Setting
Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, near Fredericksburg, Texas. Regarded
by Native Americans as a power place, and it's certainly a beautiful and
compelling monument to geology. We pitched camp on Tuesday evening, and
went exploring the trails on Thursday. What a tremendous place! The mountain
looks like a great smooth pink bubble, with a thin shell of rock that has
cracked and is in the process of very slowly sliding off of it. Sort of
looks like that quick-hardening chocolate sauce you put on ice cream...
Set
I have been looking forward to this for months. I've never had a substantial
mushroom experience before, just two very-low-dose experiments. I've requested
a heroic dose for this occasion. My wife's stepfather has just passed away
a week and a half before, and we're both kinda detached, kinda out of it,
but the beauty of our surroundings has lifted our spirits. I am still apprehensive,
though, as I was before trying LSD and MDMA...
Dosage
7g dried cubensis.
About 10 minutes after finishing our little meal, I lay back in the tent
against our packs and close my eyes. Sparkling, flowing patterns behind
my eyelids mark the beginning of the trip. I realize very quickly that they're
not mere hypnagogic fireflies, but a pulsating, breathing, living thing
that is revealing itself more and more as it impinges upon my consciousness.
Twisted shapes, striped colors and shapes like the trunks of old, old dead
trees; mushroom imagery, golden rainstorms of tiny mushrooms falling and
falling against a brilliant blue background; and an image that I come to
realize is an abstraction of my own consciousness, a blue and yellow striped
spider-legged stick figure: but why is this me? And who am I, anyway? The
fungus spirit dances before me wildly, giddy.
Bubbly faces
I look up at S and she's become a Mexican Indian, a Mayan. Her face boils
and seethes with potentiality. Her face glows and comes to resemble a stone
statue in the dim twilight of the glow sticks. She touches me kindly and
I close my eyes again.
"Get past it, it's an illusion!"
Further voyages through the country of the mind. Many times I brush up against
something powerful, something distracting, something that is drawing me
into tighter and tighter spirals of thought, of obession. A Voice tells
me each time "Get past it! Go past it!" and the hold it has upon
me breaks, and I spin again into the teeming darkness.
Chaos
I cower in my body in the tent, still somewhat apprehensive of what is happening
to me. There is a quiet peace from which bubbles up the most fantastic of
ideas and revelations. There is unity. Then the wind rushes at us in huge
waves, slapping the tent flaps against the tent, and making a tremendous
sound. We hear now also the stampeding feet of animals racing about outside
the tent. Running and rushing around in the wind, it's like they're circling,
checking us out, and then the wind stops and they are gone. But they did
leave tracks...
Washing down the mountain
After the chaos has passed, there is a brief silence, then the wind howls
again. I'm laying on ancient rock covered by the thinnest layer of soil
and life. My body shifts against the rock, and I am a rock, resting on the
mountainside, undisturbed perhaps for millions of years. The the wind comes
again, sweeping down over and past me from the mountaintop, and I'm sliding,
rolling, bumping down the hillside. Then I'm in the tent again, a rock again,
and my body shifts again and I question the "I" that chose to
move the rock, rather than leave it to the forces of nature. "I"
is quite distant, now.
Body sensation
I should not have eaten as much as I did today. Word to the uninitiated:
don't eat Jaeger Schnitzel in the afternoon before your evening voyage!
I become rapidly more aware of my body. I have hundreds of inputs coming
at me. There are so many sensations! I become aware of the various bags
and sacs of fluids contained within me: stomach, bladder, intestines, heart,
lungs, and I feel the interplay of these organs as I breathe and digest.
Digest. Digest. Unease. Discomfort... I have to pee!
Urine - The Oak
Staving off the Other for a moment, I pull my shoes on and unzip the tent,
stumble out into the firelit campsite and hobble a few meters away to relieve
myself. I end up next to a young Oak tree, it's major limb arches in my
direction as I go. I look closely at its trunk, as it looks closely back
at me with a hundred eyes. How ever could I have objectified this tree!
How ever could I have not consciously appreciated its life! It grins at
me, almost "yeah, I know..." My eyes are watering again, and I
take my gaze from the tree's hundred eyes and stare up its branches, at
the glory of the moon shining down at us, completely full, incomparably
bright. I see a painting, a Renaissance work showing God in the center of
His heavenly host, and the sky around the shining moon textures itself in
this same way. So powerful. Back to the tent.
Vomit
Urination has relieved some of some of the tension, but it was really only
an attempt to avoid what my body knows is coming: sheer gut blowout. My
body becomes more insistent in its cries for relief, my stomach is hurting,
I feel bloated and distorted. My flesh hangs from me like a dead weight.
I haul myself out of the tent again, maybe fresh air will stave off this
sickness, but no. I sit briefly on the picnic bench until a gust of strong
metaphysical wind whips my head hard to the side, and I throw myself bodily
to the edge of the stone floor and heave the Jaeger Schintzel and its friends
into the dirt. There is immediate and profound relief. I see as I look down
briefly at my vomit that there are burning, angry-looking, tiny things crawling
about within it. I'm glad, very glad to be rid of my dinner.
"M, are you all right?" from the tent. I am, though bile drips
from my nose and mouth, I am suddenly and completely transformed. This is
more than all right! I am free! My body is worn, though, so I crawl back
in the tent to rest for a moment, but it quickly becomes opressive. Suddenly
I am charged with energy and the tent is confining me. Up and out again,
and I decide to head for the bathroom to clean myself up.
Deer
Down the hillside and across the wooden bridge over the dry, gravel-filled
creek bed I go. I have my flashlight with me, but why use it when the moon
reflects the full glory of the sun and casts it down in a milky radiance
that enshrouds everything, making just enough visible. Each tree, each rock,
each plant thrumms deeply with purpose. I'm gazing at the stars and the
land and climbing the stairs at the opposite bank of the creek and I realize
that I am not alone. I have suprised a group of about ten deer, six adults
and their young. They stare at me briefly and I at them, and I say "Sorry,
folks" to them as they begin to nervously take off. The connection
I feel with this family of creatures!
C looking through my eyes
I'm leaving the bathroom now, walking out into the parking lot. The rock
is shining against the starry sky, truly magnificent, truly awesome in its
stillness. I breathe in the night, and again I question the "I"
that gazes at the rock, and realize that "I" have a companion
looking through "my" eyes: it's C! He's watching what I'm watching
through me. Powerful sense of magic, eyes watering, knees trembling. C stays
for a couple minutes, and it's definitely happening before I turn again
toward camp with the moon and the rainbow-twinking stars to guide me.
Being and not-being, earth and sky
What an incredible thing life is! Between the hard, ancient, unyielding,
undeniably solid rock below me and the infinite emptiness of space above
me: LIFE! How incredible that at this juncture of being and not-being, we
find such splendor! My eyes take in the heavens, and my heart sweeps around
the globe for a dizzyingly brief tour of this creation.
Talking with C
Back at the camp, I sit with C under our little pavilion, watching the campfire,
the moon, the planet, and our inner landscapes. S is gone at this point,
and my mind is jumping and leaping with questions. I tell C that I felt
he had been looking through my eyes after I left the bathroom, and he says
to me "I didn't know you could feel it."
The Ground of Being
All of this however was really just window dressing. The central event of
the trip came before I left the tent to vomit. As I lay with my eyes shut,
in silence in the tent, the twisting striped patterns in my brain turned
to twenty or so rainbow-hued spinning balls, arranged 4 by 5 (at least,
"I" "perceived" there were twenty of these things, I
really have no idea). The sight was startling, and the Voice said to me,
more excited than I had ever heard it before, "IT IS THE GROUND OF
BEING!!!" I immediately went past the ground of being into the rest
of my trip, but it is this event, this contact, which was the most significant
part of the trip, I came to realize in the days that followed. I had touched
the unformed and nameless potential behind all things, I had seen the Tao,
peered into the mind of God. It is to this place that I hope to return.
By a white American male, aged 23-24 at time of these experiences, who designs data communications networks for a living.
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