TRIP #4

by jbark

So this is the trip I need help understanding. It floored me. It horrified me to my core - humbled, baffled, obliterated, and scattered me like nothing else has. It made me swear off spice and all other entheo/psychedelics forever...

Now, had I been alone, no big deal. I don’t frighten easily (another classic sign of stupidity), but with my son there I had a revelation: if it came down to it and a bear came charging out of the woods at us, I felt certain that I would run, drawing the beast away to sacrifice myself to save my son . I don’t take this lightly : it was the first time I realized, despite all the philoso-babble to the contrary, that you can indeed commit a truly selfless act. It freaked my selfish little self out. I was terrified (for the first of two times that day as I was to discover later…) - terrified both for my son and by the realization that if a bear did present itself, I would die a grizzly death (pardon the pun…).

First of all, much respect to those who can navigate these deep swampy waters; I for one have no vessel and no oar, and in the absence of a keel to direct the path, I am lost lost lost and fear I shall never be found for there is nowhere to be found and no one to find or do the finding and nothing but this maelstrom, this void that is as empty and vacuous as anything my imagination can behold…

Massive primary coloured letters of sorts – most indecipherable, but at least one a strange permutation of the capital letter E, hurtling toward me without really moving in the chaotic miasma that I am in/that is in me/that is me.

Thrust into the maelstrom and stripped so profoundly of the impression that « I am » and that I exist, that whatever is left of me is thoroughly convinced that all I believed I had experienced, up to now, reveals itself, like a dagger through the heart of the mind, as an elaborate illusion to which I shall never return. Worse than cessation, more painful than the thought of death is the realization that you NEVER WERE… (note : I have, in my clearer moments, accepted my death and have faced it numerous times with other materials, but this, as with my experiences with salvia, was of an order more disturbing, to say the least…)

In the midst of the mess was a chorus : « it’s Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, it’s Saturday » screeching across the vista of my mind, until, sitting up and opening my eyes in a futile attempt to dispel the hell, I realize, seeing the room utterly transformed, that it is me screaming the day of the week – but it’s not me as well. And it’s Sunday. And I am never coming back to know what a day of the week is, because there is NO BACK TO, NO FROM, AND NO TO (let alone the mundanity of a day of a week of some year in some life). (note : I had a similar salvia trip where my field of view was filled with orange monochromatic, puffy and expanding, thick, black-outlined cartoon school buses, and a similar chorus was singing, invitingly, menacingly and with ambivalence all at once in voices that were a dis/harmony of insectoid screeches layered over the clearest of sopranos : « it’s Wednesday, Wednesday, it’s Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday… » ; yes, accompanied with the same sensations described above – IT FELT LIKE THE SAME PLACE. Maybe my mind is not constructed for the use of these substances…)

A loop - endless inexorable recursion… I sit up and then fall back into a cartoon abyss of colours and Saturday Saturday Saturday… Endless eternal indomitable recursion, an irremediable feedback loop (note : curiously I have always maintained that video/audio feedback loops are the face/voice of god…) – consciousness itself ? Am I at the root of the Hofstadter loop? The MandelThought ? The firmware of my mind ? Is this a breakthrough, pure and horrifying ? Have I disabled the illusion, unbuilt the edifice of « consensual reality » to get down to the base, most reptilian and ancient form of simple consciousness – a terrifying self-referential eternal loop of non-being ? or un-being ? the horror…

The universe and our consciousness (common and universal or not) is neither good nor evil nor ambivalent, but rather profoundly indifferent, and as neutral as any void can be. I feel this more than I know it.

Once the most intense of these sensations passed, I am able to open my eyes. There is another dimension visible : height, length, width and the passage of time have newly revealed themselves, but in addition to these co-ordinates is another. I don’t need to tell you it was indescribable, but I will nevertheless do my best with these monkey paws and keystrokes. Like trailers from walls and stairs and in the very air itself, but at once so much more than a simple visual phenomenon, I feel I am glimpsing something new to me, but that has always been there. I feel not unlike a beast who understands up, down, to and fro and has a sudden epiphany that it exists also in a universe of passing moments, conceptualizing past, present and future in an instant through the sudden awakening of a new sense.

I realize I am no more than a raw ego-less nerve of consciousness, subjected to a nonsensical and arbitrary string of luminescent and aural detritus. (Note : I meant during the trip, but the cynic in me supposes this could be applied to everyday living…)

It felt about as spiritual as a kitchen knife excoriation. I can only conclude that the spiritual aspect of this substance lies in the interpretation of the experience - but that contradicts my very understanding of spirituality as something felt not thought. I don’t…

I enjoy challenges, but this seems insurmountable, an unassailable task of back and forth and down down down through a self-perpetuating, Sisyphean recursive loop, like a perpetual motion ride past the far reaches of sanity… Where is the value in this ? What wisdom is to be had that cannot otherwise be gleaned ?

Cresting and lulling waves messing with the fine mesh of mind…

Other Spice journeys stimulated, made me think ; this one ground the thinking apparatus to a precipitous halt. Beyond intellect and beyond description and above all beyond even intuitive comprehension. The ball that rolled didn’t only cease to roll, it first became a cube, then vaulted through and beyond the realm of multi-dimensional polyhedra and became an ineffable 8i5v n 843-tg8i’jiknp2… I can’t even attempt to understand. The only questions that remain are whether it is worth returning to hyperspace (assuming I was there…) and – is…it…dangerous… ?

I don’t want to discredit the advice often given on the nexus to remain calm and not to resist, but to me at this point it is analogous to hitting someone in the head with a bat and telling them not to feel the pain (note : I am sure some zen aficionados out there will have something to say on this subject). I suppose I did resist, but I have no clear idea through what mechanism, ‘cause I did not feel there was an active I to resist with. « I » was obliterated, so if there was resistance and an absence of calm, from whence… ?

If you can’t make sense of something because the word sense no longer applies or signifies, then is there a point, a meaning beyond simply an absence thereof ?

At what cost wisdom ? and is it wisdom if it proves unwise ? There are so many paths to wisdom, and none of them promised or guaranteed – therein lies their beauty and value. But in the balance of things, is the price and the risk involved in certain behaviours, along uncertain paths worth the distant possibility of wisdom ? Someone hit by a truck, paraplegic, learns lessons everyday that no one not confined to a wheelchair and incapable of voluntary movement can learn. There is wisdom here that can be learned nowhere else, but no one in their right mind would throw themselves in front of a truck to gain these insights. There are other paths and other wisdoms ; are we throwing ourselves in front of a truck called spice ? Or am I ? Or is it only me that feels this way ?

Thanks for reading ; sorry for the length. Tough write. Not really in my nature to expose myself like this, nor to ask for help. But I guess that’s spice right?

IS WHAT’S OUT THERE'S WHAT’S IN HERE?