blanc wrote:fwiw I recognise the description of this state, I think, without drug use. a change or shift in perceptions making the world, or one's relationship to it utterly different*. actually I wonder if we don't have a shift or two from childhood to adulthood - ever tried experiencing as you experienced as a child? near impossible to remember, never mind re-create, but one knows it was different.
* mine was the sensation of being completely alone in the world,whilst in the middle of a town I know well. that doesn't really describe it, and it was a transitory state, not a rationalisation of a feeling, or a depression, not a sense of isolation or difference, just existing on a plane where no-one else was, which was not special in any way. I think this is common enough experience for people.
Well, that pretty much describes how I've been 95% of my life. This isn't quite that, this is more like, I have felt like I was a stranger to not only humanity, not only life itself, but a stranger to existence itself, a stranger to matter and energy itself. The alien absurdity of everything vividly flooding in at once, without an ego to stand in its way or from a mental balcony cast everything in a self-aware comforting context. Let me emphasize the word
alien. It isn't anything like the kind of "Oh my god
they're aliens" or "We've been
invaded by aliens" epiphany a truly crazy person or Roddy Piper might have. It's more like "Heh...
we're the aliens, we're the
only aliens there has ever been, we've been aliens
all along,
everything on this planet is a freakish alien life form, holy shit I'm watching these bizarre laughable constructed fleshy creatures participate in an half-advanced half-retarded game of mock aggression based on a delusional sense of self and society and abiding by completely illusionary rules that could be horrifyingly destroyed at any moment, and look there's thousands of them just watching all that and murmuring to their freakishly eyed and mouthed upright plasma selves...and whoa there's an alien on the couch watching the same thing on this amazing image-teleporting machine, and he...it...is trying to talk to me in language and thoughts it has learned to mimic over a lifetime...and I'm an alien too, listening to it and thinking this...wow, this is a fucking cosmic joke, haaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahaha" It might sounds like just another mildly strange trip or just some strong bong-hit sophistry...but it's not, if it sounds that way it's only because I am not articulate enough to really capture it. As you
might be able to guess, I experienced the strongest sensation of this type while mundanely watching a Red Sox game this past May with a buddy, stoned. And during that game, at the pinnacle of this epiphany, in between the ripples of anxiety at such a totally fucking bizarre perception, I felt
freedom and
peace as a
being for the first time in my life. A professional doctor might advise me never to smoke weed again if I were to describe this LMAO. But I've smoked weed for so long and I've cultivated an educated paranoia for so long, the extra bit of paranoia weed brings is
just surprising enough to be a slight pull of the rug, which then opens up the gargantuan crater of deconstructive perception I've been digging for myself my whole life -- but
I'm not falling in the hole, it's everything around me that falls into the hole, or rather, it's the cloak of belonging-to-the-world that covers everything around me which falls into the hole. I think my brain finally utterly uncloaked
everything during that game. Ev-e-ry-thing. You know how the brain filters out stimuli and modes of perception in order to function as a coherent self? It was like all of that -- ALL OF IT -- had just dropped away, exhausted from me never letting life just be. It was my brain said, "Okay motherfucker you really wanna see life without filters, here ya go chief, enjoy." If I were to try to find a good movie analogy (sigh, what else can I compare it to?) it would be...nah, fuck it, I can't even compare it to any movie I've seen. I can't say I'm in
total control of the experiences, but I can nervously choose to distract myself from them and concentrate on simple realities if shit gets too heady. Kind of like that spinning dancer. I guess, in a way...I have indoctrinated myself for over 20 years in a one-man cult devoted to unadorned reality, and the walls
finally gave way. Unlike previous existential epiphanies when I was say, 18 or 25, there wasn't the
slightest trace of smug satisfaction in myself for having "figured it out", which -- although smug -- was often the only positive feeling I could cling to after shedding one layer of "reality" after another. Like I said above, the reward this time was a freedom and peace I had never felt before, never thought even possible. I feel like I never have to take LSD or DMT or any psychedelic, there's not a chance in hell it could provide me with anything more revelatory or fundamentally bizarre than what I've experienced with just two decades of self-enforced cynicism, some good weed now and then, and a sense of humor. There
might be stranger entities (stranger entities than "just us humans" to ourselves and the rest of the totally fucking bizarre life that already exists) and more complex riddle-like realities in other trips...but I'm confident what I saw was the unadulterated basic reality of existence, which is so fucking bizarre and laughable that it's almost not even worth contemplating if one can even comprehend it.
by FourthBase » Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:26 am 
