no difference between skins
last abstraction of self and self’s body gone
hairs on leg (my leg?) tripled move in sharp
perspective
like little fleas in Tivoli sideshow in Copenhagen
no word spoken
five us sit on terrace
still staring space
catatonic silent withdrawn
Ruth I talk
She psychiatric nurse
I good patient.
She talks earnestly about . . . reality
You must try LSD
and mescaline and
see if they are
from different
mushrooms
Listen tolerantly.
Pity her.
Poor creature.
Thinks such affairs important.
Mind games. Head trips.
Whiskers walks in kitchen completely dressed, he is going to town. He is so serious about the comic game in which he is trapped. Whiskers seems so can’t bear funny.
On patio
Scientist Gerhart giggly, sitting peacefully.
Lost contemplation.
Joan by side
But
She is fighting spell
Fluttering,
Talking
Refusing to relax.
Holds bowl of mushrooms in hand
Hostess pushing cookies at church tea.
Have another, one more makes all the difference.
I eat a second.
Have another, one more makes all the difference.
I eat a third.
Swim along veranda to bedroom
Shades drawn. Dark.
Betty feels isolated. All woman un-tilled earth. I am
sorry tender.
Her black hair
drawn back big pony tail.
Cherokee princess great beauty.
Hummingbird words swoop from mouth.
How do you feel?
I sit trying to answer. Can’t talk.
Can only look jeweled patterns,
swirling tapestry work in closed eyes.
What is she asking me? Oh, yes, how do I feel?
Far far gone.
She sits silently behind bead-work face. Do you
have anything on your mind? Do you want to talk?
She wants close. Intimacy. But,
I drift off to cavern of sea light.
Gerhart and Joan come in.
Fall on another bed.
In Mandy’s arms
Her body warm foam rubber
Marshmallow flesh
My body gone
Fallen into her
Two leafy water plants
Twined together, undulating warm bermuda sea
deep
Entangled so that no one
Not even plants themselves can tell
Which leaf
Which stem
Belongs to which.
Gone again, gone into
Palace by Nile
Temple near Hong Kong
Babylonian boudoir, Bedouin pleasure tent
Gem-flash jewel
Woven color silk gown movement
Mosaics flaming color Muzo emerald Burma rubies
ceylon sapphire
Mosaics lighted from within glowing, moving,
changing.
Hundred reptiles, Jewel encrusted. Hammered
Moorish patterned
Snakeskin.
Snake mosaic, reptiles piled in
Giant, mile-square chest
Slide, slither, tumble down central
drain
One
By
One
By
One
Such happy beauty
I lift up head to laugh
From around come answering chuckles.
Who? There are others here?
Eye open
Gerhart and Joan on next bed laughing
Next to me mermaid, laughing.
Put hand on hip where
Skin pokes through bikini lacing
Hand up soft back until fingers
Sink in quicksand of flesh through skin through ribs
Close eyes
Moving belts like
Inlaid Moorish patterns
Plummeting back through time
snake time,
fish time
Down through giant jungle palm time,
green lacy ferny leaf time
Watching first life oozing,
writhing
twisting up.
Watching first sea thing crawl to shore
Lie with her. Sand-rasp under cheek,
Then float sea-thing, down
Deep green sea dark
I am first living
Thing I
Am.
Laughter in dark room IT IS INTERESTING TO CONTEMPLATE A TANGLED BANK CLOTHED WITH MANY PLANTS OF MANY KINDS. Gerhart sitting up in dark shouting WITH BIRDS SINGING ON THE BUSHES WITH VARIOUS INSECTS FLITTING ABOUT. Oh God don’t let this end AND WITH WORMS CRAWLING THROUGH THE DAMP EARTH Gerhart goatee bobbing AND TO REFLECT THAT THESE ELABORATELY CONSTRUCTED FORMS SO DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER Gerhart gone in ecstasy AND DEPENDENT ON EACH OTHER IN SO COMPLEX A MANNER I know his ecstasy HAVE ALL BEEN PRODUCED BY LAWS ACTING AROUND US We are high. High Priests.
THESE LAWS TAKEN IN ancient evolution trail THUS FROM THE WAR OF NATURE, FROM FAMINE AND DEATH down to fishy bottom Float with plankton THE MOST EXALTED OBJECT WHICH WE ARE CAPABLE OF CONCEIVING NAMELY down the littoral Tumbling past coral reef THE PRODUCTION OF THE HIGHER ANIMALS DIRECTLY FOLLOWS AND barnacled sea cliff Fathoms down through tangled jungle THERE IS GRANDEUR IN THIS VIEW OF LIFE Once we were all double-celled creatures Remember that WHILE THIS PLANET HAS GONE ON CYCLING ON ACCORDING TO THE FIXED LAWS OF GRAVITY Once we all drifted down soft red-walled caverns FROM SO SIMPLE A BEGINNING ENDLESS FORMS MOST BEAUTIFUL AND MOST WONDERFUL Our neurons remember HAVE BEEN AND ARE BEING EVOLVED Do you remember
Then begins Blake’s long red voyage EVERY TIME LESS THAN A PULSATION OF THE ARTERY down the blood stream is EQUAL IN ITS PERIOD AND VALUE TO SIX THOUSAND YEARS floating, bouncing along the labyrinthian tunnels FOR IN THIS MOMENT THE POET’S WORK IS DONE artery, arteriole AND ALL THE GREAT EVENTS OF TIME START FORTH through every capillary AND ARE CONCEIVED IN SUCH A PERIOD through pink honey-comb tissue world WITHIN A MOMENT: A PULSATION OF ARTERY along soft watermelon channels EVERY SPACE LARGER THAN A RED GLOBULE OF MAN’S BLOOD part clotted scarlet swamps coagulate IS VISIONARY, AND IS CREATED BY THE HAMMER OF LOS tumbling through caverned heart hall, ventricular AND EVERY SPACE SMALLER THAN A GLOBULE sliding down the smooth aortic chute OF MAN’S BLOOD OPENS slow bumping INTO NARROW TUN-NELED PLEXUS INTO ETERNITY, OF WHICH THE VEGETABLE EARTH feel heart’s muscle motor prodding us
Chuckles from across room
All fall in soft laugh
Some scene
Four sprawl in darkened room
Opium den of purest dreams
Oh you worldling looking in think
you evil no you wrong evil in your
mental coin your evil makes me
compassion laugh
here is no evil
but
Diamond virtue
Pure blue blueness
Beyond desire
Only
Needle moment
Buddha unity
That’s
why we laugh do you understand
thinking about that paradox
of mental evil and
the mind-less clean diamond that’s
why we laugh
Words and thinking
Are not as important as we
Said and thought
And so we four drugged ontologists
Lift up heads and laugh
Mandy stone carved semitic mask above water
don’t sleep don’t sleep
Miss the beauty if you sleep
No one s
leeps
Head fall back on bed. Floating, tumble weed, wind driven. CERTAIN SEEDS, FALLING ON WATER BECOME DUCKWEED. Dropping again down shaft of time. WHEN THEY REACH THE JUNCTION OF THE LAND AND THE WATER THEY BECOME LICHEN. See tiger jungle cats, sinewy. Good-bye. REACHING RICH SOIL, THEY BECOME WU-TSU, THE ROOT OF WHICH BECOMES GRUBS, WHILE THE LEAVES COME FROM BUTTERFLIES, OR HSU. See reptiles jewelry. Good-bye. SO GOD CREATED THE GREAT SEA MONSTERS AND EVERY LIVING CREATURE THAT MOVES, WITH WHICH THE WATERS SWARM. Now I see the straggly shore creatures. Good-bye, dear friends. THE YANG CHI GRAFTED TO AN OLD BAMBOO WHICH HAS FOR A LONG TIME PUT FORTH NO SHOOTS, PRODUCES THE CH’ING-NING. I am drifting down past flowering sea life. Good-bye. AND GOD MADE THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH ACCORDING TO THEIR KINDS AND THE CATTLE ACCORDING TO ITS KIND. Drifting down through the history of my body which is all body down to the red, wet, warm beginnings. AND GOD SAW EVERYTHING HE MADE, AND BEHOLD IT WAS VERY GOOD. I am down to the center.
To the single point of origin. Hello.
lay pulsing softly center
of all life and time
I the giant eye . . .
Giant eye I
Giant eye
Eye
I
Lying ecstatic eyes closed on a Triassic-Jurassic sedentary rock formation, one hand on Mandy’s vertebrae hearing interstellar voices from the Mexican patio, light years away. Voice calls. Where are you? Here! I am lying unicelled looking up up up through the spiral unfolding of two billion years seeing it all ahead of me, ovum, segmentation, differentiation of organs, plant, fish, mammal, monkey, baby, grammar school, college, Harvard, Mexico, Cuernavaca. They want me way up there. Is it worth the whole journey? To start the two billion-year cycle once again? No. Why bother? Let’s move over to the Precambrian sludge, no too wet, abysses, overlying waters, narrow littoral rocks, let’s try that cenozoic snaky jungle. Ah, yes.
IT IS NOW EIGHT O’CLOCK STOP MUSHROOM EATING BEGUN AT FIVE O’CLOCK STOP EFFECT STARTING TO WEAR OFF STOP WANT TO STAY HERE BUT CAN’T STOP RETURN-ING SOON STOP HAVING MOMENTS OF NON-TRANCE CON-SCIOUSNESS STOP STOP STOP BUT THE ENRAPTURING VISIONS RETURN AND CLUTCH OF MIND LOOSENS STOP IMPACT OF NOW-WORLD HITS RETINA AND DON’T STOP.
Mandy and I peer out of cage at earthlings
Acapulco friends who have just arrived
Humor of situation pushes over brink to laughter.
Friends listen to Dicko orate
Shoots nervous glances in our direction
Wildly funny
then I realize responsibility
and role as host
and walk out to porch and have
friendly conversation with new arrivals
explaining what is
happening and telling them to go to
kitchen for drink and we will be
eating supper in an hour or so they are
relieved and we conclude our
perfectly normal conversation
Quiet waters roll and Dettering
Old rumpled crocodile paddles up
Dettering reports that the rest of the
crowd had landed back on shore and
were gathered around the kitchen
table
Whiskers had returned and Gerhart
was dictating notes to him.
I INTEND REMAINING OUT HERE LONG AS POSSIBLE STOP HAVING WONDERFUL TIME STOP WISH EVERYONE WERE HERE
on livingroom couch
head in flesh pool of Mandy’s lap
Plastic forms spinning in eyelid.
Ruth standing above us
¿Qué tal?
Join us in the kitchen, everyone talking
No, Ruth.
Good-bye Ruth.
¿Adónde vas?
To slinky sea bottom.
Ruth leans down and shakes my shoulder.
Take me with you. Tell me what you see. No. No. Dear nurse Ruth.
I can’t.
Ask marlin to take you with him on slippery,
divy
skimming jumping for joy across and
under the sun-specked ocean
Ask your blood to sing the song of voyage
down to wine-red cavern of your
heart.
Can they speak your language? No?
Neither me. My voice trails off as I head down
down
again
Head falls through
Butter belly and
Melon womb to
Sofa cushions
Mandy is getting up to check
on guests
At the far end of the pool Mandy and I sit
on beach chairs. She climbs on lap. We throw
heads back and watch gray clouds skudding along
black sky.
Magic mushrooms
Sculpting clouds
Into Roman emperors
Greek gods
Football scrimmages
Cavalry charges
We sit for full half-hour
No words
Soft laughter at secret we share
Then
The gray masses change back to clouds
for longer and longer periods and all
at once my legs feel cramped and the chill of
night air and
the trance is over.
The time was 9:07 and the journey into the other half of the cerebral cortex had lasted four hours and seven minutes from the time of eating.
And that was the trip.
It was the classic visionary voyage and I came back a changed man. You are never the same after you’ve had that one flash glimpse down the cellular time tunnel. You are never the same after you’ve had the veil drawn. again
In the seven years since eating seven mushrooms in a garden in Mexico I have devoted all of my time and energy to the exploration and description of these strange deep realms.
Copyright 1968, 1995 by Timothy Leary, Ph.D., from “God Reveals Himself in Mysterious Forms: The Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico,” pp. 12-34, High Priest, Ronin Publishing, by permission. All rights reserved. Roninpub.com/rn_learylib.html.
9
INITIAL EXPERIENCES FROM THE HARVARD PSILOCYBIN PROJECT
RALPH METZNER
I had my first psychedelic experience with synthetic psilocybin in 1961. Professor Leary had decided to initiate a prisoner rehabilitation project, and I had applied to be a graduate student research assistant. Growing out of Leary’s own experience and his philosophical-humanistic values, he had decided that those giving the psychedelic to the convicts should have experienced it themselves. This was fine with me since I was eager to explore this wondrous experience I had heard so much about.
It was a chilly Sunday afternoon when I arrived at Tim’s house. Two other graduate students, Gunther Weil and Lyn K., were involved in the session, as well as Gunther’s wife Karin, and the prison psychiatrist, Madison Presnell, and his wife. After we had made ourselves comfortable in the living room, Tim gave everyone six little pink tablets, each containing 2 mg of psilocybin. He took probably a smaller dose. It had already become the preferred policy to not stress the role of guide or teacher, but rather to work on the assumption that we were fellow explorers. Nevertheless, in sessions in which he participated, Tim generally set the tone of the experience.
Sacred Mushroom of Visions Page 19
