Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  The world has changed, indeed, oh yes. How extraordinary. Like seeing a completely new dimension of this place.

  As I looked around, allowing myself to accept the total strangeness, the shift from familiar to incomprehensibly different, I began to understand part of the change. I was seeing the room as if I had never been in it before, the way it would have appeared if I had just come through the front door for the first time and sat down on the couch in an unfamiliar, darkened place, seeing everything - rugs, fireplace, the beams of the ceiling, the gleam of windows, the chair -

  thrust into the stranger's perspective that regards every object in a new place as equally important, because there is no way of knowing the relative importance of anything.

  Only living with the room will cause the mind to assign unconscious priorities and a resulting new perspective.

  With familiarity, I thought, the mind tends to notice only certain pieces of furniture and ignore others. One moves past this or that table or chair without conscious thought - only the absence of a particular thing in the room will make one notice - and the attention is to those parts of the room which involve whatever action or concern one is busy with at the moment.

  The little table near the front door is always noted in passing, because Shura and I use its top to stack various things that must be taken out of the house the next time one of us leaves -

  letters or parcels or books to be returned to the library. The piano and the bookcases don't invite conscious attention. They're simply there, and we ignore them as we pass through.

  I decided that my original suspicion about the origin of the native hut association had probably been right; it had been triggered by the woven Guatemalan scarf. My unconscious mind had filled in the rest of the rich image, creating something recognizable out of a place which had unexpectedly presented itself as alien territory.

  When Shura appeared in the doorway, I rose and went to him, and began explaining what I had been seeing. We went to the bedroom and Shura closed the door behind us to keep in the warmth.

  When I told him I thought the scarf had triggered the native hut vision, he said, "That may be, but keep in mind that you know something about the history of the sacred mushroom, and it's just as likely that the look of the room was due to your associating psilocybin with that part of the world, Mexico or Central America; after all, you've read about Wasson's first experience, and it happened in a place that undoubtedly looked somewhat like what you saw, don't you think?"

  I mulled that one over and admitted, "You're probably right." We lay facing each other on the bed, still in our dressing gowns, and I glanced at the bedside electric clock and saw that not quite 40 minutes had passed since we'd taken the white powder. It seemed like several hours, and I remarked to Shura that there seemed to be a lot of time-slowing with this material.

  "Yes, I've noticed that too," he said, then asked, "Are you at peace with it, so far?"

  "Oh, my, yes. It's getting quite intense, though. Have we reached the plateau, or will it climb some more?"

  "Oh, I don't think we've plateau'd yet. Still a little way to go, another 15 or 20 minutes."

  I examined the friendly roses in the wallpaper and saw that they were moving gently. In the bookcase beside the bed, the books were dusty jewel-colored treasures, trying to say something, or perhaps just wanting to be noticed. Across from me, the face of the boy with white hair glowed from inside with life and humor and something close enough to love to fill the space inside me that sometimes ached.

  I remembered what we had been talking about before. "Okay," I said, "Back to natural and synthetic. Even though you might not accept without question any particular experiment with plants, or the conclusions those particular people came to - that plants have some kind of consciousness - is it absolutely inconceivable to you that a plant might have another dimension? Some kind of energy, if you want to call it that?"

  "Of course it's not inconceivable," Shura said, "Everything that exists, not just plants, but rocks, animals - everything we see and everything we can't see/ for that matter - is a form of energy, and there certainly are interactions of energy fields - but it's a considerable step from that to assigning some kind of personality to a plant, or the ability to pick up thoughts telepathically from humans. There's certainly no scientific basis for assuming anything like that."

  I protested, "I didn't say anything about scientific proof; I just wondered if you can allow for the possibility of such a thing as every plant having a distinct, individual energy field of some kind associated with it? Something that might even be seen as a - well, you know how some people see what they call fairies or elves or gnomes - is it possible, in your view, that -" I floundered, not sure exactly what I was asking, then remembered what my original point had been. I waggled a hand in the air to indicate that I was still completing a thought.

  Shura stayed quiet, watching me with only a suggestion of amusement in his face.

  "All right, let me make this a statement, then," I said, sitting up cross-legged on the bed and trying to ignore the increasing excitement of the wallpaper roses, "I don't know if this is what your friend Terence believes exactly, but I do know that there are a lot of people in the world who believe that every plant has some kind of - I guess you could call it an entity - attached to it. So that, when you eat the plant, you're taking in that thing, the spiritual dimension, if you want, along with the purely physical stuff, and they probably believe that a synthetic drug doesn't have those other energies, dimensions. It's sort of like taking in just the physical part, the purely chemical part, which didn't come from the earth and has no connection to the earth, so it has no spiritual entity attached to it as a plant does. Do you understand what I mean?

  Those people feel that a synthetic chemical has no soul, I suppose you could say."

  Shura lay back on his pillow and gazed up at the ceiling for a while, then raised himself on one elbow again, "Let me tell you something that might interest you," he said.

  I nodded, and a roomful of prisms nodded with me.

  "I can't speak for other chemists, but I know that when I'm working in the lab, putting together a new compound, I not only see it upside down, inside out and in three dimensions, in my mind, but I also sense other aspects of what is developing. You might say that a personality or, to use your term, an entity, begins to take shape as I work. I try to feel it out, to get a sense of whether it's friendly or not, whether it's liable to open up this area of the mind or that; does it have a dark nature which may mean I'm going to have to watch out for over-stimulation of the nervous system, or some other difficulty I can't anticipate?

  "By the time the new compound is completely developed, ready to nibble, it has a personality.

  Not yet known, because I have to interact with it, my chemistry has to interact with a substance it's never had a relationship with before, but even though I can't define that new personality yet, it's certainly there. By the time I've explored the new compound through its active levels, its nature has become quite clear, and the 'entity' has accepted some of my inputs to its creation and its personality. I can say, without any hesitation at all, that every compound I've discovered and tried has a real character all its own, quite as distinct as anything supposedly attached to a growing plant."

  I sat looking at him, astonished, then leaned forward to tell him, "That's the first time I've heard anything like that. I had no idea that sort of thing could happen in a lab. It puts a completely different light on lots of things. Did you ever explain that to your friend Terence?"

  "No. I've never told anyone before. It's not the sort of thing one would consider including in a lecture to the New York Academy of Sciences, you know."

  I laughed. Then I asked him if he didn't think the wallpaper was getting awfully active, even more than usual. "I guess it is, now that I look at it, yes. How about you? Still together, body and soul?"

  I said I was all right. "It feels very strong, very intense. Maybe I just wasn'
t keeping track of it while we were talking, but it's certainly catching up with me now!"

  "Me, too. It seems to have taken a leap upward, from the last time we noted the effects."

  Good Lord, this is really powerful! Everything is moving, waving, broadcasting meaningfulness of some kind.

  I let my teeth chatter audibly as a strong shudder traveled through my body, "How about getting under the covers right now, maybe?"

  Shura swung his legs off the side of the bed and took off his dressing gown. The skin of his left thigh rippled faintly, as if an electric current were flowing across it. I looked at the long, muscled back and the lovely, small/ rounded bottom, but I wasn't quite enough at ease yet to reach out and stroke it. The energy tremor had become impossible to ignore. I dropped my gown on the floor and scrambled under the sheets where I lay, grasping Shura's hand, watching the tiny fans of rainbow color which crowded the ceiling.

  I closed my eyes and held my breath in astonishment at the multitude of colored images filling the mental screen. I was standing on the floor of a mosque, looking up at arches painted with gold-edged designs.

  I was aware of Shura throwing off the covers.

  The two of us were joining in the net of light that covered the earth, adding ourselves, our emotions and thoughts, our experiences of each other's smells and tastes, to flavor the whole.

  In the slowing of time, each touch of hand and mouth was an act of beauty, an offering of our own livingness and power to affirm. We were saying Yes to ourselves, to each other, to being alive, and Yes was pulsing back to us.

  How do we learn to make love? How do we know to trace brocade circles with our fingers on the beloved's skin, to say I Want with a stroke of ankle on thigh, to honor the beauty of curve and bone with hand and mouth. It's a language of body, and it opens with the opening of love in the heart and mind. It can't be explained. It teaches itself as you touch.

  When Shura cried out, De Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain was playing.

  After a while he attended to me. I saw far ahead a clear gemstone - it looked like a pale aquamarine - and, spiraling up from it, blue-white gems which gradually shaded to to mauve, then to violet, as they passed on either side of my head.

  I felt the aura of the Grail, then a flood of exquisiteness roared toward me, and I was left floating in a sea of soft blue light.

  I whispered, "Thank you," and lay beside him, my eyes still closed, breathing evenly.

  Suddenly, I was rising off the bed, Shura beside me. We drifted upwards to the ceiling and passed through it, our heads emerging on the other side. We could move no further.

  Surrounding us was brown earth, and a few feet away I saw a dirt clearing in front of a small hut; I couldn't be sure whether there was more than one room in the deep shadows beneath the thatched roof. Around us, in what looked like the light of early morning, was an abundance of flowers and leaves. The air was warm. There were large yellow lilies, spotted with brown, and tiny scarlet blossoms on a thick vine that wound through and around a fence climbing the bank behind us. Tall clusters of dark green, broad-leafed plants were visible under overhanging trees and I glimpsed wooden baskets hanging from beneath the roof of the hut, spilling pink and white flowers. There was a smell of rich, moist soil and plants growing.

  Shura and I were children, being allowed - for a brief moment - to poke our heads into a place that belonged to the grownups. My eyes were drawn to the left of the thatched roof where I saw an immense dark shape, still as rock, out of which rose the outlines of three great heads, silhouetted against the slowly lightening sky. I knew that I was seeing three massive bodies, seated side by side, watching us. I was filled with awe at the power, the numinous majesty of what was sitting there: I felt again like a child discovered trespassing on forbidden ground.

  The Great Ones were looking down on our two heads with what I sensed was a mixture of benign amusement and fond impatience. The message came: that's far enough, little ones, and long enough. Now you will return to where you belong.

  I found myself lying in the bed, gripping Shura's hand.

  "Did you see it?"

  "See what?"

  "The three - Buddhas or Gods or whatever they were. You were there with me, you were right beside me."

  "Tell me what you saw."

  I told him, aware and not caring that my voice was shaking with tears. When I had finished, he pulled me to him and we were silent together until the music changed to something by Wagner; both of us simultaneously cried "Oh, no," and broke into laughter as he reached to change the station.

  CHAPTER 27. SIBERIA

  Shura and I were coming to know the dark sides of each other.

  My problem was one which -1 was beginning to realize - troubled a majority of humans on earth: I did not, at the very deepest level/ believe in my own worth. There was a place in my soul where something fierce and strong lived, but I was in touch with it only in times of crisis and loss.

  One of the few times the strong thing within me had spoken was when I finally discovered, after eight years of marriage, that Walter had a longstanding habit of falling in love with other women - often patients - approximately every six months, and that, moreover, he honestly could not understand or accept my anguished response when I found out. He told me, in all earnestness, "My relationship with (whoever it was at the moment) in no way affects my love for you and my bond with you." I tried a lot of vodka for a while to kill the pain. Then, one day, when we were driving to the market, the hidden lioness opened my mouth, and I heard my voice saying to Walter, firmly and matter-of-factly, that I wanted him to pack and leave the house immediately, and that I was going to file for divorce. He was quiet for a moment, then said - his voice rational and reasonable - that he thought I was being irrational and unreasonable.

  But he left.

  By that time, my already none too fabulous self-image was - not surprisingly - quite a bit further damaged. After I had spent some time nursing the certainty that I was ugly, in soul if not body, inadequate and generally unlovable (except of course to my children, who didn't know any better, bless them) the lioness thing - or whatever she was - finally roared inside me, one day, furious and passionate, declaring that if that's what I was, so then, that's what I was, and I would just have to get on with my life and make the best of it.

  By the time the children and I moved to the A-frame house, across the street from Walter, the divorce was complete and I was able to look at myself in the mirror and believe that on the outside, at least, I was not too bad at all. But the self-image of basic worthlessness and uglitude remained - my sad, nasty little secret.

  One of my ways of unconsciously buying favor and approval was to try to do whatever was asked of me by somebody I worked for or liked, whether I really wanted to or not. The inevitable result was often a job done less than enthusiastically, and occasionally badly.

  Another way was to feed people. I brought enough food to the Farm every weekend to keep a small army advancing sturdily through a month-long Russian blizzard. Shura began to gain a little weight, and finally said that he liked to be able to feel his backbone through his navel, and would I stop cooking so much for him. I argued that he always finished whatever I put on his plate, and he replied, in exasperation, "I'm as greedy as the next person, and that's why I'd rather have less on my plate to tempt me!"

  "Okay," I said, and began explaining, "Half of me is Jewish, remember, and that half is inclined to be a Jewish mother - in the nurturing sense, of course, not the horrid sense -"

  Shura interrupted to say, curtly, "I still want less on my plate, please?"

  I said, "Okay, sorry," and shut up.

  The triangle situation I'd signed on for was ready-made for insecurity and self-doubt, and I often had to remind myself that it was I who had chosen it, that there had been no coercion by Shura, no half-truths, and little if anything withheld. We both knew the situation, and I had urged him to let me take this role, promising I would not cause him to regr
et it. I was an adult, responsible for my own decisions.

  But sometimes it got to me - the knowledge that I was the fill-in, the second-best - and my deeper self, less amenable to clarity of reason and purpose than the rest of me, showed its anger and fear in strange ways, at unexpected moments, despite my determination to avoid any obvious signs of stress.

  One evening at the Berkeley Repertory Theater with Ruth and George, during intermission, while everyone was lining up to buy snacks at the counter in the lobby, Shura asked me if I would like coffee, and I found myself in a state of total brain-fuzz; the simple question had splattered in my mind like paint thrown by Jackson Pollock.

  I looked up at him and said, "Coffee. I don't know. I'm feeling awfully confused for some reason, out of place here, as if I don't belong."

  The look he gave me could only be described as freezing, and he walked away. A few minutes later, he brought me a cup of coffee, black - the way he drank it, not the way I did - and all he said was, "Here," then turned and left me again.

  I moved behind a column, embarrassment added to the scatter of other dark and sorrowful things which had chosen that ill-timed moment to surface. Hot liquid spilled on my hand and I felt awkward, clumsy and stupid. All I could think of was that Shura hadn't bothered to remember how I took my coffee; I didn't even mean that much to him. I took a shaky breath and gritted my teeth against the threat of tears/ wondering if I was going to unravel completely in some unimaginable and appalling way, right there in front of all the nice theatergoers.