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Teachings on the Nature of Reality
Salvia divinorum (5x extract)
Citation:   Duskin. "Teachings on the Nature of Reality: An Experience with Salvia divinorum (5x extract) (exp22631)". Erowid.org. Apr 2, 2003. erowid.org/exp/22631

 
DOSE:
0.25 g smoked Salvia divinorum (extract - 5x)
BODY WEIGHT: 65 kg
SALVIA I
Bong Hit approximately 0.25 gr. Sept. 23 - 2.30 AM

I inhaled with one big drag and what happened within seconds after this inhalation was a state of total separation from my normal self, frame of mind and concepts. A 7-minute total displacement in space and time.
What happened was completely absurd, yet I shall try to condensate the experience in the rational mold of words. First of all it was as someone had zipped open reality, from the upper right corner of my periphery towards the left down corner, by means of a grotesquely big zipper. In what was uncovered I was no longer connected to my personality nor reality, though after a while I did have some recollection and reflection about how it usually was. The borders of normal reality, of my own room, where still visible but no longer conceptually connected to their normal function, name nor familiarity. No, now these things where part of a strange vision which I was.

The several little rectangular edges of this zipped open reality became the pointed edge of a big key which someone (me) was holding up towards the front yard of a house (mine) gesturing towards two people (my parents), asking them if they needed this key? I didn’t feel like I was one of these persons, even not the one out of whose eyes I was witnessing the scene, nor did I feel but vaguely connected to these people. They seemed the parents and the house and the memory of somebody else.

And this was of the greatest importance, that this scene was a memory, because I did feel like I was this memory or this thought. The vision kept repeating itself like a frenzied video-loop, sliding downward like a 5mm spool holding but the same frame. That of a guy gesturing a key towards a house and two people while asking the same question over and over again. Yet there was happening something else. I, as being this thought, was travelling swiftly away from the conscious perception from this person which I had been into the realm of the unconscious to be stored on my proper place with all the other thoughts and memories. Apparently not only with the thoughts and memories of this one person only, no, with those of a whole bunch of people, maybe a whole race. The immense vastness of the databank space through which I was sliding was dazzling and though I don’t remember seeing much, I did feel as though I were surrounded by innumerable other thought-entities.

Out of this, I could conclude that we as humans are not isolated minds, but connected through a large web of thoughts and thought-structures of the sum of all our individual specimen. Thus that it shouldn’t be impossible to by some way consult other people's thoughts and memories. Off course the sanity of psychedelics is that I can always discard their insights as hallucinations without any real value or truth. But what’s real anyway…. ? ?

By one way or another, after having spend an eternity of being a thought and knowing not much of being or even ever having been anything else (though there could have been a slight discomfort with this new state*), things began coming back to me… Hadn’t I been someone… done something…taken something? In a room, in a bed, Slowly, thus the contrary of the upcome, which blew away my neo-cortex, things began dawning. At first I must say I wasn’t prepared to come back, as I began realizing some things and again seeing some of reality as it should be (?), I was reluctant to return without knowing something more of what had happened to me. So I willed the thing I had become into rest, somewhere in between where I had been and where I should be… and there I saw them…

I know that it sounds silly and that it is a bit endangering to the seriousness of this report but ‘they’ resembled the most little gnomes, complete with pointed hats. I could see them standing behind the fold of the no longer zipped, but curled open reality and they where busy.
It was if they were working reality, making sure that the person sitting there (me) was getting an appropriate look at what he should see. They where getting in thoughts and memories from everywhere, editing and cutting them right size. They were taking the stuff where things are made of, abstract looking colours and forms, actually first taking apart the vision which I had been all this time but no longer really was, and crumbling it into raw pieces reality building material. They began rearranging them back in place so it looked again like my room complete with memories and feelings attached to every object and pattern. Wonderful creatures, I only got a (too) short look at.

After all this I got settled fully into my self again and noticed that 7 minutes had passed. At this point in the trip I was just glad to be back and didn’t understand nor remember much of what had happened, though I knew something had. Rather like waking up out of a confusing and chaotic yet very intense dream. Immediately came the questions and I realised that I wasn’t completely out. As there were mental answers being formulated to the questions, which were clearly not mine, nor was this one of the voices I normally associate with my thinking processes. If I wanted I could go again, told the voice and even as I thought ‘yes?!’, being a question as well as an answer, I was sucked back into it. This time it was more like falling backwards and my sight disappeared like you would fall away backwards into your own head seeing the two windows that are your eyes steadily growing smaller and finally disappearing into a vast blackness.

The best way to describe it is as an out of body experience, my ‘soul’ or ‘essence’ spinned out of its normal habitat. Not more then 2 minutes later I was back with no recollection at all of what had happened in these two minutes. Yet the conversation between my self and the other kept going and I was allowed to go in and out the state, which began with a fall numerous times, while trying to find out what was happening. In total this held on for about an hour, after which I think I fell asleep. The difficult part in this time was trying to take with the conscious ‘me’ to follow into that other place. I bit into it and was headstrong to succeed. More and more I could experience some of the onset and the end of the transition but never got in fully. The other place surely felt familiar, it was an uhr-feeling. I knew that I had always been there and I would always be and this was just fine, just how things should be.

I recognize this sensation from some intense mushroom experiences where I have, to my opinion, penetrated into a more complex, more profound and a deeper state of being which seems to hold close relation to the essence of our race, where we came from and where we are going. As in the past I hadn’t found it easy to reach this state (right ‘shrooms, dosage, setting and evolution of the trip is required) and certainly not while being fully conscious and being able to take back something, though I had succeeded a few times. I was amazed at the swiftness of what I had already reached with this herb, this only being my first experiment on its premises. I couldn’t put the idea of deep meditation out of my mind as I had just been reading a book on the various meditating methods and phases as described by the different meditational-schools. This is where these guru-guys are talking about, I thought. This is the place where you can witness your own train of thought, as an outsider, while being part of a greater logos… I have to get to the bottom of this.

All this time a communication between my self and the other was going on, though I can’t remember much of it. All I can really remember is that it was playing with me though teasingly providing me with some answers. I was thinking ‘I should remember this’ and ‘take mental note’ to myself all the time. I do remember three clear statements it made and I’d like to put them here as an end note:

· There is someone/something behind, behind, behind,… (this was while on one of the first falling backwards in the second part of the trip – and I understood it as that there is always something watching over your shoulder, and something watching over its shoulder in its turn and so on, into infinity… and that one’s mind could be, or is, all of these watchers).
· It’s good you did this (SALVIA) and you should do it again (maybe genetically programmed into the plant by the smart shop people to increase their sales ; )).
· Why always these questions? Just let yourself go…………………………

*Should say; Have a slight discomfort with my old, normal state as well (meaning….).

Exp Year: 2001ExpID: 22631
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 2, 2003Views: 60,836
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Entities / Beings (37), First Times (2), Unknown Context (20)

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