"It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here."

Last night and the last for a while: (an email to a friend)

My God man, I had no idea. I couldn't have had an idea. It was like all thought was ripped away or infinitely increased. Like my entire being was shattered into one singular experience of everything, separate from any sort of humanity.

You talked about the desire to peel away the layers... They aren't peeled away, rather ripped to a degree of infinity, with no choice or possible refusal. It was as if all knowledge was shot into relative awareness with my brain vibrating to an absolute singularity in a futile attempt to prioritize. Like a "relative extremum" although that indicates an eventual limit, in which case, I could comprehend none.

All those questions you ponder, the ones you say perhaps you talk about too much. Possibly claimed to originate in the imagination. Those don't exist from nothing...

Chasing knowledge is a sacred gift.

indeed. when my livingroom resolved after my first breakthrough, tears streaming from my eyes and laughter erupting from my mouth, i was filled with gratitude like i've never known. whatever the spice is, whatever it ultimately imparts to us, it is a gift.

i have no concrete interpretations of the experience. i don't want to make it something it isn't, or praise it beyond what it deserves, but for me it tore open the veil of materialism brought down after years of unsatisfying and even detrimental religious associations. it reintroduced unmitigated and ineffable wonder into my life on a scale i haven't felt since my earliest memories. it made me feel 100 fold the emotional blessing i sought and sometimes received from christianity. it quieted the bitter cynic in me, and allowed me to accept many things against which i had railed in futility.

higher up and further in, friend.