Of Psychedelics and Mind

How can one begin to explain the mentality of one who is shot into a mystical experience without context? One who determines himself holier than thou, yet with the approach of his original personality, which is intimidating yet humble. The poor fact of the matter is that he can no longer see or sense other people's social cues, nor can he determine anything that is being said to him with the same old understanding.

Words are mere labels, fictional noises with fictional significance. While he is used to them due to his upbringing, and can hold a poor excuse of a conversation, with the entire meaning of it not being considered, he simply cannot cope with the illusions that had defined his and everyone else's lives.

It is an ironic twist of fate for this lost soul, for he was an aspiring literate writer who longed to put his ideas into stories, different aspects of himself personified into fleshed out characters that take on lives of their own. It was once a means to express himself, but now their embodiments felt borderline obsessive, hearing and seeing them more literally with an amplified, unfiltered layer of imagination.

He always loved to portray characters that came to his mind, and would even spend hours at a time distracting himself with these notions before he succumbed to the prolonged effects of the LSD. He was a talented young lad with his whole life ahead of him, with promises of creative success in the books and short stories he would eventually make. They all orbited around a certain ideal, which was to express himself through creative writing tied to drawings.

He came up with a group of individuals who reminded him of himself. They were different aspects of himself personified, and would go through the trials of personal development as a group, as a species designed to be teachers of life from a human and alien perspective. He specializes in science fiction, you see.

He developed a man who lived in the Viking Age, with powers such as his own apparent immortality, among other things. Aliens came and fused their technology into human genes, and thus created the next stage in human evolution. From traversing through space to powers of a wide variety, the Improbability Drive is truly a device of unlimited potential. It marks the focal point of science fiction and philosophy, to emphasize on the fact that power, however vast and grand, can still make the wielders more human than their genetic makeup cares to admit.

There was also a Marine, who he had dwelled in the mind of for its perfect development. He reminded him of the Marine he wanted to embody, yet hadn't his heart in the right place. He felt disgraced, segregated, and alone for so long. He served, got injured, and was left bittersweet from his military experience. Shunned from that world, and attempting to cope in his old life, he would be left vulnerable to substance use. He wanted to show his perspective through that Marines' book when the time came.

There were young twin boys, who embody two sides of a duality of light and dark. They were reminiscent of the innocent and youthful extremes we are conditioned to, and how they eventually go from hating one another to understanding one another, making their duality much easier to cope with. They end up like identical brothers, with polar opposite personalities that vibe well together. One is ideally pure, the other chaotic and violent. One who accepted the nature of death, the other afraid down to the core.

There was also a serial killer, bound to a mask. He represented his human nature, and the intrusive thoughts that led to edginess in his early to mid teens. He loves to dwell in the dark nature of humanity, and wishes to write a book about his thoughts in the matter. He wants to help those with similar urges, however small or significant, and explain beyond the basics why killing is bad for the individual and their own humanity, which is represented as the infant that splits off from him once he truly realizes his power.

Others were in the back of his mind as well, but these ones were fully fleshed out at this point. Now that he was constantly at the mercy of his amplified, restless mind, he had plenty of time to talk with them within it. Echoes that almost sounded real, he couldn't stand or even understand the blurry line between the physical world and the one of his own creation. Days of sitting by his lonesome went by, ignorant of the illusions that tied the foundation of real world communication and living nice and neatly, realistically assuring that life from the physical world was all that there was. He now knew better than to assume such hypnotically convincing lies.

His head pulsates, for the sudden shift in perspective has made him disregard his SSRIs. Every eye movement, every head turn, he feels a dizzying shock in his cranium that simply must be ignored and endured, for it distracts and irritates him to the brink of tears. He would eventually get used to it despite its ability to get worse as the days go by. Honestly, it limits his ability to act out, which in retrospect is more of a blessing than you could imagine.

When a sudden peak of true understanding, and I mean the most raw, unfiltered emotion tied to realization, it escapes comprehension when attempting to mouth out the right idea of it. Essentially, it is the complete feeling of being in the 'now', where past and future do not exist. This experience is equally beyond the words we use to explain and make sense out of everything we go through. All I can tell you is that the truest sensation of absolute awakening left him saying,

"OH. I get it now."

Dumbfounded. Absolutely baffled, yet immense relief came flooding in to compensate for the uncertainty. Words cannot be said besides those portraying instinctive responses to the common sense aligning with the true nature of existence. It is more than orgasmic, and everything suddenly makes perfect sense. It is a feeling like you truly understand the only true manner of existence after a lifetime of anxious confusion. He would sit there, considerably feeling like he was overthinking everything he thought about life. Again, irony at its best, but he didn't see it that way in the infinite moment.

Lost in awe, lost in the best and only true sensation that goes unfelt by any sense of the conformed mentality of the average person. This young man has truly become one with himself, the true definition of which is absolutely nothing more than a mask of God. Not the western sense of God, mind you. Of that I must be absolutely clear.

So, you have someone who now responds to his environment with absolute spontaneous action. He is unpredictable. He is scary, intimidating, due to him no longer bound to life with such restraining mental conditioning. He would sit there in silence, being a large, brooding presence that sweats profusely as his family pretends that nothing is wrong. He would talk nonsense that only worried them down to their core, wishing for him to make sense. He would break them emotionally based on how he was once a respectable, friendly person, who seemed to have lost who he once was. Perhaps, even, this is how babies felt before their mothers and fathers taught them how to speak, how to act, how to perceive and how to think.

What does society do for people such as this poor bloke? I speak on his behalf when I say that loved ones were scared and heartbroken, challenging everyone emotionally while he is none the wiser. Lost in bliss. Lost in thought. Yet, he knows that all he is, is the universe itself, yet it goes without words. Without labels. He simply is. He knows everyone else is too, but they will have none of it.

Friends sobbed and became frustrated. Brothers tolerate him and cry inside. Parents come together once again to help their eldest, after their divorce over a decade ago. They try to reason and talk to him, but he is simply too lost in their eyes. He is undefinable and unable to mingle with the illusionary reality known as society. He was always an agreeable and passive person, someone who made the best out of his parents divorce and was the eldest of three brothers, offering a shining example as how to move forward with optimism for them. Now, his essential discipline was cast to the wayside, only causing more heartbreak.

In every discussion, intervention, and emotional conflict, he was simply connecting dots that made no logical sense. He would be asked to pay rent, but would respond by saying that money was already on the way from an unknown source, which frustrated his friend and landlord.  The young man was simply too preoccupied with the truth of oneness. His thoughts were one with the 'physical' world, and were making all sorts of assumptions, connections that made no sense to anyone outside his cranium. He would watch YouTube videos with lets-players and be absolutely convinced, with a true sense of excitement and groundbreaking astonishment, that the people in the videos were interacting with him mutually. With his thoughts, and laughing with them as though they couldn't comprehend what was happening. Such is the mentality of the one who suddenly knows how it feels to be truly enlightened in a western world.

He would watch and get lost in hypnotizing Astral projection videos, enraptured in the sensations that came with dampening his consciousness in everlasting bliss. It was like a drug, a means to escape the truth of the situation that he was putting all of his loved ones through, shoving them to the background of his consciousness. He loved them down to his core, but couldn't be bothered to understand their traditional conditioning. It wasn't his fault, however. Psychedelics just do that to some people.

Friends since his childhood were leaving him, unable to bear his new sense of self. Whenever a sense of anxiety spiked in this young man, he disappeared to find a secluded spot to meditate in solitude. He would consider this all a bad dream, and start fresh in the morning. In retrospect, he could explain this state of being as though living as though everything was a dream. Which, in some aspects of understanding, is undoubtedly true.

No one could understand him, but this was no longer due to his personality or his own social awkwardness. He was never one to cause harm, he lived life anxiously and with uncertainty that made him gentle and kind to the select handful of friends he would naturally make in school and from childhood. Funny even, a joker who just wanted to be there for those he cared for unconditionally. Now, he was driving them away, conversation after grueling conversation.

He couldn't see anything wrong with himself, yet felt his world around him tearing itself apart. Support systems were crumbling and disintegrating, and so he left home. He found a spot to sit and be lost in his mind without anyone to interrupt or disturb him.

Family and friends, every now and again, came by to visit or talk with him, but he would say nothing. Do nothing. Unable to be budged, he was lost in a hopeless void of self that blended into the environment so well, he began to decompose. He became skinny, one of his arms fell out of its socket. There were mementos left decorating his space, from family photos to vases with flowers. Even his very first toy, a stuffed animal, a golden retriever named 'Pal'. His family could not help him, and he was lost all on his own. Yet he didn't even know it.

A third eye began to grow on his forehead over the course of years. It was odd, yet it was opened by an amplified, overgrown pineal gland, in a brain that was the only organ still functional in his decrepit body. After the eye formed, and he was literally a neatly sitting skeleton, he was left forgotten to history and his family for over 100 years. The base of the platform he had found was sprouting with weeds and vines, though none dared to entangle the skeleton.

Decades passed. Literal centuries. He sat there, unmoving, lost in time and lost in mind. Everything he witnessed was a message from the subconscious bringing itself out to be realized firsthand. He saw, as people and animals passed him by, long dead family members, embodiments of a life he had once lived, giving him messages and were trying to taunt him. Make him realize what he did to everyone he loved. If he still had tear ducts and lungs, he would surely cry.

The subconscious tends to do something therapeutic in this mental struggle, mixing the mind and the world into one big sense of meaning. Everyone and everything gives him messages that offer meaning to him, like an alien psychiatrist. It removes the reality of what is taken in by the senses and offers unspoken emotion and imagery that tends to walk him through his pain and history, one session at a time. He got to say goodbye to his late grandmothers. His friends and families that have been long dead were talking with him, telling him through mental pings about the seriousness of what has happened. The characters from his stories offer respite here and again, yet the line of reality and mentality is so damned blurry that he doesn't even realize that he should be dead. He couldn't tell if he was, or how long he had isolated himself. The image of time is nonexistent, which tends to happen if one is dreaming. It is the best relatable explanation for the feeling of time when one is this forgone in the psychedelic experience.

That group of similar yet personally unique individuals had appeared before him, after his beyond exhausted brain had dozed off into a short burst of respite. They appeared, one after the next. Some wore a mask of empathy, others showed more or less disinterest in the sack of bones sitting before them.

It was silent for a moment, almost like they were paying respects to someone near and dear to them. It forced him awake, his ghostly empty eye sockets staring downward while his one remaining third eye snapped hectically from one individual to the next.

"This is him?" Asked the evil twin, "what good is a bag of bones?" Omega looked down on this lost soul, this discombobulated thing that apparently was the reason for their arrival. At this point, the skeleton was unsure as to what was going on, but that didn't make him stop to think that it was irrational.

"He is lost, just like the rest of us." Commented the Norse adult, Origin, who had kneeled before the skeleton, looking deep in the red third eye. "Come. Let's take him carefully."

The masked man, Phantom, holding an infant named Owen, took the skull and let the Marine, Gunnar, tucked away the body in a deployment bag. "Sheesh, not a speck of dust on this guy." Said the Marine, "His clothes are sort of worn though."

Upon inspecting the skull closely, the masked murderer sighed and gave it to the twins. "How its brain still works, I have no idea. No doubt it is one of us."

His third eye was darting back and forth, exchanging glances faster than his mind could conjure thoughts. Was this real? Was it a symbol of him passing on? Why now, of all times?

There was no way of knowing for certainty in general, let alone regarding this situation. As the good twin, Alpha, looked at the skull intently with his big, beautiful blue eyes, he was by far the most empathetic of the group. "Poor thing. He seems so distressed."

Omega scoffed and snatched the skull, holding it like a basketball in his open palm. "Do you think it can speak? Fucking thing has no organs."

Stian, the poor, weary mental traveler, accepted his fate, wishing only to see his family and apologize for all he had done to them. He put them through hell and hadn't realized it, and still only gravely comprehends the self reflection that these individuals somehow appear to be triggering. He would let out a ping from his skull, a telepathic message of understandable emotion that trigger words in the head, upon being asked if it can communicate.

"Are we real?"