Observations placeholder

The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience – Dr Robert Masters and Dr Jean Houston

 “I had been up for 3 days and 2 nights working on a manuscript.  That was the first mistake.  The room where the 'experiment' was to take place was a dirty, dingy, insanely cluttered pesthole.  That was the second mistake.  I was told I would see God.  That was the third and worst mistake of all.

The needle jabbed into my arm and the DMT oozed into my bloodstream.  At the same time the steam came on with a rhythmic metallic clamour and I remember thinking that it would be good to have some heat.  Within 30 seconds I noticed a change, or rather I noticed that there had never been any change, that I had been in this dreamy, unworldy state for millions of years.  I told this to Dr ------- who said 'Good, then it is beginning to pass the blood brain barrier'.

It was too fast.  Much too fast.  I looked up at what a minute ago had been doors and cabinets, and all I could see were parallel lines falling away into absurdities.  Dimensions were outraged.  The geometry of things crashed blindly into one another and crumbled into chaos.  I thought to myself 'But he said I would see God, that I would know the meaning of the universe'  I closed my eyes.  Perhaps God was there, behind my eye balls.

Something was there, all right; Something coming at me from a dim and distant and empty horizon.  At first it was a pinpoint, then it was a smudge, and then – a formless Shape. 

A sound accompanied its progress towards me – a rising rhythmic, metallic whine; a staccato meeouw that was issuing from a diamond larynx.  And then, there it loomed before me, a devastating horror, a cosmic diamond cat.  It filled the sky, it filled all space.  There was nowhere to go.  It was all that was.  There was no place for me in this Its universe.  I felt levelled under the  cruel glare of its crystalline brilliance.  My mind, my body, my vestige of self esteem perished in the hard glint of its diamond cells.

It moved in rhythmic spasms like some demonic toy; and always there was its voice – a steely, shrill monotony that put an end to hope.  There should not be such a voice!  It ravaged the nerves and passed its spasms into my head to echo insanely from one dark corridor of my mind to another.  Mee-e-e-eyow-ow-ow-ow me-e-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow me-e-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow – the incessant insatiable staccato went on.  It would not have been so bad if it had just been diabolic noise.  The chilling thing was that I knew what it was saying!  It told me that I was a wretched, pulpy, flaccid thing; a squishy squashy worm.  I was a thing of soft entrails and slimy fluids and was abhorrent to the calcified God.

I opened my eyes screaming …..'what is the antidote to this?  Give me the antidote!'

'There is no antidote' said Dr --------- 'relax, it's only been three minutes.  You've got at least 25 more minutes to go'