by Erik Storlie
But this suggestion is terrible. I groan inwardly. This is defeat, failure. After a passionate journey of almost two years, how can I give up this final dream of enlightenment and affirmation by the master? My only hope now for release is to push on.
“No, man, I’ll go. But this is the heaviest thing I’ve ever faced. It’s way too much. But we’ve got to go. Farmer, you just read some sections from the book. That’ll help.”
Farmer begins quietly reading from The Psychedelic Experience, but I’m beyond hearing words. The clear light energy has changed. Now in the cosmos of my skull an infinity of points ooze a glowing hot magma—a viscous energy, darkly transparent like honey, burning and relentlessly flowing. Then it erupts all through my body, inexorable, bending joints slowly backward until they snap, twisting arm and leg bones until they splinter. It’s agony, but I hang on, try to listen to Farmer’s reading of the words, hoping against hope that they will suddenly give their promise of relief, of liberation, of bliss.
But words can’t touch these vast empty spaces. “Maybe Leary can help,” I think. Groaning, I push up to a sitting position, saying to Farmer, “That’s okay, man. Don’t read any more. I’m all right. Just give me a few minutes to wash my face and shave. Then we better go.”
I go to the bathroom and painstakingly lather my upper lip, cheeks, chin, and neck, then pick up the razor and behold a terrified face in the mirror—the razor suspended, just touching a cheek. I start to stroke the razor down, catching a few stubbly whiskers, then despair. My hands are so huge, so cold and clumsy, that I fear the icy blade, anticipate the numb slice of a razor cut, imagine red blood welling out to stain the white lather. Cringing, I lift the razor away, set it down, wash off the lather, and return slowly to the living room.
“Let’s go, man,” I say. “I can make it. I really can.”
Worried, reluctant, Farmer and Dean lead the way out into the gray morning and we drive to downtown Chicago. Suddenly we’re in the lobby of the Edgewater Hotel, then in a crush of people in an elevator, then I’m following Farmer into a room on one of the upper floors.
Awkwardly trailing Farmer, I maneuver my immense body toward a cushion on oriental carpets spread out in a semicircle on the floor of a small seminar room. Around me are some twenty-five middle-aged folks, mostly professional men curious about Leary. One is a reporter from a Chicago paper. He apparently hopes there’s a story here somewhere. I seat myself and try to relax, but the energies pouring thick from every inch of my body are a rising crescendo of pain. Instant after nightmare instant, I make a supreme effort of will not to stand up, scream, run wildly away somewhere, anywhere.
After a few minutes Leary seats himself in the center of the circle and, part Harvard professor, part Irish raconteur, begins an animated exposition of the lessons of psychedelics.
“Now listen,” he says, “we’re faced with an Establishment that knows its back is to the wall. It’s terrified of the psychedelics. It can’t handle the alternative consciousness developing all over the country. The secret is out about the meaninglessness of American life as it’s presently lived. And about the war—about the collusion of the corporations, the politicians, and the military.
“The psychedelics have catalyzed that rising consciousness. The ruling elite is terrified. They’ll stop at nothing to turn the clock back. That’s why they’ve gone after me.” He pauses, fixes the audience with a frank stare, then goes on. “If honest seekers can’t use the psychedelics, then we’ll explore inner space by alternative methods. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here.”
My attention wanders in and out. My effort is to stay in my seat. Leary talks about going beyond ego game playing, about the bliss that dawns upon ego death, about access to all this through strobe lights, mandalas, visualizations, yogic concentration.
Then, looking knowingly at Farmer and me, Leary innocently asks who before has experienced a psychedelic drug. “I have, many times,” I blurt out, “and I’m on five hundred micrograms of acid right now, and it’s too much, way too much. I can’t really handle it this time.” There’s a sharp intake of breath from the audience.
Leary smiles knowingly, wearily. “And how about your partner?” he asks, pointing to Farmer, who sits uncomfortably beside me.
“Yeah, me too,” says Farmer, “but I only took half what Erik did.”
“Well,” Leary says, looking back at me, “try to tell me what’s going on with you. What’s coming up?”
“Oh, I hardly know what to say,” I stammer out. “It’s coming on bigger than I’ve ever experienced before. Every pore of my body gushes pain. And it’s like I’m a galaxy looking out at you—and you’re another galaxy light years across intergalactic space. I sit here on the carpet and it rises up like surf. I see waves rolling right across the carpet and breaking on everybody’s legs as we sit here. But it’s this pain that won’t go away. And I’m already three hours into this thing. This time, I know, I took too much.”
“Okay,” Leary says, “I’m going to take a minute to talk to each of you privately.” He beckons to me, and I retreat with him through a door that opens off the back of the seminar room. Leary closes it and sits down comfortably on the carpeted floor of a small room. I sink down heavily to join him. I notice film projectors, some other pieces of equipment, and a few assistants, who had earlier greeted the participants, working to set things up.
“Okay,” he says, “now what’s happening? Where’re you at?”
“Oh, Tim, it’s just that I took so much. I can’t handle it. It’s so huge. There’s so much pain. Farmer tried reading to me from your book this morning, but nothing happened.”
“But this thing that’s happening to you,” says Leary, “it’s just coming from you, from your own infinite buddha consciousness.” He fixes me with alert eyes. “It’s really just you. It’s your very own hell. And it’s your very own way of dying to yourself. I don’t think you took too much. You took just what you needed at this time, at this place, to do what you have to do. It’s okay.”
I’m mute. I have no response to this. After a long minute Leary says firmly, “Let’s just go back to the group. I’ll talk to your partner. He looks like he’s okay. You’ll be okay too.”
We walk back into the seminar room, curious faces following me like sunflowers. As Leary motions for Farmer to join him in the back room, I edge to the back of the crowd and sit down where I can lean against the wall. I look down at the roiling multicolored carpet and struggle to force my breath to come easily and smoothly.
Soon Farmer and Leary return to the room and take their seats again. Leary is back in the center. He says a few words, the lights are turned off, and he begins to talk. A strobe light ticks on and off in a wild chatter of light while a series of fantastic mandalic images merge into and through each other on a screen behind his head. In the dim light, I see an older white-haired man moving unobtrusively through the circle toward me. I recognize him as part of Leary’s team. He is American Indian, his face a mass of genial red wrinkles. He sits down next to me, leans against the wall, puts his arm lightly over my shoulders, and takes my ice-cold hand in his large, warm one. A tiny wash of warmth begins to reach across intergalactic space.
After long minutes, the strobe light and the mandalic images stop. The lights click on. Leary stands and, glancing at the white-haired man, flashes out angrily, “What are you doing? That won’t help anything! What he’s going through is beyond all that.” The man takes his arm from my shoulders and begins to release my hand, but I grip it, cling to it, won’t let it go. The warm hand stays in my grasp.
It’s Saturday morning, one week later. Farmer’s mother is out of town. We can take our scheduled acid trip at his house today. I’m terrified. “What if that happens to me again?” I ask myself, as I drive over to his house, cold fear gnawing the pit of my stomach. “But I can’t give up now, I just can’t give up! I’m not a coward. I won’t be beaten. I’ve put everything I’ve got into this. I’ve got
to see it through.”
Farmer knows I’m worried, but reassures me. “Well, sure, things were bad in Chicago. You really took way too much when we were going to have to be at the hotel with all those people. I knew you should only have taken a single cap. I should probably have just taken a half. Today we’ll each just do one. That should be no problem.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say, trying to feel confident.
We spend a few minutes straightening up his living room and setting out zafus. Then we go through his record collection, pulling out some favorite selections. Finally, we go to the kitchen and wash down our capsules, then return to the living room and take our seats in zazen.
Within thirty minutes I know that, again, it has all gone wrong. My body is a galaxy. I’m adrift, lost, swept through an infinity of capillary beds into endless cellular spaces. A tiny voice shrieks, I just took half the dose, and it’s just as bad. I’m flipping out. I’ll never get back, now. I’ll be like this forever.
I slip down off my cushion onto the carpet, lie on my back, and stretch out my arms and legs, trying to relax. Leary’s book always said to merge with the fear. Then the bliss of liberation would dawn. But there’s only more fear. I curl up in the fetal position and rest my head on my zafu, feeling Farmer’s worried glance. “God,” I think, “this is messing him up, too.”
But I can’t hide it anymore. Finally, I groan, “Oh, man, jeez, it’s happening all over again. And I only took two hundred and fifty. Something’s really wrong. I can’t take it, man. You’ve got to get me to a hospital. I’ve got to come down.”
Farmer, eyes wide and scared, says, “Be cool now, be cool, it’ll be all right. Relax. Take it easy. I’ll put on some Ravi Shankar. And we’ll read some stuff from the book. That’ll help. Maybe later we can walk around one of the lakes.” He starts the sitar music softly in the background and picks up Leary’s book. “What’s going on with you? What part should I read?”
“Oh, God, I can’t even tell you. But I’m freaked, really freaked. I’m so far out there, I don’t think I’ll ever get back. Just pick something.”
“Okay, okay. Try to focus.” Farmer hands me a soft pillow from the couch. “Get this under your head. And breathe real slow and easy. I’ll read the ‘Instructions for the Wrathful Visions.’
“‘O nobly born Erik, listen carefully:
You were unable to maintain the perfect Clear Light of the First Bardo.
Or the serene peaceful visions of the Second.
You are now entering second Bardo nightmares.
Recognize them.
They are your own thought-forms made visible and audible.
They indicate that you are close to liberation.
Do not fear them.’”
I try to listen, to focus. Yes, nightmares! But Farmer’s words recede. I can’t hang on to them. I’m plunged into an ocean. I struggle for breath as cliffs of water break over me, crushing me, drowning me.
Farmer keeps reading, glancing up at me hopefully.
“No harm can come to you from these hallucinations.
They are your own thoughts in frightening aspect.
They are old friends. Welcome them. Merge with them. Join them. Lose yourself in them.
They are yours.
Whatever you see, no matter how strange and terrifying,
Remember above all that it comes from within you.
Hold onto that knowledge.
As soon as you recognize that, you will obtain liberation.
If you do not recognize them,
Torture and punishment will ensue.
But these too are but the radiances of your own intellect.”
I start at the words torture and punishment. Still, there’s comfort in their harsh truth. But how do I recognize this agony, merge with it, accept that it’s mine, see its radiance? Farmer’s voice is soothing. But as I reach up my hands to stroke my hair, rub my eyes, I see with horror the hands of an alien. “Whose are they?” I wonder. “How do I make them move? What if they suddenly stop obeying my will?!”
The skin is swollen, quivering, the black hairs starting up like quills.
I struggle up to my knees—Farmer solemnly watching, his pupils darkly dilated—and crawl over to sit in a chair. Across from me is another chair, of ornate dark oak, its yellow upholstery secured by orderly black buttons. It crushes me through my eyes. It transforms and flows, compressed under the terrible weight of eternity, a rock metamorphosing miles deep in the earth.
I shut my eyes to escape it, then helplessly open them and stare again. I watch it flow like a river, moving downstream, moving toward—nothing. In ten thousand years, dispersed, scattered, where will I find its atoms, its energies, the space and time it now drifts in?
And my own body? Stinking, rotten, then nothing but dust. I close my eyes to shut out the horror, and flames rush up from the floor, engulfing the room, eating through flesh, crumbling my bones, licking hot into the cup of my skull.
Late that afternoon at sundown, walking with Farmer around Cedar Lake, I’m jubilant. “Yes,” I say to myself, “I die. But these energies are deathless!”
At the north end of the lake, we balance along railroad rails, two lines of iron secreted by the dark earth and stretching toward a sunset. Now off, then back up again, we walk into the huge, drooping red sun settling down into the hills and trees of my neighborhood. My eyes follow the soft rosy glow that travels just ahead of my feet on the polished, rust-pitted rail.
I know that just two blocks away on a hilltop, preparing their supper, hardly dreaming that we’re here, my mother and father look out their kitchen windows at the reds and golds fading in the western sky.
We stop on a little bridge over the channel, lean on the railing, and watch the lake darken. Every pore of my body gushes joy.
I say quietly to Farmer, “I don’t think I can ever do acid again.”
I’m pulled back to the Crag by a left foot that’s asleep. Even after all these years, my left hip joint is not as flexible as the right. I rock gently back and forth to start the blood flowing and wiggle my toes.
“He had courage,” I think, smiling sadly, shaking my head, suddenly admiring the grit of that young man thirty years ago. “But it finally did beat him. He knew now that Leary and his medicine show had nothing to offer. That the words from the Tibetan Book of the Dead had no magic. That only one possibility remained—years of zen discipline slowly unlocking these magnificent, terrifying infinities of body and mind.
“And you didn’t, in fact, try LSD again for over ten years. Then, after years of hard sitting, you grew curious. You sought out Gordon Wasson, Richard Schultes, and Albert Hoffman. You had to meet the three serious old men, the mycologist, the botanist, and the chemist, who stayed out of the newspapers and did the responsible work.”
Since then, eager for bliss, impatient with the dull, creeping, time-bound mind, how many times have you perched in some eagle’s nest, alive with the great mind drug, surrounded by mountains, the valleys winding out in every direction?
How many times have the world and time rolled out like a carpet from under your feet, rolled off your mountain body as streams eternally roll out from hanging snowy cirques and off cliff faces, forever polishing, marbling, enameling the shattered rock into the softness, the smoothness of time itself?
But after each of these ecstasies, lying tired, content by the campfire, I saw the patient, bemused faces of my masters Suzuki and Katagiri, each smiling sadly, each seeming to say, “So it takes this for you to remember the fire that glows in the stomach and heart, awakens each tingling finger and toe, and incandesces the mind. Do you need a mountain and a drug to remember it?”
“Hold it,” I say aloud to myself. “Where’s your discipline, your concentration? Wake up. Take a look. You’re on the Crag.”
I open my eyes wide. It’s high noon. The rocks, trees, and grasses are bathed in brilliant sunshine. Heat shimmers on the basin floor. My face is shaded by the broad-brimmed hat,
but the sun beating down on my shoulders has started the sweat trickling from my armpits.
I stretch out my legs, then lean forward, grip my left foot, and begin to massage the blood back into it. It feels like a warm block of wood. Then it begins to tingle fiercely, and I pull it up to examine the scrape. Licking my thumb, I rub off smears of blood dried around the hardening scab.
I rearrange myself in the lotus position, hands resting in the Buddha’s mudra, and start a rhythm of slow breaths. “Too many thoughts,” I think, setting my jaw and tensing my diaphragm. I watch my breath move in, move out.
I must sit wide awake, one-pointed—a mountaintop. This nose, prickling with hot windblown dust, these eyes, ears, skin, and tongue are the highest point for miles. My rock-hard skull is, right now, the absolute peak of this mountain.
I follow the inflow and outflow of breath. I count ten breaths, then ten more. Minutes go by.
Suddenly I jerk awake from a doze, bathed in sweat.
“Take a break, Erik,” I whisper to myself. Wearily, I shake my head, unwind my legs, pull on my boots, and move down off the Crag.
It’s good to stand up, to walk. Hunger gnaws at my stomach and I remember lunch.
“Let’s find some shade,” I think. Throwing things into the day pack, I amble north along the rugged crest of the mountain, pausing again and again to gaze across steep hills that undulate off toward Bitterroot country. I knead a sprig of sage between my palms and inhale deeply, rubbing it into my cheeks and nose, then circle back and dip down into trees, where the earth holds recent track of elk and piles of moist droppings.
I see a shattered anthill, what had been a careful pile of pine needles heaped around and over a rotting stump. The stump is splintered, the earth torn, pine needles scattered—and not far away there’s sticky, fresh bear scat shot through with thousands of half-digested ants.
Down a steep slope I linger by a fallen Douglas fir, an old companion, uprooted by storm winds last winter. It’s a giant, the bolt fully five feet across. The branches still hold needles, reddened in death. Roots as big as my waist are shattered and flung upward ten feet above my head, where they clutch flat, angular, torso-size boulders wrenched from the bedrock.
