Journeys into the bright world

More and more I found myself preoccupied with the issue of establishing the fairy-tale kingdom of ketamine solidly on earth. I wanted this magic to be real, and felt convinced that it could be. As a result, the endeavor to bring my two worlds into a synergistic unity gave rise to an energetic attempt to keep my personal life well organized. Otherwise I would have felt swamped by the new realizations that were flooding my mind. There may have been a compulsive edge to my determination to maintain an immaculate house, update a correspondence averaging two hours a day and take long daily baths. In this need for order I was aware that the psychedelic state can foment mental aberrations, just as extra-fertile soil can produce a bumper crop of weeds. Accordingly, I would suggest that anyone who wishes to experiment extensively with ketamine would be well advised to spend extra time tending his spiritual garden of self-development.

LSD and mescaline both left me feeling "kinky" for some time after. Looking back, it seems as though in certain ways they did temporarily warp my perceptions of this world's circumstances and of my own place within the scheme. This mind-bending effect does not seem to have occurred with ketamine which, by contrast, has served as a truth medicine sharpening both intellect and senses. It may be, however, that ketamine could feed delusions of grandeur inasmuch as it contributes to a feeling of being invincible or omnipotent. A weak ego might thereby become inflated, even though egotism per se is not rooted in the bright world.

On the 28th of November, the Monday after our wedding, we were finally able to breath sighs of relief at the thought that the house was furnished, thank you notes had been dispatched, the budget was balanced, our health was fine and friends and family had all received their share of attention. Since it was Thanksgiving weekend we still had a day to ourselves. It seemed the perfect time for an at-home trip.

Session 6

November 8, 1977   11:00 am   Alderwood Manor   50 mg

The injection was given and within two minutes the familiar cricket chirps began their welcoming chorus. Outside, gray clouds were looming over the evergreen trees of our northern clime, but inside the walls were melting into a diffusion of golden light. "Oh yes, I'm going home again," I exclaimed, aware of being repetitive but unable to restrain my pleasure.

To my surprise my mind became permeated with oriental feelings. First I remembered the Japanese garden that had been the ornament of my childhood home, the Japanese fairy tales I had loved so much, flowered silk kimonos, pretty paper birds and lanterns, dragon kites-all things Japanese flowed into a collage like oil paints swirling together. I was savoring the beauty of the archetype of every Japanese landscape that had ever been, while merging with the supremely esthetic soul of Japan. Easily, happily, I let myself be drawn into the essence of that exquisite awareness as though being condensed into a round black dot, like the pupil of an eye. Then I went right on through that eye and was back once more to that spinning wheel which this time seemed like a brighter, pleasanter place to be. I could remember it all, but it was too far removed from brain-conditioned thought processes to try to describe.

On the path of return I seemed to be in a place of wheels. It was being made manifest that all creation is based on some form of rotary motion, whether axial or around a greater center. Evidently there are whole hierarchies of archetypes descending from abstract to concrete realms of being and this was the place where these patterning principles are given their initial momentum. In some ways it was like being caught amidst the wheel springs at the back of an infinitely complex watch whose parts were all geared together and moving in perfect synchrony. Here on the inner side there could be no difference between organic and inorganic substance. The one animate totality of being, knowing and doing existed eternally. Only the face that registered time was external, its hands, empowered by those multitudinous intermeshing cogs, spinning in endless circles.

"This is the deepest I've ever been. I wish I didn't have to come back." Winding outward from that center it seemed as though the only way to retain some vestige of the experience, which I desperately wanted to recall, was to mumble comments. Even though the phrases were bound to sound meaningless they might nonetheless jog my muddled memory when I tried later to reconstruct the experience.

"It's all genetics. In some way this whole earthly play, all that we're doing, is a matter of trial and error. It's all kind of a survival of the fittest, a cosmic biological experiment."