Sorry about that.

A week ago I had my first experience with ayahuasca. I honestly haven't given it much thought since I got back but it's been in the back of my mind. I wanted to wait to fully digest the experience before reflecting on it and writing this properly I think.

I was starting to think deep thoughts so I opened my eyes to see if the world looked different. The first thing I noticed was that I could flip my spatial orientation any way that I wanted. I was laying down, looking up at a corner of the room and I could reorientate the room to make it one of the bottom corners and have the people laying on one of the walls or ceiling. You can do this normally if you concentrate because it's only defined by the direction of gravity, but it was just happening naturally and the 'normal' way of looking at it wasn't automatic or even preferred any more. I was told that the effect would take about an hour to kick in so I sat on my mat while most of the others laid down and covered their eyes. After about half an hour I laid down as well and closed my eyes. After a short bout of feeling sick I suddenly felt great and sat up.

I sat up and compared the room to how it looked and felt when I first got here. It did seem very different, the whole thing seemed much more beautiful and vibrant. The music that I found quite corny and annoying to start with sounded lovely now and really helped to enhance the experience. If I intentionally focused on a single point it would fill my whole field of view, almost like my eyes had a zoom function. From there my mind would wander away but whenever I lost my sense of where I was I found that I had to snap myself back into awareness of the room. This went on for about half an hour and I was trying to just go with it but I found I always pulled myself back to put what I was just experiencing into perspective with 'reality'. I kept telling myself that the version of reality I spend most of my time in isn't any more real or valid than any other and I was here to experience others but it was an automatic reaction and I couldn't override it. I think this was really holding me back.

Next I saw I kind of white hexagonal pattern wherever I was looking, not on the things I was looking at but as if it was across my eyes. I realised that we don't really move, the screen simply changes and our bodies are interfaces to allow us to change the visual (it works with all the senses but I'll just use sight) input we receive. It’s like basic Galilean relativity, if one object is moving away from another then you could just as easily say that the second object is moving away from the first one instead because all you can really say is that they're moving away from each other, all inertial motion is relative. This was that understanding but applied to myself so that everything moved relative to me, only this felt like a much more valid interpretation rather than simply an alternative viewpoint. We're all in the same virtual reality system and can interact with each other by manipulating it to bring our perceptions close together when we're what we think of as physically close to each other.

I've thought for a long time that the common materialism view is completely backwards because it's consciousness that's primary and everything else is created by it. We can only even think of the material universe in terms of how we perceive it, how it looks, sounds, feels, tastes and smells. Those are all created by us, take us away and the material universe couldn't look, sound, feel, taste or smell of anything. This is how I think of it anyway but it seemed so glaringly obvious during the trip. Consciousness is basically ignored by science but it's really the only thing we can be sure of, everything else is experienced through that lens so it makes no sense to start with a materialist viewpoint and then try to work backwards to explain how consciousness works. The material universe is a product of consciousness, not the other way round, so consciousness will never be explainable through physical processes. We need to start from the beginning and work outwards from there.

Then came the really deep part. The material universe can't exist without being perceived because it only exists in the context of how it's perceived but consciousness can exist without anything material. So we start with a conscious entity that creates something to experience. A painting is no good if the easiest paint fades away before the artist has finished so it uses simple rules to govern behaviour. That way it can be created and left to run on its own without needing any further input. This is very reminiscent of the game of life. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2vgICfQawE) When I first saw that I was amazed how a few simple rules could create so much complexity and got the definite impression that it showed something very profound. So a conscious entity (let's call it Golden Order Design) creates a work of art that it wants to fully experience, so it sets it up to allow for itself to experience it from within from a multitude of interfaces, each limited by its own perspective.

After about an hour from the beginning of the trip it started to ware off. I was still very altered but the deep thoughts had eased off so I asked for some more and was told maybe later. Everyone else was at the height of their trip at this point, one woman was crying, one dude looked like he was interacting with something and a couple of others were watching their hands move. At this point I decided that if they weren't going to give me any more then I'd roll a joint and see how that goes. I also really wanted to go outside. When I went to my bag I caught my reflection and I could believe how dilated my pupils were, I'd never seen myself like that before and along with how I was perceiving things differently anyway it was weird and funny to see myself that way. I went out the front (locking myself out) and that's when it really hit me just how high I was. Being in the hall was kind of isolating and being out in the world seeing life go by on the canal felt so different than it had a couple of hours earlier.

After experimenting with the badly labelled buzzers and probably annoying the flats upstairs I was let back in and told that I probably shouldn't have a second dose because I've never done it before and they didn't want me to freak out. I explained that I thought that was very unlikely but didn't push it, they ended up giving me another dose of the inhibitor instead. Only two of the twenty-two people were sick and I would have expected more than that if it was a decent dose from what I've heard about ayahuasca. Nobody else needed a second dose though and most of them had done it multiple times before but it felt like I was on the edge of something much deeper and I wanted to jump in head first. Despite what I'd heard about what I've heard from other people about suppressing the ego, I found it to be very ego enhancing rather than repressing it. I felt like I had more presence and I was much more aware of myself and other people's interactions with me but not in a paranoia way.

I was expecting to start reliving past traumas at some point but got nothing like that at all. In fact I felt better than I had in a very long time. I felt like a much better version of myself even though my personality wasn't hugely affected. I seemed like a really small change could make a really big difference. After another couple of hours other people started to move around as well. Time passed very quickly, although it didn't seem like it was at the time, the last half hour or felt like it had been going on for well over an hour but everything in the day before that seemed to have happened in less than half an hour. I was staying there overnight and I'm so glad I did, I was the only one. When everyone else left it was just me and one other who stayed behind for a while to absorb the experience, it was good to get a fresh perspective from someone who's been doing it regularly for a while. I was glad when she left though because I wanted the place to myself.

It was a really nice space, as well as sofas it had an old wooden table and chairs where I sat to make another joint when something very special and unexpected happened. Whenever anything moved I could see a series of three transparent after images following it one after the other with about three quarters of a second between the initial movement and the last image, and the last image always a black dotted outline around it. This was completely consistent and lasted the rest of the night, not what I'd expect from a random hallucination. Now I was the one who was fascinated watching my hand move. I'm heavily into martial arts and was going to do some training anyway to see how my form was under the influence and to make the most of the having the hall to myself but I wasn't expecting this. It made everything I did look so damn awesome. I didn't train for very long because I wanted to relax and enjoy the buzz but that's something I won't ever forget.

I had a very enjoyable night considering I was alone with nothing really to do other than enjoy the after effects, train and smoke weed, I couldn't even go out because I didn't have a key to get back in. I felt like I was right where I needed to be and it seemed very obvious that existence is a very special thing that's usually taken for granted. I knew that before but I wasn't really aware of it. What also seemed obvious is that there's a war on consciousness going on. When you look at what we're fed by the media and which drugs are legal and which ones aren't and the peer pressure against them it's hard to see anything other than a deliberate suppression of our true potential that starts with an education system specifically designed to systematically eliminate any form of creative thought. It seems that a wealthy few just want us docile and productive (but not in any kind of creative way) so that those few can carry on gaining more wealth off the backs of the vast majority of worker drones.

If a passenger ships crashes on a deserted island with no hope of rescue then there's work that needs to be done to make their new home a decent place to live. Once that work is finished it's not a bad thing that there's now less work that needs to be done, that's the time to enjoy it and to live, so why are less jobs considered such a bad situation outside of this island? The difference is that the island is a genuine economy free from manipulation. It's easier to see it with an isolated island example but this very simple truth doesn't stop being applicable if you scale up the island. I've had all of these kinds of thoughts before but it's like they didn't really register properly until this experience. I like to think about the nature of consciousness and the universe too so it was really just reinforcing what was already there but doing it in a way that made everything seem much more focused and real. In fact there was a hyper-real quality to the whole experience, like I was fully awake.

If there really is war going on I need to be sure that I'm on the right side. Maybe everything is the way that it should be because it's the only way that works. Maybe creativity shouldn't be encouraged because if it were then there'd be so much out there that the genuinely special works would be drowned out, the truly creative can still go to drama/dance school or become authors or whatever. Maybe drugs shouldn't be readily available, they're not for everyone and some are still out there if you want them and so are the others if you apply yourself. Maybe the people pulling the strings are doing the best they can. Nobody sees themselves as a bad guy, we're all doing what's right by us or we wouldn't be doing it. If there are a few people who have that much power then they have a better understanding of how things work than we do so they're in the best position to make the right decisions, maybe they keep the whole thing running so it doesn't all come crashing down around us. I doubt it though.

I doubt that 1% of the population owning 90% of the wealth is for the benefit of everyone, 1% of the population owning 90% of the wealth is for the benefit of the 1%. The system is fragile but it wouldn't be a bad thing if it were to truly collapse, it would for a while until people realise that money has always been worthless. If creativity were encouraged then there would be more creative works out there but they'd be more masterpieces and those would still rise to the top. If drugs were readily available so that people had the right to treat their own fucking bodies how they decide is best for them then they could of course still say no to drugs, but everybody would also have the option of saying yes, the way it should be. All of this and a lot more gives me very little doubt that I'm on the right side and I'm going to try be less apathetic and do more for the cause. That's not what this is, at least that's not how it was intended. These are some of the thought processes that I went through at the time.

To me a positive drug experience is one where you feel better after the drug completely wares off than you did before you took it and this certainly qualifies. The day after I still felt like I was under the influence, possibly just because it was so fresh in my mind. The day after that I felt more drained than I ever have. Maybe it was a comedown but I felt fine, I just had no energy. I felt a bit down at being back to 'reality' but I do feel like I've brought something lasting and potentially very special back with me. The whole experience seemed familiar, not like daja vu but like I'd done it before on a different occasion and then forgot about it. The physical sensation hasn't fully left me yet, I still sometimes feel like I did at the time. DMT provides by far the most profound experience that a person can have and most people don't know it exists. Most recreational drug users don't even know that exists. That might be changing now but it was certainly true just a couple of years ago.

I plan on doing this every six months, probably for the rest of my life. I've heard it said that drugs are to show us a new way of thinking and perceiving and that we don't need to keep on taking them because once they've shown us something that we wouldn't have been able to find without help we can then fully induce that state whenever we want, and that the problems people have with drugs is because they're not meant to be taken regularly. I do believe that's true but I think it's something that the vast majority of people including myself don't have the necessary mental skills to be able to achieve although it's something that we're all capable of. We're only aware of a very tiny slice of reality most of the time and this is something that I feel I need to explore further. It's the perfect remedy for probably the most evil and destructive lie ever told, that we're nothing more than the result of chemical processes taking place in a small lump of organic mush in our heads.