Night before last, several small doses and then one larger dose, 100X:
I am sitting on my bed cross-legged. The room is almost totally dark, something unusual for me.
As I sit there breathing deeply and regularly, the room around me seems to darken further. Shadows begin to move and lengthen, producing an exceedingly creepy atmosphere. Suddenly I hear noises, the mewling of a child, other children joining in, faint wails of fear perhaps. The room keeps getting darker and eventually begins to distort, walls changing shape, the room no longer a normal rectangular box shape.
This continued and I began to feel a rising panic; something about the auditory hallucinations is more frightening than the normal visual ones. Eerily realistic, I later learned that actual (real) sounds had come from another room where my wife was at the time, but they were apparently distorted during my experience to the eerie cries and moans.
This vision reminded me of the last scene of the movie "Ghost" where the bad guy gets hauled off by demons; the creepy sounds, the weird shadows moving and growing longer, and so forth. A fairly scary experience.
At the point where I had had enough I willed myself to get up out of bed and shakily walked to the light on the bureau and turned it on, and then the overhead light as well. Vision gone.
I think that maybe it's not such a good idea to use salvia divinorum in the dark anymore. I think it tends to bring on darker visions, more frightening ones.
***
Last night, again several smaller doses and then one larger one, 100X:
This was an interesting but short experience, one I think bears reporting. Initially I had been in the depths of a dreamlike state of which I can recall no detail. It happens. However as I was coming out of it, I clearly and distinctly recall going through a stage of waking up. And waking up again. And again. And again. To be clear, this was not me waking up repeatedly and then going back into my sleep-like state. I would awaken, feel myself waking up, see the room around me, my wife and dog asleep on the bed beside me, and then I would realize that this wasn't it yet. What I mean to say is, I'd awaken in my room, realize that I was still "in vision," then wake up again still in my room, once again realize it wasn't real, and do it over again, and again. Each time the room seemed or "felt" a bit "realer" although it certainly looked the same, until finally I awakened one last time to the "real" room. Or was it? No way to tell, really.
The interesting thing is, I can find no difference between any of the previous "false" ones and the final one. They were all equally realistic but in the earlier cases I just sensed somehow that it wasn't the realest one and continued to awaken over and over until it was real enough. Only then did I stop.
I wonder if I could have awakened yet again. I wonder if all the rooms that I saw were as real as the last one I chose. Each awakening felt much as it does when one normally awakens from a dream, and each room certainly seemed completely real... however then I'd awaken yet again and be in another totally realistic "dream" of my room that I again needed to awaken from.
It felt like all versions of my room including the last one, were dreams, and yet, I'm still in that last one, aren't I?
LATE ADDITION EDIT: I realize that I neglected to make something clear, something very important about the above experience. All those times I awakened, I opened my eyes, ***but I had never closed them.*** I opened my eyes, then opened them again, and then again, and again, over and over, never having once ***closed them.*** This is what made the whole thing so incredible in the first place. Important point.
Seeing the Unseeable, Describing the Indescribable, Effing the Ineffable...
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
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
I have had some of my more illuminating experiences in total darkness, but I know what you mean about the sounds. I've heard moaning and unusual crying sounds before, they used to get me worried because I thought they were coming from family sleeping in the other rooms. It was so worrying there was a need for me to check up on them, however it would seem they never did make those sounds.
ReplyDeleteWith Salvia everything tends to distort. It makes sense that in the darkness you had less visual hallucination and more auditory hallucination for the simple fact that your ears compensate for the lack of vision. Although in my experience I've had more visual hallucination in complete darkness.
The second experience sounds very similar to a false awakening. I've had some false awakenings in the past prior to exploring with Salvia, however there was usually something different in each wake up scene.
It wasn't a false awakening, I don't think. It didn't feel like that at all. False awakenings do not have that *feeling* you get when you awaken for real. That slight "jolt" or "pulse" you get when you really awaken. I've been in dreams with many false awakenings, and you dream you awaken, but there's no feeling of waking up, no "pulse" or whatever that feeling is when your mind snaps awake at last. I got one of those "pulses" or "jolts" every time I awakened in that experience, and I wasn't cloudy or tired or confused either.
ReplyDeleteall I'm saying is, this was different from that. This was real awakening, as far as I can tell. The very last one was *identical* to all the previous ones, except that I didn't have any more.
Salvia and dreaming have a lot in common. You don't remember most of your dreams and this amnesia is also prevalent with salvia. It's very much like a dream state.
ReplyDeleteYou are and are not. You are, because it is through you, what is; and are not, because you are not what is.
ReplyDeleteI think there is no free will, but based on our mind/body identification, we are thinking that we have a free will, we are thinking that we are a human being. Personally I think this identification is incorrect. The true nature of ourselves is without concept, identification itself is just a concept and also intellect is just a concept. That means the true nature of ourselves can never compensated through the mind.
ReplyDeleteWe are what we observe and observe what we are and that is the sense of life to observe ourselves.
And many do not even try to observe themselves, seeking instead to glut themselves on distractions and seeking happiness outside themselves. Many are so self-blind that they can commit heinous acts all the while believing them to be acts of kindness.
ReplyDeleteSo I take it you subscribe to the worldview that this reality is not actually real and we are not actually as we seem? I'm coming to that place as well over time. It's where it all points, ultimately.
ReplyDelete"So I take it you subscribe to the worldview that this reality is not actually real and we are not actually as we seem?"
ReplyDeleteCorrect. Your true self doesn't even know that it exists, because every form of knowledge is also just an illusion.
Reality itself is the biggest drug that exists. It completely controls your actions and thoughts.But when you neglect everything that exists, than you will see that only the unwritten moment can be true.
I want to give you all a book recommendation:
Consciousness and the Absolute: The Final Talks of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Cheers, live free all of you
So, if you believe that "this reality is not real," let me ask you: who do you think you're talking to right now? Who is responding?
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI think with this questions you try to find identification. But there is no personality and no identification. Everything is just a game of the elements from the consciousness.
Try to remember how you perceive your dreams. As the acting person or as the silent third person witness? Are you really acting in your dreams or have you ever thought?
But the thinks are little bit different here, based on the conviction that you are the acting person.
"And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of god moved upon the face of the waters." - Genesis
That quote says to me, that the spirit of god is watching "his own" reflection (Seed of Life).
I read that the sense of life is to find out what you are really are.
But thanks for your questions =)
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome.
DeleteHowever, my question remains unanswered. I am not interested in finding "identity" from my own perspective (whether awake or sleeping). I am asking you how YOU identify ME if, as you suppose, "this reality is not real."
Put another way: as we communicate on this blog, if reality is an illusion, who is communicating with who, by what method, and in what place? And why?
Ah. Only one answer to that. You are me. I am you. At our core, we are the same being, the same sense of "I AM," the same identity. Or, as the old adage goes, ALL IS ONE. Everything is one consciousness, all just variations on one theme. We imagine we are different, and we are superficially, but at the center we are One Being, along with everything else we see, sense, feel. All is here for our amusement. Reality conforms to deep expectations, including of course our fears.
ReplyDeleteYes this describes it very good, but also the whole reality is an image of that one being.
DeleteAnd what I tried to explain was, that everything except that one being is not really real. But I think to call it "being" is not correctly, it's more that not being, based on William Shakespeare's "To be or not to be ...".
What does it mean not to be? Unimaginable, like the quantum world, where nature starts to behave acausal. That is reason why we are not able to understand the nature on this level.
"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." - Richard Feynman.
It's so hard to explain ...
But while I'm thinking about this "to be or not to be", I'm recognizing that you are a being, because you think you are. It's not the reality that creates your conviction, it's your conviction that creates reality, because you and reality are the same thing.
Greetings
This one being (I also like to call it not being) is maybe that what we call infinity.
Delete"But while I'm thinking about this "to be or not to be", I'm recognizing that you are a being, because you think you are. It's not the reality that creates your conviction, it's your conviction that creates reality, because you and reality are the same thing."
DeleteIf I am getting this right, you are saying "I"(as Tick Tockman) exist only because "you" (as Dafu Gramer) concede to my conviction that "I" exist as a being, and further, that my conviction is what creates "reality."
If we take this to be True, where does this leave you, or Saint Brian, or anyone else as it relates to my conviction of reality and self? Are you necessary for my conviction of "I" ? Presumably this idea should work both ways . . . you exist only as a being because "I" recognize "You" as such.
If my conviction that I Am creates reality, do you exist only in the reality I have created? Or do we exist only in our own "separate reality?"
If you (Dafu Gramer) stopped recognizing that I (Tick Tockman) am a being would I cease to be? And if I ceased to be, thus dissolving the reality that my conviction creates, would you also cease to be? And if "you" ceased to be, would "I" also cease to be without your recognition of my being?
I mean no disrespect to anyone's thoughts/beliefs, and am enjoying this conversation with whoever you are. I just have many questions.
TTM
"I mean no disrespect to anyone's thoughts/beliefs, and am enjoying this conversation with whoever you are. I just have many questions."
DeleteNo problem, but it's hard for me to explain that (conviction can not be explained to others, it's like to explain someone, who is blind, how it's to see).
There is only one point of view (the point = your true self, the view = reality) and every other point of view, like mine or Saint Brain's one is is just part of your view. Don't let the view creating your conviction.
Please see Ouroborus, the self eating dragon. I think it describes the process of reality creation really good and I also see a relation there to the fibonacci numbers.
Maybe my explanation are not the best one's, I think language itself is strongly limited, because words are just metaphors. And english is not even my native language.
Greetings
Hello Dafur,
DeleteI very much like your comment about "explaining (to a blind person) how it is to see."
This is a very good way to express something that transcends language, and also echoes the frustration I often feel when I try to explain to others (or even to myself) the things I have experienced both with shamanic drumming voyages and deep explorations of Salvia realms.
Your explanation also reminds me of the words of the book "Tao-te-Ching" (which if you haven't read I recommend) where it is said, "The Tao that can be explained is not the Tao."
For some reason I am also suddenly finding myself thinking about "Schrödinger's Cat" although I'm not really sure why. . . .
I am also thinking of a line in Robert Anton Wilson's book, "The Cosmic Trigger" that says, "Convictions create convicts." But, if we believe this quote (or have a "conviction" that it is true), where are we? That, I think, is where the real nature of that sneaky serpent Ouroboros reveals itself.
The doubt I have about thoughts of convictions, and of "I" creating reality and reality creating "I" is that, to me, they begin to sound like the philosophy of Solipsism - which I am highly skeptical of.
At the end of the day, I don't think that any of us, no matter how much we want to believe, can really know anything more than "When I am hungry I eat. When I am tired, I sleep." And so on and so on. . . .
--------
Your English is very good, by the way. I speak only English and a very little Spanish, and have much admiration for people who speak several languages!
We all believe that our own point-of-view identity, the part of us that is so simple that all it can say to itself is "I AM" but not even I AM DAFU" or "I AM TICKTOCKMAN" or "I AM HUMAN" but just that basic sense if identity, is exclusively ours. Right? The part of me at the core of me that says "I AM" is just mine, right?
ReplyDeleteWhat I think I'm trying to get to here, and I think Dafu is as well, is that the idea that it's just ours, is an illusion. There's only one of those things, and we all share it. We only think it's ours exclusively. There is only one I AM, and we all share it, because it is what we are made of, this primal, basic consciousness.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSpeaking for myself about that, Saint Brian, I am no longer certain (in spite of reading a fair share of Buddhist and Taoist writings) about the whole "All One" thing.....
DeleteI once had an experience using a heavy Salvia quid/tincture combination where my consciousness exploded into an infinite number of shimmering CD-like discs spinning in space that I could hop back and forth on, each leading to to some "other" entity's consciousness.
One of these CD platforms led me to jump into the mind of a peasant farmer working his fields with his small son by his side. When "I" entered his mind he screamed and dropped his hoe and began to run across his field holding his head. I physically FELT his horror of what to him felt like he had gone insane because there was "something inside his head."
This was not an "All One" experience. Not at all. "I" had invaded, uninvited, the consciousness of an entirely "other" mind, and it was awful for that mind. Even now, 10 or 12 years later, I sometimes look back on that experience and feel a weird sense of guilt that I am at a loss to explain from the empirical vantage point that I like to think I inhabit.
Then again, I was pretty saturated with Salvinorin A so any conclusions about this experience should be filtered accordingly. . . .
This is the Buddhist idea of "ALL IS ONE." I never got that till I started to think like this.
ReplyDeleteYou are the cause of all existence.
DeleteOr perhaps more like, I am the symptom. Lol.
DeleteYou said: "I never got that till I started to think like this."
DeleteAnd thats maybe the key to understanding.... you need to change the view?! ;-)
You see it´s a crazy difference if you only belive the possibility of all being one or if you know/have seen/are able to 100% belive it is reallly all one and start seeing everything off there.....
I don't see any reason why the part of The One that is you could not 'invade' the other part of The One that was the farmer. Why not? In fact, it would make it more possible, in my opinion. His terror is because he did not understand what was happening. To me, all being part of One Thing is perhaps the very reason that you could accomplish such a thing merely by altering your consciousness.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Saint Brian, my altered experience does sound more plausible if
Deletethis is indeed the case.
However, the All One theory still leaves me with one nagging question
(which for me also spawns a whole subset of other questions), namely:
"If we are All One, what becomes of individuality? Does it even exist?"
It seems to me that if one believes they are an individual, then the idea
of being All One becomes nothing more than an amusing game of playing
"What If?" Sort of like pondering Descartes "brain in a vat" philosophy, or
pretending that the movie The Matrix is a documentary.
Conversely, If one believes we are All One, or manifestations of a Greater
Consciousness, it seems to me to be a denial of individuality. And if
individuality is an illusion, it then also seems like concepts such as Free Will
have to go flying out the window as a result.
Given our current terms of discussion, I don't see how we can be both
All One AND Individuals at the same time without violating the philosophical
argument law of non-contradiction.
So, I think what is needed at this time is a very specific definition of terms…
that is, "what, EXACTLY do we mean when we say All One?"
I think this is important, because it seems to me that if we simply say,
"we are All One," without having a VERY clear idea of what we mean by that,
it's not much different than concluding a theological argument which
has hit a wall by throwing our hands up in the air and saying, "Because
the Bible (or Koran, or Torah, or whatever) says so," and expecting that
to be good enough.
----------------------------
Addendum:
Thinking about your response to my "voyage report" I am wondering why
the All One would allow an aspect of itself to invade another aspect of
itself and inflict such terror? I really *felt* like my invasion had driven this
other consciousness insane. Why would The One allow that? To what end?
This, of course, starts to sound suspiciously like the theological/philosophical
question of "Why does God allow evil?"
----------------------------
TTM
"If we are All One, what becomes of individuality? Does it even exist?"
Delete-------------------------
Individuality only exists as far as we believe it exists, but most of us not only believe it utterly but would be TERRIFIED if they senses that it was false. I even think to some extent that terror is what prevents us from realizing we're all one.
To me now, what with me regularly experiencing myself in many places at once and my mind seeming to blend with my surroundings and so forth, even when I'm not on salvia I experience my individuality less than I did before. I feel more like I'm a part of a 'colonial mind' of some sort, even when "straight."
Why would the One "allow" you to invade another mind? Why not? after all, it also "allows" you to kill someone else if that's what you want to do. All such actions, to that mind, are itself playing or interacting with itself, so to that mind, it's all just play. Plus, I'm not certain that the One Mind is even self-conscious. Maybe it's becoming self-conscious now that humans are. But it might be more like 'building material' in the sense that everything is made of it, but it doesn't care what it's made of or what forms it takes or what those forms do. Hard to say. Many possibilities. If I ever get a definitive answer, I'll be posting it here, have no fear.
Or this may be the truth of the situation: http://salviaspace.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-darkest-interpretation.html
DeleteHave you read this yet?
Apparently I'm not alone in this one; I've learned that many experienced meditators have experienced it as well, as a form of samadhi.
I sensed this directly. I even almost cried for it, then I realized I'd be crying for myself.
Weird, huh? I hope this isn't the answer, but it may well be.
If there is only one thing and you are that, its a fact that you created everything, and i mean every thinkable (and much much more, even not yet thinkable) thing possibile.(who else could have done it? and what "more" should be there?) There is nothing what is not in this "everything" and at the same time there is nothing, nothing but you creating the matrix world of this "everything/causality/each other confusion" in you.
DeleteExistence in every "confused form/partial form" is inside the one clear only thing.
I think there is no other possibility to recognise existence.... you know this would not be possibile from the position you know from your "darkest interpretation".... no difference/causality/anchor point with only one thing existing...
Maybe this is the reason why you are claiming: "i am me, the only me St. Brian in my physical body" while "other" thinking the same interacting with each other :D
Well, I am not thinking that I'm the only me, because I experience other versions of me all the time now. Some are almost the same as me, some seem more different. Makes me wonder if a version of me is different enough from me, could it be you?
Delete"If there is only one thing and you are that" Tat Tvam Asi."
DeleteYou experience other versions of you all the time? What u mean by that?You mean while on salvia or with a different way of seeing "everything"? Is there no single "you - point" in which those different versions are bound/experienced? What version of you is writing this text? Are you recognising the version which is writing the the text and the version which is not at the same time parallel? Do you have more consciousness than one at the same time?Or one consciousness with, lets say a broader range of "beeings" recognised as you(while on salvia or not)?
DeleteAhh i come more and more to the conclusion that written language is very complicated to discuss with...
If "other versions of you" means people who have made an experience on which basis they can tell to themself: "i have seen i am the only thing existing" i think i am a different enugh version of you ;-) This must be so! Else it would be very lonely i think ... :D
I mean that, on salvia, it is common for me to experience being myself, only a lot of "myselfs." So I think there is a core to my personality that many versions of me (in many alternate realities/universes) have in common, but many other versions of me which are too different to have that core in common, so they (from their point of view) see me as a different person entirely.
DeleteIf many thousands of versions of me are only different from me in minor details, those versions share with me the core of their personality, their 'self.' So when I take SD I can see the other versions, from the point of view of my core. SD allows me to see and experience things from my core, the part that many versions have in common with me. Those too different have their own, similar cores, and their own many versions that they share their cores with.
I think that "core" of myself that so many versions share is what the old mages used to call one's "Higher Self" or even "Holy Guardian Angel" although I dislike that last term.
Maybe I didn't understand your question though. I wasn't too clear what you meant, sorry.
DeleteWhen I'm on salvia, I see not from the perspective of my normal self which is more attached to the minor details of my mind, my day-to-day experiences as me, but from a different viewpoint, from the core of all "my selves" that they all seem to share. So it's me, only more so. The real, central viewpoint of my own little slice of "I AM."
DeleteIf we all share the same "I AM," the same sense of identity, but we all mistakenly assume it's ours and ours alone, then it follows that it may be possible to go deeply enough within yourself to realize that it's not your personal sense of identity at all, to see and realize that it's shared by all versions of you in all universes. Go even deeper and perhaps you get into the territory of the part of "I AM" that other people share as well. I haven't done that yet, except possibly once.
Oh i ment no offense, no need to apologize ;-)
DeleteI just realised how complicated it is to communicate precise with written language....did you ever heared about platos unwritten doctrines and the reason why it is unwritten? :-D
No, but it's certain that most of what I see and sense while on salvia is not describable in words. Very frustrating. There have been many times when I come out of a vision and say to my wife, "Just now I saw... I saw.... there was this... this... no way to describe it to you at all, just no words, sorry, can't even begin to..."
DeleteI also think it might depend on how 'deep' you go into salvia space. Not too deep, and you are in the realm of your own Higher Consciousness, that part of you that is common to all versions of you. Go deeper and you're in the realm of the One Consciousness, of which your Higher Self is merely a facet.
ReplyDeleteI need to check back here more often. I took 7 days to respond this time.
ReplyDeletePlease answer me on the most current page now, so I won't miss it. Thanks!
ReplyDelete