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A Visit With My Transcendental Other
Salvia divinorum
Citation:   spacegarbage. "A Visit With My Transcendental Other: An Experience with Salvia divinorum (exp70547)". Erowid.org. Feb 2, 2013. erowid.org/exp/70547

 
DOSE:
0.5 bowls smoked Salvia divinorum (extract)
BODY WEIGHT: 180 lb
I’ll get straight to the good stuff and sum it all up later, cuz I hate when people drag on with nonsense.

I was 31 when I smoked salvia for the first time. It was 20x. Honestly, I have done acid and shrooms in the range of a few hundred times, but nothing could ever prepare me for this experience. I can’t even compare it to these past two psychedelics I mention.

My friend who gave it to me said he smoked it and he couldn’t stop laughing. My experience was the complete opposite. I sat on my couch with the goods in front of me, thinking I was going to smoke this, chill for a minute and enjoy, then do some yard work. Man I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I smoked what I would say was about a half full bowl mixed with cannabis. Held the first hit in for about 30 seconds, then it felt like someone plugged my tongue into an electrical outlet, immediately followed by a tornado of white light that felt like a full body tattoo spiraling upwards through my body, then I shot out of my roof and about 100 yards above my house. I could see for miles to the east, west, and north, but the south was no longer there. My whole neighborhood was being rolled up like a carpet. The core of the earth was being peeled up, and nothingness was left behind. Wham! I shot back down into my body which was still seated on the couch. It felt like someone or something had me by the scruff of the neck and was trying to roll me up into my couch and my wall behind me. It was extremely uncomfortable. I had an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia and could not for the life of me get up from my seated position on my couch. I remember seeing my two dogs walking across the floor, but they seemed like they were in another realm or dimension, but constructed of the material reality I was familiar with. It looked sinister and eternal, more real than real. I think I remember trying to spit a few times on my floor thinking this would make the feeling go away. It was like my saliva was liquid sandpaper.

Next thing I remember, I am standing in my hallway merging with the walls. I felt like a fly stuck to fly paper. No matter how hard I tried, I could not become separate from my wall. I tried to turn around and everything behind me didn’t exist, it was like I was only forward motion and nothingness followed. I would look at my arms and they were swirling molecules becoming one with anything they touched. Same with the rest of my body. Then I come to in my doorway of the foyer gripping with all my strength at the walls trying to hold the force back. By now I felt an entity, what I perceived as The Angel of Death pulling me towards my front door. To my right it seemed like an endless tunnel made by its wing. I was pleading “Hold on! Hold on! I’m not ready yet! Hold on!” This entity seemed to have no emotions and was carrying out an order he would have no personal concern with, like he had seen people in such a state of confusion like mine countless times. I pleaded “I have to call my wife, she’s at work, please!” “Have you already taken my wife?” I asked. It replied in a nonverbal language that was louder than words. “We are taking everything.”

I kept trying to resist the force with all my strength. I have now been pulled to my front door and peek out. It seemed like the neighborhood was gone, but I can’t remember. I then remember feeling like I had been lifted into the depths of the universe and was surrounded by darkness. Off in the far distance was a swirling black hole surrounded by a color wheel of light and it seemed to be pulsing with a red light in the hole. I perceived this as God and I have been a devoted atheist for about 15 years. One hit of Salvia is all it took to make me believe in something more, something we as mere mortals can never comprehend. By now my body was being sucked up into the vortex and leaving my mind behind to pine away at what was yet to come, my judgment. I pleaded to let me have my physical life back repeatedly, but was never given a response of any kind. My mind was left alone in the infinite darkness, the scariest feeling I have ever had.

Next I found myself standing by my bookshelves feeling like the books were all swallowing me in a never ending wave of two dimensional brightly colored plates or tiles. It was so beautiful but yet utterly horrifying at the same time. Then I heard the chanting of my first and last name, which started to sound like it was made of sand, and made it seem like the whole of my being in this realm was made of sand. I had flashes of memories I never knew I had, then an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, then a feeling like I was being cradled my some maternal entity, a giant head of my mother maybe, then it felt like my head was tenfold, then I felt like I had been in this other dimension before. It seemed like it summed up my whole life into a couple of thoughts or billions thoughts summed up in a matter of seconds, that which constructed what I knew of as consensus reality. I felt like I was a speck of dust attached to my infinite self or transcendental other, like there were a billion different versions of myself, but I was stuck in a vacuum of space and time which was trapping me here. Then I heard the chanting of a word that sounded something like ”Awyouwahyoubeinbonga, Awyouwahyoubeinbonga Awyouwahyoubeinbonga, Awyouwahyoubeinbonga.”

Next I remember standing back in my library staring at my tile floor and my dog staring at me. I was so glad to see something living that I recognized. Then I immediately had the feeling that my dog was the devil behind this cosmic joke. Most of you know what I’m talking about when I mention the paranoid feeling that everybody is playing a joke on you. Then I stumbled around my house chasing my dog, everything disappearing behind me still. Then I saw both my dogs in the kitchen then it dawned on me that I had smoked Salvia. I sat down on my couch as sections of my living room fell back into place one by one. I clutched my heart and noticed it was racing like crazy, I was covered in perspiration. Then I had the overwhelming feeling to get outside.

I sat in my chair in the back yard trying to figure out what the hell just happened. I could see energy fields surrounding everything I looked at for about an hour. I was dizzy for three days afterward. For example, every time I bent forward, it felt like my body kept going. The whole next week I had a very humble feeling and was seeing the world through a new pair of eyes. I was aware of all the things I took for granted. I've read that Salvia is used as an antidepressant. I couldn’t agree more. All my petty worries were gone and I loved life for what it was knowing at any second it could all be ripped away from me.

I don’t know what to make of this experience and what it’s significance is other than it made me believe that there is something more out there and we are but a stage in the process of becoming God.

If you Google “New York Times: When A Brain Scientist Suffers A Stroke”, This is a neurologists speech on a stroke she had where there was a hemorrhage in the left side of her brain. It took her seven years to recover. It’s crazy how her experience of her stroke is so similar to many people’s Salvia experiences. I guess Salvia shuts down the left side of your brain or something, and the right side takes over. I don’t know but it’s life altering.

I have smoked Salvia many times since that first overwhelming experience although with extreme caution. When I feel it start to take me, I panic and exhale. I have learned this is the best way to smoke it, in light doses. I take a hit, hold it in for about 15 seconds. I repeat this process every 5 minutes.

I have extreme sharpening of vision, and sometimes I can see auras of the people and things around me. Sometimes it makes everything two dimensional. When I say this, I mean physically and mentally. For instance, my surroundings turn into layers stacked together and when I am sitting in my living room it seems like I am at the edge of the universe in my little room, back to back with other realities right outside my little room. My thoughts lose sense of space and time, kind of like my life flashing before me in an instant. For example, I can think of a haircut I had when I was a in 6th grade, a shirt I wore in 8th grade, an earring I wore in high school, a t.v show I watched at such and such age, and on and on, but all of these images of these memories I conjure up flash at lightning speed and curly cue off into infinity. I remember typing in my journal while I was on a low dose 'I feel like drop of grease on the tip of Satan's jerry curl'. Words can’t do my experiences justice and I’m sure I sound foolish trying to explain. I know when I smoke with my wife in the room, I can see her soul. I also see these zipper heads some people speak of, like heads of people traveling through the darkness like a zipper pullin their reality behind them.

All these people posting videos their experiences online will be the reason Salvia will soon be classified as a schedule one drug. Sad but true and it’s too late to do anything about it, except go on eBay and by you a few plants and grow it yourself and risk the consequences. I think we have a lot to learn about ourselves and our souls with this plant. Ever since I was introduced to it, I have been obsessed with it‘s mystery.

Please take extreme caution when using this entheogen, it literally launches you into another universe.

Exp Year: 2007ExpID: 70547
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 31
Published: Feb 2, 2013Views: 9,463
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Salvia divinorum (44) : First Times (2), Retrospective / Summary (11), Alone (16)

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