Timothy-Leary-The-Psychedelic-Experience-The-Tibetan-Book-Of-The-Dead

Consciousness (alaya-vijnana), on the surface of which forms arise and pass away, like the waves on the
surface of the ocean. . . .” (Govinda, op. cit., p. 119.)
The atomic structure of matter is, of course, known to us intellectually, but never experienced by the adult
except in states of intense altered consciousness. Learning from a physics textbook about the wave
structure of matter is one thing. Experiencing it - being in it - with the old, familiar, gross, hallucinatory
comfort of “solid” things gone and unavailable, is quite another matter.
If these super-real visions involve wave phenomena, then the external world takes on a radiance and a
revelation that is staggeringly clear. The experienced insight that the world of phenomena exists in the
form of waves, electronic images, can produce a sense of illuminated power. Everything is experienced as
consciousness.
These exultant radiations should be recognized as productions of your own internal processes. You should
not attempt to control or conceptualize. This can come later. There is the danger of hallucinatory freezing.
The subject rushes back (sometimes literally) to the three-dimensional reality, convinced of the fixed “truth”
of one experienced revelation. Many misguided mystics and many persons called insane have fallen into this
ambuscade. This is like making a still photograph of a television pattern and shouting that one has finally
seized the truth. All is ecstatic electric Maya, the two-billion-year dance of waves. No one part of it is more
real than another. Everything at all moments is shimmering with all the meaning.
So far we have considered the positive radiance of clarity; but there are fearful negative aspects of the
fourth vision. When the subject senses that his “world” is fragmenting into waves, he may become terrified.
“He,” “me,” “I” are dissolving! The world around me is supposed to sit, static and dead, quietly awaiting my
manipulation. But these passive things have changed into a shimmering dance of living energy! The Maya
nature of phenomena creates panic. Where is the solid base? Every thing, every concept, every form upon
which one rests one’s mind collapses into electrical vibrations lacking solidity.
The face of the guide or of one’s beloved friend becomes a dancing mosaic of impulses on one’s cortex. “My
consciousness” has created everything of which I am conscious. I have kinescoped my world, my loved ones,
myself. All are just shimmering energy patterns. Instead of clarity and exultant power, there is confusion.
The subject staggers around, grasping at electron-patterns, striving to freeze them back into the familiar
robot forms.
All solidity is gone. All phenomena are paper images pasted on the glass screen of consciousness. For the
unprepared, or for the person whose karmic residue stresses control, the discovery of the wave-nature of all
structure, the Maya revelation, is a disastrous web of uncertainty.
We have discussed only the visual aspects of the fourth vision. Auditory phenomena are of equal
importance. Here the solid, labelled nature of auditory patterns is lost, and the mechanical impact of sound
hitting the eardrum is registered. In some cases, sound becomes converted into pure sensation, and
synesthesia (mixture of sense modalities) occurs. Sounds are experienced as colors. External sensations
hitting the cortex are recorded as molecular events, ineffable.
The most dramatic auditory visions occur with music. Just as any object radiates a pattern of electrons and
can become the essense of all energy, so can any note of music be sensed as naked energy trembling in
space, timeless. The movement of notes, like the shuttling of oscillograph beams. Each capturing all energy,
the electric core of the universe. Nothing existing except the needle-clear resonance on the tympanic
membrane. Unforgettable revelations about the nature of reality occur at these moments.
But the hellish interpretation is also possible. As the learned structure of sound collapses, the direct impact
of waves can be sensed as noise. For one who is compelled to institute order, his order, on the world
around him, it is at least annoying and often disturbing to have the raw tattoo of sound resonating in
consciousness.
Noise! What an irreverent concept. Is not everything noise; all sensation the divine pattern of wave energy,
meaningless only to those who insist on imposing their own meaning?