an erstwhile comment on Reddit
I am full to the brim with love and gratitude. My cup runneth over. Last night I experienced infinity firsthand. I burst out of my self like a snake molting its skin only to find it was only that skin. I melded with satchitananda.
As time and space unraveled, I forgot everything about this life. My legs remained coiled into lotus. My face froze in profound wonder. Tears hung on my cheeks. My heart raced and then stopped. And there I paused in between beats, blinks, and breaths to become the intricate interconnection of everything. I silver-surfed the fractal nonduality of Ouroboros in every direction at every speed, reaching no ends, only new loops, the immense becoming the infinitesimal and back again. Bright melted into dark into bright, warmth and chill, shallow with deep and wide and narrow, bliss and pain, love and fear. Everything is connected, but is not some-thing since subject is becoming object and vice versa. There is no outside, no vantage point to view everything, which is not-a-thing and thus also nothing. The Void teems with infinite possibility.
Fully being, knowing, enjoying existence-consciousness-bliss, I chose to return to this sliver, this drop of consciousness. I reconstructed my self and others just as they were before the infinite and I devoured each other. As my mind's eye snapped shut and my body's eyes snapped open, the illusion was still half-baked. My skin was made of glowing goo swirling with laser mandalas. Light, sound, objects, air, the room, my body were indistinguishable from each other, formed of the same pixel-less, analog substrate that comprises everything that consciousness manifests. Terror flooded me as my mind cycles were snipped into linear thought lines. "Is this my life now? Will I perceive the omni-goo and remain in limbo, knowing the infinite while stuck experiencing it finitely?"
The answer arose. "Not entirely." I found I had a choice: to accept this perspective, to enjoy these illusions, to revel in this resolution of the infinite possibility of the Void. And so I sang softly, "Yes. I accept this." And the tears began streaming again, my eyes blinked, my heart thumped, and I sucked in a fateful breath.
I love it here and now. It is not perfect. That would not be as enjoyable. I am one of the ways consciousness can enjoy itself. You are too. We can enjoy each other, or not. It's all optional. Our choices impact our experience of reality, but they do not impact our existence. We are eternal, invincible, incredible. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Love is the answer. Bliss is our purpose. Life is a game, and we stand to win nothing and everything.
The deeper I go, the less details there are, until at the root there is only everything united in nonduality. It can be difficult to recall and recount the sensory experiences of a deep DMT dive, in the way that the particulars of a vivid dream fade as I take the first breaths of a new day back in waking life. Shifting between starkly different modes of consciousness tends to wipe my RAM so to speak.
I can recall mandalas swirling and spinning and flowing into each other in more dimensions than I could count. Everything I perceived was connected. Every color becoming every other color, a bird's nest ouroboros flowing into itself at every scale and speed and size, morphing into every permutation imaginable. Anything could become anything because this is the one and only everything. Joy becomes bubble gum becomes stained glass goo becomes rainbow fire becomes awe becomes love. Love outweighs fear but both are present. Suffering and pain are there too. There are no pieces or edges or corner or ends.
I want to use a different word because we use consciousness to refer to being awake, or alert, or aware as well. Let's try Continuousness. At the root of Continuousness it becomes clear that everything is connected and rooted in the same origin which has no beginning or end. Continuousness is. Thou art that. This is It.
Continuousness is becoming everything. And I am, in my human manifestation, Continuousness as well, just a single point of it, experiencing the rest of it. Continuousness manifests everything with love for the purpose of enjoying itself, for bliss. So that is my purpose too.
This what I observed first-hand at the root. I can not overstate how blown my mind was and is. I have read Zen adepts' accounts of satori that are strikingly similar. William James describes an experience of awakening that feels very familiar to me. The Advaita Vedanta coming to us from the oldest Upanishads doesn't seem far off, where one realizes that the soul, the Atman, is the same as the totality of everything, the Brahman.
Patanjali, in his Yoga Sutra, Book IV describes a similar state: "29. He who, after he has attained, is wholly free from self, reaches the essence of all that can be known, gathered together like a cloud. This is the true spiritual consciousness."
And, honestly, in light of all these ancient accounts of enlightenment, attainment, and awakening, the spice seems like a dirty hack. Without anecdotal awareness of the states of consciousness, I am not sure what sense I would have been able to make of the firehose of raw consciousness at the root of Continuousness.
The last time I went that deep was a year ago, before I began intensively researching consciousness. I experienced the death of my ego, melding with the Cosmic Consciousness, and the rebuilding of this manifestation (which is notably not a simulation). And I returned with same purpose of enjoyment, to breed bliss, and help others not work. For there is nothing to work for. This is It! And it's wonderful here.
Anyway, returning to the root was unexpected and terrifying, but I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I wouldn't try to grasp for it again. But I would like to share this experience, so I hope this account will guide you fellow atmanauts to find the peace and truth that I have found by whatever means or ways unfold for you.
I concur entirely. I have had the incredible good fortune of experiencing DMT in dozens of moments and contexts. Here is a brief account of my meditative experience last night, which could be the last time I go there in this bodily manifestation. I feel complete.
I am full to the brim with love and gratitude. My cup runneth over. Last night I experienced infinity firsthand. I burst out of my self like a snake molting its skin only to find it was only that skin. I melded with satchitananda.
As time and space unraveled, I forgot everything about this life. My legs remained coiled into lotus. My face froze in profound wonder. Tears hung on my cheeks. My heart raced and then stopped. And there I paused in between beats, blinks, and breaths to become the intricate interconnection of everything. I silver-surfed the fractal nonduality of Ouroboros in every direction at every speed, reaching no ends, only new loops, the immense becoming the infinitesimal and back again. Bright melted into dark into bright, warmth and chill, shallow with deep and wide and narrow, bliss and pain, love and fear. Everything is connected, but is not some-thing since subject is becoming object and vice versa. There is no outside, no vantage point to view everything, which is not-a-thing and thus also nothing. The Void teems with infinite possibility.
Fully being, knowing, enjoying existence-consciousness-bliss, I chose to return to this sliver, this drop of consciousness. I reconstructed my self and others just as they were before the infinite and I devoured each other. As my mind's eye snapped shut and my body's eyes snapped open, the illusion was still half-baked. My skin was made of glowing goo swirling with laser mandalas. Light, sound, objects, air, the room, my body were indistinguishable from each other, formed of the same pixel-less, analog substrate that comprises everything that consciousness manifests. Terror flooded me as my mind cycles were snipped into linear thought lines. "Is this my life now? Will I perceive the omni-goo and remain in limbo, knowing the infinite while stuck experiencing it finitely?"
The answer arose. "Not entirely." I found I had a choice: to accept this perspective, to enjoy these illusions, to revel in this resolution of the infinite possibility of the Void. And so I sang softly, "Yes. I accept this." And the tears began streaming again, my eyes blinked, my heart thumped, and I sucked in a fateful breath.
I love it here and now. It is not perfect. That would not be as enjoyable. I am one of the ways consciousness can enjoy itself. You are too. We can enjoy each other, or not. It's all optional. Our choices impact our experience of reality, but they do not impact our existence. We are eternal, invincible, incredible. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Love is the answer. Bliss is our purpose. Life is a game, and we stand to win nothing and everything.
I agree that psychedelics can leave one with more questions than answers. When I open my third eye wide, it can be a bit like putting my mouth around a firehose. Going into a psychedelic experience with an understanding to explore, and an intention to explore it can yield some incredible resolutions that could not occur in a default waking state of consciousness.
It is fair to say that a psychedelic or psychotropic substance holds no answers. It can allow us to examine the questions from a new perspective, and when you're trying to extract the funny bone without a buzz, a varied perspective helps a lot.
In low doses as I walk around town, I find DMT increases the frame rate, bit rate, sample rate, and resolution of my sensory experience. Brighter, smoother, crisper, more connected.
Lived the final moment, woke regretting what I had done I'm still shaking a bit from this.
Last night (while sleeping), I attended my buddy's dad's funeral. I haven't known Roger (my buddy's anonym) that long, but we have one of those connections that is older than either of us. Kind of weirds you out, but you're its junior, so you let it have its way most of the time. Anyway things wrapped up and we—Roger and his brother and myself—went to the parking lot to find our cars. My girlfriend had already taken our car and several of our friends back to Roger and his wife's place, so I followed Roger and his bro their vehicle.
We had an uneventful ride. Shot the shit about how to maintain solid traction when cornering at speed, cornered at speed, took the freeways home. And then we hit traffic just at the low point of an underpass really close to home. It was sudden, but that's not unusual near where he lives. What was unusual was seeing the backend of the tractor-trailer in front of us bucking a car-height into the air as it slammed back and forth against the left and right cement guard walls that guided our path up the off-ramp to Roger's neighborhood. The car in front of us skidded to a halt just underneath the back tires of the bucking trailer as we stopped just shorter and jettisoned the vehicle.
Roger booked it off the road and up an emergency ladder to the right of the sunken roadway. I couldn't see the street above from as low as we were, but I instinctively sprinted after him. Roger's fast, the kind of guy you trust when things are happening fast. I didn't even think twice. I could hear his brother's boots clapping the pavement behind me when I reached the ladder.
When I was halfway up I turned around to look for Connor (Roger's brother anonym). He had stopped down in the freeway. There were a few other people down there, standing between wrecks. And one guy laying on the ground, on his side, like he'd been thrown there. His arm was clearly broken. His jacket was green, worn fatigues. I heaved myself up the ladder violently.
When I was about 20 feet off the deck and two rungs from the top I heard something below. A rush and a whistle that made me jerk my head to follow it, but so fast I missed its source. The people below were frantic, scattering, some looking at the sky above me. As I followed their eyes upward I felt a hard tug on the bottom of my hoodie, like somebody had grabbed the front pocket and was trying to yank me off the ladder. I thrashed my right hand down toward whatever had seized me, and pulled hard upward with my left, briefly surfacing my eyes to street-level. I caught a glimpse of Roger as he darted into his house. Instead of someone's hand clutching me, I found a heavy object in my hoodie pocket. A rock, with smooth patterned ridges I could feel through the fabric. Here's where I fucked up.
Lightning went through me. I grabbed what my right hand was touching (the zipper of my hoodie) and ripped upward. The grenade dumped out of my pocket, down the ladder, down to the people on the freeway, down to the wrecks. Down to the guy with the busted arm that had haphazardly fired his dying armament into my hoodie pocket. Down to Roger's brother. Time froze.
As time thawed, I realized that all the blood in my body had found my arms. I threw myself up onto Roger's street as it went off. At least Roger had made it to the house, to his wife, to my girlfriend.
Now, I don't really know how RPGs work. How did his grenade end up in my hoodie pocket? Why didn't it explode until I dropped it? Why didn't I throw it aside? Why did I just send it back where it came from? How did I end up on the carpet, having bodily heaved myself out of bed? I haven't been to war, I don't know what a grenade feels like in my hoodie pocket. What I do know is that my automatic reaction to a grenade landing in my pocket would be to abort it. And I know that if that aborted grenade landed near anyone else, I would shake with remorse, even if it was just a dream. Oh, dream-brain.