"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
Salvador Dali

I would like to talk a little about my own approach to mysticism, reality, and what I see as the golden rule of avoiding looking like an insane person. I think we often fall into one of two extremes. We either distance ourselves too much from our experiences, or become trapped by them, and turn into self-styled prophets of a one-man religion.

So my preferred solution would be rather, a third option: openness and exploration. Understanding the strangeness and fractured nature of reality, the spectrum of possible experiences, and maintaining a sense of humility; while at the same time, suspending our skepticism enough to accept the possibility that what we experienced has significance.

I was once part of a little coven of explorers. We made an agreement not to pull each other down to earth, but rather let ourselves 'get lost a little'. The point was that instead of grounding someone experiencing a deep reparsing of their reality with something like 'you're probably just imagining it' or 'you sound like a crazy person', letting them fly and finding connections may help us all reach higher understanding, and after a while, these peak experiences became integrated by themselves, the extremes ground back down to normality. It worked, mostly.

However, what this requires is mutual respect. Someone coming from a point of absolute and infallible certainty cannot be part of such a sharing circle, as it will inevitably lead to a playroom reenactment of the reality wars from before time. Madness is characterized by the absence of doubt, so cultivating a level of doubt is immensely important. Also, maintaining touch with consensus is great help.

It is currently my realization that psychedelic trips may present as absolute what is relative. A complex, many-dimensional reality projected down to 3, 4, 5, n dimensions, merely a mirror image, facing in a specific direction, from a specific viewpoint... I've had trips that showed me with absolute certainty exactly what I feared may be reality, and then the next one opened things up, as if telling me 'don't worry that was only the tiniest part of it all'.

This kind of exploration is rather similar to artistic co-creation, like group painting. A mutual respect for each others' vision results in something beyond what anyone could create by themselves.