There was a slight nervous tension in my stomach and after what seemed to be only a short while, I began to feel the occasional shiver shoot up my spine. This sensation grew stronger and before long I felt and heard a high pitched hiss of white noise that seemed to be moving up and down the length of my body, turning my solid frame into a rarefied field of coherent electrical pulses. Several times I touched myself to confirm my existence. Even though I could clearly feel the boundary that was my skin, I knew that this feeling was merely the result of electrical transmissions being interpreted by my brain. This recognition dominated my sensations.
As my material self continued to break down, my body image shattered and its constituent parts were rearranged. My extremities had been removed and reattached to different parts of my torso. My head now issued from where my legs should have been, my legs from my shoulders and my arms from different places on my sides. For the duration of perhaps a minute, every time I moved a certain part of my body, I felt it moving in this strange new configuration. It was disturbing to feel so deformed, but I was fascinated by this unique perspective, which felt as real to me then as what I am feeling right now.
I was attempting to relax and surrender into the experience and was quite unaware of any disturbances in the visual field. When I shifted my attention into this area, I began to see faint geometric patterns but little more. By now I could feel surges of energy moving through me, increasing in intensity, and I felt a slight fear at being overwhelmed by the experience. The shivers continued and I experienced a restlessness that caused me to constantly change my position. I also found myself yawning with an unusual frequency.
Suddenly the two-dimensional blackness of the room opened out into an infinite three-dimensional void in which I was suspended, yet free to move in any direction I pleased. In the absence of anything to verify my motion and with nothing to measure the passage of time, I dwelt in a state of timelessness, an eternal realm that until then had been mere speculation.
It became clear that this great emptiness actually contained the sum total of all possible experiences. I began traveling into my past to relive events from my childhood as if they were actually and presently taking place, in the true fullness of the five senses. The mere thought of a person would bring me to them instantly. In a relatively short time, it seemed that I had visited anyone who had ever meant anything to me. It soon became clear that I could not only visit people I have known, but I could actually become them.
It became apparent that my own choice was falling away and there was a strong sensation of being led from scene to scene. The entity leading me seemed to know me better than I did myself, for as each experience unfolded I was amazed that it was exactly the experience that I wanted and needed. It was as if something were reading my thoughts even before they surfaced in my own conscious mind.
My awareness drifted from person to person, becoming them and living as them before morphing into somebody else. Family, friends, lovers, and acquaintances, I became all of them and I was astonished that the basic sensation of existence was identical for all. Thoughts changed, the mechanism of apperception and the paradigms from which things were beheld were surely different. These things are forever changing in all of us. Even so, there was no discernible distinction between being myself and being someone else.
There are two reasons for this that have since occurred to me. One is that my consciousness was one hundred percent identified with the person I had become, so there was nothing outside of that to make a comparison with. It was not that there was a “me” pretending to be “them,” or a “me” plugged into the five senses of another. It was more like the “me” had become “them,” therefore the “them” was now “me.”
The second reason is that perhaps I had identified with the one Ground of Being, the great ocean of awareness that gives rise to the feeling of “I am” in all of us. It was this feeling, prior to all thought, that was identical in all those whom I became. At one point I became my mother giving birth to me, or perhaps it was me giving birth to my mother—I could not tell—but the experience was as real as any I have ever had: the contractions, the mixed feelings of pain and joy, and the relief at it all being over as I cradled the baby in my arms, holding its head to my swollen breast.
All traces of fear and anxiety had left me and in their place was an ecstatic feeling that grew in intensity. As it unfolded, I was being stripped of boundaries and liberated into an ever-widening awareness of the universe. The point that I had been, floating in an infinite void, expanded to include all things, all worlds, all planes, all levels, all beings, and all manifestations, all taking place inside of me. At one point I lifted my hands above my head and felt my body reaching from one side of the universe to the other, containing all things in between.
As these revelations continued, I realized that my question of free will had been answered: free will did exist, but there was only one. There was only One Will, which choreographed and directed all things, despite their apparent separation. Separate free will was a myth, for nothing existed separately from everything else. There was only one Super-Organism, whose body was the universe, and all manifestations were merely modifications of itself. It was the divine play of hide and seek, where mankind’s own false notions of personal free will were no more than the cunning method of the One for hiding from itself so as to allow the seeking and the finding.
Hand in hand with this most liberating insight was the knowledge that everything is exactly as it should be. This was the natural consequence of recognizing a singular Will, for if there is only One, then there can be no Other to oppose it. Things are the way they are because that is the only possible way that they can be. There is nothing amiss and nothing out of place. Although each of us as individuals could find a hundred things that we would change if given the choice, this is only because we fail to see the bigger picture. A limited viewpoint sees imperfection due to its own limitations, and not for any other reason.
This experience with the sacred mushroom was of great significance to me. In all honesty, it has, more than any other event, changed my life for the better. The insights that I took away with me remain to this day. They have also deepened, as I have had the chance to observe their validity in my day-to-day life.
Shortly afterward, when my partner returned from her holiday, she undertook a similar rite, with much the same effect. Subsequently, we both attempted to repeat the experience and we each passed through ordeals that taught us an important lesson. Since we had no real reasons to journey, apart from the desire to again behold the beatific visions, after a brief glimpse we were cast out from paradise and left to dwell in a strange place that was neither here nor there. It was a dislocated reality that gave us the impression we lost our sanity. Much to our distress, we remained there until the effects of the mushroom had worn off.
Neither of us has taken the sacred mushroom since—not due to fear, but because we realize that the entheogens are Teachers who have no time for students who wish only to fool around at the back of the classroom. The Teachers are to be called upon only when there is a meaningful question to be asked and a sincere desire to know its answer. If that time comes, I will once again approach the Teacher in humility and surrender. If not, then perhaps I have already been taught everything that I need to know.
THE POWER OF THE HEART IN THE FACE OF DARKNESS
MINDFIRE
A bold Canadian woman poet of forty-nine years backpacks into the California wilderness to ingest a large quantity of mushrooms—and nothing happens. Twenty-four hours later she apparently encounters a frightening entity and finds a deep source of compassion.
What if the entheogens, our plant allies, all the visionary plants, offer us an opportunity to heal ourselves and elicit a healing and maintenance of balance in the planetary body and natural world itself? Beyond the phenomenology, which allows criteria-based thinking with regard to experience, lies a subtlety of immense power: the power of Love. Imagine Love as an ide
a, a heart consciousness, an ability to live in and of the heart, not ego-driven nor fear-based, in dynamic equilibrium with all that is: Love as a resonant frequency.
Some years back I backpacked into the Ventana Wilderness in California, the ancient land of the Esselen people. My intent was to journey with the sacred mushroom and to invoke the healing powers inherent in the fusion of interdimensional energies—with possibly far-reaching implications. After focusing my attention upon my intent, I ingested a large quantity of psilocybe mushrooms and relaxed into the unknown. Interestingly, there was no grossly perceptible change in my awareness. Just being in nature has a way of enveloping me in the unity of diversity, but I went to sleep that evening wondering at and accepting the apparent lack of connection this time around.
The next morning, and for the entirety of that day, I eliminated a lot of shit, to put it indelicately and literally. I was thoroughly cleansed, but I never entered into high strangeness until that evening, upon retiring to my tent. I was jolted twice by an enormous surge of energy that leapt from the ground through my base chakra, up my spine, and out through my crown. Not to be confused with a kundalini awakening, this energy was fierce in strength, yet ambiguous in intent. It was power uploaded from the Earth, awaiting translation through me.
As the eerie hooting of a horned owl announced his guardianship of the night, these powerful surges were followed by an enormous crashing through the woods and the heaving, rasping breath of an unknown beast. It was certainly not a cougar, bear, nor deer. All alone in the wilderness, my initial reaction was, to say the least, fear-based. I felt I was in imminent danger, yet it dawned upon me that this energy or entity might be a consequence of the previous day’s ingestion of the mushrooms. I bucked up my courage and resolved to open to the essential nature of the encounter.
At the nearest point of rasping encroachment, I consciously shifted into heart-centeredness and “asked” for this entity to communicate its intent. At the moment of shifting to a trust of the heart, opening to Love and the relinquishment of fear, I no longer heard the rasping breath as a threat, but as the gasping of a wounded beast.
I felt an enormous wave of compassion suffuse my being and I reached out to the beast in acknowledgment and love. I asked, if I could be of assistance; what could I do to ease its pain? I projected unconditional love and acceptance. The rasping beast ceased its crashing and I heard it shuffle quietly away.
In the poignancy of this moment, I was exquisitely aware of the power of heart in the face of darkness. I was reminded of St. John of the Cross, who wrote:
“My dove, turn back,
For now the wounded stag
Is climbing up the slope
Freshened by the breeze of your flight.”
I was painfully aware of the everyday world of our reckoning, where the so-called “beast” is clothed in the raiment of man; a world wherein it seems so difficult to soothe the wounded stag. We live in a world where dark powers of immense interdimensional energies pale in comparison to our inhumanity.
Within an hour of this encounter, lightning began to strike and a torrential downpour ensued, ending a four-year drought in the immediate region.
In the next morning’s sun, I emerged from the womb of my tent to find hundreds of mushrooms of a variety I had never before encountered, arrayed in a Fibonacci-like spiral around me. Later, the young fellow who was to pack me out was not the one to arrive, but it was his grandfather, the eldest surviving of the Esselens.
Did I understand his look and nod as acknowledgment, perhaps even gratitude? Did it speak of all that had transpired? Could it be that the pain of its unacknowledged and unloved existence had trapped that wounded beast of indeterminate origin? Was it the source of drought in the region? By my act of acknowledgment and loving acceptance, did I free it, thereby freeing the blocked energies of the matrix?
Perhaps much of our journeying in our modern search for enlightenment is no more than narcissistic pursuit—and perhaps these allies have been working in tandem with our conscious, service-oriented, loving intent, to allow humankind to assist in the maintenance of a dynamic equilibrium, to heal ourselves, the Earth, and perhaps even other entities locked in frequencies of coengagement. This possibility takes tripping into a whole new dimension.
I consider it a privilege to partake of the mushroom sacrament and at the same time I am profoundly aware of the responsibility of doing so with great sanctity of intent. The warp and weave of the cloth of hope with which we may craft the fabric of a new heart conscious reality may truly be found in the symbiotic woven threads of hyphae and the awakened heart.
ENCOUNTER AND METAMORPHOSIS WITH THE SIRENIAN
LEOPOLD
A sixty-three-year-old professional finds himself shape-shifting and then confronting an ancient or futuristic sea-mammal deity.
I was comfortable in my own home with a gentle companion to watch over me. As the effects of the medicine commence, my hands and arms begin to feel shorter, stubbier, and clumsy. My hands appear to metamorphose into palmiped, elongated attachments, like a modified flipper. I feel a physical transformation is taking place in my body. I experience some trepidation as well curiosity as to what is going on. Certainly it is very odd, weird, and alien. I tell myself that it might be some sort of rebirth or perinatal experience, but that does not ring true at all. What is happening to me is a physical metamorphosis of an alien kind, with no connection to a birth memory.
Then I begin to sense/feel/see him in front of me and I realize I am in the presence of a very alien being. He has a broad, powerful human chest. I intuit that he has two hearts, rather than just one. The neck is very thick, short, and muscular. He has short, reddish-blonde hair, which I think may hide some horns, but I don’t see them. He is obviously male. He is doing a peculiar deep and threatening breathing, which sounds like a cross between human lungs pulling in air and some sort of gill breathing. The rest of his body is not very clear, but it is vaguely the shape of a merman. His forehead is very broad and contains a third eye. I sense a great, mysterious intelligence in this alien being.
The eye scrutinizes me and holds me in thrall. He is slightly threatening and feels like a sea mammal, but not a regressive vision to an earlier stage of evolution. On the contrary, he seems to be from the future, or at least he seems more evolved than the human race. I fear being in the presence of something much more powerful and more evolved than I: a god?
The metamorphosis of my hands can be explained: I am becoming him. I am in the presence of a Sirenian and I am becoming one! I am he. The thought is both terrifying and exhilarating. The thought of a sea god, the image of Capricorn comes to mind, in all its power!
Gradually I surrender myself to the transformation, accept it, and wonder what it means, what the image is telling me. As I transform, he remains in front of me.
With time, as the experience subsides, I consider the Sirenian image as the physical manifestation of an archetype. For the first time in any of these experiences I not only see but am also transformed in the archetypal image. I am cautious about being possessed by an archetype, as there is danger in it, but no damage results from this experience, so I take it as empowering.
The net result is of wonder, amazement, and gratitude at the gift of understanding how incredibly complex and mysterious are the worlds we live in, inner and outer. The vision and my own metamorphosis were gifts of understanding the peculiar forces around us, and a way of becoming them and joining them. It was a feeling of at-oneness.
My experience stretched my imagination much beyond normal rational boundaries. I think of Einstein’s remark that imagination is more important than knowledge. This experience certainly pushed my limits. There was very little of my normal persona when I was transformed. All ego constructs had collapsed, with all their attendant worries, anxieties, and small concerns. I was not just in the company of something much bigger than I; I was one of them. Overall, it was an exhilarating, empowering experience and my envelope is now
larger than it was. An image has been indelibly imprinted on my memory, which I can access in the future when I need it.
MY ROLE, HOWEVER HUMBLE, WAS NECESSARY AND COSMICALLY INSPIRED
PHIL O. CYBE
A middle-aged teacher remembers to dance the eternal dance again and opens to the upsurge of radiant life energy.
I enjoy eating dried mushrooms like potato chips. I do. I just love their taste and crunchy texture, so I guess that makes me a fungophile. I am an experienced one at that, since I know that even a few of these mushroom chips can prove to be too much. Much depends upon dose, mind set, and the setting in which you’ve placed yourself. These chips have a kick that can send you spiraling out into the cosmos or, if your ego desperately insists on resisting and clinging to what it thinks is so, plummeting into the hell realms. Then again, these “little flowers,” as they are sometimes called, can be gentle, playful, and instructive, true dear friends who can help you remember to dance “The Dance” with the eternal, luminous, wonder-filled Divine, from which everything is continuously arising and returning, expanding and contracting, like a heart beat.
So it was with some trepidation and much respect that I returned for another encounter with that which the Aztecs called teonanácatl, “divine flesh.” I was in a traditional circle with a very experienced, masterful guide who maintained a sacred context, a kind of spirit canoe in which I and others could safely journey.
Sacred Mushroom of Visions Page 28
