A Personal Account
One Night.
Everything Changed.
What follows is a true account — written by hand, the morning after — of an experience that permanently altered one man's understanding of himself, of reality, and of what we actually are.
The One is the All, the All is the One.
It was late. "I need to just pass out," is what I was wanting. My mind was racing. Scratch that, it was like a hailstorm of thoughts and information. It was too much. "I'm losing my mind. I'm going crazy. Damn, its got to slow down. Ok, calm down, its just the shrooms. You'll be OK."
You see, my girlfriend — now wife — and I had taken 4 grams of magic mushrooms each. That was 5 or 6 hours ago. And we had been "hanging out" since, but a few moments ago my girlfriend was wore out and had passed out. So I'm all alone, and I was at what we call "peaking."
We were dumb and hadn't researched much about shrooms other than what a "fun" recreational dose was — and that info was WRONG. So an hour after eating our doses, my gf was really feeling it and I felt nothing, so I ate another 4 grams. Yes, another 4 grams, so 8 grams in total. Like I said, dumb.
8 grams — that's what Terence McKenna calls a Heroic Dose. I didn't know what I was in for. Terence did.
There I am, freaking out, losing my mind, can't hold a thought — and the one thought I did catch from time to time was that I was losing my mind and going crazy. This scared me. The idea of being like this forever — holy shit. Then at some point the words came into my mind: "Quit fighting it." My mind racing — "Just quit fighting it." WTF? That's not me, what is that? Then again.
And I was fighting it — with every part of my being. Freaking out, scared out of my mind. So I quit. I just gave up. I was tired and my mind had just been put through the ringer. I even thought, "Maybe I'm dying."
— "You're not dying."There it was — a calm, comforting, even loving voice. I couldn't tell you who or what this was, but it made the madness slow to almost nothing, which was a great relief. But this voice, as calming as it was, was ripping everything that made me me right out of my soul. "What's happening?"
— "That's not who you are. What you are.""I am, I am John Doe. I am a dad, I have family I love. I have kids."
— "That's not who you are. You are so much more. Quit fighting it. Let go."I was still fighting it. I was confused, in the dark, hearing this calm, comforting voice rip my soul to shreds and I was helpless to do anything about it. And this went on for a long time — hours it seemed. It was the hardest conversation of my life. Painful.
But eventually I gave up. And I mean really gave up. Not "ok I'll try to relax" gave up. I mean I had nothing left. So I just... stopped fighting. All of it. And the second I did — I mean the literal second — everything changed.
I don't really know how to explain what happened next. I've tried. It's hard. But I'll do my best.
I was no longer a person. I know that sounds crazy. But I wasn't. I wasn't John Doe anymore, I wasn't a dad, I wasn't anything I had been clinging to so hard just moments before. All of that was just... gone. And what was left — what I actually was underneath all of that — was just awareness. Pure awareness. No body, no name, no story.
And it felt like — ok, this is the part where I sound nuts — it felt like being an infinite ball of light. But not light you see. Light you are. And that light was love. Not love like "I love my kids" love. Love like... that's just what everything is made of. That's the only thing that actually exists. I was inside it and I was made of it and honestly, I was it.
And then the knowing. Man. If I wondered anything — anything at all — I just knew it. Instantly. Completely. Like the answer was always there and someone just flipped a light on.
I understood that everything — every single thing — comes from this one Source. Some people call it God. That word works. Whatever you call it, it's real, and it's love, and it's what we all are.
And I was taught something. Simple. Four words I'd never heard before that night.