For Lilian and the Indigos - Above Top Secret

In the summer of 96 (the perfect summer I’ve been waiting for) my dear friend M traded
me a little blown glass bowl for what Terence calls “A heroic dosage” of chunky, blue
bruised, kind, smurfy shrooms. I woofed them down. I sat on the pavilion of The
Commons (Ithaca’s downtown outdoor mall where I lived) and quickly became hysterical
with laughter. I was tripping pretty hard after only 20 minutes and decided it would be
wise to retire to my pad before it escalated to an ecstatic state. It did. I started getting
synaesthesia (Gee your voice looks pretty), energy raced up and down my spine and my
flesh turned to fluid. “Here it comes, that religious experience I’ve been waiting for...” I
collapsed on the floor and began laughing, crying, and heaving around. I FELT soooo
loved. I could grok the Lord’s presence in everything, I knew at that moment that we
were all just the Lord’s beautiful expressions here to serve each other. The feeling of
being loved to my core displaced all the petty resentments and remorse I had been
carrying my whole life. These negativities just didn’t mean anything in light of The
Lord’s presence. I wanted my father, mother, stepmother, friends, and family all there
right then so I could hug them all. They weren’t there so I thought I might run back down
to The Commons and hug strangers. In Ithaca, that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, but I
decided against it. I stayed in my room and flopped around like I had a stun gun up my
ass. Damn, what a release it was...
After an hour I calmed down enough to just be grinning that shit eating grin we trippsters
are infamous for. I ventured back downstairs to my outdoor mall living room and
returned to the pavilion. I sat down and began pondering, “What was I before I bifurcated
into man and mushroom?”
As I sat there radiating my new found love, wondering how to serve you all, my beautiful
fellow creations, a strange thing happened. Hippie after hippie, my Rainbow Nation
family, people I never met, just began flocking around me. I had been to a gathering the
prior year at the Hector National Forest next to Seneca lake where I lived and I thought,
“These are the people who’ll inherit the Earth!” (Matthew 25:34-40)
I don’t look anything like them and they still knew I was one of them. They say, “Oh,
cyberpunk, can’t be too bad.” The subcultures have a common bond. We know what it is.
It still amazed me though, that they would be drawn to me. The hippies converging
around me may have meant nothing without the psilocybin; the pavilion is, after all,
lovingly referred to as “Freak Central,” but the trip was valid. No old stupid clinical
government scientist who’s never done it is going to convince me otherwise. It was more
valid than anything any ol’ psychopreacher ever spouted. Although the intense emotion
of that direct experience has faded, the gnosis remains.
People sometimes say that psychedelics aren’t valid compared to the disciplined
approach of Yoga and meditation because they’re drugs and drugs are “bad.” I disagree,
firstly because “bad” is a symptom of duality and I think I’ve raked that over the coals
enough already, but mainly because just because something is effortless doesn't
inherently mean it’s not real. Also, if you were to attain Nirvana, I'm not sure you could
stop experiencing it. With psychedelics you have a choice. For myself, I appreciate what
they teach me but deep down I also appreciate the little amount of veil I have left.