TRIP REPORT: The Taste of LSD

[FractalFlux]

This is my first post on this forum. It is also very, very long. But there is a lot of stuff in there. Please don’t skim through it. Either you read it or you don’t.

WARNING: This trip report contains a lot of “fucks” and in some parts discusses various demonic and sexual themes. Don’t read if you don’t want that stuff on your mind :-) Also, English is not my native language so please forgive misused words and weird grammar :-D

PRELUDE
There was so much going on, yet nothing happened at all.
This story happened two days ago. It was my 8th time doing acid (first time in march 2016). I was prepared. As usual I did my Kriya routine in the morning. I ate vegan that day and didn’t consume food 6 hours and water 2 hours before the trip started. The two most recent books I had been reading were “God is Nothingness” by Andre Doshim Halaw and “The Adventure of Self-Discovery” by Stanislav Grof (I will refer to this one later). My plan was to take 200µg of LSD at around 10pm, lay down in my dimly lit room all alone and trip the fuck out all night. And so I did. I am quite sensitive to LSD and I had only taken 200µg once before with a friend. It was the second time I did acid without anyone else around. My intention was to be without any intentions. I wanted to merge with the groundless ground of being, reach enlightenment if you will. I have had a handful of trips like that in the past with LSD and other substances. So I was quite confident about my plan. And, well, … it did turn out like that, however, the way it all unfolded… I had never experienced anything like it. But let’s not jump ahead of ourselves…

22.20pm
I carefully unwrapped the tab and sat there cross-legged for a few minutes, emptying my mind. That did not really work. I was nervous, for no reason in particular.  I was breathing through the belly, but it did not calm me down. I felt my heart beating in every part of my body.  I thought, “fuck it” and placed the tab on the tip of my lounge. No taste.
I sat there for a few more minutes, taking deep and conscious breaths trough the belly and playing around with the tab in my mouth.
Then I went downstairs to my cat and dog, sat down on the couch and waited for them to fall asleep. (These two ladies were part of the reason I wanted to trip at night. Especially my dog: She is very old and requires a lot of attention and care throughout the day. On a previous acid trip the encounter with my pets had been demonically terrifying, so I wanted to avoid it this time, at least during the come-up and peak.)

 

22.45pm
The pets had fallen asleep, so I went back upstairs. I laid down on a mattress on the floor and wrapped myself in a blanket. The room around me was quite cold. While preparing for the trip I had taken various psychedelic/spiritual books from my little library and placed them next to the mattress, in case I would want to get some inspiration while tripping. Bhagavad Gita, The Psychedelic Experience, The Bible, I-Ging, Be Here Now, No-Mind, Nature Man and Woman, The End of Your World, Daodejing, … you name it.
I did not feel like opening any of them, In fact they are still laying there untouched right now :-D I just laid there and waited for the effects of the drug to settle in. I was staring at the wooden ceiling.  Looking up there would always be my reference point for how far I was into trip. You can tell by the intensity and quality of the visuals ;-) Nothing was happening yet. Only my mind became more quite. I closed my eyes. My entire perception was filled with the rising and falling of my breath and the beating of my heart.

 

~23.15pm
The effects started to become clearly noticeable. My head felt more spacious. I recognized the knotholes of the wooden ceiling to be arranged in weird geometric patterns, slowly morphing across the surface. My breath became deeper. I was feeling my stomach and intestines. A thought popped up in my head. “I should do Kechari Mudra!” (Use google if you don’t know what that is.) So I pushed my tongue up the nasopharynx. As I did that I had a flash of understanding / information spontaneously pop up about why it is called Kechari Mudra. I do not speak Sanskrit, but from what I read the translations of “Kechari” all circle around air / space / flying. And this made perfect sense. It felt like my awareness had shifted into my tongue, which was the body of an eagle. And my body was gracefully gliding through the inner spaces of my own mind. I had visions of eagles pop up and got a strong intuitive sense of what they feel like in their bodies.  The sensation of flying was physically reinforced by the way your nasopharynx feels. I wish I could explain this better, you just have to feel it for yourself ;-) (If you are into Kriya and still struggling with Kechari Mudra; Don’t give up! Keep practicing, it is worth it. Especially when combined with psychedelics^^)
With the raising of the tongue my mind got clearer, the sense of self becoming more pinpointed somewhere in the head. I was starting to get closed eye visuals, colors and lights swirling around in the distance. Boundaries were dissolving. There was some sort of fractal vortex, which was simultaneously a feeling in my chest, a thought in my head and part of the visuals. “It is all one”, I thought with a smile. But I was still thinking that thought.

 

INSERTION: The Perinatal Matrices of Stanislav Grof
You should really do your own deep research on this, but let me quickly summarize what they are all about. The perinatal matrices refer to patterns of experience that you pass through during pregnancy in your mother’s womb and childbirth. An encounter with death and rebirth. These biological stages are not the final thing that is being pointed to, but they contain the archetypical seed of the pattern of experience.

I : The Amniotic Universe (Union with your mother. Ambrosia through the umbilical cord. Bliss in Heaven. Oceanic ecstasy)
II : Cosmic Engulfment and no Exit (Onset of labor. You have grown too big for your mother’s womb. Chemical changes. Pressure, stress and loneliness.)
III : The Death – Rebirth Struggle (Moving of the fetus through the birth channel. Struggle for survival. Extreme pressure. Strong aggression. Lack of oxygen. Contact with blood, urine and excrements. Volcanic ecstasy)
IV : The Death – Rebirth Experience (Childbirth. All the tension and pressure is suddenly released. Enlightening ecstasy. Ego Death.)
(The transition of III to IV is often accompanied by total annihilation.)

 

???pm/am
Deeper. Clearer. Surrender, on and on and on. I release my tongue from Kechari Mudra, just to find myself in a confused and disoriented state. I stare at the ceiling. Luminous organic vines are floating through the room. Lights, fractals. Nothing to hold on to. I wave my hand in front of my face. I cannot even make out its shape. The tracers are ridiculously strong and moving in perfect sync with the totality of my experience. They are not just occurring as a trail behind my hand, indicating where it just was; They are also occurring in front of my hand, indicating where it will be! This doesn’t make any sense! I close the eyes, focus onto Bhrumadhya, breathe in deeply through the belly and push the tongue back up into the nasopharynx.
Visions of lights related to the flower of life motif. The cosmic matrix of creation. A glimpse of the blueprint of all of existence. A tingling sensation at the base of the spine. I relax into it.

 

???am
I have no idea what is going on. There is no one who is experiencing this. There is just some stuff going on. Ecstatic feelings of space and light in the abdomen. It feels like out-of-this-world hardcore sex between the devil and the universe. FUCK ME UP! With each thrust beams of ecstasy are being released.  YES! YES! DEEPER! INTO THE RHYTHM!
Who am I in this act of madness bursting with pleasure? A piece of advice is floating by: “Don’t think, don’t answer!”. So I return to the obscene orgy.

 

???am
A level of being where madness, sex, beauty and death have merged into ecstatic consciousness like the components of a Nordic knot.

 

???am
Shiva dances the rudra tandava
Ragnarök

Pure destructive forces are being unleashed from the depths of the unconscious.
Cosmic snakes riding into battle.

The universe is my lover
But she is one hell of a nasty beast. She will fuck you up. A sexy, irresistible devil.
She is into the really kinky stuff. She bangs your head against the floor and shoves her tentacle arm down your throat. Chokes you to death. If you are lucky you might get a glimpse of her eating her own tail.

It moves violently through the entire body. It is not dependent on physical anatomy, it moves through secret pathways. No chance of understanding. It won’t stop until you and it are one. Surrender.

 

???am
I cannot handle it. My head slipped off the mattress, leaving my neck tilted towards the floor. Bursts of raw, divine energy. My system cannot handle or interpret them. Violent spasms at the back of the head, the energy cannot move through. I remember this very vividly. It lasted for maybe 5 seconds. It reminds me of a scene I recently witnessed, where a friend of mine was having an epileptic seizure.
Demonic visions. Rape and murder. Snuff porn. I am staring back at myself with eyes wide open but inverted into the skull and satanic runes glowing on my forehead. Sprinkle in some more NSFL stuff to fuel your imagination. I am drowning and burning myself in this untamed and raw stream of divinity. Like pushing and demolishing your head against a never-ending stream of rapidly rotating electric blades. I am Lucifer. I am Death.
Something interesting happens. A shift.
The violent bursts of energy at the back of my head can be reevaluated, seen from a different perspective. They are no longer something YOU are feeling, but rather a certain, specific vibratory state. A chunk of information only recognized for what it is when placed against the background of absolute Nothingness. There is no way of communicating it. This is the answer to everything. All that can ever possibly exist or be experienced is Spirit. Ones and zeros, electromagnetic waves creating reality through self-interference. There is a secret code, the structure of the mind itself. But you will never grasp it, for you are it.

 

???am
“That which has no karma but chooses to act anyways.” Ram Dass once said this in a lecture. I don’t remember which one. But now I understand.
Did I even take a breath since I last closed my eyes? Was my tongue really in Kechari Mudra the entire time? My breath had sunk down as deep into my belly as never before and slowed down a lot. Where I would usually stop the inhalation in meditation, my belly now just kept on expanding, defying what I had thought to be physically possible, sucking all that sweet air into my lungs.
I don’t know how much time has passed, for it doesn’t exist. I am back. I AM!
A mighty roar. I AM! I don’t really exist, but I have thought myself into existence. A funny little trick. I am thinking myself into being something other than that which I am experiencing. WHAT THE FUCK?! WHAT AM I?! A vision of what this “I – Thing” really is unfolds. It was nonverbal, but I will try to explain it anyways.
It is… A point in empty space. A black hole. It distorts reality (aka Nothingness / Nirvana / Sunyata / Brahman / Dao / … ) into whatever you want it to be, turns everything inside – out. I could go on using words to describe that which lies at root of this very moment. But it is pointless. Like a computer program, you could explain it going through its code line by line. But that doesn’t really reveal the true nature of the process. Just play around with the program. Learning by doing. You are it, so you cannot know it by studying something external.
Here is what it sort of looks and feels like (Imagine a mixture of the following ideas):
*

+ the way your nasopharynx feels during Keachri Mudra

*This is in fact the album cover for “Citadel” by the Australian extreme progressive metal band “Ne Obliviscaris”. Besides mind-shattering drums and riffs they feature growls, clean singing and a violin. I have never seen anyone as skilled as these guys in transporting and embodying the destructive yet beautiful aspect of nature. If you are into metal music, give their song “Devour Me, Colossus (Part I): Blackholes” a listen.
If you do not like metal music, listen to it anyways ;-D

At a later point of the trip a name for this “I-Thing” spontaneously popped into my head: “The tantalunian lizard!” (Coming from the Greek mythological figure Tantalus. I still chuckle at that name right now :-D The funniest thing about this is that I never studied Greek mythology. Maybe I heard that name at some point, but after conceiving “The tantalunian lizard” I first had to google whether the word “tantalunian” even exists. Well, it turns out it doesn’t, but it is obviously coming from “Tantalus”, and this just fits so perfectly :-) )

“ I am” is the first thought. It is a level of consciousness where everything is one. The One God. The last universal common ancestor. From there on time is born and the universe fractally expands through infinite possibilities and variations of what exactly “I am”.
All life is connected. The tree of life is very literal. And you are not just that one fruit hanging somewhere in the branches, you are the entire fucking tree. All life is one, you are all life, and at the root of yourself there lays this demonic principle, waiting to be realized. Eternally Self-devouring.

But before I could realize it the “I AM” took a dark turn for me. I became some sort of arch-demon, horns sprouting from my head / center of distortion, diabolic laughter. I am all the evil. I rise through never ending scenes of fire, torment and hell. The space and light I had previously felt in my abdomen turned into rot and decay. Thank god I had re-read the “Psychedelic Experience” before the trip. “Don’t identify, relax your mind, let it pass, float downstream” a voiceless voice gently whispers. I surrender.

Now I can’t even properly explain this part to myself. There were visions of some sort of enlightened, super conductive Tai-Chi beings that assumed poses that corresponded to hexagrams from the I-Ching. Whenever they did this my state of awareness changed in synchronicity with what they were doing. They were guiding me out of the hell I had just been in, restoring my energetic balance (god that sounds so stupid :-D ) The world is whatever you say it is, you just have to know how to say it. But these beings were talking/manifesting in a language I could not speak or understand. How do you arrive at these statements? You would already have to know them before conceiving them! What the fuck?! It just happens spontaneously!

 

???am
It is moving up the spine, once again. I am lying there, moaning and sprawling on the mattress. Thank God no one is seeing this. In synchronicity with the energy my arms rise above my head and touch the ground in a pose of surrender. But… ccould.. how can this possibly be true? I can feel my hands touching the ground, but I also feel the ground touching my hands! IT IS ALL MEEEEE!!! WUUUUUAAAH§HFZ&VI%R§§VI”?BDIS--
AHAHAAHAAAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Visions of something closely related to an eye opening and closing.
An eternal pulse.
Ecstasy.

I am caught in an archetypical loop. I cannot handle this energy. I surrender. Nothingness. I am back. I cannot handle this energy. I surrender. Nothingness. I am back. I cannot handle this energy. I surrender. Nothingness. I am back. I am caught in an archetypical loop.

I sit up. I sit in meditation posture. I am caught in an archetypical loop.
I attempt some Pranayama, but it is completely absurd, the energy is already rising anyways, me trying to make it rise is just distorting the process.

Visions of volcanic ecstasy as >something< is simultaneously giving birth to, playing with, fucking and devouring itself.

I lay back down and go for some more rounds on the strange loop of (non)existence.

 

3.30am
Holy shit. I just looked at the clock for the first time since lying down. The feeling in my abdomen is now neither that of light nor decay, but telling me to go to the bathroom to take a piss.
“This was the peak”, I think to myself. But I am still tripping balls. The visuals are still three-dimensional and I am so confused I don’t even know I am confused. I get up slowly and awkwardly, not used to my limbs. Like after a long session of meditation but a million times more weird.
As I am walking to the bathroom I think to myself something along the lines of: “So, kids, you want something that really kicks in? Try the ultimate drug; DEATH! That shit will fuck you up!” I remember Leo saying something like “This shit will destroy your life!” in a blog video. I laugh internally, because he is right.
I sit down on the toilet and sink my head into my hands. I just sit there. After some time I am finally able to pee. What a relief. I get up and stand in front of the mirror. I have done this before on acid, so I knew the key (as always) was to stay calm and not attach to anything you might see. Then it can get really interesting. And oh boy it did. Unfortunately there is not the slightest chance that I can express what I saw in that mirror. Let me put it like this.
On the one hand, there is absolute Nothingness. Nirvikalpa Samadhi. No self, no reflections, just void.
Then on the other hand there is Savikalpa Samadhi. It is essentially still the same nothingness, but it is “interpreted”. It gets interpreted as absolutely everything. All possibilities of all that could possibly exist and happen. An infinite cloud of quantum potential, not yet manifested. And I was standing there, my reflection morphing and shifting through all these different possibilities. I saw nothing and everything at the same time. Angles, demons, animals, indefinable shapes and objects… The stuff I saw was so utterly terrifying but also incredibly beautiful. Beyond human. Consciousness itself, available to only those who pass through the portal of death. I saw myself skimming through the billions of years of evolution. One appearance stuck with me in particular. (I also think it was the one that pulled me out of the trance, because I identified with it.) I saw my reflection calmly looking back at me with the features and elegance of a wolf, waiting patiently. The eyes, oh the eyes…
I went back to my room and laid down on the mattress. What else was I supposed to do?

The destructive forces I was describing earlier were no longer present. They had done their job. I was fucking gone. I remember laying there with nothing left but the taste of LSD. One eye closed, the other open. Completely relaxed, it feels natural. This is consciousness, beyond life, beyond death.

 

???am
And once more I was thankful for having read “The Psychedelic Experience”.
There was this entity, some sort of androgynous mother – father being of enormous light, power and attraction. (I don’t’ know which one though.) It first manifested as a point before my minds eye. Then lines formed around it and it started spinning. Out of this spin it grew in size, playfully jumping across my field of perception. It formed two antipodes that were conscious manifestations of the male and female principle. These two antipodes were entangled and making love to each other. The appearance was constantly shifting, but at times it actually resembled gorgeous body shapes of man and woman. It wanted me to join. “Come on, baby” it whispered with the most seductive bedroom eyes. But having had read the manual, I just laid there and watched…
The entity became disappointed with me not wanting to participate, spun back into itself and disappeared.

 

~5.00am
I got up from the mattress. I wanted to go outside to watch the sunset on a nearby hill. I went over to my laptop and googled when the sun would rise. (I usually sleep a lot longer than sunrise.) 7.19am . Still a bit of time to go. Using the laptop felt fucking weird and I had to laugh at myself struggling with the keyboard. I was able to recreate the “vibratory feeling” at will at the back of the head (more gentle, not violent this time), which again led to the realization that all is Spirit and sent me into a transcendent state. So I just sat there. After a while I took up a pen and paper.

(I read / listen to most spiritual stuff in english. Therefore it felt natural to me to write this down in english.)

Transcript:
So, ah
It seens [seems] like
You are the devil
A reality distorting fuck
It fkkin vibrates
feel it
(beyond) Spirit (beyond)
You are all that
ever existed
you

 

Smiling at what I had just written, I decided to listen to some music. I played the album “Spira Mirabilis” by Ajja. Oh man. I already liked that album before the trip, but now, being in that state, I felt how the music was really expressing the inexpressible! The rhythmic movement of the cosmic snake… Go listen to that album!
(You can also listen to music during to come-up to calm you down. During the peak it is pretty much pointless I think. You can just tune into that which the artist was tuned into and got his inspiration from ;-) Since the peak was over for me I was very grateful for this beautiful manifestation of soundwaves.)
So there I was, still wrapped in a blanket, dancing and stomping through the room to these rhythms that reflected the structure of mind back to me.

 

~6.00am
I was getting tired of dancing and the album was getting close to its end. I decided to roll a joint, which I would smoke while watching the sunrise. I had already noticed this on other trips and it was exactly the same this time: The more you try to roll the joint, the more you fuck up. Your hands get wet and shaky, your sense of touch is just really awkward. Don’t even try. Let your muscle memory take over. The joint basically rolls itself :-D Having finished the task, I just sat there some more.

~6.30am
I put on warm clothes (it was the first night after this summer where the temperature dropped below 0°C) and stepped outside. The first rays of light were already crawling across the sky. The cold morning air was very refreshing. So I just walked. I was still tripping quite hard, going in and out of my mind, laughing at nothing at all while staring into oblivion. I just hoped I wouldn’t come across anyone I knew. The luminous visual patterns had disappeared by now, but trees still looked incredible. That fractal skeleton, so freaking gorgeous. I recognized the same “I am” thought that my experience was based on to also create the trees and other stuff I was looking at. No matter where you look, you always encounter your own consciousness.
After about 20 minutes I arrived at the top of the hill. The sun had not yet risen but everything was bright already. It was so beautiful. The trees, the birds, fog crawling through the valleys and villages… All enlightened from within. In perfect order. I just sat there, soaking in the scenery and emptying my mind. Then I lit the joint. Cannabis and LSD synergize extremely well. (This can go into both directions, however, so be careful!) The weed “reenergized” the trip a little bit, the visuals became stronger again and my mind started to go in circles. As I was sitting there, smoking, I thought to myself: “Man, there is so much more profound stuff you could be doing with your breath instead of inhaling smoke for a little high…” But I won’t complain. The high was very pleasant. Just what I wanted. ;-)
I sat there for probably almost two hours, motionless.
In that period I had some interesting thoughts and I realized I should dive deeper into Hinduism and its pantheon. The deities represent archetypical forces that make up both cosmic and individual mind.
I took an extra long way home. I just wanted to walk, feel my body and soak in some more of that spirit-made-manifest.
I gave my best not to take on the role of the unconscious forces I had unleashed this night. I often caught myself romanticizing over thoughts of how I am this cosmic lover, destroyer of the universe.
But as always… don’t attach, watch it, let it pass…

~9.00am
I arrived back home. My pets were already waiting for me to feed them, and I was happy to see them. I fondled their heads, looked them deep into the eyes and smiled as I saw myself looking back at me. I fed them, let them go outside into the garden, sat down on the couch, closed my eyes and drifted through my mind. I don’t really remember anything specific from this period.

 

12.00am
After 13 hours of intense tripping, I finally felt like I was ready to sleep.
I laid down on the mattress, and fell asleep…
I woke up only a few hours later at around 4.00pm but still felt quite refreshed.
I ate some pumpkin soup, thought about all the crazy stuff that had happened last night and drew this picture:

 

APPENDIX
So, what did I learn from that experience? I wouldn’t consider this a life-changing trip, for I had already grasped (intellectually) the concepts I was confronted with. It wasn’t my first ride. But probably the most intense one. It taught me, that if I want to reach those higher levels of consciousness naturally, I will have to stop doing psychedelics at some point. Psychedelics are like plugging in your 5V USB directly into a nuclear power station. Brute force, anything that stands in its way shall be annihilated. It works, hell yeah, it works… But you are supposed to consciously evolve your ego to these levels like a flower growing day by day towards the light until it blossoms. Sacrificing your unevolved self in some sort of chemically induced satanic ritual to the Absolute isn’t going to cut it in the end. It is the difference between Syd Barret and Ramana Maharshi.
I feel like most of the trip was in the light of the third perinatal matrix. As a non-labor Caesarian born this was something quite new and “interesting” for me. I had arrived at Nothingness before in other trips, but the demonic and destructive component had never really been revealed that clearly. The "love component" was largely missing this time.
Also the fact that “all is Spirit” was really brought to mind once again. Day and night, love and hate, demons and angles, it is all just consciousness playfully taking on various vibratory states. There is no reason to fear anything. It is everything. You are it. You are everything.

APPENDIX II
For all you lovers of wisdom you can never grasp, for it eats you alive…
There is this archetypical sequence of vibratory states, the order in which the deities appear. When we first stumbled across this phenomena with a group of friends (all on acid, of course) we called it TAKT (german for beat/rhythm. But not (just) the musical one…) And it gets fucking weird… By completely emptying yourself you can become superconductive and let IT move using YOUR body. Then you dance the way Shiva does, and everything is in harmony. People will stare at you in horror and delight.

What is this secret code, the rhythm of the universe through which everything unfolds?
It is encoded by the symbols on the inside of the Inca Ouroboros I borrowed for my painting. It is the array of trigrams / hexagrams in the I-Ching. It is the ever-repeating process manifested in the perinatal matrices. It is the way that cosmic eye opens and closes. It is the cycle of Samsara. It is the “I am” thought popping in and out of existence. It is a deeper level of consciousness that makes up your existence in this very moment.
It is a part of you. Therefore you cannot grasp it or make a model of it. And if you can make a model of it that model will not be satisfying. The model would only be an abstraction, a shadow. What you want is the direct experience, and to get there you have to let go of all concepts. So if you are going to model it and talk about it anyways make sure you do not confuse the model for the actual thing. Don’t walk around and show it to people, claiming you found the answers to life. 
The only way to really know is to embody!

[SoonHei]

Wow

That was great!