DOSE:

repeated

sublingual

Salvia divinorum

(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

I experimented with Sage Goddess Emerald Essence on three occassions in 2003. This is a report of my experiences on those three occassions. To give you some background, I have practised various meditation techniques since 1990, and have had the occassional interesting and 'meaningful' dream experiences and 'visions' which I attribute to particularly successful meditation sessions. I am attracted to the philosophies of Advaita, Buddhism and Zen, which describe the phenomenal universe and the sense of self as illusory, with Awareness being the sole underlying reality. I really do not have much of a record of experimenting with drugs, hallucinogens or entheogens, except for using pot sporadically, and a sole LSD experience on top of a hill in the forests that was entertaining, but not particularly coherent or meaningful. In other words, all my so-called 'meaningful' experiences have been either spontaneous or meditation-induced, not substance-induced.

Salvia Experience #1 (sometime in 2003):
I was on the floor of my bedroom at night. I squirted a couple of dropperfuls of Emerald Essence into my mouth and held the stinging, bitter liquid in my mouth for about 20 minutes. I spat the liquid out, and feeling very, very sleepy, drifted off to sleep. Something was conscious of a very loud, deep bass thumping sound, and an enveloping darkness. I say 'something', because I was not aware of myself as a human or an embodied, self-aware being, in some sense, I was the sound. But yet paradoxically, 'I' was aware of the sound. The sound was extremely loud and I could not figure out what it was, nor was I making any attempt to discern its cause. Why would I? I was just aware, with no motive. I could hear every nuance in this sound.

Slowly, awareness of self returned. The source of the sound suddenly dawned upon me, it was my heart beating. I was now aware of myself as a tiny point somewhere deep inside my body, in total darkness (my eyes were closed), and I could hear my heart beating deeply, loudly, as if it were filling a cathedral. This perception continued for what felt like a few more minutes, and then as I opened my eyes and the effect wore off, my sensory perceptions returned to 'normal'. In retrospect, the experience did not feel like a hallucination at all. Instead, it felt like a genuine, hyper-sensory experience.



Salvia Experience #2 (sometime in 2003):
I was in the same setting as in the previous experience, on the floor of my bedroom. After holding the Emerald Essence in my mouth for about 20 minutes, I spat the liquid out, and again, feeling very, very sleepy, drifted off to sleep. This time, 'I' was conscious of a very loud, rushing sound, and an enveloping darkness. Again, the sound was extremely loud and all encompassing, and as before, you could say that I was the sound. I could hear every nuance in this sound. When my awareness of self returned, the source of the sound suddenly dawned upon me, it was my breathing.

I was now aware of myself as a tiny point somewhere deep inside my body, in total darkness. My body was still asleep and breathing restfully. I could hear every nuance in the sound of my breathing with a heightened perception. Think of being in a giant wind tunnel and hearing the wind rush by. This perception continued for what felt like a few more minutes, and then as I opened my eyes and the effect wore off, my sensory perceptions returned to 'normal'. Again, the experience felt like a genuine, hyper-sensory experience.



Salvia Experience #3 (sometime in 2003):
On this occassion, I was alone at home in the daytime. If I recall right, I took a larger dose than on the previous two occassions. After holding the Emerald Essence in my mouth for about 20-30 minutes, I lay down with my eyes closed. Soon, I started seeing visuals, strange geometric patterns and colors that I perceived to be 'trivial' and mildly annoying. At some point, my sense of self dissolved completely. I suddenly felt I had become a set of buildings, roads and vehicles in the neighborhood I grew up in as a teenager.

I was not a human or organic being anymore, I was a set of insentient objects. There was simply no memory of my past existence as a person. What's more, I wasn't one, I was many. This was the weirdest sensation of them all. We are normally used to being or identifying with one thing or self, not a multiplicity of things at the same time. While the imagery associated with this feeling was a typical hallucination, the experience of being many things at once is apparently within the capacity of the mind, otherwise I could not have experienced it.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 60813
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 5, 2007	Views: 9,846
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Alone (16)