and it's so much worse than I expected. My "guides" have effectively been sacked, but that's little comfort when management steps in to work the newly vacant shifts. The torment is practically automated at this point, perfectly optimized for my cognitive hardware and dragging me into oblivion with algorithmic efficiency. The program is rebooting, a fractal chasm in my mind yawning and rippling open wider and wider with every recursion, and I shudder to imagine what is pushing its way through. An eager host of burning eyes and serrated grins and flensing blades await me at every turn, and I now believe at least part of what they've been telling me all along: I am damned, and perhaps always have been.
I don't have anything close to the time, sanity, or willpower to write about the rest of what I've seen; what I've written so far would be a mere preface to everything else I've been through. My experiences may be rare, but not in any way unique. Ever hear stories about the "fried" hippies from the 60s, or know someone who went on a voyage that they never really "came back" from? Yeah, there's a reason for that, and I'm sure I'll soon be joining them. Most people who have been where I've recently been tend not to have the chance to write about it, and maybe that's for the best. Ignorance is bliss, and there's not enough Xanax in the whole 'verse for this ****.
If I sound bitter, it's because I am. Tact and time are luxuries I no longer have much of, so allow me to revise my stance a bit and cut to the chase. For those of you who think that there are no consequences to all this, that's it's harmless for an ant to play around in a den of dragons, that anything that could possibly come your way in these realms is mere subjectivity that can be waved away with the magic wand of your detached enlightenment: risk the consequences of your own arrogance if you must, but
please don't lead others astray. You suburban shamans have no idea what you're toying around with, and less idea of the influence you wield over others.
For every self-proclaimed battle-hardened veteran, there are a thousand even more catastrophically naive, impressionable little wannabees out there who read these awe-inspiring stories with wide-eyed wonder and start to get the idea that they too can play amongst the gods, that all they have to do is take some magic space drugs, say a few prayers, and keep a positive attitude. What a ****ing joke. We're at the bottom of the food chain, folks. Do you have any idea how hilarious all of this is to the things out there watching us? And to the things watching them watch us? It's like watching a monkey play with a spaceship. No, it
is watching a monkey play with a spaceship. "That one thinks she's channeling the Pleiadians again! How adorable. Hey, this one's been laying on the afterburner for way too long, this should be good. Call the dogs to clean up the mess, will you? Ooh, that one found the timeline consolidation button, too bad it never came out of beta. Pass the popcorn, please."
For the more experienced among you who are convinced that this isn't the case, prove it to yourself. You should have the means to reliably induce ego death and, with sufficient practice, enter that ultimate goal of hippie mythology, "becoming one with the universe." First, that is not what is happening, and you are not "becoming" anything. Second, you do have some control over this state, so use it. Take a good, hard look at what is happening closest to our plane of existence, and work your way up from there if you so desire. Look at those silly little barely-housebroken primates beneath you, and their relation to everything else around them. In that moment, it will seem as if all is as it should be, everything that is happening is simply the natural order of things. It can't be subjectively labeled as this or that, it simply
is. But the real revelation comes not during the experience itself, but during integration. In your moment of ascension, your perspective is not your own, this perspective is as much a fabrication as yours is, and you are not the little godling that you think you are. In that moment, your awareness has not ascended;
it has been absorbed.
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At the risk of sounding like a Gothic cliche, I'd like to share this relevant bit of Poe with you:
The Conqueror Worm
Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, 'Man,'
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
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I'll leave you with just a few final thoughts. I wrote all of this under the assumption that most of you are not materialists. It's kind of hard to be after dancing with Dmitri, after all. For those of you who are, most of this writing about higher states of consciousness and otherworldly beings will sound like madness, and you likely interpret any drug experience as purely neurological in nature. That's perfectly reasonable, and in the absence of firsthand experience or more convincing empirical evidence, this is probably the most rational way to interpret things. Good on you; that scientific attitude and cautious skepticism will at least serve you better than my Darwin Award-winning gullibility served me. That doesn't change my message, though. Ignoring all of my interpretations of what's going on, I hope that you can still accept the following:
1) My experiences were, to put it mildly, subjectively bad. Given the option of repeating all of my experiences (which apparently I'm about to, and oh so much more) and undergoing a continuous year of unanesthetized surgery, I would choose the latter without hesitation. I may or may not be delusional, but that's a moot point. Any sentient being, regardless of whatever Ramana Maharshi-like detachment they fancy themselves to possess, would likewise not want to experience these things if they knew what they were like.
2) The consequences I'm suffering now are partially the result of stupid mistakes I've made, but equally the result of random or unfathomable factors that cannot be reliably predicted or mitigated. If you can prove otherwise, I eagerly await your world-shattering doctoral thesis on the subject. The magnitude of these consequences (hint: it doesn't just affect the experiencer) is great enough to render their perceived rarity irrelevant.
3) The most active and vocal members here represent some of the most experienced, and best equipped to deal with these these things (outside of indigenous cultures with millenia of experience, and even they barely knew what they were doing). This is not representative, and most people who use psychedelics exercise less caution and balance than I did, and are much less able to handle these things than you are.
Therefore:
learn from my mistakes, don't do what I did, and
don't encourage newbies to do what you do.
Best of luck to you all. Kids, don't do drugs, don't talk to strangers, look both ways before crossing the road, and, to appropriate an old Shadowrun aphorism, never, never deal with a dragon. And if, in your journeys, you stretch out into the great beyond and happen to witness the 'Elvis sighting' of hyperspace, that fractalline, mandalic specter of the late great Terence McKenna dancing behind closed eyelids, give that old cosmic bard the one-finger salute for me, will you?
Peace out,
J. Sørensen aka NGC_2264
Laugh cause it was fun and exciting; laugh because it is scary and exciting.
