Greetings my dear terrestrial brothers and sisters, Having had quite a bit of experience with psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, Atom [MDMA/Ecstasy] and just once with DMT), I was curious to experiment with Salvia Divinorum. While I half expected it to be like smoking DMT or inhaling nitrous oxide... it was really nothing like I had anticipated. I am well acquainted with peoples descriptions this medicine, I have trained myself to release any and all mental fixations, while journeying with power plants.
I will give you folks the abbreviated version of my experience, which was unlike anything I had previously gone through.
I loaded my bong with ice water and the bowl with 1/8 gram of 20X extract. I then situated myself on the edge of my bed. I had drawn the curtains and readied myself for the blast off. After taking my first hit and holding it as long as I could, I quickly re-filled my lungs and lay back on the mattress. The taste leaves something to be desired, unlike Ganja. As I am accustomed to do, I centered my consciousness within the area of my third eye (pineal gland). I had the feeling of struggling to break through some kind of plastic/ plasma-like membrane but I couldn't rip through it.
I never did get through the barrier but I had the sensation of trying to climb into a room within my head. Strange really. It does not correlate to most of the trips I have previously had, where I am able to enter into a Satori-like enlightenment. There was a palpable dream-like quality to the trip. After 15-20 minutes or so, I was back to my self. Much of what I perceived is beyond the scope of words (or only translatable in a Salvia-type of nonverbal language?)
I was aware of the reverse tolerance of Salvia Divinorum, so I decided to give it another try in a week or so. "Patience is a virtue." When I next duplicated the ritual, this time with 1/6 of a gram of 20X extract, I had a most unique experience. After hitting on the bong three fairly rapid, successive lung fulls (counting to thirty each inhalation), I laid back on the bed. Just as before, since I didn't want to fall down and injure myself. This time, I was able to gain access into the ROOM. I felt like I was climbing through an opening in the ceiling, into an attic. I recall watching the panorama that took place, from a prone position on the floor. Floor? Yes, I was within a small room that was distinctly rectangular. Or was it a hallway?
Strangely enough, my entire perception was more 2-dimensional than 3-dimensional. Kind of... but not really. Or maybe more like a cosmic cartoon of sorts? Yeah. Three dimensional but without much sense of depth or having any far distances involved. The substance which everything was made of, was most luminous and a touch neon light-ish. It was a highly electric reality, yet bizarrely flat on some levels. As if it were taking place on an astral plane.
The color of the room was an unusual orange with a pinkish undertone to it. This came as a total surprise to me (not my favorite colors). There were no windows at all and the "room" alternately changed length. First appearing as a box-like structure, then elongating into an endless hallway (disappearing out of sight). The height of this room remained static, however, and I could constantly perceive of the angular natural of the enclosure.
The entire environment was buzzing with an electric, crackling energy. Now, the ROOM itself was composed of constantly moving lines of pure energy. These lines resembled the way a pattern of stripes is created on wall paper, in a peculiar plasticine way, with parallel stripes spaced exactly 3 inches apart. Every twelve inches, running vertically from ceiling to floor, there was what looked like the eye design at the top of a peacock feather (about the size of a 1/2 dollar). This caught my eye as a focal point. Within that focal point, churned all of the universal forces at play.
This visual phenomenon appeared much the same way, as how Y-necklaces (or tin cup necklaces) are constructed. They are crafted with a gemstone bead or pearl, evenly stationed between sections of chain. You know, just as if the circular pattern at the tip of the peacock feather was the bead and the lines of zingy energy were the chain sections that binds them as a cohesive whole?
I could distinguish the colors blue, purple and yellowish-green/chartreuse, within the spiralling eye-like pattern. In fact, if I concentrated in the very center of the peacock feather (eye-like design), I could see galaxies swirling and exploding across the universe! A counter balance of cosmic forces turned endlessly within the center of the circular design (sort of like a Yin Yang). Now, the most interesting thing about this vision is that the EYES were moving along the crackling lines of energy. That is, every other stripe flowed downwards into the floor or upwards into the ceiling, where they took a sharp turn and went from vertical to perpendicular or visa versa. I could see that EVERYTHING within the room was composed of these geometric lines of flowing linear energy.
Quite unexpectedly, a dimensional water fountain emerged out of the wall. Almost like it emerged out of a plasma-like, homogeneous substance. It looked very similar to the way it was portrayed in the movie Matrix. It too, was made up of the flowing lines of pure thought energy. Out of nowhere, a woman dressed form the 1940's strolled up, pushing a baby carriage!!! Both the woman and the stroller where constructed of the very same lines of energy, although they followed the form of the lady and the carriage and then flowed, either downwards into the floor or upwards into the ceiling. It was if everything in the room was composed of an indivisible flow of the same energy.
The woman leaned forward and drank from the fountain. It was one of these types used in schools, where you press the button and the water squirts into your open mouth. Right? I remember the water, also made of the lines, merging with the lady. I had the thought, "So this must be the Unified energy-field Einstein alluded to." I realized that what I was seeing was, God drinking God out of God. I as witness, was also God, viewing the electrified panorama within the room.
All of a sudden, as I was trying to center my mind on one of the moving eyes... one of them stopped moving, halfway down the wall and transformed into a protruding button/disc, emerging right out of the wall! It had grown from the size of a silver dollar, like the rest of the moving peacock eyes, by about 400 percent or more. It became a raised-relief, protruding out from the flatness of the wall and was also composed of the very same linear, flowing energy. It was about as large as a naval orange but not a sphere, rather, like it was a hockey puck and was flat and disc-like in it's essential form. very button-like in it's overall shape. For whatever reason, I wanted to press the BUTTON. I had the thought, that I was actually supposed to press it! Perhaps my entire lifetime had been a fleeting mirage, superimposed over the energy field, in preparation for this dramatic moment? I heard a strange, otherworldly voice say in English, "No, don't press the button, you know what happened the last time you did that!" Was it my own voice? Was it God's voice? Who/what is God? Just who am I, anyway? What am I, if EVERYTHING is created from the buzzing lines of energy?
I seemed to understand, as if some fuzzy memory was coming back to me and vaguely recalled that when I had "pressed the button" before, INSTANTLY, the whole Universe was born out of the Void of the Cosmos. Not nothingness, though, I felt it's grand presence and it was life itself. Consciousness itself but needing a reflection to witness it. Sort of... but it is way too much to contain in a thought, so I guess the Salvia wanted to show me a picture, since I was having such a distinct vision. Or was it me who wanted Salvia to reveal this hidden truth? which came first, the dream or the dreamer? It is as if the physical universe is the shadow of that Infinite formlessness (of raw, undifferentiated energy). All this, just from the touch of a button? Hmmm... but what if pressing it again, causes all of what I have been trained to see as REALITY, to cease it's existence? Again, I heard someone's voice saying, "Please don't turn off the Universe." OK, I decided not to press the button.
The following thought, which brought me back to a sense of identity was, "Ummm... What is this strange, cold meat I am holding in my hands?" Actually, the "meat" I was holding, were my own two hands! My physical/material hands, that is. I had been existing in an alternate body (aura?) inside of the external matter. A body that was not composed of flesh and bone, rather, the linear flowing energy patterning. The cosmic stuff of which, all things are made of. Viewed through the lens of Salvia, mind you.
Twenty minutes later, I was slowly returning to "normal consciousness". Aware of self and other, concrete and immaterial, material and spiritual, etc...
I am still somewhat uncertain what Lady Salvia actually does to the awareness of the individual person taking it. I believe salvia targets the opiate centers of the brain or something? The part of the brain activated is quite different from those affected by tryptamines or any other hallucinogens I have tried. The dream-like images didn't sky-rocket me into a formless level of non-self. I didn't exactly activate my 7th chakra (the crown) and merge fully with the formless Absolute (at least not in the same way).
I did not see The Grid/ Chrysanthemum (thousand-petaled lotus)like on DMT, LSD or Psilocybin. Nor did I have the sensation of kundalini rushing up my spinal column, like a guesser at Yellowstone National Park. Nor had I reached the plane which the Indian mystics refer to as "Samadhi". This was uncharted territory, for sure!!!
I was not dissolved into the clear light of the ONE and did not achieve that same kind of Yogic enlightenment. I did sense the Void and all, yet the self that I believe I am... had evaporated with the onset of the trip, leaving a separate witness to the indivisibility. Which is kind of odd, in a sense, since the indivisibility had degrees of separation between them but no real distinctions in their energy composition. As if EVERYTHING was woven from the dynamic interplay of the very same lines of buzzing energy.
Like what William James said in reference to nitrous oxide, "There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference... and no difference."
That being said, I did perceive of an indivisible frequency of consciousness, which was all-pervasive and immanently Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient.
Overall, I found it both, intriguing and quite bizarre. Obviously, I will need to further explore this phenomenal realm, although I hardly expect to arrive to the exact same place, again. Who knows, though? I feel that I am undergoing a journey on a path that will reveal to me a unique view of the universe (both, internally and externally). I will keep you guys posted about my findings. OK? Be well, folks.
Bye now, Rising Spirit There is no self to which I cling, for I am one with everything.