by J D Arthur
Intense emotions can also move us to laughter or tears in this state. These dreams can have their own form of language as well. How often have we found ourselves describing the content of a dream to someone in a fashion similar to the following: “He told me he was going on vacation, but somehow what this really meant was that he was going to the forest to live as a monk.” This is the type of weighted phrase that occurs in the salviaic state. It seems that if one were in the depths of sleep, any transition to a new mode of language would have to go unnoticed.
This dream language that seems to be at the core of the salviaic state uses words that represent concepts in that mode of mentation. These concepts, it seems, can only be grasped in their entirety while in that state, but it seems that this dream language also partakes of a universal character, since many of the concepts represented are of a universal character. The references to the “land” or “place” of the dead, for instance, have by their nature a universal human resonance. The concepts of kinship and familial affection, for example, do not derive from concepts dependent on any one language.
The Swedish Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg spent much of his life exploring trance states that elucidated many concepts that find parallels in the salviaic state. His thoughts on language are particularly interesting in the present context:
Hence it is that men while living in the body cannot speak with each other except by means of languages distinguished into articulate sounds, that is, into words, and are unable to understand one another unless they are acquainted with these languages, for the reason that their speech is from the exterior memory. Whereas spirits speak with each other by means of a universal language distinguished into ideas such as are of thought itself, and thus they can have converse with any spirit whatever, of whatever language and nation he had been while in the world, for the reason that their speech is from the interior memory. Into this language comes every man immediately after death, because he comes into this memory, which, as before said, is proper to his spirit.*1
In addition to the perceptual changes involving language, there were also perceptual factors involving somatic processes. To characterize these factors as purely physiological would be inaccurate. These perceptions would also entail vivid psychological and emotional components.
One such factor, which I began to experience about a year into my involvement with salvia and which continues to this day, I initially referred to in my notes as a “breakthrough into purity.” My entry following one such experience can illustrate:
One perception that has been repeatedly experienced has been an emotional feeling coupled with a somatic sensation, seemingly centered in the head of what one might describe as “purity.”
It seems to result from the sensation of “pushing up through layers.” On one level this feels as if it’s occurring physically within the brain on some sort of neural level—it could be described as a blissful, even ecstatic combination of centering and relaxation on one hand, with an attitude of focused endeavor on the other. At the same time, one feels as if one is pushing up or through some sort of barrier or doorway into another realm.
The aftereffect of this combination of somatic and psychological experiences is a sensation—also somatic as well as psychological—of a type of blissful neural “freshness” that seems centered somewhere behind the eyes. The feeling seems at once natural, primitive, and restorative.
This experience of freshness or purity is unique, in my experience, to salvia. The feeling is not unlike a type of birth—as if one had just emerged from a cocoon of some sort. There is a sense of exhilarating newness, as if one were a new bud pushing out from a branch. The accompanying somatic component is correspondingly rapturous. There seems to be an inherent blissful nature to reproductive processes, and this process seems to echo that function. The sensation has a cerebral focus, almost akin to a sort of ecstatic “itching” behind the eyes and up through the crown of the head. Since this experience is not a direct facet of the salviaic trance per se, but is a manifestation of the afterglow state, there is time to analyze these sensations in some depth. I’ve found that this perception of purity can last about ten minutes after reintegration.
Another, more subtle aspect of this blissful sensation that I’ve come to notice, with time, is that it always seems, on some level, to be intrinsically tied to the concept of death. It’s as if this purity is the “other side” of death—a natural unity that we can inherently sense on some primitive level. At times these sensations can seem like vague memories, on a level that defies description. The continued references to the “place of the dead,” as well as the corresponding perceptual occurrences, serve to reinforce this connection. Salvia alone, it seems, can afford one access to this paradoxical perception of “blissful death flesh.”
During this same period of time, yet another strange series of vignettes would present themselves. During the course of my salvia excursion, there would come a point, which I later surmised to be a type of cresting of the experience, which was, in effect, the culmination of awareness and sensory transformation. As the intensity of the experience was just beginning to recede, a disquieting event would occur. I would, without warning, begin to see what could only be described as animate corpses. The first time this occurred, I was afraid that I was being delivered over to an alternate group of presences, who had a darker side than those to which I’d become accustomed. It seemed that, all at once, what had been a transcendent, exhilarating experience had been transformed into a dark, foreboding, sorrowful realm. The beings that heralded this change were gaunt, exaggerated, skeletal forms, with long, bony, almost insectlike arms. They bore ancient parched faces and seemed to personify decrepit frailty. This, needless to say, was somewhat frightening, although, since the tenor of the salviaic visions was generally of such a bizarre nature, it seemed unnecessary to overreact. Although, after first noticing these vignettes followed the ingestion of a certain type of 5X, I must admit that I avoided that particular preparation for a while.
With time, these presences lost their foreboding nature. Like so many other facets of the salviaic trance, what initially could seem horrific, with time, would lessen in magnitude and become accepted as an intrinsic component of the event. Fear would be replaced with a consuming curiosity. It subsequently became commonplace to see the corpses as my journey was nearing its completion. It was as if my skeletal companions were announcing that I would be leaving the swift fluid darkness and returning to the anguished world of flesh and time.
These images persisted for several months as a regular component of my journeys, and although they’ve subsequently made an appearance on occasion, they’ve generally discontinued.
4
TAKEN
As time went on, I became increasingly familiar with its multilayered perceptual nuances. Yet one aspect was a bit unnerving. It could be characterized as a state-specific phenomenon,*1 although the strangeness of the experience seemed to imply much more.
As I’ve mentioned, it was a regular feature of my excursions to encounter very ordinary appearing “people.” These people would be the players in varied vignettes and, on occasion, would interact directly with me through speech, action, and so forth. Although this was quite a startling development, it always felt as if there was some type of distance between us. The vignettes were almost dreamlike at times, although the vividness as well as the continuity of awareness radically differentiated the two states.
What began to happen, over a period of months, was that the tenor of my encounters began to achieve an immediacy—a reality that was genuinely startling. I would relive this almost comical scenario every time I would smoke. I would try to prepare myself mentally, aware that I would soon be in the presence of the “others”; this, of course, was easy enough in the safety of my ordinary world. This was nothing new—I was used to this. Then I would smoke. All of a sudden the reality of the other world and its inhabitants would wash over me like an icy wave. It would become disturbingl
y apparent that this realm of experience is the real one. This world is the real world—not the contrived world of personality, ideas, and thoughts that insulates us from the infinite—that coddles us into clinging desperately to the known. What was beginning to happen was an almost syntactical transformation of the others from the third person to the second person.
Shortly after smoking, as the foundation of my world was beginning to crumble, I would be “taken.” There’s almost no other way to characterize it—I felt as if I were being literally whisked away to something indescribable. My guides were also becoming more present than ever before. These events were becoming more and more intensely personal, on a level that, several months before, I, myself, would have equated with madness. I found that, although I knew what to expect, there was really no way to prepare myself for these encounters. The alien nature of this realm precluded this, as well as the fact that I, myself, would, in effect, change during these events. The part of myself that attempted to prepare would evaporate as thought and memory would cease. The intense reality of these engagements would consistently take me by surprise.
To our normal way of thinking, to be “taken” would imply some sense of physical displacement, but in this case it seems that one is taken more to a state of being—or, more precisely, to a state of contact. At times, the visions that would present themselves would be of a more vague nature, yet the palpable sense of being taken would be undeniably intense. It seemed as though this sense of contact was, in itself, the transformative element. It’s as if by the lightest touching of this state, one was somehow changed. It seemed as though this contact, by its very nature, was the mechanism for the resultant blissful awareness.
On many occasions, I would want to lightly access the state as a way of exploring the nature of the transition, or merely to have a less intense experience. I would smoke one bowl of Oaxacan leaf in these cases. Even then, profound experiences could result.
From my notes, written immediately after returning:
One bowl Oaxacan:
Went all the way in and was totally absorbed by the other world and its inhabitants.
Sitting here now, I’m still amazed at the totality of my departure on one bowl. I felt completely disconnected with this world—totally immersed. I was very comfortable and felt very much at home there, relatively, anyway. There was a group of young men engendering feelings of some sort of familial brotherhood. One of the brothers jokingly asked something to the effect of, “What am I supposed to do with him (meaning me, since I wasn’t dead)?” This was a rhetorical question, and there seemed to be a good-natured feel to this. There were other people around, as well, but they were more of the nature of peripheral presences.
I had the definite feeling that this realm is above and beyond death—a feeling that the awareness that’s characterized by this state doesn’t die. Not unlike a Swedenborgian “state.”*2
I also felt, in the initial phase, that the cartoon characters (of my first experiences) are the people there, talking to us on some level of primitive emotional communication. That mode of communication is just unknown to us—a foreign emotional language.
There seemed to be quite a bit of talking this time. Again, the language appears to be some sort of “native tongue” but alien to our ordinary state. On more than one occasion, I’ve gotten the impression that the language there is experientially more rapid than ours. It seems, also, to be a more “interior” (again, a Swedenborgian term) language.
At this time, I also began experimenting with multiple back-to-back excursions, smoking perhaps three or four times in one afternoon, with about thirty minutes between sessions. I would generally use one bowl of the weaker Oaxacan leaf at each session. On one such trial, I had the opportunity to smoke in a small isolated cabin in the woods near my home. I had begun to smoke during the afternoon, rather than later at night. I felt that salvia could be enough of a disorienting experience and that to reemerge into a familiar secure environment was decidedly more reassuring than finding oneself in total darkness.
Looking out on the forest on a warm summer day could be very comforting. On one such trial, I had smoked the milder leaf twice, but felt nothing significant. I had had mild, almost annoying visions both times. The scenarios seemed weak and arbitrary. My frame of mind was not good. I thought that perhaps I was wasting my time. I was tired of these vignettes to nowhere. This very leaf had catapulted me deeply into the other world on a regular basis, now I was spinning my wheels. I thought I’d give it one more try, just to be sure. I lit the pipe again and smoked with an unusual vehemence.
What happened next was almost indescribable. I was, it seemed, literally dragged out of my body so forcefully and so completely that I was sure I had died. I plummeted upward so rapidly that any thought, or even sustained perception, was out of the question. I was dying, no doubt. The experience of dying was not a thought but more a sense that everything I knew was being wrenched from my hands. Again, although this event was frightening in one sense, it also gave the distinct impression that this was a totally natural circumstance. In an inexplicable way, it felt right. It also felt oddly familiar, as if this occurrence was not outside the sphere of experiences that make up the totality of humanness. I mean to infer nothing here, but to fail to note these perceptual impressions would render an incomplete, if not inaccurate, assessment of my experience.
During this occurrence, since thought was essentially absent, fear, also, was unable to get a foothold in the usual manner. Everything was happening too rapidly. Awe, rather than anguish, prevailed. After the session had come to a close, I was more convinced than ever that salvia had some genuine affinity with the process of death—not in any morbid aspect, but in an almost comforting, revelatory manner. It seemed that one could explore the process of death this way.
I continued with my pursuit of multiple trials using weaker salvia. This method, although occasionally frustrating, could also evince a cumulative effect at times. On one such occasion I smoked salvia several times over the course of a few hours. Aside from the opportunity to observe some of the peculiarities, as well as the quantitative abundance of the language spoken during one session, the first few trials were uneventful and disappointing. At this point, I again felt frustrated with my lack of results.
On my last attempt, I was determined to break through and loaded the pipe with the stronger Mazatecan leaf. I felt almost demanding and inhaled deeply. To my relief, this time was different—I had broken through to the state I’d wanted. I strongly felt the familiar physical sensations—the familiar shift. I suddenly found myself staring at a “nest” of organisms. Their shape was rounded, undefined—soft and egglike. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them immersed in some type of thick fluid matrix. At the same time, I heard a voice say something to this effect, “It’s all right, you only wanted to be among your own kind.” This was evidently an explanation for my mood of vehemence in smoking this last time. I indeed felt that I was among my own “kind” in the nest. It sounds implausible, yet there was an overwhelming feeling of affection for these organisms. It was as though affection and kinship is not the sole domain of humankind. Again, this feeling of kinship entailed what might be characterized as familial or tribal overtones.
In the moments that followed, I became very strongly aware of a blissful pins-and-needles feeling that was, although naturally tactile in nature, somehow outside the sphere of my ordinary physical body. The perceptions were mental, yet had some mode of physicality as their base. The same voice spoke again saying something to the effect of, “All right, this is the flesh of the gods.”*3
My perception was of a secondary or mental body that was “over there.” The sensations of my normal physical body had ceased—I was beginning to perceive sensations from this other “body,” this other “flesh.” These sensations were what appeared to be normal tactile impressions, in one sense; yet, at the same time, they possessed what might be termed a blissful fluidity that could herald immeasura
ble perceptual possibilities. This perception of the secondary body was, although necessarily fleeting, distinct and palpable. I also had the distinct impression that this series of perceptions was given to me as a gift.
It occurred to me that, to have this type of perception, I must have died, but somehow I knew (perhaps I was reassured, in some way) that I hadn’t. Shortly after this, I came to normalcy, but the “flesh of the gods” experience was unique—not only due to the experience itself, but also because of how it was demonstrated to me in such a remarkable yet understandable manner.
It became obvious that what we perceive as physicality is not really a direct tactile perception from our body but a translation of sensations by some aspect of the psyche, which interprets and describes the body’s signals. It’s as if we feel a certain constellation of sensations, and our mind translates this as “hand” or “left leg,” but in the end, it is the mind that is describing and hence creating the body. In this particular experience, my mind was perceiving a group of sensations and was describing it again, as “hand,” and so on, but the sensations this time originated from a source other than the normal physical matrix. These alternate sensations were still translated, however, as a “body.”