Chapter 4: The Vision

I've seen those corners of the world
and now I seem empty.
The stars and the seas converge within me
My soul is gone
and my memories have melted into the blurs of the present.
I have lost myself in a symphony of time.
1972

On Saturday, January 23rd, 1983 I drove to Albany, New York to visit my friend Andy and his girlfriend Sue. I went alone, bringing with me a few grams of dried psilocybin cubensis mushrooms grown with my own hands. The intention was simple: we were to share a psychedelic experience.

It was a bitter cold and overcast January day with icing conditions overtaking the roads that precluded all but the most necessary travel. Alas, common sense was never one of my great virtues. All I chose to acknowledge that day was how long it had been since I'd last seen Andy since his retreat to the hinterlands. Much too long between friends. And besides, there was the promise of adventure ahead, hallucinatory respite. I'd always been a sucker for adventure, a reckless young fool preoccupied with the pursuit of ephemeral kicks, exotic sensory gratification, and tooling up the New York State Throughway at ill advised speeds the caffeine and adrenaline pumped through my veins in anticipation.

At the time, Andy and Sue worked as reporters for a local Albany newspaper, The Knickerbocker News. As a fellow writer I'd always felt close to Andy, a tacit brotherhood bonded by words. I was impressed and ever amused by his wit and intelligence, sense of humor and raconteurship. And even though our points of view were opposed on many issues, I understood his inner need to verbalize, to record his thoughts on paper, to leave a legacy of existence even if only to himself. We shared these needs and drives.

I arrived at Andy's modest 3 room upstairs apartment around 1:30 in the afternoon. Sue was there, lovingly referred to by Andy as "Spagnoli" ("Why?" I asked him and he quickly replied, "Because she reminds me of a Spagnoli."), and we all exchanged greetings and warm bear hugs, for Andy is a bear of a person. They were surprised I'd made the treacherous journey, especially alone (a friend who was to accompany me backed out the day before), and had tried to call to advise postponement but I'd already departed. It wouldn't have mattered anyway; I was dead set on coming.

Within minutes I was sitting on Andy's cushy living room sofa making small talk, obligatory beer in hand, feeling quite at home playing with Sue's rambunctious newly acquired kittens, Rhino and Peep, and soon thereafter we were cutting and grinding the dried mushrooms into as near a powder as we could muster. By 3PM the powder had been judiciously mixed with apple sauce to disguise its musty, slightly bitter taste and the mixture ingested. I felt a bit restless from driving all morning and sitting around, and Andy suggested we take a walk down to the Mall to pay a visit to the Museum of Natural History.

We trudged through snow in places a foot deep from the prior weekend's snowfall and tried to avoid slipping on the icy streets. The air was crisp, edged with an icy bite that stung our unprotected ears, the sky was grey and churning, almost foreboding.

The drug began to come on in the Museum as we walked down near empty hallways dominated by lifesize environmental dioramas of forests and logging scenes. The whole place took on a disturbing, disorienting aura of surreality, feeling real yet unreal, and after hastening through many of the remaining galleries, soon became too much to handle. Venturing outside, we were immediately assaulted by Musak of the most offensive variety being broadcast over loudspeakers around the skating rink. We rushed from this place and walked along the Mall.

Even in a normal state of mind the Mall is a strange, surreal sort of place; the drug just intensified its weirdness to a ridiculous level. Filled with metal sculptural monstrosities donated or commissioned by the Rockefeller administration, it struck me as being a bad joke on the City of Albany, sort of "Rocky's folly". I mentioned this out loud and we all exploded with gut wrenching laughter far exceeding the hilarity of the remark. It was clear we were well within the drug's grip.

The wind chilled the air into a frigid whip lashing against our faces. Our thoughts focused only upon returning to the apartment and we did so in silence, taking a roundabout route. Once inside I could feel the drug peaking, or perhaps the severe outside stimuli had been diminished to the point where we could concentrate on the drug's interior manifestations.

The cold brought on the urge to urinate, so I stepped into the dark bathroom to relieve myself. Suddenly I perceived undulating geometric forms pulsating in the shadows around me, spiderweb shapes, polygons, and moire patterns vibrating in monochromatic shades. I closed my eyes and they continued inside my mind's eye. I wasn't scared, just fascinated by these subtle changing shapes.

Back in the living room it took me some ten minutes to roll a joint which eventually was only partially smoked. I sat down in a comfortable armchair, body heavy and stomach filled with a million fluttering butterflies, closed my eyes and let my mind drift.

Sue sat back on the sofa, eyes sealed, lips frozen in an eternal smile while Andy attempted to hold his consciousness together, spewing non-stop gibberish, slipping himself into amusing verbal cul-de-sacs, every so often chortling at some remark he'd just made.

A sensation of falling overcame me, a feeling not unlike the one one sometime feels when they're stupefied drunk. At first I tried to fight it, I tried to anchor myself to the room around me, desperately clutching the chair's arms, but at some point I simply let go and fell, free fall, slipping ever rapidly into a black Void.

I drew my legs up close to my body and felt the room, Andy's voice, and the Earth slip away from me as I hurled down a narrow tunnel. I could feel this unsettling sensation of falling right in the pit of my stomach, at the center of my being, and the further and faster I descended, the more comfortable it felt.

Soon the sense of falling diminished and I found myself, for lack of better words, on another plane of consciousness, another plateau, one which I had never ventured to ever before (at least, not in this lifetime). Philosophical questions streamed through my mind non-stop, and with them, images projected on the movie screen of my mind -- except it wasn't a screen but another reality I existed within.

I was floating in the silent vacuum of Space above the Earth, a Soul without body, without Ego. Below me were Human planes of existence, spiritual levels of consciousness. On the lowest level were the masses caught up with the physical and material plane of suffering and envy, sexual craving and hedonism, swarming like ants around a dark seething anthill. Somewhere above was a level of priests, nuns, monks, and common people, those spiritually evolved individuals who strove to find truth, inner peace, and harmony in their lives and the world around them.

On the highest level bathed in a majestic purple glow were the spiritual leaders of Mankind: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and countless others, those who had raised their consciousness beyond selfishness to selflessness, those who had achieved some degree of Enlightenment in their lifetimes. I understood in an extremely visceral way the place of these leaders and the "God" potential in each of us, that capacity for nirvana inside.

The unspoken philosophical questions burning within my Soul all seemed to be answered by this complex image, this awareness, and the answer seemed indisputably true and absolute.

I perceived my life within a spectrum of the spiritual evolution of Mankind and understood my place, the product of centuries of Buddhist priests striving for satori. I realized for the first time, in a clear and crystallized way, that the path I've chosen, writing, is aligned with my evolution as an individual and as a Soul here on Earth.

So many Truths unraveled from this cataclysm, this gentle explosion inside my head. I felt so warm, so at peace within its glow; I had no fear of death and would not have minded in the least if my physical existence had ended right then and there.

Slowly, I became cognizant of the room around me and the image gently faded from my consciousness. As the drug's intensity subsided I was left feeling extremely relaxed in its wake, my mind so peaceful and calm. Sue's kitten Rhino, usually so animated and possessed with wildness, was snuggled up next to me in a deep sleep as if it felt and was absorbed by my tranquility. Andy and Sue both remarked how Rhino never acted this way.

So changed was my demeanor that Andy stared at me for a long time and asked, "Was this time different from the others?"

I smiled, nodded, "It most certainly was..."

* * * * * * *

Years after this experience I find the memory of it blurred, its significance swallowed by the myriad petty details of everyday existence. Indeed, I found this to be true just three days afterward.

I have endeavored to the best of my limited abilities to explain what happened that January Saturday to a few of my closest friends and lovers, even to my Uncle Laverne who, as a Buddhist priest, I hoped would have some insight and empathy on this matter. Though polite and understanding, none of them comprehended what I was saying. What did I honestly expect? I have since given up on trying to relate my experience to others. Except for a few journal entries and this chapter, it has been locked up inside of me, an event etched into both my consciousness and unconsciousness, ever at the back of my mind.

Of course, I quickly realized how personal a matter this is and how impossible it is to relate verbally. I have meditated upon it many times and am absolutely certain countless others have had similar experiences. I am not unique or special. It's also obvious that the drug allowed me to become disconnected from my Ego and surroundings, it facilitated and enhanced the "floating" of my consciousness to that "other plane".

I have often wondered if this experience could be duplicated or if it would ever happen again; indeed, I have tried many times and failed. However, I have not given up hope, nor am I distressed or saddened by my failure. I am quite content in knowing I've had a taste of some higher Truth, one that suddenly and unexpectedly revealed Itself to me, as though some floodgate burst open within my soul and allowed the great ocean to rush through me.

Buddhism has taught me that Life is illusory, ephemeral, and based upon suffering and karma. Truth is immutable, eternal, and absolute. The Soul is fluid, connected with all that is the Universe. And within us is everything.