DOSE:

1 hit

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

Preparation:
Before I recount the journey… Let me write out a recipe for a great quality experience.

(1) In advance, I fully studied everything I could find on Salvia… What to expect, where other people had gone wrong or gone right. The best method and practices.

(2) I had smoked some dry leaves a couple weeks in advance to give me a baseline (to determine if I was a hard-head or soft-head)

(3) My friend… who was also my sitter… describe in detail his own experiences with Salvia along with experiences he has witnessed (some as a sitter for others).

(4) Set a date time and place - in advance - so I could prepare both the setting and to have my 'house' in order - meaning my thoughts.

Place - the floor of my living room laying on an inside-out sleeping bag and a pillow.
Lighting - dim but not dark. Evening light coming through the mostly drawn curtains.
Clothing - comfortable, bare feet.
Sitter - very good friend, trusted.

Sitter:
My sitter suggested I lay down and just relax / meditate for some time - he left the room and told me that when he came back he would just hand me the pipe and I could hand it back to him - he'd take care of watching me.

In the end I didn't move a muscle for most of the experience - so it may seem that is sitter wasn't necessary - this is completely incorrect. There's no way I would have had the same experience without a sitter there. I would have gone into it with all sorts of fear and hesitation that that would have carried into the visions. My sitter was of calm voice, caring soul & a good teacher. I am certain that a decidedly difficult trip would have been endured if not for him.

*****************************************
Experience:
As I handed the pipe back to my friend.. I could see the world recede and I immediately laid back, rested my head on my pillow, and set my hands upon my chest. I didn't even have time to consider what was about to happen. I didn't have time to be fearful or to panic. I was already gone.

I didn't descend through layers of consciousness as I may have expected, rather I was immediately in another realm - a morphing, spinning realm of red and orange colors. This place was absolutely filled with other entities. They were all very similar to each other. Their bodies were a combination of red, orange and black in color - I was exactly the same as them. I was no longer physical. I had become the same as these spirits. There were hundreds of us, maybe thousands. These spirits were expecting me. They knew me as soon as they saw me.

Immediately, I knew exactly where I was - a place I had been before - and many times before. A place that I had spent a lot of time. Even now - this place is so so familiar I am sure I've been there before. I wouldn't characterize it as a good place or a bad place - rather a mightily familiar place.

This reality was certainly three dimensional. It was spiraling and turning over on itself. Not unlike a the mass of churning humanity in a 'mosh' pit at a show. Always moving - but never blurry - very clearly defined at any point I would glance.

Putting aside the spinning morphing physical nature of this realm for now, I want to describe the entities there. It was teeming with life - all the beings were similar to me - all of them were familiar to me, yet none of them identifiable. I was the same as them, no more, no less. We were spirits - we were all the same.

I'm going to just put this bluntly. This existence was indistinguishable from death in my perception. I believed - I mean I truly believed - that I was not going to be able to return to my previous reality. In fact I was already beginning to forget about my life - I was only vaguely aware of anything beyond this place.

When I first arrived - I knew where I had come from and I realized that there was no going back - that I was already through the door - and the door was decidedly one-way.

I can describe the entry-point to this place as a three-dimensional gear-set that churns upwards - and cannot be traversed in reverse. I was disappointed that I was finished with my former life. In some way I was scared that there was no going back - but since I didn't have a choice in it - I accepted it and the fear left me.

I later described this place to my wife as a spinning cathedral of souls - and one of my earliest descriptions to my friend was 'this is like church' - so there is a clear association to spirituality in this place.

I also found a good characterization in this metaphor: Imagine a over-stuffed pillow… and unzipping the pillow - how the stuffing would cascade outwards - and that you couldn't push it back in - that was the endless nature of the realm.

As this spinning / rotational existence folded over and into itself endlessly - I would, in the mass of spinning, periodically catch a glimpse of the life I knew before - distinctly different in color - blue and green as it would pass by beneath me. I could see there was no real hope of reentering that place - it was too small a door and the world around me was moving too quickly.

My former reality passed me by exactly three times before I found myself back in my original world. I don't know how I got there, but just as quickly as I was plunged into the spirit-world - I watched it melt away into my living room.

I was shocked. I was amazed that I was 'allowed' to return. I felt briefly that I must have found some loophole. I was completely thrilled to be home. It felt like a 2nd chance - like NDE reports I've read.

I heard a noise behind me - it was my friend taking a sip of his water. At this point I am still am not aware of my 'full' life nor that this journey was Salvia-induced. My friend, having just watched me lay still for 5 minutes - said 'Maybe you're salvia immune' and I said - as best as I could articulate 'I'm definitely not Salvia-Immune' I was amazed that he had no idea that I had just got back from a trip to another reality. Truly, I thought, how could he not know that I just spent an hour in the afterlife/before-life/side-life/parallel-life?

I proceeded to say wow about 20 times - as I passed through many thresholds of 'recovery' into traditional reality.

In the first level of return - the churning/spinning realm was merged with my own reality - I watched as the living room walls folded in on themselves and the air was obeying the laws of the alternate space. Melting, merging, morphing. In this first level of the return - I was completely in bliss that I had returned. That I got to come back.

In the next level of the return I found myself waving my hands in front of myself and being able to push my reality around. I would ball up portions of the room and throw them to the other side of the room. I'd then swirl my hand and I'd watch the room follow suit. This was a very enjoyable, very playful portion of the journey. I was fully aware that I was 'me' and I was 'home'. I could feel some level of embarrassment that my friend was watching me 'believe' I was 'balling up reality' and 'throwing it around' but when I point-blank asked him if he could see what I was seeing, he quietly said no and let me go on 'controlling' the air. He called me the 'architect of air' - still completely hilarious to me!

There were incrementally smaller layers or thresholds of my reentry - as I pieced together both my actual reality and the journey from which I had just returned. It was exciting to try to explain the journey and a strong feeling of general elation about my round trip.

Sitter:
I would point out here another great part of having a great sitter…. he asked me simple questions about the journey - some of which I had answers to, some of which I did not - but all of which helped me recall the journey that has allowed me to recount it to some extent here. Without him setting my focus - I would have lost this like a dream upon waking.

I'm glad I get to keep this. There is still so much to consider.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 91782
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 37
Published: Nov 3, 2024	Views: 37
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Guides / Sitters (39), Entities / Beings (37), First Times (2), General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)