This is A WORLD OUT OF MIND, my Online Journal where I explore Consciousness and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by the intentional alteration of my own belief structures, using Salvia Divinorum and additional self-altering meditational techniques drawn from Western Ceremonial Magic.

I always attempt to adhere to the scientific method as much as possible in my explorations, and while I often speak of these experiences as if I knew they were Truth, I always consider the alternative, that it is merely self-deception on my part, and think accordingly. Thus I maintain two parallel world views at once, one aspirational and one a safe fallback into standard materialism.

The more I journey into salviaspace, the more I think the former worldview is the correct one, but there is no objective way to prove that to the world, so I'll let you, the reader, decide for yourselves.

-Saint Brian the Godless

Follow me on Twitter @AWorldOutOfMind



Saturday, September 20, 2014

The Salvia Divinorum Experience of "Many Worlds." Is It Real?

Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The Salvia Divinorum Experience of "Many Worlds." Is it real?

In all my salvia divinorum experiments, I still have not proven anything as regards the question "is this purely an hallucination?" vs "Is this my mind leaving my one body and experiencing many of my bodies?" Is it all just my mind tricking itself, or is it actually experiencing something, well, for lack of a better term, paranormal?

Because lately, most every time I take it I experience multiple locations at once, multiple "me's" at once. Even feel my body weight bearing down on the chair in many places, many of my bedrooms, at once. It's exactly 50-50 to me if it's a real effect or not. It certainly feels very real, realer than my normal life in fact, but then I factor in how easily we silly hairless apes trick ourselves, and that ties it up again at 50-50. I mean, no way to prove it to myself definitively either way.

One thing for sure though: Even if it's all just fake, I've seen things, experienced things, that I would have never have thought my mind was even remotely capable of faking. I think in a non-human way on salvia now, most of the time. "Non-human" is the best way to describe it. Many thought lines at once, approaching a question from many angles at once, like a group of people all doing it at once on a "party line," incredible flows of convoluted information that no one mind should be able to accomplish or sustain. These lines of thought are also non-verbal. They are pictorial and emotional in nature, but complex concepts actually come much easier in this atypical modality. Non-verbal pictorial, emotion-based convoluted thought-lines that occur in simultaneous "packages" if you will. I stand amazed of that, every time it happens. No way to even accurately describe it to you, it's too different from how we think normally. Maybe like a hive-mind. But I love it. I admit that. I love the amazing feeling of basically accessing many of my own minds at once and thinking not as a man might think, but as a God might, if such things existed.

I should note that I still disturb the (sleeping) dog or the wife or even my son from time to time, although I consciously try not to. Can't prove that, though. I can't do it on purpose. It only happens when I'm in "too deep" to even think of any preconceived plan. So I must remain a skeptical experimenter rather than a convert. Maybe it's my skepticism that prevents me from going further, but I can't totally abandon that, not ever in my life, so I'll still muddle along.

It's never boring.

For instance, here's an example of "Things I Shouldn't Be Able To Do:" I have a ceiling fan. Set to medium speed, which is fairly fast, I can sit in my chair, and on only a light dose of salvia, I can focus my eyes in front of me on the wall, and not move that focus; then, with my peripheral vision alone, never moving my eyes, I can focus on one single moving fan blade above me and easily track it around in circles, my attention never leaving that one speeding fan blade, with my unmoving eyes not focused anywhere near it. I can thus accurately count the RPM's of the fan over my head while looking into my wife's eyes and having a conversation with her about it!

Or I can focus on five, six, or even more points on a wall at once, again with no eye movement. No need to move the eyes, I just move my *attention* and that is not like visual focus; it allows more than one foci at once with ease. And when I say "at once" I literally mean it. My attention does not flicker from one point to the other. It divides into many foci, all at once. And my peripheral vision is very different, much sharper, at all foci.

Just a couple of the many, many phenomena I get to experience. I feel, to be honest, very lucky to have ever found this substance.

On (light doses of) salvia I can experience literally anything that you've ever read about any Yogi experiencing, and more. The so-called "Rising of the Kundalini" for example. It can feel like it practically blows the top of my head off in a rush of white light. I get to experience all that directly rather than just reading about how others have done it after 20-30 years of meditation practice.

(Interestingly, when I do that, the rising of the energy thing, or just normal intense meditation, the crown of my head gets sore, and remains sore all the next day with no salvia in my system)

I also experience something like layers or strata, that my consciousness passes through. Laminations, even. The wild thing about them is, as I pass through one of them, it's like I hear many, many conversations at once, like literally hundreds of people all talking at once, as if the layer was made up of informational content! And I mean, like you're in an auditorium and everyone's having a conversation at once. Again, I have no words to really get the reality of it across to you. I read what I'm typing here, and it's not even close to the experience, but it's as close as I can come. Frustrating.

AND NOW, A PLEA TO MY READERS:
If you're reading this online journal and have had experience with salvia divinorum or any other psychedelic substance, I'd very much like to hear about it and discuss it with you, so please post your first experience, or your wildest experience, or your most significant experience, or whatever you want to share, into the comments section. See, I started this blog for two main reasons. The first and foremost was to have a journal that I would keep my experiences in for my own perusal that was also accessible to others, and the second was to be able to discuss those experiences with said others of like mind. I really am looking for conversations here, and not just an audience for my ego to preen itself in front of. So thank you in advance for saying hello and sharing.

5 comments:

  1. Bear with me as I cannot explain very well in words what the actual experience was. It was my first time trying salvia (what a wonderful teacher) and I took a pretty hefty dose, held it for a minute, and exhaled. Upon exhaling, I made a comment, "this is different." I felt the effects before all of the smoke left my lungs. I was glowing yellow and started moving my hands which were leaving tracers. Then bam! Hit me like a freight train. I felt myself transforming (for lack of a better word) into the universe. There was no "me". I didn't really have senses, just experience. I started to "see" these little alien like beings bouncing from star to star painting pictures in colors I can't comprehend from a sober mind. They were vibrating and showing "me" visions that made perfect sense but are foreign to me now. (in a sober mind) Then my friend called out to me and the way I heard his voice was echoing through the universe. It seemed to anger these beings. I could not see my friend, only heard him. I had no recollection of anything from the sober world throughout this experience. I believe I experienced ego death. I felt my hand touch the door handle (although I was still out of this world) and the beings started frantically showing me more and more information. Then I let the handle go and they calmed down a bit. It was not time for me to leave yet. I touched the handle one more time and they got frantic again. This time opening the door and I was back to reality. Coming back was like being born again. I had no recollection of my life until I came back. Felt like I had been out of my body for an eternity.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, that's a deep trip. Less chaotic than my first try. Kinda cool actually. I've never had one like that. I've never had contact with beings except for one female voice I heard twice, and seeing a large angry male being a couple of other times, no communication from him except a feeling of anger and hatred towards basically all things.

    I've heard of trips like yours though. Feel kinda bad that I've never had one.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Brian: I was pointed here by your friend Ana. I'm much enjoying your postings, and thought in reply to your invitation to share I'd point you to an article I wrote in 2003 for Salvia Magazine (only lasted for a couple of issues): http://www.raysender.com/salvia.html
    Since that article, I had quite a few communions with La Pastora out in my garden and also indoors at night on earphones listening to ocean surf. WOW! I haven't communed for a few years now because I've been mainly interested in the 'full monty,' so to speak, and for that I think I should have a sitter and no family member around -- hard to pick just the right set and setting.
    I replied to Ana recently as follows:
    I identify the dimension where La Pastora takes me as what the Tibetans call ‘the Dharmakaya,’ or ‘the body of bliss,’ It’s so incredibly wonderful there that coming back to this reality is a literal ‘let-down.’ I mean, I want to STAY THERE! So for the past two years I’ve been concentrating on easy-to-learn-and-share bliss techniques that can in some small way duplicate the experience. These focus on tracheal resonance (purring in and out) and can be viewed on various youtube videos that I’ve posted:
    PURRING TO NIRVANA
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvyW3-2QSeQ
    And purring to nirvana II
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcwzMupl20M
    and Resonating to Nirvana
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpc6uyyz7bw
    and a companion article: Resonating to Nirvana
    http://raysender.com/resonating.html
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpc6uyyz7bw&feature=youtu.be
    touching nirvana
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpVqhRJul_E
    and an older technical explanation behind purring here:
    http://www.raysender.com/purring_3-30-14.html
    http://www.raysender.com/trachealresonance.html
    Also I found a note I wrote that perhaps might be of interest:
    -=-=-=-==-=
    My own typical Salvia experience goes like this:
    First 30 seconds or so (can't measure the time): "Oh! I'm dying! I'll be
    the first person ever to die on Salvia. Wotta.... drag.... for.... my....
    wife...."
    Next timeless segment: "Oh! I'm going insane... The guys in white coats
    will take me out on a stretcher raving my silly head off... Wotta drag for
    the family!"
    I get through the panic over the loss of control and being literally yanked out of my
    four lower 'sheathes' (material, emotional, mental, astral) into the Bliss Sheath (Dharmakaya in Tibetan Bhuddism) by sticking my tongue out in the Lion posture (Hatha Yoga), smiling and doing my Snore Mantra.
    Inhale: HONGGGG (rattle the septum)
    Exhale: Kreeeh (gargle with a French 'R')
    End of exhale: Th-th-th-th-th-th-th- (on the heartbeat)
    Next timeless segment: "Oh! Everything in this incarnation is exactly perfect for me to manifest as Avalokitesvara's nephew... "Hong Khreee!... EVERYTHING (All) is just a swirl in the Ocean of Self, each of us is manifesting a unique facet of a wonderful story! Here Ah come, universe!"
    Another helpful mantram:
    "AH-VAH-LO-KEE-TES-VAH-RAH-VAH-LO-KEE-TES-VAH-RAH-VAH-LO-KEE-TES-VAH-RAH-VAH-LO-KEE-TES-VAH-RAH - just keep it circling on the in and out breath in a
    whisper.
    Avalokitesvara is the Buddha of Infinite Compassion. Nothing harmful will ever befall if you evoke him/her.
    A further note:
    I also listen to a CD of ocean surf over earphones from The Monroe Institute: The Mind Food Hemi-Sync CD titled "Surf"
    www.monroeinstitute.org/programs/hemi-sync.html
    -=-=-=-=-=
    Best Wishes, and looking forward to reading more of your writings!
    Ramon

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice to meet you Ramon. Interesting! I am left a bit in the dust by all that, having no familiarity with Eastern techniques. I use mantras and I vibrate words and phrases from time to time, usually in banishment rituals afterwards. Having a symbolic cleansing or grounding technique is useful. When dealing with one's own mind, one uses the tools that one's mind resonates with. For me it is kaballah and western ceremonial magic. "The yoga of the West"

    ReplyDelete
  5. Whenever someone talks about which system to use, which religious symbolism or technique or meditational style, my answer is always the same. Whichever one gives you goosebumps! What I mean is, whichever one you FEEL for, is the right one for you. I was raised in Judeochristian mythos, so kaballah feels more "right" to me than vedanta or yoga or zen. My deep psyche reacts more to "The Archangel Sandalaphon!" than to "Om Mani Padme Om!"

    ReplyDelete