My Second Experience with Unity

Ayahuasca
Unity and Interconnectedness

Context

Name:
Josie
Trip Date:
2013
Age:
20
Setting:
A small dark room in the company of my friend
Gender:
Female
Height:
5ft9

Substances

Name Dosage Route of Administration
Ayahuasca 2.5g Syrian Rue / 6g Mimosa hostillis Oral

Onset

Onset

I took the syrian rue by powdering it in a mortar and pestle and washing it down with milk, before waiting approximately 45 minutes to drink down 7 grams of MHRB blended into a banana smoothie. I only managed to drink roughly 6 grams, however, as the sheer amount of liquid was difficult to take in. Though these were both unpleasant and nauseating to consume, it was nothing when compared to the foul-tasting, traditionally-brewed method which I am extremely familiar with.

I was tripping within the presence of DemFractalsYo who was also taking ayahuasca, but through the Ayahuasca cupcake method of preparation; she took 2g of syrian rue and roughly 2.5g of MHRB.

After consuming our substances, we spent approximately one hour in a well-lit living room whilst waiting for the effects of the drug to show. The first set of effects I noticed were a distinct body high which felt like a warm soft bodily glow and a brightening of colours. This was accompanied by strong level 3 drifting within and across flat surfaces around the room such as the carpet, ceiling and walls.

In terms of cognitive alterations, it was at this point that I started to feel anxious and paranoid over the thought that perhaps I should not have taken ayahuasca tonight as I felt the overwhelmingly negative vibe that “something was not right”. I could not identify its source and simply decided that I should give my ayahuasca usage a break after this trip to collect my thoughts, as I realized that I had literally been taking it on a daily basis for what must have been weeks. This feeling of anxiety remained, however - even after I had reached this conclusion but I did not let it overwhelm me and it faded once I began to concentrate on other things.

Peak

Peak

We decided that we were now tripping hard enough to leave the well lit living room and enter into a small, extremely dark room that we had previously prepared as an environment to enjoy the experience with maximum effects and minimal external influence. We entered the room and I began to feel that my subconscious was “fucking with me” or “trolling me” as if it was trying to teach me some sort of lesson, and it was resulting in strong feelings of anxiety. I expressed this to DemFractalsYo and after an extremely short period of discussion we were interrupted by a shelf collapsing behind us, creating a sudden loud noise and tipping miscellaneous objects all over us. This terrified me and created the strongest sensation that the universe was deliberately trolling me as some sort of test to evoke a response.

At this point I was beginning to trip hard and was experiencing extremely defined level 4 visual geometry within the darkness of the room. These fast-moving sets of complex geometry could be described as completely typical and standard to that of the ayahuasca experience. They were structured in their organization, organic in geometric style, intricate in complexity, large in size, fast and smooth in motion, colourful in scheme, glossy in colour, equal in blurred and sharp edges and equal in rounded and angular corners. They looked very natural, ancient and had mystical undertones in their perceived visual vibe. We felt that we must be close to hitting our peaks and began to smoke marijuana to intensify the experience. After a vague period of time, my roommate knocked on the door and informed me that a close friend was in the living room and that it was his birthday. We were tripping hard but decided to leave the safety of our small dark room and wish him happy birthday.

Upon entering the living the room and wishing our friend happy birthday I noticed that the visual geometry became extremely frantic in its motions. The intricate patterns condensed into wires made of light which proceeded to rapidly flail about my visual field in random unpredictable directions. I sat down and realized that they were watching a military film which appeared to be set in a modern day Iraqi or Afghan war zone. Almost immediately I began to feel extremely anxious as the soldiers began shooting each other whilst the trip continued to intensify in its effects. This lead me to become extremely immersed within the violence and suffering. I was beginning to teeter on the brink of ego death and feared that I would lose control and attack my friends in the battle field despite the fact that I did not have a gun.

Moments later I progressed ever deeper into the ego death and lost my sense of self momentarily. I then started to feel that I was the universe searching for itself within itself but had entirely forgotten that it was itself. At this point a brief moment of realization hit me, I realized that I had found myself and that it had been right in front of me all along. The real me was revealed as not something which resides inside the skin but everything around me with which I connect. There was not a single coherent linguistic thought within my internal narrative but through feeling alone I knew what was happening. I had once again began to enter a state of unity and interconnectedness but as I realized this my attention was drawn back to the terrifying sounds of guns and death. I decided that perhaps this was not the most appropriate environment to be tripping on a psychedelic, I grabbed the spliff which I had given to my room-mate, and hurried back to the safety of our private trip room with my friend and my dog who had decided to follow us.

Upon entering the room I sat down and commented on how genuinely frightened the film had made me before instantly beginning to slip straight back into ego death once more. It was at this point which I became completely silent and unresponsive.

“Are you ok?” “Are you sure?” “What’s happening?” “Can you talk?” “Is everything alright?”

I heard these phrases and understood them but could only nod or shake my head in response. I was completely unsure of what was happening and found myself stuck in a thought loop in which I repeatedly performed reality checks to ensure that I was not dreaming. I started to feel that everything around me had been taken to it’s most extreme of options. I looked at my dog and assumed that it was going to attack me, I turned the light off and assumed that something evil was now lurking within the darkness, I heard my friends within the living room and assumed they were going to drag me out and force me to become responsive. I then looked at the darkened silhouette of my friend and assumed that she was forcefully trying to have sex with me. I was too immobile to respond to any of these threats but saw my friend lit up, floating around the room comprised entirely of condensed visual geometry while she audibly stated “it’s ok josikins, nobody would know!”. This continued until my girlfriend unexpectedly entered the room after arriving home from work and the moment I saw her I assumed that she too was about to forcefully have sex with me.

I continued to lay there in the darkness, I was extremely disorientated but after a vague period of time I slipped out of these continuous delusions and although I could not talk, a sense of clarity began to wash over me. I realized that my sense of self, I or me had become attributed to all of existence. I felt once again that I was not just a separate skin-encapsulated being trapped within a physical body but, an organism which was one with this entire universe. I felt this so strongly and saw that the room around me was as much a part of myself as any other. I felt that this room and this body was deeply interconnected and dependent upon the entire universe which resided within and around it and that every last atom of it was all me.

I looked at my watch and felt that I had somehow stepped out of the illusion of relative time and that I could access all times from the creation of the universe to its destruction and dissipation. It was revealed to me that everything which had ever happened or will ever happen across the entirety of this reality’s timeline were all “me” and that I had existed for an eternity. The ayahuasca showed me that human beings were trapped in an illusion of perspective which made it seem as if only the present physically existed. In actuality however, it was stated that all events past, present and future exist together and are continuously occurring within their individual time frames simultaneously.

This realization that I was not only all of physical existence within the present moment but all of existence across all time frames resulted in some immediate and profound subconscious extrapolations of perspective. I suddenly felt that I had existed since the beginning of time, long before this particular part of me had come into play a mere 20 years ago. I felt that I was the supreme thinker behind all actions which had ever occurred but that I had forgotten this due to the nature of this part of my self’s particular human form.

It became somehow clear to me that I had created this entire universe perfectly and consciously down to the tiniest detail. My entire life was felt to have been planned out in advance by this supreme self which was me and so had everybody else’s. I understood that my true self outside of this insignificant body contained all of existence. I was therefore all knowing, all powerful, resided everywhere and had created everything. The moment I felt this it all clicked together. I was and always had been the very definition of god itself in every sense of the word. We were all god and the basis for such a concept in a scientific, logical universe finally became clear to me. I felt that I had stumbled upon the answer to our existence and became overwhelmed with profound religious ecstasy.

This feeling was paralyzing and stayed with me for an extended period of time. I sat there in disbelief trying to comprehend the full gravity of this new ayahuasca induced perspective. The music played and I ignored it up until the moment that an extremely relevant song began to play. We were listening to a band known as Shpongle[1], it was a long, drawn out instrumental introduction but I knew what was coming. The beat kicked in and the female vocalist began to sing the chorus,

“You are me and I am you. I’ll always be with you.” “You are me and I am you. I’ll always be with you.” “You are the sun, the rain, and the moon beams. You are the Divine Goddess of my dreams.” “You are the sun, the rainbows, the moon beams. You are the Divine Goddess inside me”

It was too much. I understood these lyrics on a level which I had never previously felt and instantly began to break down into tears of sheer profundity. I cried continuously as I weeped for everything that had ever or would ever exist. I understood just how perfect this world really was and continued to breakdown as I came to terms with my new reality and the true nature of existence. Throughout this my friend watched over me and reassured me that everything was ok. On occasion I would stop crying for just a moment, temporarily regain the ability to speak in a perfectly sober manner and ask the question “could you please roll another spliff?” before immediately regressing back into the emotional breakdown. This was a religious experience in every sense of the word and I felt clearly that it was the most profound moment of my entire life. Despite all of this however, I still held a strong desire to keep smoking marijuana spliffs throughout it.

Offset

Offset

After a vague period of time I stopped crying and began to explain the situation to my friend. I thanked her for watching over me and understood clearly what an extremely important person she would always be in my life. The feelings of unity subsided and I was no longer everything but completely psychologically exhausted. I hugged my friend goodbye and collapsed in bed as I had work the next morning and needed to be up for 7am. In the morning I woke up feeling absolutely refreshed and ready to face the day despite the fact that I had only slept for roughly 3 - 4 hours.

Over the following weeks I noticed that this trip had inflicted lasting changes to my perspective of the world. I could no longer look at my life and the things within it without getting the strongest physical sensation that “I designed it this way myself”. Even weeks after the experience had ended, I was walking my dog through a local park and came across a tree. I began to breakdown and became overwhelmed once again with the feeling that my true self had designed it this way and marveled at the profound complexity of its composition. This new perspective lasted for roughly 3 weeks but eventually faded into an idea which was only intellectually understood but no longer physically or emotionally felt.

All in all this experience was the most profound that I have ever been through. I cannot over exaggerate just how life changing it really was and simply recollecting it in such a high level of detail for the purposes of documentation resulted in the shedding of tears at multiple points throughout the writing process.