Im seriously in a bit of a head wreck myself at the moment , about 3 days ago I decided to take 2 acid blotters by myself having done it before and having a great times just sitting alone listening to music and enjoying the beauty of everything , I thought I knew acid but man was I wrong , I had just watched the film inception the night before so it was fresh on my mind , anyways I took the acid around 9am (I like to do it early when its bright out so Im not up all hours of the night) and waited for the brilliance to begin as you do .. Then I got into a chain of thinking about life and what I am , I definitely didnt see it coming but by the time it did it was too late I was thinking about dreams and layers and dreams within dreams and how they feel completely real while your in them then when you wake up you realise it was a dream except because of the lsd it felt like I was discovering some secret truth about the universe , I somehow went into some state of mind where I could see patterns and infinite layers in everything and they would go deeper and deeper and morph into anything and everything but it was all the same thing it just looked different , I began to forget what I was but then I realised this is what I am (Life), I am the universe (some all knowing entity that can create worlds with imagination) and this entity is so sad that it had to break itself down into infinite layers of fractal patterns in nature just to forget that it knows everything so it can experience the beauty of life because lets face it if you've ever played computer games you'll know once you done everything or if you use cheats the game loses its spice you know that stuff that makes it what it is then you get bored , then I started to think has this happened to me ? has the fact that I know understand we are just one entity imagining itself taking on different characters and talking to itself from different angles and perspectives in an Idea created by us (We ? all ? It?) through nature and its complexity ? have we given ourselves a brain that is not able to understand everything on purpose so we can have fun ? ....

Anyways I cant remember too much for the next hour or so it was pretty blurry but then after having this realisation something strange happened .. and scary .. I started thinking real hard while in some little "bubble of thought" saying What Am I ? to myself and then it was like a drop of water in my Consciousness and I fell out of perspective with my body and was looking from a point of view that I could only call infinity , its like I could see the whole entire existence of everything it was like a big circle fractal image with skinny lines stretching out and them lines had little branches with more smaller branches and so on and at will I could zoom right into certain areas of this fractal and It would morph into these crazy realitys with laws of physics that I could see myself creating (who knows how) with SOOO much complexity then I realised if my mind is doing this then that must mean that life is just and Idea ... just an Idea that we created ourselfs at birth we get so caught in the moment that we just keep going and going and building up this little fantasy that "We" call life , and the way the system is set up it tells you that your this "Human" that cannot be changed this physical being when really your just pure imagination breaking itself down deeper and deeper , then I got more scared and panicked ... It was like I could see this place now would that mean I can just go back here at will once I understand how ? then I started thinking maybe I wouldnt come back like Id go somewhere else and keep living but my body here would be whats called a psychotic or schizophrenic and I just couldt stand leaving my family and becoming such a burden to them and I tried (and succeeded) at snapping out of the trip though it took a while I spent a lot of time walking back and forward (I think) to me it felt like I was still walking trough these little "bubble" worlds or parallel universes , everything was also completely distorted or transformed for a while WOAH what a rant ..


Anyways now that its over I wonder if maybe im just part of my own imagination and so are you but you just dont no it and its made me paranoid I feel like I could be dragged from this "view point" at any minute and just enter some different existence if I think About it too much , I keep telling myself its just a trip but it wont help I have these weird feelings in my head that wont go away And I dont know what to believe I almost at one time felt like watching STUPID television just to bring me back down to a level of unintelligence which is very hard to do , Anyways I have trouble telling the difference from whats real and not now any help would be appreciated ..

First of all, relax. You are not the only one who comes to this reality shattering notion about life via psychedelics; in fact I think most of us can relate to you on the things you state above, I certainly can.

This thing you say at the end about 'telling yourself its just a trip'. Well that's certainly one way of dealing with the information; but as I think your finding out these insights don't just get put back to bed easily. Terence McKenna once said that many people like to call the psychedelic experience 'a trip' so they give themselves permission not to take the experience seriously. I agree with him here. You have opened something in yourself that, unless you are really good at denying your own experiences, will not close very easily.

I think your next step is integration and study. That was my next step after I had the type of trip you had. After the initial shock wears off, you'll end up looking at things from a different perspective. This different perspective drew me into a deep study of all the different metaphysical and spiritual interpretations about life. Mix that in with a little science of how the body actually works and how these chemicals effect the brain and you end up making some pretty important findings about what your life REALLY is and who YOU really are.

I wouldn't want to spoil your fun and pontificate at you how I interpret your experience; one of the most joyful things I get out of reading reports like this is realizing that you've been put on the path; your taking your first steps in a new interpretation of your own life experience. You're supposed to question; it's supposed to be confusing it really is. The reason for this you might find out if you dig into what others say about this type of experience. I'm not going to tell you how I feel about it because I think that takes away your joy of discovery. This is about you, just remember that.

Oh, and there isn't anything to fear about the way your feeling right now. It's shocking, horrifying in certain ways, but not fearful or depressing even if it first appears to be. If its fearful and depressing it just means your not integrated with it yet. It has a way of working itself out given some time and contemplation, which I highly recommend for you.

perception is reality...

If you don't believe me smoke some DMT next time you take acid..

that might actually serve to clarify things for you a bit..

Eli don't spoil it for him!

Thanks for that its good to hear somebody knows what your talking about even though I still have this Idea that you are just me from a different perspective looking from a different point of view haha , but the thing that really worries me is that it feels like something is trying to control my head like I might lose control and some other personality might go crazy and start killing people :/ kind of freaks me out and I tell myself that that kind of negative thinking is what will probably drive me to insanity but I cant get it off my mind its like .. An itch I need to scratch , a puzzle I need to solve , a thirst that just wont go away you know , and If I think to much about it it gets real intense like im having a panic-attack and it feels like im getting disconnected from "reality" whatever it may be .. Just knowing there's other people who have experienced this and made it through to the other side is what I need .. its the fear of staying in this state of mind forever that freaks me out .. Also To Eliyahu I've tried changa once before And it was very intense and visual but I couldnt really remember what happened after and another time on lsd I tried a tiny dose to see what would happen but it wasnt enough and everything just kind of vibrated so much that I could see through it for a few minutes then kind of reassembled itself gradually But Ive never gotten Dmt to work for me I just always mess it up with the smoking method ..

And So what your saying Tek is that I shouldn't just ignore it as "just a trip" and actually believe in what I seen or should I try find some sort of metaphor that it was trying to tell me ? Or maybe Wait A while and go back to try and face this issue ?

I'm not telling you what to ignore or believe. That's entirely the point of my cryptic response to your experience.

What Eli says about perception equally reality is, more or less, what I've found to be the case; but the catch is I didn't come to that conclusion because someone told me that's what it was all about. The key I think is you must come to this understanding yourself, without someone trying to tell you what it all means. It's tricky, I admit, but its the only way it works I've found. If you were the only 'real' being in reality, who in that reality could tell you you were the only one? No one but yourself! You get it?

You will 'get it' one day. What has happened to you is you've opened just a little bit to the notion that reality might not be exactly what you thought it was. It shakes your very foundations, and when it first happened to me I had spurts of 'floating away' into some sort of head space that caused me great concern for my sanity. This just ended up working itself out when I gave it enough time and reflected on everything in life. I also didn't partake of any psychedelics until I had arrived at a certain open-minded view of what was going on. Only then was I able to take the next step.

Which is the only thing I will actually recommend to you; lay off the psychs for awhile and allow a period of deep contemplation. Read a lot of stuff, the internet is very valuable. Start plugging in key words from your experience into google and just see where it all takes you. That's what I did and I arrived at a certain 'conclusion' about what Earth life actually is (it's more of a working conclusion). Others took an entirely different approach and have arrived at relatively the same understanding. The thing is though, no one can tell you what this understanding is; it has to come from inside of you. It just has to.

Yeah I get you its my journey and I have to experience it for myself , just like nobody can tell what you seen or didn't see .

Is it normal after having one of these experiences to be seeing strange symbolism and hidden meanings behind a lot of things , like there are these hidden layers of meaning behind everything like famous quotes and phrases and just everyday creations from other people like paintings and films and anything somebody with some creative initiative has made ? Like they where trying to send some sort of message out without actually saying what they thought and knew that only people with that same view of everything could understand it ? Especially music I hear songs now that I thought I understood before but now it means something completely different to me ... much deeper there arent much words to describe it its a slippery slope .
Or could that all be in my head being paranoid or something even though it makes perfect sense to me ?
Sorry for asking so much but im in a weird place right now I just need somebody I can relate to everybody I know is like a zombie they just want to take drugs to get fucked up they dont see anything like me its like they live in a different world ... maybe they do haha .

Normal is just a word and is relative to whoever is saying it. This happened (still happens) to me often so for me, yes its normal.

For a moment, forget everything you know or think you know about reality. Approach reality as if you were just born (as an aside, could this be why Jesus said to enter the kingdom of heaven you must be 'born again'? Food for thought). EVERYTHING you hear, see, smell, and touch has to do with your subjective experience of reality. A song you hear on the radio at that age has meaning to you despite what the song was objectively written about. For instance my 3 yr old niece dances around and loves the song 'Call Me Maybe', yet she has no idea what the words are saying or what the song is about. In her context, the song has meaning just because she enjoys it subjectively; she isn't thinking about it like adults do.

This is the bread crumb that will lead you further down this rabbit hole. Who are you? You're not your name, that's something your parents put on you. Your not how old you are, that's simply how many times you've witnessed the planet revolve around the sun. You're not your occupation; that's just something you do for survival. If you asked a baby who it was, what is the infant's concept of self?

So who are you? Who are you REALLY?? If you can approach the question with an open and honest mind, free of ego, you arrive at something that cannot be defined; thus my inability to explain to you in exact terms what it is your coming to the realization of. It's almost as if (and its a hard leap to make) that the you that you think you are isn't really there at all. But clearly there is a YOU there somewhere isn't there? It just wasn't what you were expecting.

Look into Carl Jung and Plato. Both of these great men talk about symbolism, collective unconcious, hidden meanings and other things that might shine a light on your experience. Plato's allegory of the cave is a great one to get familiar with, as well as the Flatland analogy (just google this stuff).

I've had this very same experience with music, with literature, with art, with movies. It almost feels like a "did you see this too?" shout out to others who've experienced this type of transcendence. Sometimes, I think it's subconscious, which is to say the creative person may not even realize the message they're sending out. I also don't think psychedelics are required. Any sufficiently spiritual enough experience can inspire this type of creative output.

That being said, don't take this too seriously. I don't mean deny the experience, but understand that reality is crazy complicated and that in the end we're just riding the wave. We'll never understand it completely. At most we get bits and pieces, glimpses at a time.

I do also want to add that trying to find these links can become a bottomless rabbit hole. As humans we are pattern finders and we can do so even when there is no real pattern. It can be elusive and sometimes the harder we look the easier it is to miss it for something else.

Take a deep breath! Enjoy the experience. Be in awe of its beauty.

You may start your journey here: http://www.no-self.com/

Heh, I remember staring at the images of Tim Leary and Albert Hofmann on LSA, not believing what I saw: it seemed as if my brain switched into a hitherto unknown, secret mode of perception which let me interpret their facial characteristics in a totally new way. Briefly, I saw them as aliens, members of some galactic federation, very old and wise, with this slightly mischievous twinkle in their eyes... it was a different - but equally valid! - interpretation of the SAME visual image.

From this it occurred to me that there might be several states of mind, each providing equally valid, but distinctly different interpretations of the same reality and we may have the ability to switch between them, somewhat like atoms switch between their stable configurations.

Hehe. This reminds me of a slightly psychotic episode where I was staring at a picture of Terence McKenna on mushrooms and his image started to distort and twist until it was like I was looking in a mirror. I had this incredibly peculiar notion that 'Whoa... wtf! I AM that guy!!'

Totally schizoid moment but it was fun

I'm amazed at how much of this info is available nowadays. OP I highly recommend reading the info at that link and see if that's similar to what you experienced. My insights highly agree with the parts I've read so far.

That is a very interesting theory of how we see things and again it links in with the multiple layers of reality I was having on my trip it was like consciousness was a liquid that filled my skull(that area you look through) and it was like it would fall through this filter and Id be in some completely different reality that was the same ..but different :/ haha its just so funny and head wrecking at the same time , it really boggles my mind how each answer asks a billion questions I suppose It really is a Rabbit hole (maybe thats where the Idea came from) I wonder whats at the end .. I have so many thoughts and theorys about everything right now that it just cant be put into words I Just feel like everything is the same as everything else but different in one way or another maybe you cant explain how its different but it definitely is in a dramatic way , either good or bad I suppose ..
And are them schizo moments normal or what ? haha

Another relative question . Schizoid moments happen often enough to me, but I have a good enough grasp on what they are about that they don't effect my day to day life.

I've had the notion creep up in me before that my life is like one of those cardboard cutouts at an amusement park. You know the ones where you stick your head through to get a picture taken and you look like a cowboy or astronaught or something? Well I've gotten the feeling that my body is exactly like that, that in 'other world' I exist only as conciousness, and I stuck my 'head' through this opening called a human body, and got so caught up in pretending I was this thing that I completely forgot about my true nature.

I've tripped before and had this pressed upon me by entities who thought very little of me; they assumed me to be a spiritual baby because I didn't realize that my body and who I am are not actually the same thing. I have a body, like I have a car, but just like I'm not my car even when I'm in it, I'm also not my body when I'm in IT. Or that's at least how it's felt to me, your results may be different than mine.

Thats Very similar to what im trying to say but to me it felt much more weird and creepy than a cardboard cut-out but I understand where your coming from .. does that idea not worry you that some other "I" could take over ? because right now it feels like my ego is fighting to keep control and Im afraid if I let go it wont be me who controls me you get me ? I Lack faith and trust is my guess Im a very paranoid person Ive quite a few enemies that I made in "another life" in those childish years when I didnt really know what was going on I was living in a fantasy but those enemies are in that same fantasy and are basicly a danger to my health so I have to be paranoid but thats my problem I need to let go but I cant because I need that part of myself to defend myself and everything and if I let go it feels like id need to let my guard down ... its soo complicated but I think im working it out bit by bit.

Oh and about that website I read the first part of it I keep getting distracted though.

You are not any of those things. That is your ego that are those things. Of course your ego is afraid to let go, that's the nature of the beast.

Some other "I" take over? You mean like some sort of demonic possession? Who would possess me if I'm the only me in existence? Why would I fear another aspect of myself? I wouldn't; my ego would because it wants that type of control.

The fear in you is the enemy (more like learning exercise), as fear can only be experienced by ego. If you can recognize this, there isn't ever any reason to fear anything; but this is all just talk and much harder to get right in practice. We do live in a reality where this is very hard to keep in the forefront of our daily lives.

Language sucks, that's why it's really complicated and difficult to nail down this stuff. Our very sentence structure is setup so you have to have an object and a subject. There has to be a pronoun of 'you' 'me' 'I' 'it' for a sentence to make grammatical sense. When you drop these its hard to even communicate, but that's exactly what must be done to get the concept across. You can see how even what I wrote above I call it 'my ego' as if I existed as something seperate from myself. Its just a byproduct of monkey mouth noises.

You do what you can with the tools your given though I suppose.

Sounds identicle to what Marc Marcel says.. http://www.youtube.com/w...n5wx8bNUOo3Xjapuw#t=137s

Whilst i think these viewpoints are interesting, i think they are oversimplified, and forget some simple home truths. I mean whilst we aren't our jobs, our country, our name, etc...We are beings that need to eat, drink, sleep, have company, a safe environment, etc. These are basic Biological needs. Without we struggle to survive. I think what you realised on Psychs like Marcel has, is that most of what life has "become" is a distortion of the simple life that is the way we used to live, and probably should still be living.

Sure, we can dump the crap we've learnt like industrialization, corporations, space travel, television, etc, etc. That's mostly crap. But we can't be without our basic needs.

Insights are great, but they need to be working models otherwise they are useless. Actually if anything, i think as man becomes more "developed", he realises he needs the simple and "back to nature" life more than ever!

I guess we need to get our priorities right. We need to accept that we only have a short life, that we should celebrate it and work together for a greater good that isn't based on money, power and greed, but simplicity.

Anyway, enough about my ramblings. I'm sure you'll find plenty more people here on the Nexus questioning about life. Just be sure to not take things too seriously, and be sure to have lotsa fun.

Cheers.

so this is a really great thread and you guys are exchanging some good ideas here. I don't mean to derail the flow here but I just wanted to put in another 2 cents..

So I have been studying philosophy and spirituality all my life.

I took LSD literally hundreds of times before discovering DMT..

Before I discovered DMT I had also tried I great number of entheogens besides LSD..

Looking back, I feel like other entheogens gave me little "pieces of the puzzle" here and there whereas DMT gave me the whole picture....the Whole puzzle put together.

Yeah I noticed it literally feels like its "hanging" onto my consciousness like there this blackness stuck to my viewpoint and if I worry about it it gets bigger and feels like what I could only call a panic attack though Ive never had one before but thats how I would explain it..



That guy in the video seems to have some very similar ideas to me some of them are his "own" I guess but the main point hes making is just like mine only hes found some way to live in harmony with this realisation .. its even weirder when somebody else explains what your trying to explain , I feel like becoming a stand up comic at this point its all so hilarious .

And about the distortion part thats a great analogy , it kind of feels like this "life" is getting so complicated and complex but its should be simple (life should be simple but clearly it isnt if you look deep enough) nature is so complex anyways why do we need to create all of this "stuff" are we all building some new intelligence ? since we are a byproduct of nature and everything is a part of nature(the universe) then isnt technology another creation of nature ? like you use metal and electricity with technology and people say that isnt "made by god" but what a load of bullshit that is its like life gives you lemons you make lemonade but doesnt that mean that maybe artificial intelligence would be a "real" intelligence if we gave it enough complexity in thinking ? is that the next step of evolution ? did something create us and now were creating the next step in the ladder to whatever ? If so it could go either way its kind of a weird idea..



Yeah I get you even from where im standing its like my hole life has been building up to this point like its been sending me little signs the whole time that im only now picking up on and when I do psychs I get a clearer picture of the end result though its still very foggy I can see light at the end of the tunnel ..