Salvia: Flashback and Forays
As I’ve already written in this journal, back in May I had my first experience of salvia divinorum - a full cone (and full lungful) of 10X extract which had a very strong effect on me. A couple of months later I had a “salvia flashback” of sorts - reliving the experience and reinterpreting it in the process. Another couple of months down the track, now settled back in my home town after long travels, I’ve located a source of the Divine Sage and have been making some forays into the fascinating world I’m calling “Salvia Space” or perhaps “The Salvia Dimension”.
Flashback
I was hanging out with a cousin I hadn’t spent close time with since early childhood, who has now become quite a wild character. One evening after a couple of cones and beers, he mentioned something in passing about my mother, just before getting on the phone to his own mother. It hit me like a flash - that warm, comfortable, enfolding sensation I’d experienced in the early part of my salvia trip was my mother! I could recall the sensation clearly, and it made perfect sense to me. As I relived the experience, I remembered a breaking-open sensation on the crown of my skull, before all hell had broken loose in conceptual space. Was this childbirth?! I’m pretty convinced that I had relived gestation and childbirth, and the feeling of knowing this was exciting and enlivening.
Later that evening, after dinner, loads of wine, and Cuz produced some acid for us all to share. After all the booze I think most of the special qualities of acid were blunted away, but something was going on anyway. I was bonding with my long-lost cousin and childhood playmate, who had since grown up in Africa, while I myself have come to feel at home in India and Japan - what an earth-shattering reunion!
So… Cuz and I went to bed (great of Cuz to share his bed with me on my travels) and I reflected further on my salvia flashback. With the lingering acid adding its fuel to the visualisation fire, I recalled further visions of the salvia trip, especially something with an animated cartoon-like quality. But these cartoon (toy?) figures had a strange dimensional quality in which they could appear incredibly long but just by turning 90 degrees would be completely flat. At the time I interpreted this as being early childhood consciousness of three-dimensional space. Recent forays have expanded that interpretation…
Solo Forays into the Salvia Dimension
Now settled back home after months of travel in India, Japan and a few weeks around Australia, I recently found a source of salvia (10X extract). I haven’t wanted to ask anyone to sit me while I took it so after a few days waiting I thought I’d try a small dose on my own and see how I handled it. I was worried because I’ve seen video and heard stories of people moving around while on salvia. So while over a few days I tried a range of doses, I haven’t been game to take the large dose I took the first time. I’d like to try it with some friends for that.
So anyway, here goes…
First experiment: about a third of a cone, with little effect, followed by another third of a cone a few minutes later, about 8pm, lights out, single candle, sitting on my bed. I got vague glimmerings of parts of my previous experience, especially a feeling of the animated world and the sound and feeling of that world - like the sound of clearing one’s throat, a kind of comedy grumpy character, very organic and a bit blubbery (something of my mother in all that…?). After effects for the next few hours were very positive feeling, love and empathy for those around me, clarity of expression and lots of metaphysical thought.
Second experiment: about 3 quarters of a cone, about 1am, lights out, single candle, lying on my bed under the covers (it was cold!), some very quiet Indian music (Ali Akbar Khan, light piece in 6 beat). This was a much more full-on experience, taking me away and yet still remaining in the room. Although the music was very quiet, after smoking salvia I started to think the music was skipping (even though it’s an iPod), so I stopped it, thinking I might disturb others in the house. I’ve found I’m very sensitive to sound while in salvia-space, like every sound punctuates my experience. At one stage I remember thinking the sound of my lips parting might disturb my housemates.
But that’s aside from the main experience, which once again had a lot in common with my first full-blown salvia trip. There were a lot of inflatable balls… lots of straight lines vs curved lines, atom vs wave motion and behaviour, the straight line of my lips is actually wavy… Polar concepts, lots of them - black/white, good/bad, atom/wave, straight/curved, yin/yang, you get the idea. Any visual stimulus I was getting from the room was transformed into this visualisation of my thoughts. When I was conscious of my body I felt very comfortable that I was lying down and my spine was straight. My awareness moved to different parts of my body, eg my throat, my genitals, my stomach, my arms, my brain…. Generally in conjunction with some geometrical-concept construct… Brains are very round and fractal, ne.
Third experiment: about 3 quarters of a cone, 4pm sitting outdoors by the river next to my house, surrounded by trees and light. My vision-field remained pretty much of this world, but my awareness seemed to pull back into a higher dimension. This experience seemed to encapsulate one sense of my previous experiences in a way I could try to interpret. It’s like this: Imagine all of reality can be shrivelled down into a point, kind of like a balloon deflating except that it keeps on shrinking and shrivelling and enfolding. On the other hand, this point can open up like an inflating ball, all the folds opening up and separating, or like a developing embryo from a single cell. If we could imagine the perspective of a higher-dimensional world, our three (four with time?) reality could appear like a point, no? One really strong sense I’ve had when taking salvia is that I’m like a small child who’s been focusing on this point but it’s like I’m waking up or coming to an awareness that there’s more outside that point.
Fourth experiment: about half a cone, about 1 hour after the previous experiment, during which I had been playing tabla and watching a beautiful sunset take shape. I wanted another mild dose to just get a sense of salvia-space for my ruminations. The sense I got was, “it’s so vast and open.”
Interpretations and Ruminations
After smoking salvia, the sense of waking up to another reality is so strong to me, as is the dimensional collapse and re-emergence of our regular reality. The feeling I get is that our spirits/consciousnesses are from a higher dimension, and that we poke our heads into this reality, get caught up in these physical bodies, and forget where we came from. Salvia is a key to opening awareness to those higher dimensions. Without that awareness, all that happens within this world seems to be by chance or out of our control. If we perform a certain act or not, is that good or bad? It depends on the perspective from which you judge. We create so many models of reality - the physics model, the biological model, the environmental model, the economic model, the cultural acceptability model, etc etc. But in fact the three dimensional world we see evolving through the fourth dimension of time is actually within a multi-dimensional reality with rules we can’t understand with reductionist science. These questions often crowd my brain when in salvia-space, and I always come away with the conviction that it all comes down to intention. Salvia really makes me feel connected to the possibilities of magick and mysticism, of our awareness and intention creating and manifesting reality.
Perhaps salvia connects us to these dimensions by bringing us back to childhood consciousness. When we are children we are still “tuning in” to this limited dimension, yet to be caught up in the rules and regulations of society and culture which make us forget where we come from. That’s why children can see fairies?
Fifth experiment: three-quarters of a cone, about 8pm in a darkened room with a cat lying on my bed, me sitting on the bed against the wall. One housemate using a computer in the next room, and the Windows default sounds of his activities did enter my trip, as all sounds punctuate my thoughts when in salvia-space. I was actually cooking dinner and decided to have a quick visit to salvia-space before I had to turn off the dal. This time I got another part of my original trip more to the fore - lots of numbers, geometry of concepts. Again the feeling of being a small child, this time back in the wide, open field. But mostly sets of concepts always related to numbers - opposites eg black-white, leading to colours, colours of people. Visualisations of topologies of concepts. Lines and curves. Combining to form symbols, characters, letters - 26 letters! Unless it’s Japanese or Chinese of course, and then there are thousands of possibilities! (I get the sense that I’m going to be judged and that the more concepts I can keep in my head at one time, the better I’ll fare.) Incredible that our brains can keep this many distinct categories! Brains really are wonderful, and round and fractal, ne.
Further Ruminations:
In all of my recent psychedelic experiences with salvia and ayahuasca (Santo Daime story coming some day, I promise), I’ve had the conviction that these plants are preparing us for an explosion in the possibilities for our consciousness. Perhaps it will be through computer technologies, perhaps through pharmacology, perhaps through meditation, yoga and mystical awareness, most likely through some combination of these things, but I believe being able to navigate these kinds of spaces is part of the next step in our evolution. Singularity here we come!