DOSE:

oral

Psilocybin

(capsule)

BODY WEIGHT:

165 lb

Keep in mind that this came about since I volunteered to be in a Johns Hopkins study on spirituality and psilocybin. The dose administered to me was unknown, since I was blinded as well as everyone but one principal investigator. I had two trip guiders with me who were both experienced psychologists/psychiatrists. They significantly helped this trip. The following were, are, is my thoughts a day after the trip.

Dose administered at 9:05 am. Started feeling the effects at 9:25. Was instructed by the trip guiders to start the process inwards, meaning I laid down on couch, wore blindfolds blocking all light, and put on headphones playing music chosen by the researchers: eastern and western classical music. I came out of the first half of this intense, exhaustive trip at 2:30 pm (I had no conception of time) and then went back in until 4:30. They drove me home sober at 5:30. This experience isn't what happened per-say but more like the revelations I had. If I were to describe the actual trip, I could do that in an articulate way but it would be pages and pages.

Also as part of the experiment they wanted me to meditate daily and write in journal. They also wanted me to maintain a mantram that I try to say daily. This is all based on Eknath Easwaran 'passage meditation'.

The psilocybin experience was indescribable by my words. It’s difficult to figure out where to even start. I touched the divine; I felt whatever eternal bliss is in spurts. I don’t know how deep into the abyss I went, but I must have gone deep. Worlds and universes were created. The black space of infinity became alive with landscapes, with visuals ever so dynamic and colorful.

It all started with a “tightness” in my chest. Like a rope knotting and squeezing my soul, the tightness consumed my entire experience. At the beginning, even though I understand time is a pointless form, a boundary or object created over something abstract so our mind can try to understand it, it was dark: Purple, dark purple visuals, spirals, ever changing, evolving, a spider like object on a web, probably representing my apprehension going inward. The dark violets and black gave way to reds and fluid worm like things. These were projections of the first layers, the gates of consciousness. I didn’t know why my mind was forming these pictures. I didn’t know what I was doing. Suddenly, the picture zoomed out. I realized, or I thought I realized, it was more shown to me. I was flying away from the microscopic view, from this smaller world into the bigger one the visuals constituted. Analogous to focusing on a wave of a single blade of grass and then just zooming out, sideways, and in all directions to the grassy knolls the blade was a part of.

I’m beginning to realize the futility of explaining something where my vocabulary is severely insufficient. Writing this down in some sort of chronological order is pointless. Somewhere at some time a big fucking massive tree trunk just appeared. Brown and thick, like the base of an oak with giant roots. This gigantic object was implanted into my chest at the exact spot the tightness occupied. It was as if the psilocybin was showing me, no telling me, letting me feel, communicating without verbal cues, that this tree is a scaffold I can explore consciousness with. My consciousness or yours, ours, it really doesn’t matter, just exploring consciousness. This is the first time the black swirls stopped. A big fucking Christmas tree grew and grew and grew. It stopped and I found myself somewhere in Dr. Suess land. I distinctly remember at one point I was riding a dragon that seemed to be the tree.

In the moments of euphoria where I touched the divine, I realized the journey was the process. There is no target, or goal, or even endpoint. It’s not what comes next, but what’s happening now. At times I felt divine, I felt as one with the Buddha, realizing we are all the Buddha, we are sharing a oneness. I had caged my inner peace, my inner self confidence, the glowing fireball of spiritual essence that we all share. I was being selfish in not letting it free, not tapping into the orb of joy for others, including myself, to see. In the fleeting moments of eternal bliss when I untied the tightness in my chest and let it flow throughout my body, out all my pores and openings, I became aware of the journey, to the answer of the questions I didn’t pose. The path is the joy. One should simply be and enjoy the present moment. Once my inner peace grew, I was able to unravel the tightness on my own. I was able to manipulate and wade through the nonsensical visualizations at will, sifting through my mind's creations as it was conjuring them, in search for the truth. There was a circular theme, I’d need help obtaining the courage of going deeper, finding the courage, and proceed on with my journey. If I ever felt small like on a boat that could capsize into the infinite sea, or if there was a mountain that needed to be climbed, any struggles soon became trivial as I realized I could soar to the eternal divine.

Once the eastern classical music set it, I decided to blow my mind away, to blast it into infinity, far away from the surface level of consciousness. The incense sticks were lit and my foray into the tightness in my chest began again. I flew seemingly at the speed of light to a state of eternal bliss, but the path there differed everytime. My ego was mischievous, so I decided to play with it. It wanted me to go after it, spiraling deeper and deeper into the abyss. I found a glowing object where the tightness once was. The trunk, tree and even dragons were symbols of this glowing org of energy. I saw that it was caged in, that I was caging it in. Then I understood, this is the “energy”, the essence. Alas I couldn’t free it, there seemed to be more doors that begged to be open, maybe another time.

Exp Year: 2012	ExpID: 94423
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Mar 11, 2020	Views: 4,908
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