The more I applied this analogy to our experiences the better I liked it. For one thing, the idea of a melting effect helped to explain why the mind becomes so suggestible in the higher stages of ketamine cookery, making it possible to remold (and hence regenerate?) the formerly crystallized substance of the psyche. Surely this was the golden key to some mystery. But what door was it intended to unlock?
4: Samadhi Therapy
SPECIAL NOTE
Emergence reactions have occured in approximately 12 percent of patients.
The psychological manifestations vary in severity between pleasant dream-like states, vivid imagery, hallucinations, and emergence delirium. In some cases these states have been accompanied by confusion, excitement, and irrational behavior which a few patients recall as an unpleasant experience. The duration ordinarily lasts no more than a few hours; in a few cases however, recurrences have taken place up to 24 hours post-operative. No residual psychological effects are known to have resulted from the use of Ketalar.
More and more I found myself preoccupied with the issue of establishing the fairy-tale kingdom of ketamine solidly on earth. I wanted this magic to be real, and felt convinced that it could be. As a result, the endeavor to bring my two worlds into a synergistic unity gave rise to an energetic attempt to keep my personal life well organized. Otherwise I would have felt swamped by the new realizations that were flooding my mind. There may have been a compulsive edge to my determination to maintain an immaculate house, update a correspondence averaging two hours a day and take long daily baths. In this need for order I was aware that the psychedelic state can foment mental aberrations, just as extra-fertile soil can produce a bumper crop of weeds. Accordingly, I would suggest that anyone who wishes to experiment extensively with ketamine would be well advised to spend extra time tending his spiritual garden of self-development.
LSD and mescaline both left me feeling "kinky" for some time after. Looking back, it seems as though in certain ways they did temporarily warp my perceptions of this world's circumstances and of my own place within the scheme. This mind-bending effect does not seem to have occurred with ketamine which, by contrast, has served as a truth medicine sharpening both intellect and senses. It may be, however, that ketamine could feed delusions of grandeur inasmuch as it contributes to a feeling of being invincible or omnipotent. A weak ego might thereby become inflated, even though egotism per se is not rooted in the bright world.
On the 28th of November, the Monday after our wedding, we were finally able to breath sighs of relief at the thought that the house was furnished, thank you notes had been dispatched, the budget was balanced, our health was fine and friends and family had all received their share of attention. Since it was Thanksgiving weekend we still had a day to ourselves. It seemed the perfect time for an at-home trip.
Session 6
The injection was given and within two minutes the familiar cricket chirps began their welcoming chorus. Outside, gray clouds were looming over the evergreen trees of our northern clime, but inside the walls were melting into a diffusion of golden light. "Oh yes, I'm going home again," I exclaimed, aware of being repetitive but unable to restrain my pleasure.
To my surprise my mind became permeated with oriental feelings. First I remembered the Japanese garden that had been the ornament of my childhood home, the Japanese fairy tales I had loved so much, flowered silk kimonos, pretty paper birds and lanterns, dragon kites-all things Japanese flowed into a collage like oil paints swirling together. I was savoring the beauty of the archetype of every Japanese landscape that had ever been, while merging with the supremely esthetic soul of Japan. Easily, happily, I let myself be drawn into the essence of that exquisite awareness as though being condensed into a round black dot, like the pupil of an eye. Then I went right on through that eye and was back once more to that spinning wheel which this time seemed like a brighter, pleasanter place to be. I could remember it all, but it was too far removed from brain-conditioned thought processes to try to describe.
On the path of return I seemed to be in a place of wheels. It was being made manifest that all creation is based on some form of rotary motion, whether axial or around a greater center. Evidently there are whole hierarchies of archetypes descending from abstract to concrete realms of being and this was the place where these patterning principles are given their initial momentum. In some ways it was like being caught amidst the wheel springs at the back of an infinitely complex watch whose parts were all geared together and moving in perfect synchrony. Here on the inner side there could be no difference between organic and inorganic substance. The one animate totality of being, knowing and doing existed eternally. Only the face that registered time was external, its hands, empowered by those multitudinous intermeshing cogs, spinning in endless circles.
"This is the deepest I've ever been. I wish I didn't have to come back." Winding outward from that center it seemed as though the only way to retain some vestige of the experience, which I desperately wanted to recall, was to mumble comments. Even though the phrases were bound to sound meaningless they might nonetheless jog my muddled memory when I tried later to reconstruct the experience.
"It's all genetics. In some way this whole earthly play, all that we're doing, is a matter of trial and error. It's all kind of a survival of the fittest, a cosmic biological experiment."
This concern with cellular reprocessing was becoming a standard feature of my trips, though I still had not the remotest idea why. Somehow the mystery of life was contained in the duplex rotary motion of the double helix of the genetic code-but how? In my normal earthside existence the name of the game was to rise to the heights of spirit. By contrast, here on the sublime plane of essences, the same game strategy demanded an effort to reach downward to and through the molecular depths of matter. Or was it intended that the growth process should proceed both ways at once?
Opening my eyes my attention was riveted to the traceries of bare-limbed bushes outside the window. "Even God must suffer." The words stumbled off my tongue, but the idea seemed fraught with significance. "It's so painful for Him to try to force that flow, to interfuse His life into our hard-edged world."
Now the prickly branches were thorns thrust into the breast of the sky-thorns piercing the heart of heaven as though each needle-tipped projectile were trying to penetrate the bloodstream of creation. In tortuous complexity the stark black shoots pushed upward like dry roots, longing to suck a modicum of moisture from the clouds. But there just wasn't enough absorbency in those probing points to soak in the sustenance offered by the vaporous atmosphere.
"I can't, I can't" my voice kept repeating. My own ethereal roots-in-heaven were still too brittle to sponge in the vivifying currents that emanate from the heart of the inner world where there are no separating surfaces. It would take many more ramifying fibers to satisfy the soul-deep thirst for the waters of life that rain down from above.
Again I closed my eyes and felt the pain of those roots trying to expand into an alien medium. All at once two tuberous tendrils intertwined and rose skyward to form an exquisite bud whose upthrusting petals unfolded like a crocus seeking the spring sunshine. Pain was still lodged at the base but the flower itself was a blosom of sheerest ecstasy. It seemed to me that Howard and I together were fashioning this floral fountain from the fused substance of our twin beings. Now the plant was exploding upward in an unleashed torrent of motion. At the peak, the blossom burst in a starry orgasm of glistening sparklets raying forth in a scintillant shower of light.