.happened this friday night.  (this message was originally written to a friend
of mine - but please write to me if you have any insights.  i'm particularly 
interested in hearing from people who've done large doses of psychedelics for 
non-recreational purposes.)

where can i begin?  what i'm about to try to describe is the most unusual and 
confusing thing that's ever happened to me - and the most convincing experience 
to date, in terms of my mystic/religious suspicions.  i'm having a little 
trouble dealing right now, and have been since then (friday night; monday now).

friday at work i got the idea in my head that i'd try tripping that night, in 
combination with the passionflower tea which had such a calming effect when i 
tried it with a small ammount of mushrooms a couple times in the previous week 
(one of which i wrote you about; the second was unremarkable, aside from the 
fact that i was completely calm & unselfconscious about being in public, etc).

i'd had these 2-1/2 tabs of (fairly weak but clean) acid in the freezer for the 
better part of a year & had been waiting for the right time to take them.  every
once in a while i'd have the urge, but something would come up, or else i'd open
the cannister (they were in a metal film cannister) to take then & feel a 
physical revulsion, so i wouldn't.  i've been doing a lot of psychedelic 
research recently & again had the urge to try acid - and i felt a lot safer 
doing so knowing that the combined effect with passionflower would be somewhat 
calm.  at 8:15 i dosed and shortly after drank some passionflower tea.  went 
upstairs to lie down and try meditating.  the climb was gradual and calm, as i'd
expected, and the chemical feelings that usually go along with acid weren't 
there.  i'd also taken a small mushroom, as i'd read that acid in combination 
with even small ammounts of natural psychedeics is more likely to induce a 
mystical state.i put on some classical guitar music, lay on my bed, closed my 
eyes, and went gradually up.  unfortunately as soon as i was "up" i realized 
that it was impossible to concentrate - i live near a busy street in uptown, 
minneapolis, and there are so many sirens and motorcycles...

eventually i moved out of my room into a windowless landing at the center of the
house, in the attic, and lay on a matress.  after a while i discovered that i 
could sing/chant to myself in order to block out the distracting sounds - and 
this had a very strange effect.  i found myself singing from deep in my chest, 
and i imagine this is they type of singing done in native mushroom ceremonies, 
though i don't really know.  soon i was able to block out the unpleasantness of 
my urban surroundings (though i remained conscious of movement in an area of 
several city blocks - confirmed when i got up to go to the bathroom at one point
and was able to see out the window several police cars gathered in a parking lot
exactly where i had sensed them) and with time my entire body began to vibrate 
in a most pleasant way.  my singing seemed to calm and harmonize my internal 
organs, which usually get very tense under the influence, and also served to 
still my mind.  i came to the usual realization about our modern environment, 
that it is an unpleasant and unnatural place, and as usual i became intensely 
aware of the sheer number of police cars and sirens.  my recurring fantasy of 
escape to the top of a high mountain struck me with an unusual poignancy and i 
considered some of the dreams i've been having recently, in which i find myself 
in a zen garden, pursued by some unknown terror, but also conscious of the 
presence of the holy.  i ose from my matress and entered my room (not having 
made contact with any mushroom- or ayahuasca-type entities, as i'd hoped, but 
full of an intense calm nonetheless).  i sensed that i was caught between two 
ways of sensing - i could see the walls of my room as i normall might, but 
superimposed over them was a film of swimming, swirling...traces of...time?

i paced and thought about my life and about society, wishing i could make things
change, thinking about what i need to do, mostly about my need to find some 
friends who are interested in psychedelics for something other than recreation, 
and about needing to meet some people who could tell me a bit more about the 
secret world than i already knew from my reading and previous mystical 
experiences.  basically i felt that i needed to get connected, to start 
gathering the tribes...

i went downstairs to join my friends, who were not dosed.  although i was 
feeling entirely calm and almost at peace, i found everything depressing - for 
one thing, when i came down they were all sitting on the couch watching beavis 
and butthead - it tied in with what i'd been thinking about modern humans being 
so unhealthy and pathetic.  someone pointed out that the moon was full.  i 
wasn't surpised.  everyone seemed very edgy & the fact that i was tripping and 
obviously not very happy with the state of the world may have had something to 
do with this.  they were all going to a party and although i had no intention of
going at first (this was about 2 hours after i'd dosed & i wasn't feeling like i
could make party talk), i eventually decided it would be better to go than be 
left on my own with the sound of sirens.  also they mentioned that a woman had 
recently been brutally murdered a few blocks from our house and this, combined 
with the excessive police presence, was really starting to affect me.

so we go to this "rock" party, which was being held at the house of an 
acquaintance of one of my roommated, and it was a lot smaller than i'd expected.
i saw some people i recognized from around, people i'd been wanting to meet for 
a while, and we took up stations on the opposite side of the living room.  they 
struck me as good people, in an important sense, and i could tell that although 
we weren't being outgoing toward them, or they us, both groups were very 
conscious of one another & that it would be only a matter of time before someone
pulled out a joint and we all got together to contemplate the extreme lameness 
of the others at this party.  of course this eventually happened, and they 
turned out to be some of the most genuinely cool people i've met in minneapolis.
the rest of the party i characterized as "lee press-on grunge" - young trendy 
"rockers" with lots of phony attitude and a thing for beer and dumb grunge 
music.  somehow my trippyness seemed to cayalyze us getting together as a group 
& we hung out together in the living room for most of the evening.  good people 
are hard to come by, and i was very happy to meet them - only i realized that 
i'd smoked one of them out at another party, and that she was roommates with 
this woman i'd had a crush on previously.

so we're sitting around near the door and all of a sudden this *guy* walks in 
wearing the most psychedelic outfit and carrying a whip.  i immediately thought 
that it was someone i knew from grade school (in st louis, mo), who i'd actually
seen around minneapolis recently, and i walked over...it's at this point that 
things get really weird.

as soon as i looked into his eyes there was this very strong connection made - 
so much so that we gave each other a big hug & immediately sat down on the floor
to chat.  i immediately asked "where have you been?"  and pretty soon discovered
that this guy wasn't who i'd thought.  he spoke very strangely, so much so that 
i thought he might be autistic; it was very difficult to hear him over the 
grunge rock which flooded my senses.  but there was *something* about him that 
made me very curious & i knew that we needed to talk.  i went back to my old 
place on the couch and he followed, and soon we really started to communicate.  
[an aside: he was obviously tripping, but i thought he had to be on something 
else as well, as his speech was so fucked up - but on the other hand i wasn't 
sure if he was autistic...something was just very strange & i wasn't sure how to
take him.]  as soon as we sat down we looked deep in each others' eyes and i 
asked him: is it true that we're all connected?  he nodded and we bagan reading 
each others thoughts...somewhat.  at this point, about 4 hours after dosing, the
effects were starting to wear off and we were definitely on different levels.  
one bizarre thing i discovered in the course of our conversation was that i 
could understand him (let's call him "jim") better if i closed my eyes.  in this
way i found that i could "visualize" his words & they actually became a lot 
clearer.  also, the closer i got to him, the clearer he became - it was not so 
much as if he was slurring his words; more like i was getting bad reception.  
after a while i started to realize what was happening - he was tripping so hard 
that he was not stable in time - i was hearing him backwards, forwards, and all 
fuzzed-out, and yet once in a while, especially if i closed my eyes, it was as 
if his voice was in my head, and i could "see" his speech - which had a very 
typically "psychedelic" "shape".

i'm doing a terrible job describing this so far, and what follows is going to be
even more difficult.  at one point jim says "come closer" & indicates that i 
should put my head down on the back of the couch, near his.  he put his hand on 
the back of my head and leaned close, saying perfectly clearly & without 
distortion "now you know this is the truth; all else is lies and hypocricy."  i 
can't describe exactly what happened then - i started to cry and laugh at the 
same time & then rocked back on my heels, into the corner, completely stunned.  
all i could say was "holy shit."  i realized then that this was what i'd read 
about in buddhist texts - only i can't remember what they called it.  i'd call 
it a psychedelic baptism, but "psychedelic" only begins to describe it.  i 
experienced the pure blue-ish light, a place where nothing is separate, and knew
immediately that all i'd suspected about psychedelics (and their connection to 
buddhism/eastern-type religion, and other "primitive" religions) was true.  it 
was a little taste of infinity, but enough that i knew for certain that...god 
exists.  only maybe "god" would be a misnomer, though this is certainly what 
people talk about when they say god - people who really know, that is, not the 
church bullshit.  i'm not going to try to describe this more - suffice it to say
that i experienced firsthand the indescribable and am still trying to figure out
how to reconcile that with my "normal" understanding of life.  it was so strange
that it now seems somewhat unbelievable, but i know it happened.  i would 
characterize my main realizations as 1) that the body is merely the location of 
normal consciousness rather than being an apparatus of consciousness (ie, house 
rather than machine), and that it is possible to communicate with another 
individual without using the body 2) something which has been referred to as god
actually exists and 3) ideas are alive and god is one of them - though "ideas" 
may not be the right word - dharmas, maybe.  "alive" may not be the right word 
either.  please bear with me; this was truly beyond words.

from this experience i realized several things about the psychedelic state.  
first, that it has to do with time and vibration more than with brain chemistry.
normally humans exist at one point in time, or a very narrow space, at least, 
which is experienced as being a "moment".  psychedelics have the effect of 
dislocating one, of giving one simultaneous access to more than one moment, or 
at the least of stretching this moment slightly.  this explains trail and 
hallucinatory effects.  i'd read that the effect of hallucinogens was to cause 
some type of mental feedback, so that the input from the senses is experienced 
several times, overlayed on itself.  this is one way of explaining certain 
psychedelic phenomena.  another, better, explanation, is that you begin to 
experience a broader range of time - you become unfixed in time - and in extreme
cases may actually have experiences outside of time, or in other parts of it.  
this theory was suggested by an account i read in _psychedelics encyclopedia_ by
peter stafford of a british man who was taped by the bbc while having a 
psychedelic experience.  he swore later that he actually experienced things in a
different order than they occurred - at one point he was given a cup of tea, 
pcked it up and sipped it - but what he says happened was that he found himself 
drinking from the cup, then next picked up the cup to begin drinking.  he swears
that this is the order in which he experienced the event, and is not just a 
production of his memory.  what really brought this realization home was the way
jim was speaking - the fact that i had so much trouble understanding him at 
first, thought he was slurring his words, but then realized that the words were 
simply unstable temporally, that he was speaking perfectly clearly, only 
half-backwards (kindof).  again, indescribably - you would have had to have 
>seen< what he was saying in order to understand - somehow in my psychedelic 
state i was able to switch from aural processing to visual, and thereby 
decode/stabilize his speech.  when he touched me, i was transported to his place
in time, which was somehow outside of time, and his voice was perfectly clear.  
i only wish there had been a tape recorder running at the time - i suspect these
words would have sounded as garbled as the rest of what he was saying - to 
anyone not touching him.

i realize that this sounds completely insane, which is why i'm having trouble 
reconciling it with my life.  let me just re-state that this was the single most
convincing experience of my life, and the single strangest to date.  i've had 
several other truly bizarre experiences while in the psychedelic state which 
might point to similar conclusions, but none so far that involved such direct 
experience of another person - and which were therefore not so entirely 
convincing.  soon after the event described we left the party and went to my 
place, where we had some instances of psychedelic (nonverbal) communication), 
but i was no longer high enough to connect to jim in such a direct manner.

let me now try to describe "jim."  he had taken an unknown (very high) dose of 
liquid lsd and at first, as i said, i thought he was either autistic or heavily 
sedated.  i've seen him once since; yesterday we went for a walk with one of my 
roommates, and his speech was normal.  however, he has what he calles "acute 
anxiety disorder" - though i'm not sure this does justice to his condition.  he 
seems to verge on autism, but only slightly.  very highly-strung, extremely 
self-conscious.  in fact, he reminds me a good deal of myself, except that i can
control my consciousness a bit better without needing medication (he's on 
valium).  hyper-aware, though, and very intelligent in a very strange way - 
flashes of incredible lucidity, juxtaposed with periods where he babbles like an
autistic - interestingly, when we were tripping, he would alternate between 
incredibly profound communication (with me) and babble about incredibly mundane 
things, like getting leather to make a hat, etc. - it almost seemed like he was 
trying to act like an idiot.  seems somewhat disconnected from reality - unsure 
what to say, has trouble categorizing things enough to give a straight answer to
certain questions.  very confused about people's names & identities - rather 
seems to experience a "generalized other" more than most people.  i would say he
seems like a "casualty" only i don't know what he was like to begin with - i 
suspect the odd aspects of his personality are organic and have nothing to do 
with his use of lsd - though they seem to facilitate his use of it.

so, that was my weekend.  please tell me what you make of all this.  i swear i'm
not making any of it up - and i was in a sober enough state when it was 
happening that i wasn't just imagining things.  in fact, i was pretty "down" (i 
have a tendency to have very short trips these days, even on high doses - i 
think my brain has figured it out) until "jim" came along - the guy was 
seriously a walking contact high.  i think i've probably omitted some pretty 
substantial things, too - mostly the extent to which we were communicating 
nonverbally & the substance of that communication.

gather the tribes!
racer x

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