DOSE:

195 seeds

oral

Morning Glory

(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

245 lb

Try to imagine spending an entire day entranced by the carpet and the wall. An entire day laying on the floor, humming occasionally. Spending half of that time with your eyes closed. Imagine what you must be seeing, what must be going on in your mind, to be happy spending an entire day at it! The answer: enough stuff to write seven pages about.

I tried to sprout 10 grams of Morning Glory seeds (about 260) by soaking them 24 hours and letting them sit with occasional rinsing for another 48 hours. Only about 200 seeds sprouted, leaving about 60 behind. Sunday morning was my chosen time.

7:45 to 8:30 am getting seed sprouts out of husks. They look like ugly little wrinkled aliens. I said a little ‘thank you’ to them, asking for guidance and a positive experience.

8:30 to 9:00 eating seeds blended in applesauce. Not too bad flavor, just nutty and grassy. Also had 2 baby aspirin with a chug of OJ, because I heard Morning Glory is a vasoconstrictor, and I wanted to thin my blood a little to make up for it.

9:00 to 11:15 watching Frasier with my wife Nellie. Horrible sick feeling and off baseline 'swimminess'. Did not want to move because I felt so pukey. I got a bag in case I vomited (never did). Occasional hilarity. Pukeyness starts to fade, starting to feel a comfortable drugged 'opiate' type of feeling. Like I can melt into the ground. Cat occasionally afraid of me. Can’t always control volume of my voice so well. Sometimes feel like I have to remind myself to breathe. Thinking about food is bad.

By 12:00 my limbs were heavy. Slow movements. But I could type fine. Reminds me of when I accidentally mixed muscle relaxants with wine. Tried a caramelized pecan. The nut tastes way different than it did yesterday. It 'sparkled' on my tongue like pop rocks, and all I could really get out of it was a sense of spiciness. When it got to the back of my mouth, I almost gagged - I did NOT want to swallow it. I eventually pulverized it to liquid, and tolerated it going down. I think, if I wasn't so pukey earlier, it would have been interesting to explore flavors more. Because it felt as though I could have analyzed every component flavor of the nut and the sugars, if I had wanted to pay attention to them, but would not get the normal 'pleasure' from the tastes. Water was ok at first but I think the taste of my mouth was just terrible in general. Slight gagginess. Water tastes like medicine. When I went to get the water, it was like walking uphill all the time. Nellie later said “eww, morning glory breath.”

Just after noon it started happening. I had lain down because I felt so sick-was trying to get comfortable, rested my cold feet on the heater. Decided to cover my eyes and try to meditate on some issues I’d written down. Tried to clear my head. There was an annoying funny dancing ‘lizard man’ who I tried to shoo away. This felt like more-vivid-than-usual imagination, not like a ‘vision’. He came back, and a scene was crystallizing. There were other dancing figures. The lizard was more accurately a cutout paper turtle face attached to a stick puppet with cutout human-style arms and legs. He was dancing really energetically to a 1-2 beat like a heartbeat, but pounding, like drums. Later I said to myself that I now understood what Jim Morrison meant by the “Lizard King”, and I understood tribal drumming and dancing a lot better. It was very close to that arm-akimbo Egyptian dancing, first one way, then the other. Symmetrical. Mirror image. Very insistent.

Amazingly, this was the same place, same circus lane, I had left off (frustrated) when I tried meditating and chewing salvia. The scene was a dark pathway like a sideshow, leading between circus booths or tents. Reminds me of a deck of cards (Alice in wonderland?). Reminds me of Cirque du Soleil; of a hall of mirrors. Reminds me of Pagliacci. The path goes off to a vanishing point at the horizon. I was trying to explain things to Nellie and I said, “I'm trying to interpret it, the dancing, and I think it means 'go with the flow' and 'let it work' but that also means not trying to interpret it...” so I did. I let go. Were the figures’ arms and legs starting to look like symbols? Like writing? Like Mayan glyphs?

Hard to describe it all. It ended up being that the lane turned into a sort of tunnel vision, the figures, tents whatever replicated themselves so I was looking at a 3-lobed circular field, with a 'pole' (like a magnetic pole) at the center which was the vanishing point (of the footpath and scene), and everything radiating fairly symmetrically out to the edges. But that doesn't really describe it because there are gradients of color and stuff. It 'fades' out too. Now I understand why people use the word ‘kaleidoscope’ when describing drug trips a lot. I just stayed with this and noticed that elements streamed out beyond the 'circle' of my field of vision, bars of color running out like liquid, and they ended up leading to the center of another 'pool' of vision, another radial node or pole, each with its own little scene or universe. I didn't look too hard in any of them, I was just kinda watching the larger structure and getting more entranced with how things all fit together, because these bars of color would cross other bars streaming out from other nodes and form beautiful interwoven patterns that would fill my mind's eye, always changing.

I suppose the effect is like in a baroque castle with a black/white checkerboard floor, imagine the walls are curved mirrors and you are moving and changing your perspective all the time, with more mirrors above and below. The patterns are changing all the time while following this 'ripples/interference' theme of dark and light bands crisscrossing. And I realized the crisscrossing bands were forming a cylindrical lattice, like a lattice tube, that I was viewing down into, like a bottomless well. It reminds me of the 'well of souls' at the Temple Mount. Remember the lattice is always morphing a little, so the far away part is elongating and dripping away into nothingness at the 'vanishing point' in the center of view. This, again, is one of these circular fields or 'poles' that I described.

Then I turned my view and saw there's another whole field or 'pole' nearby, and look up, there's another, and down another. And they stack neatly like a stack of 10 pipes nestled together – one circle nestled halfway between the two circles below it, and so on. It was sort of like being in a jungle gym cube where each exit is circular. I was wondering why my initial circle was splitting into 3 symmetrical lobes - that's why!!! Because the circles fit together so that 3 circles meet. By now, it was clearly more than just ‘vivid imagination’. When explaining to Nellie, I felt like I was explaining the structure of the universe - that's why there's a holy trinity, etc. Because all the little ‘possible universes,’ as I interpret them, are circular and fit together in that way that circles must. But throughout the day I would see lobed or petaled shapes with fourfold symmetry, five, six, and on and on. Like looking straight down at a flower where the top layer has 3 petals, the next has four, the next has five… I was seeing this form repeated everywhere all day. Also saw lots of things formed like seashells and radial sea creatures, octopus, etc (had calamari the other day…). Felt like I understood these creatures; their form, the way they grew.

Somewhere in here, I started involuntarily humming and twitching a little. The twitching was to follow the same dance patterns as the frog man and other figures. The humming (without meaning to! Without thinking about it!) seemed to turn into the 'yoga groan' or mantra or chant intonation, just a long deep note so I could feel the vibrations and see them in the patterns, but it made me realize why Indian meditators use mantras and ‘groaning breath’. I said to Nellie, 'I understand a lot better things like Indian temples with dancing figures carved outside, and humming/mantra meditation'. Indeed I now believe I had the same experience that these yogis have when they reach ‘enlightenment’. I fully believe you can see it without drugs, but I feel like I needed the drug to open the gateway, because I was so blocked up. I also was crawling around, contorting my body into weird positions that felt right at the moment. This is what yogis describe when the ‘kundalini energy’ is awakened within a person! I wasn’t thinking about that at the time!

I was oohing and ahhing and trying to describe it to Nellie and then realized I had to pee real badly. So I tried to get up - but I was distracted by the carpet! Because the carpet had the same 3-lobed symmetrical shifting pattern- I was looking at another 'pole' or node, or bottomless well! I said 'nah, can't be' and looked at another part of the carpet. There was another 3-lobed pattern node! There were several! I tried to focus, to follow the details of one. Its contours were shifting. 'Tricky', I muttered.

It's like dripping honey from a bottle onto the surface of a pond. So let's say we draw a Celtic knot or something round like that, with three-fold radial symmetry, at least roughly. The center of symmetry would be one of these ‘nodes’. Now, imagine that the bottom layer of the knot drawing-the molecular layer that is touching the water-is slowly falling away, down into the water, expanding, changing its contours. I can still see the knot at the surface, but I could also move my view down into the water a little and follow the contours of the knot into a totally different shape farther down. If I look at the right spot, I can see where these contour surfaces met others and formed a totally different shape. I was seeing Nordic knot work and how it was connected (in higher dimensions than our normal 3 or 4) to tongues of flame, and how those were connected to tree branches… and so on forever! and more was being written all the time by the dripping honey above. It didn't look like honey in the vision, I was just using those words to describe it - but I now remember that the previous day, I was drizzling honey for a recipe and was kinda mesmerized by the little lined patterns I could draw! But now, here, I was seeing how EVERYTHING is like that, following the same sort of rule in some higher dimension.

I ended up going to pee in the sink. I thought everything was fine, and was using the spray attachment to wash all the pee down, and SOMEHOW, maybe I was distracted by a sight or sensation, but I sprayed the most expensive piece of equipment in the room: my MP3 player. Later, it seems to me the entire day was symmetrical. I sat on the edge of the bed touching Nellie in the morning and at night. We watched Frasier in the morning, and at night. I had a period on the floor, seeing patterns behind my eyes, in the morning, then later on. So I was wondering, what was the center of the day. What happened at the 'vanishing point' of symmetry? Time was all messed up, I know that. The center, for me wasn't noon. I’m starting to wonder if I WENT THROUGH one of these poles, these bottomless wells I was seeing, just like going through a black hole/wormhole into another universe. And that was the period of most-distortion, and that's why time seems most messed up right around the spraying of the MP3 player. It’s almost like I blacked out when I was holding the sprayer. The memory is in little slices or fragments, little frozen frames, me in shock, realizing and taking the player to dry. Walking to Nellie in little eternal frozen steps, saying 'I cannot believe I did that.' She was very gentle and reassuring, because she knew she had to be, because it might turn into a bad trip otherwise. But also because she meant it, and in the grand scheme, everything will be fine.

I spent a period there, kneeled in front of her, trying to cover my eyes to see these glorious unfolding radial designs more clearly. They were starting to be Celtic /Nordic interwoven shapes, with - one of the most important themes - lines of varying thickness, like calligraphy, but where one edge flowed off and became its own line doing something new. Maybe there is software that can show this. Another important shape I kept seeing was a ‘recurve’ – a line would go one direction, and then take a cute little scalloped detour before heading off in a different direction. If I zoomed in on the points of this recurve, I would see they weren’t really sharp points, they had little recurves of their own. I saw how it was just like the scallops in the Christmas lights Nellie had hung the previous day. I would see these little synchronicities all day, and feel like there was a cool little ‘conspiracy’ in the universe which I had uncovered. “Tricky”, I muttered.

The shapes behind my eyes were very much like fractals but with a design to it - a communicable meaning. Like the universe is all dripping honey, and it’s up to us to make something intelligent out of it, and afterward it will flow on and become something else. Tried calling my brother Joe for the first time. All I could really say was 'fractals... EVERYWHERE.' and 'I think you are the kind of person who would appreciate seeing what I am seeing' and 'but it makes you feel really sick, so there is probably a better way' and 'I’m looking at the CARPET.' I hung up. I looked at the clock. It was around 1. “What a difference in one hour,” I said.

During this middle period, I got to experience synesthesia very intensely. I also had a way with words, that's for sure. I composed a little song for Nellie and the words and tune were completely rippling through and reflected in the fractal celtic or elven knot work I was looking at behind my eyes. I showed Nellie a drawing of how the tune followed a shape - it was much rougher and stupider on paper, but she got to see the idea. Then-!- I showed how the shape was also right there in the shape of her face and features at that moment. For that time period, I felt like an ANCIENT SONG MASTER. Like I could write the most amazing song lyrics without any effort; they were just dripping down into me like rain down a spout, and rolling off my tongue- no thinking. And I was seeing their shapes in the spiraling symbols in my head! Not letter shapes, but the actual shape of the sound, translated into flowing line symbols. Felt like I understood the first discovery of writing; and Sufi music.

I had been living with an underlying guilt for a long time, without really realizing it. Maybe from breaking up with Nellie and hurting her so badly years ago. We both have a quirk where we 'over-apologize' to be sure the other person is really ok with everything. Today I said, with sudden clarity, 'I’m not going to apologize.' Meaning the MP3 player, but also meaning my whole life. 'You chose this. I’m not going to apologize.' and I had a great sense of calmness, maybe even lightness like a burden being lifted. I think I’ve been able to let that guilt go.

I spent some time sitting with her, looking into her eyes and at her face- so beautiful!- and tried to explain how her eyebrows formed cathedral arches (wasn't very articulate, mostly used my hands, and said, 'forever.... forever...' ) eventually (my, how long it took to finish a sentence! but each moment was necessary!) I explained that it wasn't just one arch; it was a hall of arches receding with depth. If you didn't move, it was just one, but if you moved, the ones behind would peek out, and would form a strobe pattern fading off to blackness. That was what I meant when I said 'forever'. The two eyebrow arches overlapped in the center forming a complex diamond shape in her forehead.

We talked a little, she was saying everything was fine but she didn't realize I would need her full attention so much, and I was saying I thought she could probably do her own thing from there on. (Much harder to say at the time!)

Laid on the floor some more. Trying to draw some of the shapes, which was hard, mostly because pen and paper were so inadequate, but also because I didn't have the skill to translate the exact curving shape. In all fairness, it had changed instantly, so wasn't easy to remember. Also it was so much more multidimensional. Felt like I was getting a glimpse of the universe the way 'god' would see it. That everything we see in front of us has shape and form in higher dimensions we can’t see, and being able to follow those curving surfaces down their little wormholes all the way, to see how one thing was connected to another thing on the other side of the room! And for me, all the lines were connecting in Nellie, and I told her, and that is what the little song was about too.

Somewhere around here I noticed the wall above the window. There was a frozen image of a funny skeleton with its head being knocked off -seemed straight out of the monkey island computer game-- and as I looked, I could see the same scene but with the head farther away, then farther still. Like shifting freeze-frames that your eye just picks up out of the existing random paint pattern- but very real! Every time you moved or your eyes shifted, it would be a slightly different version of the scene. “Tricky,” I muttered. Later, I looked up there again and saw the skeleton scene - one big version, then a hundred smaller versions arranged all around it. I know that if I’d looked real close at one of the scenes, I would have seen it replicated a hundred times, smaller, within itself. Forever. Forever.

At some point Nellie started to cook oatmeal and millet for the week. Oh, and she brought coffee over and offered me a sip. I smelled it -good- put some on my lips- fine- but my stomach didn't want or need anything. She said, 'Don't want it?' I handed it back, grunting, saying 'The bubbles are nice'. I had been sitting there staring down into the foam, just enjoying the infinite interlocking of the bubbles. And later when I looked at the millet simmering on the stove, (Nellie covered it again and I said 'more look' so she let me look more) it was really really nice- almost a revelation. Because every time a bubble would come up from the bottom of the pan, it would lift a perfect little flower of millet up with it- five grains, I think, in a radial flower- amazing!

Looked over her shoulder out the window and became lost in the flowerlike shapes formed by the snow on the grass. Symmetry everywhere! Couldn’t believe what I was seeing! At one point she asked me, “Why is your face so red?” and I said “My face was up against the cat just now.” She had been curled up and it looked like my face would fit perfectly in the cup shape she formed, so I put it there. It was nice. Maybe there was a little bit of allergic reaction, but no biggie. I looked at our old fashioned hand-inked map of France. Up by the word “France,” there was a funny cartoony face of a French man with sunglasses, round jowls and a thin mustache, holding a cigarette. I realized the face was formed by eastern Belgium.

Went to bathroom upstairs and was transfixed by our poster of architectural features. I felt like all these artists had seen the same thing I had and were displaying it each their own way, and I laughed like being shown a magic trick or having a plot/conspiracy revealed and everything becomes clear. I then became lost in a bathroom tile. First I saw paisley 'buds' like amoebas. Then realized how they are attached as heads and ears to long-eared slender Buddha figures. Then got a close up of faces, and suddenly there were a thousand faces, different poses and expressions of the same basic face type. Later on another bathroom trip I saw horses in the same tile, a knight on a horse, first one, then a hundred all over- big, small, horses within horses. Reminded me of cave paintings and I wondered if the old cave painters had stared at the patterns on the cave wall, then gone and traced the animal forms they found. Another tile showed me lots of different animals, including some that were like 5 animals within the same shape. Felt like I understood Northwest Indian art, those stylized animals made out of shapes within shapes… Somewhere in there I also saw very clearly an Aztec/ Maya stylized face with headgear. They are supposedly the original users of Morning Glory, but I think every culture has seen what I’m seeing. I think it’s as old as time.

At 5 or 6 I tried to write this, but it felt almost impossible to describe, and that whatever I said would be taken as a nearly worthless, shallow experience. I could walk ok, tried calling Joe again; talked to him but still couldn't really convey the experience. By about 8 I could eat - and did - stomach still not completely happy but will tolerate it. Flavors back to normal. I was still seeing things but was more able to separate the inner and outer worlds. For several more hours until bed time, I was functional but still slipped into seeing patterns with open/closed eyes. We watched a few episodes of Frasier. I didn’t pay much attention to the story because I kept being drawn in to the patterns of a sweater or the strong angles, amazingly FLORAL angles, formed by Niles’ suit and tie. Slept very well. Next morning I felt like life was beautiful, I was connected to the universe, the sun was glorious, the snow on the mountains was incredible, and mundane things were silly. I’d been feeling jaded for years and now I can love everything again!

I now feel I understand southeast Asian temples with triangular rooflines reaching for heaven in an iterative fashion. I understand how even if my body dies and disintegrates, the molecules maintain a consciousness that goes on. I always wanted to be able to see in higher dimensions, and I got to do that. I understand that there are other ways of seeing besides our way. It is the reassurance I needed; that there really is something beyond our waking 3-dimensional life. I understand Indian shamans retiring for days to do a vision quest, to come back with a heightened state of consciousness that enables them to offer totally new perspectives on tired problems.

On the night of the day after, I could still see amazing patterns behind my eyes, and wrote down lots of art ideas coming from them. The next morning, I felt morose, because I was afraid I’d lost the connection. I meditated (no drugs) and hummed the ‘melody’ or ‘mantra’ that I was given. I was able to regain a sense of lightness and buzzing body feeling. I can’t say I saw anything in the vivid way of before, but I was able to be in the same state of mind and see how objects had lines that could be continued to form amazing unexpected symmetrical shapes. And maybe, with the right conditions, I will see those things in my mind again. Maybe tonight, when the lights are out…

It was a very good, healing, introspective experience. I was worried I would get no effects with 200 seeds!!!! I almost don't care what more I can see, though I guess I am curious, but it feels like I’ve been shown the most profound thing I could possibly have seen at this time. Do we all see the same things, and just describe them differently? Or do other people really see entities etc? Must do more research online. I didn’t necessarily get direct answers to the issues I had written down, but man, did I get some amazing revelations. Before, I had been very focused on sex as the ‘best thing in the world’, and I feel I was shown how it’s not the only interesting thing. I had been focused on the pleasures of food in an unhealthy way sometimes, and I was shown a state of mind where food can be explored and appreciated without ever being swallowed. But then, still, maybe it wasn’t ‘real’ enlightenment, maybe it was that wily winding vine, the Morning Glory, trying to show me its world, and how I can interpret everything as a flower if I look for it. Tricky.

---------------
AUTHOR ADDENDUM

I would like to add some information to the report.

1. My age is 28. I am an artist. I have been interested in meditation and ancient practices for years.

2. I dosed first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

3. Sex remains uninteresting 5 days later.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 75737
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Aug 3, 2009	Views: 8,134
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Morning Glory (38) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Relationships (44), Music Discussion (22), Mystical Experiences (9), Glowing Experiences (4)