DOSE:

1 hit

oral

LSD

(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

This was the second time I had an out of body/ego obliterating experience on a psychedelic. the first time was on mushrooms and that was a startling, terrifying experience, which was also profound and had fascinated me ever since. I'd wanted to return to a place like that, where I am unconscious of who and what I am, where memories, sound, fractals, shadows twist together and are not distinguishable, but the memory of the power of such a trip was frightening.

Between that time and the LSD trip which I'm about to discuss, I tripped maybe 60 or 70 times. these trips were all unique and great in their way, but I never returned to that amazing place, which is the residence of pure thought and intelligence, a place where context is a joke. studying indian philosophy intensely, then going to india, combined with my job here in the u.s. as a mental health case worker, has led me to believe that this state of mind parallels the cosmic consciousness of mystics like sri ramakrishna as well as the much more common acute schizophrenia. ramakrishna willed his psychosis into a state of bliss and love and many who have schizophrenia feel incredible bliss and connection to god, though it often dissipates into fear and mistrust because most people don't have the uber-will to fight their darkness and grow into giant conduits for love and the energy of life.

While I was taking time off of work to go to india, I had this acid trip which thrust me kicking and screaming into a state of mind like this. to this day it remains the most profound trip of my life. it happened this way....

I left the hot foul plains of uttar pradesh in search of cooler more relaxing environs, and I realize now, also because I didn't want to leave india without a profound spiritual experience, and somewhere inside of me I knew my will was pulling me to the himalyas. once there I was passing some time in a guest house with some europeans. I overheard a young german guy talking about pure mescaline trips. I asked him to elaborate and told him that I was interested in taking pyschedelics. we got to talking and he must have felt that I was a kindred spirit so he went into his room and came back with a folded up wrapper. he said gravely as hell, 'this is very special acid. VERY special. maybe you should only take half.' I thought 'you mean it's only one hit? I've taken eight at once before and handled myself.' he assured me, 'this is very special acid. this one hit will be more than you can handle. don't do it until you are ready.........'

Some weeks later I rented a cottage on the side of a mountain which was on the property of a farm. there where many terraced fields, small huts, villages, cattle, buffalo... a very wonderful place. my hut opened up to a view across a valley which was serene and also happened to be surrounded by wild pot plants (of which I don't partake.) I had found my spot to trip. I waited several weeks so I could 'sense' when to take the acid.

I practiced music regularly, walked up and down the mountains for exercise. I met an indian man named deepak who drank tea with me a lot and was a great person to talk to. we were both very into hindu mysticism, especially agora tantra, and programs which use very ancient technologies to achieve ecstasy. we both felt our minds expanding just spending time speaking with each other. deepak never did drugs, and I didn't see a need to tell him about what I was planning, because I thought he would be judgemental, and I felt he lacked the psychedelic experience so any of his objections would be without foundation.

I was going to trip alone, as I had done 40 times or so prior. I always trip alone, and work through trips alone. with psychedelics of the power as this acid, though, one must always have sitters or fellow trippers to help with context. I learned this the hard way.

The morning of the trip I awoke at dawn, practiced music, did yoga, and ate a very small breakfast. I took the acid and started to walk down the mountain to find a quiet protected place.

I sat on a rock and waited patiently, thinking about my thoughts, and watching for change in their patterns. change they did. slowly my wet warm green piece of forest began to become more and more green. the sunlight began to fill me with a joy which was unbelievable. I thought that I would walk up to deepak's cottage and just look him in the eyes to give him some of what I was experiencing. it was wonderful, a cleaner and smoother and more organic feeling than acid had ever given me. soon after this, I could hear the local farmers yelling at the monkeys and even firing some rifles at them in the distance. there must have been about thirty or forty monkeys running and screaming towards me. they can be quite nasty as anyone who's been to india can attest, and I didn't want them to see me. their strange yells and the tumult of their collective charge sounded like it was about to plow right through me!

Instead of being afraid, though, I decided to trust the stillness and joy I was feeling and to simply be still and let the monkeys come, as they will see my peacfulness, and likely take no interest in me. as it turns out they didn't come close to me, but that was the last thing I thought about before becoming completely unaware of who or what I was, what I was doing and where in this universe I was. what happened next is that I went into an all out psychedelic trance which lasted about two and a half hours. in that time I was freely moving about, standing on the roof of my cottage for a while, running and jumping across rice terraces, and eventually going up to the farm and freaking the shit out of several farmer girls as well as some european hippy travelers and my new friend deepak.

The trip followed, in the way a dream does, the issues of my mind which were circulating at the time before tripping. I had been struggling with the idea of form and subjectivity for weeks prior to that, going over and over the nature of being human with deepak. of course because we were speaking in a human language, using concepts left and right, we weren't really getting anywhere with our disscussion, and we knew it, and we were amused at what little progress one makes spiritually by flapping one's gums. this proved to be the 'theme' of the trip.

The first thing that happened after I 'flipped over' into the 'other' space was that I walked up to the roof of my cottage. I found myself feeling very centered, feeling like a solitary being with no identity, but there was one other intelligence present, presumably my idea of god. I felt that I was standing in a place which was a middle world, like a video game type of cyberspace. this place was a chamber or an temporary mock up, like a computer program (the star chamber at the end of 2001?) in which I would be presented a test. if I passed the test I would enter a cosmic state of being, if I failed, I would be left in this purgatory, a place without context, where being has no meaning. (by the way I don't really play games, cards vidoes games, D and D etc.) I had a vague feeling that living did have meaning in my previous life, whatever that was.

After this confrontation with, for lack of a better word, god, I started to slowly come down, but I was still far from knowing who I was and that I was on a drug. I left the roof and was walking through the rice terraces scraping against briars. I felt the pain, but it also was apparent what an illusion the pain was. I reached in front of me and squeezed a branch of the briar hard, just to prove to myself the pain was immaterial. the pain rippled through me in shards, but it felt silly and small and I forgot about it instantly. I did, however, feel an underlying emotional pain of incredible level. it wasn't attached to anything in particular, it was just my darkness, or the darkness of the universe. I screamed, apparently ( I was later told)very loud.

I was leaning against a window on the outside of my cottage and screamed again and put my elbow right through the window (I had no idea I'd done this until much later). the pain shot through me but it felt great compared to the deep dark pain in my heart. these screams alerted numerous people up the mountain at the farmhouse and they soon sent deepak down to see if I was alright. he immediately knew I was out of my head. I had no idea who he was, but I took him to be 'my concept' of 'concepts' if that makes sense. because of our many conversations regarding philosophy and being, he became my idea of what was wrong with me, why I was falling short of a true cosmic break. I thought he was an entity that was eminating from within my mind. I took him to be a game, one which I tried to decode. I needed to 'win' with him, or I wouldn't pass to the next level.

He seemed to to trying to pull me back to the lower world, which is in fact exactly what he was trying to do, but I wanted to stay and figure out what I needed to do to keep moving towards the unimaginable and formless. I remember yelling right in his face as an act of defiance. we kept talking and I'm sure he was petrified at how labile I'd become. I don't remember why, but at one point I hugged him, and I just reached down and grabbed his ass. I'm not gay, at least I'm quite happy with my current girlfriend, but at that moment our hug became very sexual. it didn't last long but that was a strange tangent. I then started to run away from him.

I grabbed my sitar and ran across the hillside. (deepak later said I looked very graceful leaping across the terraces with a large sitar on my shoulder.) I was walking around the farm freaking everyone out with my flashing eyes, incomprehensible statements and blood dripping from my arms and legs (from the briars, but primarily when I elbowed the window). no one knew what to do with me and deepak later told me they assumed I'd gone nuts. deepak left me at my cottage eventually in dispair, thinking I'd lost it and that they'd have to go into town and get the authorities to remove me or take me to delhi and try to contact my family somehow.

I started getting this feeling that I'd forgotten something very important. this is what was similar to the previous breakthrough mushroom trip. I was starting to remember I was tripping. I sat on a seat looking out across the valley. what was this? it was starting to make some sense. I was lucid at one level at least because I started boiling some water to drink. (so I would not drink contaminated indian water!) I sat there drinking the piping hot water slowly. deepak came down again, looking very worried. I asked him, 'what is your name?' he told me his name and my memory came flooding in. I was in india, for crying out loud, I was tripping on some crazy crazy acid. I was amazed. I'd once again visited that place I'd been to five years earlier on mushrooms. deepak was relieved. because the last thing I remembered before going into space was the monkeys, I thought I'd been attacked by monkeys and that's why I was dripping blood.

I told deepak I was attacked by monkeys which he doubted. he was very disappointed I was tripping on acid, but relieved I'd regained my self. he left me to think and that I did. I felt the effects for about 5 more hours pretty seriously. I went into the cottage and saw the broken glass and I remembered the feeling of the glass breaking and tearing open my arm. slowly the trip came back to me. at about ten at night, feeling somewhat normal and hungry, I sat out under the stars and deepak came down to talk to me. I assured him that I was ok and we talked about what I'd been through. he was skeptical about the spiritual 'shortcut' I'd taken.

he suggested that I could reach the same place through years and years of disciplined meditation. I told him that americans do prefer a quick fix. I felt blown away and totally cleansed by the experience. I love this world and everything in it and this trip made me want to continue to explore my mind and consciousness itself. I lost the desire to trip after this, feeling that if one's brain is sped up to that level, it's similar to a model of psychosis. At the peak I was at a place so high above regular consciousness that if I had had more even the smallest bit of context to ground me I could have changed my life forever. because I was visiting that space prematurely, I was confused and tormented by what I was missing out on. that place, available to any self reflecting being in the universe, is lying in wait inside the nervous system. the change can be permanent, resulting in cosmic consciousness, or in can be brief and fleeting to those who 'dabble' but ultimately fear leaving their material lives behind.

LSD is an amazing drug that is different for every person and different each time it is taken. there is a big difference between the good stuff and the bad stuff. also, I thought blotter was supposed to be the bad stuff. this paper hit blew all liquid, cubes, gelatins I'd ever done away. perhaps it was so strong because I wanted or needed something like that at that time. I was doing a lot of inner work and I was in a very deep and seriously mystical place, the indian himalya.

LSD is wild and holds the geometry of all life in its atoms!

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 27413
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 20, 2006	Views: 20,834
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