Sacred Mushroom of Visions

by Ralph Metzner

  Soon after ingesting 3 grams of the little flowers, they came on like a raging, tumultuous river. The mushrooms were as I had remembered them: overwhelmingly powerful and relentless. In fear and trembling, I desperately tried to avert the rapid onslaught of brilliantly colored geometric imagery and the rapid-fire thoughts that accompanied them, but I could not do so. There was no escape; I was along for the ride. With the help of our guide’s crystal clear, softly murmured instructions, I remembered to return to my heart center, relax, breathe deeply, and open to this upsurge of radiant life energy.

  Over time, it softened and subsided. Acting as my own compassionate witness, I experienced that which I call “I” being dismantled, dismembered, and pursued by a hunt-and-seek power that was absolutely determined to leave no stone unturned. It would not take “no” for an answer. Letting the mushroom spirits do their thing was like having a really good body session with a very skillful body worker who intuitively pinpoints and unearths every deeply-held psychological and physical kink and knot, and undoes them in a way which is at times painful, exhilarating, and deeply healing.

  At one point, the mushroom energy came on like a rolling California earthquake, leaving me involuntarily undulating on the floor. I was a Kundalini-inspired serpent. My movements uncovered, dislodged, and disclosed those places, within as well as without, to which I needed to pay attention. My relationship with my son came through very strongly. I could see with great clarity that he was indeed my son, and that he already knew it, through a process of nature-based self-initiation, a fact that I sometimes missed in my dealings with him.

  I also saw that much depended on my upright behavior. I was a kind of linchpin, a hub upon which so much depended. I needed to heal. My role, however humble, was a necessary and cosmicallyinspired one, called forth by the medicine way to uphold and defend. By personal example and practice I could be a standard-bearer of that which was required to restore a sense of connectedness to the luminous house within. This was also the case with other psychonauts who have been summoned to help heal that rupture into dualism which plagues and threatens us today.

  With mushroom-inspired awareness I saw how to get in touch with effortless effort, by letting go and allowing things to unfold of their own accord, while observing and seeing into the deeper meaning. To do this, I needed to stay alert, to keep myself from being distracted and ensnared by worry, anger, resentment, and other samsaric states of mind. I realized that I needed to come from that heart-centered, balanced place within, that radiant source of sources from which everything is endlessly arising and returning.

  The mushroom helped me see that to do that which I’ve been called upon to do, I need to enjoy myself and to drink regularly and deeply from the refreshing, bubbling wellspring within. A flattened, repressed life is too hard, too dry, too dispirited to live. Give me laughter and Zorba-like friends! I must say, “Yes!” to good wine, wonderful women, and dark chocolate. “Yes!” to Dionysus!

  I have learned that the journey begins well before the medicine is ingested. I look for it in preactivations of to-be-examined issues and images. I notice it in brighter and resplendent dreams and in the extraordinary events that often precede a medicine session proper. This time, a day before the medicine circle gathering, Coyote trotted by within a few feet of my home, looking magnificent and regal. He looked at me, paused momentarily, winked, and then disappeared into the brush. The spirit of the Trickster is at work! It’s tracking you, too, dear reader! Just say, “Yes!”

  I FELT THE VITALITY OF WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE PRIMITIVE

  THIRDPALISSY

  A young man in his twenties takes mushrooms in a cow pasture in Southern Louisiana and has a vision of the Moon as the pregnant Cat Goddess Bastet; he was struck by parallels to the vision of Sekhmet, the Lion-Headed, reported in the book on Ayahuasca experiences.

  I grew up in southern Louisiana, where from March to October cow pastures blossomed with psilocybe mushrooms after every rain, especially in the spring and fall. One day, about thirty years ago, Marc, my best friend, and his older brother, John, and I decided to try the Magic Mushroom. I had never done them before, though I had dropped acid a few times.

  We went out to a known Psilocybe haunt and out of rotting cow manure picked a paper grocery bag full of them. On that occasion and all hunts afterward I noticed that I had to be somewhat detached. It was as if they presented themselves only if I were not too greedy to find them.

  We took them back to John’s house and cooked them down for 2 or 3 hours, boiling them in water, adding more water when needed. In the end we had a little less than a gallon of ’shroom juice. In those days we used to add grape Koolaid mix in with the juice to make it more palatable. We each drank a cup, settled back in our living room chairs, and listened to psychedelic rock music.

  It’s been a long time, so I cannot accurately describe coming-on, except to relate it as the sensual initial beginning of the psychedelic experience. Colors were brighter even though we were in a relatively dark room. The music enfolded us. John had one of those fake Persian rugs that were so popular at the time. As I succumbed to my own visions, creatures and what I can only describe as Terence McKenna’s logos emerged three-dimensionally from the designs on the carpet.

  I was transported to a time before we were top predator. I felt the vitality of what it was like to be “primitive.” I was in a cave with the keen knowledge of hunter and knowing the dynamic threat of being prey.

  At the first intermission, John pulled us together to talk a little about our experience. Then we drank another cup of the magic fluid and decided to go outside. We stood and talked in the driveway under a full Moon. I looked up and beheld a wonderful sight: the Moon, still the Moon, was also the pregnant belly of a bejeweled, cat-headed woman, staring and smiling back at me. She had many jeweled and pearl necklaces around her neck. I asked something to the effect of, “Wow, is anyone else seeing this?” Marc identified the exact same vision as I had but John could not see her, as hard as he looked. Marc and I jointly maintained the view of this seeming “goddess” for several minutes. She was not made of cloud but seemed solid and alive, smiling back at us. It seems as though she was showing us something in both of her hands but I cannot remember what it was.

  Suddenly clouds obscured her vision and a wiggling, undulating “worm hole” made of cloud opened up between the Moon and ourselves. Marc and I both felt we were about to be sucked up by the Moon, so we increased our gravity (?!) to stay down, and eventually the sky returned to normal. I still wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t grounded ourselves.

  Her image is still in my mind. It was nearly ten years later when I came across an image of the Egyptian goddess known as Bastet, a statue of her with a couple of necklaces on. I was absolutely amazed. It was indeed the goddess that we had seen, though in our vision she had a couple of dozen necklaces.

  My vision of Bastet certainly aligned her with the Moon. Though I have not found any scholarly research linking her with the lunar, still in all, it is very strange to consume magic mushrooms in Louisiana and see an Egyptian goddess.

  Interestingly enough, Bastet is known as “the devouring lady.” Gurdjieff believed that the Moon eats us when we die. But foremost she is protectress, especially of those who care for cats (neither Marc nor I had a cat at the time). Later she became the life-preserving goddess of joy and the protector of women. She took on an appearance of “cat as sex symbol.” I would have to describe the vision I had of her as “sexy.” On another note of interest, she defended her father Ra, the Sun, against his only real enemy, the serpent Apep.

  I’m a fifty-year-old potter now living in North Carolina. I have a great interest in pottery from around the world and I love to visit museums and view their antique clay collections. One of my favorite museums is the Field Museum in Chicago. They possess a wonderful pre-Columbian pottery collection. Viewing the work of Mississippian clay from the state of Arkansas (where I was born and lived until I was twelv
e) I came across a bowl with a catlike head on one side and a snakelike tail on the other. Now, I cannot help but think of that bowl representing the Moon. If a twentieth century man in Louisiana can see an Egyptian goddess in the sky, I have no reason not to believe that pre-Columbian north Americans could. And those mushrooms were more than likely growing in the gulf south all the way into Arkansas then, as they do now.

  I SAW MY ENTIRE WORLDVIEW AND VALUE SYSTEM REALIGN

  DAVID S.

  A fifty-two-year-old writer and publisher endures intense physical suffering and then is able to open himself to and release negativity and find self-acceptance.

  Every time I have a session with the mushrooms, I view it as a sacred ceremony, as a sacrament. I prepare by fasting and meditation. My sacred place is a rural home in a hilly, forested area in western Sonoma County, free of traffic and noise. There are fresh flowers set about, aromatic natural plant oils are being burned, and harmonious music is being played to create a retreat for deep inner work.

  I always have a guide present to give me support, to redirect me if I wander or become anxious, to help me process if I become confused, and to provide an atmosphere of safety. The guide, usually silent, is also a witness to my healing and my life-changing insights.

  The mushroom is a preferred friend because of its gentleness, its harmony with my natural surroundings, and because I believe it talks to me. My intention was to deal with my core negativity and harsh worldview, and to seek solutions to my dire economic predicament.

  Initially I had a lot of physical discomfort and anxiety and I was glad there was music to draw off some of my confusion. I tried focused breathing, but I was losing the struggle as waves of generalized fear and hopelessness swept over me. At the same time, part of me knew that I would be well because I saw my guide quietly reading a book in the corner. Part of me also knew that this was the ego relinquishing control and sounding the psychic-physical alarms. Still, I was suffering.

  A break came at about 70 minutes, when the vista outside started to pulsate and throw off beams of light and color and look more dimensional and radiant than usual. It was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen. I was elated and commented to my guide. She nodded appreciatively and encouraged me to hang in there. But nothing else happened. I was drawing a blank in a beautiful environment. I became more miserable as the anxiety and body aches came back. I started to despair and told my guide that nothing was happening, all I had was anxiety. It looked like this was going to be a rough one. She calmly reassured me and said, “David, open to yourself. Just open to yourself.”

  I determined to follow her advice. I told myself to open to myself and to turn into my anxiety. Almost immediately, powerful muscle spasms hit me in the back and neck. It was as if I had become spastic from repeated electric shocks. I felt I was trying to form a backwards circle. It seemed as though I was short-circuiting, and I flopped off the sofa and onto the floor in uncontrollable spasms.

  A singularly powerful knowing swept over me and totally overwhelmed me, mentally and physically: that this world is a beneficent place and the source of all goodness. The power and simplicity of this realization astounded me. It was not part of my belief structure. Where had I been all these years? I had been in self-absorption. I saw my entire worldview and value system shift and realign. The world is a beneficent place. An immense relief came over me as I realized that I was free from the captivity of my previous worldview and attitudes. A new perception was manifesting, and it made sense. As waves of gratitude and awe washed over me, I went into more contortions and spinal muscle spasms.

  Now came a knowing that things were going to be all right in my life. The term “all right” was the driver. Everything was all right in my life, starting now. At first I was shocked at the fact that I knew this on such a core level. It wasn’t a case of believing it or hoping for it; it was simply knowing it. I was experiencing the knowledge and not merely thinking it. I tried to verbalize this, but I couldn’t get the words out. I realized that I was having a world-life-view shift, and that I was blowing out a lifetime’s worth of negative dross and sediment from my system.

  My guide maintained her distance and silence as I flopped around on the rug like a huge fish out of water, attempting to talk with a thick tongue. What was happening to me physically didn’t matter because I comprehended the significance. The negative karma of generations was being broken and removed. There was another way to see.

  Powerful sobs wracked my body and there was a tremendous letting go of years of misery as next came the knowing that I was all right just the way I was. I was all right, period. Without qualification, rationalization, justification, negotiation, performance, or explanation. This was the simple truth. Throughout my life, on a deep level, I have always believed that there was something wrong with me. Now, for the fist time, I was simply all right. I experienced being all right. As the magnitude of this sank in, a great calmness came over me. On the outside I was a blubbering mess of tearful gratitude; on the inside I felt the purity of the truth. This made sense. This is the way it is. These knowings repeated themselves many times before the spasms subsided.

  As the day slowly moved into dusk, I was filled with a deep gratitude for the wonderful gifts that I had received. Things were going to change. I didn’t know how, but I knew that they would. Things had already changed: I was filled with grace.

  I have left my previous occupation and begun writing and now I publish a quarterly newsletter. The difficulties of life are still here and my fears are often operative. What is different is that though things are somewhat the same, they look and feel different, feel positive. My negative self-talk is diminished. I have greater self-acceptance and am more at ease. I smile more. The world looks better. There is a calmness. I have a new reservoir of strength to draw from—I am more myself.

  PONDERING THE SEPARATION BETWEEN WHAT I EXPERIENCE AND WHAT ACTUALLY IS

  MARK BRYAN

  This twenty-five-year-old philosophy student laboriously enters a hell realm and then reaches a complex but functional understanding of God through the comparison between what is and what he experiences in mundane reality.

  With some trepidation, on this early morning in my home I embarked upon my first solo, high dose mushroom trip, augmented by marijuana, and, at one point, smoked DMT.

  I made mushroom tea by putting 5 grams of chopped mushrooms into a tea ball, then pouring separately three cups of boiling water over it. There was a flavored tea bag in the cup to mask the mushroom taste. I allowed about fifteen minutes for each steeping and after drinking cup number two, I knew that I had reached the limit of what I could handle. I decided to drink one more cup.

  I recall sitting on my bed with my duvet covering my legs, witnessing its clumps and creases transform into a vast mountain range viewed from high above, as if I were flying over it. I experienced God and was very, very fearful, overwhelmed with pure suffering, pure shame, pure denial. It hurt, especially when I resisted the experience. I had a lot of difficulty giving myself up to what seemed to be the Christian God but, upon doing so, I came to the realization that I am God, and that I was simply viewing myself from the inside and the outside simultaneously.

  As I flew across the duvet mountains, they changed from craggy peaks into barren hills, then to sand dunes, and finally into extremely arid land. I kept flying until I reached what seemed to be the Nile River in Egypt. There was desolation, azure sky, and sand for as far as I could see.

  Due to a personal issue of the time, I began to feel guilt, which increased in intensity until I was also experiencing fear, remorse, and other such emotions in their purest forms. It was no longer just a feeling of being guilty about something; it was undifferentiated guilt with no object, no cause.

  Next I became Christ descending into Hell. I experienced the sins of humankind and was punished for them all. Humankind was me, and equally I was humankind. This lasted for some time, with the struggle focused on the issue of my non-accepta
nce of the Christian God. The more I refused to yield to God, to recognize its presence and superiority, the greater my tortures. (Strictly speaking, “sin” is the choice of ignoring God in any action.) If God is immaterial then, when translated into a Buddhist context, the denial of God is the refusal to give up all of one’s attachments to materiality—this is suffering, which is what I was experiencing as the disbelieving Christ.

  Upon my eventual submission and full repentance I discovered that in actuality, because I am God (but have forgotten it), the whole experience was a trial to force me to give up my great attachment to a dogmatic belief that God was an impossibility. I was forced to sacrifice my understanding of reality. Relinquishing my day-to-day reality core led to my comprehending reality-as-it-is, not the mere experience of it.

  I began pondering the separation between what I experience and what actually is. Thinking of maya, the veil of illusion, as a kind of television screen, my consciousness and thoughts became distinct from my body. For example, I could observe myself instructing my hand (located on a television screen) to move, without being in the action myself. (In day-to-day reality, I am in my actions, in that I am not consciously deciding to perform most of them.) On a pad of paper I wrote with some difficulty, “I am seeing my hand inside a TV—I am thinking and it is writing.”

  During the year prior to this particular mushroom experience, I had smoked DMT a number of times. Many of these trips included guiding presences that revealed information to me. I had been interpreting these presences as being external entities that were communicating with me, but during this mushroom trip I realized that the information was not external in origin, but was self-revealing. What in day-to-day reality I subjectively interpret as “I” already knew all of the information of which I was being made aware.