Why couldn't the Lifeguard save the Hippy?

[s a m]

He was too far out mannn...!

Sorry for the shitty joke, lol, it is relavent tho! promise!

Most of you people have probably had one of those pivitol moments during a psychedelic experience where you feel (perhaps fear) that if you go any further, you may not be able to turn back.

Actually, I suppose in simply taking a psychedelic you are put on a path so tight you cannot turn around, you must accept that there is an experience ahead of you that may very well change you forever - I suppose the same is true of being born, you can never truly turn around, and if you do - it is not the same path infront of you as it was behind - simply by virtue of you facing it.

But I am straying from my point.

When I first took Salvia I was so impressed with her power (particularly the 'physical' hallucinations) it rather overwhelmed me. I couldn't get rid of the intuition that there was a certain point that, once passed, would lift me entirely from this place and into another dimension. Well, this turned out to be pretty much the truth! What wasn't true (?) was the feeling I may never come back should I venture there... that was fear.

Then there was my first mushroom trip (at my first Glastonbury festival) during which I felt I had gone too far & everyone there had come with me (tho not everyone knew it) I felt like glastonbury had just ripped itself out of the earth and we were drifting thru space in some sort of eternal misty night, a purgatory. The time-dilation on that trip was so extreme that I honestly thought it would never end.

But it did. (kinda ;)

I'm reminded of the time Anne & Sasha Shulgin nearly stopped the second hand of a clock - Sasha freaked & stopped the experiment before he stopped the clock, saying something like 'What do you think happens when time stops? You enter eternity... and how would you get yourself out of a place with no/infinite time/space???'

He thought they may find themselves drifting in seas of infinity, blissful & free - while their bodies stood dribbling, fixed on the face of the stopped clock hanging fom the wall.

I have a hunch that all those things are just phenomena resulting from a fear of the approaching unknown, or fear resulting from finding yourself in an unknown situation, those type of thoughts are the last line of resistance your ego deploys before you drag it into a place it cannot exist.

You will come back, tho you may not consciously remember where you went - that is my experience.

That is why as an artist I try to keep a clear channel to my subconscious, it can reveal/suggest to my waking senses so much that they have forgotten.

Well, I have rambled enough - Does anyone have any tales to tell of people 'not coming back' or any tales of times they themselves went too far out?

Does anyone think it is possible to choose to cross over - even if it is not your time? Not suicide but a willful departure to another state of being?

If exitement can speed up your heart - could the perfect peace of the void slow it down, even stop it?

Anything else???

[Proteus]

Hey S A M: i definitely have experienced the fear of not being able to come back. My last aya trip was indescriable bliss for what seemed like years (2 hours clock time) & then i was suddenly terribly uncomfortable & terrified that i would not be able to get back to my body & was too small and naked to face the oceans of music and beauty that i had been enjoying just minutes before. At the time it seemed quite possible for me to allow the ego (or whatever it is) to dissapate beyond the point of being able to keep my mind-body alive.

And the notion that i've changed myself forever and i'm not sure into what hangs at the back of my mind all the time. There are so many ways that i'm not the same person since i began to break open my head--and such a powerful sense that the transformation is only beginning. i'm not quite so scared of this as i was when i first realized that having been born again (to appropriate a tired phrase) there was no turning back.

Truth & being completely transformed by it was, after all, the reason i took the first step.

[Halfglass]

Sam and Proteus good day. Yeah been there. One time I was so certain I'd messed myself up I thought "Well now we've done it. Probably have to shoot ourself if this doesn't clear out." (I'd peaked but the peak lasted a very long time on this one and I started to think everything meant something. A crack in the mirror meant maddness was eminent etc.) That feeling of having changed yourself takes awhile to get used to, especially like you say Proteus, because it's still happening. I sometimes feel like I'm becoming more hollow, like a vessel, a whispy signal passing through an antenna. Wind. It is good to be so aware of my actions too. I'll never be that selfish person I've left behind--it's impossible now, I'm too aware.