DOSE:		smoked	Cannabis
	1 hit	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

Some background: I've been meditating regularly for 14 months now. I consider myself partially Enlightened (with a big E) as a result of some very identifiable perceptual shifts called Path-moments. I read the book 'Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha' by Daniel Ingram. To summarize what is relevant: I believe the shifts have increased my perceptual abilities, making my mind more powerful, and hence enhancing the effects of psychedelic substances...

Since about 7 months ago, I've constantly felt this pressure in my head, whenever I care to focus my attention on that part of my body. I've managed to attain all the jhanas (Buddhist term for altered states of consciousness resulting from concentration meditation), and during particularly refined ones, like the Dimension of Nothingness, literally all that was perceived is nothingness (as in, in front of my visual field behind my closed eyes, there is nothing.. below me, there is nothing.. where my body normally is, there was nothing.. literally lost all sense of my body) and this pressure in my head. Conferring with some Dharma buddies, the conclusion I came to is that the pressure represents my 'sense of being', my identification as a self... which identification will disappear when I am done with this Enlightenment stuff.

In the process of attempting to finish, I decided to smoke some Salvia. I have done it a few times before, with not too interesting results, generally I don't remember too well what happens. One time I smoked it and found myself pacing around my apartment, afraid of I-don't-know-what for no-reason-in-particular. I decided to see if my meditation progress helped any with the salvia... and that it did!

There was some weed left in my bowl while I was preparing the salvia, so I took a hit of whatever was left, which was like 1/4th of a regular hit. Not much to feel anything. Then I packed it with an indeterminate amount of 25x salvia extract. I sat down, turned off my monitors, and turned off the lights. I took the hit, keeping the lighter lit the entire time I was inhaling (as I hear salvia must burn hot to be effective), then closed my eyes, still keeping it in. As I felt the effects coming on, about 20 seconds later, I exhaled a bitter-tasting smoke.

What usually happens now is some indeterminate thing that I'm afraid of... this time it did not disappoint. I wonder if there are spirits or what-not in salvia, as I've been smoking the same batch and gotten the same results each time. Anyway, I don't remember this part too well. I ended up opening my eyes, and in the shadows that I was seeing (among a backdrop of darkness in general) shapes or something started coming up, I felt like something was communicating with me. All I could do is attempt a silent protest and some weakly-verbalized words. I ended up laboriously getting off my seat, turning on the lights, sitting back down, confused, on my seat, and closing my eyes again.

This time I got a better grip on things. The pressure in my head - this sense of 'being' - amplified tremendously, until it was the only thing I was focusing on. Normally it's just an indeterminate pressure, roiling around in my brain, be it in the center of my head, or splitting off with little bubbles under my nose or in my temples, always in a random fashion. It's generally quite annoying, as it's a really unpleasant feeling that I can't do much about and is quite unpredictable.

With the salvia, however, I felt like I could really get a grip on it. I felt like I understood all of its subtle movements. An interlude of some background: I was born in Romania, and came to the US when I was young. I'm bi-lingual, but I consider English my 1st language as I speak it much better than Romanian. However, the pressure in my head manifested as a scene that could've been right out of my childhood. I was conversing in Romanian with someone or something, playing in a playground, perhaps doing something with my older brother... and then as the pressure in the head shifted, the scene shifted , to another Romanian-language scene in another environment. While it was happening I thought 'Man this salvia is not doing much,' but looking back it was quite fantastical, replete with emotional, thought-based, and sense-based inputs. Unfortunately I don't remember the particulars, but I don't believe they're important, as I'll explain shortly.

As the salvia was wearing off I found myself doing Insight Meditation, or Vipassana Meditation, or to be precise - meditation leading to Vipassana (insight). There are some clearly identifiable stages I go through when doing insight meditation. The first one is called 'Mind & Body', and it is when you can tell the difference between what is physically felt as one body and what is projected as a result of one's mind. As I was sitting I clearly felt this pain in my right upper arm that I knew was just psychosomatic. It was like a weakness that wasn't there physically, but became apparent as an emotional weakness. What's interesting about these is that I didn't notice it during normal waking hours, but as soon as it was brought to my attention in the salvia-enhanced state, I immediately recognized it as something that had been bothering me for the whole day.

I moved on to the next stage, 'Cause & Effect', when one realizes the basic principles of Cause & Effect. I noticed how as I moved my attention to different aspects of the pressure in my head, different aspects were brought out... thus cause & effect. This sounds quite mundane, as does the previous one, but to know this insight not rationally, but viscerally, is quite mind-opening. I had been through this stage many times before as a course of my meditation practice, but this time it was brought out quite clearly.

I moved on to the next stage, 'The Three Characteristics'. (By the way, details of all these stages can be found in the book mentioned above.) To explain, every possible sensation has three characteristics - it is impermanent, as in, never remaining the same for even an instant; it is not-self, meaning it does not imply the existence of a permanent self, or of any special thing that can identify with - it's just a separate sensation on its own; and it is unsatisfactory, meaning there's always something not-quite-right about it, a way in which it's annoying... this is true for everything I can possible perceive, and though it might not seem so at first, it becomes readily apparent as I meditate, not in the 'I'm deluding myself' way, but in the 'I'm observing everything that's happening and slowly coming to the conclusion that this is true.' I assure you - no delusion is required in order to meditate effectively, and no delusion comes of it. In any case, I noticed separate sensations in the pressure, how I tried to follow them with my mind but never quite could (unsatisfactoriness) and how they never quite stayed put (impermanence). (Any two of the characteristics imply the third, if you think about it.) Again, this sounds boring, but it's quite the trip when I do it.

The next stage was quite interesting. It is called 'The Arising & Passing Away' and it's marked by remarkable increases in perceptual ability. It did not fail to impress - and never does. Basically my perception kept getting more & more hyped up until I felt I was feeling *everything* that was going on in my head. Each tiny shift in pressure, I noticed. Each actual aspect of the pressure - as the pressure, though it felt constant, was not constant, and was in fact made of tiny vibrations - became apparent. I noticed 30 or 40 sensations per *second*, and I mean that literally. 30 or 40 sensations making up one second of the seemingly-permanent pressure. To further explain this stage, when it happened while meditating on the ringing in my ears: how I can hear a pure tone, a pure sine wave, and it sounds constant... What happens in this stage is that it begins to break down. In the 'Three Characteristics' stage I start hearing gaps in the pure sound - my mind can't quite attune to it all. But as I move into the 'Arising & Passing Away', I start hearing each tiny thing making up that pure tone, until the pure tone actually sounds quite rough, as I'm actually hearing the peaks of all those sine waves, 30-40 times a second... it's quite exciting!

This stage, by the way, is kind of a 'Point of No Return' in terms of spiritual practice, the first time I crossed it. It can be marked by grandiose visions; feelings of super powers; bright lights appearing behind one's closed eyes; a feeling of oneness with everyone and everything; being overcome with supreme love; feeling like one is on top of the world; feeling that one is Enlightened, that one 'gets it'. Once I cross it, I am pretty much doomed to seek 'something' out, an answer to life's questions, until I finish the cycle (that consists of all these stages)...

Luckily I had done all this before, so it was par for the course. After the A&P comes a stage called 'Dissolution' where the remarkable perceptual ability fades and I am left feeling raw and that I can't meditate. Honestly I don't remember much beyond this point, though I'm sure I passed through the next stages relatively quickly, reached a stage called 'Equanimity', where one feels OK with regards to all this, and culminating in a Fruition, which is when the entirety of everything that one perceives blanks out for a moment, much like a segmentation fault on a computer - a taste of nirvana, indeed.

Anyway, that was a bit of a side-track, but what did I learn from all this? I learned that the sense of being was simply composed of everything that had happened to me as a human being, up until the current moment. It was just childhood experiences burned into memories, which had shaped me somehow as an adult, leading to what I am today. The salvia seems to have made that crystal clear. And it brought a literal equanimity towards it all. Whereas before, I was quite pissed whenever it intensified, as this pressure was unwelcome and I wanted it to go away - and being pissed in this way just intensified it, much like being afraid of something only leads to more fear - now I was able to view it in a different light. 'It's just human nature,' I say to myself now. 'Of course it happens. It's OK, dude!' Now whenever it begins to intensify, I can look at it with a different light... I can accept it as just some deeply-buried aspect of me lashing out, really just wanting to be accepted - and once I do accept it for what it is, a natural result of what happened in my past - karma, in the purest, Buddhist sense of the word - then it disappears like it was never there to begin with.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 89963
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Feb 2, 2017	Views: 1,927
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Salvia divinorum (44), Meditation (128) : Mystical Experiences (9), Combinations (3), Alone (16)