[The Folded Continuum]
I set the pipe on the table between us. I told myself that I was on my way, and to be brave. I reminded myself that I'd been around the psychedelic block a time or two before, and that there wasn't much the world could throw at me that would be weirder than anything I'd thus far undergone. When I could no longer hold the smoke, I exhaled heavily and took a few deep breaths of clean, mountain air. Then I waited. My partner had told me that the stuff came on pretty quickly, but my head seemed still to be quite firmly on my shoulders. Something, though; something seemed to be…
As suddenly as if it had been the inception of time itself, I realized that I was, and had been for some while, elsewhere, or elsewhen, or somehow seriously otherwise. Sight and vision had been translated into another sense and sensation, as if hearing and sound had become taste and scent, except that this new sense was one I'd never exercised. The world, the space-time continuum, had been folded through its four dimensions from a point in the vicinity of my heart, as if to be cut into some galaxy-spanning paper snowflake.
…my heart was at the center of the world, and though the world was stranger than I'd ever understood, more crazily and elaborately folded, I was absolutely balanced. It was nice to know.
[Becoming Light]
I inhaled one breath full and held it in for about 20 seconds. I was lying on my bed on my side, and as soon as I exhaled, I felt pressure all around, as if I was under a hundred of feet of water. Then, suddenly, I popped into ground-zero reality, the right side of my body opened up and I connected down through the bed, through the floor and foundation of the house into some immense planetary network, teaming with a multitude of various types consciousness and intelligence. There was a definite sense of other beings around me. I noticed that I was a gravity well, sucking all sound and light around me into a vortex that had formed in the cusp of my curled body. I was channeling everything back into the nebulae that I had contacted, I was a receptor and realized that we all are. We as humans are mere sense organs for the planet. My consciousness then flattened and spread, like dough under a rolling pin. It then began to separate into 5 distinct autonomous portions, each one a completely separate and full version of myself. I experienced them all simultaneously. At this point I kind of freaked, not expecting such a drastic shift in perception. I thought, "this is way too much! I wasn't expecting to dissolve and break apart like this!". I opened my eyes and sat up. Optic ballets of light and various shapes danced everywhere around my room, it was alive. I noticed that all matter is conscious. I could hear my heart beating.
…My consciousness and physical body began twisting and stretching like some bizarre silly putty being pulled though a cosmic taffy machine. I had visions of lives playing out, representing the whole of human experience, love, war, riot and everything in between. I could clearly see my entire biological history, the chain of life. I had somehow accessed my genetic and cellular memory
[Holy Sombreros!]
After putting the diluted essence into my mouth, I turned off the lights and got into bed (the safest place to park my body when I will be traveling without it). The effects came on quickly. I passed through level three without seeing very many closed eye visuals but then abruptly found myself in some town in Mexico staring at 'two brothers' (I was sure they were brothers although not twins). They both were wearing sombreros.
The next thing I knew was that I had a 'karmic link' to both brothers at once. But then, when I rationally questioned that I could be somehow linked to two Mexican brothers whom I did not know, to my utter astonishment (Salvia definitely has a weird sense of humor) I became their sombreros!
Then Mexico vanished and I was alone in space. My consciousness diffused through all space and time and I 'became the universe'. The thought came - it seemed like a message - 'that I always had been the entire universe', just as everyone else always was the entire universe. Individuality was revealed as just a limitation of viewpoint, albeit one necessary for biological survival. I saw that every individual 'really' extends throughout all space-time, and that what was 'me' depended on where 'I' chose to draw the boundaries - at my skin, at the limit of my memories, at the boundaries of my social web, at the history of my culture, at all humanity, at the whole history of planet Earth or wherever I chose.
The message came - as a thought or feeling not as a voice - that what I really was ultimately, what any individual was, was the freedom to choose the boundaries - or not to. That I WAS FREEDOM, the freedom to define myself. At this point I realized the trip was starting to wane. I was startled to hear 'cosmic' laughter and repeated exclamations of Holy Shit! It was my voice. The sounds were coming from my mouth. I realized I had a mouth, that I had a body. And then, abruptly, I was back in consensus reality.
This morning I went about my life, but would from time to time, find myself looking at the world a bit quizzically and thinking 'Holy Shit!', as I smiled bemusedly at the strangeness of it all.
[New Existential Eyes]
…I felt my senses transform in a way that was quite interesting, in that there was really nothing I could pinpoint as "different." Then I realized that I was seeing the world for the first time, in a quite real and convincing way. But it was harsh: it was a flash of sensory overload. It was as if there were a certain barrier that this Salvinorin passed through, and then, there I was, immediately: in a completely different place. It pushed me through some kind of membrane, and it happened in the blink of my mind's eye. Feeling the whole garage (I know, what a setting) become brighter than anything I have ever imagined, very unfamiliar because it seemed so real. It leapt from the usual mundane view to something so frighteningly *in-my-face* that it was as if I had never known it, seen it before. Never seen ANYthing. As I exhaled this smoke, so deliberately and slowly, I realized that I could freak out--this was a complete shift in reality. This was like having new existential eyes. I mean, it was the same me, the same place, the same eyes, senses, and feeling--but there was something shockingly ineffable about it. And wasn't I supposed to feel *fucked-up* if I was on this intense a trip?
…a whole layer of reality ricocheted out of space into my head. A sound: a voice, and a whole bunch of some-sort-of-smurf-elf-like creatures that seem to comprise DMT hyperspace. I swear to you, there were entities there, and they were playing! They were dancing and swirling, laughing and living in complete, unadulterated bliss! I could glance at them, astonished and with my eyes probably as wide as the gap between my chin, as it lay on the floor, and my upper lip. Real animals came out of nowhere and all of a sudden I was on the verge of their village!
…And it dangled me, this Force, this Shepherdess, and presented me this world--multiplied by 100--at the same time as it presented me Its own special and unique, transdimensional world. It said, "You can do much better than this! You have no idea!"