DOSE:

4 hits

oral

LSA

(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

INTRODUCTUCTORY NOTES

This report is an attempt at a description of an experience I had while on 4 tabs of LSA derived from ergot.

Imagine you found a valley paradise, a most magnificent scene, full of golden sunlight, tropical flowers, rainbow birds, gorgeous green hills and majestic trees. You see morning mist wafting above lush green plains all below an azure sky. Now imagine that upon returning home you feel the need to share this experience with friends but all you can do is make a few measly sketches that do not come close to doing the scene justice.

The following report is, by analogy, like those hypothetical sketches. They are only feeble outlines of the experience itself. Please keep that in mind when you read it. Also, almost every descriptive word is not to be taken literally, but a linguistic signification of an experience that eludes language.

I took four tabs of what was supposed to be ergot-derived LSA. I have examined the question of what this stuff may or may not be in detail in my experience report entitled “Lysergic Bioassay I – Visual and Auditory Phenomena”. I will not go into the same details here, but if the reader is interested he or she can read that report. Suffice it to say I believe the tabs were LSA.


The EXPERIENCE

As mentioned, I took 4 tabs of this stuff. Earlier in the day and again a little while before taking these tabs I had taken some extra vitamin C and drank some orange juice. I do not know if this really improves the effects of substances like LSD, LSA and so on, but it sure seemed as if it did.

I noticed some preliminary effects within 20 minutes of taking the tabs. By an hour it was definitely underway. I went outside to look at the July moon, which was a few days from being full. The luminescent clouds drifting across the night sky were ghostly and hauntingly beautiful. Stars blinked in my peripheral view and took on a depth I noticed the last time I took these tabs. I could see that some stars were further away than others whereas we normally see the starry sky as a flat field. After some time I could feel that the preliminary stage was moving into the full experience stages. At this point I went inside, did a little yoga, a little tai chi and then lay down and listened to a particular CD that I had set aside earlier.

The CD is disc of a set of 5 discs called “Symphonies of the Planets”. These are actual recordings made by the NASA Voyager craft as it made its way to the outer reaches of our solar system. Yes, there is actually audible sounds in outer space and the NASA Voyager recorded it. This may be boring to those with short attention spans or who can not tune into the subtleness of these recordings. They do not hit you over the head with obvious weirdness.

Rather they lure you in, if you are patient, and open you up to a deep, wonderful universe of sound. It was probably about 1 ½ hours to 2 hours since I had taken the tabs that I had put the CD on. I think I laid down just in time for the deep effects of the LSA to take me in tow. I became especially receptive to the deep subtlety of the sounds of the CD. In fact, what may seem like barely noticeable ambient background sounds to some were clear, powerful and highly detailed and complex sounds to myself. Within a few short minutes I became very, very involved with the recording.

It seemed as if I had become a transceiver (both receiver and transmitter) in a cosmic communication network somewhat how an internet server works within the World Wide Web allowing multiple computers to interconnect and share information through it. By the very nature of being a bioelectric conduit for consciousness localized in time and space, my neurological-consciousness system (that is, my brain and the mind attending it) attuned and tuned in to a much wider range of frequencies and resonated with the sounds of the universe.

I both received and transmitted a vast, multi-layered omni-directional signaling network. My mind and brain was merely one transceiver among many as if my own neural network (being a microcosm) was linked into a cosmic network (being a macrocosm) in which my own awareness was merely one node connected to millions of other nodes, all receiving and re-transmitting these sounds.

One of the more intriguing images to come from the Vedic tradition (Hindu mythology) is that of Indra’s Net. Indra, a sky and thunder god in the Hindu pantheon, had a network of pearls set up in the sky. Each pearl reflected each and every other pearl so that a single pearl both received and transmitted the images of all the other pearls. Anything object or being that cast a reflection in one pearl could be seen in all of the pearls. In this way one being at any point within Indra’s Net could see and be seen by any other at any point within the net. In such a net, light or information passes between all of these pearls in all directions at once but the pearls are necessary for these signals to become perceivable. I felt as if my consciousness was making these otherwise unperceivable signals perceivable. But I also felt as if, in some way, I was serving to spread these signals even further, as if I were like a new pearl for our little corner of the galaxy.

Now I must mention that this communication, this signaling was not like what we as intellect-minded human beings would think of as communication. In other words, there were no distinct linguistic units, nothing resembling language as we think of it with words or even abstract or coded representation of information in the form of blips and beeps, dots and dashes or digital communication in the form of zeros and ones.

Rather, it seemed to be more of an organic (although alien) communication, perhaps something like what passes between plants, birds and bees with pheromones emitted into the environment like radio towers radiating ambient signals, each wave of signals resonating with others or else bouncing off others, all blending, overlapping and/or reacting to make an oceans of overlapping and intermingling communication.

There were moments in which it seemed like a series of spread out bells and gongs were passing resonating signals between them. The gongs were deep and hollow. The bells were crystalline and delicate. Other times it seemed as if driven storms of flanged frequencied turbulences blew through an otherwise clear pool of stellar fields like swift volatile clouds passing across a night sky of twinkling silver stars. These passed like turbulence upon the surface of a calm pool reflecting the starry sky at night.

There were deep rumbling bass tones like distant cosmic thunder rolling but never cracking. There was what seemed almost like the haunted howlings of lost hungry hag-spirits or the undead demonic soul-predators, or furies of chaos from the black yawning void. But these came and went. I feared these not because there was not much “I” to do any fearing. As the saying goes, “Yogis in the jungle have no need to fear tigers”. Calmness prevailed.

There were fields of ambient frequencies, signals and tones sent out and criss-crossing in new resonant patterns that took on their own new frequencies. Imagine the pattern a pebble would make on the surface of a pond if you threw it in. Now imagine what patterns would occur if you through a few pebbles in different areas of the pond. They would radiate ripples from center points and these would reach each other and overlap to make new patterns.

In some ways these signals were like the jungles of sound one hears in the summer where it is highly populated with a variety of insects all buzzing, clicking, humming, vibrating, rising here, then there, in harmony here, in discord there, setting up ambiences of sound ripe with organic (not linguistic or coded) messages. In other ways these signals were like spring mornings, in which birds send out their songs of action and reaction, calls and responses.

For the most part I was entranced so that I was a passive observer with not much of an identity to speak of. However - and this is where it gets into highly synchronistic wonderful weirdness - it seemed that the level, quality and activity of all these frequencies and sounds were in some way directly linked or synched with the level of mental activity I had. In other words, the calmer my mental activity was, the calmer these sounds were.

This connection was not vague but instantaneous and perfectly matched. At times I would fall into a deep meditative state devoid of thought. This was when the ambience of sound was like a clear starry sky reflected upon the calm surface of a mirror pool. At other times I would start to think of how amazing this all was and with this mental activity came waves of active sound welling up from deep space like ripples on a pool, scattering the light of the reflected moon and stars.

I would imagine that if I were hooked up to a machine that monitors brain-wave activity the ongoing level of my brain wave activity would be very much in synch with the activity of a graphic equalizer for the CD I was listening to. Perhaps this is too much of a reductive materialistic notion. Perhaps what I was experiencing would not have been apparent with current technological readouts. No matter.

After the experience this apparent synchronicity between my consciousness and these sounds made me think of that old axiom, “As above, so below” meaning that the microcosm (individual consciousness of the infinite inner world) and the macrocosm (the infinite cosmos) reflect each other. The virtual cosmos of sound provided by the CD and my mind/brain were deeply in synch.

This makes me think of an important comparison I would like to make, especially because it seems to be mainly overlooked by the entheogenic community. In the east, yogis and Buddhist monks say that as one deepens the practice of meditation, one will eventually hear certain inner sounds. These sounds are described as resembling bells, gongs, a certain kind of howling sound (like hungry ghosts), deep bass rumbles and so on.

Some may speculate that these sounds come from the circulatory system (heart beat and blood flow), the air passing through the lungs, the whine of the electrochemical processes of the nervous system, and so on. Perhaps these sounds have more subtle sources, like the prana, the chi or the non-material energy the meditator becomes increasingly tuned into and intoned with. I do not know myself and I cannot say that I have perceived such sounds with meditation unaided by entheogens. But if one reads the descriptions of these sounds and listens to one of these “Symphony of the Planets” CDs one can not help but notice that they seem to be the same sounds.

This makes me wonder if this experience could have been had without the CD, perhaps with a higher dosage or perhaps with lower dosage in an isolation tank or some other sensory deprivation situation. I hope to practice meditation and experience these sounds that it is said one can hear. This would give me a better perspective on all of this. However, as a yogi or a Buddhist monk would say, this is not a goal, only transient phenomena. But as Aleister Crowley would say, “Emptiness with twinkles… ahh, but what twinkles!” In other words, this play and dance of universal energy and consciousness is not enlightenment, it can even be a distraction from enlightenment, but how beautiful is this dance! Shun it not, but grasp it not. Experience it fully without push or pull and let it move on when and if it moves on.

Interstellar signals like neurotransmiting tryptamines between brain cells, synaptic signals like electron pheromes emiting scents from flowers to insects. A web of cognitive signals, myriads of fields, particle/wave interactions, waves within waves within waves. I was immersed, one data point in a universal field of quantum complexity and fluid smoothness - digital details and analogue flow – at the intersection of the individual and the universal, a convergence of the inner and the outer where forces and signals, both tenuously delicate and unfathomably undaunted ebbed and flowed.

Force-fields, thin clear beams like lasers of sound, smooth crests, clouds of particulate sounds like swarms of electron bees, echoes of fractal complexity, resonating sound-scapes made of smaller versions of themselves, forming larger than life cathedrals of transient sound structures in flux. It was sort of an Ethernet for intercommunication among vastly variegated life forms from all over the galaxy.


The CONTACT WITH the OTHER

Through it all, some alien presence emerged within my awareness, or was received by my awareness. It was a sentient presence, something I could barely recognize as a mind or entity of some sort because it was so strange. It was alien, but natural, intelligent but incomprehensible. I feared not. I let go, opened to it. Then there was a period of time that passed in which I was not aware of what was happening. I do not think I was asleep, but it was as if my individual mind ceased to exist after the encounter with the xenogenous (alien born) being.

I felt as if something very important had happened. It seemed as significant to me as it would if a physical flying saucer landed in my backyard and some alien came out and greeted me. But this encounter occurred in my mind and therefore this is very slippery. By definition this was a subjective experience and I can not consider it a “real” contact with a “real” alien being.

After some indeterminate period of time I was again aware. I found myself thinking thoughts again, reeling over the enormity of what I had been experiencing just as the CD was coming to the end. I slowly sat up and looked at the clock. A mere 2 ½ hours had passed since I had first taken the tabs. I could not believe it. It seemed as if many more hours had passed. I got up, drank some juice, and so on but my jaw was hanging open in amazement. The experience was so intense that I decided to not repeat it that night. It was time to lie down again and just dwell on what had happened.

Again I entered into a deep trance. Every once in a while I became aware of my individual self when my bladder was too full. It probably was a result of all the vitamin C and orange juice, but I had to urinate many times that night. It served as a periodic grounding, like a kite string that would sometime pull me down to earth for a bit here and there.

Unlike the other two times I had taken these tabs, I noticed no slow “up then down” cycles of my interior auditory phenomena. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that the other two times I took the tabs when the moon was far from full and that this time I took the tabs a few days before the full moon. Perhaps the vitamin C had something to do with it. At any rate, my internal sounds were smooth, calm, and interesting. I slept for about 2 hours and woke up feeling refreshed and ready for a good walk in the woods with my wonderful wife and son.

I would like to try a similar experiment with a CD presented by the band Current 93, Harry Oldfield “Crystal” which is comprised of recordings made from crystals made to vibrate at certain frequencies. I can only wonder what this may be like.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 55485
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 12, 2007	Views: 71,633
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