The next morning we rose early, wrote, stretched and then meditated, drinking only water and avoiding breaking our fast.
At about 10 am we packed everything we needed for the day and then went through our plans again. It was a good job that we did that reconnaissance yesterday; we knew exactly where to go thanks to the old man’s advice – and where not to go thanks to our own early dead-end meanderings.
At 10:30 am Matt measured out the mushrooms with his atomic weight measure. He weighed out exactly 1 gram for us two, and a minimal amount for Jeremy who was going to be guiding us throughout the day.
We took three cups from the cupbourd and spooned in some yoghurt and then mixed in the tiny pieces of mushroom.
My heart rate went up – I was nervous. I felt vulnerable. I started needing reassurance:
Are you sure this the right stuff? Yes.
Have you done this before? Yes
Is it too much? – No, my girlfriend did it and she was half your weight and it was still quite mild.
I looked into the cup – it almost had it’s own gravity now – and then I plunged the spoon into the yoghurt and mushroom mix, and started eating. It was like eating woodchip, without much flavour.
Through fields of bright purple with foxgloves, each straw blade bowing over with a slight mist – it was like walking on a new planet in a dream in a different time. The colours were so vibrant, the patterns so perfect!
After consuming everything, we placed ourselves on the leather sofas and listened to a lecture by Timothy Leary about what was going to happen, basically the death of the ego.
I became scared. Scared of the uncertainty, scared of death. Slowly I could feel something was happening, but I didn’t know what. My body was reacting. I became increasingly anxious.
I suddenly worried about a health trauma from some years ago. I suspected that something like this might happen, and if these thoughts did come back, I reassured myself that I was going to be all right. In the audio Timothy Leary said you might experience heaven or hell. Don’t deny one nor reach for the other, just let it be.
I closed my eyes and started seeing geometric patterns. The patterns linked up and formed petals of a flower. At the centre of the flower, a vortex started forming with light shining from within it. A dot appeared in the middle of the vortex. What the heck is that, I thought. Suddenly, it formed two wings and became a bee crawling on the flower. Oh God, this already too much for me I blubbed out. My conscious and subconscious playing tricks on each other.
I opened my eyes, and after the lecture had finished, we went outside into the patio, and the effects started feeling stronger. There was a distinct contour round Matt and Jeremy. The lines on their faces became pronounced, as if someone had drawn outlines with a pencil. We chatted about something or other, and I leaned back onto the wall, slid down the doorframe till I was squatting on the concrete floor with my head against the doorframe. I pulled my headband over my eyes again, closing them and surrounding myself in darkness, and again saw the geometry – webs of alternating black and white triangles – the vortex appeared, and felt myself starting to travel towards the vortex. I was moving towards it this time, and I was nervous.
It was a combination conscious and subconscious interacting in this twilight zone, I knew that I wanted to look closer, and my subconscious visually manifested my demands.
I remembered the words of Leary: that we will go deep into the nervous system and that I should trust myself. That I should trust my fellow travellers as well, which I did. The vortex came to me with a shining light
It was the dream I had last night of the red tornado in the lake, sucking people into the whirlpool. This was the whirlpool.
Oh God, did I really want to go into this? Too late, I could see this vortex in front of me now. I was scared but curious, more curious, though, and I let myself travel into the vortex, immersing myself into a tunnel of geometric patterns, and then being surrounded by this vast universe of undulating geometry all around me. Like an ocean of black and white triangles, smooth and wavy like an ocean on a calm summer’s day, but layers in every direction, all around me, and in every dimension, folding into itself.
I was puzzled as to why it was undulating somewhat rhythmically in and out, and then remembered that this was the nervous system – alive – it was me, my nervous system. I had turned myself inside out. I was now looking inwards, but I wasn’t looking with my two eyes because sight didn’t exist, it was a self-luminous perception, all around me. Consciousness becoming self aware.
But, in that moment, I realised that I didn’t know what ‘me’ was anymore because that concept disappeared. In fact, when I opened my eyes, just a short time after closing them and entering that vortex (where I could have been for hours for all I know, because time disappeared too), and I thought “what’s me – who was this person, Neal?”. I had a mental picture of him. I stood back up and caught a glimpse of this person in the window reflection, looking distinctly wilder than usual (especially with my headband on), looking at himself as if looking at someone else.
“Fuck, I feel anxious, the fear’s all coming back,” I said turning to him behind me.
“Same here,” said the other traveller. He had, he said, this flood of anxiety welling up to ‘“this level right here,” indicating with his fingers to a water level of anxiety near his neck height, and gestured to how the anxiety was in his stomach flooding upwards through his neck into his head. He wanted to – and he leaned forward holding a dart in his hand – “smash through this part”, throwing his imaginary dart onto the wall.
That was the energy I wanted to see from him yesterday at the initiation. It felt reassuring to hear of someone else struggling with this dreadful anxiety.
The concrete floor he was standing on was a different colour and the leaves on the potted plants started wobbling – fuck me: my perception is all but gone now.
It was now raining heavily (hence the wobbling leaves), and I took my clothes off and stood in the rain bare-chested, in just shorts and headband, accepting it all. I had to stand here in this rain – wild, human, in nature – under the rain, surrounded by wild forest. I had to do this.
The tall traveller came back (I hadn’t realised he had left) wrapped up in a blanket. He had felt cold. The shorter guy lay now on the floor and was struggling to put his shoes on. He had one sock on and one shoe on. The other sock was hanging on a log next to his head. He then stood up and said that he sure as hell needed a hug right about now. Taller guy said yes, spread out his arms, expanding the blanket, offering us into his blanket. We both stepped in and hugged together. Being close to this other man – smelling his male scent and feeling his beard rubbing close to my cheek, gave me the sensation of what it was like to be a woman attracted to a man, or being in bed with a man, wrapped in a blanket. After a good hug, the shorter guy stepped back and said that he was hugging two bigger men. He asked why we were bigger than him. I leant back against the door frame and said that’s because we’ve got both our shoes on whereas he had only one shoe on. We looked down at his one shoe and one bare foot, and burst into laughter. We were now elated. The smiling began.
For the next few hours I would be smiling non-stop.
Let’s get ready to go out, we agreed. We had finally smashed through this horrid anxiety.
Peering through kitchen window, we looked at the clock. 11:10 am. What did that mean? I struggled to think what those two clock-hands actually signified. I knew it was significant but I didn’t know why. I strugled to calculate: It’s only been, what, half an hour since we ate the mushrooms? That’s not very long, right? Still another ten minutes before we planned to leave.
I went into the living room to pick up my jacket, and after picking it up, I realised that it wasn’t my jacket. So I took the jacket back and placed it on the sofa again. Then realised it was mine, I just didn’t recognise it, or didn’t recognise my possession of it.
Thank god we had packed everything beforehand, I thought. I bumped into a door frame, was huffing disorientatedly and needed to drink some more water.
It was about time to head out into the forest again.