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Swimming in Fractalized Spheres of Perception
Cannabis
Citation:   Buchumpo. "Swimming in Fractalized Spheres of Perception: An Experience with Cannabis (exp16055)". Erowid.org. May 4, 2005. erowid.org/exp/16055

 
DOSE:
1 bowl smoked Cannabis (plant material)
BODY WEIGHT: 135 lb
Saturday night was one of the most remarkable nights of my life, I believe. Let me start from the beginning.

At around 9 o' clock, hair combed and cool shirt donned, I trekked a short ways across campus to a dormitory, where I would meet my very attractive friend Carrie to go see an improv show with her and some friends.

I got to her room and worked for about a half an hour on her computer, fixing various problems and showing her how to get her e-mail on Outlook, and a few other things. Afterwards we went to the Improv show, which, being chock-full of absolutely perverse and disturbing humor, was ultimately very entertaining. Yada yada yada... so Carrie and I ended up, somehow, on M Street, sitting on a step outside a small, indoor shopping center of sorts (which was closed by then), at midnight, drinking coffee and talking about a multitude of incredibly random things that wove together quite nicely into what I'd call an amazingly cool conversation. We sat shoulder to shoulder, and there was a lot of the conversational sort of touching that just makes you feel good. And we walked back, and I said good night to her, and things were good.

Ah yes, but my night wasn't over... this was 420, and I had a slight interest in pursuing some activities that could possibility serve to yield a little bit of universal enlightenment... so... to make a long story short, I got my buddy Elwin, secured implements, trekked over to get a bag of the green herb from a good friend, and we wandered forestwards.

In the depth of the small forest we have on the outskirts of campus you can't see very much, except for hazy blue in the sky and a few lights from some distant houses on the other side of the surrounding fence. The place where most of my friends and I have tended to smoke out is at the foot of a large hill entoured by trees, and sitting on rocks at the bottom of the hill, you can relax and lean back and truly enjoy the scenary around you.

So settling into our cozy spots, the two of us began to light and pass the bowl around, and it was strong, flavor-filled chronic, and we were pleased to feel the warmth fill us, and it wasn't long before we started to feel the effects. However, maybe due to the atmosphere, the warm night that surrounded us, the pleasant feelings all around, we didn't just feel lacadaisical, funny, forgetful... all of that stage seemed to pass by in seconds, and suddenly we were both thrust into a dream-like world of colors, and we began to talk about it. The world around us was no longer so easily conceptualized and interpreted as a forest with a fence with trees and a sky... it was a fractal-like pattern of colors that our brain saw in front of us; it was a beautiful flowing picture we could touch that filled the entirety of our vision. Looking up at the sky, the leaves and hazy blue of the sky swayed and flowed, and suddenly you were seeing the entire world in the reflection of an enormous lake. Small ripples expanded into large ones, which you could feel and smell and taste and know. Looking back down at the ground, we were both mesmerized and made unable to move by the world around us, which danced and sang like so much art, and suddenly I saw it all.

Imagine if humans actually discovered extraterrestrial life. But it wasn't just some aliens in a UFO, though that's how everyone would think of it at first. It was extraterrestrials discovering us. It was a huge, huge, huge world of creatures all over the universe, massively connected and with already well-developed civilizations (kind of like in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). It would be for us like a native tribe on an island on the Pacific rim that had never known any other tribes, and though they theorized, had no real reasons to ever consider the possibility of other tribes or other people. So far as they knew, they were the universe. And then the rest of the world finds them, and suddenly they're part of a sphere millions of times as big in an instant.

That's how I felt. I was suddenly outside of the world that I had thought of as total, and I remembered (for over winter break I had felt this, and forgotten somewhat) what it felt like to truly realize you could get outside of your experience and know what it felt like to sort of remember that you'd been seeing the world through goggles your entire life. Like a much bigger version of getting sucked into a movie so much that you feel like you _are_ the plot, and then something brings you out of it, and you remember you actually have another life you'd completely forgotten about.

I looked into the forest deep through towards the lights from nearby houses, and I made an slight effort to imagine as if those lights weren't scant lights in a thin forest, and thus all we were seeing, but rather parts of a lot of light obscured by a thick forest in front of us, and suddenly I was in a much denser forest, looking through seas of trees at far off traces of light that indicated a Elven or fairy festival of sort in the distance. My entire reality changed with my perspective, and I knew what total virtual reality would feel like, someday. Looking upwards, Elwin prompted me to imagine as if the sky wasn't dark and hazy because it was the middle of the night, but only because we were in a hugely dense, thick forest, and the scant light we had was due to the tall canopy of above our heads. And it became true, and it was daytime for us, and we knew the night would be even darker. Elwin actually came to believe this so sincerely he was convinced that we had passed an entire night and the following day in the forest, because he later made several references to 'tomorrow' being Monday and it being 'Sunday night.' We had no real conception of time, and I definitely felt as if it had ceased to be an important factor in this world. It just seemed dark and hazy whenever I thought about the concept, so I gave up on it and enjoyed spiritual tangibility of the present.

And looking around, I suddenly realized my entire perception was palpable and existing, instead of just THERE and not so much existing tangibly than all that I knew. I could feel and remember how I've felt during my life, and could relive old experiences with vivid detail, now able to sense the dimension of perception, something we humans generally take so for granted that we don't even realize it exists. I began to consciously try to change my perception of my surroundings, and guided Elwin through this process as well. The leaves in the trees began to become more uniform, and the entire wilderness turned into glowing purple and green tessellations, interconnecting and phosphorescing right before our eyes. As we moved our eyes around the pattern followed, and then, I decided to add a dimension to it in my mind, and in a moment I was thrust into the center of a swirling green sphere of fractalized tessellations that swam around in a constantly moving sea of infinite complexity. And I knew that this sphere had an outside, and that I was just inside for a while, trying to pick up what I could while I was there. I felt, truly and palpably, that there was an afterlife... or better, an exolife.

During this time I noticed a lot of things that I don't normally pay much attention to, in a serious way. Every single movement of my fingers was palpable, and the vibrations my vocal chords made were so amazingly easy to feel and control that I began to sing, truly feeling as if every note I made was perfect, for my senses were so enhanced musically. As I walked back I found it hard to walk regularly and easily, for the world danced with my footsteps, and with the outer perspective that I had gotten, it took much more concentration to walk normally and act normally, for my mind was much too busy dancing around the gigantic universe it had just discovered. When I got back to the dorm, I found I could type much better, for with my eyes closed I could see a perfect map of the keyboard and how my brain drew the correspondances between finger location and letter typed, and could also spell out long words clearly and quickly in my mind. I put on a pair of headphones and I thought I was listening to some music for a while, but several minutes later I realized I had never started any music in Winamp, and all of the music had been in my imagination, though to my brain it was by then just a vague auditory memory. I thought of Carrie, and was instantly (and still remain) entranced by our excellent night together, and truly felt connected to her and everyone else in a way that seemed very childlike and wonderful... another recalling back to a level of perception I think I definitely had when I was younger and have since forgotten.

Soon, very tired by now (it was around six in the morning), I decided to settle in, and my mind, floating around wanderingly all over the new universe that had found it, eventually faded out of consciousness, and I fell asleep.

Exp Year: 2002ExpID: 16055
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: May 4, 2005Views: 28,337
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Cannabis (1) : Small Group (2-9) (17), General (1)

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