My Encounters on the God Molecule
A One-time Psychonaut’s Experience with Ayahuasca
A recounting of a psychedelic experience, reprinted with the author’s permission.
On January 31st, 2014, I arranged to drink ayahuasca, a brew made from plants containing the psychoactive compound DMT, classified as a powerful hallucinogen. I followed the customary dietary restrictions on the days leading up to this, and around 6 pm in the evening had set up a comfortable room in an apartment we had to ourselves (I was accompanied by an experienced facilitator who has done this numerous times, often in group ceremonies, and who I will refer to as my sitter).
From what I had read previously about ayahuasca (besides the vomiting or ‘purging’) it was to be a intense hallucinatory experience, with the more wide-eyed accounts talking of confronting one’s fears and undergoing a kind of death and rebirth. I had previously taken psychedelic mushrooms in both Bali and Amsterdam and had tried LSD once or twice. If anything I was expecting this experience to be something similar to mushrooms but just more extreme. Nothing though, could have prepared me for what I was actually going to experience.
My sitter suggested before drinking to set my intentions on what I wanted to get out of this experience. I have always been a searcher, searching for something. I was a little disenchanted with psychedelics, though they were incredibly interesting. I didn’t just want an interesting head trip; I wanted something more, to see a glimpse beyond it all. I moderated my genuine desire to know with a sufficient amount of skepticism. I knew enough of experience to know how easy it is for experiences to convince people of almost anything. As one might expect, I was less the touchy-feely type than the head dweller who was comfortable only when in control, or at least when the outcome was known. The unknown overawes, because it resists abstraction. One must go through it. But back to the story, I decided my intention would be about the nature of reality. I suppose if I had known the kind of experience this was, I would have chosen a less abstract concept in favor of something more personal.
Drinking the Brew
Around 6:30 pm I drank a cup of this concoction and sat down to wait. After 30–40 minutes there were some slight perceptible changes and a queasy feeling, but after the first hour passed with nothing much going on, I drank another cup.
15 to 30 minutes later I was trying to write what this experience felt like, but it was hard to focus on the paper. I was seeing all sorts of wavy, pulsating 3D visuals: around my paper and pen these floral-like designs were growing and twirling in and out and all around. One of the reasons I used writing when experimenting with altered states was to kind of control the experience, to better rationalize and process the changes, but there was something different to these kind of visuals. On mushrooms or LSD the visuals are not as compelling, but it was as if these visuals almost had a kind of alive and compelling nature, and it seemed almost like they were trying to distract me from writing, from rationalizing it.
I looked at the curtains which had become waiflike; everything had changed in texture. I got up and walked around and everything was awash in 3D visuals, like holograms; pulsating, flowing, almost alive. It was quite interesting. I had never seen psychedelics like this before. I was very intrigued, but I also was getting very nauseated, very uncomfortable, and very unnerved, as I sensed I was now squarely in uncharted territory.
I was always very cautious about drug use and quite academic about it. I start with low doses and chart the territory then increase it when I know what to expect. But this night was different. In taking the second cup, it was a kind of accepting; for once I was going out on a limb; I wanted to know. And I could sense something. It was another kind of knowing, more intuitive. Looking at the swirls and visuals I had the sense they were enticing me to let go and come with them into another world. And I had the impression I was to be taken on a journey.
Walking about had made me even more nauseated and dizzy, so I went back to sit down. Things were becoming more intense. I was becoming a little confused and agitated and I could feel myself starting to panic. It’s a particular kind of anxiety not uncommon to those who report bad trips, where a thought gets stuck and replays itself, and the fear is that the thought would become real. I had always had a habit of keeping my own emotions to myself, so I just sat there and tried to breathe as the tumult continued inside.
Shortly thereafter, everything became more intense. This sensation was like being at the beach where the waves would swell and carry you along, sometimes crashing into you and sending you tumbling every which way. And the waves were getting stronger. The visuals heightened, and I had the sense that something was calling me to go on this journey. (Throughout the experience there was a particular — and at times extremely vivid — sense of otherness, of something outside myself, something otherworldly. I felt I was communicating with something or someone that was very convincingly external. And it was like I knew them; I remembered them). But I was already painfully apprehensive at this point, and I reasoned that since this was my first time, it would not be too cowardly to try to get out of this.
So here I was trying to get out of this. I began reasoning with this other world. I said, “Please. I’ll go on the journey next time, but right now it’s just too much for me”. All the while, in the back of my mind, I was thinking I probably wouldn’t be doing this again. Almost as if I knew this was meant to be a one-time thing, and if I could just weasel out by saying that I would do it next time, then maybe I could be off the hook. It seemed to work. The visuals dimmed back down and things became more manageable, though still immensely psychedelic. Then it intensified the second time, and again I pleaded with it to stop: “it’s too much; I’m not ready; I need more time to prepare”. After a few minutes, again it slowed down. I thought maybe I had gotten out of it. But even so, each time I resisted and it withdrew, there was still this annoying thought in the back of my mind that was me telling myself, “what if this journey is something I’ll miss out on if I don’t go?” There was a struggle between curiosity and a fear of the unknown, and curiosity was cropping up at the wrong time and the wrong place and really starting to piss me off, because I had no idea what it would be getting me into.
By now I was lying down, feeling quite nauseated. It was sometime after 9pm and the visuals were more intense and everything was much more abnormal. I was tough, but I was becoming too tired, too worn out, too stressed to resist the calling. It was as if I finally gave in and agreed to go on this journey. I was becoming extremely disoriented; my identity was starting to fracture, and I could feel myself in different places, like puzzle pieces being taken apart (or like that moment before sleep when your thoughts become convoluted and your identity starts to dissociate as you drift off into dream). While this was going on, I remember thinking:
I’ve always loved the world, but always from afar off. I had this love/hate relationship with life. I appreciated the world, with its beauty, wonder, and joy, but I also saw it as bland and dismal; a dreary place filled with the dull pain of existence, the incompleteness, the bore. But in this moment of great disconcertion, I realized I had such great appreciation and admiration for life, even with its simplicity, naivety, and imperfection. I was overcome with the preciousness of life, the uniqueness, the beauty, and the immensity of community and togetherness. Life was not satisfying enough and so I wanted more, and now I was sorry for not being happy with what I had. I vowed to never again belittle life. Truly there is enough preciousness in even the most mundane of things. My thoughts then turned to how I saw myself as a very accepting person; I would never seek to condemn anyone; but I retained this slight superiority complex. We are all equal, but I must be a little more equal. Allowing myself this slice of superiority kept me at arm’s length to others. I didn't want to be just like them. But now this separation seemed so vain. We are all equally special, even the very worst of us, even the most unenlightened of us.
Sometime close to 10 pm I felt myself slipping away, like this experience was enveloping me, sucking me in, like I was being brought to the portal to this other world. I imagined that this must be what death feels like. It was like I was slipping off my body, off the mattress, off of reality. My arms and legs instinctively spasmed as if it catch me, but I wasn’t falling, it was like I was being peeled off and out of my body. And then I was gone. I had gone through the veil as it were. And my journey began.
Through the Veil
I was still very much conscious of myself but had entered into what could be described as a kind of incredibly hyper-real dream state. There were moments I could hear the singing of my sitter (she sings in her ceremonies and offered to sing for me) or feel some reaction from my body, but other than that I had absolutely no connection to the ‘real’ world.
I remember a fair amount of what transpired in this other place, but I remember it not necessarily as a sequence of events. I cannot be completely sure which events came first, or even if it happened sequentially at all, and some of the events even seemed to take place at the same time. All notion of time and space went out the window and there was no longer any anchor with which to orient myself, and words are wholly inadequate, but I will recount these experiences as best as I can.
Once in this new world, I was accompanied by a guide of sorts. — The same presence I felt I was communicating with earlier on. I did not ever see this guide but could certainly feel their presence and like they were known to me and I was comfortable with them. The relationship was almost like they were a teacher and I was a child. Here I’ll explain what I mean when I refer to myself: It seemed in this place that I had two competing identities: one was my logical and rational mind, and the other was my heart or soul. My soul seemed to be accustomed to this place, even enjoying the experience. My mind on the other hand was very ill at ease and always finding something to be displeased with.
My guide showed me many things which remain kind of hazy, but one thing that stands out was when they showed me this kind of energy ball which I sensed to be myself. My soul seemed to be so proud of me, and the light really was quite pretty, it was somewhat of a gentle reddish color. But there was also stuff on it that was not so vibrant, like when a ball has been kicked in the mud. I was annoyed that life had dirtied me, but my guide didn’t seem particularly concerned and instead wanted me to deal with other things.
(I also have a vague memory of being brought to a counsel of sorts in some futuristic-looking place and having some kind of exchange. Again the relationship was one of me being the young person and them being wiser adults. One of the things I remember from our conversation was them relating to me how intrigued they are by humans in how we have built such a structured world — almost as if they were taking this into account for some plan they had for the near future. This is something I found interesting considering this whole experience seemed much more focused on the non-structural, emotional side of things.)
For a lot of the experience, it seemed as if I was taken through a series of scenarios or different simulations — at times as the observer and at times as being part of the scenario itself. And the feeling was clear that something outside of me was the one directing the whole experience. These kind of scenarios reminds me a little of the training programs from the movie The Matrix. I was shown one thing: when I understood it, the scene would change and I would be shown another thing.
In one case, I was placed in this green world full of plants and trees but also full of emotions. The simulation was created out of emotion and me and my surrounding reality became this simulation and went through it till I fully understood what it meant to feel. Here was one of the few times I spoke, and I said, “this is the first time I’ve truly felt’. (An interesting tidbit, I would later come to know, is that the color green is associated with the heart chakra). And there was something I will never forget. It is still distinct in my memory, and if I breathe in and out forcefully and quickly I can almost re-encounter the feeling. It was as if my throat was dry, like I was gasping for breath. I needed air and moisture. I was dissolving, changing; I was melding into what seemed to be a heart. And its veins were intertwining with me, becoming me as I was becoming it, until there was nothing left and I became this big, pulsating, living heart. These experiences and others to follow were extremely shocking, not necessarily in a bad or oppressive way, but in a way that was much too overwhelming. All I could do or be was this raw, alive, breathing, beating heart. (Terence McKenna, one of the fathers of the psychedelic movement, quipped once about death by astonishment, which takes on a very real possibility for one who has been so awestruck.)
There was another experience of encountering something like a fountain of lights and shapes and forms, with everything flowing outward from the center of it. And I had this idea that maybe I had reached the secret of it all, the fountain of life, the source of reality, the meaning of existence. At every level or simulation, I seemed to enter with curiosity and interest and wonder, but then fear entered in, and the greatest fear was that this was It, that this was everything, that this was the meaning of everything. And like Goldilocks and the porridge that was either too hot or too cold, nothing was just right. I wanted to find an answer that was meant for me.
Along with these experiences, I also experienced a number of different things seemingly related to my intention to know more about the nature of reality. I saw what I might call the fabric of the universe which seemed a kind of waiflike, skeletal structure, upon which the human world was overlaid, solidifying it, putting some meat on it, filling it in. Individual identity seemed to be in a similar state. I watched as the pieces of myself fell away and disintegrated. And yet, even in this there was still a me there, I was still intact, still observing and experiencing and being, but it was like the covering or my constructed ego was washed away, and just myself remained.
At one point it seemed reality was being ripped apart at the seams; shattering into little shards that blew away. At first there was this solid-looking world and it shattered to reveal a kind of basic structure, which also too blew away, leaving some informational constants like time and space. And in one moment I was aware of space, and it expanded into infinity and then contracted till all space was a sizeless dot. A similar thing happened with time. It is hard to explain what it means to say time no longer existed, but there I was experiencing something without any space, without any time, a place beyond matter, beyond even something like an informational structure.
I found myself in this place where it seemed that there was nothing, but also that everything was possible: almost as if this was the fundamental base on which reality is built off of or emerges from. And so I tried to create reality. I tried to recreate my world. I had been carrying with me this heavy fear of being lost; my world was so far away, and I was getting further and further, and everything of the past had become just a tiny speck of memory, and so I was frantically trying to put the pieces of reality back together again. But I was too small, too weak, too inadequate. I would build and then it would start slipping away. But even in this distress, I found it quite fascinating, this impression or awareness that something like intention or belief is melded into the fabric of reality, and perhaps even what gives rise to it. And in that moment, this changed something about how I saw the world. Instead of thinking of reality as a persistent illusion, I was more impressed with the idea of reality as a persistent possibility.
Facing the Madness
While the overwhelming nature of the experiences were mindboggling to such a degree, there were three distinct scenarios that were particularly distressful. Even though I had lost the outer coverings of myself, was distanced from my memories and my identity, and was shipwrecked upon this strange universe (which at the moment resembled a kind of Rubik’s Cube, except made up of simulations and shapes and patterns), I could still make sense of things. I still had a grasp on this world, and this me that was observing was still intact. I could still remember who I was and how I got here.
Then it started.
I was caught in a spiral, a cycle. I could hear the singing of my partner, but it wasn’t the song, just one phrase of it going over and over again. And with it, this Rubik’s Cube I was stuck in was tumbling inside itself over and over again. And I imagined this to be insanity. The panic increased: what if I’m insane; what if I am now stuck here? And I felt a weight of guilt for letting my family down, for hurting them, especially my younger brothers. And humiliation, for being the one who always likes to have the right answers, but to make such a huge mistake with no coming back. I remember hearing rhythmic beats — somehow I was tapping my arms and legs in a beat pattern, and I was hearing this while I was stuck in this world. This fueled my hope; strengthened my one thread, my one iota of comfort: there was still me; there was still the memory that I had taken a drug; and therefore still the possibility it would end.
Then another one started. I was in a bright place, and all the patterns and colors started swirling together, and everything began to not make any sense anymore. I began to think that this might be what it’s like to have schizophrenia or some other disorder. And the fear increased. It was like I was contained in this box of nothing making sense, of everything swilling around, and of it being much, much too bright. I wanted to sleep, if just for a moment to escape this meaningless glare, but there was no way out. Nevertheless, I held out, there was still me and that tiny memory that I had taken some drug and it would all be over soon.
And then came the last one.
The setting changed to a much larger panorama of something that looked like an endless, grey ocean. The Rubik’s Cube became this immense and undulating and morphing and shimmering ocean. And like waves tossing around a drowning man, I was flowing in and out of realities. Each wave was an infinite potential, and the paranoia set in. Was my previous reality real, or was the whole thing just a figment of imagination? Did I just take a drug and thereby entered this place or was that memory just one of infinite conjured up thoughts from this mind that was unbearably alone. No longer was the fear simply that I was insane — I could at least take comfort in the world continuing despite my insanity. Now the fear was that reality itself was insane. That there was no world and no other people, and everything that ever was, was just one of infinite thoughts popping in and out of a tortured existence. Who was real, what was real? And then it was over.
The Journey Home
I do not know what followed directly afterwards or in what sequence it occurred, but I have some vague recollections of a brilliant and intense white light (but not the kind that was unbearable), coming towards me, enveloping me, drawing me in. And something that might have been a kind of rebirth experience. This part was quite hazy. But eventually I found myself like at the edge of the universe, on something like the steps to a massive platform, the center of which was this incalculable Otherness. I tried to form the word “God” but I couldn’t even begin to make the sound. It was as if this label was not big enough, that no label was big enough to contain what was in front of me. There was no fear in this presence, in fact it felt like the most natural thing, but there was a sense of something like nakedness. We use language to embellish, we use language to rationalize and control, but there was no way to hide behind language here, there was no manipulating, no rationalizing it, it saw right through you. At the same time, any shred of solipsism that had been apparent in the previous episodes was melted away in the immensity of this Otherness.
I remember at some point looking back on the universe and seeing or kind of sensing it like a panoramic story. It looked like a universe, but of time, not space. It seemed as if I was seeing the universe as a story, all at once. Seeing the world as a completed story did not leave me with a fatalistic impression but rather it impressed upon me the importance of being a part of it, knowing that we are truly co-authors of this story. (A couple weeks later I was watching a show on Discovery about how our world might look if you stood on the event horizon of a black hole and looked back at upon it: you would see the past and future all together in a kind of block universe. And this struck me as being very similar to what I saw.)
Then came the final scene.
For parts of the experience — when I was aware of it — it seemed my soul was happy as a lark, like a little lamb hopping about, and its cheerfulness had already been pissing my mind off. I didn’t at all like how it could be so unfazed by all the intensity I had been going through. So here I was, in this place that felt like a million miles away from earth, and before me was this great sea of lights. These lights were just like the energy ball I encountered as being myself; they were just like me, but there were many of them, and they were all together. I felt like I could go hang out with them. And then my little soul said its first and only word: it said, “Home”. And that just did it for my mind. I was so pissed; if I had arms I would’ve reached out to strangle my little soul. It got me into all this trouble in the first place, it didn’t seem to care that I was freaking out, and now it wanted to go into these beautiful lights. I had all these overwhelming, conflicting emotions. It was so beautiful and so welcoming, but I wanted to go back to my physical home. I didn’t want to stay as a ball of light. Then this thing that I had tried to call God, communicated with me, in such a caring and comforting way. It said that I shouldn’t have to worry about becoming part of this sea of lights, because once I did, I would change, and I would remember that here was everything I ever wanted. But that if I did chose to go into the sea of lights, I couldn’t come back.
I’m still not certain what would’ve actually happened if I accepted. In any case, I didn’t need much cajoling; I already desperately wanted to go back to the comfort and familiarity of the physical world. But this physical world was gone, it was so incredibly far away, like a very distant memory. And all that was left, all that I could still hold on to was something like these silver strings that connected me across space and time to those I loved. And I was able to find my way back because of love. (Months later Interstellar would come out that had a scene with Cooper finding his way through the tesseract to his daughter. When Tars asks him how, he replies, “love”).
And then just like that, around 2 hours after having entered this other realm, I was immediately wide awake and completely lucid with a smile on my face. (My sitter had been trying to wake me for awhile and was getting worried). I was back in the ‘normal’ world, though everything still had a kind of glow.
Analyzing the Experience
The most peculiar aspect of the ayahuasca or DMT-induced experience is its ability to launch the user into a completely foreign reality that nonetheless is encountered as being more-real-than-real. There are very few psychonauts who return from such journeys retaining a materialist worldview. On the other hand, many return talking of plant spirits, or in the case of smoked DMT, machine elves. The question is how to make sense of these hyper-real states. Is this some kind of mind constructed dreamscape or is this opening the doors of perception to another reality? (It is quite interesting to note that DMT is endogenous to the human brain, and to almost every living organism. What effect it has in moderating our sense of reality is so far an open guess.) My particular view is that the experience can be understood as comprising personal, collective, and otherworldly elements. That is to say, that part of the experience seems to be within and about oneself: a raw, unfiltered experiencing, that dredges up parts of the subconscious. Part of it seems to connect with something like the collective unconscious or a shared archetypal realm. And part seems to be truly otherworldly, allowing for the possibility of encountering external spaces and communicating with external beings.
The second question that must be asked is what is the meaning of this experience. It is not so much the literal experience that matters, but what the meaning of that experience is or what affect it has on the experiencer. For me, I came away convinced of certain insights. There was no great change of belief structure, but certainly an elucidation. I found what I wanted; I found what I could accept. I saw how choice and intention are intertwined in the fabric of reality, how we are meant to be co-creators of this thing we call life, how we are here to merge the dimensions in order to create a new home for being, and that all that matters, all that makes any of it meaningful, is love. Love is the beginning and the end of the story.
I could see this conclusion, but it still took time to integrate it, and to make peace particularly with the overwhelming nature of it all, along with the distressing elements, which did not just end there. I afterwards developed an acute stress reaction that continued for the following months. These distressful elements could be chalked up to a ‘bad trip’, except, encountering the terrifying seems to be par for the course for an ayahuasca journey, which in fact parallels the hero’s journey motif. Such experiences could benefit from being interpreted as such a journey. (For more on distressing experiences, see Stanislav Grof’s comments on spiritual emergencies, or Evans Bush’s Dancing Past the Dark).
While I would certainly not choose to go back in time and opt out of this experience, I also certainly wouldn’t encourage it. There are easier and safer ways to explore. For those who weigh the risks and still want to experience it, my only advice would be to keep in mind who you are, what it is you truly want, and not to believe anything too easily.
For a visual representation that tries to capture the feeling and impact of such experiences as these, check out this montage
