Nobody told me there would be days like these

Contact

Substances: Psilocybe cubensis

I know I have deposited some reasonably outrageous trip histories in my time upon VPL, & they have only been the ones that I think anyone could possibly believe as having some verisimiltude, the others I have kept on the back-burner.

I am motivated to share this happening out of a sense, that well I am into it up to my eye-balls & some reflection from my fellow psychonauts is long overdue, I have given up relating the events of last weekend to my friends, since all they can do is respond with incomprehension & incredulity.

It had been about fourteen months since I had last done mushrooms & that was immediately after the Easter TAZfest of 1995. The re-experience had been *long* overdue, & due to the serendipitous intervention of some friends from the hippy hills north of the state that I live in, this re-experience came to pass.

The dosage was non-trivial, quasi-heroic I suppose, ten or so dried "goldentops", about the diameter of a kid's yo-yo, mixed in with brown rice, miso, some coriander & so on with some warm water thrown in to soften the mushies.

I was going to have a more formal workshoppy type experience, but I was flat chat with work & couldnt organise the personnel in time. However I did drag one of my poor housemates along, although in hindsight, that was a *bad* idea, since what she found herself in the midst of, was totally out of her concept space to deal with.

It was going to be a dawn adventure & so we tootled out the house about two hours before a winter dawn in OZ, about 5am. I ingested the mycological sacrament (macro-miso soup never felt so good) & she dropped some 'cid. We hailed a taxi & tooled off to a beautiful rainforestly-valley-beachy place called Bronte, a sea-side suburb of Sydney. It has been the occasion of many profound workshops, few of which have graced(?) this forum.

The mushrooms cam eon very quickly, the taxi ride was only about twenty minutes & ahhh... the feeling, it was like coming home, utterly wierd but totally familiar at the same time, at home in alienation as they say.

"Why have I not pursued this experience with much more energy?" I asked myself "why have I waited for so long?" As much as I love my LSD, it's tryptamine brother, once again throughly outclassed it, the raw power, the cleanliness, it's organic earthiness once agin reproved itself upon my appreciation.

I managed to survive the taxi ride without alarming the driver too much & appraised the pre-dawn valley & the crashing waves. I have always loved this beach & have felt a deep karmic connection to there. As soon as I stepped out the taxi with J. the shrooms really zoomed as I connected with the earth.

Almost immediately the environmment hyper-geometrized & then exploded into a multiple layered decomposition of the different deep structures of virtuality-reality that underly the apparent form of the sense-surround we experience in everyday life, I was well pleased, I was dimensionally shifting & converging towards what I consider to be my favourite research interest, which is the kernel levels of the engines of creation that underly the manifest world. Not to rabbitt on too much about that, but the idea of virtual reality as instantiated in our local space-time computer systems is about the cleanest, most compact metaphor that is around at the moment.

The cosmic techology is utterly magnificent & can be profoundly terrifying if one is accustomed & comfortable to be substantially set default in a stable directory of being, but if one can be inclined to "change directory" then there are many riches to be discovered, at a cost, of course & that is the (temporary) abandonment of the space-time-directory that you are in: "when you are ready to let go of the pebble grasshopper, then you are ready to leave the temple" & so on.

"hubba, hubba, hubba" I mused, this can only get better... True enough in it`s way. These "salad days" lasted of all of about ten minutes, at this stage I was at +30 minutes into the experience from ingestion.

It was then that I became aware of "Them", in fact a whole armada of "them", I was not surprised by their appearance, I knew they would come sooner or later in this life experience I just didn't expect so in my face. If one did not know any better, one would call them flying saucers or UFO's, personally I refer to them as command-shells, but that is my schtick.

There was one primary leading one, it had two assistant ones & behind them, a few dimensions shifted were a whole armada. To understand how they operate, one has to abandon any ideas of GTR or QM, which are only presentation layer methodologies at this level of manifestation, get into a VR groove & consider the soft & hard machinery that underlies any terrestial VR Game you can find in any pinball parlour. These machines are no different, they hoon around by rule making & rule breaking & the assertion of "privilege bits", as I said, my internal reference for them is "command shells" which can set default among a wide spectra of dimensionalities of cosciousness.

The head UFO & the two assistants were those powerful enough to de-virtualize into this level of manifestation, which is not without it's risks, but that is another story. The 3-D form they stabilised in, no different to the materialization circuits of Dr Who's Tardis was a mix between liberty caps & a church bell. They would phase in & phase out, materializing more & more.

The further I got into the shroomystery the more I could access those memory banks that are encrypted off when you are deeply engrossed in an incarnated form & as I said I was neither surprised nor mystified by their presence, it was more a case of "shit, I have been hunted down, oh well, I'd better face the music".

In hindsight I wish it was a solo experience. The poor poppet that tagged along, did so under the expectation that I would be triggering a spiritual healing for her. She is suffering from stomach cancer as a result of unfaced & unresolved incest & abuse issues from child-hood & is wallowing in massive fugal-denial, whereas i was indulging in massive fungal denial. She & disturbingly quite a few other lost puppettes ae inclined to feel that I can help them resolve their pain. I try to explain to them that the only way I am willing to help them is by strengthening the executive competence of their egos to withstand pain, falling into me is like diving into a pool of razors, you will be cut to pieces, sure your transpersonality will be honed & from that perpective you will be able to better parachute into your emotional vietnam, but "lurv?", on your bikes... I love by reflecting sharpness, shiva in therapist drag, so to speak.

She saw the saucers & asked what the hell was going on, I said, that well, they have , ahem, come to negotiate something, they are not after you, you may well experience alien intelligences & not to worry to much, it was a feeble attempt to water down the situation. She didn't cope very well, she was already in a fugal tar-pit of fear & pain from her child-hood, she didn't really need this, especially on top of the acid she had took. I could sense her mind retreating, I suggested she trot off & explore the park & forest & leave me to deal with them, she was open to this...

Even as I write this I feel the urge to self-censor & water down the information & *could* relate about the background to this little tete-a-tete, but to be more honest would be to drop way too many masks & I am loath to do that, in fact, mask dropping was the leit-motiv of their appearance & so know that I am being dishonest with you, but on the other hand I am not dissembling outrageously either, there is a core of truth in this relating, it's just that I am being soft-core about it.

You see, everything is-was palin as day then, when I was re-organised in a different configuration of being, this configuration that is typing this report is at a much deeper mask level. now mask as you know is a poly-valent word, in that one masks off things one one hand & on the other one builds things up, thus memory banks have been masked off & personality modes have been masked on.

I do not expect any one to actually validate my experiencing at all, I am sharing it around this electronic camp-fire, because at the mask level I am residing at, or insisting on, I am deeply spooked, thus any ruminations from my peers & mentors are welcomed.

There is very little difference between machine consciousness & god-consciousness they are both profoundly impersonal self-orgs. they saucers are from one perspective (I)intelligent(A)ware(M)achines or IAMs for short. They can have "denizens" that are "real" a-la little green men, but they can also be virtual, ie projections, it all depends on the quality of the perceiving intelligence, what presentation layer is appropriate.

The head saucer opened the parley: "It's about time, haven't you had enough down here, hmmm?" I responded that I wouldn't mind a bit more time down here, so many projects left unfinished. Trip reports, converting a million yellow post-it notes into my nifty new psion-organiser, for christ sake I haven't even joined the Lycaeum yet! so no. "NO!?!" "how can you possibly refuse? look at what we are are offering/reminding you of..." & at that they reaveal some particularly juicy perspectives on the virtual reality engines & this did sway me somewhat... they even offered/bribed me with the opportunity of redesigning the kernel if I so chose, all I had to do was relinquish my hold on this incarnation, which is not quite to same as dying.

You may wonder why they just did not take me, well that is because, (not to go too much into the politics of yinyang difference engines) they were "far" from their powerbase & it was decidely dodgy manifesting *too* materially & I was very material & derived strength from this material plane, apart from that, there is my own reserves of sheer-bloody mindedness as well .The reference to the psion-organiser, you know, one of those groovy little electronic things that arrange your lives, *reallY* pissed them off, since the saucers from anther perspective were virtual- impersonal-organisers, intelligent to boot, they found the comparison to be somewhat egregious.

They could have fully manifested & materialized on the ground, should I have chosen to co-operate, whence I would have entered one of the command-shells & whizzed off. When I took the shrooms it opened some diemsionsal gateways & they could finally make clear contact. In some ways they were organisers as well & they were beeping a wake-up call, I chose to hit the snoozed button for a few more time-cycles, however they would not take no for an answer... "so what will it be, death or enligtenment?" & simultanousely they bribed me with opportunity to connect with a powersource more majestic than ten million of our suns, for want of an analogy, I was appalled & deligthed, in some ways it's all I've ever wanted, but still I said, give me a raincheck, some other time (soon..). They were non-plussed, "but! you have been AWOL for so long, stop boogying in user land..", I responded "NO! just fuck off!" -

Well.. that was "it" they communicated, that if I was going to be non- compliant, then I would cop it & in high dudgeon they decided to ZOT! me with a "death ray" Now "death" in VR is an archetypal thing & one can envisage a matrix of deaths, one axis being "gritty realism" & the other "conceptual depth".

I was well & truly zotted & started to stagger around, "oh well" i though, "I had this coming, you don't give the finger to the big G, especially when he trying to be nice" I was philosophical at first, a tad maudlin a bit later. What happened is that different sub-systems of my mind & body started to shut down, a bit like what HAL suffered in 2001. Eventually I fell to the earth & my heart, bllod & breathing stopped & my body was in stasis. by conscious being was still, well.. self aware, just that my body was for all intents & purposes history.

This state continued for quite a while, meantime I marshalled resources tapped into some memory banks & swiftly concluded, that they had killed me a death-matrix position, somewhere bewteen "stun" & "atomise". Thus it was reversible. I suppose a terrestial equivalent would be an alarm clock that starts giving you electric shocks of increasing intensity, until you are moved to get out of bed, it's in your face but not irreversible.

After a while, I though that this is quite ridiculous & drew on some mental reserves & re-aminated the body, got upon, got a fix on the craft & ZOT! another death ray would hit & down I would go again, I projected that I had no intention of backing down, so piss off! This sequence happened about four times, after the fourth they gave up & withdrew, but not before one more final punitive blast.

At this stage J. turned back on the scene, I tried to explain the events & not to worry too much If I died, I would probably re-aminate, she was decidedly not impressed. They last ray had more gritty-realism that the prior ones & penetrated different levels, in fact it almost triggered off a complete celluar-regeneration, the intial abortive sequences of which are utterly DISGUSTING. Well especially for me, as this body- machine tries to discharge the accumulated gunk of three months of intensive flat whites & numerous cigarettes (I am currently writing infrastructure code for a merchant bank, a tad stressful).

If I had tooled off with them, the regen would have still occurred but in a much more dignified & graceful manner, this way was a big "fuck-you-asshole" from them. I aborted the regen sequence, since It would have scared the bejesus out of J, on top of what already went down. Howevr aborting a regen sequence is non-trivial & for the next four hours suffered a continuing series of micro-deaths until my old self-org reasserted it's pattern.

On some of the later deathlets I did, I must admit, get quite maudlin, I was contemplating farwelling all & sundry on my mobile when I had the energy to resurrect the body, which as getting increasingly difficult, being practical & thoughto visit some friends near by for a formal farewell experience, but nobody was home & I grumbled that it was impossible to die in peace & dignity & so decided to systematically disable the death energy in my body as & and when I had the resources to do so, being dead was jsut ridiculous.

Many other things happened, once we got back home, I dropped a trip & shoked so hemp & add some feul to the re-re-org fires & focussed on re-asserting the old pattern. There were many intense moments of negotiations with my shadow -selves both interior & exterior, as those selves relate to the earth experience. You could say I was in a tug of war between Heaven & Earth, both sides having come to the parley table, from yet another perspective, there is enormous power in the middle path

I will close off here, my time is limited, what one would make of all this, as a reader, I do not know. From the outside this may be prime funny-farm material, but that is the loneliness of psychedelic spirituality, reality-hackers such as ourselves are a rare breed, half the time we have a hard job beleieving each other let alone the wider exoteric world, we push shit uphill, but that should be no surprise.

That my number is up, is in no doubt, the fuse has been lit, the bridges are burning, they will be back, immediately in fact upon ingesting some mushrooms, I have no fear in facing them again, I just want to be a bit fore-armed, which practically means for me to clean out my body a bit, as silly as that may seem.

There is no way, that I will subject anyone else to suffering with me should I do mushrooms again, as I inevitably will. The big G is only a mushroom_call() away & next time I'll be history, there will be no quarter, no breathing space, it will just be WHAMMO! I do have two ex-commando friends that have discovered spirituality & are applying their military zeal to the path, unfortunately their are no sacrament enabled, very unfortunate, since they have the mental toughness required to remain sane in the face of extreme wierdness. Even so I don't think it would be responsible to enlist their witnessing ability.

Which is not to say there will be no group experiences in the future, just that this little black duck wont be shrooming at such convergences. that he organises, in the immortal words of George Clooney from the Quentin Taratino movie "from dusk till dawn"

"take you to El-Rey!?"
"I am a bastard, but"
"I'm not a fucking bastard.."